Altered States by Anita Brookner Page B

troubadours, I should not have recognised my own behaviour,which had more in common with the Middle Ages, or even the Dark Ages, than with the twentieth century.
    My mother, who never telephoned me at the office, managed to get hold of me one evening. Her call exasperated me, as I was just about to leave the flat, but I love my mother, and I detected a note of anxiety in her voice which was uncharacteristic. I shrugged my coat off again and settled down to listen to her, my eye on the clock, as if there were little time left to me before I was due to leave.
    ‘Alan? Are you all right, dear? I’ve had some trouble getting hold of you.’
    ’Of course I’m all right, Mother. You can always reach me at the office, you know. I’m out rather a lot in the evenings at the moment.’
    ‘Well, I’m glad you’re having a good time, dear. But actually this might be a matter you need to deal with officially. I’ve had a rather disquieting letter from Sybil. She seems to think that you were instrumental in selling her house.’
    ‘Did you remind her that I am not an estate agent?’
    ‘She has, as you know, only the vaguest idea of what you do. She seems to be rather more confused than she was, although she was never exactly lucid.’
    ‘I had nothing to do with the sale of the house, Mother. Sarah sold it. Doesn’t Sybil speak to her own daughter?’
    ‘It appears that she has trouble getting through to her.’ In this I was prepared to sympathise. ‘She said that the only time she managed to speak to her Sarah told her that you had organised the lease of the new flat.’
    ‘So I did. Perfectly routine piece of business. That was the first I knew of her selling the house, or rather having sold the house.’
    ‘Sybil says she shouldn’t have done it.’
    ‘But she did. None of this has anything to do with me.’
    I could hear my mother’s hesitation at the other end of theline. ‘Don’t you think you should have asked her about this, dear? Of course it’s none of my business, and of course I don’t appreciate the legal niceties, but I do see that Sybil has a point …’
    ‘I simply negotiated the lease on Sarah’s new flat. I didn’t ask her about the sale of the house because at that stage it was no longer relevant. The conveyancing was perfectly straightforward: there was no mortgage, nothing to delay the matter. I saw no reason to refuse to act …’
    ‘That seems a little precipitate, if you’ll forgive my saying so, darling.’
    ‘Mother, I do this sort of thing all the time. I’m not responsible for all my clients’ actions. I don’t ask them to unburden themselves, search their hearts, unearth their motives. I don’t ask them what sort of terms they are on with their mothers. Anyway, why didn’t Sybil think to enquire before all this happened?’
    ‘You know Sybil. She can’t cope with change. She can’t even anticipate it. She obviously thought that Sarah would go on living in the house, probably as a married woman. She had no idea …’
    ‘What has this got to do with me?’
    ‘I’m coming to that. If you’re satisfied that there is nothing for which you feel in the slightest bit responsible there’s no need to worry. Although with Sarah I should have advised caution. She was never reliable: always the quick and easy answer to everything. Or no answer at all. And she never got on with her mother. In a way it’s just as well that the girls moved down to that place of theirs—I believe that in every other respect they’re quite happy—because there would have been trouble with Sarah sooner or later. But it was a little callous of her, don’t you think?’
    ‘Are you sure she didn’t tell Sybil she was selling the house?’
    ‘She may have done.’ My mother brightened as this thought took hold. ‘In fact she probably did. But you know Sybil when she thinks she has a grudge. Remember how she reacted when Humphrey married.’
    By this time I was kicking moodily at the chair leg.