Beauty

“Mr. Phillips?”

“Yes. Speaking.”

It was 7:30 on a Sunday morning. He was in his dressing gown. But he’d recognized the voice of his son-in-law, Paul, and appreciated the mock formality.

“Mr. Phillips” was what Paul had studiously called him when they were first introduced by Helen. Another Sunday, not so many years before. “Mr. Phillips … Mrs. Phillips …” all very proper and respectful, and he’d liked it. He and Ruth had been wondering when—if—they might meet “the boy,” as they’d both begun to designate him. Now here he was, on the doorstep beside Helen, with the obligatory bunch of flowers for Ruth and his scrupulous “Mr. Phillips.”

He’d liked it, and thought he’d let it run for a while. Wasn’t that how potential fathers-in-law were supposed to treat potential sons-in-law? A leg of lamb was roasting in the oven. Let the boy sweat a bit too.

But the boy had turned into Paul. And Helen would turn into Mrs. Heywood. And he, Mr. Phillips, had turned, quickly enough, into Tom. “Call me Tom.” He’d seen Helen’s face relax. And the boy, so it seemed, was also shortly to turn into a barrister.

If he’d put him through it, just a little, then in truth he’d been somewhat daunted himself.

Jesus Christ, Helen’s going to marry a whiz-kid lawyer.

“Mr. Phillips?”

“Yes. Speaking …” A calculated pause. He could join in the game. Birds were singing outside. “Yes—Paul—it’s me.”

“You have a granddaughter.”

On a gray February day almost 20 years later, as his train sped through several English counties, he’d remembered that moment. It seemed like recalling a dream. The phone, his dressing gown, the birds. He’d left Ruth upstairs, still half asleep, or perhaps only pretending to be. For almost 24 hours, they’d been expecting a call. He’d leaped up. “I’ll go. I’ll take it downstairs.”

After speaking to Paul, he’d returned, light-footed, to Ruth, who by then was fully awake, eyes wide, and sitting up as if to receive an audience.

A Sunday morning in May. They were both not yet 50, mere youngsters themselves.

He’d reemployed the formula of their son-in-law.

“We have a granddaughter.”

Then he’d said, “And she has a name already. Clare.”

Now he no longer had Ruth and he no longer had a granddaughter. It was unbearable.

And from the moment of his getting up this morning, he’d been haunted by that long-ago figure: himself, disheveled but overjoyed, in his dressing gown. As he’d shaved, he’d been wearing the same dark-blue dressing gown. How many dressing gowns did you need in a life?

His train had carried him captively onward, but this was all his choice. Winter scenery had glided by.

And how long a life can seem. Yet how quickly 20, 30—50—years can pass. How quickly one scene can overtake another.

Now he was walking with a woman young and old enough to be his daughter along a covered pathway on a university campus near a provincial city. He’d never been to either the city or the university, though he’d once been, 50 years ago, at a similar university when parts of the campus were still under confident construction.

He wondered whether to mention it to this woman—she was called Gibbs, Sarah Gibbs—in order to remedy scant conversation, in order to hide his apprehension and confusion.

It was a difficult walk. Words were failing both of them.

Here he was, when it was too late. Everything was too late. Ruth had died six months before. Of “natural causes.” Cancer was a natural cause, though “natural” was an easy word. And six months was nothing, it was still yesterday.

And he’d thought that that was cruel?

Could you die of unnatural, inexplicable causes? Yes, now he knew you could.

It had been a consolation—another easy word—that Ruth, at least, had never had to know the loss of their granddaughter. The double cruelty was his alone. Though Clare had known the loss of her grandmother.

Had that even been a reason?

They had been close, Ruth and Clare. What’s more, it was often noted, from the first moments of Clare’s being “shown” by her parents—he’d thought of that day when Paul had been “shown” by Helen—that Clare had Ruth’s looks. Their closeness was prefigured by resemblance. Clare had her grandmother’s eyes, her mouth, her way of tilting her chin; you couldn’t deny it. It was all rather wonderful. He had been seeing his wife as a baby.

Might he say something of all this to this woman? “Clare was very close, you know, to her grandmother. That is, to my wife …”

Was that a good tack? Or was it better—or more crass—to say, “I was at a university myself, you know, just like this one. I studied modern history …”?

