Look at Me (10 page)

Alix was laughing gently at his slight unease, and this, of course, made him act rather more boldly than he would normally have done. I could sense him seeking for ways in which to gain her approval. He was not a particularly amusing man, so I did not see how he could
entertain her. But he was attractive. Even I could see that. The novelist in me took over for a moment, and I plotted the whole thing out; then I accused myself of the most suspect form of calculation – crude, louche, cynical – and I dismissed the whole fantasy.

Which was just as well because at that point Alix laughed and said, ‘But my dear James, you can’t live like a monk! This is terrible! You’d better get together with Fanny here.’ At which point Nick joined us, and he laughed too, and then I had to, and so did Dr Anstey, and the sight of our determined hilarity sent Alix off into her throaty, strangled giggle that indicated secrecy and pleasure, and Dr Anstey stood up, the smile stiffening on his lips.

‘This’, said Alix primly, making an effort to control herself, ‘is our orphan child. Little Orphan Fanny.’

‘Of course, I know Miss Hinton,’ said Dr Anstey, and we nodded at each other.

‘You may call her Fanny,’ Alix went on. ‘She is what my nurse would have called a nice sort of girl. And she’s got pots of money.’

Nick laughed and groaned. ‘Darling,’ he protested, ‘you’re making her blush.’ And he put an arm round me and rocked me to and fro. I smiled, although I could feel the blood rising to my cheeks. I should have been used to this, I told myself.

‘Now,’ said Alix, ‘what shall we call you?’

‘My name is James,’ replied Dr Anstey, who was still standing. I remember noting that he was as tall as Nick, although slightly heavier in build.

‘Oh, James is far too stuffy,’ said Alix. ‘I’ll think of something. And you will have dinner with us, won’t you? Don’t mind my nonsense. I mean well.’

Dr Anstey hesitated only a moment. I could see his mind dwelling on the prospect of midnight oil and then dismissing the thought. ‘I’d like that very much,’
he said. ‘But would you mind if I telephoned my mother?’

They looked at him in astonishment.

‘Why on earth do you want to telephone your mother?’

‘Well, she was rather expecting me.’ They still looked at him uncomprehendingly.

‘I live with her, you see. Not far from here, actually. She has a little house in Markham Street.’

By this time Alix had dissolved once again into her laugh, her head thrown back, her eyes closed, her teeth gleaming. The spectacle of Dr Anstey’s regular life and habits seemed to have infected her with a joyousness that charged the room with energy, an energy verging on outrage. The writer in me turned over again, scripting that original plot, and then, once again, I shook myself, and, forcing my gaze outwards, perceived the brilliance of the dramatic indigo evening beyond the curtains, the warmth of the fire, the pleasantness of the surroundings, the good humour that was available for anyone who wished to join in. And I did, of course. Wish to join in, I mean. Why pay the price for being outside it all? I was no writer, I decided, dismissing that fictive outcome which was somehow encoded into my imaginings and therefore doubly shameful. I was no writer: I was a criminal masquerading as a librarian.

So I relaxed, and smiled, and, looking at Dr Anstey, saw that he was embarrassed, and determined to help him.

‘My name is Frances,’ I said. ‘But I feel I should call you Dr Anstey.’

Then he smiled too, and said, ‘You must call me James, of course. I’ve often wished you would.’

So we became James and Frances. We all had dinner together that evening. James was introduced to the regulars; he seemed to grasp the rules immediately. He
was, after all, a very clever man. I watched him a lot. I saw that he was a little stiff, a little shocked by Maria’s exuberance, but that was only to be expected. I saw that he was enthralled by the sheer novelty of the evening, by the possibilities opened up to him by these new friends. I did a lot of watching that evening. I watched the Frasers and their evident amusement at the success of their strategy. I watched their heads come together, their foreheads momentarily touch, the laziness with which they disengaged. I watched, with a touch of sadness, James watching the Frasers. Of course, the spectacle of two people’s happiness is always something of a magnet for the unclaimed. When I finally smiled to myself, and looked down, and drank my coffee, and looked up again, I found that James was watching me.

‘Where do you live, Frances?’ he said. ‘Somewhere healthy, obviously.’

‘Healthy?’ I asked.

‘Well, you always look so healthy when you blow into the Library in the morning.’

I laughed. ‘That’s because I walk to work. I love walking. But it’s no great distance. I live in Maida Vale. And I lived with
my
mother, until she died.’

