The Rules of Engagement (11 page)

“
What about that tea?
”
called my husband.

“
Just coming,
”
I said. From the telephone came
noises of banging, as if the house were collapsing
on top of her.
“
Betsy,
”
I shouted, as if
she could hardly hear me.
“
Are you still there?
”

“
Yes, I'm here.
”

She seemed unable either to say anything or to end
the call. It was unclear why she had contacted
me, for although we were old friends she had noted my
dislike of her lover. Who was now dead, I
reminded myself. And she herself had not been well, as
was evidenced by her subdued and altered tone.

“
When can we meet? I'm here all day at the
moment. I mean, I'm not busy. Do you want
to come over? Now?
”

“
Tomorrow, perhaps. If you're sure. I've got
so much to tell you.
”

“
Come to tea tomorrow. It will be lovely to see
you.
”

I rang off, moved. It would indeed be
lovely to see her.

“
This tea's cold,
”
remarked my husband.
“
Who were you talking to?
”

“
My oldest friend,
”
I told him. For she
was, I realized, the one and only, the friend who
follows one through life, and to whom one is bound by the
very fact of life itself.

The children were going back to school. I could not
help noticing this when I went out the following
morning. They seemed excited rather than downcast,
as if the prospect of order were a welcome
change after the variegated activities of the
summer holidays. They dominated the streets,
or perhaps one's eye was simply drawn to them as a
fact of nature, the new exerting its rights over
the old. It was a sight to make any childless
woman thoughtful. While never exactly
wishing for children, and in any case knowing myself to be
inept, I seemed suddenly to be conscious of a
dimension that was lacking in my life. The sight of
fathers holding the hands of chattering little daughters
affected me now as it would not have done previously.
From what I had gathered Edmund's attitude
to his children was one of tacit devotion, not to be
spoken of to an outsider, active only within the
boundaries of his home, incommunicable to anyone in
a position radically different from his own. One
sensed that few people would be allowed into the jealously
guarded intimacy thus observed, and that to attempt
to do so would strike a false note. Even a
neutral enquiry, such as I had attempted,
would be met with a banality which might have answered my
question, had it not been met with an instinctive turning
away of the head, and a smile which merely
emphasized the firmness of the mouth. After that I was
careful to behave as if I hardly knew of his
children's existence. It was an area from which I was
excluded. My attributes were those of a woman
whose sexual availability was guaranteed
by childlessness, as if the same practices could not
be visited on a woman whose status was enhanced
by the kind of respect accorded to mothers. While I
knew that this was an absurd suspicion on my
part I was aware that I could not hope to share his
experiences of life within a family, and it was perhaps
the feature that separated us even more than the
disjunction between our needs and wishes.

This was not the only sign that summer was coming,
indeed had come, to an end. The mornings were cooler
and the evenings longer than they had been; already leaves
were changing colour and scents were sharper in the
occasionally misty air. My afternoons in the garden would
very shortly be curtailed and I should be obliged
to spend more time at home. Oddly enough I had
become quite reconciled to home during the peaceful
days that were now concluded, when Digby and I had
kept each other amiable company without exchanging
anxious enquiries or forbidden confessions. For
we both contained areas of secrecy. I
suspected that he sometimes compared his first marriage
with his second, and while never faltering in his
loyalty to me must have regretted the intensity of
feeling and desire that had died or been
extinguished by his young wife's death. Such thoughts
as he must have entertained were kept from me, and I
respected his silence on such matters, for I had
a silence of my own which must not be broken.
I liked to know that he was in another room, that we
were within reach of one another, that our tact would
protect us from exaggerating a need which had perhaps
become diffused but was no less valued. With
Digby back at his office the flat would seem
unoccupied, for in his absence my presence was somehow
diminished. And on such a morning
—
the end of
everyone's holidays
—
I was left with a sensation that
time had overtaken me. The children on their way
to school, and the new silence at home, signified
a return to order, and I was obliged to consider the
challenge of how to reconcile the disorder of my
love affair with the resumption of daily life so
clearly within the grasp of those I passed in the
street, the eager children and the no less eager
parents, all recognizably conforming to some
mysterious normality of which I had lost sight.
Such social conscience as I still retained urged
me to buy a cake for Betsy's tea, rather as if
we were still children invited to one another's houses. I
dismissed the idea, but children were on my mind, even the
children we had been ourselves. It was hard to see how we
had progressed to our present situations without
bringing to the matter something of that earlier sincerity,
yet we had both in our various ways attained a
notional adulthood which, by comparison with our
initial state of grace, appeared bizarre,
even theatrical. My situation was no doubt
banal, Betsy's more unexpected. And also more
unexplained. I did not know if she had been
married to this Daniel, and if so when and where the
marriage had taken place. The absence of
information (for one always advertises a marriage)
convinced me that there had been nothing of this kind,
wisely so, for few women, even women as
unspoilt as Betsy, could bring themselves to take
on a man who was essentially still an adolescent,
placing his faith in a future to which he would
contribute only in the most immaterial of
ways. That she could believe that his nebulous
discussions could constitute a credible career argued
her devotion, which, to judge from the afternoon when she had
introduced Daniel to me, was already making her
unhappy. A man should grow out of his fantasies
and devote himself to making money. And Betsy was
my age: she must have humoured him beyond the point at
which it made sense to do so. His death would have put an
end to a process which had once involved them both
but which would eventually have divided them. The wonder
to me was that she should have remained loyal for
so long. But then, I reflected, she had always
been loyal. Loyalty was her besetting sin.
I also wondered how she would look, whether this
rite of passage would show itself in outward and
visible signs. She had been a pretty girl,
with the slightly undifferentiated prettiness of very
young English women, or indeed like the children on their
way to school. When she had visited me with
Daniel she had seemed half-way to being a
French woman, thinner, more obviously cared for,
rigorously focused, and yet distracted by her
loving anxiety for her charge (for he was no
less), doing her valiant best to reconcile
her conflicting social duties to us both. I had
discerned, above all, a desire to do the right thing, and
in this she had not changed. Her quasi-maternal
role flattered her but did not altogether suit her:
she had been destined to be wholehearted and
spontaneous, and perhaps she was aware of this. She was
as disturbed by Daniel's moody presence as I
was, but for more generous reasons. She wanted him
to be comfortable, to be happy; I merely thought him
rude. At the same time it was clear that I was still
in some way her standard of respectability, as if
I possessed certainties which had been denied
her, and which the process of growing up had merely
reinforced. She had had the same air of trying
to turn a makeshift arrangement into a proper
life, and, more important, into a proper home,
a proper family. She had produced the names of
friends
—
Vincent, Brigitte, Jean-Pierre
—
as
if they formed part of her curriculum vitae,
produced as an earnest of her and their intentions.

