Life After Lunch

by Sarah Harrison

  ‘To my bow-legged hen.’

  She snorted with mirth and botched her lipstick. ‘Now look what you’ve done!’

  It was only on the way home that I wondered what she’d meant about me and Henry being a funny pair. But I was in no fit state to give it too much thought. I concluded rather fuzzily as I indulged in half an hour on the bed with my shoes off, that she was just being affectionate.

  Josh tapped on the door and put his head round. ‘You okay?’

  ‘Absolutely.’

  ‘Been out?’

  What a little pig he was at heart. I’d heard that insinuating ‘Good lunch?’ line from a hundred London cabbies. ‘None of your business.’

  ‘Fair enough.’ He leaned on the door jamb, arms folded, and adjusted his glasses with a penetrating look that reminded me of my father.

  ‘So it’s okay if I go to work that Saturday.’ This was pitched somewhere between a question and a statement, but whatever it was it brooked no argument. I remembered his victorious air the night of my visit to Patrick and Susan’s call from Crete and concluded that it was in my own interests, and those of consistency, not to cave in completely.

  I rubbed my face and yawned. ‘In my opinion, no.’

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  ‘I can’t stop you, and I can’t make you come to your cousin’s wedding.’

  ‘True.’

  ‘On the other hand it would be nice to think that you yourself might see why it was a good thing to be there.’

  ‘Which I don’t.’

  ‘Apparently not.’

  ‘Fine.’ He pushed himself away from the door and disppeared, only to reappear almost instantly. ‘ So you’re going to let me do what I want but you’re going to be a martyr about it.’

  ‘That’s about the size of it.’

  ‘Bloody hell!’ He disappeared, this time for good.

  Becca called to see if I’d have the kids the following night so she could go out with Griggs. I said yes – it was a wonderfully stabilizing and humbling thing to have one’s grandchildren around, I found – but when I mentioned this to Glyn he told me I couldn’t.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘We’ve got the city fathers’ bash, remember? I mean, we could get out of it, but you gave me the impression that this was the first step on your road to an QBE.’

  It pleased Glyn to pretend that I was only involved in the CAB in order to get a mention in some future honours list.

  ‘Are you sure it’s tomorrow?’

  He nodded in the direction of the pin-board. ‘ It’s up there with ‘‘Yes’’ written on it in your handwriting.’

  It was. The Mayor and Lady Mayoress requested the pleasure of our company at the City Hall tomorrow evening at what was described as a ‘community reception’ with wine and refreshments. This was an annual event, intended to promote good relations between commerce, council and town. It was the first time the CAB had been represented and the first time I’d seen myself not as some earnest, unskilled part-timer but as a serious person who contributed to the social fabric of the town. I was pitifully flattered and keen.

  ‘Damn,’ I said.

  ‘You want to go, don’t you?’ asked Glyn.

  ‘In a way …’

  ‘Of course you do. But they don’t need me there. I’ll sit the kids, you cut along to the Mayor’s parlour and put yourself about.’

  I was feeling a shade touchy and overhung and decided against letting him get away with this perfectly well-meaning characterization of my motives.

  ‘No, no, we’ll both go.’

  ‘Want me to call Becca?’

  ‘I’m perfectly capable of calling her, thanks.’

  ‘George Cross job, that …’

  Becca’s reaction didn’t disappoint. ‘But you said you could! And it’s short notice – who else am I supposed to ask?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Where’s Verity?’

  ‘You mean now, or tomorrow night?’

  ‘Either – both. Now.’

  ‘She’s upstairs at the moment. But tomorrow’s her night at the shelter.’

  ‘I thought charity was supposed to begin at home!’

  ‘Look, darling, don’t bluster at me about it—’

  ‘Who else am I suppose to bluster at when you said you could do it and let me down at the last moment!’

  ‘I am sorry, really.’

  ‘I want to speak to Verity,’ she said, like a chief inspector flashing his identity card – objections were out of the question.

  I went halfway up the stairs and called. Irritation with Becca made me brusque, but if anyone was equipped to turn the other cheek, it was Verity.

  ‘Becca, for you,’ I said curtly as she appeared. A faint whiff of sandalwood accompanied the opening of the door. Her cheeks were pink and her hair dragged back in a scrunchy. She was obviously in the middle of something.

