An Eligible Man

by Rosemary Friedman

  Inez, putting her nose into the scentless gerbera, said: “Divine!” in an accent you could cut with a knife.

  Barbara Holdfast remarked how well the colours looked against the sack-cloth curtains, and Sally Maddox volunteered how hopeless she was both with flowers and with green plants which habitually died on her (a warning glance from April). This remark seemed to exhaust the subject, whereupon April left the room in search of a vase. There was a brief hiatus filled by Marcus, together with the glass which he put into Topher’s hand.

  “Lamberhurst,” he said. “Made outside Tunbridge Wells. I’d like to know what you think of it.”

  Topher was not disposed to think anything. He wanted to go home to his pot noodles and Don Giovanni.

  Robert held his glass by the foot, and the wine in his mouth for a moment.

  “A Rheinhessen? Or a Rheinpfalz?”

  “Not bad, Bob.” Marcus topped him up by way of reward. “To let you into a secret, it actually comes from Müller Thurgau grapes. It makes a reasonably provocative apéritif, don’t you think?”

  Topher had nothing constructive to offer. He thought that Marcus had left the wine for too long in the fridge. He said: “Very pleasant.” And then repeated it. “Very pleasant.” Which seemed to knock the Lamberhurst on the head.

  There was a long silence, broken desperately by Peter from Edinburgh who addressed his nephew.

  “How long have you had those whiskers?”

  Before John could answer, his father broke in with: “Too lazy to shave.”

  “It hardly seems reasonable,” John said affably, “to waste one hundred and fifty days of your life removing hair from your face.”

  “It’s part of the image…” Marcus tweaked his son’s beard will ill concealed pride, “…like going to India in a Land Rover.”

  Glancing surreptitiously at his watch, Topher realised that he had an entire evening to get through. He should not have come.

  At dinner, April sat him on her right, next to Sally Maddox. He was glad to have been spared Inez who always came on so strong that one felt compelled to flirt with her. Peter Gordon, sprung temporarily from his wife and children, had the honour of her attentions. From the expression on his face, as he held her chair for her, it did not look as if coping with Inez was going to be too much of a chore. John (who would have put his mother’s table out) had not been invited to join them.

  Taking the mise en scène over which April had, as usual, taken considerable pains, Topher realised both how hungry he was and that he had not eaten at a properly set table since Caroline’s death. He had of course dined both with Chelsea and Penge, neither of whom subscribed to the theory that “le plaisir de la table commence par celui des yeux”. They both derided the complexities of bourgeois cutlery and were not in the least concerned with formal seating arrangements. Dinner at Wapping consisted of Chelsea aimlessly wandering in and out of the warehouse kitchen (divided by an Edwardian birdcage from the living area), unwrapping whatever she had bought at the delicatessen on her way home from the BBC. By the time they actually sat down at the table, on which Chelsea, almost as an afterthought, had slung some knives and forks, Topher had lost his appetite. A breathtaking view of London’s docklands, together with the mournful sounds of the tug-boats, did little to compensate for the cold or reheated dishes (frequently still with the price on) which were Chelsea’s idea of a meal. Penge, in her commune, took nutrition more seriously. Her wholefood concoctions seemed to be composed largely of pulses, however, which gave Topher indigestion.

  April’s polished table, the colours of the floral centrepiece matching those of the Limoges china, compensated for the Lamberhurst. Topher felt himself responding to the visual stimuli and hoped that Sally Maddox could not hear the rumbling of his stomach. Caroline had been an excellent cook but, unlike April, not artistic. Her tastes had been simple. No sprigs of parsley, no radish roses, no slices of kiwi fruit. She was not beguiled by nouvelle cuisine with its warm salads (in her book a contradiction in terms) and preposterous conglomerations of seasonal vegetables. If her guests didn’t like the spinach or sprouts that she gave them, that was their problem. She would serve them a generous plate of smoked salmon, a perfect chicken (roasted with a bundle of rosemary), and a little cheese. There would be linen napkins, and wine in big plain glasses, to complement the food. Caroline never made a fuss. April’s menu would, Topher knew, be more ambitious. She did not begrudge spending half a day on a sauce and had been known personally to eviscerate mallards.

