put in an appearance. My own lamentable performance would have to be improved at subsequent meetings.
I told him that I should be absent for two or three days, which he accepted as entirely reasonable. I may have said something about the bank. He patted my arm and told me not to worry. It was unlikely that my mother would be completely awake when I returned, but her progress would be monitored with extreme care. He could vouch for the vigilance of Marie-Caroline, and for the night nurse, Marie-Ange. Even at night my mother’s sleep would not be natural. It was true that she was a healthy woman, and that no harm could come to her in this place. But the whole of Nice was now inimical to me. I longed to be back in my ugly flat, with its reassuring noises, the water in the pipes, the barking of Mr Taft’s dog. Once my mother had recovered I would stay with her at the house until she was well enough to make her own plans. She was not old; her life was not in danger. I reassured myself in this way as I made my way down the stairs. I told Marie-Caroline that I should be back at the end of the week. Smiling, she put down her magazine, and permitted me to approach the bed. My mother looked deathly pale, her lips bloodless. She seemed stern, even judgemental. I placed a light kiss on the hand that was not connected to the drip.
Back at the house I poured some wine into a mustard glass and drank it off to give myself courage. I regretted my earlier tears: nothing less than grim determination would see me through. Yet I felt immeasurably sad, the weight of Simon’s death more palpable as my eye encountered the objects of which he had been fond. These were not imposing, but like all relics made their own mute statement: his paper knife, his ashtray, unused since he had given up smoking, the spare key to the terrace. In his dressing-room I should find his clothes, his brushes, his shoe-trees, which I should leave untouched. My mother would no doubt want to see them when the time came for her to make the house her own again. Except that it had never been her own; in an odd way I had settled into it more happily than she had done. When I had my first sight of it, so white and uncompromising in the brilliant light, it had signified the beginning of an adventure, the door closed on my childhood, and I had willingly exchanged loyalty to our shadowy home for this alluring strangeness, into which were built all manner of references: the sea, the beach, the holidays which need never end.
But my feeling now was one of alienation. I dreaded the silence of the rooms, even of the kitchen, where Mme Delgado had hung up her dusters to dry. The house was now the domain of those who had departed, whether through choice or through necessity. When my mother returned I would urge her to make some changes, though I knew she would refuse. The house had always been to her a museum in which she was the main exhibit.
Curiously I examined this theory, which would once have seemed to me outlandish. Now I perceived her loneliness, which I had never taken into account, for I was used to her solitary dignity, had grown up with it. It had been the climate of my childhood, yet when the rescuer appeared, when the providential arrangements were made, and all was changed, it did not occur to me that a certain settled sadness might be more rooted than the upheaval of new opportunities, and that when the excitement and the romance had faded she might find that she missed her half-life in a way she had not anticipated. For we had been happy, too fiercely fond of each other to tolerate outsiders. That Simon had been such an outsider I did not now doubt. Our life at home was our secret, the secret we shared only with one another. Yet it had been for my sake as well as her own that she had made her decision. And the stark white house bore witness to the courage this had taken, and must at times have seemed the outward embodiment of such courage.
Darkness had fallen, and
I told him that I should be absent for two or three days, which he accepted as entirely reasonable. I may have said something about the bank. He patted my arm and told me not to worry. It was unlikely that my mother would be completely awake when I returned, but her progress would be monitored with extreme care. He could vouch for the vigilance of Marie-Caroline, and for the night nurse, Marie-Ange. Even at night my mother’s sleep would not be natural. It was true that she was a healthy woman, and that no harm could come to her in this place. But the whole of Nice was now inimical to me. I longed to be back in my ugly flat, with its reassuring noises, the water in the pipes, the barking of Mr Taft’s dog. Once my mother had recovered I would stay with her at the house until she was well enough to make her own plans. She was not old; her life was not in danger. I reassured myself in this way as I made my way down the stairs. I told Marie-Caroline that I should be back at the end of the week. Smiling, she put down her magazine, and permitted me to approach the bed. My mother looked deathly pale, her lips bloodless. She seemed stern, even judgemental. I placed a light kiss on the hand that was not connected to the drip.
Back at the house I poured some wine into a mustard glass and drank it off to give myself courage. I regretted my earlier tears: nothing less than grim determination would see me through. Yet I felt immeasurably sad, the weight of Simon’s death more palpable as my eye encountered the objects of which he had been fond. These were not imposing, but like all relics made their own mute statement: his paper knife, his ashtray, unused since he had given up smoking, the spare key to the terrace. In his dressing-room I should find his clothes, his brushes, his shoe-trees, which I should leave untouched. My mother would no doubt want to see them when the time came for her to make the house her own again. Except that it had never been her own; in an odd way I had settled into it more happily than she had done. When I had my first sight of it, so white and uncompromising in the brilliant light, it had signified the beginning of an adventure, the door closed on my childhood, and I had willingly exchanged loyalty to our shadowy home for this alluring strangeness, into which were built all manner of references: the sea, the beach, the holidays which need never end.
But my feeling now was one of alienation. I dreaded the silence of the rooms, even of the kitchen, where Mme Delgado had hung up her dusters to dry. The house was now the domain of those who had departed, whether through choice or through necessity. When my mother returned I would urge her to make some changes, though I knew she would refuse. The house had always been to her a museum in which she was the main exhibit.
Curiously I examined this theory, which would once have seemed to me outlandish. Now I perceived her loneliness, which I had never taken into account, for I was used to her solitary dignity, had grown up with it. It had been the climate of my childhood, yet when the rescuer appeared, when the providential arrangements were made, and all was changed, it did not occur to me that a certain settled sadness might be more rooted than the upheaval of new opportunities, and that when the excitement and the romance had faded she might find that she missed her half-life in a way she had not anticipated. For we had been happy, too fiercely fond of each other to tolerate outsiders. That Simon had been such an outsider I did not now doubt. Our life at home was our secret, the secret we shared only with one another. Yet it had been for my sake as well as her own that she had made her decision. And the stark white house bore witness to the courage this had taken, and must at times have seemed the outward embodiment of such courage.
Darkness had fallen, and
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