Altered States (19 page)

‘Everything all right at home?’ Brian would say. ‘Getting on all right, is she?’

‘Fine, fine,’ I would answer. I knew that he was not deceived, but I was not about to make a bid for his sympathy.

‘Perhaps you’d both come to dinner,’ he said. ‘I’ll get Felicity to give Angela a ring.’

‘I should leave it for a bit,’ I told him, and told him more than once. ‘She still gets very tired.’

‘You should take her away,’ people urged. ‘A change of scene would work wonders. For you both,’ they said, these kind people, neighbours, colleagues, for although no complaint had ever passed my lips I had lost weight, no longer appeared as presentable as I had formerly done, and was frequently sleepless. At night, in the spare room, I wept, stifling the sounds in my pillow. To my horror we both appeared to be going downhill and I seemed to have lost the will or the capacity to put matters right.

It was a momentary insight into my own condition that emboldened me to speak firmly to Jenny on one particularly harassing evening. I knew that what I was doing was reckless, but I was tired and hungry for normality. I took her by the arm and led her into the sitting-room, where Angela could not overhear us. Under the stark centre light we were accuser and accused.

‘This can’t go on, Jenny,’ I said. ‘You’re making her into an invalid.’

‘She is an invalid, Alan. You don’t understand …’

‘She’s a perfectly healthy woman who refuses to get out of bed, and you’re encouraging her.’

‘I see.’

‘You’re indulging her, Jenny. This is
folie à deux.
’

‘I see,’ she repeated, with some hauteur. ‘Thank you very much, Alan.’

‘Of course I can never thank you enough for your kindness.’

‘So you’re telling me to leave.’

‘Jenny, do understand. I want my wife back.’

‘Do you?’ She looked slyly. ‘You were after Sarah, weren’t you?’ For an instant a younger, more speculative woman considered me, a hint of irony in the faded blue eyes. ‘Did you see Sarah? Did you see her in Paris?’

‘No, no, I didn’t.’

I could feel the flush of shame creeping all over my body. I bundled Jenny roughly into the hall, fetched her coat and her shopping bag, and opened the front door. She stared at me, while various half-formed suspicions grew in her mind. My further guilt was thus firmly established, and, what was worse, was acknowledged by two people. I no longer knew how guilty I was. All I knew was that I should never again feel innocent. I now see that age would bring about this change in any case. Then I was merely aware of a feeling of entrapment. That, of course, is what guilt really resembles, the blind alley of one’s own consciousness, with no alleviation either from another person or from oneself.

‘You don’t want me to come tomorrow, then?’

‘Not really, no.’

I forced myself to kiss her on both cheeks, hoping that this would urge her on her way. Her final humility maddened me. She should have been angry, she should have accused me—I longed for such accusations to be out in the open—but
she chose to smile and look at me with an uncertain expression on her face. Then, ‘She takes her pill in about an hour’s time.’

‘I’ll remember. Thank you, Jenny.’

I marched in to Angela, and said, ‘You can stay there for now, but tomorrow you are getting up. And you’d better be prepared to pull your weight again. Jenny won’t be coming any more.’

She stared at me. ‘But I can’t do without her.’

‘You can and you will. Believe me, this is all for the best.’

But she took no notice, turned her face to the pillow, and began to cry like a child.

‘Don’t forget to take your pill,’ I said, and left her.

This continued for three weeks. Angela wept and I exhorted. She remained in bed, and soon her hair and her nightdress began to look untended. I bought prepared dishes from Marks and Spencer which she ate greedily and carelessly, like an old lady or a very young child, the corners of her mouth gleaming with sauce. Then she would apply a thick layer of lipstick, she who had used so little. Streaks of old make-up appeared on the pillow; the room began to smell. She refused to let me near her, even to change the sheets. I called the doctor, who was non-committal and said he would look in again. One freezing night I staggered into the spare room, dropped my clothes on the floor, and fell into a deep sleep. That was the night that Angela took the rest of her pills. She was dead when I went in to her the next morning. There was no note. That my poor girl had decided that she wanted nothing further to do with me was my final punishment.