  “Oh good, pudding!” Peter Gordon said, making them all laugh. “I get depressed when there are no dessert spoons.”

  “Not much chance of that here,” Barbara Holdfast said. “There will be an embarras de puddings, if I know April. Probably at least three.”

  The first course came on an oval silver platter: an arrangement of sliced hard-boiled eggs on a bed of frisée, topped by Mediterranean vegetables. The dish, with its outsize serving spoon, was passed round the table. It was followed by a basket of rolls. Helping himself to three curls of butter, Peter put a hand to his stomach which lapped comfortably over his belt.

  “I’m supposed to be dieting. Don’t tell my wife!”

  In the silence which followed, everyone avoided looking at Topher.

  Marcus leaped up to fetch the decanter from the sideboard. It was while he was circumventing the table, filling the glasses, that the incident occurred.

  Topher held the dish, with its lattice of red and yellow peppers, while Sally Maddox helped herself. Then Sally Maddox held the dish for him. He was just wondering how much of the hors d’oeuvre one could reasonably take without appearing greedy, and whether there would be sufficient to go round, when she said softly: “Marcus told me you have recently lost your wife.”

  Topher felt a constriction in his throat which prevented him from replying.

  “You must be very sad.”

  Topher nodded. It was rarely that one’s feelings in the matter of bereavement were acknowledged. The subject was either studiously avoided or tactics employed which were designed both to take one’s mind off the event and save the questioner from embarrassment.

  Topher replaced the serving spoon on the platter which he held aloft. He passed it on to April who was looking anxiously round the table. It was as he relinquished the cumbersome oval of silver, that he felt a hand slide beneath the napkin on his lap, investigate his private parts through his trousers and briefly, but unmistakably, clutch his balls. In the nick of time April rescued the dish from his grasp. Topher turned to Sally Maddox, who was calmly buttering her roll.

  Marcus filled his wineglass. “Château La Courolle. From the Montagne St Emilion area. Quite a decent little chap if you allow him to relax for half an hour.”

  Eyeing the Château La Courolle with suspicion, Topher thought that he had perhaps been affected by something in the Lamberhurst. You could not really trust an English wine made from German grapes grown in the wrong climate. Perhaps he had had an hallucination brought about by pollutants. Additives such as dried blood, ferrocyanide and gelatine had all been recently detected in certain wines. He stole a glance again at Sally Maddox in her brown, with her brown hair scraped back into a falling down arrangement at the back of her head. She was tasting a forkful of yellow peppers. When she’d finished her mouthful she turned towards him. He was almost too abashed to look at her. Her glance was open, friendly, as if she had nothing to hide. Perhaps he had, after all, been imagining things.

  Sally Maddox put a hand on his arm and leaned towards him conspiratorially. Topher shrank back. He dreaded to think what was coming.

  “I wonder,” her whisper was intimate, “if I might trouble you for the salt.”

  He had no recollection of his plate being taken – perhaps he had even handed it to April himself – or of the next course being served. He found that he was addressing a portion of oriental chicken on a bed of saffron rice. The conversation was gyrating about his head.

  They were
discussing the Common Market’s agricultural policy, with which Peter Gordon, an investment banker, seemed to be involved.

  At some other time perhaps, Topher, aware of his obligations to sing for his supper, would have contributed to the discussion. As it was he was too stunned. He hoped that his host and hostess would put his lack of concern for the butter mountain down to his general loss of interest in the world about him, a direct result of his recent misfortune.

  It was not the fact that he had been groped by Sally Maddox that bothered him – he had rejected the idea of hallucinations – but that the result of this affront to his person was still uncomfortably evident. It was unbelievable. Such a thing had never happened to him. Certainly not at a dinner party. He tried to keep track of the small-talk while he sorted out the conflicting sensations assaulting his brain, which were a direct result of the assault upon his person.

