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EXCERPT
I read the Blue Fairy Book, the Yellow Fairy Book, and the stories of Hans Andersen, the
Brothers Grimm, and Charles Perrault. None of this was groundwork for success in worldly
terms, for I was led to think, and indeed was minded to think, of the redeeming situation
or presence which would put to rights the hardships and dilemmas under which the
characters, and I myself, had been labouring. More dangerously, it seemed to me that I
need make no decisions on my own behalf, for destiny or fate would always have the matter
in hand. Although I was too sensible, even as a child, to believe in a fairy godmother I
accepted as part of nature’s plan that after a lifetime of sweeping the kitchen floor
I would go to the ball, that the slipper would fit, and that I would marry the prince.
Even the cruel ordeals undergone by the little match girl, or by Hansel and Gretel, would
be reversed by that same principle of inevitable justice which oversaw all activities,
which guided some even if it defeated others. I knew that some humans were
favoured—by whom? by the gods? (this evidence was undeniable)—but I was willing
to believe in the redeeming feature, the redeeming presence that would justify all of
one’s vain striving, would dispel one’s disappointments, would in some
mysterious way present one with a solution in which one would have no part, so that all
one had to do was to wait, in a condition of sinless passivity, for the transformation
that would surely take place.
This strikes me now as extremely dangerous, yet parts of this doctrine seemed
overwhelmingly persuasive, principally because there were no stratagems to be undertaken.
One had simply to exist, in a state of dreamy indirection, for the plot to work itself
out. This was a moral obligation on the part of the plot: there would be no place for
calculation, for scheming, for the sort of behaviour I was to observe in the few people we
knew and which I found menacing. This philosophy, the philosophy of the fairy tale, had, I
thought, created my mother, whose strange loneliness was surely only a prelude to some
drastic change of fortune in which she need play no active part. I therefore accepted as
normal that she should spend her days sitting and reading, engaging in minimal outdoor
activity, for surely these were the virtuous prerequisites for vindication of some sort,
for a triumph which would confound the sceptics, whom I was also able to recognize. She
was a widow; I was hardly aware of the lack of a father, for I accepted that the road to
validation was in essence one of solitude, and rather than engage in some productive
occupation I preferred my mother to wait for the solution to her situation to be presented
as none of her own volition.
I was thus aware of her unhappiness but able to bear it, with the help of the knowledge
and indeed wisdom I had culled from my reading. As a child I did not perceive her
longings, which had been cruelly cut short by my father’s premature death. Nor was I
much interested in him, for he belonged to prehistory; I had no image of him other than as
a face bending over me, and a photograph of a slim young man in an academic gown. Even the
photograph conformed to my belief, for it showed someone who was not quite grown up, and
therefore a fit companion for my mother who was not quite grown up either, a woman in
embryo whose maturity was still far off. This made me comfortable with my own position, a
fit descendant of a couple on the verge of existence who were merely undergoing some form
of trial and who were surely approaching some beneficent outcome which would make even my
father’s death assume acceptable proportions. He had died, and my mother had survived
his death. Her unhappiness, I was confident, would be overturned, as any term of trial
must be. It sometimes seemed to me that my father’s disappearance had merely prepared
the way for a story very much like the ones I was so fond of reading. I was not then aware
of the universal desire for a happy ending: I would not have understood such an
abstraction. But I did know, or was convinced, that our story would have a happy ending,
not realizing that there is no proper ending in human affections until time provides an
ending to which all must submit.
The fact that we were of the same species (even my absent father contributed his very real
silence to our own relative silence) merely emphasized the gulf that existed between
ourselves and the harsher world outside our flat in Edith Grove. At least I assumed that
it was harsher: how could it not be? When my mother walked soundlessly from one room to
another, sat reading in the quiet afternoons, or carefully watered the plants on our
little balcony, I was not aware of any lack or discrepancy in our lives, or not until some
outward agency disrupted our slow peaceful rhythm. Our street was nearly silent, almost
abandoned by the late morning: I could be trusted to make my own way to school. After I
had done my homework in the evening I would take up my position at the window. I liked to
watch the lights go on in other houses, as if preparing for a wayfarer’s return. My
reading had conditioned me to think in terms of wayfarers, so that footsteps on the
pavement gave me an agreeable sensation that the stories contained enough authenticity to
justify the fact that I still read them.
