and poured himself another gin-and-tonic. He tried pacing up and down in the kitchen, but it was too narrow, so he sat down again.
“God,” he said, “poor Trigger. He looked terrible. How could he let himself be taken in like that?” He continued in a disjointed monologue in which Trigger was made to sound like the last of the Mohicans, noble and free, the last of the dinosaurs, destroyed by fate and lesser species, and the last of the dodos, too dumb to get away. Then he attacked the bride, accusing her of being predatory and malicious and of sucking poor Trigger into the domestic void (making me picture her as a vacuum-cleaner), and finally ground to a halt with several funereal predictions about his own solitary future. By solitary he meant without other single men.
I swallowed the last of my frozen peas. I had heard this speech twice before, or something like it, and I knew there was nothing I could say. If I agreed with him it would only intensify his depression, and if I disagreed he would suspect me of siding with the bride. The first time I had been cheerful and maxim-like, and had attempted consolation. “Well, it’s done now,” I had said, “and maybe it’ll turn out to be a good thing in the end. After all, it isn’t as though she’s robbing the cradle. Isn’t he twenty-six?”
“
So this time I said nothing, remarking to myself that it was a good thing Peter had got this speech over with early in the evening. I got up and dished him out some ice-cream, which he took as a sympathetic gesture, putting his arm round my waist and giving me a gloomy hug.
“God, Marian,” he said, “I don’t know what I’d do if you didn’t understand. Most women wouldn’t, but you’re so sensible.”
I leaned against him, stroking his hair while he ate his ice-cream.
We left the car in one of the usual places, on a side street behind the Park Plaza. As we started to walk along I put my hand through Peter’s arm and he smiled down at me abstractedly. I smiled back at him – I was glad he was out of the teeth-gritting mood he had been in while driving – and he brought his other hand over and placed it on top of mine. I was going to bring my other hand up and place it on top of his, but I thought if I did then mine would be on top and he’d have to take his arm out from underneath so he’d have another hand to put on top of the heap, like those games at recess. I squeezed his arm affectionately instead.
We reached the Park Plaza and Peter opened the plate-glass door for me as he always does. Peter is scrupulous about things like that; he opens car doors too. Sometimes I expect him to click his heels.
While we waited for the elevator I watched our double image in the floor-to-ceiling mirror by the elevator doors. Peter was wearing one of his more subdued costumes, a brownish-green summer suit whose cut emphasized the functional spareness of his body. All his accessories matched.
“I wonder if Len’s up there yet,” I said to him, keeping an eye on myself and talking to him in the mirror. I was thinking I was just about the right height for him.
The elevator came and Peter said “Roof, please,” to the white-gloved elevator girl, and we moved smoothly upwards. The Park Plaza is a hotel really, but they have a bar at the top, one of Peter’s favourite places for a quiet drink, which was why I had suggested it to Len. Being up that high gives you a sense of the vertical which is rare in the city. The room itself is well lit, not dark as a drain like many others, and it’s clean. No one ever seems to get offensively drunk there, and you can hear yourself talk: there’s no band or singer. The chairs are comfortable, the decor is reminiscent of the eighteenth century, and the bartenders all know Peter. Ainsley told me once that she had been there when someone threatened to commit suicide by jumping off the wall of the patio outside, but it may have been one of her stories.
We walked in; there weren’t many people, so I immediately spotted Len, sitting at one of the black-topped tables. We went over and I introduced Peter to him; they shook hands, Peter abruptly, Len affably. The waiter appeared promptly at our table and Peter ordered two more gin-and-tonics.
“Marian, it’s good to see you!” Len said, leaning across the corner of the table to kiss my cheek; a habit, I reflected, he must have picked up in England, as he never used to do it. He had put on a little weight.
“And how was England?” I asked him. I wanted him to talk and entertain Peter, who was looking grumpy.
