Offstage Interests

24

Offstage Interests

    “Good morning!” called Sir Ralph, smiling and waving at Georgy on Mrs Mayhew’s front steps in the morning sun. He was rather glad he’d worn his best maroon silk dressing-gown to wander down to the letter boxes, and made a mental note that he must always do so, provided that it wasn’t one of his mornings for jogging, for which he would of course start wearing that new jogging gear the moment the weather got cool enough for it: a tracksuit in some new silk-look fabric, navy with a turquoise trim. At the moment it was far too hot to swathe one’s nether limbs in anything like that, even in the early mornings, so he’d keep on wearing the decent white shorts and the maroon running singlet. Thank God his legs were nice and tanned this summer... He was, of course, blissfully unaware that Georgy had no desire to see his legs, tanned or otherwise, and would not have admired them if she had seen them: they were all right as far as middle-aged, quite spruce, jogging-and-skiing tanned legs went, but not a patch on Adam’s.

    To his surprize Georgy got up and came down to him, smiling. Sir Ralph hurried nearer, beaming.

    “Ssh,” she said. “Adam’s still asleep.”

    “Worn out after the marathon yesterday?”

    She shuddered, and nodded.

    “When in God’s name did you finally finish?” he asked. At eleven o’clock he and his sister-in-law had given up on the dress rehearsal, which had started at five, and he’d driven Jemima home to bed. Not his, unfortunately.

    “It must have been after twelve: it was nearly half-past one by the time we got home,” said Georgy. “I went straight to bed but Adam was so keyed up he went for a walk. I don’t know what time he got home, I was asleep the minute my head touched the pillow.”

    Lucky pillow, thought Sir Ralph on a wistful note. “I’m surprized Mac hasn’t hauled you all in at crack of dawn this morning.”

    “No, he said we could all have a rest this morning. But he’s called all the principals for half-past two this afternoon,” she reported glumly.

    “I see. Er—correct me if I’m wrong, but hasn’t term started?”

    “Yes.—They’re calling them semesters, now.—Mac never timetables himself for lectures in March. And this year I haven’t got many, either. And for this week he said no First-Year lectures at all, they could all come up to Puriri Campus and be orientated,” said Georgy with a little smile. “So I’m free until Monday.”

    “I see. Then you start nine o’clock lectures in town, or am I wrong?”

    “Um—yes. I mean, you’re not wrong, my Second-Year classes do start at nine next Monday. Adam reckons he can drive me in, only I don’t really think it’s sunk in,” she said. “Never mind, there’s a bus!” She smiled at him.

    There was a bus, yes, but it was a five-mile hike to the highway to get it.

    “I won’t even hear the word bus in your context,” he said firmly. “I’ll give you a lift. I like to get into the surgery before nine at least three days a week, and if I drop you at the City Campus I can nip up to Remuera through Parnell.”

    She blushed and protested, of course, but Ralph finally settled that as he would be going into town anyway he’d tap on their door, and if she was ready and Adam was asleep, he’d drive her in. As Adam McIntyre struck him forcibly as the type to take the line of least resistance when it was offered him on a plate, he foresaw some pleasant drives ahead.

    Then, as Friday wasn’t one of his mornings for early surgery, he invited Georgy warmly to partake of his breakfast.

    She looked very tempted.

    “Pink grapefruit?” he suggested, making a comical face.

    “Ooh, I’ve never had those!” she said eagerly. “Um—well, I’ll just check on Adam.”

    Sir Ralph let her do that. Then he led her off to his lair, where he fed her on pink grapefruit, which he quite often had—and yes, he believed they were imported—plus excellent coffee with wholemeal toast and scrambled egg (making mental notes about his cholesterol level, no cream or butter today, and no more for a couple of days), followed by more wholemeal toast with orange marmalade, which he was rather partial to. Er—probably was English or something, he’d found in at The Deli in Puriri, they had some quite nice stuff there.

    “Yes,” said Georgy, examining the label narrowly: “all the people from The Hill go there.” She twinkled naughtily at him.

    “Not all of them, have you met a fearsome female medico called Ariadne Nicholls?”

    “Um... Oh, I know: Dr Nicholls; she’s Dr Smith’s partner!”—Ralph had to swallow. He didn’t know Puriri County all that well, but he knew it well enough to know that the entire population addressed and thought of Bruce Smith as “Bruce.” Bar one, apparently.—“It’s her daughter that’s doing housework for us: you know, Roberta, the girl who’s been helping with the gardening. I don’t really know her mother, I’ve just seen her a couple of times at the Medical Centre, but Adam says she’s very like Roberta.”

    “Mm. Handsome woman. Not the type to darken the doors of The Deli, though, even though they do live on The Hill. I know one or two people who’ve been privileged to dine at the Nichollses’ board, and apparently it’s lentil casseroles accompanied by grated beetroot and carrot salad. Relentlessly healthy, wouldn’t know a decent chunk of pâté if it stood up and hit her in the eye.”

    “Yes, I can believe that,” said Georgy with a smile, putting the marmalade jar down. She then told Sir Ralph her story about the lady from The Hill who’d bought those eleven-dollars’ worth of Californian grapes in midwinter, and Sir Ralph produced the appropriate shocked noises. It wasn’t even an effort.

    She then asked him about the scrambled eggs, going rather pink. “I tried to make some the other day only they got burnt and stuck to the pot,” she explained.

    “Ah.” He explained about small Teflon pans that were ideal for scrambled eggs for two, and about watching what the butter did.

    “I can grasp it intellectually,” she said at last, “but I can’t see me managing the physical side of it.”

    “No, that’s the part that takes practice,” he said, refraining with an effort that almost killed him from mentioning actresses or bishops.

    “Yes,” she sighed. “Oh, well, Adam will eat muesli, and he loves fruit. Where did you get those lovely grapefruit?”

