The Rules of Engagement by Anita Brookner Page A

Though you can get rid of it if it's not suitable. ”
    The smile faded. “ Yes, all that stuff. Father's desk — I never got rid of that. Mary didn't want anything changed. ”
    “ Change it now, ” I instructed her. “ You'll feel better with new things around you. ”
    The sound of Digby's key in the door brought us both to our feet. “ Home! ” he called, as he always did, and I went out into the hall to greet him. “ Tired? ” I queried. That too was habitual. “ I have a friend with me, ” I told him. Obediently he straightened his shoulders and summoned a smile. “ You remember Betsy, ” I told him. “ She was at our wedding. ”
    Betsy held out her hand. “ Betsy de Saint-Jorre, ” she said. She had appropriated both the aristocratic name and the married style. It was her one act of dissimulation, and I thought it entirely permissible.
     

 
     
     

    7
     
    Edmund's voice on the telephone sounded distant, patriarchal, as a voice does after an absence. I had not seen him for six weeks, and at times it had seemed to me that he had gone away, perhaps on a longer holiday than I had anticipated, or, worse, that he had gone away of his own accord, leaving me without an explanation, or rather with an explanation I was free to divine for myself. The agreement, or rather the agreement that had been imposed on me, was that we were two strangers who met from time to time for a specified purpose, but who did not otherwise intrude into each other's lives. In order to sustain my part in this bargain I had needed all my hard-won pragmatism, and this, so far, had not deserted me. What intimacy we shared was rigorously controlled, confined to the flat in Britten Street, and never referred to in a wider context. This tacit collusion had excited me from the start. Now, with the changes in the year becoming advanced, and consequently the alteration in my habits dictated by the colder weather, the darker evenings, I began to see the advantages conferred by a companionship that could be taken for granted, a middle ground in which references could be understood without explanation. This carefully contrived neutrality was something one observed with strangers, beyond the comfort conferred by true knowledge.
    “ Are you all right? ” I asked, aware that my voice had betrayed an unwanted eagerness.
    “ My mother died. We had to go up to Scotland for the funeral. ”
    “ Oh, I'm so sorry. ” Again, this was too heartfelt. But surely the death of one's mother was a tragedy? I felt that it might be a tragedy for others, although the warring tendencies of my own parents had made their absence a blessing rather than something to be regretted, as I rather suspected their eventual deaths would do. Parenting responsibilities had long since passed to my husband, in whose care I remained safe. But I assumed that for a man who had had the confidence to establish a family of his own, while continuing to live as freely as he chose, such ties would inevitably be stronger. In fact it pleased me to view Edmund as a member not exactly of a class but of a caste, a man in possession of all the certainties that had come to him at birth and had never had to be relinquished. His assurance derived not simply from his untroubled physical expectations but rather from the conviction that he had obeyed all of life's norms, that he measured up to some ideal standard which he had never thought to doubt. His behaviour would remain unquestioned by those whom it affected, simply because there were no questions to ask, or perhaps because it was a matter of form not to ask them. Privately it had occurred to me that such behaviour might cause anguish, bitterness, but from these dilemmas Edmund seemed inviolate. It was perhaps part of his natural endowment, this ability to please himself. He had given himself permission to do so by virtue of the fact that he had observed and paid the dues he owed to society, that he had acquired all those attributes that