Read Online Remember Me by Fay Weldon - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Fay Weldon
Tags: General Fiction
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more, that almost nothing is unplanned.
Dumpy, flushed Margot linked to lovely bleached Lily by chains more profound than those of employment and Margot’s childminding nature? Surely not! Lily would never consent to it.
But see the pair of them now, Margot and Philip, on their way to the dinner party. Margot scurries behind Philip, as is her habit.
‘I don’t like it one little bit,’ he flings to her, over his shoulder. She is pleased. Remonstrance is better than silence; a milder form of reproof. ‘Don’t like what?’ she asks, though she knows very well.
It is a windy night: the sky is alternately lowering and bright: clouds chase across the moon.
‘Getting socially involved with patients,’ he says, as expected. His suit is too tight: he has put on weight.
Shepherd’s Pie is his favourite dish, and Margot’s speciality.
She is a good plain cook—plain to the point of obstinacy, he sometimes thinks.
‘We’re only going because her other guests dropped out,’ says Margot, as if this made all the difference. The wind pushes her along, the moth into the flame.
‘We’re going because his first wife turned up and you were there to witness it,’ says Philip. ‘You know what some people are like. She wants us all together in one big double bed.’
‘Do you think so?’ she enquires, surprised. But he does not reply. If he hadn’t thought so, he wouldn’t have said it.
Margot feels foolish. Her little feet are tight in their best shoes. Walking fast in high heels, she thinks, gets more difficult with the years: or else Philip is increasingly difficult to keep up with. Perhaps Madeleine is right, perhaps she is living in an entirely false security, and her trust in Philip is misplaced. Perhaps Philip envies Jarvis; perhaps he too would like a newer, fresher wife: perhaps he is not as indissolubly linked to her as she believes: perhaps one day he could speak of her as Jarvis speaks of Madeleine, as a stranger and enemy. The thought catches her breath, and there is a pain in her chest as if some cold hand gripped her heart. Her eyes smart.
‘Do you love me?’ she begs him, ridiculously, as she hasn’t begged for at least ten years. But either he doesn’t hear or he doesn’t want to reply. She trots a little faster. ‘You don’t ever feel you want to start again, with someone else?’
‘Good God,’ he says, ‘I wouldn’t have the strength,’ and his voice is blown away by a gust of damp wind, and his long stride takes him ahead of her again. And Margot recalls, quite clearly, the smell of the wet furs fifteen years ago, before ever she was married to Philip—well, not ever, only some four months before: when she married Philip she was three and a half months pregnant—and puts it from her mind. The past, thinks Margot, rashly and wrongly, is past.
12
A H, BON APPETIT!
Lily is an altogether admirable hostess. What a happy note she strikes between ostentation and prudence, between self-advertisement and the pleasure of her guests. Dinner will be served in the dining room: french doors open on to the long garden: it is summer. The weather, contrary to the long-range forecasts, is good. The garden itself has a pale and washed out look: partly due to the lack of rain and partly to Lily’s liking for plants with pale foliage and paler flowers. A spectacular passion-flower vine covers the high trellis, which shuts out the neighbour’s gardens, but does not keep out the sun. The big lime tree, which once housed a wood pigeon’s nest, and every second year shed a sticky substance mortal to all growing things, and from the boughs of which the infant Hilary used to swing, has long been cut down. Pale rock plants grow obediently in the crevices between the York Stone slabs with which Lily and Jarvis personally sealed down the recalcitrant roots of the tree, for the stump refused to die for several years. (Sam the estate agent eventually suggested drilling a hole in the stump and inserting a
Dumpy, flushed Margot linked to lovely bleached Lily by chains more profound than those of employment and Margot’s childminding nature? Surely not! Lily would never consent to it.
But see the pair of them now, Margot and Philip, on their way to the dinner party. Margot scurries behind Philip, as is her habit.
‘I don’t like it one little bit,’ he flings to her, over his shoulder. She is pleased. Remonstrance is better than silence; a milder form of reproof. ‘Don’t like what?’ she asks, though she knows very well.
It is a windy night: the sky is alternately lowering and bright: clouds chase across the moon.
‘Getting socially involved with patients,’ he says, as expected. His suit is too tight: he has put on weight.
Shepherd’s Pie is his favourite dish, and Margot’s speciality.
She is a good plain cook—plain to the point of obstinacy, he sometimes thinks.
‘We’re only going because her other guests dropped out,’ says Margot, as if this made all the difference. The wind pushes her along, the moth into the flame.
‘We’re going because his first wife turned up and you were there to witness it,’ says Philip. ‘You know what some people are like. She wants us all together in one big double bed.’
‘Do you think so?’ she enquires, surprised. But he does not reply. If he hadn’t thought so, he wouldn’t have said it.
Margot feels foolish. Her little feet are tight in their best shoes. Walking fast in high heels, she thinks, gets more difficult with the years: or else Philip is increasingly difficult to keep up with. Perhaps Madeleine is right, perhaps she is living in an entirely false security, and her trust in Philip is misplaced. Perhaps Philip envies Jarvis; perhaps he too would like a newer, fresher wife: perhaps he is not as indissolubly linked to her as she believes: perhaps one day he could speak of her as Jarvis speaks of Madeleine, as a stranger and enemy. The thought catches her breath, and there is a pain in her chest as if some cold hand gripped her heart. Her eyes smart.
‘Do you love me?’ she begs him, ridiculously, as she hasn’t begged for at least ten years. But either he doesn’t hear or he doesn’t want to reply. She trots a little faster. ‘You don’t ever feel you want to start again, with someone else?’
‘Good God,’ he says, ‘I wouldn’t have the strength,’ and his voice is blown away by a gust of damp wind, and his long stride takes him ahead of her again. And Margot recalls, quite clearly, the smell of the wet furs fifteen years ago, before ever she was married to Philip—well, not ever, only some four months before: when she married Philip she was three and a half months pregnant—and puts it from her mind. The past, thinks Margot, rashly and wrongly, is past.
12
A H, BON APPETIT!
Lily is an altogether admirable hostess. What a happy note she strikes between ostentation and prudence, between self-advertisement and the pleasure of her guests. Dinner will be served in the dining room: french doors open on to the long garden: it is summer. The weather, contrary to the long-range forecasts, is good. The garden itself has a pale and washed out look: partly due to the lack of rain and partly to Lily’s liking for plants with pale foliage and paler flowers. A spectacular passion-flower vine covers the high trellis, which shuts out the neighbour’s gardens, but does not keep out the sun. The big lime tree, which once housed a wood pigeon’s nest, and every second year shed a sticky substance mortal to all growing things, and from the boughs of which the infant Hilary used to swing, has long been cut down. Pale rock plants grow obediently in the crevices between the York Stone slabs with which Lily and Jarvis personally sealed down the recalcitrant roots of the tree, for the stump refused to die for several years. (Sam the estate agent eventually suggested drilling a hole in the stump and inserting a
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