“Thank you, my lord.” She hadn’t believed any of my twaddle, though things were going too well for me to care.
“I hope the meal will be worthy of you,” I said, feeling daft for having babbled such stuff. “I don’t believe you mentioned your name at tea.”
“It’s like being on the Orient Express, not exchanging names, though if you must know, since you’re inviting me to dinner, my name is Sophie.”
“We’ll have something to drink. Any objection to champagne?”
She laughed, as we were shown to the table. “Try me.”
The waiter was friendly after I placed my order. “Fact is,” I told her, “I’ve had almost no sleep for three nights, which is why I was a little late just now. I had so many affairs to put in order to do with my estate it’s a wonder I got away at all.”
She flamed a cigarette from a small gold lighter, and spread her napkin as if to catch the ash. “I can always ask direct questions on a train, can’t I?”
“Oh, right,” I laughed, “and get lies for answers.”
She leaned forward for almost a whisper. “As long as the lies are interesting.”
Here was a woman I could deal with. “Ask all you like.”
“Are you married?”
“Was. I’m free and detached now, the only state to be in, whether or not it’s painful, as it sometimes is. The ideal is to be yourself, and that’s impossible from the moment you’re married. Only on your own can your experiences have full meaning. I recommend it to all my friends, so lose a few who could never have been my friends.”
If she was wanting to know from some purpose or other, which was it? “You must have loved your wife,” she said. “You married her, after all.”
“Granted.” I fished up more of Blaskin’s droolings. “But we never live for life with those we fall in love with. When you’re in love everything relates to the beloved, and that’s where boredom kicks in. She’s in front of your eyes all the time.”
A slight tremble of her shapely lips was not unnoticed: “How did we get into this?”
“Your question started it. I knew a man who lightheartedly asked his wife whether or not she had ever been unfaithful. He was convinced she’d been as loyal as a turnip all their married life, till she answered, feeling it was beneath her dignity to tell a lie, that as a matter of fact she was having an affair at the moment. He was so stunned he poleaxed her. Killed her. He’s still in jail.”
The other diners turned at her laughter. “No?”
“It’s as true as I sit here,” I said. “It was in all the newspapers as well.”
She looked serious, which I didn’t care for, though she smiled when the champagne came. “I knew a man and wife,” I went on, “who got divorced after forty years together. A few months later they died of cancer — both of them. Everybody’s different. Some can take it, some can’t. Love’s often too much for the heart to bear, but when love isn’t there the heart’s arteries get clogged up, or it starts free-wheeling, which can lead to disaster.”
Make me stop, I told myself. What am I running on like this for? But I saw she liked it. “It’s a mistake to live with those you love, because those you live with soon stop loving.” Trying to detach her from her husband, we clicked glasses. “On the other hand there’s no more disturbing sensation than feeling you’re in love, and having no one around to love, a state I’ve been in this last day or two.”
No laughter now, she forked into the first course, three little tents of something or other in the middle of our plates. “I think you might be a dangerous man to know,” she said.
I was making progress. “I think things out. Why be alive and not do that?”
“I seem to have lived all my life sleepwalking.”
“Most people do. It’s easier, so who can blame them. I’m sometimes filled with envy at their deadness.”
She was no fooclass="underline" “You talk as if you’ve been married twenty times.”
“Only twice.”
“You certainly wouldn’t envy me.”
I refilled her glass almost to fizzling over. “‘Beaded bubbles winking at the brim.’ Keats, if I’m not mistaken.” I blessed Frances, who occasionally read aloud for our entertainment.
“I went to a good school as well,” she said.
“Why wouldn’t I envy you?” I asked. If I couldn’t get to know all about her it wouldn’t be the fault of the champagne, a good half already gone.
“I’m not sure I can explain.” Her touch of despair was promising. “On the face of it I’ve had all I wanted out of life, but it’s never seemed good enough. In a year or two I’ll be forty.”
“A perfect age, though you don’t look a day over twenty-five. I hope you don’t think I’m boasting when I say my judgement is good on that sort of thing.”
“Well, I must tell you I don’t feel twenty-five. I’m not sure I’ll ever know what life is all about, what’s more.”
“Who does? Or can?” I said, in too deep to get out. “The best way is to live and not care what it’s all about, then one day, bingo, it all becomes clear. That’s what I’m banking on. And if it never does, at least you’ve had a worry-free time. Cheers!”
Her features lit up, then went down to about forty watts. “Things haven’t been good on the home front lately. Yesterday I told my husband I was leaving him, though I suppose I’ll stay in Italy till I’ve cooled off, before going back. It won’t be the first time.”
She pushed most of the fish course aside, and swigged the last of the champagne, her throat moving prettily. I ordered a bottle of red, hoping to get more than a look in at the drink. “There was hardly a moment when I didn’t want to get out of my marriage,” she said. “The other week I looked into the mirror and thought: ‘There but for the death of me go I,’ so I got into the car and lit off. Nobody wants to be a prisoner for life.”
“When you hold someone captive you become a captive yourself.” The hooter sounded, as if the train wanted to remind us of where we were. “Ask any prison warder about that.”
She sighed. “It’s easier for a man to get out of a marriage. I suppose a woman who falls in love with a man deserves all that happens to her.”
“Not necessarily.” I had nothing to quip back with, as the red came and the main course was put down. “Drink up. We’re all pals at the palindrome.”
“You’re a tonic,” she said. “I haven’t been so taken out of myself in months.” We ate in silence, till she asked: “Tell me another story.”
After a good swallow of wine I cobbled one together. “I knew a man — married — who had a girlfriend called Paula. He dialled her one day from a call box, and in his hurry tapped his home number by mistake, the worst kind of Freudian slip. He didn’t realise. Or his mind played him a vicious trick. His girlfriend Paula wasn’t in, which didn’t surprise him, knowing she listened to the messages on getting home in the evening. While what he thought was his girlfriend’s ansaphone was saying its piece he held the phone to his thigh to light a cigarette, and only heard the bleep telling him to go ahead after his wife’s ansaphone voice was finished. Then he spoke into what he thought was Paula’s receiving box. Still with me?”
“I certainly am. Can’t wait. I see what’s coming though.”
“Oh no you don’t. ‘Hello, Paula, darling, this is Denis,’ he said. ‘Don’t forget our lunch date on Friday. I’m calling to say I couldn’t get a table at the Trout, but they fixed us up at the Rainbow. So be there at one o’clock. Love you to bits. Can’t wait till we’re in bed again.’ Of course, his wife heard all this.”
She was laughing, a very attractive liveliness on her features. “Went and caught them, did she? Shot them dead, set the place on fire, then did a runner to Timbuctou!”