Making Things Better (5 page)

‘I've done all that,' he said mildly. ‘I quite enjoyed it, though not in the way you would. I have never sat on a beach in my life.'

‘No, well, you wouldn't, would you? What did you do, then?'

‘I went to cities. At first I went to all the glamorous ones: Venice, Rome. But I did in fact feel rather lonely there. Then I realized that I didn't have to go to these places, that I was happier in small towns of no particular interest. So I picked the ones in which I could please myself, without witnesses. France, mostly. I was more or less contented when I could just amble round a church, and then sit down and drink coffee and read the local paper, half-hear other people's conversations.'

‘Sounds hilarious.'

‘Oh, you'd hate it. But carrying on like this seemed to satisfy me. And the places I chose had a certain charm, though not of the sort that would appeal to you.'

‘Did you ever think of moving somewhere abroad?'

He smiled at her. ‘I feel as if I am abroad already. London is still strange to me, though I have lived here since I was fourteen years old. Somehow it still doesn't feel entirely like home. And now that I don't travel any more . . .'

‘That's a mistake, Julius. You'll just turn in on yourself.' She paused. ‘I take it you live alone?'

He smiled again. ‘Of course I live alone. I'm an old man. Who would have me now?'

She cast around her, picked up her bag, having done her best to rally him once more.

‘You were a good-looking man,' she said. ‘Women could still find you attractive.'

‘I don't hanker for female company.'

‘I was enough for you, I suppose?' Her tone was mocking, but there was a wistfulness behind it.

‘You were enough for me. I was very happy with you. I'm only sorry that you weren't happy with me.'

‘It was the whole set-up, though, wasn't it? Your parents, and that funny old girl who came in on a Saturday and never took her hat off. It got to me after a time. And even that was better than Edgware Road.' She shuddered. ‘I don't know how you stood it.'

‘I had to stand it. Now I'm happy that you've made a life for yourself, found someone who can take you on holiday, take you out . . . I manage. I'm not discontented. Don't worry about me, Josie.'

He reached for her hand, glad that this brief exchange had cleared the air between them. But now he was tired, and thought she must be too, although in her case tiredness would be compounded with relief that he had not reproached her. Though eager to proclaim the rightness of her decision to end their marriage, if challenged to do so, she was nevertheless not eager to dwell on it. In this, he thought, she showed signs of a belated maturity, although in a way he regretted this for her sake. In his experience maturity rarely brought cheering insights. Better the eagerness of youth, before the world had done its worst. His smile faded. He pressed her hand and then released it. They had after all not completely disappointed each other. And it was time to leave, before further reminiscences disturbed their fragile equilibrium. He glanced meaningfully at the next table, where the two women who had earlier caught his attention were now arguing vehemently. Josie followed his gaze, then nodded at him.

‘They will have a rotten afternoon of it,' he said, guiding her out into the street. ‘And they had planned it all so carefully. It was to have been a treat for one of them, though not, clearly, for the other. I dare say they will cut it short and go home to Weybridge. Oh, your car. Where did you say you left it?'

‘In the car park. Don't come with me. I know you hate it.'

‘Well, if you're sure. I'm always afraid of getting locked in.'

‘Goodbye, Julius. Thank you for lunch. Keep in touch.'

‘Yes, I'll keep in touch. Good to see you, Josie. Oh, and have a good holiday.'

He watched her stride away, noting with some sadness her thicker shoulders, the fact that she was slightly bent. With an effort he straightened himself, pushed back his own reluctant shoulders. They were old; it was all over. She would have told him not to be so defeatist, that, compared with so many, he was fortunate. He knew that, but it made no difference. His own equilibrium rested on such slender foundations that he also knew that undue reflection would disturb them. And now he was truly tired and wanted nothing better than to be at home, where no one but himself could register his decline.