    The answer was Newmarket, and her face fell.

    “I’m told it’s the greengrocer’s patronized by the Gov,” he said. “Only when he’s up here, of course,” he added, lips twitching. “It is the best one in the entire city—better than the Remmers ones, before you ask.”

    “I wasn’t going to,” admitted Georgy with a grin.

    “Actually, I believe they’re quite widely available—at a price, of course,” he said, relenting. “I’m sure the nice greengrocer’s in Puriri would have them.”

    Georgy nodded and he added meanly: “I doubt if it’d have what our compatriots insist on calling ‘Florentine fennel,’ however.”

    “What?” she said blankly.

    “Adam might have spoken of it merely as fennel,” he murmured.

    “Fennel?” croaked Georgy in horror.

    “Mm, I know: noxious weed. But in more civilized climes, its edible cousin is better known.” Helpfully he got up and fetched her a book. As he rose the skirt of his dressing-gown gaped rudely but Sir Ralph didn’t mind that. On the contrary, actually.

    “I see!” she said at last, eyes shining. “I think this is the thing they had at that French restaurant!”

    “Oh?”

    “Um—I’ve forgotten its name... Tom calls it the Giggling Goosey.”

    Sir Ralph gulped: L’Oie Qui Rit was quite undoubtedly the best restaurant in the southern hemisphere: classic French cuisine. His bloody brother had only been there courtesy of his gracious self.

    “This is a lovely book; aren’t the drawings beautiful?” she then said.

    “Mm. I’ll lend it to you if you promise not to take anywhere near your kitchen,” he offered, lips twitching.

    The little oval face with its big luminous eyes looked earnestly up into his and she said: “I promise, I’d hate to get it grubby.”

    Ralph had much ado not to lean over and touch his lips to those sweet coral ones. Only that would have been grubby, indeed. He sat back and said lamely: “You’re welcome.”

    Georgy looked through the book quietly for a few moments. Then she looked up and smiled and said: “I don’t suppose you could explain in words of one syllable to a person with no bump of location exactly whereabouts this up-market greengrocer’s is, could you?”

    He opened his mouth and then thought better of it. “Actually,” he said craftily, “there are two in Newmarket, and they’re both good, but one is excellent. It’d be much easier to show you. Look, I’ve got a consult at The Mater later this morning—that’s just up the slope and round the corner a bit from Newmarket shops,” he explained, quite sure she wouldn’t have a clue. Sure enough she nodded earnestly but blankly. “Why don’t I meet you and Adam for lunch and show you?”

    “Um, I not sure—” gulped Georgy, covered in confusion.

    “Would he be furious to find you’d made a luncheon appointment for him?” he murmured.

    “Um—yes, he probably would,” said Georgy, very red.

    Ralph Overdale felt an unexpected spurt of anger with bloody McIntyre—which was absurd, for although it was true to say his own love life was in abeyance at this moment—apart from the dreaded Sylvia of ski-slope and TV-interview fame, who was always on offer—he did have several other interests, one of whom was even younger and prettier and less attainable than Georgy, so if he was sighing over anyone it might as well be over her rather than his new neighbour, however delicious slight dalliance with her might be in the odd spare moment.

    “Then I’ll ring him later,” he murmured.

    “Um—yes. Thank you very much!” gasped Georgy.

    Sir Ralph then regretfully looked at his watch and showed her out, kindly providing her with a pink grapefruit for Adam. Georgy was duly overcome by this munificent gift.

    He stood in his front doorway and watched her wistfully, unaware that the emotions he was experiencing were shared by a retired Cambridge professor of Physics from Ridge Road, Kowhai Bay, the owner of a large and successful chain of purple bathroom supplies shops, also from Ridge Road in Kowhai Bay, and, indeed, an amateur Shakespeare director and professor of English literature soon coming up for retirement. Not to mention an eminent English film producer-director who’d only just met her.

    “Well, in that case, darling,” said Adam, finishing up his pink grapefruit happily and smiling at her: “you’ll simply have to wear something decent.”

    “I haven’t got anything decent. P’raps he won’t ring you after all, p’raps he was only being polite. You know—social people say that sort of thing. I think he’s very social, he knows that fancy French restaurant that Polly and Jake took us to. What is its name? All I could think of was ‘Giggling Goosey’, that’s what Tom calls it.”

    Adam laughed suddenly and explained Tom’s joke. He could see that Georgy understood but didn’t think it was funny. “Well, what about clothes for this lunch?”

    “Do you think he was serious, then?”

    “I’m sure he was,” said Adam on a dry note.

    “Oh—blow. Um—well, those new jeans are quite respectable.”

    “Yes, and you’re adorable in them. Only I’d quite like to see you in a dress.”

    Georgy wrinkled her brow. “I’ve got a blueish thing that Aunty Christine made me, only I didn’t bring it.”

    “Thank Christ for that! –Is that all?”

    “Um—well, there’s a sun-frock. No, there isn’t, Mum made it into dusters. I usually just wear jeans or shorts in summer. Or my togs, of course.”

    “Stay there,” he said, pointing a finger sternly at her. “I’ll ring Polly.” He hurried out to the pie-crusted telephone table in the front passage

    He came back looking disconcerted.

    “Was she there?”‘

    “Er—no. Some woman who does her housework answered; she appeared to think we’d met, but— Anyway, she insisted on getting the lurid details out of me and she’s given me mountains of advice about where to shop, she’s apparently been dying to dress you for the last aeon! –What?” he said as Georgy gave a scream of laughter.

    “Daphne Green! She’s a friend of Ngaio’s!” she gasped. “She’s worked for Jake for ages, since before Polly even met him, I think:’

    “Yes, well, here’s a list of boutiques as long as your arm. I don’t know if I’ve got them all down right, they appear to be scattered all over the city. Is this Rem-you-something place the same as that Remmers dump Polly took me to, once?”

