The Bay of Angels by Anita Brookner

because they still obeyed harsher and more rigid rules. They were now beginning to understand that they too might have enjoyed their youth had they been differently taught, or less frightened of their own wishes. It was as if the Bible had been spreading false doctrines, and although neither of them was in the least religious they bore the marks of a sententious upbringing, in an era when obligations were more important than entitlements. Their incomprehension had something pitiable about it as well as ludicrous. And the embodiment of their confusion was so sincerely unapologetic that he made nonsense of their careful constraints and of who knew what disappointments they might have kept concealed.
    What was clear was that they had been made unhappy, that my mother, in particular, was less happy now than she had been in the past. In the course of my next telephone call I asked if I might come to Nice for Christmas, professed a longing to see them which was sincere, for it seemed to me to be up to me to persuade them that nothing had come between the three of us. My mother’s response was so eager that I was glad of my impulse to gratify them. Other irreconcilables I would deal with on my own. If the way ahead for all of us was to be through reconciliation I was ready to play my part. My austere way of life had given me a longing for some kind of comfort, wherever it was to be found. I resolved to reserve my pity for others. For I was not altogether unfamiliar with the harsh imperatives of a doctrine which was in many ways not negotiable. I smiled with exasperation at my earlier version of a happy ending, saw belatedly that some form of ordeal was inflicted on every character in literature, and that even the gods had to make do with fairly limited powers, and were allowed only the satisfactions of caprice and rarely those of reciprocity.
    The people whom I knew to be good somehow remained good in spite of themselves. Such were my mother, and possibly Simon, who gave money when he could give nothing else. The harm he had caused me had proceeded from a dreadful, because forbidden, curiosity, and from the unbearable presence in his house of someone whose behaviour he could only imagine. He too must have experienced shame, but I had little sympathy with him on that account. What made me genuinely sad was the knowledge that with the best will in the world one can still fail the test that the world sets, a test easily surmounted by those with more variable standards. I still wanted life to be conducted justly, honestly. But what if honesty brought into the open unpalatable truths, tendencies, compulsions? Honesty could hardly be its own reward in those circumstances. How strongly should one condemn a curiosity which had, perhaps, never been satisfied? The well-behaved may have many regrets, have realized too late that they might have had a more amusing time had they only seized other opportunities, precisely the opportunities from which they had obediently averted their eyes.
    I now felt pity for those two people, whose moral education had been so rigid, even absurd. I considered myself to be wiser than they were in many respects, though I was in a position to measure the danger of complete enlightenment.
Tout comprendre, c’est tout pardonner
; I beg to differ. Total forgiveness in all circumstances seemed to me to be nothing less than hazardous, for I understood both Simon and Adam and could forgive neither of them. I understood them, that was all. This did not automatically confer indulgence but was directly responsible for my pity. One feels pity for those who are unprotected, at risk, those whose high ideals have not been met. Therefore, in some strange way, I was bound to cherish Simon and my mother, not because they were my family, or what passed for one, but because they relied on me to cement their partnership, to bring them joy. They longed to be restored to themselves, after the irruption into their lives of a person whom