Look at Me by Anita Brookner Read Free Book Online

clothes, that he always went to the right barber, that he played the right games, these seemed to us to be explained by his munificent personality rather than by an enlightened use of the right instructions given from the very outset. We felt he was a natural leader of men. Yet his greatest gift to us was that intermittent speculative gaze, as if he might call one of us, from our dull safe places, to join him for an instant. He never did, of course. But the possibility, each of us thought, was there. Each of us – and every woman he had ever met, except Olivia – was just as actively waiting.
    When I first saw him with Alix, I understood that we had been waiting in vain. I understood that he was, quite simply, unattainable. Unattainable, that is, by the likes of anyone who was not Alix or her equivalent. Alix was the only sort of woman whom Nick’s sort of man would have chosen, and we were left with the distinct impression that there was only one example in each category: Nick and Alix. We were also left with the impression that they themselves knew and recognized this fact. It was when I saw them together, for the very first time, rejoicing in their complicity, their physical similarity, that I stopped any feeling I might have had towards Nick, other than the one I have already described. Instead, I fell in love with them both. Everybody did. They were used to it.
    The first impression that one received was of a supreme married couple, matched in every way. The most obvious match was physical. They had a look of health and of exigence: one felt that no distant country would intimidate them, no contingency give them anxiety, no moment dare remain unfulfilled. One felt that the world was theirs, the physical world, that is, because it had been created for their diversion, and that if they wanted to feel the heat of the sun then they wouldquite naturally take off for Africa, rather than shiver and complain and wait for summer like the rest of us. ‘I am interested in absolutely everything’, I was to get used to Alix saying, and I did not question her, for with the entire universe open to her inspection, how could she not be? Whereas I tended to think in terms of the most obvious points of reference – neighbours, friends, colleagues, people in the bus queue – Alix and Nick would compare races, cultures, ethnic prototypes. What impressed me most about this was not only their breadth of view, but the fact that their lives contained no element of routine, that they would obey any summons, providing, of course, that it amused them to do so, answer any invitation, go anywhere, do anything. I thought them brave. They merely thought themselves sensible.
    As they came through the door, that first afternoon, they appeared to walk with the same confident unhurried stride, and to look at each other rather than at their surroundings, as if the surroundings could wait, and were not, in any case, important enough to claim their attention. ‘Pictured here enjoying a joke’, as the captions said in those old copies of the
Tatler
that my mother used to pass on to Nancy and which are no doubt still in the kitchen cupboard somewhere. The Frasers’ joke was of the same elevated and exclusive variety. It was no mere affair of hilarity, no spasm of passing amusement; it was, rather, an area of collusion, a shared knowledge of some ultimate delight which they desired to keep to themselves. One could easily imagine them strolling with the same unconcern, the same gaze directed towards each other rather than around them, through every circumstance of life; one could imagine them transplanted to the remotest civilization, the most exotic and untested of climates, and they would still consider themselves to be of primary and immediate importance.
    I exaggerate, of course. Had I reflected for a singlemoment, on the occasion of that first meeting, I would have told myself that there is no such thing as a charmed life, although appearances may