Undue Influence
Acclaim for
ANITA BROOKNER
“Brookner’s novels are models of psychological observation that remind us of the myriad glances, asides, and gestures that indicate so much we usually miss or dismiss.”
—The Christian Science Monitor
“One of the very few contemporary authors whose novels deserve to live on well into the next century.”
—The Washington Post Book World
“Brookner’s control over the material is absolute.”
—
Jane Smiley
“In
Undue Influence
, the novelist has created in Martin Gibson a discerning, right-on portrait of the masochistic male. … Of Miss Brookner’s novels I’ve read, this one may have given me the most pleasure.”
—The Washington Times
“If Henry James were around, the only writer he would be reading with complete approval would be Anita Brookner.”
—The New York Times Book Review
“Brookner is a writer of great skill and precision. Passages of brilliant writing abound, hard-won insights that startle us with Brookner’s clarity and succinct intelligence.”
—Los Angeles Times Book Review
Table of Contents
One
It is my conviction that everyone is profoundly eccentric. Those people I pass on my way to work every morning almost certainly harbour unimaginable fantasies. Nor are my neighbours entirely to be trusted. Once my mother and I were disturbed by the sounds of a ferocious altercation coming from the flat above ours in Montagu Mansions, yet the following day we were able to address our usual greeting to the stately widow who lived there and who was visited, as far as we knew, only by her son, an economist at the Department of Trade and Industry. Shortly afterwards she informed my mother that she was going to live with her son in Maida Vale. This was somehow understood to be a sensible arrangement, arrived at in a mature manner, although to judge from that epochal argument it seemed less than reasonable. She was in the habit of looking in on my mother, who rarely left the flat. ‘Poor boy, his marriage did not work out,’ she said, with a lovely show of tolerance, but my mother reported the gleam of victory in her fine eyes. She had promised to keep in touch after she moved, but my mother died and the widow failed to put in an appearance. I dismissed this as normal behaviour, and was able to do so because by that time I had come to realize that most people are entirely inconsistent and that one is advised to treat
them gently, keeping one’s scepticism to oneself. Not to let it show is a desideratum of civilized behaviour.
My other conviction is that everything is connected. That widow in the upstairs flat, whom I knew only slightly, I immediately identified as the mother of the man I observed drinking his coffee in the café in Marylebone Lane where I occasionally stop on my way to the shop, for no better reason than that he had a cowed and submissive look which could have been caused by nagging from more than one quarter. A scenario immediately suggested itself: the wife and the mother at odds, the mother waging ceaseless and not very subtle war against the wife and finally bearing her son away in triumph, like the warrior she was. To the victor the spoils. This man in the café, with his fair bent head, his meek neck, looked like one of those Christians bound to be thrown to the lions. And his mother would have been accustomed to thinking of herself as her son’s accredited girlfriend, his companion on holidays, his escort on social occasions. This sort of mother never forgives this sort of son for indulging in sexual activity, and should he marry, which in many cases he does in order to get away from his mother, will act as if she has received a mortal blow from which she may not recover. Her performance, which will be carefully calibrated, will necessitate anxious telephone calls from the son; she in her turn will have no hesitation in calling him at his place of work, sometimes in tears over an implied snub from the wife by whom she purports to be baffled. ‘But I’m his mother!’ she might say, in the face of certain objections to her frequent visits, so that relations would be broken off and the son would have to visit his mother surreptitiously on his way home. Finally there would be a demonstration of the wife’s unworthiness, like the one my mother and I had overheard, and the die would be cast: mother and
son would live together as if no marriage had taken place. The man drinking his coffee in Marylebone Lane wore a clean shirt every day and had neatly combed hair, like a schoolboy. I imagined his mother inspecting him before he left home. A wife would be too busy.
Naturally it is likely that none of this was true. This man in the café might be unattached, and our widow in the flat above entirely innocent. Except that she gave out an aura of unfulfilled sexuality that led one to reflect on the penalties of widowhood, and the troubled legacy to children—although as far as I know she only had the one son. Apart from this there was nothing in her demeanour that was unseemly, or rather there was nothing else in her demeanour that was unseemly. But she seemed unusually combative, as if a campaign were in progress. My mother was the only woman she did not view as an antagonist, largely because my mother was so polite. She knew that the widow—Mrs Hildreth—felt sorry for her, was mildly amused by this, but was good-hearted enough to play her part. Playing her part involved venturing no opinions. And I think she admired the woman’s gusto, imperfectly concealed by a worldliness that was acquired rather than innate. Her eyes would roam round our plain living-room, with its oak furniture—even a settle!—its large blurred green carpet on the hardwood floor, its densely patterned curtains, the volumes of Ruskin in the bookcase, as if William Morris were still alive, and she would condemn it out of hand, reflecting complacently on her own swagged and cushioned apartment, on which my mother had reported with perhaps justified satisfaction.
