Selected Stories

Margy lit a cigarette when she was alone with Francesca, and suggested a drink. She poured gin and Cinzano Bianco for both of them, saying she didn’t believe there was much wrong with Miss Martindale’s mother, and Francesca, bewildered, looked up from the dishes she was washing. Then, without a word, she left the kitchen and Margy heard her noisily reprimanding her sons, declaring that it was cruel and unfeeling to say people were dead who weren’t. Abruptly, the sound of the television ceased and there were footsteps on the stairs. Margy opened a packet of Mignons Morceaux.

Francesca and Margy could remember being together in a garden when they were two, meeting there for the first time, they afterwards presumed, Francesca smiling, Margy scowling. Later, during their schooldays, they had equally disliked a sarcastic teacher with gummy false teeth, and had considered the visiting mathematics man handsome, though neither of them cared for his subject. Later still Francesca became the confidante of Margy’s many love affairs, herself confiding from the calmer territory of marriage. Margy brought mild adventure into Francesca’s life, and Francesca recognized that Margy would never suffer the loneliness she feared herself, the vacuum she was certain there would be if her children had not been born. They telephoned one another almost every day, to chat inconsequentially or to break some news, it didn’t matter which. Their common ground was the friendship itself: they shared some tastes and some opinions, but only some.

When Philip – father of Jason and Ben – arrived in the house an hour later Francesca and Margy had moved to the sitting-room, taking with them the gin, the Cinzano Bianco, what remained of the Mignons Morceaux, and their glasses.

‘Hi, Philip,’ Margy greeted him, and watched while he kissed Francesca. He nodded at Margy.

‘Margy’s going to make us her paella,’ Francesca said, and Margy knew that when Philip turned away it was to hide a sigh. He didn’t like her paella. He didn’t like the herb salad she put together to go with it. He had never said so, being too polite for that, but Margy knew.

‘Oh, good,’ Philip said.

He hadn’t liked the whiff of cigarettes that greeted him when he opened the hall-door, nor the sound of voices that had come from the sitting-room. He didn’t like the crumpled-up Mignons Morceaux packet, the gin bottle and the vermouth bottle on his bureau, Margy’s lipstained cigarette-ends, the way Margy was lolling on the floor with her shoes off. Margy didn’t have to look to see if this small cluster of aversions registered in Philip’s tight features. She knew it didn’t; he didn’t let things show.

‘They’ve been outrageous,’ Francesca said, and began about Miss Martindale’s mother.

Margy looked at him then. Nothing moved in his lean face; he didn’t blink before he turned away to stand by the open french windows. Golf and gardening he gave as his hobbies in Who’s Who.

‘Outrageous?’ he repeated eventually, an inflection in his tone – unnoticed by Francesca – suggesting to Margy that he questioned the use of this word in whatever domestic sense it was being employed. He liked being in Who’s Who: it was a landmark in his life. One day he would be a High Court judge: everyone said that. One day he would be honoured with a title, and Francesca would be also because she was his wife.

‘I was really furious with them,’ Francesca said.

He didn’t know what all this was about, he couldn’t remember who Miss Martindale was because Francesca hadn’t said. Margy smiled at her friend’s husband, as if to indicate her understanding of his bewilderment, as if in sympathy. It would be the weekend before he discovered that his golf-clubs had been set in concrete.

‘Be cross with them,’ Francesca begged, ‘when you go up. Tell them it was a horrid thing to say about anyone.’

He nodded, his back half turned on her, still gazing into the garden.

‘Have a drink, Philip,’ Margy suggested because it was better usually when he had one, though not by much.

‘Yes,’ Philip said, but instead of going to pour himself something he walked out into the garden.

‘I’ve depressed him,’ Francesca commented almost at once. ‘He’s not in the house more than a couple of seconds and I’m nagging him about the boys.’