The Girl Who Passed for Normal Read online

  We stayed vaguely in touch, and some years down the line he told me he was in a position to make anything he liked, and really wanted to make The Girl. He came to London, we talked about it, he asked me to write a script, I did and I sent it to him. But I heard nothing back, which was most unlike him. I called his son in Vancouver and asked if he was all right? The son told me he’d suffered a brain tumour and lost his sight, and about two months later he died.

  RTK: Earlier you mentioned Patricia Highsmith as an influence on your writing. Highsmith famously said that she was ‘interested in the effect of guilt’ upon the heroes of her stories. Do you think you are interested in something similar?

  HF: No – not ‘guilt’, that’s not something I really recognise. I would say I’m interested in characters coming to terms with things, in themselves and in the world. It’s about their arriving at a knowledge, of murder, of death … And then they use this, and grow out of what they were. That’s a conscious theme of all my books.

  RTK: In your own life would you say you’ve had experiences that affected you in just this way?

  HF: I think for my generation a big part of it was growing up just after the war, in the shadow of that, which had a profound effect on me, certainly, and from an early age. I remember, at school, reading accounts of concentration camps. And you were told this was what the Germans were capable of – or the Russians, in the case of the gulags. But these things weren’t dreadful because they were done by Russians or Germans. I thought, ‘This is what human beings are capable of.’ It led you to wonder how you would cope in that situation – cope, I mean, whether on one side or the other, whether one was in such a camp or running it.

  The other main theme in my books, I suppose, is the ‘beauty and the beast’ element – that you have to have them both, you can’t have one without the other. Beauty without the beast is shallow, meaningless.

  RTK: Would you say it’s a necessary acknowledgement of evil in the world?

  HF: Not ‘evil’, just the facts of life. I don’t really ‘do’ evil (laughs). I hate the word ‘innocent’, too – I know what people mean by it but I just don’t buy it. There’s ignorance and then there’s knowledge, or there should be.

  People say Francis Bacon’s paintings are horrific, but I find them beautiful as paintings. The subject matter is, in a sense, irrelevant. If you consider the power of Renaissance painters who painted crucifixions – the subject may be tragic or whatever you want to call it, but if the paintings are beautiful then in that way you get the whole package. The Grunewald Crucifixion in Colmar, for example, is horrific but also beautiful. Whereas paintings by someone like Renoir who just did flowers and rosy-cheeked girls are much uglier to me.

  RTK: So the artist needs to make an accommodation with the horrific, to look at it squarely?

  HF: Oh, I think everybody should, artists or no. I should say, I don’t think artists are any more corrupt than anyone else – I just think they should stop pretending that they’re less.

  1

  She opened the door of the apartment. It was quiet and dark inside, and across the hall, through the open door of the living room, she could see that the shutters were closed.

  She called “David,” but there was no reply. She picked up her suitcases, carried them into the hall, and closed the door. She turned on the light, then went into the living room and opened the shutters. She took off her coat, and noticed that one of her mother’s curly, greasy hairs was sticking to the shoulder. Her lips twisted a little in distaste, and she removed the hair and dropped it in a wastepaper basket. She had checked the coat five or six times since her mother had said good-bye to her, had put her fat arms around her and put her greasy head on her shoulder, but every time she checked she found another hair, or a trace of the gray-white mohair sweater her mother had been wearing. She thought, with disgust, that she would probably go on finding traces of her mother for days and days, and just when she thought she had found them all she would find another — and when she had found them all she would still be able to smell her mother’s smell, that mixture of sweat and cooking fat.

  She wondered where David was. The apartment looked clean and neat, almost unlived in. There were no books lying around, no pieces of paper or pens. The ash trays were all clean, and there was a cover on the record player. She went out of the living room and across the hall to the bedroom.

  That, too, was clean and neat. The twin beds were made and the covers on them. There were no clothes lying around. She wondered where David was.

  She had been expecting him at the station. After she got off the train she’d looked at all the people waiting; and when she hadn’t seen him she’d put her luggage down and waited, in case she’d missed him in the crowd, or in case he was late. But when everyone had gone and she was still standing, with cold hands, at the end of the platform, she had realized that there was no point in waiting any longer, so she had taken her suitcases, and found a taxi.

  When she arrived at her glass-and-brass street door she had rung the bell with David’s name on, and waited with her mouth by the grille to say, when David called softly, “Who’s there?”, “It’s me, David. Will you come down and help me with the cases?

  But David hadn’t answered, so she had searched in her handbag and found her keys; had let herself in and, painfully, carried her cases up the three flights of stairs, telling herself that there was no point in feeling hurt. David might be working, or he might have had to go away for the day — though she couldn’t imagine where.

  She sat down on one of the beds and wondered where he was. He might at least — she stood up and opened the windows and the shutters and looked out into the street as if she would find some sign of David there — see him running up the steep little hill, calling up to the third floor, “I got held up on my way. Why didn’t you wait?”

  But there was no one in the street, and the tree, opposite, that had been so summer-full when she had left, three months ago, was now almost bare. She shivered. It was only mid-November and should have been quite warm still; but it was a gray, bleak afternoon, and she was tired and cold, and the apartment was empty.

