A Friend from England (8 page)

And they had danced together like brother and sister.
That was what had worried me at the time. It even worried me slightly now, although I began to feel my familiar exasperation with Heather, as I always did just before seeing her, as if the sight of her mild face stimulated me to a fury both on her account and on my own. Well, if she were either stupid enough or clever enough – I could never decide which – to enter into a
folie à deux
with this strangely affecting and disappointing man, that was surely her own affair. It was certainly nothing to do with me, although I began to see that at some point she might run into trouble. But I remembered her extreme reticence, the way she had issued news of her courtship in the form of a single bulletin, almost a press statement, the competent way with which she had dealt with the enquiries of her aunts, and I assured myself that she knew what she was doing. I was all the more anxious to believe this because I did not relish the task of lining up my experience with Heather’s inexperience and taking on the burden of inducting Heather into a fully adult life. In a way I wanted Heather to remain as she was, just as I wanted Oscar and Dorrie to remain as they were, fixed points in a volatile universe. I simply wanted things to go on as they were, an unchanging backdrop against which I could conduct my own variations. I saw them as the dry land to which a hapless swimmer such as myself might cling for safety.

I dare say everyone has arrangements of this kind, little bargains struck with uncharacteristic activity or behaviour. Eileen Somers, from my shop, a widow with two undergraduate sons, has a side-line in free-fall parachuting. Her late husband was a Wing-Commander in the Royal Air Force, and she feels that in this way she can keep in touch with him. Eccentricities abound in the most orthodox, the most humdrum of lives. And who was I to criticize this marriage that had been launched in the most genial of circumstances, with the almost
frenzied goodwill of both sets of parents? For the parents had, on both sides, every reason to wish to see their offspring settled. Perhaps I sensed that there was some reservation as to how these children might be inducted into real life that gave me pause, or perhaps it was Oscar’s thoughtfulness when he scrutinized Michael that worried me. But in the end it was hardly my affair. I left the shop to Robin and Eileen and set out to walk to Marble Arch, determined to enjoy my rôle as spectator, determined also not to involve myself in matters regarding an intimacy which I had no desire to share.

It was a bright windy day in early June. The summer had not been a good one so far. Brisk south-westerlies had kept the temperature down, and there seemed to be road-works everywhere. Dust blew into my eyes as I walked along Notting Hill Gate into the Bayswater Road, where Japanese tourists gazed uncomprehendingly at the junk displayed against the railings of the park. Doomed as they were to walk about all day, it was possible to feel for them an immense compassion. I was glad that summer journeyings were not for me. I usually went away after Christmas, in the slack season, thus allowing Eileen and Robin to get on with their action-packed lives. I never minded summer in the city and frequently wandered about in the evenings after the shop was closed. I liked the feeling that everyone was abroad and that London was inhabited by transients. Sometimes I wandered long and far, and only returned home after nightfall. So far I had not done so this year, but the return of the Livingstones signified that I was in some way free once more, as if their rootedness gave me the security to be rootless, to test my vagrancy against their stability, my preparedness for adventure against their bourgeois world. The contrast was perhaps necessary to me for reasons which were present in me, not as reasons, but perhaps as instincts, as if I and they existed
to offset each other in a way to benefit both conditions, as if I, in my willed impermanence, could look to them to measure it, and as if they, sensing this, looked to me to provide them with some entry into a region of greater understanding. ‘Rachel is a feminist,’ Dorrie had once said proudly, introducing me to one of the aunts. I think she thought me very brave. I think they all did.