No visit disturbed our evenings, nor did we wish for any. It was only at the weekends,
when my mother said, ‘Better put your books away. The girls are coming,’ that I
resigned myself to a lesson in reality which would be instructive but largely unwelcome. I
feared this lesson on my mother’s behalf; I knew instinctively that her good manners
were inadequate protection against the sentimental tactlessness of our visitors, who
surely thought their presence something of a comfort to my mother and even to myself.
‘They mean well,’ said my mother. ‘They are good women.’ But we both
knew that this was a lame excuse.
‘The girls’, as opposed to ‘the boys’ (their husbands, twin brothers
in the hotel business), were as devoted as two sisters might have been, although they were
not related. Rather it was my mother and I who were related to them, through my
great-grandfather, who had married twice and had raised two separate families, one
eventually resulting in my father and the other in the boys, who did not accompany their
wives on these visits, although they might have done, on some vague grounds of
consanguinity. What family feeling there was seemed to be in the gift of the girls,
Millicent and Nancy, who faithfully kept up with my mother, whether through charity or
genuine interest. It seemed to intrigue, even to excite them, that a woman of my
mother’s age could live without the presence of a man; they regarded her with pity,
with anxiety, but also with curiosity, as if in her place they would have gone mad. They
had little self-control, were obtuse, and kind, but also avid. Neither had children. Their
days seemed, to hear their anecdotes, full of activity: shopping, maintenance, which was
of a high order, visits, and then back home to the boys for dinner and an evening of
bridge, at which they would complain incessantly, their beautiful complacency fracturing
slightly to reveal a perhaps unguessed-at discontent.
Despite their physical perfection, which impressed and unselfishly delighted my mother,
they were women whose very real innocence was but one feature of their glossy appearance,
nurtured solemnly, and thus providing a fit basis for compliments. Drawn together by the
accident of their marriages, they remained devoted to each other by virtue of an
extraordinary similarity of temperament. They were sensuous, but not sensual, felt
relieved that neither one of them was entirely satisfied by her husband’s company,
took refuge in material comfort and busy social arrangements. Marriage was no less than
their right; it was also their alibi, protecting them from any form of censure, and may
have been entered into precisely for that reason. My mother was well aware of this, as
they may not have been; I deduced this from her kindness, which had something protective
about it, as if they needed to be sheltered from certain realizations. I accepted them as
a fact of nature. Their anxiety, unusual in very handsome women, was directed towards my
mother, for whom they felt genuinely sorry. Their visits were mercy visits, in the sense
that there are mercy killings, with the same admixture of motives.
I disliked them because they interrupted our peaceful lives, with their incessant
suggestions as to how my mother might improve her solitary condition. I disliked them
because these suggestions made no provision for myself. She was urged to, in their words,
socialize, and offered the occasional invitation to their parties, which she attended with
a martyr’s stoicism. I was also aware that they discussed her, deriving some comfort
from her sadness, her obvious inactivity. I could see that they meant well, since their
visits were occasions of lavish generosity: boxes of cakes were produced, a beautiful
pineapple, and cartons of strawberries brought up from the car by Millicent’s driver;
at the same time I was puzzled that their real kindness gave them no legitimization in my
eyes. My favourite myths did not apply to them, for I could not in all conscience see them
as the Ugly Sisters. I simply perceived that they had not waited, and therefore had not
been rewarded, as my mother would surely be rewarded. It is not impossible that they
perceived this as well.
‘You both look splendid,’ said my mother with a smile. This fact at least was
incontrovertible. The girls habitually looked splendid since most of their time was
devoted to that end. Millicent in particular was immaculate; her beautifully manicured
hand frequently patted the upward sweep of her imposing coiffure, which was cared for
every day by a local hairdresser who had no objection to sending one of his juniors to the
house in Bedford Gardens to brush away any imperfections that the early morning might have
wrought. Millicent was the younger of the two, plump, wide-eyed, expectant. Nancy, by
contrast, was tough, imperious, a heavy smoker, granted seniority by virtue of having
lived abroad, in various of the brothers’ hotels, mainly in the region between Nice
and the Italian border. I saw that she could be relied upon to look after Millicent, but
that neither of them would look after my mother. Once, when some malaise or illness had
kept my mother at home, they had sent a deputy, ‘poor Margaret’, who had been
adopted as a child by Nancy’s parents and who performed the valuable function of
looking after both girls. She lived in a flat in Nancy’s house, which was
conveniently situated in the same street as that occupied by Millicent and her husband,
Eddie. I disliked Margaret even more than the girls, since I sensed that she was willing
to break out, could hardly be constrained, in fact, and conformed to others plans for her
only because she was too lazy, or perhaps too fearful, to strike out on her own. In this
she differed from my mother, who, though passive, had not altogether forgone courage, as
I, and perhaps the girls, were obliged to recognize.
