Read Online Providence by Anita Brookner - Free Book Online

piling their empty plates on to a tray. ‘Larter you know, of course.’ Everyone knew Larter, who had been cautioned for loitering outside the bicycle factory and who was capable of many embarrassing misdemeanours. ‘Larteris, quite simply, brilliant. Mills will go back to his college and never be heard of again. But he’s very nice. The one that worries me is Miss Fairchild. I can’t seem to get any sense out of her. Shall we have our coffee by the window?’
    Maurice took Kitty’s cigarette out of her mouth, put it into his own, and passed it back to her.
    ‘Jane Fairchild?’ he asked. ‘My mother thinks she’s rather bright.’
    ‘Your mother?’ said Kitty in astonishment, receiving the cigarette back.
    ‘She lives quite near us, in Gloucestershire. Her parents are friends of mine.’
    ‘She’s very beautiful,’ said Kitty, digesting this news.
    ‘Quite a pretty girl, yes.’ He moved over to the sofa, stretched out his long legs, and crossing his hands behind his head, slid down until he was nearly horizontal. Kitty’s eyes lingered lovingly on the crumpled cushions, displaced by his weight; they were always pristine when he was not here, and she hated them that way.
    After a minute he turned to her and smiled. ‘Where’s that coffee?’ he said.
    Kitty made the coffee and served him. They drank in silence. After a minute, she asked him about his trip to France. ‘More or less fixed,’ he said, and patted the seat next to him for her to sit down. She waited to hear more but the subject appeared to be closed. He murmured something about the car needing to be taken into the garage the following week.
    ‘And so you’re off? When exactly?’
    ‘Oh, three or four weeks’ time. As soon as term is over. Actually, I might sneak off a bit early. And I’ll stay there till the last minute. I’m not just inspecting these cathedrals, you know. They mean more to me than that.’
    Kitty looked at him. His face, without its perpetualsmile was stern, sad. She had never seen him like this before.
    ‘What is it, darling? Are you depressed?’
    ‘No, my dear. I’m never depressed.’
    Darling. My dear. Kitty registered this, their usual exchange of endearments. She registered it every time.
    ‘Never depressed?’ she asked, her voice a little false in her effort to keep her balance. ‘I very much doubt if anyone else can say that. I’m depressed most of the time, I think.’
    Maurice turned his head towards her and resumed his smile.
    ‘Kitty,’ he said. ‘Kitty. You are absolutely without faith, aren’t you?’
    ‘Why, yes,’ she said. ‘How did you know?’
    He smiled even more fully, at the look on her face. ‘If you’ve got faith, you can always spot the ones without it. You, dearest Kitty, live in a world of unbelief. It makes you tense. I can’t tell you how simple life is when you know that you are being looked after. How you can survive one blow after another.’
    ‘Does God organize the blows?’ asked Kitty, somewhat tartly.
    ‘Who knows?’
    ‘Then what exactly do you believe in?’ asked Kitty.
    Maurice took his arms from behind his neck and sat forward, elbows on his knees, staring at the floor.
    ‘I believe in Providence,’ he said.
    Kitty was alarmed. He seemed strange this evening, locked up even more securely into his private world, allowing her no access. And she was aware, for the first time, that he was an adult, a man, not just a phenomenon, an unexpected visitor to her own life, but a human being whom experience had marked, who was beginning to show these marks, whose graceful body held its own inevitable diminutions.
    She laid a hand on his arm. ‘Maurice,’ she said gently. ‘You don’t sound very happy when you talk of Providence. What is wrong?’
    He took a long time answering. Then, locking his hands together between his knees, he stared at the floor, as if some image had suddenly materialized there, as if it held a fascination bordering on enchantment.
    ‘What