Virtual Strangers (35 page)

‘Thanks, low life,’ I say mildly. His eyes narrow.

‘Thanks for what?’

‘For that good word you put in for me with Austin.’ He looks blank. ‘That was all about
me
, wasn’t it? All that stuff I heard you say?’

He sips the froth off his lager. And adds a white moustache to his fluff one.

‘Well,’ he says finally. ‘It was all true, wasn’t it?’

‘I don’t know - you tell me. You’re the one who knows what I’m like. Knows how funny I am and so on.’

‘Look,’ he then says. ‘What
is
it with you? You’ve had it in for me since the day I fucking started. Mrs bloody know it all. Mrs mother superior.’

I’m genuinely surprised. Me? Superior?

‘What on earth are you on about?’

‘You know very well. The Pringle business.’

‘The
what
business?’

‘You ratted on me.’

‘I certainly didn’t.’

‘Don’t lie.’

‘I didn’t! Hugh, I may not have approved of your ‘tactics’ as you called them, but I never saw it as my responsibility to tell anyone else about it. Yes, I have principles, but I’m not a snitch.’

He looks suspiciously at me.

‘Hmm,’ he grunts. ‘Anyway. You’ve done all right. You’ve got your branch, haven’t you?’

He sounds exactly like the petulant juvenile he is. He should go far with Metro.

I can’t be bothered to talk to Hugh Chatsworth any more. Possibly never will.. So I return to where Rhys is now holding court to a huddle of matronly women. All post-hysterectomy, presumably, as the snatches of conversation that reach my peripheral point in the throng, seem mainly to be about pipework and plumbing. Rhys isn’t right about a female distaste for euphemism - as I acknowledge his smile, I hear one woman explain what a relief it is not to have all that downstairs plumbing clanking around, because the hot water system is now firing up nicely.

I leave them to their titters and look around hopefully. The Willie Jones Jackson table consists of Austin, Brian Jackson, his wife and Hugh, plus a Metro manager I recognise,and the stylish Ianthe. I belatedly recognise an un-Davina-like Davina and then cast my eyes over the remaining chairs. There are twelve to a table and the remaining five on theirs are all taken, presumably by the very same big noises in planning that were instrumental in the cessation of my inopportune tryst. But - I scan wildly - there is no sign of Adam. He’s not there. No Adam.
No Adam
. Why not?

But then Rhys steers me off to our invitees table, where we are separated by six feet of starched linen plus several diners, and then we say grace.

Thank you, Lord, for this excellent repast and so on and so forth. And thank you for Rhys because he’s such a nice guy, oh, but by the way, can you find him someone else for me? And I’m so sorry for all the times I use your name in vain, and it isn’t
really
in vain, you understand, but oh,
God
, why isn’t Adam here? What have you done with him? Why didn’t you send him? Was it all too much? Could he simply not bear to be around me? Well?
Well?

God sends back message ; he’s a Doctor, you silly cow. He’s probably on call or something.
God,
you’re self-important, Simpson! Don’t flatter yourself! And in any case, didn’t he make it absolutely clear where he stood?
Didn’t
he? Didn’t he tell you he loved his wife and was intent on making progress with her? And hasn’t he?
Hasn’t he
? Is she not the very
incarnation
of progress? Is she not progress
personified
? Is she not the embodiment of what a dogged persistence and much love can achieve? Does she not look like a woman who has bloomed and ripened and thrust forth her pistils? Has she not, in fact, intimated as much? This very day, in fact? This
very
day?’

Go into sulk.

I open my eyes to find there is already something edible in front of me. A small pinkish disc, like an ice hockey puck , but with a dribble of sauce and a thimbleful of red caviar. A fishy hors d-euvre, which I really don’t fancy. But eat anyway, as I know small children have emptied their money boxes to pay for it. Hmmm. I am becoming dangerously chopsy. I almost want to refuse to eat. Don’t people realise where their hard earned donations are going? Don’t people care? I think of Minnie’s little pot of stamps for the blind, and all those gold and red milk bottle tops that my mother would rinse off religiously each morning and put on the kitchen windowsill to dry. They would glint in the sun like oversized sequins - treasure, to help all the sick children feel better. Not to pay for the likes of me to sit here. Which is ludicrous, I know, as this ball will make thousands, but I can’t seem to help it. I push it away.

