Altered States by Anita Brookner Read Free Book Online Page B

number, but that I had to have a number. They must have thought I was behaving oddly: they always took messages correctly, and never failed to note down contact numbers. I walked back to Wigmore Street and to a coffee bar where I sometimes had breakfast. I remembered that I had eaten nothing that morning. After tea and toast I suddenly felt tired, as if I might pass out. I roused myself and ran back to the office. There were no messages.
    Oddly enough this did not depress me. Nor was I depressed throughout the whole of the next two weeks. I waited expectantly, but in a sort of dream; if nothing happened it simply meant that the delicious moment of contact was still in the future, something to look forward to. By the third week my mood changed, became more bleak. If nothing happened it was because nothing would happen. There was no contact. There never would be.
    On the Wednesday of the fourth week I got back fromlunching with a client to find Sarah in the room shared by Telfer and Mrs Roche. There was a pungent smell of nail polish in the air: she was painting her nails. Avoiding Mrs Roche’s eye I invited her into my office. She picked up her bottle, and with her fingers spread wide wriggled past me through the door. I smelt a heavy scent, something by Guerlain, I thought, and the waxy, more aromatic odour of her hair. I was worried that I might be too confused to speak. However, when I did I was entirely in character.
    ‘How can I be of help?’ I said.
    Even then I could probably see that it was hopeless. I seemed to have to exert phenomenal psychological pressure, along the order of mesmerism, to induce her to meet my eye, since she was intent on her nails, testing them to see if they were dry, and when they were, examining them carefully, turning her hands this way and that. I wondered why she could not have completed this task at home, before she came out, but that was to misunderstand Sarah from the start. I had known her intermittently, as a distant relative, all my life, but not in the intuitive fashion to which I now had access. I could see that time and occasion would mean nothing to her: whatever she wanted to do she would do, regardless of where she was, or who was with her. And she would be so intent on what she did that reproaches would either be useless or out of order. This was one of her versions of her mother’s fabled oddness, though in contrast to Sybil’s eager anticipation of old age and decrepitude Sarah would live entirely in an eternal present. Her main characteristic was the kind of primal innocence enjoyed by children, except that allied to this innocence—of time, of her effect on others—was an extremely alert sense of her own importance. The psychopathology of this combination was unusual. Since that meeting in my office I have seen her enter a room full of people and fail to greet any of them, secure in theknowledge that sooner or later they would drift over to her and greet her of their own volition, drawn by her infinitely magnetic presence. By the same token she would sometimes laugh in solemn company, for example if an extremely serious matter were under discussion, simply because too little attention was being paid to her. She was not stupid, not by any means. She knew herself to be unusual and desirable, and most of the time she would be restless and bored. She probably expected the world to attend to her needs, which would not fail to be quite specific. And, more important, she would be deficient in the ability to link cause and effect, or to think in any but the most immediate terms.
    Naturally I could confirm nothing of this at the time, though I think I sensed it. While Sarah was examining her nails I felt that intimation of longing and frustration that results from an inability, almost an incapacity, to capture the attention of someone who has suddenly assumed a vital and overwhelming importance. I waited patiently, my gaze no doubt beamed on her like a searchlight, until she