Free Visitors by Anita Brookner Page B

was indeed worthy of respect.
    But now their conspiracy had encountered newcomers who did not know the rules, aliens, as Austin had described them, and respect would no longer be the order of the day. Mrs May had felt little sympathy for the young people, seeing them as predators, ignorant of their own intentions. She suspected, as Austin and Kitty no doubt also suspected, that they despised the values so munificently displayed in the Levinsons’ flat, their complacency, their material anxiety, their need for comfort. She herself had always come up against the barriers they erected for themselves against the world, but had seen them for what they were, a defence against fear. David’s expansiveness, Ann’s insouciance notwithstanding, they too were conspirators. And in any contest between age, which is easily bewildered, and youth, which is scornful, the least prepared were the most at risk.
    The real alien, she reflected, was Steve, who had no claim on anyone, unless it were herself. But she was more fortunate than Kitty and Austin, for she had no claim on him. She did not expect him to like her, to be grateful, to be appreciated. His blankness of manner, his lack of affect, made it unlikely that he knew how to pay a compliment. Oddly enough this made him seem vulnerable. Holding him mentally at arm’s length she might deal with him in a satisfactory manner. ‘Don’t get involved’ had been Henry’s invariable maxim when anyone pressed claims too strongly. Steve, to do him justice, pressed no claims, merely landed weightlessly in other people’s lives, expecting to be taken for granted, as a given. She must find a way of dealing with the situation, as speedily as possible. The exercise would be an excellent opportunity to sharpen her wits. I too am old, she thought. But there are times when experience, even assumed, even simulated, counts.

He was no trouble. She admitted as much to Molly, who telephoned one morning when Steve was taking one of his lengthy baths. In a whispery confidential voice Molly expressed concern for her sisters health, and solicited Mrs May’s views on the matter. This was the usual tenor of her conversations. Devoted to her sister, of whom she was in awe, Molly found it restful to dwell on Kitty’s complaints, perhaps because these had no real substance. Of the broken heart she was uneasily aware but did not speak, this being a matter not to be discussed outside the family. What they spoke of in confidence, on one of their stately pilgrimages to Harrods, was also a mystery, though it could perhaps have to do with their husbands, towards whom their innocent yet determined girlhoods had been directed.
    Of the two of them Molly retained some vestiges of that earlier self; her nature was placid, yet an unanswered question could still be detected in her round brown eyes. She, the younger of the two, had married first, and had felt apologetic about doing so, yet Kitty’s had been the real love match. It may have been some memory of the young Kitty’s rage andtears on hearing of that first engagement that had made Molly defer to her ever since. Yet they were close, as close as two sisters ever could be, as close as two girls who had never left home, for the men they had married, and had married for that reason, had never tormented them, had never shocked or challenged them, had acceded with them to married life as if it were merely a superior and agreeable social activity, a stage setting for fine housekeeping and family parties, with access restricted to those similarly endowed. Amiable Austin, amiable Harold, had both chosen and accepted these two handsome sisters, not long back from their Swiss finishing school, and ever since, uncomplainingly, had had their lives prescribed for them. In return for their indulgence they received excellent care, as if they were already in their dotage. There was never a murmur of complaint on either side, or none that reached the outside world.
    Yet in