Look at Me Read Free Page B

the evenings, and when we say that we are expected for dinner somewhere, she tugs a comb through her wiry hair, flings on her tweed cape, says, ‘All right, be like that’, and sweeps out of the room. She is a noisy woman. I once tried to find out why she came here; she does not really need our resources for those articles she writes in psychic magazines, but Olivia says that she lives in a private hotel in South Kensington and has to get out in the daytime, and besides, she hatesto be alone. And I imagine she gets paid more if she includes an illustration or two in her articles. She certainly stays here until the bitter end, and I have seen her face droop into a quite hopeless expression by the end of the day, the inside of her lower lip, which protrudes, looking empty and babyish.
    I walk with Olivia to her car, and then I buy a newspaper and read it over a cup of coffee somewhere. I never want to go home and I put it off for as long as I can. I usually walk, from Manchester Square, where the Institute is situated, through to the Edgware Road and past all those horrible shops, full of corsets and nurses’ uniforms and video cassettes and Indian food. I tramp past the launderettes and the cheap hairdressers with the mauve neon illuminations until I reach the more salubrious uplands. I always walk, whatever the weather. And when I have got rid of my restlessness and my tendency to brood, I let myself into the flat and I am in for the rest of the evening. I have something to eat and then I usually try to write. In that way I manage to get rid of the rest of the day.
    I encounter resistance in myself, of course. That is only natural. I am quite young and I am aware that this is a dull life. Sometimes it seems like a physical effort simply to sit down at my desk and pull out the notebook. Sometimes I find myself heaving a sigh when I read through what I have already written. Sometimes the effort of putting pen to paper is so great that I literally feel a pain in my head, as if all the furniture of my mind were being rearranged, as if it were being lined up, being got ready for delivery from the storehouse. And yet when I start to write, all this heaviness vanishes, and I feel charged with a kind of electricity, not unpleasant in itself, but leading, inevitably, to greater restlessness.
    Fortunately, I am not a hysterical person. I am used to being on my own and sometimes I doubt whether Icould endure a lot of excitement. This remains an academic question, for I have never yet been tempted in this way. I am very orderly, and Spartan in my habits. I am famous for my control, which has seen me through many crises. By a supreme irony, my control is so great that these crises remain unknown to the rest of the world, and so I am thought to be unfeeling. And of course I never speak of them. That would be intolerable. If I ever suffer loneliness it is because I have settled for the harsh destiny of dealing with these matters by myself.
    Sometimes I wish it were different. I wish I were beautiful and lazy and spoiled and not to be trusted. I wish, in short, that I had it easier. Sometimes I find myself lying awake in bed, after one of these silent evenings, wondering if this is to be my lot, if this solitude is to last for the rest of my days. Such thoughts sweep me to the edge of panic. For I want more, and I even think that I deserve it. I have something to offer. I am no beauty but I am quite pleasant-looking. In fact people tell me that I am ‘attractive’, which always depresses me. It is like being told that you are ‘brilliant’, which means precisely nothing. But apart from that, I am in good health and have ample private means. I have few bad habits, apart from my sharp tongue. I have no religion, but I observe certain rules of conduct with considerable piety. I feel quite deeply, I think. If I am not very careful, I shall grow into the most awful old battle-axe.
    That is why I write, and why I have to. When I feel swamped