‘If only you’d learn to play bridge,’ lamented Millie, to which Nancy
rejoined, ‘Leave her alone. How do you know she hasn’t got a secret life?
This was taken as a risqué remark, although it would have been quite in order for my
mother to take a lover (I thought ‘a suitor’), in which case they would have
been shocked, and even disappointed. They did not suggest that she get a job. In the 1950s
it was thought quite reasonable for women to stay at home and live a peaceful
semi-detached semi-suburban life. The great awakening, which was supposed to benefit my
generation, had not yet taken place. My father had left a little money, the remains of a
legacy, which was supplemented by a small annual cheque from some investments: we lived
frugally but decently, unlike the girls, who served mainly as showcases for their
husbands’ success. This too was thought quite normal at the time, although they
seemed to me idle and pampered. Their discontent, which they would furiously have denied,
came from purposelessness. In any event, although enjoying the spectacle of their
prosperity, I preferred the propriety of our own circumstances, which seemed to fit in
with the preordained plan which I knew from my early reading. I did not know, nor, I
think, did my mother, that circumstances can be changed, or at least given a helping hand.
There seemed to be something natural, even unavoidable, about our lives, which may be why
they were so peaceful. Any dissent, any criticism, came from the girls, fascinated as they
were by our unmanned condition. Our function was to set their own lives on course, to
bring their many advantages into relief. My mother played her part. I merely looked on.
‘What eyes that child has,’ said Nancy. ‘Has she nothing to do?
‘She reads a lot,’ said my mother. ‘We both do. Zoë, have you thanked the
girls for the strawberries?
It was true that I read a lot, but by now I had graduated to adult reading. Dickens had my
full attention, for surely in those novels he was telling the same story of travail and
triumph. The additional benefit, apart from the eccentric characters, with their eccentric
names, was that many of these travails were undertaken by young men of peerless
disposition. This was welcome proof that such life experiences were universal, and, more
important, could be, and usually were, brought about while suffering an initial
handicap—wicked stepparents, an indigent family—which the heroes (for David
Copperfield and Nicholas Nickleby were undoubted heroes) could circumvent with little more
than their own blamelessness to guide them. This struck me as entirely beautiful, and
convinced me that one must emulate their efforts, that one must never be discouraged by
the unhelpfulness of others. Not that I had ever experienced such an obstacle at close
quarters: what I took for wickedness was in fact worldliness, as my mother explained to
me. The unapologetic presence of our visitors, their peculiar blend of restlessness and
complacency, which was discordant, was essentially harmless, though it occasionally sought
relief in imprecations, in disapproval of others, principally of my mother and myself. I
saw—in Nancy’s hoarse smoker’s laugh, in Millicent’s delicate hand
smoothing her hair—a quality that was alien to our own lives, faintly undesirable.
Sometimes my mother’s eyes had a look of tiredness, and she was obliged to turn her
head away for a brief moment, as suggestions for improvement, or rather self-improvement,
came her way. These visits, which I now see were undertaken for more merciful reasons than
mere curiosity, were in essence a form of female solidarity before that condition had been
politicized. They were concerned for any woman living on her own, with only a child for
company. At the same time they were fearful that such ivory-tower isolation might be
catching. They wanted my mother to be reinstated in society for their sakes as much as for
her own. They genuinely pitied a woman who had no status, but they also translated this
lack of status as failure in the world’s terms.
What distinguished my mother was a form of guilelessness which they had, perhaps
regretfully, laid aside. This was what I saw: they had exchanged one condition for
another, and may not have been entirely compensated. My mother was their crusade: they
also usefully saw her as a pupil. When they rose to leave, the frowns disappeared from
their faces, the concern evaporated, and their embraces were genuine. They were glad to
get back to their own orbit, with its comprehensible distractions, glad to have done their
social duty, even if the results were so sadly lacking. My mother, shaking cushions after
their departure, would be more silent than usual, and I somehow knew I should not intrude
on her thoughts. I reflected that Nancy and Millie were characters, no less and no more,
and that any confrontation—but none had taken place, nor would take place—would
be unequal. My mother was bound to succeed, for she was untainted by the world’s
corruption and thus qualified for remission from further ordeals. This was slightly less
affirmative than my previous beliefs. I comforted myself that even David Copperfield had
had moments of downheartedness.
