Look at Me (20 page)

I stared down at the yellow custard on my plate and willed my shock not to show. And when I raised my head, it was to look calmly and even smilingly at Alix and Nick. Who were, of course, watching me. I said, ‘It was delicious but I really couldn’t eat any more.’ Then I turned my head and looked at Maria, who was flushed and laughing. Then, when I could trust myself, I looked at James. His eyes were fixed on Maria and his face was foolish with desire.

‘H’m,’ said Alix, who appeared to be slightly cheated of the ‘interesting’ situation she had foreseen or even contrived: I should never know. I should never refer to it again. I was aware that if I made some sort of a scene, they might have warmed to me in sympathy. The trouble with good manners is that people are persuaded that you are all right, require no protection, are perfectly capable of looking after yourself. And some people take
your impassivity as a calculated insult, as Alix seemed to be doing now. Still I smiled.

The faces before me seemed to me to be flushed, venial, corrupt, gorged with sweet food and drink, presaging danger. Smoke wreathed through the hot air, and flakes of ash fell on to the unheeded plates. Alix stubbed out her cigarette in the remains of her yellow custard and smeared red over her wide mouth. Nick encircled her with his arm. I did not dare to look at James. It was very hot, and I knew that I must get out soon, but that I must not betray my haste.

‘H’m,’ said Alix again. ‘I suppose we’d better go.’ I took out my purse and, smilingly, insisted on paying the bill. It was, in any case, the last meal I should ever eat here. ‘I suppose we’d better leave these two together,’ said Alix. Still I smiled.

‘What are you doing for Christmas, Fanny?’ she asked.

Very calmly, because I was now in such a state of terror that it seemed as if nothing could get worse, I said, ‘I suppose I shall go to Olivia.’

‘Rather you than me,’ she said.

‘I don’t understand,’ I queried, with a polite, upward turn of my head.

‘Well … can’t be much fun, can it?’

‘Why?’ I asked.

‘Well … she’s crippled.’

I said, ‘Only physically’, and I must have spoken rather loudly, because there was a brief silence.

After that, it was quite evident that the evening was over. They stirred and put on coats, and although I walked ahead of them to the door it was a matter of pride to behave as if I were still in their company. I did not look back. I simply went out on to the pavement, and, still smiling, and with a brief wave, I walked briskly away from them, down the street.

And then I was alone, in that emptying street, with the night’s blackness to hide me.

I maintained my airy walk and my smile was still on my lips. For as long as I thought that Nick and Alix might take it into their heads to worry about me and offer me a lift home in their car, I sauntered along, looking amused and nonchalant, as if having witnessed some particularly rare episode of the human comedy, available only to connoisseurs of the absurd. My hands in my pockets, my head tilted at its usual enquiring angle, I took my time, perusing articles in shop windows, stepping unconcerned from areas of light to areas of darkness, attentive to the hiss of tyres behind me, waiting for a car to stop and a voice to hail me. I would have gone with them. Yes, even then I would have gone with them. For what I felt, beneath the bright factitious surface of my outward appearance, was an enormous sense of loss. It no longer seemed to me important that I had been duped. I was so tired of not apportioning blame that I could no longer see where it was due. I felt, simply, irradiated by the blast of some great revelation, although I could not yet fully understand the nature of
that revelation. I could not, somehow, make contact with any familiar emotion. As I lingered in front of a lighted window, apparently beguiled by a pair of burgundy leather shoes, I could only identify a feeling of exclusion. I felt as if the laws of the universe no longer applied to me, since I was outside the normal frames of reference. A biological nonentity, to be phased out. And somewhere, intruding helplessly and to no avail into my consciousness, the anger of the underdog, plotting bloody revolution, plotting revenge.