He decided to walk back to Chiltern Street, knowing that this was foolhardy, yet anxious to test himself. He stood for a moment, irresolute. The day was fine, windy, but with a mild sun. He set off down St Martin's Lane, turned instinctively into Cecil Court to look through the second-hand books, and spent a restful few minutes away from the crowds. He was no longer used to company, that was the problem, could not function well in an atmosphere of talk and activity. Even the pleasures of the restaurant had tired him, even the company of Josie, although he was glad that she had re-established herself as a dear girl, barely recognizable now as the fresh-faced nurse whose presence he had so craved, almost as soon as he had had time to study her across a café table on the very first evening of their acquaintance. But that was how it should have continued, he thought: meetings in cafés on random evenings, as if they were actors in some black-and-white film, preferably French. In that way they could have injected an element of romance into their fortuitous association. He realized that he had been too keen to drive the relationship to its logical conclusion to speculate as to what a woman might want. Besides, his knowledge of women was so slight that this was in the realm of abstract thought. As far as he knew women were divided into two categories: those like Fanny Bauer who tormented one and those like Josie who offered refuge from such torment. Now he saw that this was less than fair to either of them. They were both, in their different ways, similar at heart. Both were opportunists in the best possible sense, able and willing to turn matters to their advantage, even if by the most traditional route, by marriage. It was entirely possible that he had failed them both, by not endowing Josie with that missing element of romance, by not being less romantic, less impetuous, more of a solid prospect, in his approach to Fanny. He had picked the wrong moment to act the lover, should have turned himself for the occasion into a sober citizen. As for Josie, she had seen her advantage in solid prospects: the respectable setting of a family she would soon outgrow, the bourgeois comfort of a flat that would soon prove to have been merely a temporary refuge. And no romance, he reflected, could have survived Edgware Road and the cramped quarters barely adequate for one ménage, let alone two. The strain had told very quickly, so that it was almost a relief to him when she made her decision. And by that time Fanny was simply a mirage. He could still see her as a girl, that was the strange thing, as if the intervening years had no substance.

He wandered back down St Martin's Lane, thinking he might go to the National Gallery, might look at the Claudes and the Turners for half an hour. He did this from time to time, applied himself to a pleasure that had outlasted all the rest, yet aware that art was indifferent to whatever requirements he might bring to the matter. He still had in his mind Freddy's contempt for his former calling, and worse, his boastful negligence, his repudiation, as if art had proved fallacious in some way, as if it were preferable to be the equivalent of a playground bully, a ruffian, rather than the suffering aesthete he had been in his former life. Herz hoped that there was no real need to choose between these two extremes, but thought that there might be. It was informative that after seeing Josie he felt the need for something incorporeal, as if the one ushered in the need for the other. Yet after a calming half hour he would be aware of the sound of his own footsteps and would long for company of the simplest kind. The sight of children, sitting cross-legged on the floor and listening to a lecturer explain a picture to them, made him want to join them, if only for a minute or two. Yet in today's sad climate an adult man approaching a group of children was no longer an innocent sight, even though a man as old as himself might be thought to be above suspicion. Unfortunately nobody was above suspicion these days. It was a matter of prudence to behave with the utmost circumspection, as if one's guilt and folly, the accumulation of a lifetime, might in an instant be exposed to the public gaze. And how could one recover from that?

Finally, more hesitant now, he decided to give the National Gallery a miss. He would keep his favourite pictures for another day, a better or a worse day, it hardly mattered now. Now he would go home, but not on foot. He had noticed that he was becoming a little unsteady. That was why he had largely given up travelling. He was afraid of a collapse in a foreign city, saw himself lying on a pavement, surrounded by unknown faces. Such a thing had never happened, but he had begun to fear the day when it might. He was safer now at home, for home had become his ultimate refuge. In the taxi he decided to telephone Josie that evening to thank her for their lunch, and once again to wish her a pleasant holiday. That was the right note to end on, he thought, and then, in a panic, asked himself why he should be thinking of endings. Nothing was over. In a couple of months' time they would meet again, and be glad to. It was the best that could be done for the situation in which they found themselves. In a way it was the best he could do for both of them.

