Look at Me (15 page)

‘But why should I?’ I protested, when she first put this to me. ‘What harm am I doing him?’

‘You’re simply standing in his way. He feels committed to you, and you’ve told me there’s no future in it.’

‘I’ve said nothing of the sort …’

I could hear her lighting a cigarette and inhaling.

‘You said you didn’t love him, didn’t you?’

‘But that doesn’t mean I can’t see him. I enjoy being with him. I enjoy his company. He enjoys mine.’ I found that I was pleading with her, for the right to continue to see James. ‘Why does it have to change? We were very happy …’

‘There you are, you see,’ she cried triumphantly. ‘You
were
very happy. Or rather
you
were very happy. It’s all self with you, isn’t it? What about him? Do you think he’s happy?’

I said, ‘I’ll have to go now’, because I was so disturbed that I didn’t know how to go on. I wondered if I had really made James unhappy, and if so, what I could do about it. I wondered why he had not told me that he was unhappy, although I did remember his face, stern and downcast on too many occasions when we were together, the eyelids severe. His hands no longer touched my face, as they used to do, but stayed clasped in his lap; their astonishing gentleness had disappeared, and they looked angry again, hard and red. But if the terrible truth was that he no longer loved me, why had he not said so? And if he no longer loved me, why were we going away
together? And if he no longer loved me, what had changed him?

It was this last intolerable doubt that kept me connected to Alix, who obviously held the key to the whole dilemma. She must have encouraged James to talk to her, as he had not yet done to me; she must know more than I did. The uneasiness of my situation blinded me to the fact that she had no business to meddle in it, and that I would be justified in asking him not to confide in anyone but myself, if indeed he had anything to confide. The last sensible part of my brain told me that the whole thing was a fabrication, that Alix was bored, that she could not resist a situation which seemed to her ‘interesting’, and that she might indeed simply be using it for distraction, for entertainment. Because I no longer entertained her. I no longer confided in her. I had repaid her attentions with ingratitude. And that if James were confiding in her it was because he was a better guest than I was and knew what was expected of him. Knew what was due to Alix. That he was humouring her.

This particular line of thought led to a truth which was not welcome. If he were humouring her, it was at my expense. And if he were doing this, then he was less than the totally honourable man that I had supposed him to be. But I could not believe this, although I remembered his new severity, which was quite unlike the severity which had marked him before I knew him properly. Before he loved me. Which led me to the other intolerable truth, which was that he had fallen in love with Alix. Or that Alix had fallen in love with him and was trying to estrange us.

When this thought came I found I could not dislodge it and it swirled round and round in my head with full accompaniment of ugly and erotic images. I saw the three of them in some hateful collusion, as I had once pictured them at the breakfast table, laughing. Pictured
here enjoying a joke. My madness disposed them in arrangements which I did not know I knew. I heard Mrs Halloran saying once again, ‘She has him by the balls’, and I acknowledged the power and capricious will of Alix, her mastery, her autonomy, her fearlessness. She who must be obeyed. I saw Nick’s abstracted face at our little Christmas party, and I thought I understood it. I saw James being drawn away from me, because I was too dull to keep his interest. I had thought that we were happy in our modest way, with our walks, our coffee. I thought of our impending holiday, and I knew that I could not go through with it if these questions were unresolved.

On an impulse, I seized my purse, went down to the public telephone in the basement, and dialled Alix’s number.

‘I’d like to talk to you,’ I said, ‘about what you were saying. About James and me.’

She sounded very weary, very reasonable.

‘I’m not sure that there’s any point.’ I could hear the cigarette being inhaled. ‘I’ve made myself clear. If you don’t love him – and you’ve said you don’t – you’re duty bound to tell him that you can’t go on with it. That’s all there is to it.’

‘But it isn’t,’ I protested. ‘I have some feelings in the matter, you know. You don’t seem to understand that. And that’s what I want to talk to you about.’

She sighed. ‘Well, then, come round on Sunday. He’ll be out then. It’s his mother’s birthday. Come about four.’

