‘I’ll absolutely tell you this,’ Edwin said, ‘I’m not attending this thing.’
‘But darling –’
‘Oh, don’t be bloody silly, Deborah.’
Edwin’s mother had called Deborah ‘a pretty little thing’, implying for those who cared to be perceptive a certain reservation. She’d been more direct with Edwin himself, in a private conversation they’d had after Edwin had said he and Deborah wanted to get married. ‘Remember, dear,’ was how Mrs Chalm had put it then, ‘she’s not always going to be a pretty little thing. This really isn’t a very sensible marriage, Edwin.’ Mrs Chalm was known to be a woman who didn’t go in for cant when dealing with the lives of the children she had borne and brought up; she made no bones about it and often said so. Her husband, on the other hand, kept out of things.
Yet in the end Edwin and Deborah had married, one Tuesday afternoon in December, and Mrs Chalm resolved to make the best of it. She advised Deborah about this and that, she gave her potted plants for 23 The Zodiac, and in fact was kind. If Deborah had known about her mother-in-law’s doubts she’d have been surprised.
‘But we’ve always done it, Edwin. All of us.’
‘All of who, for heaven’s sake?’
‘Well, Angela for one. And Holly and Jeremy of course.’
‘And Peter. And Enid and Pansy and Harriet.’
‘You’ve never told me a word about this, Deborah.’
‘I’m really sure I have.’
The sitting-room where this argument took place had a single huge window with a distant view of Wimbledon Common. The walls were covered with plum-coloured hessian, the floor with a plum-coloured carpet. The Chalms were still acquiring furniture: what there was, reflecting the style of The Zodiac’s architecture, was in bent steel and glass. There was a single picture, of a field of thistles, revealed to be a photograph on closer examination. Bottles of alcohol stood on a glass-topped table, their colourful labels cheering that corner up. Had the Chalms lived in a Victorian flat, or a cottage in a mews, their sitting-room would have been different, fussier and more ornate, dictated by the architectural environment. Their choice of decor and furniture was the choice of newlyweds who hadn’t yet discovered a confidence of their own.
‘You mean you all sit round with your teddies,’ Edwin said, ‘having a picnic? And you’ll still be doing that at eighty?’
‘What d’you mean, eighty?’
‘When you’re eighty years of age, for God’s sake. You’re trying to tell me you’ll still be going to this garden when you’re stumbling about and hard of hearing, a gang of O.A.P.s squatting out on the grass with teddy- bears?’
‘I didn’t say anything about when we’re old.’
‘You said it’s a tradition, for God’s sake.’
He poured some whisky into a glass and added a squirt of soda from a Sparklets syphon. Normally he would have poured a gin and dry vermouth for his wife, but this evening he felt too cross to bother. He hadn’t had the easiest of days. There’d been an error in the office about the B.A.T. shares a client had wished to buy, and he hadn’t managed to have any lunch because as soon as the B.A.T. thing was sorted out a crisis had blown up over sugar speculation. It was almost eight o’clock when he’d got back to The Zodiac and instead of preparing a meal Deborah had been on the telephone to her friend Angela, talking about teddy-bears.
Edwin was an agile young man with shortish black hair and a face that had a very slight look of an alligator about it. He was vigorous and athletic, sound on the tennis court, fond of squash and recently of golf. His mother had once stated that Edwin could not bear to lose and would go to ruthless lengths to ensure that he never did. She had even remarked to her husband that she hoped this quality would not one day cause trouble, but her husband replied it was probably just what a stockbroker needed. Mrs Chalm had been thinking more of personal relationships, where losing couldn’t be avoided. It was that she’d had on her mind when she’d had doubts about the marriage, for the doubts were not there simply because Deborah was a pretty little thing: it was the conjunction Mrs Chalm was alarmed about.
‘I didn’t happen to get any lunch,’ Edwin snappishly said now. ‘I’ve had a long unpleasant day and when I get back here –’
‘I’m sorry, dear.’
Deborah immediately rose from among the plum-coloured cushions of the sofa and went to the kitchen, where she took two pork chops from a Marks and Spencer’s carrier-bag and placed them under the grill of the electric cooker. She took a packet of frozen broccoli spears from the carrier-bag as well, and two Marks and Spencer’s trifles. While typing letters that afternoon she’d planned to have fried noodles with the chops and broccoli spears, just for a change. A week ago they’d had fried noodles in the new Mexican place they’d found and Edwin said they were lovely. Deborah had kicked off her shoes as soon as she’d come into the flat and hadn’t put them on since. She was wearing a dress with scarlet petunias on it. Dark-haired, with a heart-shaped face and blue eyes that occasionally acquired a bewildered look, she seemed several years younger than twenty-six, more like eighteen.
She put on water to boil for the broccoli spears even though the chops would not be ready for some time. She prepared a saucepan of oil for the noodles, hoping that this was the way to go about frying them. She couldn’t understand why Edwin was making such a fuss just because Angela had telephoned, and put it down to his not having managed to get any lunch.
In the sitting-room Edwin stood by the huge window, surveying the tops of trees and, in the distance, Wimbledon Common. She must have been on the phone to Angela for an hour and a half, probably longer. He’d tried to ring himself to say he’d be late but each time the line had been engaged. He searched his mind carefully, going back through the three years he’d known Deborah, but no reference to a teddy-bears’ picnic came to him. He’d said very positively that she had never mentioned it, but he’d said that in anger, just to make his point: reviewing their many conversations now, he saw he had been right and felt triumphant. Of course he’d have remembered such a thing, any man would.
Far down below, a car turned into the wide courtyard of The Zodiac, a Rover it looked like, a discreet shade of green. It wouldn’t be all that long before they had a Rover themselves, even allowing for the fact that the children