    “Bound to be!” choked Georgy. “Frightfully up-market! We won’t go there, you’d think its boutiques were vulgar.”

    “I’ll probably think they all are. Anyway, that place is right over the other side of the city.”

    “I know. People up here with cars seem to think nothing of travelling thirty miles to shop.”

    “Mm.” Adam studied the list he’d scrawled on Mrs Mayhew’s telephone-table notepad. Each page had a sweet wee kitten in the top left-hand corner. This sweet wee kitten had been defaced by a large moustache and underneath him someone had written “Horace”.

    “Have you been gossiping on the phone with your girlfriends the minute me manly back’s turned?” he asked with a grin.

    “Only Val! She works on Puriri Campus, I rang her up the other day—it’s n0ot a toll-call!” she gasped.

    “Georgy, darling,” said Adam, reaching across the table and gripping her hand very hard: “for God’s sake ring up whoever you like whenever you like, for however long you like. I keep telling you I’ve got all this moolah to chuck away. I was merely wondering why you’ve christened this crooked-faced sweet wee kitty Horace.”

    “Oh. He looks like a Horace,” said Georgy sheepishly. “At least, he did before I put that moustache on him, I think it ~g a mistake.”

    “Yes, now he looks more like a Bertrand.”

    “No!” she cried in scornful amazement.

    “Bertrand,” said Adam firmly, holding the list out of her reach, “Er—I’ve got Devo, here, what on earth can that mean?”

    “Devonport. Where the ferry goes.”

    “Gripes,” he muttered in the vernacular. “Er—Takker?”

    “That’s a bit nearer. It’s where the ferry bus goes to, Adam, don’t you remember?”

    “Oh, yes, the semi-urban desert,” he recalled.

    “There are some nice shops there. It’s a long drive, though.”

    It seemed to be the nearest port of call, however. “We’ll go,” he decided.

     … “Not with shoulder pads,” he said firmly for about the fourteenth time since they’d hit the Takker shops.

    The shop girl’s face fell. She investigated the dress and discovered that the shoulder pads were firmly sewn into it. “It’s the In Look, though, Mr McIntyre,” she said.

    Georgy felt the fabric dubiously.

    “No?” he said to her, raising his eyebrows.

    “Um—no. I’m sorry,” she said to the girl, turning very red: “I do like the colour, only—um—I don’t much like these artificial fibres.”

    The girl looked blank. Totally blank.

    “Come along,” said Adam with a sigh, taking Georgy’s arm and steering her out.

    “There’s a nice craft shop up there,” she said hopefully.

    Adam sighed. He had discovered that Georgy had a passion for nice craft shops~~She never bought anything from them, of course, just looked. If the lady inside looked like a dragon, she only looked in the window, what was more. Most of the ladies did look like dragons, Georgy’s definition of the term was apparently a generous one. “Time’s getting on,” he murmured.

    “Yes. Ooh, look, there’s a dashund like Miss McLintock’s!” she squeaked, grabbing his arm.

    Adam had also discovered that Georgy had a passion for dachsies. That didn’t mean she pronounced ’em right.

    “Dachshund,” he corrected slowly.

    Georgy agreed tranquilly: “Ja, das ist ein Dachshund. Only it’s like ‘lavatory’ and ‘toilet’.”

    Adam groaned.

    “Come on!” she said with a giggle.

   She dashed off to the craft shop. Adam followed slowly. Next to the craft shop was a much more interesting shop, old lace, antique garments, and—ooh!

    “Come on, darling,” he said, pulling her inside it.

    … “Lovely,” he said to a view of Georgy in tight palest peach brocaded satin with a train.

    “Isn’t it super? It dates from the Thirties, we were lucky to get it in,” beamed the superior-looking young woman in the black tee-shirt and wildly ruffled Laura Ashley fabric skirt. She tossed a hank of thick, straight hair back behind her one huge dangly antiqued silver and turquoise earring and smiled at him.

    Georgy was silently aware that the superior young woman would never have even spoken to her if she’d walked alone into the shop. Not even to ask her if she wanted anything. She knew this for a fact, because she had once walked into this very shop when they’d had a nice lace blouse in the window. Georgy hadn’t bought the blouse, she hadn’t bought anything, because although she had had plenty of money in her purse the cold, fishy look in the superior young woman’s eye had been more than enough to scare the living daylights out of her.

    “It’s an evening dress, Adam,” she croaked, in an agony of embarrassment.

    “Mm? Yes, of course, darling... Oh, I wasn’t thinking of this bloody lunch of Sir Ralph’s!” he said with a laugh. “We’ll definitely take it, thanks. And we’d like to see some of those white lacy dresses.”

    The assistant sprang to it. Soon there were white lacy dresses all over the shop and the other two customers, a thin teenager in a very nice lacy blouse of her own, tight stretch jeans, and a narrow silver belt, plus an earring not unlike the assistant’s one, and her young and terrifyingly well-groomed mother, were frankly watching.

    Eventually the teenager said: “That’s ace!”

    Georgy swallowed. “It’d look much better on you,” she said

shyly.

    The girl tossed her terrifically shiny, well-washed, streaky-blonde hair back with a casual movement of her head and laughed and said: “No: it really is you!”

    Georgy swallowed and looked in the mirror.

    The dress was a mixture of old broderie Anglaise, new broderie Anglaise, and new lawn, very cunningly put together. The top apparently was the older part, sporting a square neckline, with the shoulder straps and the little yoke made of the old fabric. Finely gathered onto this by a few lines of white smocking was the rest of the bodice, which was then gathered in at the waist by more white smocking, about three inches wide. The skirt was plain lawn to about mid-thigh, where there was a series of tucks, then a plain stretch to around the knee, then lots more tucks and cotton insertion lace and more broderie Anglaise, very feminine but not over-frilly, the final scallops being about four inches above Georgy’s slender ankles.