The plate is removed and as the diners who flank me are both engaged in conversation with more personable people, and because it is in the nature of such functions that there is generally a twenty minute wait between courses, I excuse myself and head off to the loo.

Where my blooming and ripening ex-boss has gone too.

‘Well,’ says Davina, as we exit our cubicles and our reflections make contact. ‘Now that
is
nice, Charlie. That greeny-blue really is
you
.’

Right about the colour analysis, then.

‘Thank you. So’s yours,’ I reply, finding that much as I want to dislike it, I actually mean it. Davina’s looks, normally leached from her by the wet roof slate colours she generally favours, are enhanced by the soft pastel hues in her dress. And the straight honey hair that she usually ties back is tonight a big glitter flecked cascade of curls. In short, she looks beautiful. I want to go home.

‘You like this?’ she asks. I nod again. At it. ‘Ah!,’ she says. ‘It’s the Ianthe effect. It’s after Monet, you know. And she helped me choose it. I would never have dreamed I’d wear something like this! Just goes to show, eh?’ She smiles at herself in the mirror. ‘She has
such
taste, doesn’t she? A natural artist.’

Jesus. Scrub colour analysis. This is a serious stuff. Progress, I guess. Davina slips her lip gloss back into her handbag and turns her smile on me.

‘You look great,’ I repeat. And then, despite my absolute,
absolute
rule never to bring him into any conversation with Davina ever again in my life, and despite the fact that as soon as I bring him into
mind
, let alone larynx, in public, I know, that I will turn the colour of a freshly cropped radish, and despite the fact that even as I think about formulating a sentence with his name in, I emit saline in sufficient quantity to make my eyeballs look like a pair of marbles in a puddle - despite
all that
, I smile and say;

‘Shame Adam’s not here to show you off to everyone.’

She’s been beaming and smiling pretty much throughout. So much so that when her face suddenly changes back into something approaching its usual configuration (shifty, suspicious, trifle with me at your peril eyebrows etc.) I am jerked back to reality with a twang. She adds some penetrating eye contact and stares at me with it. While inside I’m going sixteen shades of puce.

‘Yes,’ she says finally. ‘It
is
a shame, isn’t it?’ She pokes at her hairdo. I poke at mine. ‘But just,’ she adds, ‘the way that things sometimes work out.’

‘Hmmm,’ I reply. And then her beam reasserts itself.

‘So,’ she says. ‘Shocked?’

She knows, then. She
knows
. But she means work now. She must do.

‘Um. Yes. A little. Though I did know there was something going on. Funny,’ I eject a laugh to illustrate, but it comes out as a squawk. ‘
I
thought that
you
didn’t know about it. I kept seeing Hugh and Austin Metro together, and I thought they were plotting something behind your back.’

She roars with laughter at this. She has become so,
so
strange.

‘Oh, bless!’ she says, shaking her head. ‘No, you know what these things are like. We had to keep covert. But, my God, it
has
been stressful. And it was a pretty tough decision for me, I can tell you. If you’d asked me six months ago how I would have responded to Austin’s proposal, well! Phew! You know me! And what with everything else,’ she embellishes the words “everything else” with a grimace. ‘I would rather have died. Well.
You
know, Charlie, don’t you? Work was all I had left.’

I feel I have entirely lost the plot of this conversation. I get the look again briefly, then she’s once again smiling as we head to the exit.

‘So what changed?’ I ask. ‘I could never have imagined you leaving.’

She puts a hand on my shoulder and beams again -
really
beams - at me.

‘
I
changed,’ she says, holding the door open for me. ‘
Me
.’

There is little time to gather my thoughts into anything resembling an understanding of the situation, because when we come out of the toilet we bump into a large man with a moustache who Davina introduces as Mr Routledge - the gentleman who bought Cherry Ditchling.

‘Ah,’ I say, slightly light-headed with confusion. ‘You fell in love with the beautiful gardens, no doubt.’

I have no idea why I have said this, but am soon to be pleased beyond measure that I have, because he replies,

‘Gardens? What gardens? Har, har, har, har. Show me five acres of prime flat land, and I’ll show you covered hardstanding for twenty five cars.’

‘Mr Routledge,’ Davina explains, ‘has the biggest collection of Classic Jaguars in Wales, apparently. He was particularly keen on Cherry Ditchling because of its lack of gradient.’

‘Oh,’ I say, nodding. ‘You’ll not be keeping the ha ha, then?’