It was Aubrey who suggested, or rather who strongly recommended, that I go away. ‘This has broken your mother’s heart,’ he said consolingly. Mine too, I reminded him. He considered me, as if weighing the sincerity of my words, then, having perhaps decided that I was, for a very brief moment, to be trusted, his expression softened.

‘We must all recover as best we can,’ he said. ‘I’ll look after Alice, of course. Don’t worry about her. Worry about yourself, but worry constructively. Get some exercise, some decent food. I know the place for you—I used to go there myself when I was out of sorts. It’s a place called Vif, on the border between France and Switzerland. There’s very little to do there but walk and sleep, and that’s just the sort of thing you need. They know me quite well there. If you like I’ll give Monsieur Pach at the hotel a ring. In fact you can
leave the whole thing to me, tickets, hotel, currency. I’ll drop them into the office; that’ll save you a bit of time.’

For he was anxious to get rid of me, not because he disliked me, but because I was associated with disaster. He was, for a man of his relative sophistication, surprisingly superstitious. I saw that look on other faces: the hastily lowered gaze turned resolutely into one of cordial sincerity, the caution of the approach—could it possibly be avoided?—and the neutral, numb-seeming words of condolence. I had become an embarrassment, even an irritation, and my presence was not welcome.

I therefore took the hint and avoided most of my friends, all of whom professed themselves anxious to see me; perhaps they were, but I could anticipate the conversation, the avoidance of one particular subject, and I felt protective of their naïve kindness, far more protective of them, in fact, than of myself. Only Brian and Felicity were precious to me, Felicity even more than Brian, whose unfailing presence in the office next to mine constituted a consolation in itself. Felicity spoke of Angela’s death quite simply as an event destined to pass into history, and thus to an extent without affect. I dined with them quite often, either in St John’s Wood, or, at my invitation, at a restaurant near their house. I trusted them so deeply that when their baby son cried in the nursery I did not even mind. It was as if their adult presence, so matter of fact, so devoid of exaggerated sympathy, served as a bulwark against my hurt.

In any event I was scarcely aware of hurt, only of shock. This had a curious effect on me: I became polite and humble, searching people’s faces for the reassurance I could no longer find in myself. When I looked in the mirror I saw that my expression was one of pleading. If I lived at all in those first months I lived automatically, eating without hunger in order to combat fatigue, walking carefully to work in order to
afford myself some vestige of healthy activity. There was one change: I slept a lot. I became a sleeper of heroic duration and consistence. In the early evening I thought of my bed in the spare room with longing, but waited until a suitable hour before I would permit myself to pull the coverlet off the bed and undress with a sigh of relief. I camped out in the flat, using only this temporary room and the bathroom. I ate out, when I did eat; sometimes I went for a walk in the dark, to use up the time before I could decently go to bed. Sleep was what I most wanted. It seemed to be the only need I would ever have again.

One evening I returned home to find that Mother had been in, had removed Angela’s clothes from the wardrobes and stored them in the cupboards in the spare room, and had stripped the beds and changed the sheets, removing every sign that Angela had ever occupied our bedroom, along with vestiges of her infinitely tragic life, her novels, her pills, even the flowered towels she had bought for our bathroom. I almost resented this. By inviting me to occupy my flat again, as I had occupied it before my marriage, it seemed as though my mother was being insensitive. But this very slight clumsiness did not offend me. It embarrassed me. I felt apologetic about taking my ease in the big bed, thought the spare room more appropriate. It was not that I was afraid of Angela’s ghost, for whom I felt pity and protection. I was simply aware of her absence as something irreparable. I did not blame her for what she had done, because I recognized that what had happened was an act to which she had put her name, that she had acted in character. That her life had excluded me for an appreciable time I accepted, however regretfully. I told myself that our parting was inevitable. I went through this reasoning every night. Then I entered sleep as others enter religion.

When Aubrey dropped an envelope containing my air
ticket and a quantity of French and Swiss currency onto my desk I looked at him blankly; I had forgotten where I was going, and why. My lack of assurance unsettled him, propelling him into reluctant sympathy.