    The shop was full of such dresses, and of blouses in similar styles, most looking to the unprejudiced observer (of whom Georgy was certainly one) as if they’d been put together by someone with one eye on the main chance and the other on an attic full of old nighties, corset covers and pillow cases, not to mention the occasional out-and-out christening gown, but never mind, Adam was all lit up about them and so was the teenager. She had just proposed to her mother the purchase of a cream lacy blouse with an old-rose ribbon on it and a floral old-rose Laura Ashley-ish skirt which by a sheer coincidence was trimmed with a strip of cream lace that exactly matched... Yes, well. The shop was also full of such skirts.

    “I think it’s too young for me,” Georgy said to Adam in a tiny voice.

    “Nonsense, darling. It’s charming, just right. Now try on some of  these others, we might as well buy what suits you when we can find it. -We’ve been hunting for something she can wear without looking like a draggy American footballer all morning!” he said to the well-groomed mother with a smile.

    “Yes, you see some terrible flashy stuff in the shops these days, don’t you?” she agreed.

    “Oh, Mum!” cried the teenager, though not as if she really disagreed in her heart of hearts, more as a form.

    “You said yourself that Desiree looked a fright in that yellow thing, dear,” she reminded her.

    “Well, yes, but she can’t wear yellow... Look, Mum, this is a nice belt, what do you think?”

    “Mm... Yes, that would be nice with your fawn skirt...”

    Georgy tried on more dresses. And blouses. And skirts. Adam ended up buying three day dresses: two of them in the white broderie Anglaise. Virtually identical so Georgy couldn’t see why he thought she needed two. And one very similar in cut but less decorated and in a modern black broderie Anglaise cotton and Dacron mix, with a wide tapestry belt in shades of green and coral, fastened by means of coral-bead-tipped green lacing through gold eyelets. The teenager expressed open envy. Plus three skirts: all the same cut, rather long and loosely gathered at the waist, and all in Laura-Ashley-ish fabrics: one a small pale green floral print, one mixed green and coral, also a small floral print, and the third quite large old-rose and palest yellow roses—Georgy sighed—with dark green leaves on a very pale green background. The small green and coral print had three restrained rows of very narrow braid round it just above the hem but the others were plain. Mercifully plain, in Georgy’s opinion: the teenager was now trying on some lace-trimmed jobs that were very like the thing the assistant was wearing.

    Naturally Adam bought her several blouses as well. Georgy by this time was so embarrassed she didn’t figure out whether there were three or four. Naturally Adam also bought the palest peach evening dress.

    He also inspected all the jewellery narrowly—Georgy didn’t object, she was now looking nervously at her watch and fidgeting—and bought her a circlet of tiny coral beads which he put round her neck immediately: it exactly matched the little coral roses she was wearing in her ears at his insistence. Then he bought her a little artificial moss rose in pale peach and pinned it carefully to the front of the broderie Anglaise yoke of the white dress she was by now, of course, in, with a tiny silver beetle brooch he’d also bought. Georgy would have been utterly content with just this beetle.

    “Yes,” he said pleasedly.

    “I’d wear my hair out,” said the teenager instantly.

    “Patricia, dear,” murmured her mother, but not as if she meant it in her heart of hearts, more as a form.

    Georgy sighed. “Have you got a comb?” she said to Adam.

    He produced a comb.

    Georgy undid her braid and combed her hair out with a gloomy expression.

    “Oh, wow!” cried the teenager.

    Georgy went very red.

    “Patricia,” her mother reproached her, but not as if she meant it in her heart of hearts, more as a form.

    “Lovely,” said Adam smugly.

    Georgy looked at herself in the long mirror. “Oh, Mr Rochester,” she said in a terrifically neutral voice.

    The teenager choked and looked frantically at her mother. The mother pretended she hadn’t heard but her ears went very red.

    “Come on, Jane,” said Adam with a grin, kissing the top of her head. He paid out immense sums, gathered up a clutch of bulging plastic carrier bags, and led her out.

    “Shoes!” he said with a teasing grin.

    “Oh, no!” wailed Georgy.

    “I asked that up-market mother while you were in the changing room: come along.” He strode off.

    She panted in his wake. “This is ludicrous, Adam!” she gasped. “You are doing a Mr Rochester!”

    “And you’re doing a Jane Eyre: I refuse to be seen in the company of that dress with those sneakers.”

    Georgy had forgotten she was wearing her sneakers. “Oh. Um, they do look a bit silly, I suppose.”

    “Only if one has a hidebound consumerist mind,” he admitted with his glinting smile. He led her off to the shoe-shop thinking thoughts which mostly ran along the lines of “Cashmere sweaters” and “really decent twinset and the pearls to go with it” and “heather-mixture tweed skirt?” and “smart black suit?” and “smallish diamond brooch on lapel?” Mostly but not entirely: his interest in Georgy wasn’t only sartorial.

    The dress was a great success with Sir Ralph. So were the scalloped white suede toe-peeper shoes. Lowish heels, but not flat. Georgy had just about died at tithe mere idea of white suede but very luckily—in Adam’s opinion—they’d been the only shoes in the shop that had fitted her. In fact Georgy’s whole outfit was such an evident success with Sir Ralph that Adam began to wonder slightly about the wisdom of the whole bit. Only slightly, though.

    When she put her old sunglasses on the effect was ruined so in Newmarket he immediately led her into a nayce chemist’s and got her a Polaroid pair with narrow white plastic rims. Just the ticket. Delicate but jaunty. Sir Ralph got very interested and helped, and suggested scents. The two of them had a lovely time trying scents. Georgy got very bored and put her new sunglasses on and stared wistfully out to where she could just see the corner of a bookshop that looked quite interesting.

