Family and Friends by Anita Brookner Read Free Book Online

instinctively raising her headand meeting the eyes of a middle-aged man who is smiling in genuine admiration of Mimi’s coiled red hair. Politely, Mimi smiles back. ‘For God’s sake,’ hisses Betty. ‘Don’t encourage him. I shan’t be able to get rid of him.’ But she moves her chair slightly and, in the course of doing so, her skirt rides up a little. She appears not to notice this. The middle-aged man, however, recognizes the difference between the two sisters and adjusts his manner accordingly, turning his attention to Betty, albeit with some slight feeling of regret. Most people are aware that Betty is inferior to her sister but Betty provokes and absorbs so much attention that she is usually thought of as more interesting, more controversial, more entertaining. Betty has a trace of Frederick’s command of alluring bad behaviour. In any contest with her sister, one, to be sure, which Betty might care to avoid, there is no doubt as to which one will carry the day.
    That is why there is something of a question mark over the sisters’ relations with Frank Cariani. Handsome Frank, although all too willing to make an exhibition of himself when he dances with Betty, really prefers the docile and serious Mimi, whose grave demeanour appeals to his rigorous Italian upbringing. It is Mimi whom he slips round the door of the music room to see although his visits are cut short by Betty whirling him off for a bout of passionate Latin dancing. Betty is one of those women who believe in acting out a passion before they really feel it. Maybe they are cold. Maybe Betty, for all her exacerbated appetites, suspects this of herself. Maybe she knows that Mimi, so dreamy, so passive, so correct, might, would, with the right partner, come to a deep amorous understanding, an expansive love without need of gestures, a radiant acceptance of what a man has to offer, and a joyous capacity for motherhood that Betty knows can never be hers. Perhaps that is why she startsto try harder to attract Frank Cariani’s attention, pressing up against his body in long silent attitudes not wholly warranted by the dance, or, dropping all pretence, touching him knowingly, her sharp little tongue just visible between her sharp little teeth. Betty is not entirely bad. She wants to capture Frank Cariani before her sister comes to realize how much she cares about him. In that way, thinks Betty, Mimi will be spared what she might have felt had she, Betty, taken her time, as she would have preferred to do. It is imperative for a woman of Betty’s temperament (and high spirits) not to cede the pass to any other woman even if that other woman should happen to be her sister. Knowing so much more about men, she has found herself obliged, by a single long and entirely serious glance between Mimi and Frank, to force the issue. Regrettable, but necessary.
    That is why Betty has been obliged to make certain contingency plans when her removal to a finishing school in Switzerland is under active discussion. Betty knows that without her supervision Mimi might permit herself to become seriously enamoured of Frank Cariani and he of her. Mimi is one of those women who marry early or not at all, and she is, at this moment, very beautiful. Frank Cariani, although not of an eminence to please Sofka, would make an excellent son-in-law, attentive, deferential, respectful. The Cariani academy is doing so well that Mr Cariani senior has been able to buy the freehold of the house next door, extending himself quite patriarchally along Marylebone Lane. Mr Cariani senior is more than good to his wife, his unmarried sister, and his mother, and has housed a widowed sister-in-law in another property he happens to own somewhat to the north of Regent’s Park. This is entirely the kind of benevolent and structured family into which Mimi might transfer from her mother’s house without any feeling of disloyalty whatever,and Sofka, seeing her safe at last, could not but approve. In