Look at Me Read Online Free PDF Page B

right. It is not, nor was it ever. It was unendurable, and I trained myself to endure it. The sad and patient virtues that seem to be enshrined in the very fabric, the very furnishings of this flat – the flightiness of its details battling unsuccessfully against the gravity of its overall demeanour – none of this has any further part to play in my existence. The blamelessness that flourished within these walls left us all deficient in vices with which to withstand the world, deficient in the sort of knowledge that protects and patronizes one’s ventures. I know now that one needs to be as cunning as Ulysses in order to negotiate one’s own passage. I believe that I have learned this lesson – I certainly hope that I have – and I intend to put my knowledge to good use, although I am not sure how. If necessary I shall write myself into a new way of life, and it will be a very amusing one. I have a long way to go, that I know. The old pattern still flourishes, because it was so complete, because everything here conspires to prolong it. It is like a long old age, forever forlorn and waiting for the end. Every morning now I hurry to get up and out of the flat, before Nancy gets back from Mass; I hurry to the Library, ready to observe the endless foolishness of serious preoccupation. I note every quirk of the behaviour around me, and when I get home I write it all down and I feel the weight of all that virtue lift, leaving me lighter and almost ready to begin again.
    I shall probably stay here until Nancy dies, or leaves, which is improbable, although she has a sister in Cork. It is her home as much as it is mine, for I am ready to leave and have been for some time. I should like to move nearer to Nick and Alix, if not actually into their flat. Ineed their high spirits, their energy, their durability. I need to participate in the life that they seem to generate; I need those impromptu meals, those last minute decisions, that ease. Here all is cautious, prudent, safe. The lift gates clash, and Nancy shuffles on her worn slippers, and sometimes that tray appears in front of me with the same tiny meal prepared and I shudder inwardly, although I eat it to please her. I could never hurt her. But she appears to think that nothing has changed, and that it never will, and she doesn’t realize (why should she?) that this frightens me.
    It is all so different at the Frasers’. Alix, who has had servants all her life, can’t cook a thing except steak and spaghetti, which in fact she does rather well, so that her spaghetti has become ‘her’ spaghetti, and people congratulate her on it. She has this amusing way of interrogating absolute strangers if she thinks that they look interesting, and we have often gone down to the restaurant in the evening, just the three of us, and ended up with two more people, or three, or often just one, for she is always fascinated by people who are on their own; I don’t suppose she knows many. Everyone succumbs to Alix, who can ask the most outrageous questions without giving offence, and after a time they find they want to confide in her, and they usually do. They ring her up, usually the morning after they have met, and I am sure they all feel that they have made a significant acquaintance. I think they wait, as I did, for that first invitation. ‘You must come and have some of my spaghetti,’ said Alix that day when she dropped into the Library after having lunch with Nick. ‘It won’t be much,’ she added, ‘because I’ve come down in the world’, and she pulled a funny little face and looked at Nick, and he looked back, in a way that made me feel a little awkward, and they went off together and were away for quite a time. That is how and when I met her, although ofcourse I have known Nick for much longer. He is always in and out of the Library.
    Anyway, I went round to dinner one evening, the very day after I had met Alix, and I was enchanted. I loved everything: the little flat off