I found Heather’s block of flats behind Norfolk Square, a complex of buildings with a Thirties-ish appearance, curved metal windows catching the afternoon sun. A porter reading the
Daily Telegraph
behind a small desk informed me that the Sandbergs were on the fourth floor. I walked across an expanse of Jazz-Age carpet to a flight of stairs with a chrome handrail, until recalled to order by the porter who indicated the lift: small, but with bronze-coloured doors which slid into one another at the touch of a button. I could smell the Colonel’s cigar before I even rang the bell of Heather’s flat; he must have preceded me in the lift. I found echoes of his presence distasteful, reminding me of the urgency with which he had previously behaved. But it was Dorrie who came to the door, flustered and happy, and who, after a kiss, ushered me into a Nile green drawing-room where I saw Heather sitting on one of those sofas that have the arms lashed to the back by ropes. Clearly, the decorating here had been done by Dorrie. Other notable features of the room were an oval mirror in a gilt frame surmounted by an eagle (possibly an item intended to underline Michael’s masculine presence) and several armchairs of extraordinary depth, with footstools covered in the same pale green silk: elaborate curtains in more of this material were swathed and swagged at the long French windows, one of which was open on to a terrace. The room was in fact rather handsome, and certainly luxurious. Fine china cups and saucers covered with a pattern of little birds stood ready on a piecrust table in front of a fireplace in which a gas
fire, simulating live coals, was lit, for it was only intermittently warm, and the windows were soon shut, perhaps as much to emphasize the hermetic closeness of the gathering as for any real reason. Dorrie was obviously longing for it to be dark so that she could light all the lamps with their coral and peach coloured shades. It was the room of a child of the middle classes, one who had never known the austerity, the poverty or the ugliness of an unhappy home. It was also a little out of date, as if fashions which had come and gone had no purchase here, and only the solidity of a conventional bourgeois comfort had any meaning. The air was warm and scented with Dorrie’s muted honeysuckle cologne. Although I had just arrived, she had already darted out of the room, and tinkling noises announced the preparation of tea. It was clear that she was duplicating her own rituals, with no sign of an interruption, barely acknowledging the fact that her daughter was in charge of this establishment, with its elegant appointments and its air of sophistication. She seemed delighted to be doing the honours, and Heather in her undemonstrative way was apparently pleased that she should. In fact Heather was so extremely immobile that I wondered briefly if she might be pregnant. Since she had only been married a month, and since her husband was nowhere in sight, nor was there any trace of him in the room, I dismissed this possibility from my mind. In any event it didn’t fit in with my theory.

There were only four of us, Oscar, Dorrie, Heather, and myself. The men, Dorrie explained, had had some business to discuss and had gone to the Colonel’s office; they would be back later. Over the rim of my teacup I studied Heather. Her expression indicated that nothing was different; nevertheless there were some subtle changes which had, however, entirely to do with the influence of Italy on her always variable garb. ‘Did you have a nice holiday?’ I asked. (Holiday, rather than
honeymoon, seemed to me to be the appropriate word.) ‘Yes, thanks,’ she replied. I was grateful to her for not showing off but felt that probably her reticence was due to the presence of her parents, particularly of her father, rather than to my own. Oscar, leaning back full-length in his engulfing chair, seemed to me to be slightly older, a little less spruce, than when I had last seen him, but the shadow of melancholy had temporarily disappeared from his face. Presently he was mobilized to fit an adaptor to one of the numerous lamps, for the conveniences of this flat, its commodities even, seemed to be the sole preoccupation of the elder Livingstones, as if their son-in-law were incapable of looking after them himself, or, more probably, as if they judged his status to be too honourable for them to ask him to descend into practicalities. He disappeared from the room, only to reappear a few minutes later. ‘I’ll have to go down to the shops, darling,’ he said to Dorrie. ‘I should find something still open. This doesn’t fit.’ ‘Edgware Road,’ Heather offered from the sofa. ‘On the corner.’ Oscar looked at her, and for a tiny second hesitated. ‘I shan’t be long,’ he assured Dorrie. And to Heather, ‘Try to get your mother to sit down.’ But Dorrie was already piling cups on to a tray. ‘I’ll just wash these,’ she said. ‘I expect you two girls want to be alone anyway. You’ve probably got a lot to talk about.’

The fact that we had never had much to talk about had completely escaped her. I suppose she thought that we had intense and intimate conversations in the privacy of Heather’s car and was too modest ever to enquire about them. In any event there was a silence after she had left the room and it occurred to me that the afternoon was going less well than I had expected, or perhaps was proving less of a treat. I had expected a renewal, or perhaps even a continuation, of that unthinking, almost soporific, warmth that I usually so enjoyed in the Livingstones’ house, and instead everything
was being slightly but noticeably mismanaged. Only Dorrie seemed to think that nothing was wrong, that everything was splendid, that all the omens were favourable. Heather herself seemed less overwhelmed by her good fortune, but then she was always fairly expressionless. ‘Well, how have you been?’ she enquired finally, but with that benevolent smile she had inherited from her father. ‘Oh, I’m all right,’ I said. ‘How about you?’