5

By the time Herz reached Chiltern Street the sun had clouded over and the wind freshened, foreshadowing a dull evening. He put his key in the door and stood for a moment in the little hallway, experiencing as usual both relief and a sense of anticlimax. He was still not used to the silence that greeted him, although he had craved that silence at various points throughout a day which had proved exhausting. He moved slowly into the kitchen and filled the kettle, then, abandoning the notion of making tea, moved equally slowly into the sitting-room and settled himself gratefully into a chair. Adventures such as his lunch with Josie now proved disappointing, yet their conversation had agreeably filled the afternoon. Now there would be no more conversation. He looked around him as if seeing the flat for the first time, unusually aware of its constraints. It was too small, but being small was, he supposed, ideally suited to one who lived alone. On this cold May evening it took on the proportions of a cell, decreed by some invisible agency as appropriate to a lifestyle which could no longer accommodate company. He supposed that it was the best thing that had ever happened to him, and wondered why, at moments like these, at the end of the day, it was no longer gratifying. Its work was done: all that was left for him to do was to come to terms with its restricted amenities, and to reflect, as always at such times, that it was foolish to expect mere living conditions to supply a degree of contentment which only humans could furnish.

And yet he loved the flat. Its coming into being he regarded as nothing short of miraculous. He remembered as if they had taken place yesterday the events that had brought it about. Once again it was Ostrovski who was the provider, as if he were the unlikely convenor of their destinies. One day he had paid a visit to the shop, looking as he always did simultaneously prosperous and ramshackle, his over-large coat slung over his shoulders, his hands playing with one of his numerous sets of keys. Even in winter he was deeply tanned. Herz had greeted him with his usual mixture of deference and resignation. Ostrovski was, in that unsuspecting moment, still his employer, and, if such duties could be ascribed to him, his patron.

‘Make coffee, Julius. I need to talk to you.'

He had done as he was told, preparing to hear the usual diatribe against the harshness of the economic climate, his impatience with the property market, with which he had mysterious dealings. It had been rumoured that Ostrovski owned several shops in various parts of London which he bought and sold as the fancy took him, always on the lookout for the end of a lease or a failing business, news of which would reach him in his perambulations or while drinking coffee with cronies in the cafés he frequented or in those odd clubs in which card games took on the function of a day's work. Herz knew nothing concrete about him, supposed him still to be living in Hilltop Road, looking more mournful now that he was old, no longer the cocky entrepreneur keen to spot a gap in the market. He commanded considerable funds, that much was clear, and yet his income was insubstantial, as likely as not to vanish overnight. He seemed never to be in a hurry, yet his eyes were sharp, observant. At any moment it seemed as if he might disappear, move out of town, as if his misdemeanours had caught up with him. Yet Herz had never heard a whisper of complaint against him, no suggestion of illegality. He behaved like a minor financier, but with a hint of penurious origins. His dealings were as ever obscure. As far as anyone knew he operated alone, making the best of uncertain beginnings, which he had managed to supplement by native shrewdness. He was an unavoidable fixture in their lives, and although neither Herz's mother nor his father had liked him they had been forced to trust him. This was never a comfortable position; they suspected him of various irregularities which might or might not land him in prison, but as far as they knew his reputation, which they suspected of being damaged, had not so far caught up with him.

It was that bleak time after the deaths, after the divorce, after Nyon, when life in the shop had had to fill Herz's days and for which in a way he was grateful. It was the sameness of those days that had compensated for the rawness of recent years. Every morning he descended the stairs from the flat to open up; every Friday he took the week's money to the bank. Yet this was no longer the modest outfit that his father had nurtured for so long; it had become busy, almost prosperous. Herz had supposed that he would take care of it for as long as Ostrovski was satisfied with him. He had no thoughts of owning it, but had come to terms with it as a fact of life, of his life. He gave Ostrovski his coffee and prepared to listen to the usual nostalgic reminiscences of those evenings in Hilltop Road at which he was an almost assiduous visitor, almost assiduous because he was so adept at hiding his true purpose that they never knew whether he felt anything for them at all or was, as Herz suspected, lonely.

‘I'll come straight to the point,' he had said. ‘No point in keeping you in suspense. The fact of the matter is that I've sold the business. The whole property, in fact. Had a very good offer and accepted it.'

