Incidents in the Rue Laugier by Anita Brookner Page A

girlfriends who swam in David’s wake and who were willing to be temporarily diverted by this charming if awkward Frenchman, with his so careful blazer and tie. By the end of a week he had flirted with three girls and had slept with one of them, a procedure which he enjoyed less than anticipated. The talk with these girls was always of David, as if the girls regretted his absence, as if they were still alert to the sound of his name, even if they had to pronounce it themselves.
    At the end of the second week it had seemed impossible to capture the attention of these girls for any length of time, nor, in truth, did he find them attractive, with their big feet and their noisy voices, certainly not as attractive as David, who emerged from various bedrooms, looking amused and restless, as if ever ready for the next partner. When he realised the extent of his friend’s power over him, Xavier became verythoughtful, locked his door in the evenings, and resolved to return to France and to obey his mother, who wished him to marry someone suitable as soon as possible, so that he could begin his apprenticeship at the bank with a full panoply of honourable attributes. David, who was intelligent, had sensed this, had not pressed his advantages, and had invited Xavier not to any more louche parties but to his parents’ lavish flat in Chelsea, and then, for two successive weekends, to their house in Worcestershire. In the presence of a wealth he had not suspected, Xavier felt impressed, unsure of himself, but the parents were offhandedly kind and asked him the sort of questions of which his own parents would have approved. At home David’s sexuality disappeared as though it had never been. The absence of any kind of saturnalia, of any female company at all, reassured Xavier, who thought his earlier feelings must have been the effect of drunkenness. He was allowed to play a splendid piano in the Worcestershire drawing-room, and began, cautiously, to feel at ease with himself once more. When he issued his invitation to spend the following summer at La Gaillarderie the invitation was graciously accepted. A year later, it occurred to him that this may not have been such a good idea. His own feelings, now that he had gained some insight into them, were under control, but now there was Maud to be considered. He shrugged his shoulders. Maud was old enough to look after herself. Besides, there might be some antipathy between them, some mutual disapproval. David, he knew, did not take kindly to disapproval, and Maud had a scathing eye. He dismissed the knowledge that her scathing eye, together with her distant gaze and imperious expression, were summoned up to conceal a very real feeling of inadequacy. He had noted the inexpensive blouse and skirt. She was not only untouched, he told himself: she was disastrously unprepared.
    Maud, sitting on the terrace with her mother and her aunt, and once more caressing her wide skirts—for they were all now changed for the evening—reflected that if she had risked upsetting her mother she could at this moment be with her friend Julie in the latter’s villa in Corsica. In the end some residual affection, something like pity for that unrelenting mother, had made her drop the subject shortly after she had introduced it. She loved her mother, but tried to distance herself from that same mother’s plans for her: she had been ashamed, on more than one occasion, of her mother’s unforced enthusiasm whenever she invited Julie and Julie’s brother Lucien to tea—and Lucien was not even an acceptable escort, in her mother’s opinion. She was determined to conduct any flirtation that came her way out of her mother’s sight, if that were possible. So far the matter had not arisen, nor had she seriously thought to thwart her mother’s plans for her. Sadly, she realised that those plans were all too obvious, and felt a resentment that brought in its wake that unwanted pity. Only she knew how her mother looked