Free Family and Friends by Anita Brookner Page B

coming week. In a moment he will send a telegram to his father, saying that he has accepted a last-minute invitation from a friend. This is, in a way, true. There will be mild trouble when he gets home, of course, but nothing that he can’t deal with, as long as he has a clear conscience.
    When the three of them have exchanged polite and friendly greetings and have sat together over yet another cup of coffee, Mimi, still fully in command, gets up and makes as if to leave. The other two look up at her, waiting for her to do something. ‘Betty,’ says Mimi. ‘I will tell Mama to expect you home in a week’s time. Don’t forget to get in touch with Maître Blin. He will arrange about your ticket.’ Betty looks furious but says nothing. She has no intention of going home, as they both know, but she feels that she has lost face by being instructed in this manner. ‘Frank,’ says Mimi calmly, as if she has been talking privately to him all her life. ‘Will you walk me to a taxi? I think I saw a rank just round the corner.’ Frank assents with alacrity, and is only momentarily intercepted by Betty who embraces him, head back, leg bent back at the knee, as if he were going on a long journey. The workmen in the café cheer her with good-natured amusement. Both sisters blush deeply at this. It is their last moment of common feeling.
    As Frank strides beside her on his beautifully elasticdancer’s legs Mimi wonders how she is to move ahead. For a moment, and quite unexpectedly, she is tired, sad, faintly ashamed of this whole adventure. She knows that she should have remained the correct elder sister, negotiating Betty’s return far more energetically than she has done. How will life be for her without Betty? They have never been apart before. She is aware that they have both lost their early innocence, and she is aware of the strangeness of this thought, for she has done nothing. Betty has chosen to rid herself publicly and scandalously of her girlhood, her upbringing, her education, even her ancestry, but she, Mimi, has done nothing. Disturbed, she turns to Frank. ‘She must be home by next week,’ she says to him. ‘She is foolish and headstrong and she worries our mother.’ ‘Never fear,’ says Frank. ‘I will bring her home.’ At this Mimi looks at him with large sad eyes. ‘Don’t hurt her,’ says Mimi with difficulty, not knowing how to phrase this. ‘Of course not,’ he replies, without difficulty, she thinks, in the painfully aware state that seems to have succeeded her earlier calm. She puts out her hand. ‘Goodbye, Frank.’ He retains her hand in his. ‘I always liked you best, you know.’ Her pain deepens, then lightens, leaving her calm once again, but very sad. ‘I am at the Hôtel Bedford et West End,’ she tells him. ‘And I shall be there all this evening.’ He presses her hand in acknowledgment before seeing her into the taxi.
    Mimi finds Alfred looking brighter, after his visit to the bank, and mildly pleased with his morning’s work. Apparently they have quite a lot of money, which is always reassuring. ‘Would you like to stay here a few days?’ asks Mimi, after she has explained that Betty will return, under safe escort, in less than a week. ‘No fear,’ says Alfred, who has not yet recovered from the unfamiliarity of this experience and who eyes approaching waiters with deep suspicion. Decorously, they lunch intheir suite, for Alfred is in fact quite seriously disturbed by the French in their informal mode. He finds them threatening, confident, and much cleverer than he is, and he knows that at the bank they were expecting him to be Frederick. He is conscious of being young, although it was his birthday yesterday, and he is acutely homesick. The truth is that in some ways he has had to grow up too quickly and in others he has not had time to grow up at all. Alfred is a clever boy, and he is conscious of the fact that he is going to have to sort this out for himself. His heart