drifting under one eye. ‘Rose, I’m going to collapse if I don’t get home.’ Then she realized to whom I was talking. ‘You,’ she uttered, in thrilling tones. ‘What are you doing here?’
Out of the corner of my eye, I spotted Sam alongside Jilly, talking to a final guest. I gestured frantically.
Ianthe was enjoying her opportunity to run up her flag and to display her colours on the mast. ‘You should be ashamed.’
Under the onslaught, Minty exuded contempt and defiance, but she had turned even paler and I took pity. ‘Mum, don’t.’ I pulled Ianthe to one side. ‘No scenes. Look, Sam’s here. He’s going to put you into a taxi, aren’t you, Sam?’
Ianthe kissed me crossly. ‘I know that it’s not permitted, these days, to say what you think when your husband leaves you for another woman. You may feel that you must be all woolly and forgiving, but
Sam stepped into the breach and bore her away. For the merest fraction of a second, Minty and I exchanged a look. ‘See what I mean?’ she murmured, and I read disappointment, regret and a new, more savage element to her humour.
‘You’d better go, Minty.’
‘I want to say something, Rose.’ She straightened up wearily on those impossible heels. ‘I owe it to you.’
I considered walking away but she gave the short, breathy laugh I knew so well and, I suppose, habit and curiosity triumphed. ‘What?’
‘It isn’t plain sailing. Not at all.’
In the end, things were funny rather than sad. I put my hand on my hip. ‘Any more thoughts of the floozy to the discarded middle-aged wife?’
‘None,’ she admitted, ‘and there’s the tragedy’ There was a pause. ‘I’m sorry, Rose, I hope I didn’t spoil it for you.’
I considered, and the image of the Madonna raising her too-pink hands over the terror and waste flashed through my mind. ‘No,’ I said. ‘You didn’t spoil it.’
The dark eyes widened, softened, said – I think-‘Thank you.’
I bent down to put on my shoes, and when I straightened up, Minty had drifted away. Yet the irony had struck home. In that curious, careless way life has of tossing in coincidences and convergences, it was apparent that Minty and I shared more than divided us.
‘And there it is. The story of the floozy and the wronged wife… and the surprising son-in-law,’ I said to Charles Madder, after I had described the events of the wedding party. ‘How is… what the paper called your mistress, by the way?’
Charles had surprised me by ringing me up and suggesting a drink. It was not often that one had a chance to make new friends, he pointed out. Certainly not in my position. Why not? I thought, and we were now settled in the House of Commons bar with two bowls of peanuts through which Charles was steadily working.
‘My mistress? The one with the exotic sexual tastes? You wouldn’t believe how far from the truth that was. It was Flora’s doing, of course. Her vile lies. Kate is as normal as anyone and her life has been hell ever since the article.’ Charles looked both defeated and baffled. ‘We’ll probably get married, but it’s changed. Exposure to the white heat of publicity that depicts the reverse of what you are does things to a person.’
‘I’m sorry about Kate.’
He stuck a cigarette in his mouth and lit it. ‘It’s nice to talk to someone who means what they say. Most people…’ he glanced round the smoke-wreathed bar ‘… don’t mean a word they say. How do I know? Because I used to be the same. So it’s nice to hear a genuine voice.’
‘Thank you.’
Charles insisted I had a second drink and we made easy conversation as if we had known each other for a long time.
When I got home to Lakey Street, pleasantly warmed by the wine and the prospect of a new friendship, there was a message on the answerphone. ‘I’m back in the country,’ said Hal’s voice. ‘When can I see you?’
‘Hey,’ he said, when I phoned him, ‘I have a window, as the publicist would put it. Can we meet for a meal, or something?’
There was no reason not to see Hal and more than one reason to see him. We agreed he would come over for supper, and I swooped into the old routines of putting together a meal and laying the table. The house was filled with flowers from Poppy’s party, and I spent time pulling out dying roses and refilling vases. He caught me with my hands full of spent blooms.
‘Hi,’ said Hal, and proffered a huge bunch of… roses. ‘Bull’s eye, I see,’ he said drily.
In the kitchen, he made me put down the flowers so that he could look at me properly. ‘I didn’t get a chance to study you at that dinner, so do you mind if I do so now?’
I did a bit of my own scrutiny back. I wanted to catalogue the changes and to pinpoint the exact shades of disparity between my idea of him and the man who stood so solidly in my kitchen.
‘It’s very interesting,’ said Hal. ‘You haven’t turned out as I expected.’
‘Oh, yes?’
‘You were quite shy in the old days. I thought you might grow into a quiet person, an academic perhaps, someone who preferred the country. You’re much smarter and more metropolitan than I pictured you would be.’
So, the seven-year brain-cycle theory did hold water. ‘In that case, I’ve changed more than you. You look much the same.’ But Hal seemed indifferent as to whether he had changed or not, which was perfectly in character as he had never been much interested in poking around in the psyche. I gave him a glass of wine. ‘How was the book tour?’
‘Fine, if you like that kind of thing. It went on and on. But I’ve trained myself to do it gracefully. Why not? I want people to read my books and I’m grateful when they do.’ He shot me a look. ‘I know what you might say’
‘And what might I say?’
‘That’s a new one. In the past, I never did what anyone wanted.’ I found myself grinning, for that was exactly what I had been thinking. He continued, ‘And since I was over there, I took the chance to go and visit the relations, which only confirmed that I’m neither fish nor fowl, neither an American any more, nor British. It’s a bit of an uneasy place to be. But exile is always good for copy’
There was a silence in which I discovered that sharing a past with someone is deceptive. You think you know everything important about them and, deep down, you do, for the strands of a past history are thick and knotty with issues that require airing and tying up properly. Yet when it came to the give and take of conversation, the little negotiations around the gaps that would initiate this process, I found I did not know enough. ‘Where
He grinned. ‘With supper? I’m hungry’
So was I.
By mutual consent, we discussed issues that required no more than the exchange of information. We talked about Hal’s journeys, his future projects, the olive farm in Umbria. ‘Nothing special, as I told you,’ he said. ‘Except it’s very special because the village has allowed me to slip into their lives. There are times when I almost feel I’m not a stranger, and you can’t ask for more than that.’
‘So you’re putting down roots?’
‘I suppose so. I’m back on my ecological path. There’s a battle going on between traditional methods and the new intensive practices, and I want to be there.’
‘Do you speak Italian?’
‘I’ve learnt the dialect.’
Over coffee, he asked about my interests and I told him of my passion for the garden, which he had initiated, about my career and its temporary suspension and the new job. But my sacking had yielded pluses, I was astonished to find myself admitting. ‘I didn’t realize I was in a straitjacket until it wasn’t there.’
Hal lounged back in his chair. ‘It’s an ill wind,’ he said comfortably. ‘There must be other things you want to do.’
‘Yes, indeed, but I’ve not had time to think about them.’
‘Now you have.’
‘The other shock is to discover how quickly I’ve forgotten about the actual process of being at work. The
