Read Online Undue Influence by Anita Brookner - Free Book Online

on which to manifest itself. But I had only to picture my mother and her girlhood friend, their heads together, wandering through the summer evenings, to feel unworthy. Yet even they had been subject to change. Marriage had transformed my mother into a woman, although she remained a girl at heart. Marriage had put an end to the blamelessness of those evenings, which she was never to know again. The same may even have been true of her friend. I no longer thought it odd that they had not kept in touch. Both would now have been conscious of concealment, of secrets no longer to be shared. I thought my own methods were healthier. For me concealment meant distance. Perhaps it was time I took another holiday.
    I had suggested to Wiggy that if we looked in on the Gibsons at about six o’clock we could escape after at most half an hour on the pretext of dinner. This seemed to me more satisfactory than a later hour, when Cynthia Gibson would no doubt be tired. I had noted her sudden slump into exhaustion from my previous visit. Had I stayed longer, I knew, she wouldhave become febrile, querulous. I remembered her husband’s assiduity in marshalling me out of the room. Looking back to say goodbye I had been shocked by the sudden deterioration in her appearance, her colour faded, her mouth bitter, set in a grimace which may have been habitual. Therefore I was relieved, for my own sake, as well as Wiggy’s, when the door was opened by a robust-looking girl in a white coat, the nurse, presumably. ‘Hi,’ she said. ‘Good timing. I was just about to leave. Your visitors are here, Cynthia,’ she called. ‘I’ll just see if she wants anything, then I’ll make myself scarce.’ She laughed pleasantly, revealing dazzling teeth. Had I been ill I should have found her presence reassuring. Nothing could conceivably go wrong in the presence of those teeth.
    But I was not ill, and I wondered if it were entirely in order that she should be wearing earrings and that the white coat should be open over a blouse and a pair of pin-striped navy blue trousers. I wondered this again when she returned to the hall, took out a comb, and stationed herself in front of a small and no doubt venerable mirror. She was good-looking in an uninteresting sort of way, with large blue eyes and regular features. The white coat came off and was hung in a cupboard.
    ‘Sue, darling,’ came a cry. ‘Don’t leave me without saying goodbye. After all I shan’t see you until Monday.’
    The nurse, Sue, presumably, gave us a conspiratorial wink, and said, not much lowering her voice, ‘She’s been like that all day. Restless. Fortunately you’ll be a bit of a distraction. Only don’t stay too long, will you? And remind Martin to give her her pills. I’m coming,’ she carolled. ‘Ready or not.’ It was evidently her job to coax and tease, to provide affectionate banter, even to flirt. She would, throughout the day, be the unfortunate woman’s sole companion. I felt equally sorry for them both.
    At first sight all I could see of Cynthia Gibson was thosegreedy little hands clasped round the nurse’s neck, disturbing her recently combed hair. Therefore it was not really surprising to see the nurse stroll over to a dressing-table confected out of some antique table and a nineteenth-century looking-glass in order to put herself to rights all over again.
    ‘Good evening, Mrs Gibson,’ I said. ‘It’s Claire Pitt; do you remember me? And this is my friend, Caroline Wilson.’
    ‘Of course I remember you. You bad girl,’ she added. ‘You told me you were bringing another friend.’
    ‘No, no. Caroline is called Wiggy. That’s probably what you remember me saying …’
    She took no notice of this. ‘Martin,’ she called out. ‘Bring the champagne. I want Sue to have a glass before she goes.’
    ‘You shouldn’t,’ I protested, for form’s sake.
    ‘I’ll let you into a secret,’ she said, leaning towards me and releasing a wave of scent. ‘Tomorrow