‘What’s the worst thing anyone’s done to you?’
‘Are we still talking bed?’
‘Mmm.’
‘Jane, what a question.’
‘Well, we’re bound to be asked it sooner or later. The way everything’s going.’
‘I’ve never been raped, if that’s what you’re asking. At least,’ Alice went on reflectively, ‘not what the courts would call rape.’
‘So?’
When Alice didn’t answer, Jane said, ‘I’ll look at the landscape while you’re thinking.’ She gazed, with vague benignity, at trees, fields, hedgerows, livestock. She had always been a town person, and her interest in the countryside was largely pragmatic, a flock of sheep only signifying roast lamb.
‘It’s not something… obvious. But I’d say it was Simon.’
‘Simon as in the novelist or as in the publisher or as in Simon but you don’t know him?’
‘Simon the novelist. It was not long after I was divorced. He phoned up and suggested coming round. Said he’d bring a bottle of wine. Which he did. When it became pretty clear that he wasn’t going to get what he’d come for, he corked up the rest of it and took the bottle home.’
‘What was it?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, was it champagne?’
Alice thought for a moment. ‘It can’t have been champagne because you can’t get the cork back into the bottle. Do you mean was it French or Italian or white or red?’
Jane could tell from the tone that Alice was riled. ‘I don’t know what I meant actually. That’s bad.’
‘What’s bad? Not remembering what you meant?’
‘No, putting the cork back in the bottle. Really bad.’ She left an ex-actress’s pause. ‘I suppose it might have been symbolic.’
Alice giggled, and Jane could tell the moment had only been a hiccup. Encouraged, she put on her sitcom voice. ‘Got to laugh after a bit, haven’t you?’
‘I suppose so,’ replied Alice. ‘It’s either that or get religion.’
Jane might have let the moment pass. But Alice’s reference to Buddhism had given her courage, and besides, what are friends for? Even so, she looked out of the window to confess. ‘Actually, I’ve got it, if you want to know. A little, anyway.’
‘Really? Since when? Or rather, why?’
‘A year or two. It sort of makes sense of things. Makes it all feel less… hopeless.’ Jane stroked her handbag, as if it too needed consolation.
Alice was surprised. In her world view, everything was hopeless, but you just had to get on with it. And there wasn’t much point changing what you believed at this late stage of the game. She considered whether to answer seriously or lightly, and decided on the latter.
‘As long as your god allows drinking and smoking and fornication.’
‘Oh, he’s very keen on all of those.’
‘How about blasphemy? I always think that’s the key test when it comes to a god.’
‘He’s indifferent. He sort of rises above it.’
‘Then I approve.’
‘That’s what he does. Approves.’
‘Makes a change. For a god, I mean. Mostly they disapprove.’
‘I don’t think I’d want a god who disapproved. Get enough of that in life anyway. Mercy and forgiveness and understanding, that’s what we need. Plus the notion of some overall plan.’
‘Did he find you or you find him, if that makes sense as a question?’
‘Perfect sense,’ replied Jane. ‘I suppose you could say it was mutual.’
‘That sounds… comfy.’
‘Yes, most people don’t think a god ought to be comfy.’
‘What’s that line? Something like: “God will forgive me, it’s his job”?’
‘Quite right too. I think we’ve overcomplicated God down the ages.’
The sandwich trolley came past, and Jane ordered tea. From her handbag she took a slice of lemon in a plastic box, and a miniature of cognac from the hotel minibar. She liked to play a little unacknowledged game with her publishers: the better her room, the less she pillaged. Last night she had slept well, so contented herself with only the cognac and whisky. But once, in Cheltenham, after a poor audience and a lumpy mattress, she was in such a rage that she’d taken everything: the alcohol, the peanuts, the chocolate, the bottle opener, even the ice tray.
The trolley clattered away. Alice found herself regretting the days of proper restaurant cars with silver service and white-jacketed waiters skilled at delivering vegetables with clasped fork and spoon while outside the landscape lurched. Life, she thought, was mostly about the gradual loss of pleasure. She and Jane had given up sex at about the same time. She was no longer interested in drink; Jane had stopped caring about food – or at least, its quality. Alice gardened; Jane did crosswords, occasionally saving time by filling in answers which couldn’t possibly be right.
Jane was glad Alice never rebuked her for taking a drink earlier than some. She felt a rush of affection for this poised, unmessy friend who always made sure that they caught their train.
‘That was a nice young man who interviewed us,’ said Alice. ‘Properly respectful.’
‘He was to you. But he did that thing to me.’
‘What thing?’
‘Didn’t you notice?’ Jane gave a sigh of self-pity. ‘When he mentioned all those books that my latest reminded him of. And you can’t very well say you haven’t read some of them or you’ll look like an ignoramus. So you go along with it and then everyone assumes that’s where you got your ideas from.’
Alice thought this unduly paranoid. ‘They weren’t thinking that, Jane. More likely they were writing him down as a show-off. And they loved it when he mentioned Moby-Dick and you put your head on one side and said, “Is that the one with the whale?”’
‘Yes.’
‘Jane, you’re not telling me you haven’t read Moby-Dick?’
‘Did it look as if I hadn’t?’
‘No, not at all.’
‘Good. Well, I wasn’t exactly lying. I saw the film. Gregory Peck. Was it good?’
‘The film?’
‘No, the book, silly.’
‘Since you ask, I haven’t read it either.’
‘Alice, you’re such a friend, you know.’
‘Do you read those young men everyone’s going on about?’
‘Which ones?’
‘The ones everyone’s going on about.’
‘No. I think they’ve got quite enough readers already, don’t you?’
Their own sales were holding up, just about. A couple of thousand in hardback, twenty or so in paper. They still had a certain name-recognition. Alice wrote a weekly column about life’s uncertainties and misfortunes, though Jane thought it would be improved by more references to Alice’s own life and fewer to Epictetus. Jane was still in demand when radio programmes needed someone to fill the Social Policy/Woman/Non-Professional/Humour slot; though one producer had firmly added ‘BIM’ to her contact details, meaning ‘Best in Morning’.
Jane wanted to keep the mood going. ‘What about the young women everyone’s going on about?’
‘I suppose I pretend a little more to have read them than with the boys.’
‘So do I. Is that bad?’
‘No, I think it’s sisterly.’
Jane flinched as a great wind-blast from a train going in the opposite direction suddenly rocked them. Why on earth did they put the tracks so close together? And instantly her head was full of helicopter news-footage: carriages jackknifed – they always used that verb, making it sound the more violent – trains strewn at the bottom of embankments, flashing lights, stretcher crews and, in the background, one carriage mounting another like mating metal. Quickly her mind ran on to plane crashes, mass slaughter, cancer, the strangling of old ladies who lived alone, and the probable absence of immortality. The God Who Approved of Things was powerless against such visions. She tipped the last of the cognac into her tea. She must get Alice to distract her.