  ‘What does she want?’ This unprecedented querying of her sister’s summons should have alerted me to a change in the prevailing wind, but I suppose I was too cross to notice.

  ‘You’d better ask her.’

  Verity followed me down the stairs and I returned to the sitting-room, where Glyn was looking at an old copy of Viz and occasionally helping himself to black olives out of an opened tin. He rolled his eyes up at me and tweaked one side of his mouth in an ‘ I told you so’ expression.

  ‘Sorry,’ said Verity, out in the hall. ‘ I’m afraid I can’t.’

  We were both absolutely riveted.

  ‘I have to be at the shelter,’ she said in response to the inevitable question on the other end, and then, ‘It is crucial, actually. There aren’t that many of us and dependability’s very important.’

  I peeped out into the hall. Verity was standing with one hand resting on the banister, gazing out towards the garden, listening. And listening. Becca obviously had plenty to say.

  ‘Can’t you ask that friend of yours? You know – Karen? Oh no … oh, poor thing … I see, no, of course not.’

  There was another long pause. Verity suddenly turned my way and I got up like a scalded cat and sat at the other end of the sofa, ignoring Glyn’s suppressed hilarity.

  ‘I tell you what,’ suggested Verity, ‘ask Griggs to come and visit you at home. If he’s that crazy about you he’ll come. He’d probably like to. With all the glitz and stuff he has to put up with I should think he’d enjoy a night in with a bacon butty and the telly.’

  It was clear that whatever Griggs’s likely preferences, Becca herself did not favour such an evening.

  ‘I’m really sorry I can’t help,’ said Verity. There wasn’t a trace of harshness or sarcasm in her voice – she was genuinely sorry – but she was also firm. ‘They need me at the shelter. Hope you find someone. ’Bye.’

  We listened to her footsteps go back up the stairs. Attuned as I was to such things, I could tell that her light, steady tread was neither weighed down by care nor propelled by rage. Having been caught out once, we didn’t even look at each other again until we heard Verity’s door close behind her.

  ‘Has she been to assertiveness classes?’ asked Glyn.

  ‘Not that I know of.’

  ‘Poor old Bex.’

  ‘Good for Verity.’

  ‘Absolutely. Have an olive. Anyway,’ he said, ‘it’s not our problem.’

  We heard no more from Becca on the subject. The following evening we left for the Mayor’s bash while Verity was still eating her early-evening cornflakes in front of an Australian soap.

  ‘You two look nice,’ she said.

  ‘What would you expect,’ repled Glyn, ‘when we’re off to be feted by the Mayor and Corporation?’ He was wearing a buttermilk-coloured suit and a white button-down shirt with no tie. I considered this altogether too much of a fashion statement, and said so.

  ‘It’s not a fashion statement, it’s a heat statement,’ he told me. ‘It’s warm out, it’ll be hot as hell in the town hall, so when
I undo my top button I’ll look smartly casual.’

  I wasn’t sure about this. ‘They might not even let you in without a tie.’

  ‘So? It’s your body they’re after, Laura-lou.’ He interposed himself between Verity and Summer Bay and asked, ‘What’s your view on the no-tie issue, Ver?’

  She looked him up and down. ‘Trendy.’

  ‘Trendy!’ Not sure whether to be flattered, he grimaced over her head at me. ‘A word reserved for the oldest swinger in town.’

  Verity leaned sideways. ‘ You’re a better door than a window. Dad.’

  As we were about to get into the car. Josh came slouching back from the bus stop.

  ‘Where are you off to like pox doctor’s clerks?’ I told him. He watched us get in and then leaned down to speak through the open window to Glyn. ‘If this is your bid for civic respectability, you want to put a tie on. That look’s sending all the wrong messages.’

  ‘Get out of it,’ said Glyn. But as we drove down Alderswick Avenue he craned to look at himself in the mirror. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  I couldn’t resist it. ‘Remember Jimmy Mullaney?’

  ‘Jimmy who?’ He drove another couple of hundred yards. ‘Really? Shit a brick.’

