The Rules of Engagement (14 page)

I determined to buy some new clothes, and wondered
why I had not done so during the long summer
break. I did not normally pay much attention
to such matters. If I had any appeal it was because
my entirely neutral appearance gave rise
to a certain curiosity. Now I began to wonder
whether I should not have been more calculating. But
to bring such considerations into a love affair seemed
to me to be so unworthy that I abandoned the thought
almost as soon as it had formed. In truth it had
half formed and thus qualified for further
examination. This I determined to postpone until
I felt less doubtful, less divided. For that
was the way of it with another's obvious
entitlements. They were genuinely envied, admired,
even, but at the same time they left one feeling
diminished. It was as if one's own entitlements were
being depleted in order to make room for those other,
more natural, demands. But no, demands were
consciously formed. These were assumptions, all the more
compelling in that they were entirely instinctive, almost
a gift of nature. Or of the gods.

I was no longer anxious to linger in the flat, and
yet it was too early to go home. I decided
to pay a visit to Betsy, to see how she had
settled into her new home. I found her
surrounded by the overweening furniture that was de
rigueur in the 1930's: a large
glass-fronted bookcase, a nest of tables,
and a standard lamp with a dull parchment shade. In the
bedroom I knew I should find, and indeed did
find, a bed with a sculpted walnut headboard and a
dressing-table with a tilting mirror. The kitchen
at least seemed to be free of influences, but her
shopping
—
apples, cheese, coffee beans
—
proclaimed that here was a woman with little appetite
and only a faint desire to go through the motions. A
street light glowered through the window, which was as yet
uncurtained. It was, as she had said, so
obviously a unit rather than a home, a unit
designed for a single person, and one that gave out
messages of loneliness, determination, and
suitability.

“
You'll have to get rid of this stuff,
”
I said
stoutly, with a conviction I did not altogether
feel. My slight paranoia had diminished in the
light of how Betsy now appeared to me: an
orphan, surrounded by an orphan's
furniture. She gave out an unmistakable
message of loss. One advertises oneself in
all sorts of unconscious ways: others are
alert to the signals. A ruminative aspect,
a hesitant walk, a less than responsive
smile, all betoken facts about oneself that one would
not necessarily wish to be known. Any
assumption of busyness is immediately seen to be
fallacious by those who know how to look. And
Betsy's large eyes were so obviously turned
to the past that her ugly surroundings seemed almost
appropriate. How would she live? And in this
new context how would she see her recent
history? It seemed more than unfair to me that she
should be cast adrift in this manner. A woman in
our time is far from helpless; she can work, earn her
own money, surround herself with like-minded friends, join
protests, even constitute a one-woman protest
in her own right. But if there is no love in her
life she will know herself to be an exception, an
anomaly.

I could see, or thought I could see, what the
future held for Betsy. She would become one
of those selfless volunteers who devote themselves
to others, simply because she had more in common with the
dispossessed than with those who were rightfully her
peers. She would drop out of their ambience, take
refuge in books, become so accustomed to being
alone that she would be an awkward guest,
unfamiliar with social norms, and soon cease
to be a guest altogether. She had the courage of the
survivor, but survival of this sort is a
grievous condition, beside which I had to count myself
fortunate. She was subtle enough to make comparisons
with whatever she perceived about my life, yet too
good-hearted to feel envy. What in fact would she
envy, even if she knew the truth? Certainly not
the fact that I had a lover, for this would surely have
shocked her. Her own dream of love,
unrealistic though it had been, had in many ways
reflected her true nature, which yearned towards
the impossible of attainment. She may have understood
the various chimeras she had encountered, but she would not
have avoided them in the name of prudence, of
practicality. Such behaviour had served
to isolate her even further; the fact that she had
brought nothing back from her adventure was
not quite apparent to her, as it would be apparent to others.
I hoped that she would come by such knowledge slowly and if
possible gently. And yet there was a strange
beauty in her abandonment. She had kept her
integrity, had forfeited nothing of her original
innocence, had committed no fault. My own
conduct in comparison seemed shabby, compromised,
yet adult in a way that Betsy might concede,
but would not understand.

Naturally I told her nothing. That this
isolated me, and perhaps at a further remove from
what we both once had been, was a matter for my
private contemplation. I could not regret what
had taken place, although I had certainly
experienced flickers of disquiet, as recently as
this evening. In retrospect I saw Edmund's
behaviour as grandiose but flawed, as if he were a
representative of a conquering race and I one of the
conquered. I found this exciting, but knew it was
questionable. Yet the endowment was not one I was willing
to forgo. In giving me access to my own licence,
my own lawlessness, Edmund had made me know
myself, and in doing so I had gained a liveliness and
even a courage that had not previously been within
my reach.

