Free A Private View by Anita Brookner Page B

blind to his surroundings, but sufficiently familiar with the place to assume that the feet pounding past him belonged to men in tight bright clothes, each imprisoned in an equally bright capsule of effort and reward, he made his way towards South Kensington where there would be a couple of cafés open and where he could eat breakfast. This cheered him, as the prospect of a treat, however derisory, usually did. The day was fine, perhaps too fine; such early brightness could not be sustained. All the more reason therefore to appreciate the morning before succumbing to the usual gloom of Sunday afternoon. He kept up a steady and invigorating pace until he was at the bottom of Exhibition Road, by which time the clear skies had already developed a steely glint. This was the way of it on these short winter days; one’s craving for the light was only acknowledged in mere snatched moments, such as this. The rest of the time one had to endure the dark as best one could.
    Lingering over his coffee, he wondered what to do next,what to do with all the time that remained to him. Christmas, he supposed, was the immediate problem, as it was for so many. He would receive the usual invitations and would be unable to offer the usual excuses, for everyone now knew that he was retired and on his own. He would have to go away, he reflected, although the idea of travelling alone was no longer as pleasurable as it once had been, when there had been so much to come back to. Now the prospect seemed faintly menacing, as if something might happen to him when he was far from help, or as if he might die without anyone knowing. But it would have to be faced, and it might have to be faced immediately. Rome, he thought, or Vienna, for he knew them both well and was at least assured of comfortable hotels. Reluctantly, as if the journey were already upon him, he paid for his coffee and toast, and set out to find a supermarket. He bought lavishly but absent-mindedly, thinking he might eventually find a use for all this stuff, the cod’s roe and the artichoke hearts and the mascarpone, although he could not quite work out in what context they might be useful. Then, with his plastic bag only slightly weighing him down, he set out for the north side of the park and home.
    There was still no sound from the other flat. With the same stealth he closed the door behind him, unpacked his provisions in the kitchen and put them away, simultaneously aware that there was nothing sensible for lunch and that he was anxious to get out of the house again as soon as possible. Again the pantomime of caution, but it was no longer a pantomime, he acknowledged: he did not want to be confronted, detained. Again he was relieved to be out of the building; again he breathed more freely when he was in thestreet. He would lunch at his club, he decided, and then he would look at some pictures.
    This was what usually happened to him on those Sundays not occupied by a ruminative walk to the suburbs. At least, it was the pattern on those Sundays which found him both tired and depressed, as he was now, tired because of the previous evening, and depressed by his renewed consciousness of Putnam’s absence. On such a day he and Putnam might have been lunching together, before each of them went off peaceably to their separate occupations, which would in their turn be recounted over their regular lunch on Monday. Thus was an air of purpose given to the longest day of the week. They might not talk again until the following Sunday, but the contact would be unbroken throughout their professional concerns, which often came together when it was a question of entitlements or bonuses. In the office they would lift a brief hand of acknowledgment to each other, but not linger. Thus there was ample material for commentary, which seemed to be, and often was, mutually beneficial. The fact that Putnam would have cast a sceptical eye on Bland’s excursion the previous evening was particularly unwelcome, as,