Free A Start in Life by Anita Brookner Page B

country.’). In her absence Ruth had done the cooking but had not enjoyed it. ‘Fabulous, darling,’ said Helen, her mouth full of chicken casserole, but she went back to bed as soon as the meal was finished, leaving Ruth and her father at the kitchen table with very little to say to each other.
    A London summer. She had had many. Holidays were rare in the Weiss household. When she was a child her grandmother had taken her to those mild watering places that she herself had known in earlier days: the Isle of Wight to recover from measles and chicken pox, then Baden Baden, Vevey, Scheveningen. They had sat obediently in hotel gardens and lounges, planning their walks, their rests, looking forward only to the hours between tea and dinner. Sometimes a band would play. Once they took the train from Vevey to Montreux, where her grandmother had spent her honeymoon; once they took a lake steamer in the other direction. Rousseau and Stendhal had left their mark here, but Ruth was too young and they did not yet matter. At Scheveningen they sat huddled in the chill wind in the Kurhaus gardens. Ruth had only once braved the sea, while her grandmother stood guard on the endless and almost untenanted beach.
    While they sipped their tea in Baden Baden – her grandmother with an old-fashioned sunshade and Ruth’s pullover on her knee – George and Helen went on tour or
stayed with friends in Menton. They were good guests, Helen so vivacious, George so good-natured. But all that had come to an end. Baden Baden and Vevey were still there, Ruth did not doubt; even the improbable Scheveningen was still reachable. But Oakwood Court, now permanently occupied, as if they were under house arrest, had assumed a centrality that had never existed before. The elder Mrs Weiss had imposed calm and order. Now there was a restlessness of continuous yet undignified occupation. They could not get away.
    Ruth sensed danger here, if only because she herself had so little to report after her vacations. For how could she talk about wandering the evening streets between Kensington and Victoria? Occasionally she went to Paris, not too often because her parents always reacted with dismay if she appeared to be leaving them. But she knew that Paris was not the answer, for she pursued her same dreamy paths there, or sat in the Luxembourg Gardens as if her grandmother were still beside her with the sunshade and the spare pullover. And getting home was no relief either, for she had so little to say for herself. ‘Well,’ Anthea would demand, ‘did anything happen?’ Nothing happened.
    It was with this knowledge that nothing was happening that Ruth returned to Oakwood Court one evening in mid-September and informed her parents in a tone of nannyish cheerfulness that they should go away for a holiday. That it would do them good. That they spent too much time in the flat. That they did not see enough people. That she would be off herself in October and that she would like to see them looking fit and refreshed before she left. George was deeply annoyed. Helen was amazed. Mrs Cutler was all in favour.
    George was annoyed because he found himself unwilling to spend any money, having already spent a good deal in the electrical department at Peter Jones. The record player, which he had not yet presented to Mrs
Jacobs, had cost more than he expected but the euphoria of spending his own money had got out of hand, and he had gone on to treat himself to a sun lamp and a small portable grill in which, the assistant told him, he could make toasted sandwiches. He planned to keep these two items at Sally’s flat; he could see himself fit and bronzed from the sun lamp and lean and trim from the steaks with which he would supply the grill. He would have to ring Peter Jones to postpone the date on which he intended to have the things sent to Bayswater. He had warned Sally to expect a couple of bulky packages and had mistaken the look of alarm that flashed across her face for one