Altered States (27 page)

‘Quite honestly, Alan, it was very difficult. She was always a chatterbox, but now she’s worse. And there seems to be a certain animus behind her chatter that wasn’t there before. Am I being uncharitable?’

‘No. I’ve noticed it.’

‘I thought the best thing to do was to keep her out of Aubrey’s way. That meant we had to go out all the time: shops and cafés, and more cafés, and then more shops. And she’s developed a habit of clinging on to my arm, which I’m simply not used to. Of course she’s getting old: we both are. It’s just unfortunate that I’ve grown to love my quiet life here with Aubrey. We’re very selfish, I know. I used to think that Aubrey was selfish before I knew him better. Now I see the point of a well-ordered life, and if that means a circumscribed life—and it does—I can’t see that as a failing. Old people should learn to keep to themselves.’

‘Actually I feel the same way.’

‘But you’re young, darling.’ There was a pause, in which neither of us referred to events in my life. ‘We’re so looking
forward to seeing you. We’re driving dear, so there’s no need to meet us, although Aubrey appreciated the offer. You’ll write to Sybil, won’t you?’

In fact my letter to Sybil crossed with one from her, which was surprisingly brave and sensible. She had been with Marjorie when she died, which she said was a great comfort to them both. ‘But now I am alone, and you of all people, Alan, will know what that means.’ I was touched by that, though by this time I was no more alone than most people. What she meant was that we were both bereaved, but was too dignified to say so. She reverted to her usual style in the following paragraph: Marjorie had been given a humanist funeral but Sybil intended to get in touch with her on the other side, through the agency of a medium with whom they had both been friendly. ‘Of course this is forbidden in the Bible, as you know, but I am not of a superstitious turn of mind. My sister and I were very close, closer than I have ever been to my daughter, from whom I have not even had the courtesy of a letter.’

Neither had I, and her memory was beginning to fade. If I imagined her (but this was difficult) I imagined her resentful at my act of appropriation. Perhaps it was Sybil’s letter that brought to mind the fact of Sarah’s wilfulness, although I had always found her frighteningly self-possessed. Her present silence, now more than several weeks old, signified that she had nothing more to say to me, and although I knew her address from the will, an address which Humphrey had jealously kept to himself, I did not write. What could I say? I could hardly tell her that her inheritance looked more dingy every time I saw it, that the dead bulbs in the chandelier had not been replaced, that Jenny tended to live in her bedroom, perhaps in memory of the way she had lived in the Hôtel de Départ, and that this bedroom now emitted a musty odour which permeated the rest of the flat. I did not tell her this: I
could imagine her shrug of contempt, which was very nearly mine. If I visited Jenny it was to prevent her from coming to the office, yet these visits were an ordeal. She had got it into her head that my mother was unhappy with Aubrey, that Aubrey was a monster who had destroyed the friendship she had always had with my mother, and that she owed it to my mother to compensate her for this unfortunate relationship by visiting her as often as possible. Fortunately she was also absent-minded, and was not clever enough to check my excuses, some of them not even excuses, that my mother and Aubrey had friends to stay, or were planning a cruise to the Greek Islands with yet other friends. She would grow sharp-featured on hearing of these alternative attractions to which my mother had succumbed, but then her face would relax into melancholy, as if yet another door were closed to her.

As time went on Jenny began to complain of indigence. As far as I could judge this was not justified, although she had spent freely on new clothes, for which no one could blame her. She had been under the initial impression that her money was inexhaustible, as if it were Danaë’s golden shower. That had now come to an end, and she affected extreme poverty, creeping about the flat with her shawl round her shoulders. Her face would brighten when I told her that her funds, supplemented as a matter of course by my own, were sufficient to enable her to live comfortably, and she would respond by planning another trip to my mother. This had now become something of a problem, but one which my mother, out of the goodness of her heart, did not see fit to avoid. Twice a year Jenny would arrive in Cagnes, and spend most of the week or the fortnight unpacking and packing her clothes, only too ready to take offence at Aubrey’s restrained welcome. Since these visits taxed my mother inordinately, to say nothing of Aubrey, I took my own holidays not at Cagnes but at Vif, to whose slumbrous
peace I returned with something like affection. The place had been good to me, and Monsieur Pach offered me the sort of unsurprised welcome which I found acceptable. These visits soon became habitual, so that my presence there was taken for granted. I did a certain amount of business for clients in Hong Kong, so that visits to the Far East also became habitual. All in all my time was well occupied. I knew a calm in Vif which I did not know anywhere else except at the cottage, and if this calm verged on melancholy, I accepted that as well. As my mother had observed, all those years ago, I had never been afraid of my own company.

