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Authors: Anita Brookner
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not want to have dinner with her, to get to know her. I already knew her, or what I wanted to know of her. Besides, I was afraid of a refusal.
Sybil’s letter arrived the following morning. It appeared to have been dashed off with extraordinary energy on several sheets of dark blue writing paper. I scanned it hastily before leaving the flat: it contained many admonitions but no threats. ‘Scandalous’ was underlined several times, as was ‘Thoughtless’ and ‘Impertinent’, this last embellished with three exclamation marks. The letter seemed to issue from a correspondence already fully formed in Sybil’s head, as if I had previously written to her, outlining my feeble excuses for disposing of her property. Since she had, as it were, already established my side of the argument, I saw no reason to get involved, and told myself that it would be prudent to have no hand in the matter. My conscience was almost clear, though a little tender, my duty, as I saw it, was to instruct Sarah as to her obligations towards her mother, or, if that were impossible, to write to her, and occasionally to answer the telephone. This promised a certain amount of pleasure, although it was not the romantic pretext I sought. I really would have preferred to meet Sarah on neutral ground, devoid of all contingencies, but this was again an illusion, possibly a delusion, as if the only circumstances in which it would be possible for us to come together were to be situatedin the confines of a dream. From this I was able to deduce, but much later, that my feelings were admirable, exalted no doubt, but doomed to remain unrealised.
It was a fine morning, with an early mist just dissolving into early winter sunshine. I was halfway to the office before I remembered that I had had no breakfast, strode back again, drank my coffee, ate my toast, and was still early for work. At some time during the morning I dialled Sarah’s number, and, as usual, got no reply. At this point it occurred to me to wonder why I was making such a fool of myself. I was nearly thirty, neither decrepit nor disadvantaged, and yet I seemed doomed to assemble these rickety structures of possibility around a woman whom I hardly knew and who probably only thought of me, if think of me she did, as some kind of dim adjunct to a family with which she no longer had any contact. For if I retained anything from Sybil’s letter, apart from her general condemnation, it was a sense that as a parent she was unlikely to have had much contact with her offspring for some time.
From Sarah’s point of view I could judge the unwelcome nature of Sybil’s erratic vigilance: this was not a mother in whom an independently minded daughter could or would confide. I was uncertain about mothers and daughters, but I knew that even my own loved parent sometimes made me sigh with impatience. How much more so, then, would that seductive child-woman reject a mother who was not only completely solipsistic but aesthetically unpleasing. I only ever seemed to have seen Sybil in the heather mixture coat and skirt in which she visited my mother, her short bristly hair crowned with her trilby hat, yet in her youth she must have possessed something of the aura that her daughter had inherited. After all, she had once been a bride: presumably the tension that gathered her face into a permanent frown had not always been there. Even so it was hard to see howSarah had developed her more artful personality from the genetic elements at her disposal. That she was unique, a
lusus naturae
, fitted in with my perception of her, one which I was somehow unwilling to abandon. It harmonised with my curious state of impotence, justified my unwillingness to confront her on any kind of rational pretext. Yet Sybil’s letter provided me with just such a pretext, perhaps the only one I should ever have, and it was with only the slightest tremor of impatience at what seemed to be a duty I was only half minded to discharge that I picked
Sybil’s letter arrived the following morning. It appeared to have been dashed off with extraordinary energy on several sheets of dark blue writing paper. I scanned it hastily before leaving the flat: it contained many admonitions but no threats. ‘Scandalous’ was underlined several times, as was ‘Thoughtless’ and ‘Impertinent’, this last embellished with three exclamation marks. The letter seemed to issue from a correspondence already fully formed in Sybil’s head, as if I had previously written to her, outlining my feeble excuses for disposing of her property. Since she had, as it were, already established my side of the argument, I saw no reason to get involved, and told myself that it would be prudent to have no hand in the matter. My conscience was almost clear, though a little tender, my duty, as I saw it, was to instruct Sarah as to her obligations towards her mother, or, if that were impossible, to write to her, and occasionally to answer the telephone. This promised a certain amount of pleasure, although it was not the romantic pretext I sought. I really would have preferred to meet Sarah on neutral ground, devoid of all contingencies, but this was again an illusion, possibly a delusion, as if the only circumstances in which it would be possible for us to come together were to be situatedin the confines of a dream. From this I was able to deduce, but much later, that my feelings were admirable, exalted no doubt, but doomed to remain unrealised.
It was a fine morning, with an early mist just dissolving into early winter sunshine. I was halfway to the office before I remembered that I had had no breakfast, strode back again, drank my coffee, ate my toast, and was still early for work. At some time during the morning I dialled Sarah’s number, and, as usual, got no reply. At this point it occurred to me to wonder why I was making such a fool of myself. I was nearly thirty, neither decrepit nor disadvantaged, and yet I seemed doomed to assemble these rickety structures of possibility around a woman whom I hardly knew and who probably only thought of me, if think of me she did, as some kind of dim adjunct to a family with which she no longer had any contact. For if I retained anything from Sybil’s letter, apart from her general condemnation, it was a sense that as a parent she was unlikely to have had much contact with her offspring for some time.
From Sarah’s point of view I could judge the unwelcome nature of Sybil’s erratic vigilance: this was not a mother in whom an independently minded daughter could or would confide. I was uncertain about mothers and daughters, but I knew that even my own loved parent sometimes made me sigh with impatience. How much more so, then, would that seductive child-woman reject a mother who was not only completely solipsistic but aesthetically unpleasing. I only ever seemed to have seen Sybil in the heather mixture coat and skirt in which she visited my mother, her short bristly hair crowned with her trilby hat, yet in her youth she must have possessed something of the aura that her daughter had inherited. After all, she had once been a bride: presumably the tension that gathered her face into a permanent frown had not always been there. Even so it was hard to see howSarah had developed her more artful personality from the genetic elements at her disposal. That she was unique, a
lusus naturae
, fitted in with my perception of her, one which I was somehow unwilling to abandon. It harmonised with my curious state of impotence, justified my unwillingness to confront her on any kind of rational pretext. Yet Sybil’s letter provided me with just such a pretext, perhaps the only one I should ever have, and it was with only the slightest tremor of impatience at what seemed to be a duty I was only half minded to discharge that I picked
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