  His first reaction was one of shame, as if he had betrayed Caroline. As if he had defiled her memory when she had only been dead three months. His second thought was one of surprise at his own prompt response. His first thought about his second thought was to tell himself not to be so dishonest, so hypocritical. There seemed, as he had discovered over the past weeks, to be a direct association between grief and desire. He had been meaning to discuss it with Marcus.

  Nothing had been further from his mind than sex during the weeks of Caroline’s illness. The morning after her death he had woken in his lonely bed with an unambiguous desire for it. The longing had not been for his wife but for relief. The fact that his flesh was outside his control did not please him. He was a controlled man, one of Her Majesty’s judges, and it distressed him to think that, while he was directly responsible for the lives of others, he was not in command of himself. Apart from with Muriel Mills, he had not been unfaithful to Caroline. It upset him to think that, while eating his saffron rice, he was being disloyal to her memory.

  Returning his attentions to the table, Topher discovered to his horror that the subject now under discussion was “genitalia and sexual selection in the animal kingdom”. He wondered whether it had been arrived at subliminally, as a result of the ordeal to which he had been subjected a few moments before. He grew both increasingly ill at ease and conscious of the presence of the unpredictable lady on his right, as Marcus informed the table that, while some flies rejoiced in penises which were larger than the rest of their bodies, the male spider – like the male seahorse – did not possess a penis at all.

  Applying himself to his pudding – Barbara Holdfast had been right, there was a tarte au citron, a passion fruit sorbet and a redcurrant mousse – Topher listened, with morbid fascination, whilst willing the discussion to take a less sensitive turn.

  Marcus was just getting into his stride. One theory for the evolution of complex genitalia in the animal kingdom, he said, was that male and female structures had a lock and key relationship. This ensured that, for purely mechanical reasons, individuals could only mate with a partner of their own kind. He was expounding on the sex life of the moth, whose organ carried an elaborate file and scraper that rubbed together to produce a vibratory stimulus heard by the female through her genitalia, when April said: “Really, Marcus, you can’t expect us to believe that that’s where moths keep their ears!”

  Against the general hilarity which greeted her remark, April enquired if anyone would care for some more of the sorbet before she put it back in the freezer. While she was in the kitchen, Topher, glad that Marcus had been deflected from the mating habits of animals by the desire for a second helping of passion fruit, turned to his outrageous companion.

  “Marcus says you’re a writer.”

  Sally Maddox raised a hand. Topher flinched. Surely she wasn’t going to assault him again in front of the whole table which had gone suddenly quiet. To his relief the hand was merely to silence him.

  “I work every morning for three hours, in accordance with Trollope’s prescription, and the ideas just come.”

  She had answered the question before Topher had voiced it.

  “It’s a writer’s catechism. Doesn’t the law have one?”

  “When I was at the Bar I was required to explain how it was that I could defend one fellow against another, even if it was the second who was in the right. These days I get asked for my qualifications to sit in judgement. There are none, of course and I don’t. My task is simply ‘to interpret law and not make or give law’.”

  “Psychiatrists are confused with mind readers,” Marcus chipped in from the sideboard where he stood with a bottle of Rémy Martin in his hand. “People either clam up completely or expect me to know what they’re thinking. I sometimes wish I were a shoe salesman.”

  “I am confronted with a scrap of material,” Inez said, “from which I am expected to suggest which colour should be ‘picked out’. Colours should meeeld…” She made a cadenza of the word. “They should have to do with the perssonality of the house.” She leaned close to Peter and put her hand on his arm. “Tell us about investment bankers, darlink?”

  “Get-rich-quick tips. I wish I knew some!”

  “Writers always get the shitty end of the stick.” Sally Maddox shocked Topher for the second time. “People sink their teeth in to you and never let you go. They think they have only to know what sort of paper you use, and whether you write with a pen or a pencil, to be able to do it themselves.”

  “Do what themselves?”

  April retrieved the fag end of the conversation as she came in carrying the coffee pot. “Don’t tell me we’re back to moths again!”

