What Men Say
Authors: Joan Smith
Joan Smith
Nunc iam nulla viro iuranti femina credat,
nulla viri speret sermones esse fideles.
CATULLUS
64
That's itâfrom now on no woman should listen to a man who
claims he loves her.
In fact, if she's got any sense, she won't believe a word he says.
CATULLUS
64
1
“They're All
Burnt.
” The Boy Pulled A gargoyle face and pushed away the paper plate Loretta was holding out to him.
“They're not burnt, it's just that the grill's very hotâit makes black lines when you put them on. Look, they're all like that.” She pointed to the neat row of hamburgers, blotting-paper pink and curling at the edges, cooking on the grill. “Haven't you been to a barbecue before?”
The boy, a sandy-haired child of nine or ten in a garish Ninja-turtle T-shirt, ignored the question. “They're not like that at McDonald's.”
“Aren't they?” Loretta had been to McDonald's once in her life and felt in no position to argue. Dumping the rejected plate on the table in front of her, she used her forearm to push her hair out of her eyes and wished she had brought something to tie it back from her face. She hadn't believed the previous evening's weather forecast, with its confident prediction that heavy overnight showers would give way to bright sunshine, but this was one of those rare occasions when it was spot-on. She had long ago discarded her jacket but there was no escape
from the stinging heat of the gas-fired barbecue and she could feel her dress beginning to cling between her shoulder blades. Loretta thought anxiously about how much it would cost to dry-clean, distrusting the “hand wash, cool iron” instruction on the reverse of the size-12 label. She should never have worn a new dress on such a muggy day, especially not this dark-blue silk which she had been able to afford only because it was on saleâand was that a grease stain she could see near the hem? She bunched up the cloth, scratched ineffectually at it and then realized that the surly boy had not moved away.
“Changed your mind?” she asked hopefully, nudging the plate towards him. On closer inspection she saw that the burgers had acquired a penumbra of animal fat; Loretta was quite hungry herself, but it occurred to her that these shrivelled apologies for meat were enough to make anyone a vegetarian.
The boy's attention had wandered to a group of older children arguing over a frisbee further down the lawn. Loretta hoped he would go and join them but after a while he turned back, a wistful expression on his face. “You got anything else?”
Loretta bit her lip, deducing from his avid glances at the frisbee players that he was clumsy at games, unpopular with other children, or both. “Why don't you go over there,” she suggested in a friendly voice, “look, where Bridget's standing, and someone'll give you a bagel.”
“What's a bagel?” His voice was flat, uninterested.
“It's a sort ofâit's a kind of bread roll with a hole in the middle. You eat it with cheese and smoked salmon . . .” As she spoke, Loretta realized that this was an even less attractive offer to a ten-year-old than her stripy hamburgers. “Wait a minute. What about these?”
She rummaged in a box under the table and came up with a packet of crisps.
“They chilli?” He twisted his head sideways in an attempt to read.
“Umâno. Salt and vinegar.” Loretta hadn't known you could get chilli-flavored crisps.
The boy twisted his face into another bizarre expression of rejection. “I only like Bovril and chilli.”
“Bovril
and
chilli? Oh, I see. Let's have a look.” Loretta knelt and took packets out of the box one by one. She was supposed to give out a packet of crisps with each plate of hamburgers but she had forgotten their existence until a moment ago. “Sorry, they're all salt and vinegar. Go onâtry them.”
He shook his head emphatically and Loretta's patience finally wore out. “Wellâthat's it, then. I haven't got anything else.”
He thrust his hands in his pockets and slouched off, disappointment radiating from his hunched shoulders. Halfway across the lawn he dropped this act, veered off to chase the frisbee and was shouldered out of the way by a larger boy. Loretta sighed and wondered where his parents were.
“Trouble?”
She turned to see Stephen Kaplan, a politics lecturer she knew slightly, watching her with amusement. He was short, dark and intense, and they had become embroiled in a fierce argument over the resignation of Mrs. Thatcher, an event Loretta celebrated with an impromptu party at her house in Oxford, the last time they met. She was surprised to see him at Bridget and Sam's house-warming party, not on political grounds but because she had the impression Bridget found him less amusing these days.
“Just a bit of consumer resistance.” She tried to put
the dinner-party argument, which had struck her as childish and embarrassing even when it was going on, out of her mind. “I can't compete with McDonald's, apparently. Or do I mean Burger King?”
Stephen smiled and looked superior. “Anyone can see
you
don't have kids. Burger King isâ” He gestured downwards with his thumb. “McDonald's, now . . . Rachel had her birthday party there last month. Ten over-excited kids, balloons, sticky drinks . . . prepubescents' heaven. Can I get you a drink?”
Loretta nodded gratefully at this unexpected offer and held out her empty plastic beaker. Stephen, she noticed, was drinking from a proper glass. “Something nonalcoholic. I think I'm starting to melt.”
“Orange juice? Mineral water?”
“Mineral water. Oh, and do you have any idea of the time? Someone's supposed to take over from me at two o'clock.”
