Dolly by Anita Brookner Read Free Book Online

as if she were a lady companion. If Toni were reconciled to Hugo’s eventual marriage—for she was not a complete fantasist and considered it her duty to guarantee his survival—she had no such plans for my mother. My mother was to assure Toni’s comfort as she grew older, until such time as she might require assistance. At those hotels where Toni liked to spend Christmas, my mother would sit resignedly on the edge of some ballroom while Hugo whirled his mother round the floor. No one was likely to ask her to dance: at fifteen she looked no older than eleven, and in any event her mother did not like her to talk to strange men. It was at one of these hotels that Hugo metDolly, while my mother loitered palely on the sidelines. The brief courtship that followed was watched with agonised approval by Hugo’s mother. She consented to the marriage, half hoping that Dolly could be installed in the house in Maresfield Gardens. The one event for which she was not prepared was his request for a transfer to the Brussels branch of the bank. She suspected, rightly, that this was inspired by Dolly, who nevertheless addressed her as
‘Maman chérie’
. In due course this was changed to
‘Chère Mère’
, but by that stage Toni had found fault with Dolly as well.
    My mother grew up in her separate quarters in Maresfield Gardens, and grew up entirely without rancour, humbly accepting her indifferent status and the petty duties that were demanded of her. In time Toni’s dislike turned to indifference, although she never valued my mother as my mother deserved to be valued. She continued to regret her appearance, so that my mother grew up believing herself to be ugly. Her mirror told her that she was in fact far from ugly, but she believed her mother rather than the mirror. At the age of twenty she announced that she had decided to go to college. Nanny Sweetman had by this stage retired. My mother must have sensed that she must not settle for what had been devised for her, and put her case quite strongly.
    ‘Very well,’ said Toni, who by this time had various cronies in Maresfield Gardens, strong-willed women like herself with pliant sons or daughters. ‘But you must live at home. I can’t be left alone. You must see that.’
    She agreed, of course. But she had learned that escape was easier than she had suspected. She took to going out by herself in the evenings, when Toni was entertaining her iron-jawedfriends. That was how she found herself in the Wigmore Hall, where she met my father.
    He was, I think, the first person to love my mother, for Arthur Ferber hardly counted, and he loved her to the end of his life, as she loved him. By contemporary standards their courtship was slow, archaic: for five years they went to concerts, took their walks. I think well of this, although my generation is more cynical, less hopeful of a good outcome, and tends to be derisive of such obvious chastity. Toni’s attitude was cautious. She knew that something was afoot, but chose not to know. For that reason my mother introduced Paul Manning to Maresfield Gardens on an evening when Toni was giving one of her weekly bridge parties. At these affairs lavish refreshments were served. As they entered the room seven heads were lifted from their coffee cups. Toni, in the face of such public witness, was gracious. ‘So nice to meet you,’ she said. ‘You will have coffee, won’t you? Etta, find Paul a chair. Next to me, dear. That’s right.’ When she found out that he worked in a bank she became more gracious. ‘My son is in our Brussels branch,’ she said. The Westminster Bank had become ‘our’ bank. And in the presence of her friends it suddenly became her to have a marriageable daughter. At the end of the evening she clasped Paul’s hand and said that he must come again soon. Her friends exchanged significant glances. For a brief moment Toni enjoyed her status as mother of the bride.
    This harmonious state of affairs was not to continue