Metroland by Julian Barnes

self-debate, had been decided on, my underpants were changed (again) after last-minute re-inspection, and I’d chosen the book I wished to be discovered with: Villiers de l’Isle-Adam’s Contes Cruels . I’d actually read it once before, so that I was well covered in case it turned out that she had too.
    All this may sound cynical and calculating; but that wouldn’t really be doing me justice. It was, I liked to think (perhaps still do think), more the result of a sensitive desire to please. It was as much a matter of how I imagined she would like me to appear as of how I would like to appear to her.
    ‘Salut!’
    I jerked my head out of old Villiers, the jerk and the excitement sending my eyes out of focus again. That solved the problem of whether I’d recognise her.
    ‘Oh, er salut !’ I started to get up as she started to sit down. We both stopped, laughed, and sat down. So that was what she looked like, yes, a little thinner than I’d remembered, and (when she took off her mackintosh) er, yes, they were, um,very nice, not enormous, but somehow … well, real? Only Soul and Suffering to go. Her hair was that dark brown sort of colour, centre-parted and dropping fairly straight to her shoulders, where it turned up; her eyes were nice, brown and I suppose the usual size and shape, but very lively; her nose was functional. She gesticulated a lot as we talked. I suppose what I liked most about her was the moving parts – her hands and eyes. You watched her talk as well as listened to her.
    We talked about the obvious things – my research, her job in a photographic library, Durrell, films, Paris. You usually do, despite fantasies about the instant meshing of minds, the joyful discovery of shared assumptions. We agreed about most things – but then we would, given my craven urge to please. I don’t mean I struck myself as spineless; and I did put in some dissent about Bergman’s sense of humour (arguing perkily that he had one). But there was a natural decorum to our investigations; the only major shared assumption was that we should not dislike each other.
    After a couple of drinks, we fell on the idea of a film. You can’t just go on talking, after all; best to lay down a little shared experience as soon as possible. We settled quickly on the new Bresson, Au Hasard Balthazar . You knew where you were – or at least where you were expected to be – with Bresson. Gritty, independent-minded, and shot in intellectual black-and-white; that’s what they said about his films.
    The cinema was near, gave a student reduction even on the evening show, and had enough right-looking people gazing at the stills outside. There was the usual array of hideous cartoon commercials, featuring animals of unidentifiable species. During my favourite commercial, the one with a squeaky matron urging ‘ Demandez Nuts ’, I was forced to suppress my normal, knowing, lubricious Anglo-Saxon giggle. I thought out a remark comparing English and French commercials, but was short of a word so didn’t bother to launch it. That was another advantage of going to the cinema.
    As we came out, I allowed the customary minute for us to get over our too-moved-to-speak reactions, then
    ‘What did you think?’ (Always get this in first)
    ‘Very sad. And very true. Lots of …’
    ‘Integrity?’
    ‘Yes, that’s right, integrity. Honesty. But lots of humour, too. But a sad humour.’
    You can’t go wrong with integrity. It’s a good thing to admire. Bresson had so much of it that once, when trying to film the silence of some mournful wood, he sent men out with guns to shoot the jarringly cheerful birds. I told Annick this story, and we agreed we didn’t know quite what to make of it. Did he do it because he found it was impossible to simulate a birdless wood by running a blank tape? Or out of some deep, puritanical sense of honesty?
    ‘Perhaps he just didn’t like birds?’ I quipped, having breathed the sentence over to myself