He glanced at a watch equipped with sufficient hands and dials to time an Olympic race. “Ten to. I wondered if you were stuck with that thing all afternoon.” He nodded towards the barbecue. “Did you volunteer?”
“Well, not exactly. Sam had a sort of rota . . .”
Stephen looked smug. “He tried to sign me up for something but I promised Jane I'd keep an eye on the kids. I've been in Warsaw for ten days and she says it's my turn.”
Loretta had never met the Kaplan children, a boy and a girl, so she had no idea whether they were among the half-dozen youngsters on the lawn or inside the house. Stephen evidently wore his parental responsibilities lightly, beginning an anecdote about Lech Walesa and someone Loretta had never heard ofâWakowski or Wachowski, some name like thatâas though he had the entire afternoon to himself. Loretta listened to him skeptically,
recalling a dismissive remark by her most recent lover, a history lecturer, to the effect that Stephen's Polish contacts were merely a bunch of Poujadists without political access or influence. Of course, Joe was inclined to sneer at anyone who might be construed as a potential rival, which was one of the reasons Loretta had ended their relationship, but his parents were Polish, he spoke the language fluently and his friendships with KOR intellectuals went back a decade.
Stephen finished his story and waited for Loretta to laugh. She had not really been listening and managed only a thin smile, after which they lapsed into awkward silence.
“Wellâ” Stephen looked at his absurd watch again, though it was only five minutes since she had asked the time. “I'd better see about this drink.”
Loretta watched him set off for the house. Its unusual name, Thebes Farm, had prompted a nervous joke from Bridget when she first produced the estate agent's details, something about the surprisingly short distance between Thebes and Jericho, the latter being the area of Oxford in which Loretta lived. Troy was only four or five miles up the road, Bridget added, referring to an imposing farmhouse of that name in Somerton; this bit of Oxfordshire was a veritable map of the ancient world. The geography lesson was intended, Loretta guessed, to cover up Bridget's anxiety about her announcement that she was about to move to an isolated farmhouse half an hour's drive from the city center, thus putting an end to their old habit of walking round to each other's houses when the mood took them. Although her own first reaction was dismay, Loretta joined in the joke, such as it was, by adding to the list Nineveh Farm on the road from Oxford to Nuneham Courtenay.
Bridget and Sam were so proud of their singular address that they had commissioned a local artist to provide a sketch of the house for their writing paper. The drawing was only slightly fanciful, showing a solid, double-fronted house with a barn standing at right angles to it; the artist had used her imagination on the barn, which was actually rather dilapidated and boobytrapped, when Loretta last looked inside, with rusting farm machinery of unknown provenance.
The house itself had flagstone floors in all the downstairs rooms, and Loretta thought wistfully of the cool, shady interior. She was rather sick of hearing about the floors, which had been painstakingly lifted, cleaned and replaced by Bridget and Sam's builders in an operation which, in terms of expense and effort, seemed to be on only a slightly smaller scale than the renovation of the Piazza della Signoria in Florence. Loretta had not seen the final result until an hour or so before the party, when Sam showed her into a drawing room straight out of
The World of Interiors:
smooth, dove-gray flags, brilliantly colored kelims, and two scroll-end sofas newly upholstered in deep-yellow velvet. Even if she had been invited to sit down, Loretta would have been reluctant to disturb their shiny tautness, but the occasion did not arise. Sam had given her a lightning tour of the ground floor before leading her into the kitchen and asking if she'd mind slicing and dressing a gargantuan quantity of boiled potatoes. Loretta wished now that she had given in to the temptation to nibble as she whizzed up mayonnaise in a state-of-the-art food processor, instead of assuming that there'd be plenty left when she escaped from the hamburgers.
“Hello, how are you?” Loretta greeted Audrey Summers, Bridget's former next-door neighbor in north Oxford, without enthusiasm. Loretta suspected that Audrey
disapproved of her, a suggestion Bridget denied in such a half-hearted way as to convince her of its accuracy. She certainly didn't want to be trapped into making polite conversation with her across the hamburger stall, and she was relieved when Audrey returned her greeting and kept going, cool and unapproachable in a Liberty-print skirt and jacket.
“Jack! Jackâwhy don't you bring a bottle?” A woman's voice drifted up from the orchard at the bottom of the garden, vainly trying to attract the attention of a man striding towards the house with a tray of empty glasses. Loretta turned to look at her, watching as she smilingly acknowledged that Jack hadn't heard and went back to breast-feeding a small baby. She had not seen the dark-haired woman before, nor any of the other adults forming a companionable group about her under the trees.
The garden was, according to the estate agent, one of the “glories” of Thebes Farm. It was large, south-facing and triangular in shape, at its widest in front of the house where it was laid to lawn. Like the house, it was raised well above the level of the road and was further protected by a high wall. A narrow gate, reached by half a dozen deep stone steps, provided the sole access from the road so that anyone arriving by car had to turn off and drive round the back of the house into the old farmyard. Loretta's hamburger stallâactually a scarred pine table covered with a thick paper clothâhad been set up parallel to the wall, just in front of a newly planted herbaceous border. Facing her, on the far side of the lawn, was the barn which featured so prettily on Bridget and Sam's notepaper.