‘I wondered if you’d know me. I was going to get in touch with you at The Palm Oiled Cat or whatever it was called, but whenever I went north you were on the other side of the central reservation, and we always came down a different way. Or I had my employer in the car and wasn’t allowed to stop.’ So much fundamental shifting about had recently happened that no leap of my imagination would take me back to the sort of person I’d pretended to be in order to broach that broom cupboard. ‘I would have looked you up sooner,’ I went on, ‘only I had to go to America for a week. I thought about you all the time I was in New York, though.’
Her little mouth got straighter and straighter. ‘I hate rotten liars.’
‘So do I. The worst liar I ever knew was my father. The next worst liar was my mother. They made life hell.’
‘Oh, fuck off.’ She went behind the counter. The trouble with working-class girls, I told myself, is that they always say what they think. I picked up the newspaper and tried to figure out an anagram in the crossword. Ten minutes later she was back. ‘Do you want me to chuck this boiling soup over you, or are you going to stop pestering me and get out?’
I wasn’t one of her sort, who would respond to such a request by pushing the boiling soup into her lovely, sensual face. I fingered the remaining corner of my mouldy bread and killed a weevil that dropped onto the quiche which I hadn’t had the courage to tackle in case I got bilharzia. ‘I’ll go when I’ve finished my lunch, or whatever you call it.’
She delivered the soup to the next table and went back to the counter. There was a cashier at one end and — behind the vats of cornmush and gritcakes and wholemeal onion patties and Brussels Sprout paste and melted cheese dips and nut rissoles and codliver oil salad dressing — were two other women, one of whom I fancied very much. She was a mature thirty-five-year-old clandestinely eating a beef sandwich as if she had only taken a job at such a place in order to drive the customers mad, because lengths of meat and fat were hanging from between the bread like living organisms soon to be devoured. She was full-bodied, and had dark ringlety hair, and her high cheekbones were highly flushed as if they’d been too near the fire. Ettie, who was in tears, had presumably complained of my offending presence, as I knew she must if I sat there long enough, so that when the woman had finished her sandwich and poured a cup of strong black coffee out of a hip flask — which being too hot could grow cooler while she was dealing with me — she came swaying beautifully between the tables of satisfied customers, and said: ‘You’d better clear off. You’ve been annoying one of our waitresses.’
I looked up. ‘I was waiting to have a word with you, as a matter of fact. I’ve been here for luncheon on at least five occasions recently, but it’s only been due to you, not to that foul-mouthed little chit. You’ve been under observation.’
‘What the hell are you on about?’
‘Your name is Phyllis,’ I said. ‘You are approximately thirty years of age, and one of your parents comes from Ireland. And you’re divorced.’
My sharp ears had heard her greeting to Ettie on the way in, and I put the rest together from all sorts of clues. I could also have said she had two kids and lived in Camden Town, but didn’t want to overdo it, or spoil the picture.
‘How do you know all that?’
‘It’d take too long to explain. There’s a new restaurant opened not far from here called Raddisher’s. Used to be The Shin of Beef. You probably know it. I own it. To be honest, what food I’ve ordered here wouldn’t be enough to energise an ant, so I’m thinking of sloping off for a porterhouse platter at the aforementioned place. I might have a barrel of Burgundy to wash it down. Would you care to join me?’
I saw by her eyes, and the slight turn of her lips, that she’d had quite a bit to put up with in life, but because it had been mostly from blokes like me it was still only blokes like me who could deal with her and hope to get anywhere. The expression around her brown eyes was so subtle and active that her whole life seemed to pass in front of them before her hostility finally went and she said: ‘I’m working till three thirty.’
‘I’ll meet you at seven thirty tonight, for dinner.’
My speedy response pushed her back into the trenches, and her lovely eyes clouded over. ‘What did you do to Ettie?’
I yawned. ‘I’m afraid it’s what I didn’t do. That’s always my trouble. She worked at a service station, as you know, which wasn’t far from my estate in Cambridgeshire, where I breed racehorses. I couldn’t take her there because of my wife. I know I’m soft-hearted, I must be, because my mother’s Irish, but I don’t like making women unhappy, and I stick to that rule so firmly that unfortunately I occasionally end up hurting someone, or making myself even more unhappy because of it. But if I had taken her home with me the chances were that my wife — and it hurts me to say so, but it’s the truth, so I don’t see why I shouldn’t — well, she would have got Ettie into bed before I could. My wife’s like that. Even our five kids look askance at her now and again when she’s with other women. I’m pretty broad-minded myself, because when she’s got tired of some of these women, I have to comfort them, and then I have my innings, you might say. But I didn’t want to subject Ettie to her baleful influence. I wouldn’t wish that kind of thing on any woman.’
She wanted to go away, but couldn’t. She was horrified, which was promising. She was fascinated, which was dangerous — for her. But I was tired of it and wanted to end matters.
Good woman that she was, she wrung her hands together, and looked across at the bar, where Ettie stood as if wanting a news bulletin from the negotiating table. What it was all about I didn’t know, and I craved the certainties of an encounter with Moggerhanger.
‘When I took my secretary home to do some work, the result was the same,’ I went on. ‘I hired a male secretary, and took him home, but she had him in bed as well before midnight. I was at my wits’ end, but finally decided that I was the only one who’d be safe when I went into that house, simply because she despised me so much.’
‘Don’t listen to him,’ Ettie shouted. ‘He’ll tell you anything. He’s a fucking liar.’ Half the happy eaters looked closer at their gritcake and vintage carrot juice, while the rest stared across at her. She rushed over to me, her little bill pad swinging. ‘He sent his pal up to The Palm Oiled Cat to tell me he wanted to borrow ten pounds because he was down the road with a puncture. He said he would come tomorrow to pay me back, with love and kisses. But he never did. And now look at him, dressed to the fucking nines and denying everything.’
I pushed the chair over in my haste to stand up. ‘What did you say, you lying little tart? What pal? I don’t have any pal.’
She turned to Phyllis. ‘You see? I suppose he ponces off a lot of women like that. And I said I was in love with him. I can’t believe it. He said he was in love with me, as well.’
‘Men do,’ Phyllis said.
I don’t suppose I’d ever been much closer to mental agony than I was while standing there. Or I had, but I’d forgotten the other times. ‘What was this chap like? Was he a blind man? Did he have a dog?’
These questions inflamed her even more. She jeered. ‘You see? He’s trying to get out of it.’