Fictional Lives Read Free Page B

between us we’re all right for money, and anyway, I don’t like London.’
    ‘You do. You’ve just convinced yourself you don’t. Besides,’ Maisie added, ‘you should do it because you envied Brandon.’
    ‘I did not.’
    Maisie smiled, and picked up the book she’d been reading.
    ‘I didn’t, really,’ Tina insisted. And she hadn’t, she told herself. She had simply believed that he was the one man who seemed capable of writing something that wasn’t totally false, that wasn’t totally compromised, and had thought that if her belief were correct—if someone, anyone could write a book that wasn’t untrue—then it might have been possible for her to continue writing. But she had also thought that her belief probably wasn’t correct; just that she was incapable of detecting the fundamental dishonesty of Brandon’s work.
    ‘Well anyway,’ Maisie murmured after a while, ‘I still think you should do it. I mean I know it’ll be difficult for you. But if the man did trouble you, you should try to find out why. Even if he’s dead now.’ She looked up. ‘You never know, you might suddenly find you want to write another novel yourself.’
    ‘Never,’ Tina said firmly, getting to her feet. But she sounded firmer than she felt. For she had to admit that, as so often, Maisie did have a point. Brandon had troubled her; and if she could only find that dishonesty in him she was sure must exist, there would be no danger that, in another five or ten years, she would repent of her decision to have abandoned hercareer. While if she didn’t find it, or didn’t even look for it, though she had felt so triumphant when she had heard the news of his death, that danger would always exist.
    It would be appalling, she thought, as she went over to the window and gazed, through the June evening, over her fruit trees and vines, if she ever did come to repent of all this; repent of her having more or less forced Maisie to give up her job; repent of their having moved to Italy (that also had been her idea); repent of their not having stayed on in London, she locked up in her study, and Maisie working at the hospital, doing her research into tropical medicine.
    ‘But how,’ she asked plaintively—and it was to be her last word on the subject that evening—‘will I be able to face it?’
    ‘Oh Tina,’ Maisie laughed quietly from her book, ‘I told you. You don’t dislike the outside world as much as you’ve convinced yourself you do. And you’re just as capable of facing life in London as I am of watering the plants, cooking, and making sure Giovanni does whatever it is he does. After all,’ she concluded, ‘you faced it for long enough, and you were quite successful at it.’
    *
    Yes, Tina thought, six weeks later in England: that was so. But it was in the past. Whereas today, sitting in the office Christopher had put at her disposal, looking down at Long Acre, and watching the cars and people move along the street, she really wasn’t sure if she could face it any longer. It was all so ugly, so squalid, so tedious…. Not that she had anything against London in particular; in fact it had always been her favourite city, as far as cities went. But to think that this was reckoned one of the centres of civilization! Oh certainly the majority of those people walking down there did the best they could, and she didn’t for a minute imagine she was in any way superior to them. After all—as Maisie had said—she herself, until eight years ago, had been one of them, and had beenhailed as a success by them, and by the city—the world—in which they lived. As, on their terms, she had been. But—what terms! She had only done it, she thought, in order to be able to dismiss success; to be able to know, having tasted the fruit, that she didn’t like its flavour. And now, now that she did know, to have come back! To have abandoned her refuge up on that Italian hill. To have returned to face not just the fact that, however