‘Bugger the ha ha, my lovely,’ he says sternly. ‘Gone the way of the summerhouse. Bulldozed. Ptchung!’

Elevenish.
Elizabeth Shaw Mint Crisps
et
comedian.

What am I
doing
here?

On the way back to my table, I passed the Harris-Harpers, who looked as if they’d only just arrived. David Harris-Harper (big noise in conveyancing, presumably), was at the bar, ordering drinks. His dinner suit jacket was made from a bronze coloured brocade, and six months ago, I would have thought what a catch he looked. Top three material, always, David. Tonight all I saw was a man.

Kim Harris-Harper (big noise, period) came across and waved an arm towards Davina’s departing form.

‘That’s some dress,’ she observed. ‘Hmmm. How the other half lives, eh?’

I nodded. ‘Yes, it’s beautiful, isn’t it? (Blah, blah, blah. Gush, gush, gush. Go with it. Just learn to cope. Grow up). Ianthe designed it, apparently. Ianthe’s the woman who did the Willie JJ makeover.’

Kim nodded and went; ‘Ah! The legendary Ianthe! Hmmm. Still, Davina looks happy, I suppose.’

I nodded back. ‘Yes, doesn’t she? Very.’ Then tagged on, for effect, ‘Which is nice.’

Kim sipped her drink.

‘Hmm. I suppose so. Bit of a shock though.’

Here we were again. ‘Shock?’

‘This whole giving up work, earth mother, Romania
thing
she’s embarked on. Bit of a turn up, isn’t it?’

‘
What?
’

‘The baby bit. You wouldn’t have thought it, would you? I mean, she’s always been so -well, so utterly not
into
that sort of thing. And even if you accept the biological countdown argument - and the physical constrictions,
obviously -
you still can’t help but be a touch fazed. I mean, orphanages? Foreigners? Squalor?
Davina
? Can
you
see it?’

I was still trucking through eastern Europe. I’d turned left at baby and got lost straight after constrictions.

‘It’s a turn up.’ And then some. Though not totally incredible.

‘Well, precisely! I know it’s all very fashionable these days, but
really!
You’d think she’d exhibit a little more
sangfroid
- I mean she’s pushing forty, for God’s sake! And can you really see Davina hunkered down on the axminster playing Tootles the Taxi with some two year old sprog? Even given a perfectly adapted sprog, it’s hard to imagine. And these children have
problems
, don’t they? In fact, barely function, most of them, from what I’ve heard. And that’s quite without all the other malarky, isn’t it?’ She shook her head. ‘I just can’t see it. There are limits and there are limits. I mean no-one’s saying she doesn’t have a right to be happy. Of course they’re not. And I’m as broad minded as the next person. But, well, some things really are beyond the pale. It’ll be mendhi and a black wig next,
a la
Madonna.’

‘Is that a wig? I thought it was her own hair.’

‘Doesn’t anyone’s hair
really
grow that fast? I don’t think so. And don’t tell me those biceps aren’t steroid enhanced. Anyway, I just think you can take these things a little too far. Don’t you?’

‘Doesn’t she what?’ said David Harris-Harper, from behind me. Which was handy, as I’d not the slightest idea what to say next. Kim flapped her hand dismissively.

‘Oh, nothing. We were just talking about Davina.’

He rolled his eyes. ‘Oh, leave the poor woman alone, Kim,’ he said. ‘Don’t be so judgemental all the time. I don’t know. You girls - gossip, gossip, gossip. At least she’s doing something useful for society.’

‘
Useful?
’ countered Kim irritably. ‘Useful for who? Useful for which society? Don’t we have enough dysfunctional families already? Don’t we -’

‘No,’ he said, winking at me. ‘Useful as in giving up work. Useful as in one less Estate Agent around.’

Apart from his time-expired joke about Estate Agents, (for which I immediately and unreservedly forgave him as soon as he had the grace to realise its impropriety in my company) David Harris-Harper was really a perfectly nice guy. Why did perfectly nice guys so often end up with baggages?

And how on earth did his baggage
know
all this stuff?

There was a limit to how much time I could spend wandering around during a formal dinner without someone coming up and asking me for an extra bread roll or something, and I didn’t want Rhys to think I was stuck in a toilet, so I went back to the table and sat down again. Another plate had arrived in my absence, this one playing host to a piece of brown meat, a stick and green gravy. The man on my left proffered a vegetable dish.