  She went into the kitchen and lit the gas for the central heating. She glanced up at the electric water heater; that was on.

  She went back to the bedroom and looked through the wardrobe; David’s clothes were all there. She stared at herself in the mirror on the wardrobe door. She was looking cold and bleak as the day. She smiled at herself in the mirror; frowned, pursed her lips, and narrowed her eyes; but her face remained wintry. She didn’t want David to see her like that. She pulled the rubber band off her hair and shook her head. She ought to wash her hair. It looked too hard; it always did after she had dyed it, and especially when her face was pale and her lips painted a bright, extraordinary red. She shouldn’t have put any lipstick on. David hated it. He said it gave her lips a life of their own, made them look obscene. But it was better, she had thought on the train, to attract the eye to the fat red fish when the pond they were swimming in was not only shallow but muddy as well. She had felt muddy on the train, simply with the fatigue of the journey; now she felt muddy and bleak and awful, and her shoulders ached from carrying her bags.

  Perhaps David had left her a message somewhere. She dosed the wardrobe door to shut off the offending image, and looked around the room. There was no message there, no sheet of paper saying “Be back soon Love David.” She went into the hall and looked around; on the bookshelves, on the chair, on the coat rack. She went into the last of the three rooms of the apartment, David’s study. There was no message. She wondered whether David had received her letter. Perhaps he had gone away before it had arrived, and hadn’t yet returned. Perhaps she hadn’t been clear in her letter; had said the 25th of November instead of the 15th. Perhaps the letter had got lost in the post and never arrived at all.

  She went into the living room and sat down. The letter couldn’t have got lost, and even if it had, David, presumably, had been seei
ng the Emersons. She had written them at the same time, so they would have spoken about her to him, surely. Both letters couldn’t have got lost in the post. But then — if David had been going to the Emersons, if he had been teaching Catherine, he couldn’t have gone away. Unless the Emersons had gone away. If they had, before they had received her letter, David might have thought it a good opportunity to go away himself. Perhaps he had gone somewhere with Marcello. And if he hadn’t read her letter, he could have hardly been expecting her to return, when only ten days before that she had written, “I’m afraid mother is very sick indeed; the doctor says he doesn’t know what more he can do.”

  Perhaps. She didn’t know. She felt tired and miserable. She had come home, and home looked like a hotel room, empty and neat. She had come back to Italy for David — for if not for him she couldn’t think why — and David was not there. She felt her lips twisting on her face, leaping and writhing as if they had a life of their own, trying to hide the fact that they were wounded.

  She took a cigarette from her handbag and lit it quickly. That was better. She inhaled a couple of times, then stood up and went back to David’s study. She opened the top drawer of his desk, where he kept his letters, and saw the letter she had written him. She took it out and read it.

  My dearest love,

  I’m coming back soon! Things here have sort of resolved themselves. Three days ago I had a long talk with mother. I told her what the doctor had said, that he couldn’t do anything more, and that it was just a matter of waiting to see what happened. She didn’t seem at all upset, just nodded and smiled and said she’d realized that, that it was just a question of time now; that she’d reached the end, etc. So I said to her that I was thinking of flying over, just for a weekend, to see you and see how you were. That really upset her! She said I mustn’t go off and leave her, that if I went she’d die within hours, that I couldn’t do that to her. So I said O.K., I won’t go, and she immediately seemed happier, almost smug — so much so that it made me wonder if she really was feeling all that sick, and whether it wasn’t that she enjoyed having me there, and wanted me to stay. I wondered whether, in fact, she had any intention of dying. So I had it out with her and she got really angry, saying that she had always known that you would have a bad influence on me, that you had made me hard and selfish, etc. etc. Then I got angry, and we were both shouting away for about — it must have been twenty minutes — and then, suddenly, I looked at mother and I knew, and she looked at me and knew I knew. She’d been faking all the time! She was just feeling miserable and lonely, so she decided she wanted me to come home and look after her. I think perhaps she did have a mild heart attack earlier, but I went to the doctor again the day before yesterday and asked him whether it was possible mother had been faking the whole thing and he said yes — that when she called him and said she was having an attack it was the first time he’d seen her for about ten years, and though there was something wrong with her heart it was something that could have been wrong for years and years, and could go on being wrong for years and years — and, in any case, he said that mother being the size she is, it would be pretty strange if there wasn’t something wrong with her heart. He did say, however, that if she felt miserable enough to persist in playing the role of a dying woman for three months there was something wrong with her, if not necessarily with her heart, and that I should have pity on her and not rush off immediately. So I went home and told mother that I would be leaving in two weeks’ time. She took it without a murmur, and yesterday and today we’ve been really quite friendly. So! This morning I bought my ticket. I’m going to come back by train. I leave London on the morning of November 14th, and arrive in Rome at about 3:30 on the afternoon of the 15th — perhaps you could call the station to check that, and if you’re not doing anything … it is a Sunday. I can’t tell you how happy I am! Apart from that, I haven’t been doing much. The weather —

