Look at Me by Anita Brookner Page B

all very clear-cut, and found them much more amusing that way. This served two purposes: it was a rehearsal for the workings of my novel, and it kept Alix from talking about money, which she tended to do when out of spirits, contrasting her past with her present circumstances. Although I could not see that the Frasers had ever lacked for money, although indeed they seemed to spend a great deal, I did see that her anxiety was genuine.
    It was at moments like these that she would speak to me of letting the spare room, preferably to myself. The idea was overwhelmingly attractive to me. A move from Maida Vale would be symbolic; it would signify a complete break with the old sad way of life. I could walk out on the zig-zag rugs and the creaking hide chairs and the china and glass birds with as little sense of remorse as ifI had never seen them before; they would be left to the next tenant and in that way I would not feel a pang of sorrow at seeing my parents’ flat dismantled. Nancy could be dispatched to her sister in Cork, which would be appropriate, for I must admit that I did not look forward to her inevitable decline. She had been there at the beginning of my life; I did not want to witness the end of hers. I need bring nothing away with me. And there would always be company at the Frasers’. If I moved in with them I would be delivered from the silence of Sundays, and all those terrible public holidays – Christmas, Easter – when I could never, ever, find an adequate means of using up all the available time.
    I find, however, that this particular dilemma, which I will call Public Holiday Syndrome and which I would rank next to Two-Star Hotel Bedroom Syndrome as an affliction to which I am particularly prone, is not to be talked about, even as a joke. It is generally felt that complaints about loneliness are unseemly and should be turned over to professional samaritans. My own friendships have always been strong, but they no longer satisfy me. I do not seek out friends so that they will offer consolation: I have a horror of that. I am an extremely good listener, and thus pretty well in demand, although recently I suppose I have been lazy. I have been aware of a boredom, a restlessness, that no ordinary friendship can satisfy: only an extraordinary one. I have grown tired of my lot, I suppose, and have wanted strenuously to change it. So I write, and I take a lot of long walks, and I ferment my ideas, and if I am lucky they come out as vivid as I should like real life to be. That may indeed be the purpose of the exercise. It just tends to break down at times like Good Friday or in places like dim foreign hotels. Then, the lure of company, any company, is enormous, and I feel it might be more sensibleto prepare myself for contingencies like these by accepting the sort of offer that Alix was now making.
    The only thing that made me pause before finally committing myself was the thought of my novel waiting to be written. I knew that I would have to pay for the company of Alix and Nick with the surrender of all my free time; I knew that Alix would look on any withdrawal from their society with suspicion, and that Nick would consider me thoughtless if I left Alix on her own for any evening on which he might be late home. In short, if I were to consider myself a writer, then I was ideally situated in that warm silent flat in Maida Vale, with Nancy in the kitchen. She was not really a burden to me, nor was I a burden to her; we shared the same food, we knew each other’s habits and movements, we were allied by the same memories and associations. At Christmas, that time when we were both a little forlorn, I knew she would be desolate if she had to tell Sydney Goldsmith, who always paid a seasonal visit, that she was being moved back to Ireland. The image sprang up in my mind: Sydney proffering his lavish box of chocolates, Nancy in tears, a lace handkerchief of my mother’s (for I gave her most of the things) pressed to her