A Private View by Anita Brookner Read Free Book Online Page B

particular evening, neither man nor woman—and he felt balky and unattractive.
    ‘What time shall I pick you up?’ enquired Katy Gibb.
    This too seemed tactless, but he put his irritation down to the fact that he had not yet managed to have his bath and had eaten nothing for what now seemed a very long time. And this morning I was in Nice, he realised with surprise.
    ‘Shall we say seven-thirty?’ he said. ‘There’s quite a good Italian restaurant round the corner. And we’ll all meet up here first for a glass of sherry.’
    He telephoned Mrs Lydiard, who expressed herself to be delighted at the prospect of this rather random invitation. Then he made himself a cup of tea with what was left in the caddy, wondered if he had time to slip downstairs to the shops, realised that he was cutting his arrangements pretty fine (his bag still unpacked) and resigned himself to coffee in the morning. He thought of hiding the coffee, in case Katy Gibb came back for it, then had the grace to laugh at himself and at last ran his bath.
    As usual he contemplated himself sombrely. The body, he thought, was no longer good for much as an object of pleasure, or even as a subject of pleasure, yet it had served him well, and, more important, gave no warning of hidden illness, of imminent breakdown. There might be some anomaly waiting its time beneath the pale skin, behind the bony ribs, but for the moment it was leaving him in peace. If meagre, it was not altogether disgraceful; a little stooped, perhaps, but he could make an effort in that direction. He was powerless only with that which lay outside his normal competence, which might account for the fact that he had chosen so unexciting a partner as Louise. Yet even Louise had surprised him, and thus he had surprised himself. Nevertheless, he still felt somewhat ashamed of his constancy. It had never occurred to him to question hers.
    Patting his body dry, and anointing it with Eau Sauvage, he turned his attention to his face, one eye widening warily over the old-fashioned razor as he registered a slight hairiness about the ears, rather too much domed forehead, a few broken veins round the outer rim of the nostrils. He made the same inventory every day, but it never ceased to amaze him, this evidence of decay of which he otherwise had no notion. Clothed, he was once again in command, an urbane, tall, rather thin man, with an undistinguished face and large hands, who had on the whole made a success of his life but who was now perhaps at something of a loose end. He must make plans for the future, he thought, as he arranged glasses on a tray; he must learn how to fill his days. If this afternoon were anything to go by he was in danger of slipping downhill, and not only of slipping but of ending up rather nearer to his early beginnings than to his later achievements.
    When the doorbell rang, yet again—for it now seemed to him that it had been ringing all day—he hurried to answer it with some relief. Katy Gibb’s third manifestation took him by surprise. He had registered the sullen hippy of that morning, and the pink-cheeked wet-haired schoolgirl of the afternoon. Now the creature who stood before him was a sulphurous sophisticate, clad in black silk trousers, a black silk jacket, and a black silk camisole. The body thus revealed, as opposed to concealed, was seen to be small and agreeably rounded, perhaps a little heavy on the hips. But the face … Her lips were now a brilliant red, her cheeks a dark reddish pink; the eyes were enlarged and darkened with cosmetic, the lashes freighted with mascara. Mata Hari, he thought, then realised that the name would mean nothing to her. He was amused in spite of himself, but at the same timetouched that she had taken so much trouble. She smelt not of strange essences but of shampoo and face powder. He was aware of the white flesh beneath the camisole but was more beguiled by the bold and artificial colours of the face. The picture that she