Topher had stopped on the way home from court to buy flowers for April. He rejected the daffodils which reminded him of happy times in the Scilly Isles with Caroline, looking for the grey-cheeked thrush. He found the irises unappealing. He had never considered blue an appropriate colour for flowers. The tulips were equally unattractive because of the egg-like configuration of their heads. He settled upon gerbera, imported Dutch blooms in pinks and orange, as sufficiently grand for the hearth in April’s sitting room where, in huge, hand-thrown vessels, she habitually massed her floral arrangements.
After so long on his own, the prospect of the evening had made him apprehensive. He felt like a small boy forced to go to a birthday party, or as he had when, on his very first day in court in his newly acquired robes, he had been obliged to find his voice. By the time he rang the Gordons’ bell, clutching the gerbera, he had stiffened his resolve with more than one nip from the new bottle of whisky on the top of the fridge.
The door was opened by John, down from Cambridge. From years of habit, as honorary uncle, Topher might have been tempted to embrace the youngest Gordon had he not been reminded of the passage of time by the boy’s recently acquired beard. This luxuriant growth was a topic of conversation soon to be eagerly seized upon to dispel the awkwardness engendered by Topher’s presence in the drawing room. The assembled guests had been suitably primed. Their smiles of welcome (after which they contemplated the Chinese carpet or their shoes) had obviously been vetted for the least sign of commiseration.
Marcus effected the introductions: Robert Holdfast, a fellow psychiatrist whom Topher knew well, whose wife Barbara was a psychotherapist; Inez (with an unpronounceable surname which she had inherited from the last of her three husbands) who was April’s business partner; Peter Gordon, a cousin of Marcus’ from Edinburgh, in London for a conference; and Sally Maddox, short and dumpy – a condition exacerbated by the brown, shapeless two-piece she was wearing – a fiction writer of whom Topher had not heard. Clearly anxious that any ice be broken, they exclaimed over the flowers which Topher had brought and which April was now cradling.
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!”