‘But why? It was doing so well. At least I thought so.'

‘Make no mistake, you've done wonders with it. No, it's nothing to do with you.' He shrugged off his coat. ‘Look at me, Julius. How old would you say I was?'

‘I've no idea.'

‘Eighty-one.' He waited for some rebuttal. When none came he dropped his uneasy manner and looked uncharacteristically sombre. ‘I'm getting out,' he said bleakly. ‘I've had enough. All these years I've been wheeling and dealing I've never been happy. I always wondered why. And now I know. I'm not well, Julius.' He laid a tentative hand below his rib cage. ‘Tried to overlook it, as one does, but there's no doubt about it now. I'm looking at the end. The next big thing.'

‘The next big thing?' Julius had echoed.

Ostrovski ignored him. ‘I've got a place in Spain, as you know. Marbella. Might as well spend my days in the sun as in this perishing climate. I'm getting out, liquidating my assets. So you'll be on your own, dear boy, free, for the first time in your life. You've been a good son, I've never doubted that, too good, perhaps. Sorry your marriage broke down, but that was all part of it, wasn't it? Now you've got a chance to be your own man. I've seen to that.'

‘You mean you'll give me a reference,' he had said, his tone carefully neutral.

‘I mean I'm giving you what I paid for this outfit in the first place. Of course prices have gone up since then. I've taken this into account.' He mentioned a sum that sounded unreal. ‘You can look for a flat of your own. Take what you want from here, not that you'll want any of it. Truth to tell I always had a bit of a bad conscience about you. They favoured that brother of yours, didn't they? Well, now you can make up for lost time.'

‘I can't take this. All this money.'

‘You can and you will. It'll buy you something small but comfortable. And there'll be a bit left over. Wisely invested it should take care of you for the rest of your life. Ask my nephew about that. Name of Simmonds, Bernard Simmonds. He's a solicitor, perfectly straight sort of guy, though bloody uninteresting. He'll advise you. I should get in touch with him as soon as possible. He'll have the flat in Hilltop Road, by the way.'

‘I can't take this money,' he had repeated.

‘It's all perfectly legal, if that's what you're worried about. And why not have it now, instead of waiting till I'm dead?' He grimaced. ‘Why wait?' he said. ‘Simmonds had the same reaction, couldn't believe I was doing the decent thing. But I always wanted to do the decent thing. The times were against it; that was the beginning and the end of it. I had to claw my way up, and I don't say I didn't enjoy some of it. Only it ends badly, Julius, remember that. You end up looking on, reduced to less than half of what you were. I dare say I shall do as well as I can, out in Marbella. In the sun there's less need to think. And I want to get rid of the past, just live in the present, or what remains of it.'

‘Are you sure? You might be lonely.'

‘Of course I'll be lonely. But there's a loneliness that comes with age anyway. There's nothing I can do about that. And there's a sort of club there, all ex-pats, all on their last legs, all making quite a good job of it. It'll be like going back to school. Absurd!' He gave a harsh laugh. ‘Anyway I've put you in the picture. You've got about a month to sort yourself out. The new owner will dispose of the stock; I've given him a few contacts. Wants to open a hairdressing salon, I believe. I didn't want to go into his plans; I've lost interest anyway. I just want my place in the sun, for as long as I've got. As I say, take anything you want from here. The two armchairs are quite good. And that little table. Belonged to my mother.' Tears filled his eyes. ‘Don't let me down, Julius. Do as I wish. That way it won't all have been in vain.'

‘I don't know how to thank you,' he had said wonderingly.

‘No need. I can't take it with me, can I?' He wiped his eyes. ‘I suppose this is our last meeting. Get in touch with Simmonds if you need anything. Now get me a cab, there's a good fellow. Got some packing to do.'

On the pavement he seemed frail, unlike his former self. The transformation was already under way. ‘Hilltop Road,' they both told the taxi driver. Then it seemed natural to embrace, as they had never done in the old days, natural for Julius to stand waving, until the cab and Ostrovski were out of sight.

