Undue Influence by Anita Brookner Page A

returns,’ we wished heartily, as if to cover the uneasiness of the moment with the fervour of our goodbyes. ‘We’ll see ourselves out,’ we told Martin, anxious now only to leave. ‘Thank you so much,’ he said. He looked up from the bed, his eyes haggard. ‘So nice to have seen you. We enjoyed your visit, didn’t we, darling?’ But Cynthia, looking bewildered, did not reply.
    ‘What did you make of that?’ asked Wiggy, when we were safely out in the street.
    ‘It’s obvious, isn’t it?’
    ‘You mean …’
    ‘Quite.’
    ‘Poor old thing,’ said Wiggy. ‘I don’t think I feel like dinner, do you?’
    We were both shaken by the impropriety of the episode, myself more than Wiggy. Until then I had not really considered Cynthia to be ill, ill that is as my father, my mother had been ill. Her illness had seemed essentially decorative, tricked out as it was by her soft pillows and her immaculate appearance. Now I saw these accessories as a last resort, a form of dandyish wilfulness, of defiance. She was no stoic, but she had perfected a stoic’s defences. This again was evidence of the power of her instincts. Had she used her mind to perfect the same strategy she would have been admirable. As it was she was profoundly pathetic.
    By unspoken common consent we walked in silence, up Harley Street to the edge of the park, before turning back again in the direction of Cavendish Square. But this area was irritatingly devoid of passers-by. Life was what we wanted. More life! ‘We should have some coffee, at least,’ said Wiggy, and we walked the length of Wigmore Street in search of it. In thecafé where I remembered eating a toasted sandwich we sat down gratefully at the back, away from the door, Wiggy with her unopened sketch pad, still in its plastic bag, on her knees. ‘How awful if I’d forgotten it,’ she said. ‘We could never have gone back.’
    ‘No,’ I agreed. ‘We can’t go back.’
    That this had now been decided by what seemed like an outside force was something of a relief. We relaxed, ordered more coffee, eventually a Danish pastry. All round us the evening was merely beginning. Two girls at the next table seemed to be discussing a colleague. ‘She tried to talk her way out of it,’ said one. ‘She didn’t know I’d caught on.’
    ‘I never liked her,’ said her friend. ‘Still, you have to make allowances, don’t you?’ ‘Not me,’ said the first one virtuously. ‘I never make allowances.’ She lit a king-size cigarette, and sat back, challenging anyone who might conceivably suggest that she should. I was impressed. Wiggy, aware of my growing interest in their conversation, brought me back to the matter in hand with a discreet warning look.
    ‘We might send her some flowers,’ she said.
    ‘Good idea. I’ll get on to it.’
    ‘Roses, I think, don’t you?’
    ‘Yes, she’d like that.’
    We were both disturbed by the evening’s events. Even the girl at the next table seemed threatening. Embarrassment, I knew, would come later. We should not have intruded into the Gibsons’ private drama, and yet we had been invited to do so. Their need for an audience—or perhaps for help—had made itself felt throughout. It occurred to me that for all their uninviting, even forbidding manners they wanted some sort of encouragement that neither of them was equipped to provide. Perhaps anyone would have done. But in the end we had let them down. It was probable that at this stage no one could havehelped. I thought with some irritation of Martin’s mother in Norfolk. Surely she might have put in an appearance? But she ‘didn’t get on’ with Cynthia, and this I translated as a total breach. And tomorrow was Sunday, when the nurse would not be there. I longed to eliminate Sunday, thinking of the two of them, polite and terrified, in their dark flat.
    Suddenly the noise of the café seemed unbearable. I wanted to be out in the beautiful air, savouring the last of the evening. The