    After Sir Ralph and Adam had almost come to blows over the rival merits of Miss Dior (Sir Ralph) and Y (Adam) Georgy was finally asked for a casting vote, Not realizing who was for which, she chose the Miss Dior. Sir Ralph preened. Adam scowled.

    The chemist’s assistant, being a pretty average chemist’s assistant, hadn’t harboured any nasty thoughts about the possible relationships between the three of them, not even when the lady had stared out of the door while the gentlemen sprayed their wrists with scent (which, the self-aware Sir Ralph had thought at that point, he himself would most certainly have done), and so she said innocently to Georgy as, after having squirted her liberally, she parcelled the scent bottle up clumsily with her giant maroon fingernails: “Yes, I think your father’s right: it’s lovely and fresh, isn’t it? Why’s nice, too, of course, but I think the Miss Dior is really your scent!” She beamed at her.

    “Um—yes. Do you really think so?” gulped Georgy, taking off the sunglasses.

    “Yee-uss, deff-er-nut-lee-yuh!” she beamed, sounding just like Tanya From Hair 2000.

    “Good, I’m not much good at scents,” said Georgy weakly.

    “Come on, dear, take Daddy’s arm,” said Sir Ralph with a chuckle as they went out.

    “Well, she placed you rather nicely,” Adam conceded.

    “Yes, my eldest son’s about Georgy’s age,” he responded with a bland smile.

    Adam didn’t feel there was anything he could say to that, really.

    After Adam had embarrassed Georgy horribly by asking the greengrocer all sorts of questions about the provenance and freshness of his provender, they retreated to the cars and put Adam’s shopping in the Laser. Sir Ralph then insisted they get into the BMW, there was nowhere to eat round here, he’d take them to Parnell. Not that The Golden Lamb was good, but it was bearable. And they could sit in the courtyard, would Georgy like that? Georgy agreed shyly she would.

    When they got there she was very, very glad that Adam had bought her the clothes, because it was full of men in suits like Sir Ralph’s, plus a scattering of ladies in suits like—well, almost as well cut, but nicer colours.

    Adam was also in a suit but Georgy wasn’t at all sure about it. It was a pale linen which looked white until you saw it against, for example, her white dress and then you realized your eyes hadn’t gone fuzzy, it was a very pale grey. It would have looked awfully nice with, for example, a pale peppermint silk shirt like Sir Ralph’s, or, given Adam’s eyes, a blue silk shirt. Or any sort of shirt. Adam wasn’t wearing a shirt under it he was wearing a tee-shirt sort of thing which was sleeveless. Black. When he took the suit jacket off the effect was sort of— Georgy couldn’t have described it but it made her at once terribly excited and enormously embarrassed. Whether it was the way it looked sort of chopped-off at the shoulders, or the way his arms stuck out of it, or— She was praying he wouldn’t take it off in the restaurant. At the neck could just see a hint of a gold chain when he moved. Also a hint of black hair.

    Adam had posed for her without the jacket before they’d left, asking her whether she thought he ought to be called Bruce, Bruce or Don—in a strong American accent—but Georgy, what with the excitement and the embarrassment and the dread about the forthcoming expedition, not to say her unfamiliarity with popular culture, had failed to place any of these names. Adam had been a lot more pleased by this failure than he would have been by her placing them.

    Sir Ralph seemed to know everybody in the restaurant by name. First name. The maître d’ was Michel and almost the minute the man had left them he told them in a most amusing way, which Georgy uneasily thought shouldn’t have been, how his name was really Mike Dawson and he was the scion of a Maori family who farmed next to Polly’s family down in some obscure part of the East Coast. They might have disbelieved this but Ralph backed it up with the casual information that his eldest son was now working for Polly’s father, so they tacitly conceded defeat.

    Then there was the pretty little elderly white-haired lady in powder-blue over by the window whom he had greeted as “Belinda! Such a pleasure!” and the handsome silver-haired but younger man with her who was “John, old fellow: how’s the gyny business these days?” And the very handsome lady in possibly her mid-forties who was with them: a lady in a suit, a terrifyingly smart, yellow linen suit, the sort that was worn without a blouse: “Phoebe, dear: long time no see?” Only Adam spotted the exact tone of this casualness, which indicated that whoever “Phoebe dear” was, once upon not so very long ago they had had seen all there was to see of each other.

    A saturnine man at a corner table in huddle with a florid man looked vaguely familiar, and turned out to be the medical gent who was Sir Ralph’s next-door neighbour at Willow Grove, the florid man being an anaesthetist, or as Sir Ralph explained genially, a lesser breed without the law on whom Hugh had taken pity; and a clutch of men in the courtyard, all guffawing and smoking cigars, were “Oh, God, bloody Bob and his crowd of legal beagles”, the rather good-looking darkish man who waved and made a face at him being the middle Overdale brother.

    “Shouldn’t have come here,” he said to Adam with a wry grin.

    “No; it only lacks Livia and Maurice, really,” he agreed.

    “Is this the place you came to that time?” asked Georgy.

    “Those times, mm: apparently it’s the only place in town Uncle Maurie condescends to lunch at.”

    Georgy looked puzzled. “I’ve seen him at the Club, a couple of times. Um—on the City Campus,” she said to Sir Ralph, blushing.

    “Mm, quite decent nosh there. Plain but good.”

    “Yes. And do you know that vegetarian place in, um, High Street, I think—that serves Mexican food? I’ve seen him there, I think he likes Mexican food.”

    “Did he see you?” asked Adam.

    “Um—no. Well, this was before he’d met me. Um—well, you know what I mean.”

    “I don’t think I know it,” said Sir Ralph, frowning. “Mexican?”

    “Um—well, it’s very ordinary, really. Just lunches, you know. Not a proper restaurant.”

