A Friend from England by Anita Brookner Read Free Book Online Page A

which I gathered was something to do with the property or travel business. There was necessarily some confusion over this until it turned out that the father managed a chain of time-share apartments abroad, and that he had done so well at this that he had bought into several travel agencies and was something of an expert and also a monopolist in this field. Apparently he was the man to consult if you wanted to live in Spain or Portugal. As the Livingstones already had their place at Puerto Banus I thought this a happy coincidence, designed to bring them closer together, but it appeared that he was already advising them to sell and go somewhere else. I saw Oscar fielding his advice, with a look on his face as remote and as sphinx-like as Heather’s. At any rate, the Colonel was easy to get along with, and allowed nothing to deflect him. He was a restless man, a cigar-smoker, a fast talker, the kind who goes down better with women than with men. Yet for all his uningratiating habits, when he looked at his son, which he did frequently, his face was rueful and devoted. I trusted that look.
    I could see that Oscar did too, while Dorrie was too excited to calm down into her usual contemplative mode. It seemed to her as if for once she had done the right thing. And her sympathies were engaged by theplight of this couple, who had apparently brought each other up in the absence of a woman to care for them, and whose attachment therefore had a slightly tragic aspect, as if they were now to lose each other to strangers. Indeed, Michael and his father had all the Victorian overtones that should by rights have attached to Heather, for she who had always been so protected was soon to leave the home and the parents who had so protected her. Yet the anxiety of the Colonel and the ardour of his son argued for their greater vulnerability, and this was where Oscar was to play his part, for in the furnishing of those worldly goods which allay anxiety he was by now an expert. I believe there was a great deal of money on the other side as well, but I imagined this being displayed with the sort of lavishness that undermines faith in the seriousness of the commodity, as if it were fool’s gold. Spectacular and unconvincing offers were being made – of properties to be lent for holidays, villas on indefinite loan, private beaches – all of which were wide of the mark because I could see that Oscar had no intention of exchanging his little flat, and that if he did he was quite capable of making his own arrangements, although he would now undoubtedly give offence if he did so. There was something of the pools winner about the Colonel: whereas Oscar could never have been mistaken for one. At the same time, there was a mind running on business, so that he would never let an opportunity slip. ‘Well, we shall know who to come to,’ said either Gerald or Lawrence, rather dazed by this attempt to get them all to move, while either Lawrence or Gerald added, ‘Perhaps you could send us some of the literature.’ I could see that they were resisting this man, out of a sort of distaste for his volubility, his accessibility. They were both pacific, largely wordless. But Sam, Oscar’s brother, was clearly amused by him, and promised to have lunch with him the following week.
    While the Colonel was relocating everyone, his son was talking earnestly and in turn to the aunts, and of course to Dorrie. They looked on him with indulgence, and I could see that he had a special rapport with these simple women, women who loved weddings and babies and cherished these matters over and above all others, simply filling in the time disdainfully until mobilized by another wedding. The married state claimed their strongest loyalties, their finest efforts; already their minds were furiously working on the arrangements, which would be argued out in long telephone calls. They could see that they would meet no opposition to their plans from the motherless Michael, the