I felt him relax, and my little sadness passed. ‘I like walking too,’ he said. ‘I do quite a bit of it.’ At this point we were turned towards each other, and I sensed that Nick and Alix were watching us. ‘You’ve been at the Library some time now, haven’t you?’ he went on. ‘Do you like the work?’

‘But you don’t know her secret,’ Alix broke in. ‘She’s really a writer. She’s writing a novel.’

I protested, but Nick said, ‘Don’t be an idiot, Fanny. Tell him all about it.’

So I succumbed and said my piece, and made it funny, and he laughed, and Alix called for the bill, and waved me imperiously aside when I insisted that it was my
turn, and then James, whom I now thought of as James, with fairly impressive determination, brought out his wallet and put four ten pound notes on the table.

‘Well,’ said Alix, ‘you must be our guest next time.’

‘I’d love to,’ he agreed. ‘This has been so very pleasant. Can I offer you a nightcap somewhere?’

I think perhaps that he had suddenly grown rather impatient with that hothouse atmosphere of intimacy that had so attracted him earlier in the evening. And his legs were so long that he found sitting at a small table rather uncomfortable. And so we found ourselves, somewhat incongruously, in the lounge of a very large hotel in Knightsbridge and sat ourselves round a table surrounded by acres of orange and brown geometrical carpet. There was no one else there but an Italian family chattering in a corner; their small daughter, a beautiful child with big over-tired eyes and tiny earrings, ran round and round, getting more tired, and stopping on her way to gaze at us. Alix offered her an olive from a dish on our table, and she covered her face with her hands and ran back to her mother.

I remember that they were putting up Christmas decorations, two-dimensional gold trees fixed to the fake pilasters.

‘Rather early, isn’t it?’ I remarked to Alix. It was only the third week in October.

‘Oh no,’ she said. ‘They always do it early. Foreign tourists expect it. Anyway, it can’t be too early for me. I love Christmas.’

‘I don’t,’ James and I said simultaneously, and looked at each other in surprise.

‘I usually spend it with my mother,’ he explained. ‘We’re both divorced and we both dread it.’

‘I can’t wait for it to be over,’ I confessed, not wanting to go into the business of Nancy and our sad little celebration. Public Holiday Syndrome is something you
keep to yourself, I thought. I was amazed and enchanted to find a fellow sufferer.

‘But you must come with us this year,’ cried Alix. ‘A whole crowd of us usually gets together. You know practically everyone by now. It’s great fun. And it saves cooking.’

‘Spaghetti,’ murmured Nick, and dodged a glancing blow.

‘Boxing Day is even worse,’ James continued; he had by now quite lost his original shyness. ‘On Boxing Day I am obliged to go for a healthy walk. A very healthy walk.’

Alix groaned. ‘On Boxing Day we go to Nick’s parents. Don’t remind me.’

Nick laughed. ‘Darling, they adore you.’

How interesting, I noted. They adore her. If I were in her place, I should adore
them
.

‘I usually go to the Benedicts’,’ I said. ‘Olivia, you know. In the Library. Her parents. But it usually ends up in a healthy walk, just the same.’

‘Sounds delirious,’ Alix broke in. ‘What exactly is the matter with that girl?’

I shouldn’t have minded the question, although few people ask it. They take Olivia’s disability for granted, as she does. She was injured in a car accident when she was about sixteen. She spent a year in hospital, and a further year at home afterwards. She made a good recovery, but she has a certain amount of difficulty walking, although as she is always sitting down this is rarely noticed. What had caught Alix’s eye was her neck brace, that cruel pink collar on which her beautiful head so uncomfortably rests. In my mind’s eye I remembered her on that day when Nick had brought Alix to the Library and had invited me to dinner. Olivia had blushed at Alix’s glance, and then had whitened when forced to witness the performance with the hair. She
had picked up a pair of scissors and had begun to trim a photograph; she had had to bring it up rather high into her field of vision and Alix had noted this too.

I also saw Olivia’s perfect face, a colourless olive face with eyes so black that the iris and the pupil seemed to be one. I saw the long waving black hair parted in the middle and falling to her shoulders, over the neck brace. It is this face, and her impeccable good sense and balance, that makes me literally forget her movements when she has to get up from her chair. She is so good at her job, such a natural scholar, that it does not matter that she cannot walk round the tables or carry piles of photographs. I do that for her. It works out quite easily, and what I have in physical strength, she has in moral strength. We are dear friends.

