Visitors (10 page)

With Henry, for the first time in her life, she had looked forward to holidays. Because he travelled a great deal for his work—America, Israel—he was unambitious, wanted only peace and quiet and good walking conditions. Every winter they spent two weeks in Nice, as his grandparents had done: she could still see Henry, with his copy of
Nice-Matin
, sitting in a café waiting to be served breakfast, while she walked on a little further to buy a copy of yesterday’s
Times
. The companionability of those mornings appeared to her now as a dream from which she had since woken. In the spring or the autumn they might go to Ireland or Switzerland, but as time went on, and Rose’s condition became more dependent on Henry’s presence, they had not gone away at all. She had willingly made that sacrifice, and when they walked home after their Sunday visits, and sometimes walked as far as the park, she remembered her timid, resolute excursions as an adolescent, and marvelled that the wheel had come full circle, but that she was now no longer alone. Then he had died, quite quickly, in that room that was not their room, the room into
which she never went. When he died, with a look of ruminative puzzlement on his face, she had gone to the mirror and seen an identical expression on her own. The rest was a long apprenticeship that had not yet reached a conclusion.

Holidays since Henry’s death were therefore a major problem, for she was now alone again, restored to a condition which she had found problematic from the very first. Friends had urged her to go away, as friends always will, and for five consecutive years she had obeyed them, had gone to mild, expensive watering places—Vichy, Divonne—had read her book in public parks and gardens, had conscientiously dressed for dinner, and had eaten dinner alone. It was on those holidays that she had learned to cultivate sleep, which was now such a magnificent resource. It was with gratitude that she had laid down the burden of the day in those hotel rooms, reluctantly had opened her eyes on the following morning, instinctively making plans to return home. To do so was a defeat, but it was a defeat she had lived with ever since, so that the whole of August was spent in the same manner: coffee on the terrace, lunch at the café, the long afternoon spent reading. ‘I’m quite happy,’ she would say, if anyone asked her. ‘My travelling days are over. I appreciate my home now.’ Since something in her expression forbade further questions she was usually able to get away with what was, after all, the truth. Soon she was no longer asked whether she had any plans for the summer. That was when she was most acutely aware of defeat.

So that to be able to reply, ‘I have a young friend staying with me,’ as if it were the most natural thing in the world, was a very welcome alternative. But she had to reflect that it was no sort of summer for a young person, even if that young person were as uncommunicative as Steve. Apart from his non-existent
conversation his body language made him seem unapproachable. He had gone out that morning wearing a T-shirt inscribed with the words, ‘Don’t Mess with Texas’. He tended merely to lift a shoulder in response to her increasingly anodyne remarks. As far as she knew his activities were entirely innocent. He jogged in the morning—in her mind she followed him wistfully round the park—and sometimes returned to the flat to spend a silent hour in his room. He left again before lunch, presumably to go over to the Levinsons’ where he would stay until after dinner. He was as neat and as anonymous as a midshipman, or a young recruit, treating her home as if it were just another billet. She knew no more about him after three days than she had done when he first arrived.

Yet she sensed that he was lonely, as lonely in his way as she was in hers, except that her loneliness was the outcome of a fiercely guarded reclusion, and all that she required to help her was a deeper sense of reverie. Young people were not given to reverie, were not particularly articulate, lacked the sort of patience that only the old could command. Seeing him moody and unoccupied made her feel sympathy for his predicament, yet she herself could provide few distractions. She pitied his straitened youth of jogging and rock music, yet on the rare occasions on which she had heard him speak he appeared to be educated, even gently bred, but determined to hide the fact. She had had to come to the conclusion that he preferred to live as he did, to have no regular employment, to drift into the company of those who might make his decisions for him. It was a sadness to her to contemplate such a life. Her own, by comparison, seemed infinitely rich.

That afternoon, after lunch, she called in at a garage in the Fulham Road. Her own driving licence had long since expired,
but a kind young man promised to deliver the car within two hours. When the telephone rang she was almost startled to receive news from the wider world: that was the negative result of her quiet days. But she had been drafted into a conglomerate; she had to read the balance sheet. Austin had not mentioned her hotel proposition, for which she felt no surprise; he had always been somewhat lazy, or perhaps merely subject to Kitty’s will. Kitty was like the enchantresses of old, those who ruled through fear. In this way she had bewitched her husband into eternal and unwavering sympathy. The alternative would be a
crise de nerfs
. She regarded this—as did Austin—as a legitimate manner of seeing that her wishes were granted. His rewards were also considerable: perfect management of his household, a physical loyalty that soothed and regenerated him. They never argued, or if they did, ended up on the same side.

But on the telephone Kitty’s voice was dangerously lofty, hinting that some sort of argument was in train or had already taken place.

‘I’m expecting you for dinner on Friday, Thea.’ Her characteristic little laugh followed. Dare to refuse, said the laugh.

‘That will be very nice, Kitty.’

‘I’ve invited the Goldmarks. They can pick you up.’

‘No need. I’ve hired a car. Steve can drive me over.’

There was a silence. ‘I hope you’re not making him feel too much at home, Thea. Don’t forget they’re supposed to be leaving directly after the wedding. In fact the whole thing’s been a terrible strain on me. And now Molly’s being difficult.’ Here an intake of breath presaged an outburst. ‘We had words. Too silly. I hate to quarrel with my sister.’

‘Is anything wrong? What has happened?’

Kitty’s voice now appeared to have modulated without transition into the tearful. Perhaps the tears were always there, threatening to break cover without warning.

‘I asked her to take David until the wedding. Of course she said no. I can’t blame her for that. But I don’t want him either. And he gets on Austin’s nerves. It was the least Molly could do …’

‘Did she agree?’