It was on my return from one of these visits that Mother telephoned to say that Jenny, who had been staying with them, had suffered a slight stroke. She had recovered well, but they were driving her back to London, where she would presumably stay for the foreseeable future. They hoped I would join them as soon as possible. On the appointed day I picked up my briefcase once again and left for the Edgware Road. There were three people in the flat when I arrived: Mother, Aubrey, and a neighbour, presumably the neighbour who had come to Jenny’s assistance on the morning of Humphrey’s death. Jenny herself was lying on the sofa with her eyes closed. I have never seen anyone so obstinately waiting to be waited upon. Aubrey took me on one side. ‘She’s perfectly all right. Ate like a horse on the way over. I don’t want your mother involved any further. Leave that, Alice,’ he said sharply, as my mother began to gather up teacups. ‘Perhaps Mrs …’ he paused.

‘North,’ supplied the neighbour. ‘Beatrice North.’

‘Perhaps Mrs North could suggest some sort of help. On a daily basis, preferably.’

Mrs North looked doubtful. ‘I could ask my cleaner to look in,’ she said. ‘She’s usually with me until about twelve.’

‘Excellent,’ said Aubrey. ‘There you are, Jenny,’ he added,
bending over the figure on the sofa. ‘Mrs North has very kindly arranged for someone to come in every day.’

‘I want Alice to stay.’

I’m afraid that’s not possible. We plan to return to France tomorrow.’

A slight shake of the head from my mother told me that this was not quite true. I had to admire Aubrey’s sense of command, though my admiration went into sharp decline when he said, ‘Alan will look after things. He’s not far away. He’ll no doubt look in on you from time to time.’ To this Jenny made no acknowledgement; in fact her eyes, which had been briefly open, closed again, as if to repudiate the puny help that had been summoned on her behalf.

At the time I was oddly distracted by a curious dream I had had the previous night, or perhaps in the early morning, when I was close to waking. A young man had come to me, pitifully dirty and unkempt, wearing greasy blackened clothes. He explained that he was a student, and that he lived in a tower block which had no bathrooms. This seemed to me perfectly plausible, as was the fact that he required my help. I took him in, removed his clothes, and ordered him to take a bath and wash his hair. Several times, I added. I then cut his long black finger nails. All this was accomplished without a suggestion of sexual excitement or religious fervour. Nor had I any idea what the dream, which was unfinished, signified. I knew no young men, apart from the exceedingly well dressed and excessively self-assured young crook who was currently consulting me about bringing a charge of entrapment against the police. (I turned him down.) I hesitated to read any warning or portent into this dream. Yet when Mother and Aubrey had left, Jenny sprang into something like life, which indicated that she had suffered no permanent damage.

‘You won’t leave me, will you, Alan? If you do I shall be all alone. What will happen to me?’

Far more alarming than the dream, which in retrospect was alarming enough, was the prospect of having to coax Jenny from her sofa, as I had once tried to coax Angela from her bed. The memory was so overwhelming that I pleaded an urgent appointment, and with a fervent smile asked the neighbour if she would not mind staying, adding that I should be most grateful for her help.

‘You’ll be back?’ she insisted.

‘Not before the weekend,’ I said firmly.

Let others work this out, I thought. In the hall I heard Mrs North say, ‘What a charming man! Is he a relative?’

‘In a way,’ said Jenny, in her normal voice. ‘I have known him all my life.’ This was the only indication I received that something irrevocable had happened to her, and that I must prepare myself for mental as well as physical deterioration.

