Hotel du Lac - Anita Brookner [41]
‘ “But it’s your birthday,” cried Monica, who was evidently following the same train of thought as I was. “Now which one, I wonder?” This Mrs Pusey tried not to hear. (In fact, at this point it occurred to me that she might be a bit deaf. Almost certainly, now I come to think of it. Those monologues, which take no account of anyone else, which are impermeable to anyone else’s opinion – perhaps these are the characteristic of someone who cannot, for reasons of vanity, admit to deafness.) “Darling,” she said to Jennifer. “Do go and ask Philip to join us. He knows we don’t stand on ceremony.” At which Jennifer, her face once more rosy and blank, trotted over to Mr Neville, who had somehow concealed himself while these celebrations were taking place but who was now obliged to surrender his plans for the evening and join us.
‘Monica, however, was not to be deflected. “Come along, now,” she insisted, in a playful tone which nevertheless brooked no argument. “I’ll bet you just can’t face the fact of being sixty. Is that it? Well, you don’t look it.” Mrs Pusey laughed. “Age is relative,” she parried. “You’re as old as you feel. And sometimes I feel as if I’m still a girl.” Her voice shaded off into artless wonder as she pronounced these words: to us, her audience, she seemed to be hesitating on the brink of womanhood, amazed at the cornucopia of riches which the world had to offer her.
‘ “But you’ve got Jennifer,” said Monica, rather unkindly, I thought, and so, evidently, did Jennifer, who scrutinized her with that same level look, a look which made her seem much older than … Than what? Perhaps the champagne was making me feel tired, perhaps I was tired already, but suddenly I had the uncanny feeling that this was all for show, that everything was a pretence, that this had been a dinner of masks, that no one was ever, ever going to tell the truth again. I wanted you then, David, very much. But you were not there. Only Mr Neville was there, enjoying himself hugely. Mr Neville, I should explain, is a connoisseur of the fantastic, an intellectual voluptuary of the highest order.
‘The sad fact is that Mrs Pusey, although still game, suddenly looked rather old. But when, after long and sustained courtesies on the part of Mr Neville, she finally revealed that she was seventy-nine, we were all genuinely astonished. Calculations flashed through our minds; each of us knew exactly what the others were thinking. If Mrs Pusey admits to seventy-nine, then Jennifer must be about my age. Mine and Monica’s. And that is what she is. Jennifer, like me, is thirty-nine, although her curious combination of plump body and expressionless face makes her seem no older than fourteen. For what Jennifer insistently expresses, now that I come to think of it, is latency. She has the unsettling presence, or possibly the equally unsettling absence, of many adolescents; her apparently uninformed voluptuousness would be almost shocking if it were not cancelled by her daughterly obedience. Jennifer is blatantly wholesome, seemly, innocent. Yet in comparison, I, who am none of these things, feel like her maiden aunt.
‘It was then that Mrs Pusey, coaxed on by the attentive Neville, told us how the early years of her marriage were overshadowed by the completely inexplicable absence of children. Here another snowy handkerchief was produced from her bag, shaken out, and applied to the corner of her lips. “No matter how hard