‘Eventually. Oh, I dare say we’ll make it up, but it upset me. You know how sensitive I am. And Ann has been quite difficult. I’ve bought her one or two things, but she takes no interest. Just looks at me with a pitying smile, as if she were doing me a favour. If it were up to her she’d get married in that thing you saw her in.’

‘If you have a hand in the wedding it will be beautifully done,’ said Mrs May quite sincerely.

‘Thank you, Thea. It’s nice to receive a little support and encouragement. And how are you getting on?’

‘Oh, not too badly. Not too badly at all. But we shall all be pretty tired once they’ve gone.’

‘Austin insists that we go to Freshwater. You wouldn’t like to join us, I suppose?’

This invitation, though quite possibly genuine, was couched in a manner and a tone of voice that expected a refusal.

‘You know how I enjoy my quiet way of life, Kitty. I don’t move far these days.’

‘No, you don’t, do you?’ said Kitty, refreshed by the thought. ‘Well, we’ll see you on Friday. Seven-thirty. Goodbye, now.’

Mrs May replaced the receiver and was suddenly aware of
a gap in the afternoon. She willed Steve to come back, if only to have a bath before going out again. ‘Look out of the window,’ she planned to say to him, quite casually. ‘I’ve hired it for you. It will give you a bit more freedom. And perhaps we could go out for a drive? At the weekend? If you’re not too busy, of course.’

‘How’s it going, Dorothea?’ Steve’s taciturnity was somewhat moderated by the sight of the car outside in the street, a fact which, although welcome as a sign of comradeliness, was nevertheless in some ways regrettable. It had suited them both to mount a certain reserve, a reserve made more piquant by a no less certain stealth: each would listen for the other going down the corridor, a metaphorical ear to the door. Now they were obliged to acknowledge proximity, although not as yet intimacy. She felt the weight of his appreciation—for the car, not for her person—in his cheery meaningless salutation, repeated several times a day when they were obliged to meet. He required no answer to his greeting, nor had she—after one fervent, ‘Oh, very well, Steve, and you?’—any answer to give him. In fact neither required the other to speak. She intuited that his greeting was defensive, pre-emptive, as though by offering this formula he was at the same time signifying that he was not available for questioning.

She knew nothing about him beyond the fact that he was reasonably tactful; beyond that, and his reclusiveness, which almost matched her own, there was no evidence of nurturing.
It was impossible to imagine him sitting in the same room as a mother or a father, yet she thought she detected a dolefulness in his always retreating figure that made her feel protective. Although he looked like a man he was at pains to conceal a boy’s feelings. She admired the set of his features, which gave nothing away, and thought that any girl who set her sights on him would have a hard time. Mrs May doubted whether he had lived at such close quarters with a woman since leaving home: body building seemed to have replaced any interest in the opposite sex in his particular physical economy. Living at such close quarters she had become more readily acquainted with his appearance: the short dark hair, the pleasantly blank smile, the mouth which, when not under strict control, betrayed his dissatisfaction, the neat concentrated body, of average height, that spoke of punishing exercise, the bare feet that rejected shoes until the last minute. She thought too that she detected something disturbingly affectless about him, as if he were some sort of mercenary, home on leave from a distant war zone, scrupulously cleaned up, and all at once bored.

She had no idea what he did with his time. Apart from dinner at the Levinsons his days were unaccounted for. Running served him in lieu of an occupation; she was given to understand that he met David in the park and ran round Kensington Gardens with him. She assumed that they spent the morning together, or part of it, and possibly got themselves something for lunch. She did not know whether he had any money, a matter which tormented her. David, it was clear, at least it was clear to her, came from a comfortable background: he had the expansive manners and comfortable assurance that had apparently attracted the wary Steve in the first place. She thought she could understand that friendship, Steve paying with his silent loyalty for the attention of the other, while
David gained an adherent who absorbed, without a hint of criticism, his evangelical observations. She found David, or what she had seen of him, unattractive, his prospective bride even more so. She sincerely sympathised with Kitty, whose objections to the situation were troubled, imprecise. At the same time she saw in Steve the victim of the others’ alliance, the third party unsure of his continued welcome by the other two. With this position she could also sympathise.

Surreptitiously, under cover of preparing more coffee, she watched him eating his breakfast, a breakfast which became more lavish as she was convinced of, or imagined—it came to the same thing—his penury. With breakfast in Fulham and dinner in Hampstead he would not go hungry. Then, safely behind the closed door of her bedroom, she would blush at her folly. As if this young man needed her protection! As if she needed his! Had she not spent fifteen largely successful years on her own, bothering no-one, needing no audience for her occasional fears, no concern for her attacks of breathlessness? Had she not got out of the habit of men, as old women will, and even congratulated herself that there was no longer any one of them to torment her? She had loved Henry, had loved even the trace of his presence—his signet ring left carelessly on the side of the washbasin, the smell of his cigar—yet when she had cleared his room after his death she had felt a sort of elation on realising that in the future she would not be disturbed. And she had not been. Living alone, she had discovered, was a stoical enterprise but one that could be rewarding. And now, after only a few days, she was once again anxious, fearful of displeasing this stranger in her house. The date of his departure, fixed for the Wednesday of the following week, when he was supposed to fly to Paris with the newlyweds, struck her as unreal; she was half convinced that at the last
moment he would refuse to go. She did not think that she had made him so welcome that he would want to stay with her, although the idea made her blush again. She did not even know whether she would be glad or sorry when or rather if he went. She only knew that clearing up his empty room would not provide that curious relief that she had felt when clearing Henry’s room after his death.