  Five

  Looking out of the window of the train as the sheep and pastures of the English landscape flashed rhythmically by, Topher thought that that had all been three weeks ago. In the time which had since elapsed, the memory, like a recurring fugal subject, had rarely been far from his mind. He had been so disturbed by the indignity of Sally Maddox that, when he went to bed that night, he had had to take one of Caroline’s sleeping pills. The effect of the drug had not worn off when he set out for court next morning. He had switched on the radio in the car to keep himself awake. The statement that the seckertary of state had just announced the trade figures which the goverment reckernised were a reflection of wider market forces, provided just the irritant he needed.

  Penge called him a pedant. He supposed he was. He could not tolerate the current misuse of English, a direct result of an educational system which had produced a generation unable to parse and, a priori, to construct the simplest sentence. He appreciated that the days when Greek and Latin verses flowed from the lips of national leaders were long past. Now, cut off from their own language and literature, even those in high office perpetrated grammatical bloomers which would have once disgraced a schoolboy. Pronouns were misused, metaphors mixed, and participles left to hang. Solecisms, such as those he had just heard, together with contempory, ecksetara, grievious, and mischievious (none of them to be found in the English dictionary) were commonplace.

  He had tried to convey to his younger daughter that he was not opposed to linguistic change. In his own lifetime he had seen the transmogrification of such words as gay and swing and shoot and snort, not to mention the introduction of the dreadful Ms which sounded more like the drone of a bumble bee than a form of address. It was ignorance he railed against, a direct result of the neglect of classical studies which closed the doors to so much of European language, literature and culture. Common aberrations betrayed a disregard of root and source by many of those – including his own daughter – who might have been expected to know better. While Topher shuddered at Penge’s misapplication of prepositions – “bored of” and “on the weekend” – she countered with the archaic frills and superfluous curlicues employed in his court. Why did barristers (counsel) kick off with the obsequious “If Your Honour pleases” rather than a cheery “Good morning, Judge”? Why were they bound to make submissions rather then present arguments? Why did they defer to opponents as learned friends when they were
about to put the boot in? Why, Penge wanted to know, apart from the aforesaids, heretofores and thenceforths, was the judge himself addressed “with the greatest respect” when what followed indicated that in the opinion of the speaker he had not understood the first thing about the case?

  Topher tried to keep count of the number of inaccuracies he was able to detect in the course of a single news bulletin, but his mind kept returning to April’s dinner table and to Sally Maddox. What remained of the evening following her abuse of him passed in a blur only partly induced by the Rémy Martin, a second glass of which he had accepted as the treatment of choice for the shock he had sustained.

  When the farewells were said, Sally Maddox had kissed him on both cheeks with the demureness of an ice-maiden. He seriously wondered once again if he had imagined the whole episode.

  Arriving at the County Court he felt his gall rise at the sight of a van parked partially across the space reserved especially for him. He realised, not for the first time since his widowhood, that he would have to watch himself. He was operating on an extremely short fuse.

  He nodded curtly to Registrar Wilmslow whom he met on the stairs, and grunted when his usher, a widow who rejoiced in the name of Mrs Sweetlove said: “Good Morning, Your Honour,” as she set down his apple juice together with his neatly folded copy of The Times.

  “There’s a van in my space, Mrs Sweetlove!” Topher said, although it was not strictly accurate.

  “I’ll look into it right away, Your Honour,” Mrs Sweetlove replied in her “nanny” voice, not at all put out by his petulance. He had noticed a change in attitude in everyone since his wife had died and he wasn’t at all sure that he liked it. People humoured him – Registrar Wilmslow and Registrar O’Donnell, the clerks of the court, Miss Fletcher and Miss Roderick – no matter how displeased he was with them. And Mrs Sweetlove, her eyes brimming with understanding, for whom he was now able to do no wrong. He did not care for their solicitude, their overt sympathy. He would rather they had treated him as if nothing had happened. He would not then have been reminded at every moment of the day of the unoccupied house to which he must return, the aching chasm in the region of his heart.