Aphrodite’s Hat

‘When’s your birthday?’ Clive asked.

‘June the tenth. Why?’

‘Is that Gemini?’

‘Yes.’

‘And how old are you?’

‘Twenty-six,’ said Clare. ‘What is this? A Spanish Inquisition?’

‘Will you marry me?’ Clive asked. ‘I’m twenty-nine tomorrow, by the way.’

Clare said she thought she might but she had better sit down first.

Later, in bed, he said, ‘You know, the Hampshires’ flat is right next to Mrs Radinsky’s in the next block?’

‘So?’

‘So I’m a surveyor, or will be. Old Hampshire’s been sucking up to me since the meeting. Tried to find out what would be involved in extending their flat laterally.’

‘Ah.’

‘I think she’s pretty safe, though. Rita.’

‘Rita now, is it? I’ll have to watch her, given what we are so reliably told about her!’

Clive patted Clare’s bottom appreciatively. ‘She’ll like you. She saw you.’

‘Saw me?’

But he had heard something. ‘Hang on. There’s a hell of a noise outside.’

They got up and, together relishing their nakedness in the December cold, stared out into the wintry darkness. A figure over by the bins straightened up and looked furtively about. Clive opened the window.

‘Oh, Mrs Hampshire,’ he shouted down. ‘What a lovely party. We did enjoy ourselves. But we should have helped with all those bottles, instead of leaving them to you.’

JOIN ME FOR CHRISTMAS (#ulink_382259b7-8c85-54a8-bd1b-d8b277a9aebd)

Emily had met Lionel after many years managing on her own. For those who are not temperamentally suited to solitude, living alone feels not so much a trial as a waste. Emily’s first husband, a physicist, had gone to America to deliver a lecture and had never returned. Emily was a little put out when, at a later date, she met the cause of his decampment. ‘Dumpy, with red-veined cheeks’, was how she described the new wife to her friend Deb. Emily herself was slight and on the whole did not forget her makeup. ‘Perhaps he likes them with a bit more flesh,’ Deb had, not too tactfully, replied.

While the children were small, Emily had coped with the life of a single parent, sometimes with a touch of despair, sometimes almost breezily. But when her younger daughter, Kate, left to study drama at Bristol University, Emily found herself crying into a brushed cotton nightdress – the one with koala bears on it which Kate had rejected as unsuitable for college wear. Emily knew from this that change was called for. ‘This won’t do,’ she said sternly to herself and arranged with Deb to attend evening classes.

Lionel was at the class on Greek civilisation which had led, in time, to a study tour of the ancient sites of the Peloponnese. Emily had left her handbag in a restaurant, and Lionel had been gallant in retrieving it. After that, they had become a couple, of a kind. At weekends, Lionel visited Emily because her house was larger than his bachelor apartment. They walked, her arm in his, through the park and discussed Greek and other civilisations; and it was pleasant to have a body beside hers in bed at night, and a face to chat and read the papers with in the morning.

Lionel’s introduction to Emily’s children went better than she’d expected. ‘He’s nice, Mum,’ Beth had said after a dinner where Emily had burned the leg of lamb in her anxiety over her daughters’ pending judgement. ‘You could do worse,’ was Kate’s more laconic view. The girls were glad their mother had someone to spend time with so that they needn’t worry about her. So when Lionel asked Emily to marry him it seemed not a bad plan.

‘Well, if you’re sure,’ Emily said. She didn’t want another disappointment, not at her time of life.

‘I wouldn’t ask if I wasn’t,’ Lionel had said.

Perhaps there is some concealed trap-door which the vow to love and cherish unlatches but once they had signed their names in the local registry office, which was the last port of dreariness, the sense of companionship which had attracted Emily to Lionel began to slip away. Few people attended the ceremony – just the girls and Deb on Emily’s side – Lionel had not asked anyone on his, which Emily vaguely noticed but at the time didn’t trouble to ponder.