    “Counter service?” he asked.

    “Um...” Georgy looked round dubiously. “There is a counter, you have to queue, they have the hot food there and if you want a taco they fill it for you while you wait... I see what you mean,” she said, blushing: “this is table service, isn’t it?”

    “Yes,” he said, smiling at her. “You like Mexican food, do you, Georgy?”

    “Um—well, I like tacos, I’ve never had any of those other Mexican things. I’m not sure, really, Mum never has spicy food.”

    “No enchiladath?” he squeaked, raising his eyebrows very high so that he suddenly looked rather like Tom.

    “No tortillath?” grunted Adam hoarsely, very nasal.

    Georgy gave a strangled giggle.

    “I was going to say ‘no margaritath’ but I think they do do them here,” said Sir Ralph. “Having been told how to by a certain lady of our mutual acquaintance. Or so I’m reliably informed.” He looked bland.

    Adam remembered the lunch at The Royal with Polly and Phyllis. “Reliably, eh?”

    “Mm,” said Sir Ralph, looking super-bland.

    Adam glanced cautiously at Georgy. “We might discuss these—er—margaritath.”

    Sir Ralph waved casually and the waiter was there, conjured out of thin air.

    Georgy didn’t think Ralph should drink if he was driving. Sir Ralph was visibly shaken by this opinion. Adam smiled meanly. Finally he was allowed to have a margarita if he didn’t have any wine with his lunch. He agreed to this condition, not pointing out that there was nothing drinkable on The Golden Lamb’s wine list, anyway.

    Georgy wasn’t terribly hungry so she had the pawpaw, followed by a spinach and bacon salad which she assured them was delicious. Ralph, thinking of those eggs this morning, also had the pawpaw and followed it up with orange roughy, forbidding them on pain of instant withdrawal of his custom to slather it in a raspberry-vinegar based sauce, a mango-pulp based sauce, or a Mornay sauce with capers, all of which were urged on him. They gave him chips with it but he manfully ignored them.

    Adam started with the fanned-out avocado thing that Livia had had on a previous occasion, and found it extraordinarily unfilling, so he was glad he’d ordered the lamb chops with the mashed potato. When they came he ate them hungrily although they were rather overdone and he preferred his lamb pinkish, not realizing that the reason he was so hungry was that he hadn’t been eating proper meals lately.

    Georgy, however, noticed he was ravenous and it suddenly dawned on her why and she looked at his large male frame and felt both guilty and very taken aback indeed and started to revise her ideas on equality and the modern woman’s rôle somewhat. After all, it was all very well for people (unspecified) to talk about sharing the household tasks equally, but if she didn’t feed Adam, who would? More liberated or more hard-hearted ladies might well have said “If he can’t feed himself at his age, let him starve” but Georgy was making the most disconcerting discovery that whatever she might have thought she was like up till now, she didn’t seem in fact to be like those liberated, hard-hearted ladies.

    After Georgy had had her pudding—fruit salad—and the gentlemen had refused pudding and Sir Ralph had ambled off to exchange guffaws with his brother and the legal beagles—Georgy had hitherto thought it eagles but on Sir Ralph’s advice she had taken a second look and decided he was right, they were much more like beagles—Adam said with a funny little smile: “What’s the latest verdict on our gregarious neighbour, darling?”

    Georgy looked at him seriously and said: “I think he’s rather sad. And very lonely.”

    Adam had had an idea it might be something like that. He replied: “Mm. I think he must be in the running for the country’s biggest pseud: with a population of three and a half million there can’t be many more like him.”

    “He’s quite genuine about food and wine and—um—art and music,” said Georgy. “Don’t pretend you weren’t trying to catch him out, because you were.”—Adam grinned unrepentantly.—“And he’s got some nice books in his flat. I mean the sort that he’s obviously read, not just those coffee-table books that dumb people with plenty of money buy.”

    “Possibly. But the manner?”

    “It must be his defence mechanism, of course. He’s quite intelligent, isn’t he?”

    Adam groaned.

    “I can’t say I really like him all that much,” said Georgy honestly: “only I can’t help feeling sorry for him. And he is interesting to talk to. He—well, he doesn’t think in clichés, does he?”

    “No. Must have something to do with the fact that though he may not be the country’s greatest pseud—which I don’t concede for an instant—he’s definitely its greatest cynic. If not the world’s: I’ve never met a more disillusioned mind. Well, not in a living human being.” She looked at him in some alarm and he said: “Oh, Lor’, sweetheart, I don’t mean the ambulances are going to come screaming up Willow Grove any day, I mean that I’ve read a few writers who’d be in the same class, but it took a couple of thousand years of Western civilization to produce a mere handful of them!”

    “You ought to tell him, he’d think it was a great compliment, I’m sure!” said Georgy with a smile.

    “Mm.”

    He didn’t, though.

    “This will be extremely painful,” Derry warned Lucinda as she lowered her bum onto the bleachers before Mac’s stage.

    At this a neat, fawn-haired woman perched on the bleacher behind them said in an English accent: “The most painful experience known to the human bum, actually. But I’ve got a spare cushion here, if you’d like to fight over it?”

    Lucinda took it gratefully, as she did have a touch of arthritis in one hip and Derry was well padded.

     Then Derry said: “Actually I meant the performance, I’m afraid.”

    “Actually I knew that, I’m afraid,” she said, poker-face.

    At this he grinned and said: “Put it there, kindred spirit. I’m Derry Dawlish.

    Jill shook hands but said drily: “I’m Jill Davis. Am I still a kindred spirit if I tell you Joel Thring’s my cousin?”

    “Bognor, I knew I recognized that accent,” said Lucinda tranquilly. “Hang on: touch of Cambridge?”

    Jill’s jaw dropped, and Derry explained: “It’s her little specialty: the Professor Higgins of the Nineties.”

