Selected Stories

‘I have to tell you,’ her husband says, ‘that I believe I’m drunk.’

His voice is quiet, the words not slurred. He does not look drunk; he is the same. He doesn’t smile, but then he often doesn’t when he comes in. ‘A sobersides,’ her mother said. ‘Wizened,’ she added, although that wasn’t true.

‘I looked in at the St Boniface,’ he says. ‘Understandably, I believe.’

‘I’m awfully sorry.’

‘Oh Lord, it’s not your fault.’

‘I -’

‘I know, I know.’

‘I couldn’t think.’

‘I couldn’t when I heard, myself.’

‘They mentioned it?’

‘Quicke couldn’t resist a little mention. It didn’t matter. Sooner or later someone would.’

‘Yes.’

‘The culprits will be exposed, the Master’s view is. Of course he’s wrong.’

‘You don’t seem drunk in the least.’ Relief has slipped through Vanessa during these exchanges. For a reason that is obscure to her, and for the first time since she turned the pages of the newspaper while waiting for the early-morning kettle to boil, she feels that nothing is as terrible as it seemed in those awful moments.

‘To the best of my knowledge I have never in my life been drunk before. The man poured three double whiskies, and that on top of sherry.’

She lifts the plates that cover their cold meat. She stirs the oil and vinegar, shakes the salad about when she has added a few spoonfuls, then pours on the rest. Perhaps they’ll go away, Vanessa’s thought is, perhaps he’ll take an early retirement, as one of them so unexpectedly did last year. She’d pack up at once, she wouldn’t hesitate. Liguria, or Sansepolcro, where his favourite paintings are. Hers, too, they have become. ‘I could live here happily,’ he has said, over coffee in Sansepolcro.

‘I can tell you how this has happened,’ he says. ‘If you would care to know.’

‘Panic,’ she begins to say, and ceases when he shakes his head, grey hair as smooth as a helmet.

‘An act of compassion,’ he corrects.

‘But it was stupid. To try to suppress what cannot be suppressed -’

‘Why cannot an act of compassion be a stupid one? I can tell you,’ he repeats exactly, ‘how this has happened. If you would care to know.’

‘Some horrid, wretched student.’

‘I am not the sort to inspire a grudge. I am too shadowy and grey, too undramatic. I annoy too little, I do not attack.’

She watches the buttering of a piece of baguette, the knife laid down, the meticulous loading of tongue and salad on to a fork, the smear of mustard. She pours his coffee; he likes it with his food at this time of day, with French bread in particular, he has often said. My God, Vanessa thinks, it might be true. He might not be here now.

‘Imagine Kellfittard opening his paper this morning. Imagine his happy hour or two.’

For a moment she is confused, thinking he means Kellfittard is responsible for this. He says, ‘And then the rug pulled out from under him. Generations have suffered from Kellfittard’s wit. It passes for that, you know. So much we fusties say passes for wit.’

‘But you -’

‘They would not mind about me. Whoever they are who got this going would not think twice about reaping me in before I’m due. What’s famous here is Kellfittard’s abiding passion for someone else’s wife.’

The last time Kellfittard stopped to talk to her yesterday’s garlic was on his breath. Stopping to talk to her has always been his ploy, and smiling in a secretive way – as if, by doing so, secrets are created.

‘Fall-guy, do they call it?’ she hears her husband say. ‘I am the fall-guy. ’

He has winkled out the truth, sitting in the public house he gave the name of, which she has often passed. The truth doesn’t make much difference, and certainly is no consolation. Yet for her older husband it had to be established, if only because it’s there somewhere. Students who are no longer students have got their own back. He is an incidental figure, and so is she.

‘Well, that is that,’ he says. ‘Four notices in all, Quicke said. Space to spare on a Saturday.’

‘There will be letters.’

‘Oh, and apologies will be printed. So Quicke says too.’

Something in his tone, or in what he has said, causes her to realize that she was wrong when she imagined him buying the newspapers. He has not done so. He asks about the coffee and she says Kenya.

He nods. The coffee’s good, he says. The other matter’s over, he does not add, but Vanessa knows it is. Once Kellfittard gave her a box of chocolates, Bendicks’ Peppermints because he knew she liked them. ‘I bought these by mistake,’ he said, the lie so damaging the gesture that the gesture lost its point. It would have been silly not to accept them.

‘Linderfoot’s put on another stone, I’d say. How fortunate the wives are to be left at home!’