Julian Barnes: The Sense of an Ending

I confirmed my existence, authenticity and location, attaching photocopied corroboration. I asked if I might be told the date of the will. Then, one evening I sat down and tried to resurrect that humiliating weekend in Chislehurst some forty years previously. I searched for any moment, incident or remark which might have seemed worthy of acknowledgement or reward. But my memory has increasingly become a mechanism which reiterates apparently truthful data with little variation. I stared into the past, I waited, I tried to trick my memory into a different course. But it was no good. I was someone who had gone out with the daughter of Mrs Sarah Ford (deceased) for a period of about a year, who had been patronised by her husband, loftily scrutinised by her son, and manipulated by her daughter. Painful for me at the time, but hardly requiring the subsequent maternal apology of five hundred pounds.

And anyway, that pain hasn’t lasted. As I mentioned, I have a certain instinct for self-preservation. I successfully put Veronica out of my mind, out of my history. So when time delivered me all too quickly into middle age, and I began looking back over how my life had unfolded, and considering the paths untaken, those lulling, undermining what-ifs, I never found myself imagining – not even for worse, let alone for better – how things would have been with Veronica. Annie yes, Veronica no. And I never regretted my years with Margaret, even if we did divorce. Try as I could – which wasn’t very hard – I rarely ended up fantasising a markedly different life from the one that has been mine. I don’t think this is complacency; it’s more likely a lack of imagination, or ambition, or something. I suppose the truth is that, yes, I’m not odd enough not to have done the things I’ve ended up doing with my life.

I didn’t read the solicitor’s letter immediately. Instead, I looked at the enclosure, a long, creamy envelope with my name on it. Handwriting I had seen only once in my life before, but nonetheless familiar. Anthony Webster Esq. – the way the ascenders and descenders finished with a little curlicue took me back to someone I had known for a mere weekend. Someone whose handwriting, in its confidence rather than shape, suggested a woman perhaps ‘odd enough’ to do things I hadn’t. But what they might have been, I couldn’t know or guess. There was an inch of Sellotape on the front of the envelope, centre top. I was expecting it to run down the back and add an extra seal, but it had been cut off along the envelope’s top edge. Presumably the letter had once been attached to something else.

Finally, I opened it and read. ‘Dear Tony, I think it right you should have the attached. Adrian always spoke warmly of you, and perhaps you will find it an interesting, if painful, memento of long ago. I am also leaving you a little money. You may find this strange, and to tell the truth I am not quite sure of my own motives. In any case, I am sorry for the way my family treated you all those years ago, and wish you well, even from beyond the grave. Yours, Sarah Ford. P.S. It may sound odd, but I think the last months of his life were happy.’

The solicitor asked for my bank details so that the legacy could be paid direct. She added that she was enclosing the first of the ‘documents’ I had been left. The second was still in the possession of Mrs Ford’s daughter. That, I realised, would explain the cut piece of Sellotape. Mrs Marriott was currently trying to obtain this second item. And Mrs Ford’s will, in answer to my question, had been drawn up five years previously.

Margaret used to say that there were two sorts of women: those with clear edges to them, and those who implied mystery. And that this was the first thing a man sensed, and the first thing that attracted him, or not. Some men are drawn to one type, some to the other. Margaret – you won’t need me to tell you – was clear-edged, but at times she could be envious of those who carried, or manufactured, an air of mystery.

‘I like you just as you are,’ I once said to her.

‘But you know me so well by now,’ she replied. We had been married about six or seven years. ‘Wouldn’t you prefer it if I were a little more… unknowable?’

‘I don’t want you to be a woman of mystery. I think I’d hate it. Either it’s just a façade, a game, a technique for ensnaring men, or else the woman of mystery is a mystery even to herself, and that’s the worst of all.’

‘Tony, you sound like a real man of the world.’

‘Well, I’m not,’ I said – aware, of course, that she was teasing me. ‘I haven’t known that many women in my life.’

‘“I may not know much about women, but I know what I like”?’

‘I didn’t say that, and I don’t mean it either. But I think it’s because I’ve known comparatively few that I know what I think about them. And what I like about them. If I’d known more, I’d be more confused.’

Margaret said, ‘Now I’m not sure whether to be flattered or not.’

All this was before our marriage went wrong, of course. But it wouldn’t have lasted any longer if Margaret had been more mysterious, I can assure you – and her – of that.

And something of her rubbed off on me over the years. For instance, if I hadn’t known her, I might have become involved in a patient exchange of letters with the solicitor. But I didn’t want to wait quietly for another envelope with a window. Instead, I rang up Mrs Eleanor Marriott and asked about the other document I’d been left.

‘The will describes it as a diary.’

‘A diary? Is it Mrs Ford’s?’

‘No. Let me check the name.’ A pause. ‘Adrian Finn.’

Adrian! How had Mrs Ford ended up with his diary? Which was not a question for the solicitor. ‘He was a friend,’ was all I said. Then, ‘Presumably it was attached to the letter you sent.’

‘I can’t be sure of that.’

‘Have you actually seen it?’

‘No, I haven’t.’ Her manner was properly cautious, rather than unhelpful.

‘Did Veronica Ford give any reason for withholding it?’

‘She said she wasn’t ready to part with it yet.’

Right. ‘But it is mine?’

‘It was certainly left to you in the will.’

Hmm. I wondered if there was some legal nicety separating those two propositions. ‘Do you know how she… came by it?’

‘She was living not far from her mother in the last years, as I understand it. She said she took various items into her safekeeping. In case the house was burgled. Jewellery, money, documents.’

‘Is that legal?’

‘Well, it’s not illegal. It may well be prudent.’

We didn’t seem to be getting very far. ‘Let me get this straight. She ought to have handed over this document, this diary, to you. You’ve asked for it, and she’s refusing to give it up.’

‘For the present, yes, that is the case.’

‘Can you give me her address?’

‘I would have to have her authority to do so.’

‘Then would you kindly seek that authority?’

Have you noticed how, when you talk to someone like a solicitor, after a while you stop sounding like yourself and end up sounding like them?

The less time there remains in your life, the less you want to waste it. That’s logical, isn’t it? Though how you use the saved-up hours… well, that’s another thing you probably wouldn’t have predicted in youth. For instance, I spend a lot of time clearing things up – and I’m not even a messy person. But it’s one of the modest satisfactions of age. I aim for tidiness; I recycle; I clean and decorate my flat to keep up its value. I’ve made my will; and my dealings with my daughter, son-in-law, grandchildren and ex-wife are, if less than perfect, at least settled. Or so I’ve persuaded myself. I’ve achieved a state of peaceableness, even peacefulness. Because I get on with things. I don’t like mess, and I don’t like leaving a mess. I’ve opted for cremation, if you want to know.