Read Online A Friend from England by Anita Brookner - Free Book Online
Authors: Anita Brookner
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Heather had, with unexpected firmness, stood out against any elaborate fantasies that Dorrie might have been maturing, with the full collaboration of her sisters. ‘It’s all arranged, Mummy,’ she had apparently said. ‘We’re having a tea-dance.’ Once this idea had been mooted, Dorrie began to see its possibilities. ‘And it’s to be very soon,’ she added proudly. ‘As soon as we’ve found her a nice flat, although Oscar’s been busy looking for the past week. And he thinks he’s found just the thing. He’s taking me to see it this afternoon.’ I said that everything sounded marvellous. ‘Of course, I’m going to be very busy,’ she went on. ‘But you won’t forget me, will you, Rachel? Or Heather? She relies on your judgement, you know. And we shall expect you next Saturday as usual, dear, if you’ve nothing better to do. You know your way now.’
I warned myself against colluding with this curiously passionless excitement, although it was the very absence of passion, the very even tenor of controlled emotion,that had attracted me to the Livingstones in the first place. It seemed to me now as if their former lives had had a mature calm which had vanished, replaced by a rather more commonplace activity which became them less. Dorrie
affairée
was slightly less attractive to me than the timid and sighing embodiment of domestic immobility, while Oscar the man of property was inferior in my view to the gentle and indeed rueful man who would cast aside his newspaper, smooth down his tie, and greet Heather and myself as if we were still children. My next visit to their house, on the following Saturday, was even slightly nostalgic for those early days of our friendship, which seemed to me now almost prelapsarian, untouched as they were by adult considerations, hermetic, indifferent to the world’s events and news. The safety that I had felt in their particular enclosure had evaporated and was replaced by a certain glumness as I was called upon to view the splendour of Heather’s appointments. Dorrie had been shopping with a vengeance, meeting her sisters for lunch at the Capital Hotel and going on afterwards with them to plunder the stores, making for Harrods on an almost daily basis. Appalled as I was by the array of saucepans, china, glass, linen, and above all, the glossy nightgowns and dressing-gowns so lovingly purchased by her mother, I did have time to reflect that there was even something age-old and defensible about these preparations, and I imagined the three sisters setting out on their pilgrimage every day, united as they had not been since childhood, or rather since the last wedding. This, they obviously felt, was what women were for. And the sisters were mobilized on Dorrie’s account because they had always felt that she was the one most in need of scolding, of supervision. Only in the event of this final marriage, the last child to leave home, would they retain their earlier status; by the same token, a certain amount of deference was due to Dorrie, whose dignity, theyfelt, was newly conferred upon her by events. The little sister had grown up.
I learned in the course of that fairly distracted afternoon that a flat had been purchased for Heather and Michael in a large block behind Marble Arch. The flat had been newly decorated just before the previous owners had had to leave it, due to a posting abroad, and all that needed to be done was to fill it with furniture of the kind most favoured by the Livingstones. This was now actively under way. Heather, apparently, had no firm views on interior decoration, which I found a little surprising in view of her way with clothes: she was capable of a kind of outlandish chic, which was immediately undersold by her mild, questing expression. She was however quite content to let her mother provide the necessities, and already piles of bath towels, in royal blue, were mounting up next to the enormous range of white French porcelain bowls and dishes,
I warned myself against colluding with this curiously passionless excitement, although it was the very absence of passion, the very even tenor of controlled emotion,that had attracted me to the Livingstones in the first place. It seemed to me now as if their former lives had had a mature calm which had vanished, replaced by a rather more commonplace activity which became them less. Dorrie
affairée
was slightly less attractive to me than the timid and sighing embodiment of domestic immobility, while Oscar the man of property was inferior in my view to the gentle and indeed rueful man who would cast aside his newspaper, smooth down his tie, and greet Heather and myself as if we were still children. My next visit to their house, on the following Saturday, was even slightly nostalgic for those early days of our friendship, which seemed to me now almost prelapsarian, untouched as they were by adult considerations, hermetic, indifferent to the world’s events and news. The safety that I had felt in their particular enclosure had evaporated and was replaced by a certain glumness as I was called upon to view the splendour of Heather’s appointments. Dorrie had been shopping with a vengeance, meeting her sisters for lunch at the Capital Hotel and going on afterwards with them to plunder the stores, making for Harrods on an almost daily basis. Appalled as I was by the array of saucepans, china, glass, linen, and above all, the glossy nightgowns and dressing-gowns so lovingly purchased by her mother, I did have time to reflect that there was even something age-old and defensible about these preparations, and I imagined the three sisters setting out on their pilgrimage every day, united as they had not been since childhood, or rather since the last wedding. This, they obviously felt, was what women were for. And the sisters were mobilized on Dorrie’s account because they had always felt that she was the one most in need of scolding, of supervision. Only in the event of this final marriage, the last child to leave home, would they retain their earlier status; by the same token, a certain amount of deference was due to Dorrie, whose dignity, theyfelt, was newly conferred upon her by events. The little sister had grown up.
I learned in the course of that fairly distracted afternoon that a flat had been purchased for Heather and Michael in a large block behind Marble Arch. The flat had been newly decorated just before the previous owners had had to leave it, due to a posting abroad, and all that needed to be done was to fill it with furniture of the kind most favoured by the Livingstones. This was now actively under way. Heather, apparently, had no firm views on interior decoration, which I found a little surprising in view of her way with clothes: she was capable of a kind of outlandish chic, which was immediately undersold by her mild, questing expression. She was however quite content to let her mother provide the necessities, and already piles of bath towels, in royal blue, were mounting up next to the enormous range of white French porcelain bowls and dishes,
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