Hotel du Lac - Anita Brookner [44]
And Geoffrey Long, that kind man who had been produced for her at that not too far distant dinner party, and who had been so lonely since his mother died: what more excellent guarantee could anyone produce of a safe and sensible future? Only a very innocent man, she thought, could play the traditional suitor so openly, and how impressed everyone had been, principally Penelope, but in the end even Edith herself, by his devotion, his generosity, his endless flowers, his fussy care, and finally his mother’s gloomy opal ring. And he had offered her a complete life, a new home to move into, new friends, even a cottage in the country, luxuries which she would never have thought to procure for herself. And he was a personable man, if a little old-fashioned in his views: he did not, for example, approve of women working, and he teased her about the amount of time she gave to her books. And there was something so agreeably straightforward, even comic, about his courtship. And everyone said how good he had been to his mother. Everyone said how lucky his wife would be. Everyone said how lucky Edith was. Penelope said it with that faintly nettled air that implied that she herself would have been a more worthy recipient. And Edith was constantly reminded of her good fortune. And, really, there was no need to disclaim any of this. She was lucky. I am lucky, she reminded herself, looking at that drawn face in the glass of her dressing table.
She made a pot of very strong tea, and while she was waiting for it to draw she opened the kitchen door to inspect her garden. But there was a small and niggling wind which blew a tiny shower of dust around her ankles, and the door kept swinging backwards and forwards, interrupting the curious light, bringing intimations of cloud, although there was no cloud, and a cessation of things to be taken for granted. Like this little house, so long her private domain, a shell for writing in, for sleeping in, silent and sunny in the deserted afternoons, before the children came home from school, and turned in at other gateways. Those becalmed afternoons, when the strength and heat of the sun on the window at her back merely drove her relentless typing fingers onward as if they had a life of their own. And the ensuing exhaustion, always signalled by an alteration in the light, which returned her to herself and to her tense back and shoulders and her slight cramp, and an awareness of untidy hair and smudged hands, and with this awareness a disgust, as if something orgiastic had taken place, while the children were coming home from school. Then, leaving that room, she would go down to the kitchen and open the back door, sniffing the heavenly, the normal, air, while waiting for her kettle to boil. And would take her tea to her plain little white bathroom, where she would wash away the day’s fatigue and its residue, and hang up the simple cotton dress she wore for working in, as if only some unassuming garment were appropriate for her daily task – that illicit manufacture of a substance not needed for survival. And in her bedroom, a cool room which got the morning sun only, and then for a brief period, she would dress herself carefully and brush her hair, as she had been taught to do, a long time ago, and pin it up with her usual unthinking expertise, and when she had judged herself, gravely, in the mirror, to be presentable, she would go downstairs, pour herself another cup of tea, and at last feel ready for the garden.
She would miss the garden most, she thought, although she was not really a gardener. Most of the work was done by a taciturn and alarmingly pale boy from the greengrocer’s;