Making Things Better by Anita Brookner

that.’
    Simmonds shrugged, looking suddenly weary. ‘I won’t say there hasn’t been the odd discussion. But she likes her freedom. Women do these days; they don’t seem to suffer. I sometimes wonder if men don’t suffer more. But we’re together, we have fun.’
    â€˜Fun?’
    â€˜Distractions are easy to find. We travel a lot. And because we’re not together the whole time we’re always pleased to see each other.’ He looked wistful, as if foreseeing a time when he might miss her. But, thought Herz, there would be those distractions. Perhaps eternal restlessness was the answer, just as eternal vigilance was the price of liberty. Rest would not only descend on one too soon; it would be unwelcome when it did.
    â€˜Your generation is quite different from mine,’ he smiled. ‘You seem to have everything mapped out.’
    â€˜It’s all a matter of communication these days. You need never really be apart: e-mail, mobile phones, and so on.’
    â€˜But I wonder if that really keeps you together. Some things can’t be put into words.’
    â€˜Most things can.’
    â€˜I was thinking how the smallest changes are often the most subtle. How one unconsciously reverts to what I suppose were one’s origins. Nowadays I find myself eating the sort of food I had at home. And it’s not a conscious decision. I do it instinctively.’
    â€˜You want to look after yourself, you know. You’re looking a bit thin.’
    â€˜Oh, I’m fine.’
    â€˜You should take a holiday.’
    He smiled. ‘I look forward to hearing about yours. Shall I get the bill?’
    â€˜Let me.’
    â€˜With all this money it’s the least I can do.’
    They parted on the usual good terms, Herz waiting on the pavement until Simmonds’s car drove off. Then he walked to the bus stop, remembering, in spite of himself, Bijou Frank and his first experience of servitude. He smiled. How had she lived, poor Bijou? And when had she died? There had been no notice in the Deaths column of
The
Times,
although there was no reason why there should have been. It had been an obscure life, dignified by a sort of loyalty. That was what he missed, the sort of loyalty observed by people who had little in common but their origins, but who understood each other in a more rooted way than the rootless young could ever understand. He understood it now, almost wished those lost connections back again. He was not trained for freedom, that was the problem, had not been brought up for it. He had done nothing more than glimpse it. The irony was that he now possessed freedom in abundance, but did not quite know how to accommodate it. And it was, it seemed, too late for him to learn.
    At the bus stop he was suddenly overcome by a feeling of unreality, so enveloping as to constitute a genuine malaise. He placed a tremulous hand on his heart, and seconds later wiped a film of sweat from his forehead. He stood for a moment, trying to regain his composure, glad that there were no witnesses. He had no memory of the journey home, in a providential taxi. In bed he felt better, ascribed his faintness to the second glass of wine he had imprudently drunk, but slept badly. The morning came as an unusual relief, one that he had barely expected.

7
    â€˜It was like a cloud descending,’ he explained to the doctor. ‘Like being enveloped in a cloud, or indeed a cloudy substance. Opaque, you know. I couldn’t otherwise explain it, although I had to explain it to myself. The only thing I could think of was Freud’s experience on the Acropolis.’
    â€˜I’m sorry?’
    â€˜Freud reported a feeling of unreality which overtook him when he was visiting the Acropolis. He was alarmed, as well as feeling unwell, although he didn’t go into that. Then, being Freud, he worked out an explanation; he was uneasy because he had gone beyond the father. In other words he