    “Get away: Joel’s been gossiping,” she said faintly.

    “Only about old theatrical acquaintances; I think he’s homesick,” said Lucinda calmly.

    Jill looked at her weakly. “I’m awestruck. I once saw you in a Scottish thing: I was so overcome by the accent that I went and looked up your biographical details in order to prove to less credulous friends that you were actually Scottish. Most actors sound like raw Glasgow or Gordon Jackson, but you sounded like the people I’d stayed with on a farm in Scotland in my youth.”

     Lucinda smiled. “Praise indeed.”

    “Hang on: were these people on the farm actually Scots?” asked Derry keenly.

    “The analytical mind,” groaned Lucinda.

    “He’s right, though. Most of them were, Derry. One was my mother, she was from Bognor like me, and one was my father, I’ll leave it to Ms Stuart to figure out where he was from.”

    Lucinda said firmly: “Lucinda. –I can’t possibly tell where your father was from without hearing his voice.”

    “He was from Bognor, too. I was hoping to catch you out.”

    “No-one catches Lucinda out, she can always tell if they were born Hungarian,” said Derry happily.

    Jill chuckled. “This trip must be full of new aural experiences for you,” she noted.

    “All of ’em unpleasant,” said Derry glumly. “Joel told me the Bottom was a real possibility, but— Oh, well

    “Oh, is it the accent stopping you?” said Jill airily. “We thought it was the brown.”

    There was a short pause.

    “Runs in the family, I see,” said Derry on a grim note.

    “Yes, clear-sighted intelligence, the Davises are known for it.”

    “Not the Thrings?” said Lucinda with a gurgle of laughter.

    “Oh, he’s a Davis, too. Changed his name to Joel because it was artistic, to get him the more airy-fairy parts, and to Thring because he fancied it was regional, to get him the more—er—regional parts, I presume. This was back when Alan Bates and Co. were beginning to be taken notice of.”

    “So what actually is his name?” asked Derry keenly.

    “John Davis, what else?”

    Derry grinned. “You would think twice about casting a John Davis as Puck.”

    “I wouldn’t, but then I’m full of clear-sighted intelligence,” replied Jill calmly.

    “In that case, tell me what you think of Madame de Sévigné,” said Lucinda, twinkling at her.

    Jill scratched her neat fawn head. “Um—well, I suppose she must have had charm, she seems to have attached old Bussy all right, plus a crowd of Rabbit’s friends and relations, but reading her she always strikes me as the complete pudding.”

    “Thanks.”

    “Any time.”

    Lucinda sighed.

    “We could fall back on Molière,” murmured Derry.

    “No, I’m the wrong sex to play him,” she pointed out.

    “In him, dear.”

    “No, the only character with an ounce of complexity is le Misanthrope, and I’m the wrong sex to play him, too, in case you hadn’t noticed.”

    “Does it have to be French?” asked Jill, rolling her eyes wildly.

    “No, but it definitely has to be costume: Derry’s gone all period.”

    “What about one of the famous mistresses?” said Jill.

    “Whose?” replied Lucinda warily.

    “Uh—well, pick a Louis.”

    “Think about it, Derry,” she said, patting his knee.

    “Mistresses are old hat.”

    “Ah, but still Box Office,” said Jill. “Look out, here comes trouble.”

    They glanced up, and sighed.

    When Livia and Mac had finished screaming at each other and had respectively flounced and stomped off they all sighed again.

    “What on earth’s up with her? First Night Bard nerves, or what?” wondered Lucinda.

    “Don’t think she’s got any,” said Derry.

    “Adam was saying something about some love affaire that went wrong, but that’s not Livia’s style, surely? And I know I said she was pretty brittle the other day, but really!”

    “It might just be that she regards Nigel as her exclusive property and that white dress Georgy’s got on today has put her nose out of joint,” ventured Jill.

    “Not so much the dress, Nigel’s reaction to it,” said Derry.

    Lucinda gave him a dry look. “Yes, well, plus yours, plus Mac’s, plus every male within a radius of forty miles. But—well, you never knew her before, Jill, but I’d say something’s caught her on the raw, she doesn’t usually let herself go like that.”

    Joel had come over to them during this exchange and now he said with a sigh: “One gathers there has been a Big Row, dears. Maurice has announced he can’t come to the Opening Night, after all.”

    “Naughty little Maurice,” said Lucinda drily.

    “Yes. It isn’t the defection in itself, so much—though that is bad,” he said, walking carefully along his cousin’s bleacher with his arms outstretched for balance, “but, one gathers, its implications.”

    “Don’t tell me he’s found another Indian beauty!” said Jill in a stunned voice.

    “No, the wife is coming home and has ordered him to meet her at the airport bang in the middle of Act Four.”

    “Ouch,” said Jill.

    “Even Livia can’t be pretending she didn’t know he was married, surely?” said Lucinda weakly.

    “No, dear, but there are two points to consider, here: the first is, Livia will be without an escort for the Opening Night knees-up after the show, and the second is that at our tayme of layfe we do not wish to be remaynded of where we stand in the scheme of things. Have you no sensitivity?”

    “No. I haven’t got clear-sighted intelligence like the Davises, either.”

    Joel preened, and nearly overbalanced. He sat down hurriedly. “Er—no. Well, one gathers that is it, dears. The nose is thoroughly out of joint. And Nigel has been a bad brown boy, he thinks Georgy’s prettier than Livia. Proves he’s not blind, I suppose.”

    “Also that he has no tact whatsoever. Well, he’s young, he’s young,” sighed Jill.

    “For one that’s not in this Midsummer Nightmare, you sound remarkably disillusioned, Jill!” noticed Lucinda with a chuckle.

    “Disillusioned? I’ve been getting glimpses of it now for—um—fifty years or so. No, well, since before Christmas. Well before. Personally I think I deserve a medal for not having cut my throat long since.”

