Family and Friends by Anita Brookner Page B

for reminiscence: childhood, schooldays, family stories – an endless stream of mildly affectionate talk and no surprises. This is not to Betty’s taste at all. Betty surrounds herself with a drama and an excitement that leaves no time for anybody’s childhood. Betty is so violently single-minded that she will flirt with herself if there is nobody else immediately available. Betty would like a man of moods and passions, apt to fly into jealous rages which neither of them need take seriously, with no childhood to speak of, slightly cruel and unreliable, knowing all the best places, theatrical, like herself, loving play rather than truth, faithful but pretending not to be, abusive and despairing: such a man she would understand perfectly. But for Frank, who turns up every morning in time to take Betty out to lunch and who will stay with her all day, being unable to think of anywhere else to go, and who will be with her all night if she wants him, and who will, in all this time, wear a sunny and slightly puzzled smile, and will long to tell her of some family holiday in the distant past or some anecdote about his married sister, but who is quite used to being ignored, Betty has little sympathy and less and less patience. For this reason she has taken to snapping athim quite viciously, usually in public; she likes to show off her power over him. So that Frank is not entirely happy; it has become apparent, even to him, that he is too respectable for her. She refuses to marry him, although he, like the honourable soul he is, has asked her. Marriage is not in Betty’s plans at all, at least, not marriage to Frank. He is useful as an escort, and nothing more. Or rather, was useful. When Betty thinks of him she shrugs. And when Frank looks at her he becomes thoughtful. She has developed far beyond him, out of his reach. When she sends her laugh pealing through smoky restaurants late at night, and when people, or rather other men, turn round and watch her appreciatively, Frank begins to wonder what his mother and his sisters would have made of Betty had they known her. It is in any event inconceivable that they should meet her in her present state. Frank feels some moral discomfort at this dilemma, which was entirely of Betty’s own making, although he does not allow himself to blame her. Not yet. He feels a genuine unhappiness at the irresolute and excitable nature of life here. Frank is really a man of solid upbringing and settled habits; apart from his startling gifts as a dancer he is as regular in his patterns of thought and behaviour as his father’s metronome. He is conscientious and kind and, in Betty’s view, hopelessly incorruptible. Perhaps he would have been happier with Mimi after all.
    The discovery of this little apartment in the Rue Jouffroy was an event for Betty, and she decided firmly to begin her life again from this point. Like all self-renewing persons, she finds it easy to discard anything or anyone who has proved something of a disappointment. The Pension Mozart was very comfortable but it was stuffy and rather like the finishing school she so cleverly resisted attending. In the same way the money was useful and easy to come by but she was very tired of being lecturedby Maître Blin who seemed to think she could live on far less than Betty herself thought she needed. What right had he to lecture her, she stormed at him, and then stormed out of the room, covering up in her mind the fact that he was on the point of refusing to pay any more of her bills. In that way she felt liberated from the Pension Mozart and all its respectability; if they wanted her to live like a Bohemian, then that is what she would do. A friend of hers, another dancer, as it happened, whose dressing-room she had briefly shared, was leaving to go on tour and offered Betty the rest of her lease. The dark little flat enchants Betty; it is warm and quiet, and yet if she opens the window wide and looks out she can see the softly lit