She turns the pudding out into a Pyrex dish, ready to go into the oven in twenty minutes. She hears her husband in the hall, her own name called, the welcoming bark of Ka-Ki. ‘Let’s have a drink,’ she calls back. ‘Let’s take a drink to the garden.’
He is there, by the summer-house, when she arrives with the tray of sherry and gin and Cinzano. She has done her face again, although she knows it hardly needs it; she has tied a red chiffon scarf into her hair. ‘There now,’ she says. ‘Dinner’ll be a while.’ He’s back earlier than usual.
She pours gin and Cinzano for him, and sherry for herself. ‘Well, then?’ She smiles at him.
‘Oh, nothing much. MacMelanie’s being difficult.’
‘That man should be shot.’
‘I only wish we could find someone to do it.’
There is nothing else to report except that a student called Fosse has been found hallucinating by a park keeper. A pity, apparently, because the boy is bright and has always seemed to be mature and well- balanced.
‘Roy, I’ve something to tell you.’
‘Ah?’
He is a man who sprawls over chairs rather than sits in them. He has a sprawling walk, taking up more room than is his due on pavements; he sprawls in cinemas and buses, and over the wheel of his car. His grey hair, of which there is a lot, can never acquire a combed look even though he combs it regularly and in the normal way. His spectacles, thickly rimmed and large, move about on his reddish face and often, in fact, fall off. His suits become tousled as soon as he puts them on, gaps appearing, flesh revealed. The one he wears now is of dark brown corduroy, the suit he likes best. A spotted blue handkerchief cascades out of an upper pocket, matching a loose bow tie.
‘Sharon Tamm was here,’ Henrietta says.
‘Ah.’
She watches while he gulps his gin and vermouth. His eyes behind the pebbly glass of his spectacles are without expression. His mind does not appear to be associated with what she is saying. She wonders if he is thinking that he is not a success in the department, that he should have left the university years ago. She knows he often thinks that when Mac-Melanie has been troublesome.
‘Now, Roy, you have to listen.’
‘Well then, I’m listening.’
‘It’s embarrassing,’ she warns.
‘What is?’
‘This Sharon Tamm thing.’
‘She’s really pulled herself together, you know. She’s very bright.
‘She has developed a fantasy about you.’
He says nothing, as if he has not heard, or has heard and not understood.
‘She imagines she’s in love with you.’
He drinks a mouthful of his drink, and then another. He reaches out to the tray on the table between them and pours himself some more, mostly gin, she notices. He doesn’t gesture towards her sherry. He doesn’t say anything.
‘It was such an awkward conversation.’
All she wants is that it should be known that the girl arrived and said what she did say, that there should be no secret between them about so absurd a matter.
‘I had to tell you, Roy. I couldn’t not.’
He drinks again, still gulping at the liquid rather than sipping. He is perturbed: knowing him so well she can see that, and she wonders how exactly it is that MacMelanie has been a nuisance again, or if he is depressed because of the boy, Fosse. His eyes have changed behind the glass of his spectacles, something clouds his expression. He is trying not to frown, an effort she is familiar with, a sign of emotion in him. The vein that comes and goes in his forehead will soon appear.
‘Roy.’
‘I’m sorry Sharon came.’
Attempting to lighten the atmosphere, she laughs slightly. ‘She should wear a bra, you know, for a start.’
She pours herself more sherry since he does not intend to. It didn’t work, saying the girl should wear a bra: her voice sounded silly. She has a poor head for alcohol of any kind.
‘She said you can’t hurt people.’
He pulls the spotted handkerchief out of his pocket and wipes sweat from his chin with it. He runs his tongue over his lips. Vaguely, he shakes his head, as if denying that he can’t hurt people, but she knows the gesture doesn’t mean that. He is upset by what has happened, as she herself has been. He is thinking, as she did, that Sharon Tamm was once taken under their wing. He brought her back with him one evening, encouraging her, as a stray dog might be encouraged into the warmth. Other students, too, have been like daughters or sons to them and have remained their friends, a surrogate family. It was painful when Sharon Tamm left them for the Orange People.
‘Of course I know,’ Henrietta says, ‘that was something we didn’t understand.’
Vaguely he offers her more sherry, not noticing that she has had some. He pours more of his mixture for