We never saw the son, which enabled me to identify him with the stranger in the café. But the curious fact is that I saw Mrs Hildreth again long after these imaginary events had taken
place. I saw her from the back, lingering outside Selfridges, and I noticed how much older she seemed, her neck bent in that characteristic elderly stoop, although her hair was as carefully burnished as it had always been, and her ankles were still slim above the obstinately high heels. She had not given in. On the other hand she looked idle, absent, and she was in the original neighbourhood.
‘Mrs Hildreth?’ I said. ‘Do you remember me?’
Her eyes, when they focused on me, seemed slightly strained, as if her sight were failing.
‘It’s Claire, isn’t it?’ she said finally.
‘Yes, it’s me. How are you?’
‘Oh, still out and about, you know.’ She gave a poor smile.
‘Still in Maida Vale?’
‘Yes, although the flat is too big for me now. My son married again, you know. I’m on my own now.’
Come to think of it I had not seen the man in the café for some time. Married again! Then the story was over. Except that it never is, is it? Mrs Hildreth’s alteration was now explained, as was her withdrawn expression. She stood as if expecting me to tell her what to do next. Clearly she was now without occupation, one more old lady submitting to the inevitable shipwreck.
‘You must miss your son,’ I said, not quite innocently.
‘David? Oh, I usually see them at the weekends. They live in Burgess Hill now. David collects me in the car. But I’m quite glad to get home again—I don’t believe in outstaying my welcome.’
There was no rancour in her tone, no wistfulness either. This was what convinced me that her life was nearly over. Her eyes looked out bleakly, in an effort to see beyond me. She did not ask me how I was, although she seemed content to stand and
talk. Seeing her there, still smartly dressed but somehow quite lost, I was forced to abandon the story I had told myself about her. Sometimes connections are misleading. Her son was probably short and dark and complacent, not at all like the worried man in the café. But I was correct, I thought, in supposing that he had finally got the better of his mother, for in doing so he had somehow killed her. The luxuriant widow I remembered had nothing in common with this obedient relic. I felt I should do something for her, ask her to lunch, at the very least call her a cab. She must have sensed my hesitation, for she gave me a smile that was all comprehension. I wondered if she remembered that my mother had died. If so she had not mentioned the fact, nor had she inquired after her.
‘Give me a ring some time,’ she said, laying a hand on my arm. ‘Don’t be shy.’
In that moment I realized that she was probably quite blameless, always had been, that that long-extinct argument—so powerful, so brutal—was probably quite misleading, that she was simpler than I had supposed, simpler than I was, and that the connections I had made were sometimes skewed, the result of a life spent watching rather than in taking part.
People are mysterious, I know that. And they do reveal mysterious connections. But sometimes one is merely anxious to alter the script. It was not the first time I had been guilty of a misapprehension.
Two
I was at home in the flat when my mother died, having just returned from the hospital to pick up the nightdresses I had washed and ironed for her. She had seemed very tired when I left her, but no more than usual. The telephone rang just as I was making myself a cup of coffee. ‘At least you had time to say goodbye,’ I was assured by the ward sister, but I rejected this. The idea of saying goodbye to my mother seemed outrageous, barbaric. Yet I knew that I should never see her again.
My friend Wiggy came and spent the evening with me, introducing an element of normality into a day which had been given over to making arrangements, though truth to tell there were few enough of these. We had no relatives, so there was no Book of Numbers genealogy to work through. She had wanted to be cremated, as if this were somehow a fitting conclusion—or perhaps an unexpected one—to a life entirely lacking in drama. I had kept my face impassive when she discussed this, and had assured her that everything would be taken care of. By me: this went without saying. She faltered a little when she realized this, which was why it was only mentioned once. Neither of us had any thoughts on the afterlife. There would be no resurrection. This, if anything, cheered me: I had no desire to spend eternity praising other people’s God.
Nor did I very much want to see my father again, clumsy as he had been after his first stroke, his useless right eye covered by a patch. I had spent some years working as his secretary, and had thus missed out on the career of which my mother spoke so hopefully. In any event I had thought him an unworthy partner for my mother, and he had the peculiar faculty of blunting my imagination. I longed for my mother to have had worthy suitors, regretted on her behalf his thick tweed-suited body, the stick he used, even in the flat. We were both dutiful, of course, my mother because she was a dutiful woman: I myself felt less humble but knew that life was only simple when one concurred with the wishes of others. In itself this is a dangerous weakness, but it seemed obligatory at the time. I was glad when he died. My mother spent a dazed week huddled in her chair, as if he might reappear at any minute. After that I think she knew a measure of contentment. She had always struck me as a contented woman. She belonged to the era before women complained.