Look at Me by Anita Brookner Page B

between Alix and Nick about who was to be dropped first. James, obviously. Markham Street was closer than Maida Vale. The car, when Nick opened the door, smelt of cigarettes.
    ‘Oh,’ I said impulsively. ‘I wish we could walk.’
    ‘We can,’ James replied. ‘At least,
we
can. I’ll walk you home, Frances.’
    I turned to Alix and then to Nick, both of whom looked faintly amused.
    ‘I see,’ said Alix. ‘I see.’ She laughed, and we had to join in. And this time I laughed with genuine pleasure and surprise. For the one thing I had not expected was to be written into the plot. I had really not expected that at all.
    We parted with promises to ring up the following day, and our voices left an echo in the misty air.
    James and I walked in silence until we got to the top of Sloane Street. Everything around us was quiet, but not quiet enough for me. The air was very still, and there was a faint scent of burnt leaves. After a moment I said, ‘Do you think we could walk through the park?’
    ‘Of course,’ he replied. ‘It’s what I intended. You’re not tired, are you? Could you walk all the way home?’
    I think that was the happiest night of my life. We walked in complete silence through the silent park, andit seemed to me that instead of drawing to a close the year was just beginning. Beginnings are so beautiful. Although I am naturally pale, I could feel the blood warm in my cheeks. I drew no conclusion from this, and my instinct was correct. I was not falling in love. Nor was there any likelihood that I might. But I was being protected, and that was something that I had not experienced for as long as I could remember. I was coming first with someone, as I had not done for some sad months past, and in my heart of hearts for longer, much longer.
    ‘They’re a remarkable couple, aren’t they?’ he asked, more to break the silence than anything else.
    ‘Remarkable,’ I agreed. ‘Wonderful friends.’
    So we walked up the Edgware Road, past the nurses’ uniforms and the sex shops and the bleary light from the launderette, and after a while he said, ‘You’re not tired, are you?’ and I shook my head, for I could have gone on for ever.
    ‘But how will you get back?’ I asked him suddenly, when we were at my door. ‘You have no car, and taxis are hopeless around here.’
    ‘I’ll walk back,’ he replied. ‘Goodnight, Frances. I’ll see you tomorrow.’
    That night I did not bother to write.

Six
    And I did not write for many evenings that followed. In my new security I began to see it all in a different light. I began to hate that inner chemical excitement that made me run the words through in my head while getting ready to set them down on the page; I felt a revulsion against the long isolation that writing imposes, the claustration, the sense of exclusion; I experienced a thrill of distaste for the alternative life that writing is supposed to represent. It was then that I saw the business of writing for what it truly was and is to me. It is your penance for not being lucky. It is an attempt to reach others and to make them love you. It is your instinctive protest, when you find you have no voice at the world’s tribunals, and that no one will speak for you. I would give my entire output of words, past, present, and to come, in exchange for easier access to the world, for permission to state ‘I hurt’ or ‘I hate’ or ‘I want’. Or, indeed, ‘Look at me’. And I do not go back on this. For once a thing is known it can never be unknown. It can only be forgotten. And writing is the enemy of forgetfulness, of thoughtlessness. For the writer there is no oblivion. Only endless memory.
    So that when I received a congratulatory letter from the prestigious American magazine, and the news that my story about Dr Leventhal’s Hellenic adventures would shortly be published, I felt no urge to sit down and write another. Rather the opposite. I looked on my success as the fitting conclusion to a