I also see her on those Sundays, after lunch and the brazil nuts, when her untidy mother and her silent father, both rather ugly people, seat her in her chair in the drawing room and gaze at her with unsentimental love. They seem more impressed with her beauty than with her disability, and as they have always taken this attitude, which is perfectly genuine, she is singularly uninhibited about her appearance. I don’t know what she feels about it, for she never mentions it, and I have long since ceased to notice it. I put down her blush to her love for Nick, rather than to anything Alix had said or done.

‘Spinal damage. She manages very well,’ said James, for I could not trust myself to answer. Suddenly the surroundings of that hotel, with the geometrical carpet and the gold trees, seemed tawdry, the refuge of people who had no genuine reason to be out. I had already got Olivia’s Christmas present, a first edition of
The Ordeal of Richard Feveral
, her favourite novel, and I also saw the smile that would break up her little face when I gave it to her.

Alix began to stir, rather restlessly. ‘Well, I think we can do better than that,’ she said. James and I looked at each other, and after a moment smiled. ‘I’ll have a word with Maria,’ said Alix. ‘And let you know. Put yourselves in my hands.’ She looked at us speculatively. ‘You could do worse,’ she added.

It was close to midnight when we got outside. It was a beautiful night, cold and misty, with a yellow moon. I was tired but excited; I had had such an extraordinary evening that I did not want it to end. I wanted, in fact, to walk a little, but discussions were already under way between Alix and Nick about who was to be dropped first. James, obviously. Markham Street was closer than Maida Vale. The car, when Nick opened the door, smelt of cigarettes.

‘Oh,’ I said impulsively. ‘I wish we could walk.’

‘We can,’ James replied. ‘At least,
we
can. I’ll walk you home, Frances.’

I turned to Alix and then to Nick, both of whom looked faintly amused.

‘I see,’ said Alix. ‘I see.’ She laughed, and we had to join in. And this time I laughed with genuine pleasure and surprise. For the one thing I had not expected was to be written into the plot. I had really not expected that at all.

We parted with promises to ring up the following day, and our voices left an echo in the misty air.

James and I walked in silence until we got to the top of Sloane Street. Everything around us was quiet, but not quiet enough for me. The air was very still, and there was a faint scent of burnt leaves. After a moment I said, ‘Do you think we could walk through the park?’

‘Of course,’ he replied. ‘It’s what I intended. You’re not tired, are you? Could you walk all the way home?’

I think that was the happiest night of my life. We walked in complete silence through the silent park, and
it seemed to me that instead of drawing to a close the year was just beginning. Beginnings are so beautiful. Although I am naturally pale, I could feel the blood warm in my cheeks. I drew no conclusion from this, and my instinct was correct. I was not falling in love. Nor was there any likelihood that I might. But I was being protected, and that was something that I had not experienced for as long as I could remember. I was coming first with someone, as I had not done for some sad months past, and in my heart of hearts for longer, much longer.

‘They’re a remarkable couple, aren’t they?’ he asked, more to break the silence than anything else.

‘Remarkable,’ I agreed. ‘Wonderful friends.’

So we walked up the Edgware Road, past the nurses’ uniforms and the sex shops and the bleary light from the launderette, and after a while he said, ‘You’re not tired, are you?’ and I shook my head, for I could have gone on for ever.

‘But how will you get back?’ I asked him suddenly, when we were at my door. ‘You have no car, and taxis are hopeless around here.’

‘I’ll walk back,’ he replied. ‘Goodnight, Frances. I’ll see you tomorrow.’

That night I did not bother to write.

And I did not write for many evenings that followed. In my new security I began to see it all in a different light. I began to hate that inner chemical excitement that made me run the words through in my head while getting ready to set them down on the page; I felt a revulsion against the long isolation that writing imposes, the claustration, the sense of exclusion; I experienced a thrill of distaste for the alternative life that writing is supposed to represent. It was then that I saw the business of writing for what it truly was and is to me. It is your penance for not being lucky. It is an attempt to reach others and to make them love you. It is your instinctive protest, when you find you have no voice at the world’s tribunals, and that no one will speak for you. I would give my entire output of words, past, present, and to come, in exchange for easier access to the world, for permission to state ‘I hurt’ or ‘I hate’ or ‘I want’. Or, indeed, ‘Look at me’. And I do not go back on this. For once a thing is known it can never be unknown. It can only be forgotten. And writing is the enemy of forgetfulness, of thoughtlessness. For the writer there is no oblivion. Only endless memory.