As for James, whom I loved all the more for having lost him, and more even than that, for having seen him reveal himself as a true man, with desire in his eyes, a lover at last, well, James, it was simple, James was … like them. No mischief had been practised, for you cannot stand between a man and his inclination, if that inclination is strong enough. I would have thought, before this evening, that I understood what love was about. Given the chance, I would have laid down my life … Being of a sacrificial disposition. But clearly, matters have to be taken in hand, attentions redirected, if unsuitably placed. Clearly, for love, a rampant egotism serves one better than an unsophisticated hope. I remembered the noise and the heat of that restaurant, the intent and flushed faces, the oozing custard, the sucking inhalations of cigarettes, the raucous but sly excitement, the watchers. That, clearly, was the correct atmosphere in which love might flourish. And, come to think of it, why not naked competition, black propaganda, ruses, devices, stratagems, insinuations, blackmail, trickery, cruelty, desertion? Why not the triumph of the will? And why be sad about all or any of this? If, as we have it on the highest authority, there is more joy in Heaven over one sinner that repenteth, why not sin, provisionally? Why not break the rules, like that Prodigal Son (so much more amusing than his tedious
brother) who must have attended so many parties like this evening’s, and who still came home to enjoy the fatted calf? Because they had felt so dull without him. So extremely bored with only the spectacle of virtue and hard work to beguile them.

The noises of the street were becoming fainter, and, to give them a last chance, I lingered outside Harvey Nichols, watching a small electric train racing silently round and round. When I raised my eyes from this, it was to meet my own reflection, small, slight, undeniably chic. Not a hair out of place. Still poised, still terrified, still murderous. A person, you would say, of no overt desires or needs. Well provided for. Decently housed. In extremely good health. A person who had not, in any sense of the word, come down in the world. And who could be relied upon never to cause embarrassment, either of a social or a personal kind. For that very reason, perhaps, rather less than interesting. And quite talented, with two stories already published in a prestigious American magazine. Embarking on a novel, it is said, calculated to be much appreciated in donnish circles. No immediate plans, but then, when one is a writer, one does not have the same plans as other people. One is not expected to. One is, let it be remembered, an observer, an unblinking eye recording what is thought, at the time, to be unremarkable. These scenes, these actions, to be retrieved, at a later date, intact. No blame attaching, of course. Able to see the funny side.

For it is all extremely funny, the misplaced enthusiasm, the expectations. Running like an acolyte to those who did not need me and like a fiancée to one who made his choice elsewhere. And even now, standing in front of Harvey Nichols, watching an electric train race round, my eyes, when I raised them to the darkened glass, were brilliant with tears and spite. It had to be funny. For if one is serious, one is rarely a welcome
guest. Everything must be converted, somehow, into entertainment. And I could do it. I might not want to, but who cared about that? I could do it. And when a secret is known to the whole world, no one will ever suspect that it was ever a secret in the first place.

The street was almost silent now, and empty of cars. The rain, which had been threatening all day, making a dark afternoon and a seductively soft evening, now came blowing on the wind, disruptive of one’s appearance, unsettling. I took my leave of the train set, crossed the street, and, almost automatically, entered the park. I was in no hurry to get home, although it occurred to me that what I was doing might be rather dangerous. I thought, childishly, that if it had really been dangerous, they would have stopped me. As they had not, I would put myself at risk, just to see.

I was unprepared for the darkness, and the silence. I had never noticed them before, as I had always been hurrying to Chelsea on a visit, or walking back with James, my face turned towards him. On every occasion, my head had been crammed with words. Now, when I needed them, they had deserted me. Vacant, I was surrounded by vacancy. It was extremely undramatic. Apart from the fact that my feet stumbled when they encountered soft earth and tripped when they got back on to a hard surface, I was not aware of any sensation whatever. Once past the edge of the Serpentine and the darkened café, once on to the gravel again, I stopped for a moment at that point where one can take one of three paths in the direction of Marble Arch. A clump of broad, squat, leafless trees, perhaps no more than three or four, but dense and compact in outline in this uncertain light, stood sentinel by the side of the main centre walk, the shortest distance to the other side. But I was not anxious to reach the other side, and so I turned to the right and
embarked on the narrower path that would lead me in an oblique angle, to where it was darkest.