  Any notions we had about attracting attention, favourable or otherwise, were instantly dispelled on arrival. The place was packed. Our names were proclaimed, above the unheeding hubbub, by a perspiring flunkey. We had been given LD badges with our names on, mine with the qualification ‘Citizens Advice’ – there was no room for the ‘ Bureau’ – and Glyn’s just with ‘Guest’. We could not see the Mayor or the Lady Mayoress – at least, we couldn’t see any heavy-duty chains of office and we wouldn’t have known these dignitaries from Adam. There was no one else we knew either. It was going to be a case of looking at badges and, as the invitation had suggested, networking.

  There was red or white wine or orange juice, all being served at body temperature.

  ‘Oh God,’ I moaned through a polite half-smile, ‘ we should never have come!’

  ‘Rubbish!’ said Glyn, playing, as so often, Ratty to my Mole. ‘It’s absolutely classic. I love it. And—’ he put his arm round my waist – ‘we’re the smartest couple here.’

  ‘That’s not saying much.’ We were surrounded by more easy-care cotton-mix two-pieces and chainstore suits than you could shake a stick at.

  ‘Let’s circulate. You take the right flank, I’ll cover the left.’

  He was already on his way, studying closely the left breast of a his June Harrod, educational psychologist, and telling her that we needed her services to sort out our son who was a disturbed genius. I knew that he was enjoying himself, and that his interest in his Harrod, who was trim and politely startled, was completely unfeigned. He was, as the phrase went, ‘into it’.

  I set off doggedly in the opposite direction. This was supposed to be my evening, after all, but there were no prizes for guessing which of us would have the most fun. I had imagined being greeted at the door with a warm mayoral handshake and borne off at once to be introduced to extraordinarily interesting people whose approval would validate my twelve hours a week at the CAB. It would have been nice to demonstrate a real identity among my peers, as Glyn had been able to do, effortlessly, at the Guys ’ n’ Dolls riverboat party.

  I did come across one familiar face, near the finger-buffet.

  ‘Shona …?’

  ‘Mrs Lewis, hi there!’ Shona was my age, but her friendship with Verity seemed to have persuaded her that she was of Verity’s generation and should accord me some sort of respect.

  I looked at her label. ‘Oh, the night-shelter.’

  ‘That’s right. I debated long and hard whether to come, but Verity said I might meet some people with cash connections, and she and Jasper could cope—’

  ‘Jasper?’

  ‘Her chap, you know? He helps us out from time to time now. I suspect his motives are not entirely altruistic, but who cares?’

  ‘No one,’ I agreed. This brief conversation explained so much. I glanced across the room for Glyn and saw him wielding a bottle – how had he got it? – over the glasses of a merry group.

  ‘It’s a bit of a bear-garden, isn’t it?’ asked Shona.

  ‘It is rather. I had no idea there’d be so many people.’

  ‘Oh yes,’ said Shona, displaying an unexpected streak of world-weariness, ‘ it’s just a PR exercise for His Worship when you come to think of it. Pack as many bods in as you possibly can, which reduces the cost per capita, and let them get on with it.’

  ‘I suppose so,’ I agreed forlornly.

  ‘I wish I had even ten per cent of what they forked out on this for our shelter. Still,’ she smiled wistfully, ‘mustn’t complain. It’s lovely to see you. And we all think the world of your Verity.’

  ‘We do, too.’

  ‘She’s a real doer,’ enthused Shona. ‘We all know who to ask if we want something done.’

  I reflected that as of yesterday evening Becca would not have agreed with this. I had a strong sense of the old order changing, and shifting sands beneath my feet.

  ‘Where is the Mayor?’ I asked.

  Shona took my shoulder, turned me to face into the room, and pointed discreetly. ‘Over there. I’ve already had a word, and he’s not a bad chap at all actually. Why don’t you go and introduce yourself? Nothing ventured, nothing gained.’

  Councillor Ian Shepherd was not as old as I’d expected, or perhaps it was another function of getting older oneself that the mayors, like the policemen, got younger. I put him in his late thirties, a smooth, go-getting type with a snappy handshake.

  He was also a whizz with the peripheral vision, because before I’d opened my mouth, and without even appearing to glance at my badge, he said, ‘Mrs Lewis – we haven’t forgotten about your new premises.’

