Lewis Percy by Anita Brookner Read Free Book Online Page B

he would be a citizen of the free world at last. That was how the gap would be closed and the circle made whole once more.
    Finally, when it was very late, he went up to bed. He stood for a moment on the landing, then, slowly, quietly, he closed his mother’s door.
    The next day, Saturday, was the day on which he was to begin his new life. He gazed at the heap of ash that had been the fire, then left it and went out. The weather was dull, misty, hazy, damp, as it had been on the day of the funeral, lending the whole procedure an air of unreality: this winter was unseasonably mild. Lewis almost wished for a frost, a snowfall, something that would bring people together, inspire comments between strangers. Yet the street stretched before him grey and featureless, and apart from the lorries in the background, there was no animation. Standingat deserted bus stops he felt a terrible bewilderment, and with it the beginnings of anger. Life should be better than this. It should be splendid, colourful, exciting, not this miserable affair of mortal illness and tinned soup and ashes in the grate. He abandoned the bus stop and began to walk, found himself eventually striding down the King’s Road, welcoming the crowds, the air of licence, the greater profusion in the shops, the promise of excess. He bought bread and milk, and, because he could think of nothing better, more soup. Cheese occurred to him, as something that required no cooking, and then, in a Proustian flash, he saw himself buying the camembert in Paris. But that was the solution: he must go back! He could rent his old room again and finish his thesis there, where he had begun it. The thought momentarily excited him. After all, he knew the routine in Paris, knew how to fill his day, and even looked forward to getting back (he did not quite think ‘home’) in the evenings. Those women, and their indifferent affection or affectionate indifference, would take him into their care, bind his wounds, make him fit once again for this cruel world. He could leave next week, for there was nothing to keep him here. So enabling did this decision seem that he went into a coffee bar and ate the nearest thing to a meal that he had eaten for some days. And now that he was in no hurry he strolled among the Saturday crowds, losing something of his heavy-heartedness, until fatigue came upon him suddenly, and he got on the bus and went home.
    Standing at the window, as his mother had done, and feeling grief rising once more to the surface, he was surprised to see Professor Armitage, out of context, approaching him from the corner of the street. Thinking that the man looked diminished without his desk to protect him, and uncharacteristically encumbered as he was with a carrier bag and a bunch of flowers, Lewis realized with alarm that Armitage, knowing nothing of the events of the past week, had come to tea as arranged. This must be prevented at all costs. Lewis rushed to the door and opened it on to Professor Armitage’s modest and appreciative smile.
    ‘I’m awfully sorry, sir,’ he said precipitately. ‘I’m afraid it’s all off. I mean, my mother died on Monday.’ He found himself in an attitude of defence, almost barring access to the house.
    It was Professor Armitage who quailed at this announcement, his smile slowly giving way to an expression of distress.
    ‘My dear boy, I am so sorry. Is there anything I can do? Are you alone? Perhaps if I could come in for a few minutes?’
    Lewis led the way to the drawing-room, momentarily ashamed of the empty grate. He was leaving anyway, he told himself; he would clear up before he went. He watched Professor Armitage lower himself into a chair, placing his flowers tactfully out of sight. Why did everyone have to seem to him so unbearably vulnerable? Armitage, he had heard, was a bachelor, had lived with a widowed sister until she died, and since then had soldiered on alone, grateful for any company. A good scholar, but too modest to have