The Bay of Angels by Anita Brookner Read Free Book Online Page B

familiar. I accepted this idea, for I was unwilling to break entirely with a past which had otherwise proved so accommodating. Yet when I sat in the kitchen on those early mornings, when the sky lightened infinitesimally, and so slowly, and my eyes ached after a sleepless night, I wished that some more radiant escape were in sight, one in which I could make my mark and make others proud of me. I had no idea what this future might be. I only knew that it contained Adam Crowhurst, whose favour it was still important for me to seek.
    I asked my mother, in the course of one of our Saturday telephone calls, whether I might bring a friend when I came down at Easter.
    ‘Of course, darling. Who is it? Mary? Verity?’
    These were the friends of my youth.
    ‘Adam Crowhurst. A friend from college.’
    ‘Yes, I suppose so. Though it might be a good idea if you were to write Simon a note first.’
    ‘Why? Is he likely to object?’
    ‘Not really. But he is of another generation. And it is his house.’
    It was indeed his house, the one from which my mother seemed eager to escape. There had been no further talk of their coming back to London, though despite the attractions of the climate and the surroundings there was little for them to do in Nice. This suited Simon, who was relieved to be there, doing nothing. Not so my mother, her duties taken care of by Mme Delgado, her days idle. Simon liked to have her with him at all times, in the same room, if possible. I found this both tiresome and desirable, for no such domesticity was likely to come my way. Adam’s possessiveness was in his own gift, and might at any time be diverted either to myself or to other women who had aroused his interest. I do not know what kept us together. That we were still attached was due mainly to my own assiduity. I studied him with the care I should have given to my books, made allowances which shamed me. Yet in between his lighthearted infidelities he returned to me. I was too fearful to do more than accept this.
    He was like the man in Chekhov’s story ‘The Lady with the Dog’, a cynic who is nevertheless touched by his mistress’s tears and converted into a belated acknowledgement of love. Not that I wept, unlike Chekhov’s heroines, who seemed to weep all the time, from guilt, from ecstasy, from remorse. Another of these stories, ‘The Darling’, should have taught me the dangers of excessive compliance. Olenka, the darling, marries one man after another, simply because they ask her, and grows old in widowhood after they have died or left her. She ends her days looking after the young son of one such man, and this is where the story hurt, for I could see in her devotion to the child something of what I might feel for a child of my own. I was young; there was no need for me to feel such wistfulness. Yet the feeling was present, for I knew that I would be denied any expression of such a wish. That is why stories are so important: they reveal one to oneself, bringing into the forefront of one’s consciousness realizations which have so far been dormant, unexamined.
    There was no possibility that Adam would ever accede to my wishes rather than to his own. There was an aura of success about him, of brilliance, which made no allowance for my docility. I was compliant, like Olenka, and he was Gurov, the cynic who fell in love with the lady with the dog, but reluctantly, and only when his hair was turning grey. I was a feature in Adam’s life, yet his frequent silences left me with far too much time for speculation. Women were easily attracted by his ease, his considerable beauty, attracted too, it must be said, by his fearless bad manners, his unapologetic licence. The conditions for being accepted by him, of being allowed to share his leisure hours, could be met only by total capitulation to his rules. For there were rules: no questions, no reproaches. I had come by this knowledge the hard way, and from time to time it seemed too hard even for me