‘No,’ said Mrs Fitch.
‘I was a particularly tall child, with my spectacles of course, and a longish upper lip. “When you’re a big man,” I remember her saying to me, “you’ll have to grow a little moustache to cover up all that lip.” And declare, Mrs Fitch, I did.’
‘I never had a nanny,’ said Mrs Fitch.
‘ “He’ll be a tennis-player,” people used to say – because of my height, you see. But in fact I turned out to be not much good on a tennis court.’
Mrs Fitch nodded. Raymond began to say something else, but Mrs Fitch, her eyes still fixed upon her husband, interrupted him. She said:
‘Interesting about your uncle’s business.’
‘I think I was right. I’ve thought of it often since, of sitting down in an office and ordering people to do this and that, instead of remaining quietly in my flat in Bayswater. I do all my own cooking, actually, and cleaning and washing up. Well, you can’t get people, you know. I couldn’t even get a simple char, Mrs Fitch, not for love nor money. Of course it’s easy having no coal fires to cope with: the flat is all-electric, which is what, really, I prefer.’
Raymond laughed nervously, having observed that Mrs Fitch was, for the first time since their conversation had commenced, observing him closely. She was looking into his face, at his nose and his moustache and his spectacles. Her eyes passed up to his forehead and down the line of his right cheek, down his neck until they arrived at Raymond’s Adam’s apple. He continued to speak to her, telling of the manner in which his flat in Bayswater was furnished, how he had visited the Sanderson showrooms in Berners Street to select materials for chair-covers and curtains. ‘She made them for me,’ said Raymond. ‘She was almost ninety then.’
‘What’s that?’ said Mrs Fitch. ‘Your nurse made them?’
‘I measured up for her and wrote everything down just as she had directed. Then I travelled out to Streatham with my scrap of paper.’
‘On a bicycle.’
Raymond shook his head. He thought it odd of Mrs Fitch to suggest, for no logical reason, that he had cycled from Bayswater to Streatham. ‘On a bus actually,’ he explained. He paused, and then added: ‘I could have had them made professionally, of course, but I preferred the other. I thought it would give her an interest, you see.’
‘Instead of which it killed her.’
‘No, no. No, you’ve got it confused. It was in 1964 that she made the curtains and the covers for me. As I was saying, she died only a matter of months ago.’
Raymond noticed that Mrs Fitch had ceased her perusal of his features and was again looking vacantly into the distance. He was glad that she had ceased to examine him because had she continued he would have felt obliged to move away from her, being a person who was embarrassed by such intent attention. He said, to make it quite clear about the covers and the curtains:
‘She died in fact of pneumonia.’
‘Stop,’ said Mrs Fitch to the Tamberleys’ Maltese maid who happened to be passing with a tray of drinks. She lifted a glass to her lips and consumed its contents while reaching out a hand for another. She repeated the procedure, drinking two glasses of the Tamberleys’ liquor in a gulping way and retaining a third in her left hand.
‘Nobody can be trusted,’ said Mrs Fitch after all that. ‘We come to these parties and everything’s a sham.’
‘What?’ said Raymond.
‘You know what I mean.’
Raymond laughed, thinking that Mrs Fitch was making some kind of joke. ‘Of course,’ he said, and laughed again, a noise that was more of a cough.
‘You told me you were forty-two,’ said Mrs Fitch. ‘I in fact am fifty-one, and have been taken for sixty-five.’
Raymond thought he would move away from this woman in a moment. He had a feeling she might be drunk. She had listened pleasantly enough while he told her a thing or two about himself, yet here she was now speaking most peculiarly. He smiled at her and heard her say:
‘Look over there, Mr Bamber. That man with the woman in yellow is my husband. We were born in the same year and in the same month, January 1915. Yet he could be in his thirties. That’s what he’s up to now; pretending the thirties with the female he’s talking to. He’s praying I’ll not approach and give the game away. D’you see, Mr Bamber?’
‘That’s Mrs Anstey,’ said Raymond. ‘I’ve met her here before. The lady in yellow.’
‘My husband has eternal youth,’ said Mrs Fitch. She took a mouthful of her drink and reached out a hand to pick a fresh one from a passing tray. ‘It’s hard to bear.’
‘You don’t look fifty-one,’ said Raymond. ‘Not at all.’
‘Are you mocking me?’ cried Mrs Fitch. ‘I do not look fifty-one. I’ve told you so: I’ve been taken for sixty-five.’
‘I didn’t mean that. I meant –’
‘You were telling a lie, as well you know. My husband is telling lies too. He’s all sweetness to that woman, yet it isn’t his nature. My husband cares nothing for people, except when they’re of use to him. Why do you think, Mr Bamber, he goes to cocktail parties?’
‘Well–’
‘So that he may make arrangements with other women. He desires their flesh and tells them so by looking at it.’
Raymond looked serious, frowning, thinking that that was expected of him.
‘We look ridiculous together, my husband and I. Yet once we were a handsome couple. I am like an old crow while all he has is laughter lines about his eyes. It’s an obsession with me.’
Raymond pursed his lips, sighing slightly.
‘He’s after women in this room,’said Mrs Fitch, eyeing her husband again.
‘Oh, no, now –’
‘Why not? How can you know better than I, Mr Bamber? I have had plenty of time to think about this matter. Why shouldn’t he want to graze where the grass grows greener, or appears to grow greener? That Anstey woman is a walking confidence trick.’
‘I think,’ said Raymond, ‘that I had best be moving on. I have friends to talk to.’ He made a motion to go, but Mrs Fitch grasped part of his jacket in her right hand.
‘What I say is true,’ she said. ‘He is practically a maniac. He has propositioned women in this very room before this. I’ve heard him at it.’
‘I’m sure –’
‘When I was a raving beauty he looked at me with his gleaming eye. Now he gleams for all the others. I’ll tell you something, Mr Bamber.’ Mrs Fitch paused. Raymond noticed that her eyes were staring over his shoulder, as though she had no interest in him beyond his being a person to talk at. ‘I’ve gone down on my bended knees, Mr Bamber, in order to have this situation cleared up: I’ve prayed that that man might look again with tenderness on his elderly wife. But God has gone on,’ said Mrs Fitch bitterly, ‘in His mysterious way, not bothering Himself.’
Raymond did not reply to these observations. He said instead that he hadn’t liked to mention it before but was Mrs Fitch aware that she was clutching in her right hand part of his clothes?
‘He shall get to know your Anstey woman,’ said Mrs Fitch. ‘He shall come to know that her father was a bearlike man with a generous heart and that her mother, still alive in Guildford, is difficult to get on with. My husband shall come to know all the details about your Anstey woman: the plaster chipping in her bathroom, the way she cooks an egg. He shall know what her handbags look like, and how their clasps work – while I continue to wither away in the house we share.’
Raymond asked Mrs Fitch if she knew the Griegons, who were, he said, most pleasant people. He added that the Griegons were present tonight and that, in fact, he would like to introduce them to her.
‘You are trying to avoid the facts. What have the Griegons to recommend them that we should move in their direction and end this conversation? Don’t you see the situation, Mr Bamber? I am a woman who is obsessed because of the state of her marriage, how I have aged while he has not. I am obsessed by the fact that he is now incapable of love or tenderness. I have failed to keep all that alive because I lost my beauty. There are lines on my body too, Mr Bamber: I would show you if we were somewhere else.’