A Start in Life by Anita Brookner Page A

were both very much present. They seemed to be occupying more space than usual. Perhaps she had got used to the relative silence of Mrs Cutler. Perhaps being in the open air had made them seem so voluble, so oppressive.
    ‘Now that you’re home,’ said Ruth, ‘you mustn’t slip into bad habits again. You’re much too lazy, Mother. You should get out more.’
    Helen turned her head very slowly.
    ‘Get out?’ she questioned. ‘I don’t even feel like getting up.’
    That was it; that was the change. Helen meant it. They all knew that she meant it. Something would have to be done. But Ruth remembered her mother’s face as she had seen it the previous evening, frightened and old under the unbecoming slant of the peaked cap. George had seen it too. Mrs Cutler had seen it and was determined to do something about it.
    Mrs Cutler had liked being mistress of the flat: she didn’t count Ruth. She remembered a time when she had been mistress of her own small house in Battersea, when Douglas would take her to the pub on a Friday evening, when she had a captive audience of her own. The only stratagem she knew took shape in her mind. She was not keen on it but it would have to do.
    ‘I’ve been thinking,’ she said, unconsciously fingering her left hand. ‘I might like to get married again. Can’t give up without trying, can you?’
    George was stunned. Helen, on the contrary, seemed very sympathetic. She foresaw entertainment for the weeks ahead. And she need not even get up for it.
    ‘There are marriage bureaux, of course,’ said Helen. ‘I believed there’s one next to Barker’s. Why don’t you
sign on or fill in the form or whatever you have to do, and then you can ask them back here, whoever they are. If anyone turns up,’ she added kindly. ‘As you know, I’m a pretty good judge of character. And men are such liars; they certainly won’t tell you the truth. But they won’t get much past me.’ She seemed cheered by the prospect. ‘With my experience,’ she said.
    Mrs Cutler, who had already decided to take her project seriously but to meet any aspirants at the Mexicana coffee bar next door to the launderette, agreed to let Helen help her with the application.
    ‘Say you’re of independent means,’ advised Helen, now filled with enthusiasm. ‘That always gets them. And, after all, you are, aren’t you?’
    Ruth slipped out of the room as her father was leaving.
    ‘Is she all right?’ she asked. ‘She looks different, somehow. Thinner, more highly coloured.’
    ‘Of course she’s all right,’ replied George. They were whispering. He was annoyed. Nobody worried how
he
was. He was becoming restive.
    ‘I don’t like the idea of your going away, Ruth. Don’t like it at all. Especially if Maggie’s going to leave.’
    Ruth looked at him in astonishment.
    ‘But who on earth would want to marry Mrs Cutler?’ she asked. ‘She doesn’t mean it. This is the only home she’s ever likely to have.’
    George shook his head.
    ‘Think about it, Ruth. You have a duty to her, you know.’ Then he left, in a hurry to get to Peter Jones, to oversee his purchases and perhaps buy himself a towelling bathrobe.
    This was the first Ruth had heard of her duty, which she had always imagined was confined to the characters of Balzac. She had a duty to them, certainly, and the British Council, no less, had recognized it. Her father could not really imagine that she would be of any use here?
    In the days that followed, it became quite clear that he did.
    On the first Tuesday in October, in an atmosphere of suppressed disappointment and anxiety, Ruth waited for the taxi to take her to Victoria Station. Her mother was in bed (‘You don’t mind, do you, darling heart? My precious girl? I am just a
little
bit tired’). Her father, who was gravely displeased with her, had gone to Mount Street to prove it. Ruth was suddenly bereft. As her taxi drew up and she prepared to say goodbye to Oakwood Court, she glanced up at