Providence

Providence by Anita Brookner Read Free Book Online Page A

Book: Providence by Anita Brookner Read Free Book Online
Authors: Anita Brookner
anxious, too adult, too wary, would eventually give way to something more conservative and presentable; he would have his wispy hair properly barbered; he might even learn to withstand the blandishments of the elitist life he would be called upon to live, and thus maintain the extraordinary purity of his intellect. For at the moment there was no mystification in him. That would come later, with public success. If life tripped him up, on the other hand, failed to provide him with those essential opportunities, he would go all the way down, ruin his health, drink too much, make do sadly with substitutes. ‘What did you do in the vacation?’ she had once asked him. ‘Well, I was going to Grenoble to do my Stendhal stuff,’ he had answered. ‘But I met someone on the train and got off when he did. You know how it is.’ He had flashed her a smile that was both malicious and wistful. She feared for him, but recognized that she could do nothing to help him. She was a restraining voice when his words threatened to spin out of control or run out of sense; she restated the position for him, enabling him to start again after a wrong direction too energetically pursued. At the same time, she marvelled at the profundity of his thought, the generosity of his ideas. Theirs was in fact an ideal alliance. He made her feel like a teacher. She did not make him feel like a student.
    Philip Mills had disconcertingly grey hair, which made Kitty unsure of her role. He was a teacher himself and some years older than she was, kind, polite, cautious,bifocalled. She wondered if he were satisfied with his year off, or whether he found them all disappointing. Not Larter, surely? For Mr Mills was a good foil to Larter, argued with him, was irritated by what he called his free association, was given to unseemly exasperation, which he had surely never been able to express so freely. ‘What do you
mean
, tragic? How can a word be tragic in itself? It can only have tragic implications.’ ‘It can have a tragic sound,’ Larter would cry and immediately produce a flood-tide of tragic-sounding words. ‘You have lost the point
again
,’ Mills would answer testily. ‘You always go past it. Your analyst has got a lot to answer for.’ At this stage Kitty would intervene; sometimes it would take her a couple of minutes to impose her will on their perfectly valid disagreement and restore a sense of unity to her class. She enjoyed these episodes, for she possessed a sense of fairness, and was happy to see them chattering amicably a few minutes later, or when they bundled their books together at the end of the seminar and went off for a cup of tea. She was on excellent terms with both of them.
    Not so with the troubling Miss Fairchild, who had never been observed to open her mouth unless invited to do so. When Miss Fairchild read an essay, it ran quite sensibly for about seven minutes, ending with a complete sentence and a full stop. Then Miss Fairchild would lift her limpid eyes to Kitty and say, ‘I’m afraid I didn’t have time to write any more.’ There would be no answer to this. For she was so extremely beautiful that it seemed a concession for her to have written anything at all. Even Larter was half hypnotized by her. She had long pre-Raphaelite tendrils of beige hair with which she played throughout the seminar, drawing them back briskly behind her neck as if in preparation for some sort of announcement, or winding a lock round and round her fingers and across her lips, her immenseeyelids lowered in obviously meaningful reminiscence. Her skin would retain its even golden character throughout the extremes of heat and cold experienced in Kitty’s little attic room; the greenish eyes would watch unblinkingly as Larter and Mills went for each other. She usually wore a cotton skirt and a dark blue jersey, borrowed from a brother, Kitty supposed, for its sleeves nearly covered her hands. Her full and rather low bosom occupied most of the front of

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