In fact she made good physical progress, and was able to go out each morning, walking with the aid of a stick, yet whenever I called she was lying on the sofa, with the shawl over her legs. She was well cared for, by Mrs North’s cleaner, who came every afternoon, and by a nun from the local convent who visited occasionally. Doing God’s work, no doubt. My own visits were held against me. Like many lonely people she complained of solitude the minute she had a visitor, pouring her complaint into complaisant but guilty ears. And one was always guilty, if only for not having been present before the complaint had had time to form.

‘You’re so hard, Alan,’ she would say. ‘You don’t know what it’s like.’ At this point two tears would form in her eyes. It was true: she was lonely. No one cared for her. And still she longed for company, for closeness. And no one could trick her out of that longing with false words of encouragement.

One evening I found her slightly more animated than usual, with a dangerous febrility that seemed to promise a
further stroke. She grasped my arm as I bent to kiss her, her breath, now clean as a child’s, in my nostrils.

‘I want Sarah,’ she said. ‘Sarah will look after me. Sarah always loved me.’

This was so complete a misreading of the situation that it seemed to me that there was nothing more to be said.

‘I don’t know where she is,’ I told her.

‘You can find her. You’re a lawyer.’ Her hand tightened on my arm. ‘Find Sarah for me.’

When, on future visits, I repeated that I did not know where Sarah was, she did not believe me. Until the Sunday—and it was always a Sunday—when she triumphantly presented me with a piece of paper on which she had copied two addresses, one in Paris, one in Geneva. ‘In Humphrey’s diary,’ she said, and I noticed that she was becoming short of breath. ‘Now you can find her for me.’

I left her with the usual kind vague words one uses on such occasions, put the paper in my pocket, and went home. At the kitchen table, with a cup of tea in front of me, I scrutinised the paper, noting the tumble-down nature of Jenny’s handwriting. Dropping, as if exhausted, to the lower right-hand corner, a pencil had inscribed Berthe Rigaud’s address in the rue de Rennes, and a number in the rue des Bains in Geneva. Out of conscience, or curiosity, I telephoned the rue de Rennes, to be told by a sharp young voice that Monsieur and Madame Rigaud were now living on their property in the Sologne, and that Berthe Rigaud, whom the speaker had known slightly, had married some years earlier. She believed that her married name was Chapuis, but she had lost touch with her, and could not help me any further.

I thanked her, oddly grateful to her for putting Berthe Rigaud out of reach. I got up, made more tea, and sat down again. My discovery of that moment, but in fact fully formed for some time, was that I would make no attempt to find
Sarah, who was now lost to me, and that Jenny, who had come to rely on me to perform this task, might transfer—would transfer—her final disillusionment from Sarah to myself. This seemed to me as much of a solution as I could achieve.

But it has not been easy, to watch the rage, the obstinacy, dissolve into sadness and a kind of trust. These last few bleak winters have been particularly hard. I do not speak of my own boredom and pity, though both are acute. As Jenny grows weaker she believes more and more hopefully in my quest, which I invent for her every Sunday. So far I have told her of my (fictitious) visit to the rue de Rennes, a story which she followed attentively, longing for the next instalment. From her point of view it is the best kind of saga, for there is—there must be—fulfilment at the end of it: the very form dictates it. I am aware of deceit, dissimulation, all kinds of treachery, not only to Jenny but to myself. But I have reached a stage of life which finds me unwilling to compromise my own peace of mind, and the hours I spend in that dark flat, spinning my tale, amount to the lie I am willing to commit in exchange for that elusive peace.

Soon I shall have to start the story again, but it will not greatly matter. I take her hand, and as I start to talk, her faded eyes look into mine for comfort. ‘Not long now,’ I tell her, and indeed it has often seemed to me that it will not be long. But she is tough: she does not die. I have also told her that I shall be going away shortly, but the news does not alarm her, for she knows that I will be back, if only to finish the story. I leave the flat disheartened by the ease with which I have brought off this trickery, and with the even more disheartening conviction that at the end I too will be told kindly lies by those who know me well enough to spare me the truth.