And feebly joke, “Now I’m part of it.”

Why hadn’t this woman—Mrs. Gibbs? Dr. Gibbs?—put on a coat? It was February. She’d said, “It’s no distance.” It was already feeling like half a mile.

The resemblance had been unmissable. He might put it differently and say that Clare had been as beautiful as her grandmother. They shared their beauty.

He wished he’d said it when they were both alive. Might he say it now to this woman?

But Clare’s grandmother had died. Just when Clare was leaving school, when she’d gained a place at university and was turning 18, just when she was deserving of blessings and congratulations—not least from her grandmother—her grandmother had stolen her thunder and died.

A reason? A trigger? If only her grandmother hadn’t died.

Well, yes. He said it constantly to himself. If only Ruth, his wife, Ruth, Clare’s grandmother, hadn’t died.

And sometimes he even said—unreasonably and harshly: If only Clare hadn’t stolen his grief.

Cold gusts blew around the pathway. The canopy above them rattled and tinkled. He was in the coat he’d arrived in. This woman must be suffering, in just her white blouse and black cardigan. She must have thought, back in her office, that it would be somehow unseemly, under the solemn circumstances, to go through the petty business of fetching her coat and putting it on.

He had said—it was common decency—“It’s chilly out there. Aren’t you going to put on a coat?” He hadn’t thought this visit would involve such niceties.

But no. It was “no distance.” Or perhaps she’d thought that she should appear penitent. Though was it her fault? He hadn’t said it was anyone’s fault. He hadn’t come here to blame.

Though he hadn’t come here, either, to console. Poor woman, she must have been going through it.

A black cardigan, a black skirt. To offer a token touch of the funereal? A black skirt that hugged her hips. Was it for him to notice?

“Mrs. Gibbs?”

Another phone call.

“Yes. This is—Mrs. Gibbs speaking.”

He hadn’t known whether to call her “Mrs. Gibbs” or “Dr. Gibbs” or even, possibly, “Dean Gibbs.” She was, apparently, a dean.

“This is Mr. Phillips.” He might have said “Tom Phillips,” but didn’t. “I’m Clare Heywood’s grandfather. I mean, I was her grandfather.”

“Ah.”

He’d heard the tremor of exasperation.

Yes, he could well imagine the tough time of it this woman has been having. Not only imagine; he knew it, from Helen and Paul. Sarah Gibbs was their “liaison” with the university. Perhaps she’d thought that after three weeks she’d almost weathered it. Now here was an agitated grandfather.

He’d heard the exhaustion in her voice. But three weeks was nothing. How long did you—could you—give such a thing? He’d been told, many times, well-meaningly, that he’d “get used” to Ruth’s death, or, more subtly, that he’d “get used to not getting used to it.” Well, six months had passed and he hadn’t gotten used to anything. Six months was nothing.

And how did you ever get used to this?

“Mr. Phillips—please, would you accept my deepest condolences.”

A fair start. It had even been said with a sort of gentleness.

Then he said, “There’s something I’d like to discuss.” And he thought he’d heard an intake of breath.

Yes, she might have had enough “discussion.” Enough fielding, in its various forms, the relentless question “Why?” He’d had to steel himself to make this call—to get put through. Now he sensed a steeliness on her part. Perhaps she was really some horn-rimmed harridan.

“No, I don’t mean ‘discuss.’ There’s something I’d like to do.”

Less than a week later, on this gray day, he’d found himself in her office. His “request” had been granted. Could it be refused? A date had been agreed on. He’d taken a train. A taxi from the station. He’d been directed to the appropriate administrative block. He was still steeled, still prepared for some harridan. But—

She was beautiful. He hadn’t expected it. He hadn’t expected to be confronted with beauty. Yet he’d at once thought: Jesus Christ, she’s beautiful. Some inner voice that he thought he’d lost years ago had said it, even in such brazen language.

And he was at once bewildered. Doubly bewildered. He was bewildered anyway. It seemed that he’d entered long ago a permanent state of bewilderment. Life had become bewilderment.

She’d stood up, behind her desk.

“Mr. Phillips, I’m Sarah Gibbs.”

Forty-four? Forty-five? The same age as Helen, a little older. Might that have helped Helen in their “discussions”? Could anything have helped Helen? Or Paul?