On the whole I was happy. I liked my school, I liked my friends; I liked the shabby charm
of our flat, from which a light shone out in winter to guide me home. I liked our silent
streets, the big windows of the houses in which artists had once lived: I liked its
emanations of the nineteenth century. The only difference was that I no longer thought in
terms of wayfarers; such people had now become neighbours, or, once I was out of their
orbit, pedestrians. That we were somewhat on the margin of things did not disturb me,
although the girls, making their way by car from Kensington, complained of the distance,
as if they had been obliged to cross a frontier, or to go back in time. It is true that
our surroundings were a little mournful, perhaps unnaturally so to those habitual
shoppers. I, on the other hand, cherished them as a place of safety. The streetlamp that
shone outside my bedroom window I accepted as a benevolent gesture on behalf of the town
council, the man who swept the leaves in autumn as a guardian of our decency. I was hardly
aware of the sound of cars, for fewer people drove then. Even footfalls sounded discreet
and distant, and the clang of an iron gate was sometimes the only sound in the long
afternoons.
This struck me as an ideal state of affairs. But as I grew older I began to be aware that
my mother was less happy than I was. Her eyes had a distant look, and she turned her head
slowly when I spoke to her, as if she had momentarily forgotten that I was there. She was
still a young woman but she was slightly careworn, as if her thoughts were a burden to
her. She was also more silent, nursing what I later came to understand as grief. She was
entirely lucid, had devoted her life without complaint to a child who may not have been
rewarding (but I did not think that then), and by dint of suppressing almost every healthy
impulse had maintained both her composure and her dignity. Hence her silences, her very
slight withdrawal from myself. Her survival depended on a control which had not previously
been in default. For the first time I began to wish that my father had lived, but
selfishly, as young people do, in order to leave me free. I knew, with my increasingly
adult perceptions, that it was not in my gift to deal with such a deficit, that my
mother’s loneliness was acute, that regrets, long buried, had begun their insidious
journey to full consciousness . . . My mother was a good woman, too good to give way to
self-pity. This austerity of behaviour denied her close friends. I think she exchanged
only the most obvious pleasantries with our neighbours, keeping her most painful thoughts
fiercely to herself. To voice even one of them would have constituted a danger.
Her sadness, I thought, was brought on by the knowledge that life’s opportunities had
definitively passed her by, and also by virtue of the fact that the redeeming feature, or
presence, had not manifested itself. She was thus cast into the category of the unwanted,
the unsought. I perceived this on certain lightless afternoons, when there was no joyous
voice to greet me when I returned from a friend’s house, from noisy friendly
normality. I perceived it, no doubt correctly, but it burdened me. I wanted no part of her
passivity. I was young and not notably unfeeling, but I did not want to be a partner in
anyone’s regrets. Had I been of an age to understand the full implications of this
dereliction I should have resented it strenuously. As it was I began to see some virtue in
the girls’ remonstrances, though in truth they had little but themselves to offer by
way of compensation for her solitude. Therefore, when I put my key in the door one
afternoon and heard Millie’s festive voice exclaiming, ‘Now, I’m counting
on you, Anne. There’ll only be a few people. Nice people. I know you’ll like
them,’ I was inclined to add my own encouragements to hers.
My mother murmured something placatory.
‘Nonsense,’ said Nancy. ‘You have to make a bit of an effort in this life
if you want to get anywhere. And as far as I can make out you’re not getting
anywhere.
‘Six-thirty,’ said Millie. ‘I’ll send the car for you.
After that it would have been difficult to back down.
My mother’s expression, after they had left, was bemused, resigned, even cynical. I
took it as a good sign that she went into her bedroom and opened her creaking wardrobe
door. Everything in our flat creaked, a sound I found friendly. Now I saw, perhaps for the
first time, that it was rather gloomy, that my mother’s room was in perpetual shadow,
too conducive to nostalgia, to introspection. On her dressing-table was the photograph of
the young man in the academic gown whom I did not remember. His face was steadfast,
obedient, not quite up to the task of growing up, certainly not of growing old. I
regretted his absence, as I had not done when still a child, with my mother to myself. Now
I had her to myself, but was no longer a child, was beginning to feel a hunger for wider
experiences, for a life outside the home, even one as well ordered as ours. Perhaps
precisely for that reason.
‘Do I look all right?’ asked my mother, on that next Friday evening.
