In fact, it had been more than that. Sitting in the restaurant with people she liked, she’d thought it was the nicest thing that had ever happened to her on her birthday. It was absurd because none of them could afford it. It was absurd to go to the Ritz for a birthday treat: martinis in the Rivoli Bar because Malcolm said it was the thing, the gilt chairs and the ferns. But the absurdity hadn’t mattered because in those days nothing much did. It was fun, they enjoyed being together, they had a lot to be happy about. Malcolm might yet play rugby for England. Gavin was about to make his breakthrough into films. Sue was pretty, and Polly that night felt beautiful. They had sat there carelessly laughing, while deferential waiters simulated the gaiety of their mood. They had drunk champagne because Malcolm said they must.
With Malcolm still holding her hand, she crossed the spacious hall of Number Four Sandiway Crescent. People were beginning to leave. Malcolm released his hold of her in order to bid them goodbye.
She stood in the doorway of the sitting-room watching Gavin and Sue dancing. She lifted her brandy glass to her lips and drank from it calmly. Her oldest friend was attempting to seduce her husband, and for the first time in her life she disliked her. Had they still been at the Misses Hamilton’s nursery school she would have run at her and hit her with her fists. Had they still been in Maida Vale or on holiday on the Italian Adriatic she would have shouted and made a fuss. Had they been laughing in the Ritz she’d have got up and walked out.
They saw her standing there, both of them almost in the same moment. Sue smiled at her and called across the coffee-coloured sitting-room, as though nothing untoward were happening, ‘D’you think we’ve fallen, Polly?’ Her voice was full of laughter, just like it had been that night. Her eyes still had their party gleam, which probably had been there too.
‘Let’s dance, Poll,’ Malcolm said, putting his arms around her waist from behind.
It made it worse when he did that because she knew by the way he touched her that she was wrong: he didn’t realize. He probably thought she’d enjoyed hearing all that stuff about Philip Mulally hanging about after prostitutes and Olive Gramsmith being a slapparat, whatever a slapparat was.
She finished the brandy in her glass and moved with him on to the parquet. What had happened was that the Ryders had had a conversation about all this. They’d said to one another that this was how they wished – since it was the first time – to make a sexual swap. Polly and Gavin were to be of assistance to their friends because a woman in Parker, Hille and Harper had wanted Malcolm to get a divorce and because there’d been other relationships. Malcolm and Sue were approaching all that side of things in a different way now, following the fashion in the outer suburb since the fashion worked wonders with wilting marriages.
‘Estrella babysitting, is she?’ Malcolm asked. ‘All right if you’re late, is she? You’re not going to buzz off, Poll?’
‘Estrella couldn’t come. We had to get a girl from Problem.’
He suggested, as though the arrangement were a natural one and had been practised before, that he should drive her home when she wanted to go. He’d drive the babysitter from Problem home also. ‘Old Gavin won’t want to go,’ he pronounced, trying to make it all sound like part of his duties as host. To Polly it sounded preposterous, but she didn’t say so. She just smiled as she danced with him.
They’d made these plans quite soberly presumably, over breakfast or when there was nothing to watch on television, or in bed at night. They’d discussed the game that people played with car-keys or playing cards, or by drawing lots in other ways. They’d agreed that neither of them cared for the idea of taking a chance. ‘Different,’ Malcolm had probably quite casually said, ‘if we got the Dillards.’ Sue wouldn’t have said anything then. She might have laughed, or got up to make tea if they were watching the television, or turned over and gone to sleep. On some other occasion she might have drifted the conversation towards the subject again and Malcolm would have known that she was interested. They would then have worked out a way of interesting their oldest friends. Dancing with Malcolm, Polly watched while Gavin’s mouth descended to touch the top of Sue’s head. He and Sue were hardly moving on the dance-floor.
‘Well, that’s fixed up then,’ Malcolm said. He didn’t want to dance any more. He wanted to know that it was fixed up, that he could return to his party for an hour or so, with something to look forward to. He would drive her home and Gavin would remain. At half past one or two, when the men threw their car-keys on to the carpet and the blindfolded women each picked one out, Gavin and Sue would simply watch, not taking part. And when everyone went away Gavin and Sue would be alone with all the mess and the empty glasses. And she would be alone with Malcolm.
Polly smiled at him again, hoping he’d take the smile to mean that everything was fixed, because she didn’t want to go on dancing with him. If one of them had said, that night in the Ritz, that for a couple of hours after dinner they should change partners there’d have been a most unpleasant silence.
Malcolm patted her possessively on the hip. He squeezed her forearm and went away, murmuring that people might be short of drink. A man whom she didn’t know, excessively drunk, took her over, informing her that he loved her. As she swayed around the room with him, she wanted to say to Sue and Malcolm and Gavin that yes, they had fallen. Of course Malcolm hadn’t done his best to combat his blubberiness, of course he didn’t make efforts. Malcolm was awful, and Sue was treacherous. When people asked Gavin if he made films why didn’t he ever reply that the films he made were television commercials? She must have fallen herself, for it was clearly in the nature of things, but she couldn’t see how.
‘It’s time we went home, Sue,’ Gavin said.
‘Of course it isn’t, Gavin.’
‘Polly –’
‘You’re nice, Gavin.’
He shook his head. He whispered to her, explaining that Polly wouldn’t ever be a party to what was being suggested. He said that perhaps they could meet some time, for a drink or for lunch. He would like to, he said; he wanted to.
She smiled. That night in the Ritz, she murmured, she hadn’t wanted to be a blooming angel. ‘I wanted you,’ she murmured.
‘That isn’t true.’ He said it harshly. He pushed her away from him, wrenching himself free of her arms. It shocked him that she had gone so far, spoiling the past when there wasn’t any need to. ‘You shouldn’t have said that, Sue.’
‘You’re sentimental.’
He looked around for Polly and saw her dancing with a man who could hardly stand up. Some of the lights in the room had been switched off and the volume of the tape-recorder had been turned down. Simon and Garfunkel