Forty-five? Forty-six? And, probably, a mother too, perhaps with a daughter of her own, around Clare’s age. Why had he immediately thought: daughter? But, in any case, young and old enough to be his own daughter. And beautiful.

She came forward, extending a hand. A black cardigan over a white blouse. A black skirt. What did she make of his own choice: a suit and tie, visible beneath the unbuttoned coat that he seemed uneager to remove? A stern let’s-get-on-with-it look about him. And yet—could she see it?—he’d been stopped in his tracks.

“Please call me Sarah.”

Had he said, “I’m Tom”?

Bewilderment. The words Mrs. Gibbs or Dr. Gibbs, let alone Dean Gibbs, didn’t go with the word beautiful. If beautiful, in this context, was even a legitimate word. He hadn’t found any other woman beautiful since Ruth died. He hadn’t thought it possible, permissible. Now it was happening, now of all times.

“Please, Mr. Phillips, won’t you sit down?”

He hadn’t wanted to sit down. Sitting down led to “discussion,” to not getting on with it. But he sat, without taking off his coat. A compromise. She hadn’t said, after all, “Won’t you take off your coat?”

When she sat too, at her desk again, he noticed, inside the collar of her blouse, a single string of pearls. He felt a stab, an unwarranted but undeniable stab. She might have seen his eyes glisten. A present from a husband, for some special occasion. She belonged still to that world in which husbands gave presents to their wives, a world of pearl necklaces. The world he no longer inhabited.

Now she walked beside him, her hand sometimes seeking her throat, as if to coax from it unobtainable words, or to tell herself that, instead of a pearl necklace, she might at least have worn a scarf.

He’d declined, perhaps too briskly, the inevitable offer of a coffee or tea, but seen the flicker of relief in her face. No sitting around for five minutes, clinking cups. She, too, perhaps, wished to get on with it. Or get it over with.

The face had, yes, its signs of strain, but this didn’t stop it having its principal effect. He was actually afraid that if they lingered for any length of time, looking at each other across her desk, she must see in his own face the awkward fact that he was attracted to her.

Attractive. A better—safer—word than beautiful ? It was almost neutral. But it wasn’t the first word that had come into his head. And what did this—business—between them have to do with safety? It was too late for safety. Though she was apparently a dean, charged not with the academic needs of students but with their general welfare. Their safety. Hadn’t she failed, catastrophically?

But he hadn’t come here to blame. Though perhaps she thought he had—sitting there, in his coat, like some impatient inspector.

Did she find him frightening? While he found her beautiful.

The pearls had trembled as she spoke.

“You must realize, Mr. Phillips, that Clare’s room has now been cleared.”

It was good that she called it “Clare’s room,” but there was the little collision of “Clare” and “clear.” They were the same word. Had she noticed and regretted it?

And cleared was itself a strange expression. But, yes, he’d “realized.” He’d known from Helen and Paul. It was, anyway, a reasonable assumption. He hadn’t been expecting, after more than three weeks, a room that would be “just as she left it.” A room full of things. Full of Clare. That would have been unbearable.

“Everything that belonged to her has been—taken by her parents. It’s just, I’m afraid, a bare room. We are keeping it empty and locked as a—mark of respect.”

He’d thought, but not said: For how long? Long enough for this visit of his? How long would be appropriate? He’d thought: Poor students who had the rooms on either side, who shared the corridor. Poor student who, one day, whenever the period of respect was over, might get allocated the same room.

He said, “I understand. But even so.”

Meaning: Even so, I’d still like to go there.

Had she been thinking that at the last minute he’d reconsider? Was she worried that she might not get through this little exercise herself? Might he have to hold her hand?

Was she frightened of him?

“Well, then.” She got to her feet again, but paused, her fingertips pressing her desk. “If you’re sure.”

“Quite sure. It’s why I’m here.” He tried to smile.

She took from among the things on her desk a set of keys. But, for whatever self-punishing reason, disdained a coat.

And now they were walking along a covered but exposed pathway and she must be frozen, but he couldn’t bring himself to offer her his own coat. Part of him, in fact, longed to offer it, to be in circumstances where he might not only offer it, but take the opportunity to nestle it around her. But these were not those circumstances. He was shivering too, even in his coat. These were circumstances that, in any weather, might have caused shivers.