I thought she looked beautiful, in her simple blue dress and jacket. She was plainly
agitated, and had it not been for the car being sent would have thankfully abandoned the
whole adventure. When Tom, Millie’s driver, rang the bell, we were both in a state of
high concern. It was almost a relief when she left, and I was thankful for the hour or two
I could spend on my own before her return. I thought of her among those nice people and
hoped painfully, not that she was enjoying herself—that would have been too much to
expect—but that she was not feeling too lonely. For a woman as shy as my mother
social occasions on which she was unaccompanied were a nightmare. That was why
Millie’s pressing invitations, offered, or rather insisted upon for entirely
defensible reasons, were, more often than not, gratefully refused.
But she had not refused this one, and it was at Millie’s party, on that Friday
evening, that she met her second husband, my stepfather-to-be, and thus changed both our
lives.
2
My mother’s fate having been settled according to the archaic principles of natural
justice, and the conditions for her redemption having thus been met, I was now free to
cast off on my own. I was sixteen, nearly seventeen, and the timing was providential. I
had no doubt that we should all be entirely happy. I loved Simon, who, at our first
meeting, embraced me with Jewish cordiality, making no distinction between my mother and
myself. It was my first contact with genuine expansiveness and I warmed to it. Standing in
our flat in Edith Grove he revealed its shabbiness, and thus deducted much of its charm.
He was a big man, who seemed to smile all the time, delighted to have found a woman as
unspoilt as my mother. He later told us that he too had had to be prevailed upon to attend
that epochal party, for, although naturally gregarious, he was aware of the lack of a
companion in these most public of circumstances. He was a widower, who, since the death of
his wife, had devoted his life to business, or rather to ‘business interests’,
as he termed them. He exuded a pleasant air of health and viability, which did something
to mitigate the fact that he was rather old: he was self-conscious about his age, which he
dismissed as ‘nearly the wrong side of seventy’, but he was so obviously fit,
and so benignly energetic, that I soon overlooked this fact.
I knew that he could be relied upon to take care of my mother, which seemed to me our
prime concern. By this stage I knew, or suspected, that she had money worries: the tenancy
of our flat had only another year to run, and after that we should have to move into more
restricted quarters or take out a loan from the bank. Both were problematic, but the
problem was solved by the fact that Simon occupied two floors of a large house in Onslow
Square, into which he was anxious to transfer my mother as soon as possible. He also
possessed a house in France, which I thought much more interesting. Over dinner our fates
were swiftly settled. My mother would live in Onslow Square and I would stay on in Edith
Grove until the lease ran out, after which Simon would buy me a flat of my own. ‘Look
on it as a wedding present,’ he smiled. ‘There’s no reason why you
shouldn’t share in my good fortune.’ This easy generosity was very difficult to
resist. Besides, none of us had a desire to live under the same roof. My mother thought it
would be unfair on me, even indelicate, to live at close quarters to a late marriage,
particularly between two people of different ages, and Simon was naturally fastidious,
anxious to hide the evidence of his years—‘my advanced years’, he
joked—from critical eyes. As for myself I had no desire to see his pills in the
bathroom, to witness his laundry arrangements, or be present at his intimate life with my
mother. This, I thought, should be kept as secret as possible.
Something in me shied away from the thought of his making love to her, for this was the
flaw in the arrangement. Later I understood this as a primal scene, the kind infants
fantasize, or even register, as taking place between their parents. If my mother had met
someone more like herself, or even like the young man in the photograph—modest,
trusting, steadfast—I should have had no further qualms. It was just that Simon, so
obviously a good man, was foreign to our way of life, our settled habits. His bulk filled
our flat whenever he visited us, as did the smell of his cologne. I could not quite get
used to his habit of humming under his breath, or his restlessness, which might just have
been an expression of his insistent physicality. He had the good taste to make no
allusions to what was to come when my mother would live with him. As far as I was
concerned he was a sort of Santa Claus, a provider, to whom giving was second nature.
I felt a deep relief on my mother’s behalf and also on my own; I should now be able
to begin my David Copperfield progress towards my own apotheosis. I never ceased to feel
this with regard to Simon: he was a facilitator, an enabler, and the unlikely outcome of
his attending a party, a tiresome social engagement to which he had not looked forward,
and which he intended to leave early, was, I thought, beneficial in the way that only
unexpected rewards are beneficial. He was, quite literally, our gift from the gods.