‘Fine, fine,’ she said.

I judged the fact that she had used two words instead of one to be a good sign.

‘Not looking forward to going back to work, though,’ she added.

‘Will you keep on the shop?’ I asked, in some surprise.

‘Of course,’ she said, looking at me with the same surprise. ‘Why not?’

‘I thought you might find you had to do more at home,’ I said lamely.

‘Well, no, not really,’ she said. ‘He’ll be travelling quite a bit, you see. And Mummy filled the freezer while we were away. There’s nothing for me to do. Anyway, I should be lost without the shop. I’ve built it up quite a bit. You’ve never seen it, have you?’

I reminded her that we usually met at her parents’ house, for which I already felt nostalgic.

‘Well, you must look in and see me. And you’re always welcome here, of course.’

She smiled, again with that faint but irresistible kindness, to which I always responded. I think it was that smile, which they all shared, that bound me to them.

I was however a little disheartened. She seemed to me to have passed into another age group, one in which material certainties are taken for granted, romantic love is a thing of the past, and work has assumed the central
position that it usually occupies in truly adult lives. I felt, in comparison with this surprisingly assured Heather, a trifle forlorn, as if my life had yet to reach the point at which hers had apparently come to rest. And yet there was no marked change in her. Her hair had grown a little fuller, perhaps, and she was quite conventionally dressed in a rather striking violet print skirt with a thin violet sweatshirt, obviously Italian. Perhaps she had a little more chic, a little more style. If so, it was commendably understated, which I also put down to the influence of Italy. It struck me that she might have some flair in the fashion business after all. ‘I bought some marvellous things in Italy,’ she added, as if to bear out my assumptions.

That seemed to be the end of our conversation, and I was quite glad when Dorrie came back into the room. ‘I expect Rachel would like to see round the flat,’ she said to Heather. I got to my feet with a show of alacrity, although my curiosity seemed to have evaporated. I remember noting the bedroom as a cold blue room with one wall taken up by a range of white fitted wardrobes, and an immense bed covered by a pale blue satin counterpane. It looked icy and unused, and I wondered how she could bear it. There were none of Michael’s things scattered around, and by now his absence was rather noticeable. And yet I was the only one who noticed it. ‘Lovely,’ I managed to say. ‘You must have worked awfully hard to get it finished so quickly.’ ‘Oh, the parents saw to everything,’ Heather said. ‘Most of the stuff didn’t arrive until after the wedding. They stayed here for a bit while we were away.’

I reminded myself that there was nothing necessarily unusual about this, although the image of that icy bedroom followed me back into the drawing-room, and I went to the fire to warm my hands. Something had been lost. But, ‘Lovely,’ I said again, this time to Dorrie. She was already pouring sherry from a square
cut-glass decanter. ‘Here you are, Rachel,’ she said, handing me a glass. ‘Now, tell us what you’ve been doing.’

‘Well, we’ve been quite busy,’ I began, but at that moment the front door opened and shut and an aroma of cigar and a volume of subdued but busy talk heralded the arrival of Michael and the Colonel, whom I must remember to call Mr Sandberg, for he was not a Colonel, nor had he ever been one. The title was some impenetrable joke forged in Michael’s childhood and perpetuated ever since. Nevertheless he was not averse to using it, and I suppose it suited him well in business. On second thoughts I decided to retain it. For some reason I didn’t want to get on the wrong side of him.

They brought with them a bustle and an air of good cheer that struck me as semi-professional. It seemed essential to them always to be laughing, as if without this activity their spirits might plummet to zero or disappear altogether.

‘Hello, hello,’ exclaimed the Colonel. ‘How lovely to see you.’

I doubt if in that instant he had any idea who I was, but his eyes focused and hardened as he looked at me.

‘You remember Rachel, don’t you, Teddy? Heather’s friend?’