“No distance”? Hadn’t she learned the dimensions of her own university? They walked along pathways, between buildings and wintry lawns, across paved spaces that seemed to have been recently equipped with brightly colored, screwed-down metal benches and tables, though the paving itself, he noticed, was blackened and puddled. The buildings, too, which must once have been modern and “contemporary,” had streaks and stains on their brickwork.

And as they walked together, he was aware of their togetherness in a way that, though he’d imagined that there might be such a walk, he’d not foreseen he would peculiarly appreciate.

Attracted, attractive. The safer words? He was having feelings about her, and it was shocking, shaming, bewildering that he was having such feelings when engaged in such a purpose.

And when, anyway, for God’s sake, he was old.

He’d recognized it, accepted it. He was 68. He’d not recognized it when Ruth died. He’d been 67, Ruth 66. He’d felt then, even with gushes of anger: I’m too young for this, too young. Ruth had certainly been too young. But, after this other terrible thing, he’d become old.

Sixty-eight? That’s not old, they might say, not these days; it’s nothing. But he recognized it. There are things that age you.

He was an old man, even a ridiculous and grotesque old man, walking beside this woman young enough to be his daughter, and having feelings about her. He was in his suit and tie and coat, but he might as well have still been wearing the dressing gown he’d worn this morning. A permanent, flapping old man’s dressing gown, the February wind now and then revealing his bare, blue old man’s knees.

And around him were young people. Of course there were. It was a university. They flitted around like so many ghosts, using the paths, going in and out of buildings, crossing the paved spaces with the playground furniture. Some of them nodded, even smiled at Mrs. Gibbs, a little sheepishly, he thought. And what on earth did they make of him?

He was an old man among ghostly young people, and must look like a ghost to them. Or perhaps like a man who had seen a ghost. Or was going to see one.

They hardly spoke. It was a silencing walk. He felt the onus was on him to gallantly dispel the silence, but he lacked the means. What topic was appropriate? And there was no question of their batting between them the word that yet surely hung over them and that had hung over everything for more than three weeks: Why?

No one had the answer. Clare herself had left no explanation. No note. There was nothing she’d said to any friend—or family member—to be recalled, even with hindsight, as ominous.

Why? It started and at once stopped conversations. But it was the only word that mattered. He’d not pushed it forward in his dreadful conversations—if conversations was even the right word—with Helen and Paul. He wasn’t going to thrust at them a word for which, though they must have ceaselessly struggled to find it, they clearly had no answer.

Paul was now an experienced legal counsel, no doubt used to sharply getting to a point, but he was as beyond words as Helen. And as for “counsel.”

They walked. His heart was thumping at what lay ahead. At the same time his blood was tingling, outrageously, at something else. It was being warmed by this woman—who must be freezing—at his side.

Was it all a monstrous conflation? It was Clare who’d been beautiful, Clare who’d taken after Ruth and been beautiful and young and had so many other things going for her. But who’d deliberately and meticulously over a sufficient period of time stored up some pills and then killed herself in the room that he was about to be shown.

They turned, at last, into one of the residential blocks. This must be the one. They went up two flights of stairs. A corridor. The doors to rooms, perhaps seven or eight on either side. He had the dreamlike illusion that Mrs. Gibbs, with her set of keys, was taking him to his room, to where it would be his lot to be staying, some strange, uncategorizable guest. After she’d unlocked the door and shown him the room, she would hand him the key.

And now they were outside it. “Clare’s room.” It was just a door. There was no special sign, least of all an indelible Clare Heywood. Just a number: 16. Between 15 and 17. She unlocked the door and stepped back, to let him enter first.

A bare rectangular room, quite small. A few fittings. A folding flap of a desk. A window with a view, a pleasant-enough view of trees—now all bare too—and sloping lawns. Paths. Another of those paved spaces with the colorful apparatus. Her last view.

But it had happened, of course, at night.

A bed, also bare, just a mattress. A single bed. But he knew from his own direct, if ancient, experience, which he had no wish to invoke in detail, how these single rooms and single beds might become intimately shared.

He stood in the room. It was all impossibly cruel. It was like some neat, comfortable, yet punitive cell. Surely not a condemned one.

