Читать онлайн «The Rules of Engagement»

We met, and became friends of a sort, by virtue of the fact that we started school on the same day. Because we had the same Christian name it was decreed that she should choose an alternative. For some reason—largely, I think, because she was influenced by the sort of sunny children's books available in our milieu—she decided to be known as Betsy. When we met up again, several years later, she was Betsy de Saint-Jorre. Not bad for a girl initially registered as Elizabeth Newton.

How much nicer children were in those days than the adults they have become! Born in 1948, we were well-behaved, incurious, with none of the rebellious features adopted by those who make youthfulness a permanent quest. We went to tea in one another's houses, sent each other postcards when we went on holiday with our parents, assumed we would know each other all our lives ... The Sixties took us by surprise: we were unprepared, unready, uncomprehending. That, I now see, was why I married Digby: it was the right, unthinking thing to do. That was why Betsy took it upon herself to have a career, out of despair, perhaps, at not being provided for. Choice hardly dictated our actions. Yet I suppose we were contented enough. Certainly we knew no better. And now we know too much. Discretion veiled our motives then, and perhaps does so even now, even in an age of multiple communications, of e-mails, text messages, and news bulletins all round the clock. We still rely on narrative, on the considered account. That is how and why I knew Betsy's story, though I cannot claim to know all of it. There were areas of confusion which it seemed better not to disclose. But she was always painfully honest, rather more so than prudence might advise.

Her initial demotion from Elizabeth to Betsy was thought to be justified, given her uncertainty of status. She took it in her stride, thinking it gave her permission to assume an altogether different character, someone more lighthearted, skimming the surface, responding always with a smile. She longed to be superficial, with the sort of ease that I and my particular coterie took for granted. Adult responsibility, of an altogether unwelcome kind, had already come her way, in the shape of her widowed father and the faded aunt who kept some sort of primitive life going in that flat above the surgery in Pimlico Road. She was unfortunate: that was generally agreed, and it made her something of an anomaly in our midst. My mother professed sympathy for her, but viewed with dislike Betsy's attempts to be winning when she came to our house in Bourne Street, on the rare occasions when I was obliged to invite her. The enthusiasm with which she greeted my mother's teatime offerings (meagre enough in those days of austerity) and the attention she paid to the contents of our drawing-room were not attractive, and my mother was not tactful in acknowledging the evidence of Betsy's social awkwardness. I had many years in which to reflect on my mother's harshness. Even when young I was aware of a desire to depart from this, to be less brittle, less proud, less conformist than my mother. Now I see that I have not quite managed it. My only victory is that the harshness has been internalized. My judgements even now are sometimes less than charitable.