Whether my mother thought this or not was another matter. I was old enough to understand
that she was preoccupied with the business of having to find another flat for us both, and
perhaps tired of pretending that she was entirely satisfied with her way of life. Perhaps
the example of those visitors, the girls, with their talk of holidays, had made more of an
impression on her than she was willing to concede. She did not envy them their
entertainments, but she did envy their security, and even their unthinking acceptance of
their husbands’ indulgence. Although sincerely shocked by their entirely natural
delight in this state of affairs, she was made wistful by the presents that the chauffeur
brought up from the car, wishing that she had it in her gift to endow others in the same
manner. The fact that these presents always consisted of things to eat merely reinforced
the impression that some fundamental discrepancy existed between the sort of woman she was
and all the others, who had made a better job of marriage and extracted from it
satisfactions that were almost edible, certainly tangible. I now see that even the most
saintly of women can ponder the difference, and although we both deplored these
gifts—the cakes, the strawberries—we were forced to admit that we enjoyed them.
Only we enjoyed them rather thoughtfully, as they made their incongruous appearance on our
dinner-table. Some days our evening meal consisted almost entirely of these offerings, and
I firmly believe that the sight of a chocolate éclair on my plate, in lieu of something
more sensible, made her reflect that this would not do, that none of this was appropriate,
and that if it were too late for her to start again the same need not necessarily be true
for myself.
To do the girls justice they were both delighted. ‘I must remember to thank
them,’ laughed my mother. But she was almost serious. She thought herself inadequate
in the light of such good fortune, and needed stronger personalities to maintain her
resolve. The girls’ fretful attention was now directed towards my mother’s
appearance: the car arrived punctually to bear them all off for an afternoon of shopping,
and she would return home with bags from Harrods and Harvey Nichols, complaining of a
splitting headache. I detested the clothes the girls made her buy, or had thrust on her as
presents, and so did Simon. ‘We’ll find something in France,’ he said, his
big hand pushing aside a silvery skirt which had no place in my mother’s life.
‘You can leave all this stuff here, or give it away.
‘They meant well,’ said my mother.
‘Of course they did. Their intentions were of the best. But they wanted you to look
like themselves.
‘And to be like themselves,’ said my mother to me after he had left. ‘And I
don’t think I can be.
‘He loves you for your own sake,’ I said stoutly.
‘Yes, he does. He does seem to. Isn’t that extraordinary?
I suspected that the girls had tried to indoctrinate my mother in the ways of acquisition,
paying no attention to the fact that appropriation was foreign to her nature. They may
have been sincerely shocked by her attitude of modest dependency, for she almost at once,
and instinctively, began to behave like a wife to Simon, thus once again earning the
disapproval of the girls and furnishing them with an agreeable subject of conversation.
They hated, with some reason, her life of lowered expectations, and always had, fearing
the comparison. Her celibacy had been abhorrent to them, and now that this was at an end
they found it difficult to come to terms with the fact of her brighter eyes, her more
frequent smiles, even her rare but now occasional laughter. Feelings were disguised, but
not entirely successfully. I began to dislike the girls, and was grateful that their
patronage would be no longer needed. They had never had any time for me, nor I for them. I
foresaw that we should shortly be separated by circumstances and was secretly relieved.
Now that I am so much older I see that this new opportunity was not one to be missed, but
embraced perhaps a little less than wholeheartedly. This was not first love, which my
mother must have experienced for my father, however remote that must now have seemed. This
was a prudent arrangement which had been entered upon almost by accident and which was to
retain an air of absentmindedness, of not quite willed satisfaction. It was providential:
all seemed to agree on that point. If it gave my mother any joy it was a joy she expected
to reveal itself in the longer term, when she got used to her new life and was able to
take a fuller part in it, when she would come to accept her new dignity (but never to
exploit it), and when she learned to be as expansive as her new husband, a task for which
she was singularly ill prepared.
I shied away from the prospect of my mother’s physical life, for I was as contained
as she was. Simon had perfected the agreeable business of kissing us both, with the same
obvious affection, in the short interval my mother spent in our flat, with me, before
moving into Onslow Square. Of course I missed her, but as Simon insisted that I see her
every day I did not mind too badly. This was helped by the fact that I felt more at home
in our old flat than in Onslow Square, and also because I had a great deal of studying to
do, for I was soon to go to university. My prolonged childhood seemed to have ended rather
abruptly, and I felt unsettled by this: at the same time I recognized the fact that it was
over and that in future I should have to rely on my friends for company. I was momentarily
in demand, as newly fortunate people are, and the fact of having my own flat added to my
prestige.
Excerpted from BAY OF ANGELS © Copyright 2001 by Anita Brookner. Reprinted with permission by Random House. All rights reserved.
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