Why?

Mrs. Gibbs said, behind him, “Would you like, perhaps—some time to yourself? Would you like me to wait along the corridor?”

“No. It’s all right.”

He was glad of her hovering presence. And, even now, of the tingle. Did she feel it? Was it, conceivably, a mutual thing? He felt in any case that she, too, preferred not to be left alone—standing at the end of the corridor, clasping her arms around herself and wondering how long he might need.

While she stood at his shoulder, he scanned the room. Was there, in a corner, some clue, an overlooked clue, some hint that only a grandfather might discern? But it didn’t take long to take in everything—and nothing.

It was all he could do, all he could have done. It didn’t even look like “her,” or anyone’s, room. He’d never come here when she and all her things had been in it. He’d never visited, proudly, when she was a new university student, 18 years old, with her life before her. She’d been born—that Sunday-morning call had come—in the momentous year 2000. What did they think, those flitting ghosts, about their future? He, her grandfather, had been born in the not unresonant year 1950. And had outlived his granddaughter.

Would it have made any difference if he’d visited? Surely it would have been the last thing she’d have wanted, a grandfather turning up to embarrass her before her newfound friends. And in any case, her bereaved grandfather, with his smell of age and grief.

But he was here now, with his even stronger smell, the bare trees outside peering in at him like so many assembled witnesses.

After a while he turned and said, “Okay, that’s enough.”

Mrs. Gibbs was standing closer than he’d thought.

He said, “I’m glad I came.” A clumsy statement. But, truly, he was. Even if glad was a preposterous word.

She let him out, then relocked the door. It was as though he’d said, “No, I won’t take it, I won’t take this room.”

He thought that she might have been prepared for him to have some kind of convulsion, to weep. Prepared, even, to put an arm around him. But no, it hadn’t been needed. At least he’d spared her that, and sacrificed, for himself, the chance to receive from her some faltering, pitying—soft, womanly—embrace.

If Clare had been a ghost, haunting her room, what would she have thought to behold such a thing?

Around them again, as they walked back, flitted all those other ghosts. And as they walked back, they walked, once more, mostly in silence. But this time he said it. It seemed it would have been heartless not to. “It’s really freezing. Won’t you have my coat?” And—for whatever reason—she declined, with a little determined shake of her head. “It’s all right.” Though she’d clearly been trembling.

He thought, then, that she might burst into tears. That she might be the one, in her role of dean, of guardian, of faintly maternal protectress, to suddenly break down. And require comforting.

And again, as they walked, what small talk was there? Oh yes, I was at university myself once. It was where I met my wife …

In her office, as he made his final departure and they shook hands, he said once more, “I’m glad I came. Thank you, Mrs. Gibbs. Thank you very much for your trouble.” But he didn’t, even at this point, call her “Sarah” or give her hand some extra affectionate squeeze.

And the strange thing was that, even as she’d relocked that door, even as he’d offered her his coat, his extraordinary rush of feeling for her—his attraction, his perplexity before her beauty—began to fade. It seemed itself like some departing ghost.

Was she beautiful? Or had he in some unaccountable way gifted beauty upon her?

When he said goodbye, he said something else. He said that his daughter and son-in-law, Helen and Paul, Clare’s parents, didn’t know about this visit of his; he’d not mentioned it to them. And he asked Mrs. Gibbs if—were she to have any further dealings with Helen and Paul—she might not mention it either. He asked if they might keep this visit of his “between themselves.”

And that’s just what it had been—more than he’d supposed. Between themselves.

She had blinked a bit. Out of surprise, or out of a sense of complicity. Or she’d just blinked. And yes, when she’d blinked he’d thought that her dark-brown eyes were beautiful.

She said, “I won’t say anything.” But she didn’t ask why. She just said, “I understand.”

“I understand.” The words, too, were like a ghost. Nobody understood anything.

On his train back, he wondered if Mrs. Gibbs would remember him: the man, the grandfather—Mr. Phillips— who came to look at just an empty room. Or was she already forgetting him, putting him away, with relief perhaps, in some file for unclassifiable items?

Outside his window, the February sky darkened. The scudding fields and trees became obscure, until he could see nothing of them beyond his own reflection seemingly keeping him company in the dark.

This story appears in the September 2024 print edition.