‘Everything’s got to end some time, I thought. During the few years we were together you can imagine how often I was in a bad mood. That meant that we didn’t make love much, because he found it impossible to make love to me when I was in a bad mood. That of course was exactly the time when I wanted him to do it. I would have come out of my bad mood then. But when I was in a bad mood he went into a worse mood, so it was even less possible for him to make love. The only time he could make love was when I was in a good mood, which under the circumstances wasn’t very often since I couldn’t be in a good mood because he was always in a bad mood. And when I did happen to be in a good mood, in spite of everything, I didn’t always want him to make love. Neither did he, as often as not, but when he did I had to let him. Sometimes it worked, but often it didn’t. There was endless friction on that front alone.’
I wondered if this long yarn wasn’t her technique of putting off men who were about to make a play for her. If so, I would have taken my hat off to her, if I had been wearing one. ‘You make me sweat.’
‘Do I? Anyway, when the great day came I helped him into a taxi and kissed him goodbye. The only condition was that I wouldn’t ask where he was going. That was easy. I didn’t want to. When the door closed and he was driven away I was desolate for a couple of hours, but then I began to mend. I was happy. I wanted money to live on, so two days later I got a job as a typist and general office dogsbody. My wages were low, but I managed. It was no real problem. In fact everything was wonderful. No one could understand why I was so happy and calm. I made friends, with a woman or two, and a married couple in the same street. I invited them over for drinks. There was even a man I thought I might fancy.
‘Well, you’ve guessed it. He came back. I found him on the doorstep one day, when I got home from work. My heart sank. I wanted to kill him. Just as I had got back on my own two feet this had to happen. My impulse was to turn round and walk off, never to see him or the house again. If only I had. But I couldn’t. I swear it had nothing to do with him. It was just that I lived there. Whatever I thought, he was back. He had become more and more unhappy the longer he was away. It was only three months. We had grown to be so much like Siamese twins, spiritually, that maybe his continuous misery was only at the thought that I was getting happier and happier.
‘We had a real quarrel then, such as we’d never had before. It didn’t clear the air and end our troubles, either. Things aren’t that simple. It made them worse. There was no solution. I went for him with a hammer. No, I didn’t murder him. Even that would have been an advance on our situation. I caught him at the temple, and I never knew he had so much blood. Perhaps that was his trouble. Anyway, two weeks later I left him, and I didn’t go back. He was still at his work, the life and soul of the firm, I suppose. I packed up and got a room. I had arranged a transfer to another office of the same firm, in St Albans. In a couple of years, by which time he’d got himself another woman — thank God, I was quite happy about that — the divorce came through. I’m the manageress of the office now, and they’ve given me extended leave, because I had to get away. I’ve been very calm, and maybe the reaction was delayed, but the hard fact of the divorce hit me like a bomb, not because of anything to do with him but due to something in myself. I’m absolutely free now, and at last know who I am. Only I can tell me who and what I am, not any man. I live very well on my own. I’ve even managed to save money without skimping myself. I have friends, though no man friend who I would let be my lover.’
‘If you dislike men so much,’ I said, ‘why are you telling me all this?’
She held my hand for a moment, and finished her beaker of champagne. ‘I’m not one of those who hate men. It’s just that nothing good’s happened with men, that’s all. In any case, you’re a writer and I can talk to you. My name’s Agnes, by the way.’
‘Glad to know you.’ I opened the second bottle. ‘I’m writing a novel called The Way We Live Now, but I’m stuck halfway through. That’s why I had to get away for a few days.’
The plane droned on. Now and again I got a glimpse of the film, which seemed to be about an endless car chase, the occasional vehicle erupting into a fireball. ‘They gave me a bonus for the trip,’ she said, ‘and I went to Knightsbridge and spent some of it on underwear.’
The seatbelt lights scintillated, and air pockets scared her. They scared me, too. The stratosphere shook the Boeing as the proverbial terrier is said to shake a rat. Then it went as if on velvet. I didn’t mind the plane falling apart, but I would have appreciated having the fuselage lit as we went down. ‘Underwear’s a good thing to spend money on,’ I said. ‘Keeps up the old morale.’ I put my hand on her thigh, quite unobtrusively I thought, but she tapped it away: ‘It’s not for you.’
‘It’s for you, then, is it?’ I responded.
‘Oh damn,’ she said, ‘trust me to sit next to a writer.’
‘The sort of experience you’ve told me about takes longer to get over than you think.’ I wondered if there would ever be a time when such misery between man and woman would not exist. Even in China, I said to her, a peasant and his wife were not beyond an occasional slash with a billhook in the rice fields when the Red Brigade commissar was looking the other way. No system could cure it, and I suppose in fact it kept us going because otherwise we would be bored to death. At the risk of making an enemy for life I told her this as well, and she said: ‘You’re wiser than you look!’
Another car exploded on the screen, maybe to get us used to the idea of the plane disintegrating. The fuselage was grumbling so much I wondered if it could stand the strain of the next two thousand miles. She didn’t feel me twitch at her remark. The only thing that stopped me slapping her chops was the thought of that sexy underwear clinging to her thighs and arse. I couldn’t understand why she had told me such a come-on thing, unless the idea of contempt for men had bitten so deep that she didn’t care anymore. ‘If I ran an airline, I’d call it Pornair and show blue movies all the way, one that men would enjoy, and one for women.’ She took my hand at another lurch of the plane. The film show ended with a convoy of cars and lorries exploding one after the other, and half a dozen babies started crying at the same time, as if we had miraculously taken more on board since the trip began. ‘I think the pilot’s got a lever on his instrument panel that controls screaming kids.’
The lights came on, and a smell of casseroled meat hinted that food bins weren’t far away. ‘I’ll throw up if I don’t eat,’ she said.
I was famished, and wolfed the grub as if I hadn’t seen any for a week, though didn’t omit to pass her tit-bits from my identical dish. ‘I’ll be at the Grand Park Hotel in Toronto. Smack in the middle. I’ll probably only stay two nights, being a restless sort of person. If I’m there longer than that, I usually hang on for a fortnight, or until I’m bored. Is your sister going to be waiting for you?’
‘She isn’t even expecting me. I’ll phone her from the airport. If I had written beforehand to say I was coming she might have told me not to bother. If she isn’t pleased to see me, I’ll go on to New York. I got a visa before I left, just in case.’
She wasn’t to know, but so had I. As soon as Moggerhanger said Canada, I said New York to myself, and though he was certain to put me on such a tight schedule that I wouldn’t be able to use it, I got straight down to Grosvenor Square with a photo and the filled-in documentation, and fixed myself up just in case.