Undue Influence by Anita Brookner Page B

following day would be Sunday for me as well, a day on which nothing happened, or could be expected to happen. There was another complication: when would Martin get in touch? He had left his telephone number on the note posted on my typewriter, but given his temperament, his agonized sensibility, I knew that he would not welcome an inquiry. We had indeed been witnesses, but to something we could not talk about. This would prevent him from appearing in the basement again, and no doubt from telling me more about himself. The emphasis had shifted once more back to Cynthia. (The weak exert a tyranny denied to the more robust.) At least that was how I now saw it. Irritation, so ready to surface, was curiously absent. My imagination failed me, put to flight by a more insistent reality.
    ‘Are you all right?’ asked Wiggy.
    I collected myself. ‘I’m fine.’
    Wigmore Street was blue with the last of the evening. We both breathed in deeply.
    ‘I’ll ring you tomorrow,’ said Wiggy. But in fact we were both anxious to be alone.
    As it turned out Sunday was not so bad. It was enough just to be intact. I took a long walk round Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens in the afternoon, and like the Colliers ate a substantial meal when I returned home. I felt guiltily safe. I went to bed early and slept deeply. On the Monday morningI went to Selfridges and ordered some pink roses. On the card I wrote, ‘With love from Claire and Wiggy’. This seemed adequate until I remembered that if Cynthia were somehow restored to relative health, as I hoped, she would have already forgotten who we were.

Eight

    I waited uneasily for something to happen. Was it in order for me to telephone and inquire? Or was the situation so embarrassing that it was better to revert to my status as occasional, even random visitor? I thought that there might have been some acknowledgement of the flowers, until, like my mother, I reflected that flowers often fail to arrive, or arrive on the wrong day, at the wrong address. Indeed, given these potential mishaps, I wondered whether the flowers had not been a mistake, or that they had not in fact been delivered. In which case no acknowledgement could be expected. In retrospect it seemed to me that the flowers had struck a false note, that it would have been better for all of us, Martin and Cynthia included, that that particular visit had not taken place. Nevertheless the onus seemed to be on the Gibsons, or at least on Martin, to get in touch. If he did not it was because there was no reason for him to do so. We were, after all, completely marginal. I concluded that the Gibsons had retreated into their peculiarly watertight relationship. Either that or the flowers (which may not after all have arrived) had been registered as some sort of error, both formal and over-eager. In any event there was no indication that either Wiggy or I was needed, even remembered. This was both a relief and a puzzle. Yet tryas I might—and I did try quite hard—I did not see that there was any further role for me to play.
    One evening I got home from the shop to find a message on my machine. ‘Hi! This is Sue? Mrs Gibson’s nurse? I’m sorry to have to tell you that Mrs Gibson passed away last Wednesday. Mr Gibson asked me to let you know. He can’t come to the phone right now. Bye.’
    I was enormously, even disproportionately shocked. That a woman whom I had suspected of the direst stratagems had actually died seemed to me an outrage. In fact any death is an outrage. The death even of a stranger connects one with one’s own losses. My hands were shaking as I dialled Wiggy’s number. Interestingly, she was as shocked as I was, though she had less stake in the matter.
    ‘What should we do?’ she asked, genuinely at a loss.
    ‘We ought to offer sympathy. Pay our respects, or whatever people say in these circumstances.’
    ‘Yes, but they’ll have had the funeral, won’t they?’
    ‘I certainly hope so. And anyway it would have