‘You need the break, Alan. You’re still a young man, too young to spend your life brooding. Some fresh air will do you the world of good. Your room is booked. You’ll telephone as soon as you arrive? Try to sound positive when you speak to Alice, won’t you?’

I detected an anxiety for my mother behind this desire to get me out of sight. It occurred to me that he loved her, and that this late love had rattled his normal composure. He was uneasy with me, too scrupulous to blame me for causing trouble, but unable to care for me in what he viewed an enormous indiscretion. Indeed I felt the same way that he did; my guilt had disappeared, to be replaced by a high degree of social embarrassment. It was for this reason that I acquiesced in his plan for me. The name of the small town to which he had consigned me—Vif—seemed appropriate, since my nerves were
à vif
, that is to say, flayed. Since I was no longer at home anywhere, except in my dreams, which were, curiously enough, peopled with characters I had known in childhood, I became resigned to going away. It seemed only polite to do so. And somewhere, at some level, there may have been a hope that Aubrey’s reasoning was sufficient, that all I needed was some fresh air and exercise, and that if I absented myself I would expiate my fault (since it remained mine) and would go some way to being forgiven.

‘It’s only two weeks,’ said Brian, to whom I confessed the terrifying blankness of my mind. ‘Though why you couldn’t just go to the cottage I don’t know. I suppose by pleasing Aubrey you’re pleasing your mother …’

‘That’s it,’ I said thankfully. ‘That’s why I’m going. To make them feel comfortable.’

‘It might be all right. I recommend running, preferably before breakfast. Take something to read. I’ll ring, of course, or Felicity will.’

‘She’s been marvellous.’

His face softened. ‘She’s a good girl,’ he said. ‘I know you’ll be all right, Alan.’

What he meant to say was that he hoped I’d have better luck next time. This did not offend me; in fact it encouraged me. If Brian thought it permissible to turn the page then I would think so too. My view of love at this time was wistful, as if happiness in marriage would be forever denied to me. Briefly, fugitively, I glimpsed a time when I might deplore my choices, might give a sad but impatient shrug when I considered how badly my emotional investments had turned out. Indeed, for a somehow heartening moment I consigned both Sarah and Angela to the past. Of the two of them it was Sarah who inspired the greater distaste. I was once again on the side of the virtuous; wholeheartedly I saw the point of virtue. Since obedience was a virtue I would go away, but I would endeavour to go away without my memories. I had always been a fairly robust character; if I were condemned to live alone then I would try to make a good job of it. Nevertheless, when I left the office and knew that I should not see it for two weeks, I felt something akin to panic. A solitary life is not for the faint-hearted, and I wondered whether, as Brian thought, my luck would ever change. Bracing myself, I made what farewells were in order, my features set in a rictus of determination and assurance. Then I was out in the street, bound for sympathy.

I dozed on the flight to Geneva; evidently sleep was to be my new occupation. Following instructions I went down the escalator in the airport and found the train that was to take me to Vif. By this time it was evening and I could see little from the windows, but I was aware that the train was climbing.
It was the nadir of the year, a misty early February, when the days are still short and the promise of spring seems remote. I stumbled out into the dark and a profound silence. Then, beyond the station, I found a café, and sat down, my bag beside me. I was shocked into consciousness by the completeness of my exile, and for a moment I felt renewed panic, not knowing what to do with myself. Then I picked up my bag, found a taxi, and told the driver to go to Aubrey’s hotel, which seemed to me to be some way out of town. I noticed very little of my surroundings that first night, although I have come to know them well ever since. The proprietor, Monsieur Pach, a small immaculate man with white hair and hands folded like a monk, asked after Aubrey, whom he appeared to know well, and told me that the weather was warm for the time of year. He melted away silently, then just as silently returned with a map of the region and a small brochure detailing some of its delights: the Château Fort, the Promenade du Soleil, the Belvedere, with its
vue panoramique
, the Hôtel de France with its Sporting Club, and the English Tea Rooms.