Emptiness flowed away from me on either side. The rain was now steady but silent, falling in such thin threads that one was aware of it merely as a coldness descending. There was no evidence of life around me, no rustle in the undergrowth, no reassuring country twitterings. The park, at night, was empty of comfort, a place for outlaws, for those who desired concealment. I was entirely alone, and might have gone on like this indefinitely, had I not, too soon, reached the darker avenue of trees which ran parallel to Park Lane. Now I could hear a sizzling sound, as the occasional car seethed along on the wet road. Lights, in the big hotels, merely served to accentuate the opacity in which I moved. There was a moon, revealed and again concealed by drifts of black vapour, but it did not reach down into my darkness and was in any case on the wane.

I found, in a curious way, that I was walking from memory, for I could see nothing ahead of me. I could hear ordinary city sounds, muted by the late hour, to my right, but they seemed to have nothing to do with the cessation of life in the narrow enclave in which I moved. I was at no point afraid, even when I heard footsteps behind me, a soft steady pounding of deadly purposefulness. Indeed, I could barely be bothered to turn my head as the silent runner, in shorts and sweatshirt, eventually overtook me, and then I could hear his laboured breathing and smell his sweat. Once he had disappeared, the silence was even more intense. My thin shoes made no sound and my black coat made me at one with the unmoving columns of the trees.

In fact it was so restful, so appropriate, that at one point I sat down on one of the seats, congratulating myself on the extremely controlled way in which I was handling what might, to others, seem an unpromising
situation. Still in this mood of tight control, I made plans. Changes would have to come about, I thought practically. I could no longer go on living in that flat, with its two-fold layer of memories. I would pension Nancy off and send her home to her sister in Cork. I would tell her after Christmas, and once she was settled, put the flat on the market. It would bring me in a tidy sum, and with this I would buy an attic, a top floor somewhere, in a different area. I liked the small shopping streets near Victoria Station. I might even give up my job, for I no longer needed the money or the occupation. I would be a writer, my material spread out before me, the whole world my oyster, free to invent my life. I doubted if I should marry David, for something inside me had become fissured by alarm, as if exposed to some violent and deathly ray, resulting in a kind of sterility. I loved his family too much to wish on him a wife unable to understand or to trust affection given naïvely, worthy of good faith. Since leaving the silent train set, emblem of so much Christmas expectation, I had felt myself growing smaller, harder, more brittle, less worthy of love than before. I felt dangerous and endangered. The sooner I cut adrift, the better. I felt I should go where no one could watch me, check on how I was bearing up. I would deal with matters in my own way, far from scrutiny. My own views, so far unsought, might eventually find their way to the light of day.

I had no idea of the time, although it must have been very late. When I felt cold, I got up and resigned myself to walking on. There was still no sign of life. I strolled, in an almost leisurely manner, in the direction of Marble Arch. Far ahead of me, a tiny light, at waist level, wavered, was gone, then reappeared. My coat was damp, my face cold; I could feel minute drops of water on my eyelashes, which made the outlines of the trees hazy. The light came nearer. At no point did I feel either fear
or curiosity, and when a policeman, on his bicycle, asked me whether I was all right, I answered, as briskly as I could, that, yes, I was perfectly all right and was on my way home. I often walked this way, I told him, feeling him to be unconvinced. And indeed I quickened my pace, for he had got off his bicycle and stood, watching me, and I could feel his eyes on my back as I went down the steps to the underpass.

In the thin glare of the mauvish lights the endless tunnel stretched before me, a far more frightening sight than the dark and empty park. There was a stink of urine, and someone had recently been active with an aerosol, for several fresh slogans in blue Arabic writing decorated the tiled walls. ‘Victory to the Revolutionary Council in Iran’, proclaimed a grease pencil, applied to an otherwise innocent poster advertising men’s dress suits for hire. There was no one in sight, but now I felt a touch of unease, and my footsteps drummed out rather more loudly, their echo coming back to me. At one point I stumbled and must have kicked an empty lager can, whose mournful clatter, a doleful sound, made my teeth clench and sent me hurrying on. Then, just as I felt the first faint stirrings of alarm, a figure staggered round the corner ahead of me and came to a groaning halt, propping itself against the wall, and bending over as if in an extremity of pain.