Free A Private View by Anita Brookner

he had in any sense desired the girl, but because he despaired of himself.He realised that had he not been aware of Mrs Lydiard’s implicit disapproval he would have invited the girl into his flat, not to make love to her, but to find out more about her. She had stimulated his near professional curiosity; he doubted that she was altogether above board. He retained, for closer inspection, the undoubtedly expensive black silk outfit, toted across continents in a cheap nylon holdall, ready for a fortuitous meeting with a man, even a man as unpromising as himself. But that was wrong too, he thought, as he ran his bath, for the most worrying factor of all was that throughout the previous evening he had not felt noticeably benevolent. What he had felt, he reflected with a slight shock, was young, much younger than his official age (which must be all too apparent to the girl), and open to suggestions, however louche. He had even been willing to engage in a species of flirtation, distinguished only from the conventional kind by the fact that it was a flirtation with the truth. He would get the truth out of her; in this matter he would have his way with her.
    Nevertheless he was still puzzled by his own behaviour, which was part good nature, part avidity. His interest had been engaged, and for that he was grateful to her. On the other hand he must be circumspect, more circumspect than he had already shown himself to be in the presence of Mrs Lydiard, who, having taken her leave of them at the lift, had assumed a dignified air, as if dissociating herself from bad behavior. He must remember that this girl, Katy Gibb, was not being given to him to study, that she had a life of her own, flimsy though it might seem to him. After she had left the Dunlops’ flat—for she could hardly remain there after their return—he would never see her again. Therefore itmight be wise, as well as appropriate, to give her a wide berth, to treat her as the stranger she both was and was destined to be, and to behave with renewed decorum, as befitted his station in life.
    He felt disturbed that anything out of character had ever crossed his mind, then reflected that the provocation had been blatant. This, he thought, was also worrying, but was no concern of his; the girl was young (or possibly not so young), was at a loose end, had perhaps drunk too much, had perhaps thought that this was the way in which she was expected to reward her host for a not very scintillating evening. But at some deeper level he had known that she was angry, with that strange unfocused anger of hers which could be activated by a random incident or circumstance, by something as mysterious as an association formed in her own mind which would remain completely inaccessible to others. He wondered if she had had the benefit of Howard Singer’s therapy, or rather of one of his therapies, his encounter work, as she had called it. However bogus the man was he could surely not fail to notice the strange combination of concealment and aggression which even he had isolated. But however complicated her mind appeared to be, Bland sensed that it was closed, uncommunicative, not available for comment, not susceptible to explanation. Hence his strange sensation of alarm as he had slid into sleep the previous night.
    He remembered the last conscious image he had entertained: the lips closing definitively over something glistening and defenceless. The image itself had frightened him then and contrived to frighten him now. But there was a difference: now he divined its gross indecency. With a bemusedexpression, to which he was oblivious, he decided that he had been near the edge. This edge, which he did not and could not define, represented the limit of acceptable behaviour, acceptable not merely to society but to his own internal censor whom, so far, he had done nothing to defy. He was aware that what he termed acceptable behaviour would be a laughable neutrality to others, a hedging of bets, a