I said, stupidly, ‘I can’t. I’ve got to go and see Miss Morpeth. I go once a month and I can’t not go just before Christmas.’

‘Oh, for Christ’s sake,’ she exploded. ‘That’s exactly what I mean.
Your
little habits.
Your
little routine. And you expect him to fit into that.’

‘Alix,’ I said, steadying my voice, ‘this is idiotic. I don’t even know what it’s all about. We must talk. Can’t I come another day? What about Monday evening? I could come to you after work …’

There was a pause. Then, ‘We’re joining Maria on Monday. I’d have to ask her. Oh well, why not? Yes, come on Monday.’

I was shaking when I put down the telephone. I felt as if I were about to come up for judgment, at a court which was already prejudiced against me. And I still could not see what I had done that was so wrong. I was, as I saw it, not only blameless but completely harmless. I was not forcing James to do anything that he might not wish to do. In fact I was not forcing him to do anything at all. Perhaps that was what was wrong, I thought. Perhaps he is the sort of man who likes to have things decided for him. Perhaps he is so upright and severe that I must initiate changes. That I must ask him why he hesitates, tell him that it is all right. That I must make him love me.

I have said that I did not love him in the fatal sense. By that I mean that he was not a drug, an obsession, like that time of which I never speak. I did not have to strive for his attention, I did not have to abandon everything when he appeared, I did not have to squander all my resources at a sign from him. In fact, after the debasement of that previous time, I experienced with James a renewal of innocence, and I felt more at home with that innocence than with that cynicism of desire and contempt so strangely mingled that I had previously known. That secrecy, that urgency, that bitterness, that lack of hope … I had enjoyed the openness of consorting with an eligible man (how prehistoric that sounds!) in full view of others, after those stratagems and those returns in the early hours of the morning, weeping, my coat huddled round me to conceal the clothes so
hastily put on and now creased. The concealed pain, the lying morning face. I could not go through that again.

I wanted, you see, to make it all come out right this time. I wanted contentment and peace for myself and for him and I wanted the approbation of others. Perhaps, above all, the approbation of others. I wanted it to go according to plan; I even wanted the small satisfactions of congratulations and good wishes. I wanted to see the smiles on the faces of Mrs Halloran and Dr Simek as they raised glasses to me. I wanted, for once in my life, a celebration. To make up for all the sadness, all the waste and confusion, all the waiting, the sitting in sickrooms, the furtive returns and the lying morning face. I wanted, more than anything, a chance to be simple, once again, as I was meant to be, and as I had been long ago, a long, long time ago.

I wanted an end to shabbiness, to pretence, to anxiety, to dissembling. That last time, the time of which I never speak, had been so unendurable and also so baffling. I had found myself rising, somehow, to expectations which I did not fully understand: grossness, cruelty, deceit. I had been humiliated, and had been enjoyed precisely because I was humiliated. It was all so different from what others had believed of me. I had managed, somehow, to live two lives. But in the end it was the more respectable of those lives that I had inherited. I minded, of course. Oh yes, I minded. But at the same time I knew that whatever people say and whatever they put up with and whatever they get away with, love should be simple. And it is. It is.

Now, once again, it seemed that I must keep spontaneity at bay, must manœuvre and keep watch. I would do what was required of me – although I was by now so confused that I could not quite decide who required it. I trembled to lose James, my spirit failed at the thought
of the expertise ranged against me, I prepared to do battle. But my heart was no longer in it.

I ran up the stairs and knocked on his door, something I had never had to do before. He looked surprised to see me, and rather distant, encased in that professional persona of his. When I explained that I wanted to see him that evening, that, please, I must see him that evening, he gave a little smile, shook his head, as if humouring a child, and told me that he would pick me up after the Library closed, at six.

