‘This is true, Phoebe.’ It felt anachronistic, even counter-revolutionary – the notion that certain allowances should be made for men (of all people). ‘So you’re saying?’
‘Well. If I happen to find out you’ve spent the odd afternoon with a trusted ex-girlfriend…you might just be forgiven in the end. A deeply trusted ex-girlfriend. And a compulsively hygienic ex-girlfriend. Because if you ever give me a nasty surprise, Martin, then you won’t just be spurned, I promise you. You’ll be sued.’
He watched as her smile disappeared, leaving no trace on the lean lips.
‘Now you’ve said you want children.’
‘Yes I do, in principle. But I’m not in any rush.’
‘Then you’ll also be prospecting for wives. And, Mart, honestly I approve – because it sets a natural time limit. Let me know, immediately, if you think you’ve found one, and that’ll be that. With no hard feelings.’ Another smile. ‘In the meantime I issue this warning. If you ever, if you ever publicly compromise me with another female, then…Then, Martin, woe betide you. Do I make myself clear?’
He was used to strongminded eccentricity, or adamantine whimsicality, and none of this was altogether foreign to him – apart from the purdahs and the gambling. Still, the sense of an additional, an ulterior strangeness persisted, and was regularly topped up by her so-called friends. Barely worth describing, Phoebe’s friends were at least very few in number. There were three.
Comprising Raoul and Lars, who sometimes showed up for an hour in the late evening, two tall young men (a paunchy Austrian and a wiry Dane) with suntans and layered hair, whose talk was unswervingly footling and plutocentric (and eloquent, despite their waisted pinstripe suits, of truly boundless free time)…
Comprising Merry, who had a flat in one of the terraced houses further up the street. Perhaps ten years older than Phoebe, frizzy, flustered, ladylike in manner, slapdash in appearance (the offwhite tackle of her bra always peeping through the misbuttoned gaps of her blouse), this neighbourly visitor was Phoebe’s only associate of the gentler sex…
Martin asked Phoebe about Merry, Raoul, and Lars. Phoebe explained that they were people who had happened to attach themselves to her and then time passed, until it became a question of loyalty and habit. He acknowledged that this was how things often turned out (look at Robinson). But even so he thought that Phoebe’s friends were meaningless. They didn’t add up to anything.
By now he could tell when her episodes of lassitude were looming. She would sometimes go silent in the middle of a conversation, seeming not vacant but concentrated, and then both angered and fearful, as if listening to a voice within herself, a voice that sharply criticised or cruelly mocked…
The view of the elders
I said, ‘The only other girlfriend of mine you seriously fancied was Denise.’
Kingsley lifted his glass (Scotch and water) and said over the top of it, ‘What makes you think I fancied Denise?’
‘Oh nothing much. You went slightly intent whenever you talked about her. It wasn’t your Sex Life in Ancient Rome face, no. But your eyes widened. Or lengthened. Intently.’
‘Balls,’ he said.
‘I only mentioned it because it’s so rare. And now with Phoebe you’ve come out into the open. You freely admit as much.’
It was after dinner. My car was outside but I would be staying here this Saturday night. Not that long ago the Amises had moved house, from the northernmost fringe of London, and there were still stacks of books on the floor and half-empty tea chests…
‘I can see why you fancied Denise.’ Yes, because she looked like a gorgeously soft-hearted barmaid (very gentle with her hungover regulars). ‘But why d’you fancy Phoebe?’
‘You know, apart from just liking the look of her I’m not…She reminds me of an illustration I saw in a children’s book. A little fox dressed as a forest ranger.’
‘What was the little forest ranger wearing?’
‘Green skirt and green tunic,’ he said. ‘And brown shoes. Bob was very taken with Phoebe. Remember last time? Very taken. He even asks after her in his letters.’*11
‘So. Bob too.’ Nodding, and half to myself I said, in vindication, ‘There you are you see, it’s the business suit. I keep telling Hitch it’s the business suit.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘Sorry, Dad, I’ve been wondering. And you won’t like it, but it’s to do with your age and your work ethic. And I have that too. In weaker form, diluted by time.’
‘Get on with it.’
‘Well, there she is, Phoebe. A looker, and a probable goer, but also an earner. That means you and Bob can fancy her without feeling haunted by the poorhouse.’
Kingsley was wearing his inconvenienced expression, and was about to say something gruff – but then his wife entered the room…Things had got to the point where tension entered with her (a false stillness); on the other hand, tension was already there, waiting. That was what the two of them were doing these days: directing tension at one another. I got to my feet and said,
‘Ah. We were talking about Phoebe. You quite approve of her, don’t you Jane?’
She sat, and took up her sewing (another huge and heavy patchwork quilt – swirling squares of velvet and slanting trapezoids of silk and satin; all the beds in the house were bedizened in Jane’s patchwork quilts).
‘I, I admire Phoebe. All right, she’s undereducated, but then so was I. She’s a striver and she’s come a long way, and good for her.’
I could feel an impending proviso. Jane looked up frowning and said,
‘She’s not an orphan, is she?’
‘…No. No, she’s got parents. I’ve met them. No, she’s not an orphan.’
Thereafter the evening seemed
