Brief Lives by Anita Brookner Page B

quite carefully, while you’ve still got some colour. Then nobody will notice.’ But I felt a little faint and was anxious to get out into the air. Possibly the child had upset me, or I was not eating enough. ‘Let me think about it, John,’ I said. ‘I’ll let you know next time.’ He lifted the hair from my neck, ran his fingers gently through it, something my own husband never thought of doing. ‘It’s good hair,’ he said. ‘Don’t let it go to waste.’ Ithad been pretty, a light reddish blonde, the sort of natural attribute for which one was admired in the old days. Now it looked quite colourless, although still light. I gave no thought to my looks at that time and regarded the obligation to take care of them as one more of my duties. It was certainly not a pleasure. I was a middle-aged woman, and not making too good a job of it: loveless, mourning my mother, without children of my own, and beginning to regret my youth. ‘Perhaps when you’re feeling a little brighter,’ said kind John, and because he was so kind, so discreet, I nodded gratefully, paid the bill, and made my escape.
    It was a beautiful spring, so beautiful that even being out in the street was a pleasure. There were intimations of happiness in the mere fact that yet again fruit trees had blossomed, and afternoons were bright with the first strong sun of the year. I took to wandering, although I still found the district unwelcoming. Solitude became important to me then, and has remained so. Mother would have said, ‘Out of bad comes good,’ and this realization gave me extraordinary comfort. There had been little comfort of any other sort. Vinnie had paid me a visit of condolence, although she had no time for me these days, and had not quite forgiven me for earlier reprimands. She sat at the kitchen table, swiftly eating a plate of bread and butter and evidently annoyed that there was nothing more substantial on offer. ‘You’ll sell the house, of course,’ she said, poking at the corners of her mouth with her terrible handkerchief. ‘What will you do with the money?’ She seemed to think this quite a legitimate question, as perhaps it was. ‘A little cottage somewhere? Owen has always wanted to live in the country, and of course I was brought up in Sussex. Etchingham. Near Eastbourne,’ she added kindly. ‘We could all go downin the car one day and look round. Perhaps
two
cottages,’ she added coyly. ‘So that I could be near my boy. And you too, Fay, of course.’ I could hear myself making smiling sounds of interest even as I decided to ignore her.
    And Julia came, one evening, on Charlie’s arm. I thought that was decent of her. But Julia knew about mothers and was devoted to her own, that still pretty, rather silly woman, so appreciative of her daughter’s looks and accomplishments that she was her most perfect audience. ‘Have a whisky, darling,’ one of them would say to the other; it hardly mattered which, for their voices were astonishingly alike. Mrs Wilberforce confined herself to the most general of remarks and was thus extremely easy to get along with. She had always appeared pleasant enough, largely, I think, because it was in her interest to do so, but also because she was not a reflective sort of woman. She was another of Charlie’s pensioners, and as long as she had access to her daughter and to the amenities of Charlie’s flat, which included his whisky and cigarettes, she was relatively contented. ‘Too terrible for you,’ said Julia. ‘I came as soon as I heard.’ This cannot have been true: my mother had been dead for over a month. But then why should Julia know that? As usual I was having to do battle with my own scepticism, although I was curiously comforted by the visit. ‘If Mummy went I don’t know what I’d do,’ said Julia in a melancholy voice. ‘All the husbands in the world couldn’t make up for her. Although of course Charlie is my prop and mainstay.’
    She was right, I reflected;