two of them together, or didn't you know that? I tell her the same sort of thing all the time. We don't go on swapping translations of epigrams by Martial hour after hour.'
'No of course you don't, I quite see,' said Jake mildly, as opposed to saying harshly that that would be all right if the story didn't take fifty times as long as it was supposed to be interesting for.
Brenda's expression softened in response but a moment later it had hardened again. 'And the way you treat poor old Geoffrey, as if he's off his head or something.'
'I think he is a bit off his head, always has been as long as I've known him. Look at those bloody silly clothes he—'
'That's no excuse for treating him like that. You should have seen the way you were looking at him.'
'When?'
''When?' Whenever he said anything or was getting ready to say anything, when he said he'd like some wine... And what was all that about the wine in the kitchen? What were you up to?'
'Nothing, just opening it. The other bottle was....'
'No, you were up to something but I know it's no use going on about it. When he said something about Mexico and when he said he was absent-minded, Allie saw the way you were looking at him, and then when I asked them to stay and after about five minutes you said what a good idea as if it was your own funeral. You should have heard yourself.'
She paused. Jake looked up at his wife. Her breasts were about as large as Curnow's receptionist's but her hips were large too. And, partly concealed by the loose-fitting cardigan, one of her favourite forms of dress over the last couple of years, her waist, her thighs and her upper arms were also large and her paunch was fairly large. But her face, as he had recently noticed from a photograph, had hardly changed in ten years: it was still the face of a woman anxious not to miss anything good or happy that might come her way in the future. That anxiety in it had been the second thing he had observed about her, after her eyes. She turned their glance on him now. He reached out his hand and she took it; he considered getting up and putting his arms round her but somehow decided not to. Without hostility she soon withdrew her hand.
'I'm sorry,' he said. 'I'll try to do better next time.' Of course he meant do and nothing more: how could anyone change his attitude to a pair like the Mabbotts? But next time was going to have to include next time they came up in conversation as well as in person, and that meant fewer of those jocular little sallies about them which had so often cheered up his half of the breakfast or lunch table. A few moments earlier he had thought of telling Brenda that in fact the idea of those two having noticed anything in the least objectionable was a load of rubbish and that she was cross with him for what she knew he felt about them, not for how he had behaved to them, but that too he decided against.
She had moved to the fireplace, he now saw, and was carefully picking up the pieces of china. 'How did it go with the doctor, darling? I should have asked you before.'
'That's all right. Oh, he .... asked me the sort of questions one might have expected and said he couldn't do anything and fixed up an appointment for me with some fellow who might be able to do something.'
'When? I mean when's the appointment?'
'Tuesday. Right after Easter.'
'Good,' said Brenda, going back to the tea tray. 'Anybody interesting at the club?'
The dub was a long way from St James's in more than the geographical sense and existed for the benefit of unprosperous middle-aged and elderly men of professional standing. In order to survive it had recently had to sell half of itself, of its premises that is, to a man who had constructed a massage parlour there. 'Just the usual crowd,' said Jake, accurately enough.
'I see. Ooh, the Thomsons have asked us round for drinks one evening next week,' she said, mentioning one of the comparatively few couples in Orris Park who didn't go on about their cars or their children the whole time. 'I've put it in the diary.'
'Well done.'
'You know, we ought to give a party some time. We can't go on just taking other people's hospitality.'
'I quite agree, but it's so bloody expensive. Everybody drinks Scotch or vodka these days.'
'They can't do much about it if you just offer them wine.'
'I suppose not.'
'I was thinking.' Brenda stood with the tray held in front of her stomach. 'I thought we might give that new Greek place a try.'
'Tonight?'
'I just thought....'
'I don't really like Greek food. I always think Greek food is bad Turkish food and Turkish food isn't up to much.'
'What about Sandro's? We haven't been there for ages.'
'They charge the earth and they never seem to change their menu. Isn't there anything in the house?'
'Only the rest of that chicken.'
'Sounds fine. You could fix up a salad, couldn't you?'
'I suppose so..... Then we could go to a film.'
'There's nothing very marvellous on, I looked at the 'Standard' yesterday. Oh, apart from that thing about Moloch turning up in the crypt of a San Francisco church and having children fed to him alive, 'The Immolation,' that's it, I wouldn't mind seeing that.'
