preoccupied by the proposal.’
‘The pipeline in Azerbaijan one?’
Clive and Mark had arrived at twenty to nine by taxi, grey with fatigue, clutching ring-bound files and what looked like the print-out from an old-fashioned computer but was actually the outpourings of a Russian telex machine.
‘Clive won’t be a moment.’ Henrietta came labouring back onto the patio, flapping vaguely at a midge cloud that hung in the doorway. Even on the low-key occasions, a category which surely included this entertainment of your husband’s understrapper and your husband’s understrapper’s girlfriend, being Clive’s wife must be rather a strain, Lucy deduced. Her eye fell again on the paperback of
Captain Corelli’s Mandolin
.
‘It’s wonderful isn’t it?’ Henrietta said before she could be asked. ‘I don’t know how many times I’ve read it. And the film. That was wonderful too, wasn’t it? Quite made you want to go and stay there. Wherever it was set, I mean.’
‘It didn’t make me want to go and stay there,’ Lucy said diplomatically, ‘but I think I know what you mean.’
‘And it makes you wonder, doesn’t it?’ Henrietta went on fiercely. Her white, plumpish face was oddly animated, Lucy thought, like one of those TV game show contestants suddenly enriched beyond expectation. ‘I mean, why it is that writers come to write things.’
‘Beckett wrote for luck.’
‘For what?’
‘I read it in some book of interviews. The
Paris Review
or somewhere. He said that whenever he sat down consciously to write, he was doing it for luck.’
Once again Lucy knew, instinctively, that she had said the wrong thing. Henrietta looked perplexed. More than perplexed, Lucy divined.
‘Do you know,’ she said – and years later Lucy would recall the look of injured innocence on her face – ‘I think you mustbe making fun of me. He couldn’t possibly have done that. There must have been another reason.’
‘I suppose it was all to do with him being Irish.’
‘You
are
making fun of me,’ said Henrietta, not crossly, Lucy thought – which might just have been warranted by the circumstances – but with an almost plaintive dolefulness. ‘I never heard anything so silly.’
They watched her pad off again through the French windows. In the kitchen they could see Clive stalking back and forth, bellowing excitedly into the mobile.
‘Looks as though you got the job,’ Lucy said. ‘Do you know, what Clive gets paid a year is probably the entire budget of the series I’m working on at the moment. I figured it out.’
‘Honestly Lu, that’s not much of a comparison.’
‘All the same,’ Lucy said, smiling brightly at Henrietta as she wheeled back into view bearing a tray of champagne flutes, ‘I just felt like making it.’
Later, quite a bit later, they rolled home in a cab down Putney Hill, through tiny streets sunk in darkness. Curiously, this was the time Lucy liked best about her life with Mark: that companionable ten minutes or so of padding around the silent house, checking the answerphone and the fax, setting out briefcases for the dawn. The morning’s post and the stack of estate agents’ brochures lay where she had left them on the kitchen table. Looking at Mark as he lurked at the foot of the bed, his game and still slightly frantic face looming happily through the shadows, Lucy wondered – something she’d never got to the bottom of in the three years of their relationship – if this serenity, this pleased matter-of-factnesswas genuine, whether it didn’t just denote some part of him held permanently in reserve.
‘I didn’t make it up,’ she said. ‘Beckett did say he wrote for luck.’
‘I’m sure he did.’ She could see him blinking thoughtfully at the pile of management magazines on the bedside table. ‘I think it was just a bit much for Henrietta.’
Something about the evening’s small talk came back to her. ‘This pipeline job. Will you have to go out
‘The pipeline in Azerbaijan one?’
Clive and Mark had arrived at twenty to nine by taxi, grey with fatigue, clutching ring-bound files and what looked like the print-out from an old-fashioned computer but was actually the outpourings of a Russian telex machine.
‘Clive won’t be a moment.’ Henrietta came labouring back onto the patio, flapping vaguely at a midge cloud that hung in the doorway. Even on the low-key occasions, a category which surely included this entertainment of your husband’s understrapper and your husband’s understrapper’s girlfriend, being Clive’s wife must be rather a strain, Lucy deduced. Her eye fell again on the paperback of
Captain Corelli’s Mandolin
.
‘It’s wonderful isn’t it?’ Henrietta said before she could be asked. ‘I don’t know how many times I’ve read it. And the film. That was wonderful too, wasn’t it? Quite made you want to go and stay there. Wherever it was set, I mean.’
‘It didn’t make me want to go and stay there,’ Lucy said diplomatically, ‘but I think I know what you mean.’
‘And it makes you wonder, doesn’t it?’ Henrietta went on fiercely. Her white, plumpish face was oddly animated, Lucy thought, like one of those TV game show contestants suddenly enriched beyond expectation. ‘I mean, why it is that writers come to write things.’
‘Beckett wrote for luck.’
‘For what?’
‘I read it in some book of interviews. The
Paris Review
or somewhere. He said that whenever he sat down consciously to write, he was doing it for luck.’
Once again Lucy knew, instinctively, that she had said the wrong thing. Henrietta looked perplexed. More than perplexed, Lucy divined.
‘Do you know,’ she said – and years later Lucy would recall the look of injured innocence on her face – ‘I think you mustbe making fun of me. He couldn’t possibly have done that. There must have been another reason.’
‘I suppose it was all to do with him being Irish.’
‘You
are
making fun of me,’ said Henrietta, not crossly, Lucy thought – which might just have been warranted by the circumstances – but with an almost plaintive dolefulness. ‘I never heard anything so silly.’
They watched her pad off again through the French windows. In the kitchen they could see Clive stalking back and forth, bellowing excitedly into the mobile.
‘Looks as though you got the job,’ Lucy said. ‘Do you know, what Clive gets paid a year is probably the entire budget of the series I’m working on at the moment. I figured it out.’
‘Honestly Lu, that’s not much of a comparison.’
‘All the same,’ Lucy said, smiling brightly at Henrietta as she wheeled back into view bearing a tray of champagne flutes, ‘I just felt like making it.’
Later, quite a bit later, they rolled home in a cab down Putney Hill, through tiny streets sunk in darkness. Curiously, this was the time Lucy liked best about her life with Mark: that companionable ten minutes or so of padding around the silent house, checking the answerphone and the fax, setting out briefcases for the dawn. The morning’s post and the stack of estate agents’ brochures lay where she had left them on the kitchen table. Looking at Mark as he lurked at the foot of the bed, his game and still slightly frantic face looming happily through the shadows, Lucy wondered – something she’d never got to the bottom of in the three years of their relationship – if this serenity, this pleased matter-of-factnesswas genuine, whether it didn’t just denote some part of him held permanently in reserve.
‘I didn’t make it up,’ she said. ‘Beckett did say he wrote for luck.’
‘I’m sure he did.’ She could see him blinking thoughtfully at the pile of management magazines on the bedside table. ‘I think it was just a bit much for Henrietta.’
Something about the evening’s small talk came back to her. ‘This pipeline job. Will you have to go out
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