    Derry dug in his pocket. He handed something to her.

    “Ta,” she said weakly.

    Joel peered. He grinned. “Un petho!” he grunted through his nose.

    “That reminds me, who in God’s name was that smooth gent with Adam, earlier, and why in God’s name were they speaking like Speedy Gonzales?” asked Lucinda weakly.

    “Ya-reeb—”

    “Shut up, Speedy Gon-Thring,” said Jill. “He’s Tom Overdale’s brother—chap who’s in charge of the consort. He was at the dress balls-up last night, or so I’m told; didn’t you meet him?” They shook their heads. “Lives in the up-market clutch of yuppie hutches where Adam’s rented a place.”

    “Not a place, dear, a wee nest,” Joel reproached her.

    “I thought I told you to shut up?”

    Joel pouted. “All right, if you’re so clever, now explain the Me-hi-cano bit, nyergh, nyergh, you can’t, can you!”

    Jill replied sourly: “No, apart from plain and simple male rivalry over our Dr Harris. In case you need it spelled out.”

    “Oh, I can spell it, dear,” said her cousin, equally sour. “D,I,S,A,S,T—”

    Lucinda and Derry exchanged glances. “It’s not that bad, surely?” she said feebly.

    “Not the rivalry, no,” Jill conceded. “Well, none of Georgy’s friends and supporters are terribly tickled by it. Your mate Adam does tend to strike one and all as the love ’em and leave ’em type.”

    “One has nothing against Adam, Derry, dear,” Joel explained airily, but with a wary look in his eye: “but looking at the two of them one does tend to think that whereas A has everything, B has— Well, very little. ‘A is happy,’” he suddenly carolled: “‘oh, so happy: laughing ha-ha, chaffing ha—’ Sorry. Only it is rather ‘happy undeserving A’ and poor little B. –Can’t remember what B was, but I know it wasn’t good.”

    “‘Bu-hut condemned to di-hie is he-ee, Wretched something-something B’,” contributed Lucinda.

    “Puts it in a nutshell, darling,” said Joel acidly.

    “Possibly A will take B away with him, though,” murmured Derry.

    “To be his little domestic slave, dear?” enquired Joel tenderly.

    Lucinda looked dubious. “Is he like that, do you think?”

    Joel nearly fell off his bleacher. “Darling, one hasn’t tried it personally, but one dares hazard a guess!”

    “That frightful woman he married was no domestic slave,” she pointed out.

    “Domestic tyrant, more like,” agreed Derry.

    “Was she?” asked Jill curiously.

    “God, yes,” said Derry cheerfully. “Led him a dog’s life. Then when his career started taking off and people started paying him a bit of attention and she found she looked a bloody fool when she put him down in public for a weedy wet—which was her pleasant habit—she couldn’t dump him fast enough. Ran off with a fellow who had about as much go in him as a piece of used chewing-gum. You remember him, Lucinda: that fair-haired friend of Adam’s—did Young Will to Adam’s Dark Lady in that bloody two-man fringe thing at Edinburgh.”

    “This is apocryphal,” said Jill faintly.

    “What? Oh!” said Derry with a chuckle. “Hell, no! It was bad, though, I’ll give you that. Well, Adam wasn’t too bad, especially in the first part, where he was in drag—you must remember!” he said to Lucinda.

    “Oh, yes, of course: he was very pretty. Said he had to use a cream to get rid of the five o’clock shadow,” she recalled with a twinkle.

    “Darlings, how did I come to miss it?” gasped Joel in horror.

    “Must’ve been the year you were in summer stock in Blackpool, wowing them on the pier,” replied Derry unkindly.

    “Beast! Ay have never played anything in Blackpool! I presume it never got to London, that’s how I missed it.”

    “Don’t think it ever got to a third night on the fringe,” said Derry drily. “Well, anyway, that blond wimp was him. –The fellow Adam’s wife ran off with!” he said irritably as they all looked blank.

    “Oh, yes: there was a point to this story,” recalled Jill.

    “Well, I think it’s irrelevant,” said Joel firmly.

    “Derry’s story? So do I,” admitted Jill sadly. “Good, mind you, but irrelevant.”

    “No, the Claudia thing! The fact that she was a domestic tyrant doesn’t mean he won’t bully poor little Georgy if he carries her off to his cave!”

    “You’ve got a point, Joel,” Lucinda admitted with a grimace. “But he’d do it with great charm: it could well be thirty years before she woke up to the fact that that was what he was doing.”

    “Oh, well, goody gumdrops. She could go and start a new life after that, I suppose!”

    Lucinda gaped at him. Even Derry stared.

    “Darlings, you don’t know her as we do. But we are all convinced that she is Too Good For Him!” he hissed evilly.

    Derry winced slightly and wiped his face. “Er—yes. No doubt. Well, it seems to me that you’ve got two choices here, Joel: either you can hope that Adam dumps her heartlessly, thus sparing her the pain of thirty wasted years with a disillusionment at the end of ’em,”—Joel glared—“or you can hope he drags her off to his cave, thus sparing her the immediate pain of a broken holiday romance and—er—affording her the pain of thirty wasted years with a disillusionment at the end of ’em.”

    “Yes, very clever, dear. I’ll go and fetch Charles, then he can write it down in real words with spelling, and maybe you can make use of it for your next epic!” He got up and went off, looking cross.

    “Good God,” said Derry faintly.

    “Of course, to ar-teestes such as you, Georgy and Adam are like all of us poor humans: mere raw material,” noted Jill airily.

    “All right, oh clear-sighted intelligent one,” Derry retorted: “how do you see their bloody relationship ending up?”

    Jill rubbed her nose. “Pretty much the way you do, actually.”

    “Yeah,” said the famous producer-director drily.