Brief Lives by Anita Brookner Read Free Book Online Page A

said, ‘Bad timeof the month, is it? I used to be the same. Just find me an ashtray, would you?’ I quickly put the lemon mousse away in case it got a flake of ash on it. I wanted her to go away; I wanted to cry my eyes out. When I took my head out of the fridge I caught sight of the face she was putting to rights with the aid of a mirror and a lipstick-stained handkerchief which she kept in her bag for the purpose of adjusting the contours of her mouth. This disgusting habit repelled me, but now I caught sight of her eyes, those uncensored eyes which were always lonelier than the rest of her face. ‘I’m sorry, Vinnie,’ I said. ‘Let me make you some coffee. Is someone coming to collect you?’ She smiled frostily. ‘As you may have noticed, I’m on my own today. Just get me a taxi, would you?’ There was usually a taxi on the corner, but it meant my going out into the street. I switched off the oven, reflecting that in doing so I had probably ruined the batch of coconut
tuiles
that I had intended to accompany the mousse, went out into the street without removing my apron, in time to see a taxi driving off. ‘There’s going to be a slight delay,’ I said, back in the kitchen. ‘You’d better have that coffee after all.’ I was aware of the need to appease her, but she had decided to take the incident seriously. ‘Perhaps you would be kind enough to telephone Godfrey Burton for me,’ she said. This was a neighbour of hers in Swan Court, much in demand as a squire to various ladies, whose colours he was then obliged to fly. ‘I’m sure he would not mind bringing the car round,’ she said with awful majesty. She was, of course, perfectly capable of catching a bus, but liked to boast that she had never been on a bus in her life.
    When Godfrey Burton turned up I had to offer him coffee, to which he assented enthusiastically. ‘Tell Owen to telephone me, would you?’ were her distant words to meas she left on Godfrey’s arm. I had no doubt that complaints were to be made. This did not bother me unduly—it had, after all, been a squalid little incident—but the fact that Vinnie hated me, had probably always hated me, hurt me suddenly. It was as if she had bequeathed to her son the same propensity, a decision to dispense with emotions once they had served their purpose. She had been pleasant enough until I had shown real exasperation over the spoilt casserole, and what she had, quite rightly, intuited as some kind of watershed. The exasperation had been so real, so charged, that it was an unmistakable emotional fact. This was distasteful to her, as was any emotion, and so she decided to punish me for it. And in that moment I began to wonder if Owen would eventually do the same.
    It should have been clear to me then that there was a great deal wrong with my marriage, but these things only become clear in retrospect. And it was a matter of pride to me not to believe that anything was wrong, or that I was not entirely happy. On the surface Owen was an excellent husband, more handsome than ever, bronzed from frequent Mediterranean business trips, successful, hardworking, and extremely popular. To look at him, to be in his company, one would have thought that he was a man in love with life. But in fact he was only in love with a certain sort of life—a tycoon’s life—and it was a life in which I was cast for quite a minor role. I began to feel like the poor girl I had once been, before I started earning my own money. Now I no longer had that resource, and although Owen gave me a handsome housekeeping allowance we entertained so much, and he insisted on such elaborate meals, that there was little left over at the end of the week. I longed to go up to town and take Millie to lunch and out shopping for the afternoon, but in fact I did not want to meet her penetratingeye. And I was aware that my own clothes, for which allowance was also made in the budget, were far more expensive than hers could ever be, although