“
What we should do,
”
I said,
“
is go
to Peter Jones and look at their stuff. You'll
soon see what you like. And you can afford it now; you
can please yourself. I'll help you; we'll go
next week, have lunch there. Like ladies.
”
We
both smiled, as if at a picture of those
ladies we could not yet hope to become.
“
And
eat something,
”
I urged her.
“
You're far too
thin. And your looks are too good to waste.
”

It was a relief to be in the street again. It was
a beautiful evening, soft, warm, and dark, with a
rising mist. It had been a truly golden
October: sharp mornings, mellow afternoon sun, the
pungent smell of leaves. It had been easy
to ignore the portents of winter and the shorter days,
and with them my own reclusion. I had no wish to go
home, and for once I had a perfectly valid
excuse to offer for my absence: I had been with
Betsy. I should have liked to stay out in the air,
to take a long walk, as I had done in the early
days of my marriage, before the instinct to escape
had led me into aberrant behaviour, yet had already
been felt in the blood, along the nerves. I was
impatient with myself, with my tendency to dwell on
recent pleasure, as if it were a singular
endowment unshared by other women. My thoughts were if
anything coarse: I could have this and more if I so
wished. I regretted my circumscribed life
in Paris, my only opportunity for
emancipation, and my refusal then to seize it.
Like Betsy I had come to love late in life,
and I knew that a longer apprenticeship would have
served me better. But I had received the wrong
instructions, had thought that marriage was the answer.
And no doubt it was the answer, for I did not
really want the sort of independence that is more often
forced on one than truly desired. Betsy's
independence was assured, and yet I knew that she
would have been the sort of wife who was going out of
fashion. We both had had that picture in our
minds when we were girls. But we were no longer
girls, and now I understood the regret in those
lovely songs I used to hear in Paris, in the
odd
café
, or through an open window. Le
Temps des Cerises is a land of lost
content, whatever one's condition, a realization that
what has gone will never return, whether it be
love or a vision of love which has somehow failed
to materialize.

I was surprised to find the flat empty when
I got home, particularly as it was nearly
seven-thirty. Digby was rarely late. He was
a man of settled habits who frequently
cited routine as a principle. I looked in his
desk diary to see whether I had forgotten a
meeting he was supposed to attend, but the pages were
blank. Indeed all the pages were blank, the
desk diary an annual gift from a Canadian
colleague which kept company with the other accoutrements
of his small desk, the old-fashioned fountain
pen, the paper knife, his telephone extension.
His study seemed so empty, so inscrutable, that
I determined to turn it into something else, and yet
it was too small for an extra bedroom, and
Digby did occasionally use it when he wanted
to write letters. The life he lived in that room was
closed to me; it had been there before he met me,
no doubt held secrets that were not to be disturbed.
I found it sad, perhaps for that reason, yet the
room was perfectly ordinary, summarily
furnished, benefiting from the morning sun. But
blank, like the diary.

I wandered into the kitchen, made myself a cup of
tea. The flat seemed very quiet. I was more
tired than I realized, resolved
to take a bath before Digby returned, yet was
reluctant to move. When the doorbell rang
I jumped. There were confused sounds from outside;
when I opened the door the first thing I saw was
Mrs Crook, standing outside her flat, her
face a mask of horror. Then I saw what
had caused this: Digby, leaning against a wall,
supported by his secretary, Jean Thompson,
one hand useless at his side, the other dragging
Miss Thompson's sage green jacket from her
shoulder, as if to get a last purchase on something
tangible while it was still within his grasp.
“
He was taken ill at the office,
”
explained Miss Thompson.
“
At first it
looked like a sort of seizure, yet he seemed
to recover from that. He even told me not to be
alarmed. Fortunately he had someone with him at the
time; otherwise I might not have disturbed him till
I left. I made some tea and took it in
to him. That's when I saw what had happened to his
face. And he seemed to be deaf in one ear. I
thought I should call an ambulance but he stopped
me. He could still speak at that stage, told me
he wanted to go home. So I waited half an
hour and then called a taxi. My father went this
way. You'll probably want to see your own
doctor.
”

We took him into the drawing-room and sat him
in his chair. His face seemed to have been divided
into two halves, the mouth distorted, one eye
closed. We all knew what had happened.
Digby certainly knew. Yet we were determined
not to name it, all three of us.

“
If you could just help me get him into the
bedroom,
”
I said.
“
I'll look after him.
I'm most grateful to you. I think this is what
he would have wanted.
”