"Nothing to it, old boy. Calm down. These things pop up now and then. Bit of toothpaste slips out of the tube, you put it back. People say it can't be done. Happens every day. Wife well?"
"Gloria's fine."
"Kiddywinks?"
"Fine."
"Give our love."
"So I've decided it's to be a really super dance," Gloria was saying enthusiastically.
"Oh, right, splendid," said Woodrow and, giving himself time to recover the thread of their conversation, helped himself to the pills she made him swallow every morning: three oat bran tablets, one cod liver oil and half an aspirin.
"I know you hate dancing but that's not your fault, it's your mother's," Gloria went on sweetly. "I shan't be letting Elena interfere, not after the rather tacky little do she gave recently. I shall just keep her informed."
"Oh. Right. You two have kissed and made up, have you? Don't think I knew that. Congratulations."
Gloria bit her lip. Memories of Elena's dance had momentarily cast her down. "I do have friends, Sandy, you know," she said, a little pitifully. "I rather need them, to be frank. It gets quite lonely waiting all day for you to come back. Friends laugh, they chat, they do each other favors. And sometimes they fall out. But then they get together again. That's what friends do. I just wish you had someone like that. Well, don't I?"
"But I've got you, darling," Woodrow said gallantly as he embraced her good-bye.
* * *
Gloria went to work with all the drive and efficiency she had put into Tessa's funeral. She formed a working committee of fellow wives and members of the staff too junior to refuse her. First among them was Ghita, a choice that mattered greatly to her since Ghita had been the unwitting cause of the rift between Elena and herself and the ghastly scene that had followed it. The memory would haunt her all her days.
Elena had given her dance, and it had been, to a point, one had to say, well, a success. And Sandy, it was well known, was a great believer in couples splitting up at parties and working the room, as he called it. Parties, he liked to say, were where he did his best diplomacy. And so they should be. He was charming. So for most of the evening Gloria and Sandy hadn't seen much of one another, except for the odd woo-hoo across the room and the odd wave on the dance floor. Which was perfectly normal, though Gloria could have wished for just one dance, even if it had to be a foxtrot so that Sandy could get the rhythm. And beyond that Gloria had had very little to say about the evening, except that she really thought Elena could cover up a bit more at her age, instead of having her bust springing out all over, as we used to say, and she wished the Brazilian Ambassador had not insisted on putting his hand on her bottom for the samba, but Sandy says that's what Latins do.
So it came as a total bolt from the blue when, on the morning after the dance — at which Gloria had noticed nothing untoward, be it repeated, and she did consider herself rather observant — over a post-mortem coffee at the Muthaiga, Elena had let slip — completely casually, as if it were just another bit of perfectly ordinary gossip rather than a total bombshell, wrecking her complete life — that Sandy had come on so heavily with Ghita Pearson — Elena's very words — that Ghita had pleaded a headache and gone home early, which Elena considered tedious of her, because if everyone did that, one might just as well not bother to give a party at all.
Gloria was at first speechless. Then she refused point-blank to believe a word of it. What did Elena mean, come on, exactly? Come on how, El? Be specific, please. I think I'm rather upset. No, it's perfectly all right, just go on, please. Now you've said it, let's have it all.
Feeling her up, for openers, Elena retorted with deliberate coarseness, incensed by what she perceived as Gloria's prudishness. Groping her tits. Pressing his nasty up against her crotch. What do you expect a man to do when he's got the hots for somebody, woman? You must be the only girl in town not to know that Sandy is the biggest pussy hound in the business. Look at the way he padded round Tessa all those months with his tongue hanging out, even when she was eight months pregnant!
The mention of Tessa did it. Gloria had long accepted that Sandy had had a harmless thing about Tessa, though of course he was far too upright to let his feelings get out of hand. Rather to her shame, she had quizzed Ghita on the subject and drawn a satisfying blank. Now Elena had not only reopened the wound: she had poured vinegar into it. Incredulous, mystified, humiliated and plain bloody angry, Gloria stormed home, dismissed the staff, settled the boys at their homework, locked the drinks cupboard and waited darkly for Sandy to return. Which he finally did around eight o'clock, pleading pressure of work as usual but, so far as she could tell in her fraught state, sober. Not wishing to be earwigged by the boys, she grabbed him by the arm and frog-marched him down the servants' staircase to the lower ground.
"What the hell's the matter with you?" he complained. "I need a Scotch."
"You are the matter, Sandy," Gloria retorted fearsomely. "I want no circumlocutions, please. No diplomatic sweet-talk, thank you. No courtesies of any kind. We're both grownups. Did you, or did you not, have an affair with Tessa Quayle? I warn you, Sandy. I know you very well. I shall know immediately if you're lying."
"No," said Woodrow simply. "I didn't. Any more questions?"
"Were you in love with her?"
"No."
Stoical under fire like his father. Not budging an eyebrow. The Sandy she loved best, if she was honest. The kind of man you know where you are with. I'll never talk to Elena again.
"Did you make up to Ghita Pearson while you were dancing with her at Elena's party, or not?"
"No."
"Elena says you did."
"Then Elena's talking bilge. What's new?"
"She says Ghita left early in tears because you pawed her."
"Then I assume Elena is pissed off because I didn't paw Elena."
Gloria had not expected such straight, unequivocal, almost reckless denials. She could have done without "pissed off," and she'd just stopped Philip's pocket money for saying it, but Sandy might be right all the same. "Did you stroke Ghita — feel her up — did you press yourself against her — tell me!" she shouted, and gave way to a burst of tears.
"No," Woodrow replied again, and made a step toward her, but she brushed him aside.
"Don't touch me! Leave me alone! Did you want to have an affair with her?"
"With Ghita or Tessa?"
"Either of them! Both of them! What does it matter?"
"Shall we take Tessa first?"
"Do what you want!"
"If you mean by "affair" go to bed with her, I'm sure the idea occurred to me, as it would to most men of heterosexual appetite. Ghita I find less appealing, but youth has its attractions, so let's throw her in too. How about the Jimmy Carter formula? "I committed adultery in my heart." There. I've confessed. Want a divorce or can I have my Scotch?"
By which time she was doubled up, weeping helplessly with shame and self-loathing, and begging Sandy to forgive her because it had become horribly obvious to her what she had been doing. She had been accusing him of all the things she had been accusing herself of ever since Justin slipped into the night with his suitcases. She had been working out her guilt on him. Mortified, she hugged herself and blurted, "I'm so sorry, Sandy," and "Oh Sandy, please," and "Sandy, forgive me, I'm so awful," as she struggled to release herself from his grasp. But Sandy by now had an arm round her shoulders and was helping her up the stairs like the good doctor he should have been. And when they reached the drawing room she gave him the key to the drinks cupboard and he poured a stiff one for both of them.