  She put the letter down. He had received it and read and put it in his drawer, and she had been quite specific about the day and the time. She picked the letter up again and pressed her lips together. It was a horrible letter. Perhaps David had thought that. Perhaps she had hurt him by hinting at what her mother had said in their twenty-minute shouting contest. She shouldn’t have mentioned it. He had always known her mother didn’t approve of him; she always thought he was too lazy, or too cynical, or too “brilliant,” and not quite, as she put it, straight enough. It had never worried him before. He had always said that her mother had fallen from another, more puritanical century; her mother, who had worked so hard all her life, first as a waitress, then as the owner of a small restaurant for truck drivers. Her mother had raised two, as she thought, talented daughters, and then felt unhappy when they went off with two talented men, and disappeared — as she had always hoped they would and worked so they could — from her life of hard work and sacrifice.

  David had always said he liked her mother, and that it was natural for her to feel as she did about him; it would have been unnatural, a betrayal, had she not done so.

  But perhaps, Barbara thought, after he had read the letter he had felt that she had come to share her mother’s opinions. Perhaps he had believed that she had gone off to England and stayed there three months because she wanted to get away from him, and had made up the whole story of her mother’s sickness.

  She cursed her mother for being fat and ugly, for having greasy hair and a foul smell, for having worked too hard all her life, for being sick, and for lying. She cursed her for having said all the things she had said about David, and everything else she had ever said. She wondered where David was.

  He couldn’t have gone away; not without his clothes, not just like that, without any message. He must have cleaned the house for her homecoming, and then, for some reason, gone out. He would be home soon.

  Suddenly, she felt more relaxed. She decided to have a bath. Perhaps while she was in the bath, he would return. Perhaps he was out buying her some flowers. He would be home soon.

  *

  She had her bath, washed her hair, dried it, unpacked her bags, made herself some coffee, looked at her watch about twenty times — and when it was seven-thirty there was still no sign of David.

  She began to feel frightened. Perhaps he had had an accident on his way to the station.

  At eight o’clock she rang Marcello.

  Marcello didn’t know where David was. He hadn’t seen him for more than a week. He asked Barbara when she had got back.

  “I got in this afternoon,” she said, “but David’s not here. I don’t know where he is.”

  Marcello didn’t sound worried, or even particularly interested. He suggested that David had had to do something urgent.

  “Did David say anything about my coming back when you saw him last?” Barbara asked.

  “No.”

  “I’m worried, Marcello. It’s — oh, I don’t know. It makes me frightened. He should be here.”

  Marcello told her not to worry, but said that if David hadn’t returned by ten she should ring again. “Then I’ll worry with you. O.K.?”

  Barbara nodded at the telephone and said, “Yes. I’ll call you back.”

  *

  Once before, David had disappeared. It had been his birthday; two weeks before, Barbara had said, “I don’t care what we do, but I want us to spend that evening together. We can go out and celebrate, or we can stay home.”

  “O.K.,” David had said vaguely.

  When the evening of his birthday came he insisted that they eat early. As soon as they finished he said he was going out to buy cigarettes. He didn’t return until two the next morning. Barbara waited up for him, determined not to make a scene; but as soon as he came into the bedroom she started crying. “You did it deliberately, just to hurt me,” she said, and David looked at her as if she were a fork that wasn’t quite clean. “I met Marcello,” he said. “We had a drink together. Then we met some friends of his and —”

  “You could have rung me up. Y
ou could have —” she tried to control herself, but she couldn’t. “You should have asked me. You promised we could spend this evening together.”

  David had looked petulant. “It’s my birthday, isn’t it?” Then he had added, “Besides, you don’t like Marcello.”

  She had cried, and David had undressed and got into bed without looking at her, and turned out the light without saying anything to her; and eventually she had fallen asleep.

  When she woke up, David was not there. He didn’t return for a week. He had gone to Switzerland with Marcello. When he did return he was tanned and looked relaxed. Barbara felt that she had withered in his absence, and become twenty years older than he, instead of the five that she was.

  She had tried not to mention his week’s absence, but she couldn’t help it; and when she did mention it she said the wrong thing. “Why do you live with me if you don’t like me?” she had asked.

  David had looked at her angrily and said, “Did I say I didn’t like you? And anyway, where am I supposed to live? This is my apartment, isn’t it?”

  She had said no more, and slowly they had resumed their old relationship, had started talking to each other again, and laughing with each other.

  *

  Perhaps he had gone off again like that, for a week. Perhaps he didn’t really mean to hurt her, and it was his way of maintaining his independence. Perhaps he did it to prove to himself that he was free. It was silly, of course; she had always insisted that he was as free as he liked. He didn’t have to prove anything, either to himself or to her. But then he wasn’t always logical, and sometimes wanted to demonstrate that the relationship they had agreed — or at least understood — to have with each other was valid. Barbara loved David, and David liked Barbara. That was it, that had always been it. But perhaps, she thought, there were times when he felt that he loved her, or that she was trying to hold him with her love; and then he did something deliberately, inexplicably hurtful, to restore the balance.