A Friend from England by Anita Brookner Page B

couple they formed had something infantile about it, something that irritated me, as I had often been irritated by Heather’s sacrificial passivity in the past. And although she had sufficiently emerged from that passivity to have performed the astonishing feat of getting herself engaged to be married, I could not see that she would perform her other duties with the right kind of understanding. For this was where my own experience, extensive, I’m afraid, had kept me from true friendship with Heather. I knew what mattered and she did not. Now I wondered if she ever would and felt that I had grounds for my occasional exasperation with her. Yet I was still disarmed by her kindness. In her slow-moving way she had always been kind, as they were all so kind, as if their kindness were irreversibly bound up with their blamelessness. As if only in a state of complete unknowingness could their marvellous instincts of benevolence and trust have free and full employment. And perhaps Heather had responded to that family conspiracy, that collusion with their own innocence, in her choice of a partner, a partner who would certainly notremove her to an alien world of brutal depths and unwanted rancours. Perhaps even the habitual melancholy of her parents had been adopted in her present stance, for she would surely have grounds for a little secret disillusionment. For she was still very shrewd. But the coalition of innocence and melancholy could be maintained on this basis, and I began to see that it would be.
    Things livened up a little when the cousins, Sarah and Georgina, arrived with their husbands, one a doctor, and one a manufacturer of ball-point pens, exactly the kind of go-ahead and self-sufficient young men that Oscar could understand. In comparison with these model husbands Michael’s unfocussed radiance appeared even more suspect, but I remembered those dreadful parties to which Heather had been summoned, and for a moment I was almost ready to give my vote to Michael. In any event congratulations were now in order, and everyone but myself seemed to think the omens were good. The cousins were pretty, rather sulky girls who resembled each other. Both had high-pitched exclamatory voices and watchful eyes, and I could see where the slight element of malice that had informed those parties had come from. They were extremely fashionable, and they darted about in their very high-heeled shoes, introducing an independent element of restlessness into this nest of gentlefolk, in addition to the element already present in the person of Michael. Facing up to these new arrivals, Michael almost looked like a man dancing with himself, and his activity was if anything increased when the champagne was brought in. Corks popped, toasts were proposed. ‘Michael and Heather!’ exclaimed the Colonel, to which Oscar replied, ‘Heather and Michael!’ The Colonel retrieved his ascendancy by lifting his glass and rallying everyone with, ‘Oscar and Dora! New family, new friends. And I hope old friends already.’ He then lookedat his son, who responded with, ‘To Hetty!’ He overdid it of course, as if he were already at his own wedding, and this cannibalizing of Heather’s name did not go down too well with Oscar, but by now it was too late to rearrange matters, and on that slightly hectic note we all drank deeply, and in my case, and I am sure in Oscar’s, thoughtfully. Then I decided that it would be tactful to take my leave of them so that they could have a proper family party without outsiders. Or with only Michael and the Colonel.
    I telephoned Dorrie the following morning, a Sunday, and told her what a lovely party it had been. She was childishly grateful for an opportunity to prolong her euphoria and told me all the wedding plans, which had been discussed after I left. Perhaps they all thought I would have minded, would have been smitten with a bridesmaid’s gloom, if I had been there. There were to be no bridesmaids, of course. In fact