Brief Lives Read Online Free PDF Page B

hand.
    And yet, with all this unsuitability being demonstrated, there was anxiety in the air. Both Vinnie and I knew that Owen’s emotions were in a tangled state and that he was both susceptible and on his guard, likely, in fact, to makea reckless judgment and a wrong decision, or, worse, no decision at all, and become old, sitting with his mother in her little flat, drinking gin, for want of anything better to do. For Owen had been married, briefly, before, to the beautiful Hermione, who had left him for an American colonel with whom she had been having an affair about which Owen had known nothing. She had walked out of the house in Gertrude Street, on which she had lavished so much of Owen’s money (or rather Owen’s father’s money) and was currently in Orlando, Florida, still with the colonel, who was now something substantial in marinas. Hermione Langdon, as she was then, possessed suitability in abundance: she was striking, ‘amusing’, and had advanced ideas on interior decoration. When I first visited Owen’s house I had felt my eyes watering: she had done out the rooms in dark harsh colours, indigo, sage green, and the brooding red of claret. There was a large chandelier in each of the two rooms on the first floor, which opened out into each other. Everything was spotless, excessive, and chilly. Owen’s bed, which seemed to me twice the normal size, had a white satin coverlet with sculptured edges to match the white satin padded and buttoned bedhead. I did not see how any woman other than Hermione could sleep in such a bed; maybe that had been her intention. In any event, when I saw that bed I realized that Owen was not—could not be—for me.
    Vinnie, after offering me gin, when I was badly in need of a cup of tea and an aspirin, asked me what I did. I told her that I sang, to which she replied, ‘Oh, how clever of you. All you girls do something these days. I never did. I was married practically from the cradle.’ Then she realized that she had uttered the word ‘married’, looked frightened, and changed the subject.
    She feared that Owen would marry me, or the next girl he brought home, or the one after that. But I knew that he had no such intention, and, although I was hopelessly in love with him, I was almost reconciled to being forgotten once he had got tired of me. We had met at a party, to which I had not wanted to go. Millie dragged me there, and I felt tired and bad-tempered. Neither of us knew our host—a journalist—well, and we were intimidated by his flat, which seemed full of noisy, excitable and superior people. My first sight of Owen was prophetic: he was talking to a girl who had her back to the wall; he had one hand extended behind her, so that she was imprisoned by his arm beside her head. I registered a sort of antagonism at the same time as I caught my breath, for I had never seen such a beautiful man. He was tall and exceptionally graceful; his hair was longer than average, and he had a restless fatigued expression, which I later came to identify as boredom. So strong was my reaction, which was almost one of fear, that I turned to leave, for this was a contest I had no desire to enter. I knew that I was too placid, too simple for such a man, and that even if I won his attention I should not be able to hold it. ‘Oh, don’t go,’ he said, releasing the girl inside his arm. ‘We haven’t met yet.’
    He later told me that he fell in love with me then, and although I believed him I never felt confident that he loved me as a man should love a woman he intends to marry. But perhaps it was exactly intention rather than volition on his part that brought us together. He was bored with his mother’s anxiety, bored with finding different girls to sleep with, bored with his life, bored with the restless existential boredom that plagued him when things were not going well. I represented an easy way out of both his boredom and his entanglements. I was straightforward, transparent,