  ‘You understand our difficulty,’ I said.

  ‘It’s my job to understand people’s difficulties, or try to. I imagine that if we were able to move the Bureau on to the ground floor that would help? You have no objection to the Corn Exchange as a site, per se?’

  I realized this was my opportunity to do some serious lobbying. This was what I was here for.

  ‘The Corn Exchange is marvellous,’ I said, ‘but I think people feel rather exposed corning to see us there. You know, the bar, and everything else that goes on there …’

  ‘You don’t think they might find all that helpful?’ asked Councillor Shepherd, furrowing his brow in an expression of concerned and penetrating enquiry. ‘Perhaps a buzzy, vital place is more inviting. And while I appreciate the point that’s been made about the stairs, the Exchange is central and accessible.’

  I persevered. ‘Seeking advice and help isn’t a social activity. The kind of people who come to us are very often the ones who most want quiet and privacy – the elderly, the badly-off, single parents—’

  ‘Ah, single parents,’ said Shepherd. ‘I must say that when it comes to the family I’m old-fashioned.’

  I had the impression that he confided this to me in the expectation that I, too, would be old-fashioned, and would heartily agree with him. I couldn’t remember when I’d instinctively disliked someone so much.

  ‘Really?’ I asked. ‘In what way?’

  ‘I feel we should give all the help we can to those who need it, naturally, but that shouldn’t prevent us from aiming to re-establish the family unit.’

  ‘Which family unit is that?’

  ‘The conventional one. The one on which society is based and which the Christian religion advocates as the ideal way for men and women to conduct their lives and bring up their children.’

  That did it. Verity was my touchstone in matters spiritual, and I was quite sure she wouldn’t have given houseroom to Shepherd’s smug, paternalistic views. I sensed that I was talking to someone completely devoid of ordinary human charity – a careerist. As he beamed interestedly into my face I was sure he was using that pre
ternaturally developed peripheral vision to spot other, more susceptible and less contentious guests within his ambit. Becca, I thought, would have made mincemeat of him. But she wasn’t here, so I’d have to do.

  ‘Oh dear,’ I said with a teasing smile. ‘You are old-fashioned, aren’t you? Never mind. You’re young. You’ll learn.’

  I touched his wrist forgivingly and turned away. I hadn’t a clue where I was headed, only that I mustn’t hesitate. Mercifully I saw Glyn’s backview over by one of the open windows that overlooked the market square. The person he was talking to was perched on the windowsill. I sidled my way through the crowd.

  ‘Help,’ I muttered, ‘I’ve just been rude to the Mayor.’

  ‘No harm in that,’ said Glyn. ‘The vital thing is to make an impression. By the way, do you know the Prof here?’

  Patrick got up off the windowsill.

  ‘As a matter of fact we do know each other, yes.’

  ‘Yes,’ I repeated stupidly. I had broken out in a flop sweat and could feel my silk shirt sticking where it touched.

  ‘I knew it,’ said Glyn happily. ‘Networking, you see.’

  Patrick folded his arms. He was wearing the usual shapeless jacket and cords. ‘I bet your wife hasn’t told you that I gatecrashed your party in the spring.’

  ‘She didn’t, no. She doesn’t tell me a thing – she protects me from all life’s little unpleasantnesses.’ Glyn was clearly delighted with the whole thing, but I was panic-stricken. Patrick might say anything – he was a loose cannon. My helplessness was terrifying. If Glyn had to find out this would be the most brutal, farcical, unforgivable way possible. My heart thundered in my ears. I couldn’t look at either of them – I gazed out of the window.

  ‘I was lured in by your pied piper,’ went on Patrick. ‘Fairy fiddler, I should say.’

  ‘Great, wasn’t he?’ agreed Glyn. ‘We can’t take any credit, he was a present from a friend. So what was your cover story, or didn’t you bother?’

  ‘Didn’t need one. I came in at your back gate. Your wife was there. She handled the whole thing with perfect grace and tact.’

  ‘Hear that?’ Glyn tapped my arm. ‘You can do it when you try.’ I suppose I must have smiled or something, because he went on, ‘You should have brought the Prof in for a drink.’