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98
of a home than home had been for a very long time. There was always someone to talk to after the
seminar, and she would take a walk in the evening streets before sitting down for her meal in a sandwich bar
at about six thirty. Then there was work in the library until nine, and she would reach home at about ten.
'But don't you ever go out?' asked her friend Anthea. For she was surprised to find that she made friends
easily. Needing a foil or acolyte for her flirtatious popularity, she had found her way to Ruth unerringly;
6
Ruth, needing the social protection of a glamorous friend, was grateful. Both were satisfied with the
friendship although each was secretly bored by the other. Anthea's conversation consisted either of
triumphant reminiscences — how she had spumed this one, accepted that one, how she had got the last pair
of boots in Harrod's sale, how she had shed five pounds in a fortnight — or recommendations beginning
'Why don't you?' Why don't you get rid of those ghastly skirts and buy yourself some trousers? You're thin
enough to wear them. Why don't you have your hair properly cut? Why don't you find a flat of your own?
You can't stay at home all your life.
These questions would be followed rapidly by variants beginning 'Why haven't you?' Found a flat, had
your haircut, bought some trousers. It was as if her exigent temperament required immediate results. Her
insistent yet curiously uneasy physical presence inspired conflicting feelings in Ruth,
7
who was not used to
the idea that friends do not always please.
By the end of the second year a restlessness came over Ruth, impelling her to spend most of the day
walking. The work seemed to her too easy and she had already chosen the subject for her dissertation: "Vice
and Virtue in Balzac's Novels". Balzac teaches the supreme effectiveness of bad behaviour, a matter which
Ruth was beginning to perceive. The evenings in the library now oppressed her;
she longed to break the
silence. She seemed to have been eating the same food, tracing the'same steps for far too long.
8
And she was
lonely. Anthea, formally engaged to Brian, no longer needed her company.
Why don't you do your postgraduate work in America? I can't see any future for you here, apart from the
one you can see yourself.
Ruth took some of Anthea's advice, had her hair cut, won a scholarship from the British Council which
entitled her to a year in France working on her thesis, and fell in love. Only the last fact
mattered to her,
although she would anxiously examine her hair to see if it made her look any better. Had she but known it,
her looks were beside the point;
9
she was attractive enough for a clever woman, but it was principally as a
clever woman that she was attractive. She remained in ignorance of this; for she believed herself to be dim
and unworldly and had frequently been warned by Anthea to be on her guard. 'Sometimes I wonder if you're
all there,'
10
said Anthea, striking her own brow in disbelief.
She did this when Ruth confessed that she was in love with Richard Hirst, who had stopped her in the
corridor to congratulate her on winning the scholarship and had insisted on taking her down to the refectory
for lunch. Anthea's gesture was prompted by the fact that Richard was a prize beyond the expectations of
most women and certainly beyond those of Ruth.
11
He was one of those exceptionally beautiful men whose
violent presence makes other men, however superior, look makeshift. Richard was famous on at least three
counts.
12
He had the unblemished blond good looks of his Scandinavian mother; he was a resolute Christian;
and he had an ulcer. Women who had had no success with him assumed that the ulcer was a result of the
Christianity, for Richard, a psychologist by training, was a student counsellor,
13
and would devote three days
a week to answering the telephone and persuading anxious undergraduates.
Then Richard would wing home to his parish and stay up for two whole nights answering the telephone to
teenage dropouts,
14
battered wives, and alcoholics. There seemed to be no end to the amount of bad news he
could absorb.
Richard had been known to race off on his bicycle to the scene of a domestic drama and there wrestle
with the conscience of an abusive husband, wife, mother, father, brother, sister.
He was rarely at home. He rarely slept. He never seemed to eat. His ulcer was the concern of every
woman he had ever met in his adult life. His dark golden hair streamed and his dark blue eyes were clear and
obdurate as he pedalled off to the next crisis.
Into Ruth's dazed and grateful ear he spoke deprecatingly of his unmarried mothers and his battered
wives. She thought him exemplary and regretted having no good works to report back.
15
The race for virtue,
which she had always read about, was on.
So Ruth took more of Anthea's advice and found a flat for herself.
Proper Names
Ruth [r
] — Рут
Anita Brookner [
'ni:t
'br
kn
] — Анита Брукнер