“All right, I guess; crowded, though. Every time you turn around you bump into somebody from here. It’s getting so you might as well not go there at all, the place is so cluttered up with bloody tourists. I was sorry, though,” he said, turning to Peter, “that I had to leave; I had a good job going for me and some other good things too. But you’ve got to watch these women when they start pursuing you. They’re always after you to
Peter brightened perceptibly. “Marian tells me you’re in television,” he said.
“Yes,” Len said, examining the squarish nails of his disproportionately large hands; “I haven’t got anything at the moment but I ought to be able to pick up something here. They need people with my experience. News reports. I’d like to see a good commentary programme in this country, I mean a really good one, though god knows how much red tape you have to go through to get anything done around here.”
Peter relaxed; anyone interested in news reports, he was probably thinking, couldn’t be queer.
I felt a hand touch my shoulder, and looked around. A young girl I’d never seen before was standing there. I opened my mouth to ask her what she wanted, when Peter said, “Oh. It’s Ainsley. You didn’t tell me she was coming along.” I looked again: it
“Gosh, Marian,” she said in a breathless semi-whisper, “you didn’t tell me this was a
Len and Peter had risen. I introduced Ainsley to Len, much against my better judgement, and she sat down in the fourth chair. Peter’s face had a puzzled expression. He had met Ainsley before and hadn’t liked her, suspecting her of holding what he called “wishy-washy radical” views because she had favoured him with a theoretical speech about liberating the Id. Politically Peter is conservative. She had offended him too by calling one of his opinions “conventional,” and he had retaliated by calling one of hers “uncivilized.” Right now, I guessed, he could tell she was up to something but was unwilling to rock her boat until he knew what it was. He required evidence.
The waiter appeared and Len asked Ainsley what she would have. She hesitated, then said timidly, “Oh, could I have just a – just a glass of ginger ale?”
Len beamed at her. “I knew you had a new roommate, Marian,” he said, “but you didn’t tell me she was so young!”
“I’m sort of keeping an eye on her,” I said sourly, “for the folks back home.” I was furious with Ainsley. She had put me in a very awkward position. I could either give the game away by revealing she had been to college and was in fact several months older than me, or I could keep silent and participate in what amounted to a fraud. I knew perfectly well why she had come: Len was a potential candidate, and she had chosen to inspect him this way because she had sensed she’d have difficulty forcing me to introduce them otherwise.
The waiter returned with her ginger ale. I was amazed that he hadn’t asked for her birth certificate, but upon reflection I decided that any experienced waiter would assume that no girl who seemed so young would dare to walk into a bar dressed like that and order ginger ale unless she was in reality safely over-age. It’s the adolescents who overdress that they suspect, and Ainsley was not overdressed. She had dug out from somewhere a cotton summer creation I’d never seen before, a pink and light-blue gingham check on white with a ruffle around the neck. Her hair was tied behind her head with a pink bow and on one of her wrists she had a tinkly silver charm bracelet. Her makeup was understated, her eyes carefully but not noticeably shadowed to make them twice as large and round and blue, and she had sacrificed her long oval fingernails, biting them nearly to the quick so that they had a jagged schoolgirlish quality. I could see she was determined.
Len was talking to her, asking her questions, trying to draw her out. She sipped at her ginger ale, giving short, shy answers. She was evidently afraid of saying too much, aware of Peter as a threat. When Len asked her what she did, however, she could give a truthful answer. “I work at an electric toothbrush company,” she said, and blushed a warm and genuine-looking pink. I almost choked.
“Excuse me,” I said, “I’m just going out on the patio for a breath of air.” Actually I wanted to decide what I should do – surely it was unethical of me to let Len be deceived – and Ainsley must have sensed this, for she gave me a quick warning look as I got up.
Outside, I leaned my arms against the top of the wall, which came almost to my collarbone, and gazed out over the city. A moving line of lights ran straight in front of me till it hit and broke against and flowed around a blob of darkness, the park; and another line went at right angles, disappearing on both sides into the distance. What could I do? Was it any of my business? I knew that if I interfered I would be breaking an unspoken code, and that Ainsley
