‘No,’ I said, wishing I had a drink. ‘Nothing like that.’
‘I’ve seen the way you look at her. You’re a bad lad, Maurice.’
‘There’s nothing wrong in looking at her.’
‘In your case there is, because you’re a bad lad. Anyway, don’t touch it, if you want my advice. That sort of little bitch would be more trouble than she’s worth. There are other things to a woman than taking her to bed. And that reminds me—I’ve been meaning to have a chat with you about Joyce. She’s not happy, Maurice. Oh, I don’t mean she’s miserable, nothing like that, and she does throw herself into the life of the place— you’re very lucky there. But she’s not really happy. I mean she doesn’t really think you’d have gone as far as marrying her if you hadn’t wanted somebody to be a mother to young Amy. And that side of things isn’t working out as well as it might because you’re leaving it to her to do it instead of helping her to do it and doing it with her. She’s a young woman, Maurice. I know you’ve got a lot to do running the pub, and you’re very conscientious. But you mustn’t hide behind that. Take this morning, now. Some rooster was kicking up a fuss because Magdalena had spilt a few drops of tea into his breakfast marmalade, if you don’t bloody well mind. Joyce dealt with him all right, and then afterwards she said to me…’
He stopped, as his ear, no less quick than mine, caught the sound of the outside door of the apartment opening. Then, hearing expected voices, he got up from the dining-chair where he had settled himself, so as to be on his feet by the time the door opened. ‘Tell you later,’ he mouthed and whispered.
The Mayburys and Joyce came in. I went over to the sideboard to see about the drinks for dinner, and found that Diana had followed me. Jack had started being as tolerant as ever to my father, who he seemed to feel could not reasonably be expected to maintain impeccable physical trim at the age of seventy-nine. Joyce was with them.
‘Well, Maurice,’ stated or queried Diana, managing to turn even that short utterance into a fair sample of her unnaturally precise enunciation. She also implied by her tone that she had effortlessly removed us both to a level far different from the plodding to-and-fro of ordinary converse.
‘Hallo, Diana.’
‘Maurice … do you mind if I ask you a question?’
There, again in small compass, was Diana for you. It was tempting, and would have been near the truth, to answer, ‘Yes, I do, by God, if you really want to know, very much indeed,’ but I found that I was looking at or near the low top of her serpent-green silk dress, where there was a lot more of Diana for you, and merely grunted.
‘Maurice … why do you always look as if you’re trying to escape from something? What makes you feel so trapped?’ She spoke as if helping me count the words.
‘Do I? Trapped? How do you mean? As far as I know I’m not trying to escape from anything.’
‘Then why do you look as if something’s after you all the time?’
‘After me? What could be after me? There’s income tax, and next month’s bills, and old age, and a few things like that, but then we’re all——’
‘What is it you want to get away from?’
Sidestepping another tempting retort, I glanced over her smooth tanned shoulder. Jack and my father were talking at once, with Joyce trying to listen to them both. I said in a lowered voice, ‘I’ll tell you another time. For instance tomorrow afternoon. I’ll be at the corner at half-past three.’
‘Maurice …
‘Yes?’ I said, not altogether, I hoped, through my teeth.
‘Maurice, what makes you so incredibly persistent? What is it you want from me?’
I felt an individual globule of sweat well up out of the skin of my chest. ‘I’m persistent because of what I want from you, and if you don’t know what that is I can soon show you. You will be there tomorrow, won’t you?’
Exactly then, Joyce called, ‘Let’s start, shall we? You must all be starving. I am, anyway.’
Not bothering to conceal her triumph at the way events had brought her the prize of quasi-legitimately leaving my question unanswered, Diana moved off. I uncapped my father’s pint of Worthington White Shield, picked up one of the bottles of Bâtard Montrachet 1961 the wine-waiter had opened half an hour earlier and followed her. In the last five seconds it had become almost overwhelmingly unlikely that she would meet me the following afternoon, because she was now in the uncommonly rewarding position of being able to stand me up without incurring the odium of having actually broken an arrangement. On the other hand, she was very much capable of following this line of argument and so going along to the agreed corner to find me not there, which would shove me back to the wrong side of square one, not to speak of the questions about why I was so changeable and so selfish, and did I think it was because I was so insecure, that I would have to sweat through as part of the shoving. And, being Diana, to have got that far would mean she would know, without having to think about it, that I would have got as far as it, too. So I would have to turn up anyway. But I had been going to do that all along.
By this time I had poured the drinks and taken my place in my walnut Queen Anne carver, which, though I had one or two older things in the house, is much my favourite piece. I had Diana on my right with my father on her other side facing the door, then Jack, and Joyce on my left. As we ate the vichyssoise, my father said,
‘All sorts of people seem to be wandering about the house these days. I mean up on this floor, where they’ve no business to be when there’s no banquet affair going on. Not half an hour ago there was some rooster clumping up and down that passage outside as if he owned the place. I was on the point of getting up and going to see what he thought he was doing when he buggered off. It’s not the first time in the last few days, either. Can’t you put up a notice or something, Maurice?’
‘Outside the main door here there’s a—’
‘No, no, I mean something at the foot of the stairs, to keep them off this floor altogether. The place is turning into a mad-house. Haven’t you come across this sort of thing yourself, Maurice? You must have, surely.’
‘Once or twice.’ I spoke listlessly, my mind and the edge of my vision on Diana. ‘Now you mention it, there was a woman hanging about at the top of the stairs earlier on.’ I realized for the first time that I had not subsequently seen that woman in the bar or the dining-room or anywhere round the house. No doubt she had found the ladies’ lavatory on the ground floor, and left while I was busy standing in for Fred. No doubt. But I half-saw Diana put her spoon down and begin taking stock of my face. I could not stand the prospect of being asked, in those separated syllables, why I was so this, or what had made me so that, or whether I realized that I was so the other. I got up, said I was going to say good night to Amy and went off to do so, ringing for Magdalena on my way out.
Amy’s appearance and posture had changed to the minimum degree consistent with her having been Amy sitting on bed before and being Amy sitting in bed now. On the television screen, a young woman was denouncing an older one who was keeping her back turned throughout, not so much out of inattention or deliberate rudeness as with the mere object of letting the audience see her face at the same time as her accuser’s. For a moment I watched, in the hope of seeing them do a smart about-turn at the end of the speech, and wondering to what extent real life would he affected if there were to grow up a new convention that people always had to be facing the same way before they could speak to each other. Then I went over to Amy.