The suddenness of Ostrovski's announcement seemed to have obliterated any response. Julius went to his small desk and scrutinized the invoices and accounts, the contents of which he knew by heart. But it was no good; he could make sense of none of it. His working life, it seemed, was over. Not quite what I expected, he had admitted to himself in the course of the afternoon. Yet he had expected nothing, and had been endowed with freedom, a freedom for which he was entirely unprepared. And he was relatively well off, though he would have to check with this Simmonds person that the gift was perfectly regular. He seized the telephone and dialled the familiar Hilltop Road number. The call went unanswered. The next thing to do was to find out the address of Simmonds's office, and make an appointment to see him. Then he would have to find somewhere to live. The prospect posed even more difficulties; he had never exercised his own wishes in this respect. From Berlin to Hilltop Road to Edgware Road all his homes had been chosen for him. And home was such an emotive concept that he doubted whether he would be able to live up to it, to make a place for himself in a world where people exercised choices. On an impulse he hung the CLOSED sign on the door and went up to the flat. He had grown used to it, in a resigned, almost philosophical sort of way: he had not looked this particular gift horse in the mouth, although it had brought about unwelcome changes. He had been told to take anything he wanted, but he wanted nothing. He noticed a shabbiness he might otherwise have overlooked. The wallpaper had faded; the windows needed cleaning. He would take the two armchairs, and the little table that had belonged to Ostrovski's mother, more in the interests of Ostrovski than himself. In that sense there would be some continuity. The rest he would have to buy. The prospect of a new bed, unslept in by anyone before him, filled him with a timid pleasure. Ostrovski had said something about a month. In that time he would have to find somewhere to live. Even more difficult, he would have to school himself into new habits, work out how to spend the rest of his life. He was after all at an age when most men retired, and no doubt they were all faced with the same daunting prospect. So much time! How on earth was it to be filled?

At eight o'clock that evening he telephoned Hilltop Road again and was answered by Bernard Simmonds. So he actually existed; this was a good sign. And Simmonds was encouraging. There was no doubt about the money: it was properly gifted, and there were legal declarations to prove it. ‘Unusually generous, I agree, and almost unheard of these days. But he was better off than any of us suspected. I'm talking serious money here. I know, I know; it takes a bit of getting used to. If I were you I'd look for a property before the prices go up again. Don't hesitate to get in touch with me if you need advice. We're in the same boat, you know. I'd been paying rent here; now I own the lease. Incredible.'

‘Where is the money?' he remembered asking helplessly, a memory at which he blushed for several days when forced to think of it.

‘In your bank. It's all there, don't worry. Now you'll want to put it to good use. Between ourselves I think it would be better if you found something as soon as possible. Things will not be too comfortable at Edgware Road. New owner, and so on.'

‘But the business. The accounts. The stock.'

‘The new chap has appointed a firm of accountants to take care of all that. Liquidators, I suppose. But it's all fair and square. In fact you're free to leave.'

But he did not feel free. He felt bereft. As the evening darkened and the shadows gathered in the small sitting-room that had been home he felt somehow deprived of a birthright, the right to work. He felt newly alone in the world, wished for a family, an imaginary family, more like an audience, composed of people who would applaud and endorse all his actions. He had never known such people, half-knew that this was a fantasy left over from adolescence, or further back, from childhood. He went to bed, slept fitfully, would have welcomed a dream, however unpleasant. He got up before five, anxious now to be out of the place, out in the air. He would have breakfast at the all-night café on the corner, then try to work out some plan of action. In the early-morning light the familiar street looked strange, uninhabited, although there were muted signs of activity, as shopkeepers opened their doors to take in supplies. The coffee had a valedictory taste; he was in no mood to eat. As the sun rose slowly on what might prove to be a beautiful day, he paid, exchanged a few abstracted words with the café's owner, and turned back to what was no longer his home. Raising his eyes from the pavement which he had apparently been studying, he saw with a pang that a van had drawn up outside the shop, that the door was already open, and that inside men were engaged in some sort of activity, one of them apparently going through his desk.