Yet she had appeared isolated, as if she
knew that what bound her to these friends was provisional,
and as if Daniel's ability to take seriously
an affiliation which was essentially not serious had
only imperfect hold on her honest and forthright
nature. She would have wanted all the comforts of
marriage and I could see that these would be denied her.
I had thought her performance courageous. As well
as love she was already dealing with disappointment, and
although the two are not infrequently linked I thought
she deserved better.

When she was sitting in front of me I could
see that further changes had taken place. She
had lost more weight, and her larger eyes gave
beauty to a face that had hitherto been a mere
receptor of changing moods. She had gained a
stillness, a languor; no longer did
she exclaim with enthusiasm when presented with the
slightest favour. Her hair had grown, and it was
clear that she no longer dedicated much thought to her
appearance. This, paradoxically, gave her a
certain authority. It was as if her life were now
properly adult and she herself had to deal with adult
concerns, such as money, property, but also
solitude, fear. She smiled faintly at my
expression, and it was true that I was shocked. I
wanted the truth from her, and I knew that she would
give me nothing less, yet I did not want
to intrude into such a private matter. All I
knew was that her life in Paris was over, that she
had returned, or had been returned, to her
origins, to the old house, and by the same token
to an old friend. I was determined to remain that friend,
although I too had changed. Our friendship would now be
measured by the success with which we managed such
changes, and also by how much we chose to reveal of
our changed selves.

“
What has happened?
”
I asked, largely
disobeying my need to be discreet.

“
Well, I'm here.
”
She gave an
unconvincing little laugh.
“
I've bought a rather
horrible flat off the Fulham Road, and
I'll move in as soon as it's habitable. Which
will have to be soon, because they want to get rid of
me. The new owners of the house, that is. It's
been bought by property developers, and they are not
particularly responsive to my needs.
”

“
I mean, what happened to Daniel?
”

“
Well, he died. I think he wanted
to die.
”
Her face expressed the most profound
disbelief that anyone should want such a thing.

“
Was he ill?
”

“
I think he must have been. I think he was
mentally ill. I couldn't get him to relax. He
was over-excited all the time. Sometimes he talked
all night. And the flat was being repossessed by the
owner, who wanted it for his son. That affected him
badly. And the money was getting scarce.
”

Her money, I assumed.

“
One night he wouldn't stop talking,
refused food. I tried to get him to calm
down, but it merely made him more agitated. Then
we had a row, our first. And our last. He ran
down the stairs
—
I could hear him all the way to the
street.
”
She became silent.
“
He was run
over by a police car. I heard it. Or rather I
heard a woman scream.
”
She was
silent again.
“
The police were very kind. They
took care of everything. I think they thought I
might bring charges. The worst thing was when they
asked me about him, and I realized I knew
next to nothing. A friend, I said. I think they were
relieved to be shot of the matter. They said they would
look into it and let me know. But they didn't. I
suppose these things take time. I never heard
another word.
”

“
What did you do?
”