Incidents in the Rue Laugier by Anita Brookner

Author:Anita Brookner [ Brookner, Anita]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 978-0-307-82630-5
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2012-08-01T04:00:00+00:00

NINE

MAUD, IN THE TRAIN, RECOVERED HER COMPOSURE TO an extent which she would not have thought possible. Her present impassivity was achieved by a sort of willed regression, in which she was the age she was in reality but unencumbered by Harrison or even by Tyler, and all that she could contemplate was the sexless presence of some kindly companion who wore a passing resemblance to her cousin Xavier. As she sat, with her hands folded in her lap, her images of happiness were quite distinct: they were of herself engaged in some harmless or childish pursuit, eating ices, or sitting in the sun, or stretched out for sleep in her high narrow walnut bed in the rue des Dames Blanches. If the thought of her forthcoming marriage crossed her mind it was at a considerable degree of distance, as if it were someone else’s fantasy. That fantasy was her mother’s, and had relevance only as far as her mother had relevance in this strange translated state of mind. She was prepared to tolerate her mother as background, as guiding principle, as presiding genius of a certain domestic economy which should have prepared her for an entirely predictable destiny. As this destiny had been in some unforeseen way compromised, Maud did not see how her mother featured in the scenario in which she now had a leading part. She wished, in some dreamlike fashion, to be deprived of her mother as well as of her putative fiancé, whom she saw as mystically allied: she wished to be alone, and single, and free, above all free, free to walk along a street and to know that no one was shadowing her movements, expecting her to return to an order which she had already renounced, free not to divulge her whereabouts, free not to telephone or converse even with friends, free if necessary to disappear.

If she were to disappear from her mother’s vigilance she would have to go to London and marry Edward. If she were to disappear from Edward’s life she would have to stay in Dijon and shelter behind her mother, who would defend her actions in so far as she considered Maud to be marrying the wrong man. Maud was quite aware of her mother’s needs and desires. She knew that her marriage would put an end to an over-preparedness which they both found intolerable. How often had she winced to feel her mother’s hand in the small of her back, propelling her forward to greet some man, any man, even the ancient family doctor, even Xavier (certain Xavier), and to hear her mother’s voice exaggerating her slender accomplishments. Yet she had also seen that mother’s wry smile and downcast eyes in the presence of Tyler, and knew that she could have presented her mother with no greater prize than Tyler for a son-in-law. That chaste woman, with her long history of widowhood, had derived a speculative thrill from contemplation of Tyler’s peculiar form of masculinity; the more dangerous,

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