All that day I trembled steadily, close to anger but not quite angry enough. I was tense with anxiety, with despair, for I doubted my ability to inspire love. If, as it seemed, I had become so uninteresting so quickly, how could I put matters right at this late stage? I was not a powerful woman, able to bend others to my will, nor was I particularly malleable, and therefore able to bend to the will of others. I was not distinguished by notable caprices, I was not irresistibly attractive; I was simply well behaved and rather observant – a bad combination. And my tongue, I am told, is sharp. I was certainly extremely reasonable, but that very quality seemed to deprive me of expectation. Why should anyone care to please me, or exert themselves to try, when I made so few demands? I knew this, I had always known it, but now the knowledge seemed to render me doubly ineffective. At one stage during that long day I caught myself literally wringing my hands, and then I knew how seriously I was dismayed.

I could have been different, I think. Once I had great confidence, great cheerfulness; I did not question my purpose or the purpose of others. All that had gone, and I had done my best to replace it. I had become diligent instead of spontaneous; I had become an observer when I saw that I was not to be allowed to participate. I had refused to be pitiable. I had never once said, Look at
me. Now, it seemed, I must make one more effort, one more attempt to prove myself viable. And if I succeeded, I might be granted one more opportunity to do it all over again. I did not dare to think what would happen if I failed.

At half-past five I slipped out of the Library and went to wash my hands, which were clammy. I looked at myself in the glass and I saw my neat watchful face, my alarmed eyes, my white lips. From my bag I took a little-used lipstick and made my mouth pink, then rubbed some of the colour into my cheeks. I willed myself to relax and smiled pleasantly at myself in the glass. When I returned to the Library, Olivia said, ‘There’s a call for you’, and her eyes were as wide and alarmed as my own. I went into Dr Leventhal’s room and picked up the telephone; it was, of course, Alix, very friendly, with an invitation to dinner for that same evening.

‘I can’t,’ I said. ‘James is taking me out.’

‘Yes, he rang to tell me. I thought it would be simpler if you came over here, and then we could put you into a taxi and all have an early night.’

‘Well, no,’ I said carefully, although I was frightened and annoyed. ‘I want to talk to him.’

‘You can talk to him here,’ she said. She sounded not only inexorable but very reasonable. She made it seem as if there could be no point in my not doing as she wished, and that it would save trouble all round if I agreed to do so straight away.

I merely said, ‘Not tonight.’

‘All right, all right, there’s no need to snap at me.’

‘I didn’t …’

‘Just send him home early, that’s all I ask. He looks worn out. You might think of that for a change, when you can spare a minute from your old ladies.’

‘I’ll see you next Monday,’ I said tightly, trying to
control my voice, and waited for her to ring off, which she did, without a further message.

I think it was then that I decided that I was at Alix’s mercy, and because this shocked me so much I took a pull at myself and became more realistic. If, as was unquestionably the case, I had incurred Alix’s displeasure because of James’s attachment to me, then it seemed as if I must renounce him in order to get back into favour. This was so palpably ridiculous that I gave up the idea straight away. I would, I decided, throw in my lot with James, explain the situation to him, make it seem not serious, even rather amusing, and then ask him what he thought about it. I must, above all, clear the air. I was becoming morbid, I told myself.

He put his head round the door just after six, and nodded, and I picked up my bag and went out to join him. Some instinct made me turn round and I saw Olivia looking at me. Our eyes met, and although I had said nothing to her, she smiled sturdily and raised her clenched fist. In her delicacy, she made no move to leave, in case it should be thought that she was observing James and myself.

I could eat very little at the restaurant, although I believe that the food was excellent at this Italian place: James lunches there most days. He did not seem to notice as I cut up the food and pushed it around my plate; he did not even look at me, although he was in good spirits and very talkative. He seemed to be addressing a point somewhere to the right of my head, and although I wanted to pay attention and seem interested I had some difficulty in understanding what he was saying. I blamed my own distraction, but in lucid moments I realized that he was being deliberately inconsequential; he was talking about matters and even about people I did not know and in that way I could not join in. He was defending himself against me. I could
make no inroads on his attention although I knew that it was there, warily, waiting for an ambush, and determined to avoid one. My heart beat strongly, uncomfortably, and all at once I was anxious to get out of the restaurant, to get home, to have him to myself. But he was in no hurry, it seemed, and I could not engage his attention. He would not even meet my eyes. Look at me, I wanted to say. Look at me.