The honeymoon in Ravenna, where they admired the famous Byzantine mosaics, was only moderately passionate – but sensible people know not to expect too much of such occasions. Emily had learned her lesson with Mark. She kept her own counsel when Lionel complained about slow service in the laid-back local taverna and became irate over the matter of the lazy water pressure in their bathroom. And she did not take issue when he objected to the weather – unfortunately unseasonably inclement – though it was far from clear to her to whom his objections could usefully be addressed. But then, she thought, it is not every day, thank goodness, that one gets married and maybe it was his way of letting off steam.

It was Deb who said, ‘Where have you gone? You know, I hardly see you these days.’

‘I’m where I always was,’ Emily retorted, sensing reproach. But was she? Deb’s affection carried the pedigree of a tried-and-tested friendship and there was a hint of hurt in her tone which made Emily reflect. It was a long time since she and Deb had been out together. In the past, they had eaten regularly at each other’s houses – or been to the pictures, or the theatre, or even taken odd weekends away. Now any meeting with Deb was mostly on the phone.

‘I’m seeing Deb on Thursday.’ As she spoke she experienced an emotion too fleeting to pin down but it was relief she felt when Lionel merely said, ‘You’ve not seen her for a while, have you?’ Deb had suggested they meet for a film but after it was over Emily hurried home and did not take up Deb’s invitation to go back to hers for a drink.

That Christmas Kate said, ‘Mum, why are you wearing that old apron? You always used to dress up for Christmas dinner.’

The Christmas was not proceeding well. Kate had invited a boyfriend, Robert, from Bristol. He smoked joints in the spare bedroom and, partly to steer the smoking outdoors, Emily offered the couple the loan of her car.

‘It’s my car,’ Emily said protestingly when Lionel suggested that a boyfriend on drugs was ‘too irresponsible’ to be trusted. ‘Anyway, cannabis is practically legal these days and it’s no worse than you drinking gin and tonic.’ She didn’t add – too many gin and tonics! Perhaps it was politeness which made her refrain; or perhaps it was some other emotion. But whatever in the world was there to be afraid of? Lionel was ‘nice’ – hadn’t Beth said so?

‘Mum,’ Beth said, washing up in the kitchen when Kate and Robert had gone for a spin in Emily’s car. ‘You’ve gone all quiet. What’s happened? Cat got your tongue?’

Emily said she was feeling a bit whacked.

‘You look it,’ Beth said. ‘Is everything OK? You’re not ill, are you?’

Emily said she wasn’t; but she found herself almost looking forward to her daughters’ departure. It would be welcome to have the fine veil of anxiety, which seemed to have settled on her since their arrival, lifted. After Beth and Kate, and Robert, had been driven to the station Lionel said, ‘I think we might go somewhere next year – get away from Christmas.’

‘Oh why?’ she blurted, at once regretting it.

‘I hate Christmas,’ Lionel said. ‘All that fuss.’

Emily felt an upsurge of alarm. She had recognised there had been nothing even faintly seasonal about his attitude to the recent festivities, but the vehemence with which he was voicing dissatisfaction was disturbing.

‘Oh, but I don’t mind …’

‘But I do. You might think of someone other than yourself for a change.’

Slicing onions at the time, she nearly sliced off the top of her thumb. At least the blood – crimson, like the brilliant berries on the holly branches which Kate had brought back from their drive in the country – was a distraction. Late that afternoon, Emily made a bonfire of all the Christmas paper debris and stood by the flames as the sky turned from pale to dark pewter and stray cawing birds came home to roost for the night.

The following year Kate rang and said, ‘I hope you don’t mind, Mum, but we won’t be joining you for Christmas. Robert’s mum has asked us …’

Emily said she didn’t ‘mind’. What else could she say? ‘What about Beth?’

‘Oh, Bethie’s joining us too. It’ll give you and Lionel a chance to be together without us getting in the way.’

‘But, darling, you’re not, you’ve never either of you been “in the way” …’ Emily’s heart, bunched hard, was hurting under her ribs.

‘Yes, but Lionel … you know, Mum. It’s better, really …’

‘It looks as if it’ll be just the two of us for Christmas. What would you like to do?’ she said that evening.