Anyway, I thought you were supposed to be in love with William Macklesfield.’ William Macklesfield was the middle-aged poet who had been seen occasionally on the television, and with whom, on and off, Susan had been sleeping for years.
‘William and I are very close. We are best friends. We have a wonderful platonic relationship with sex lying, as it were, on top of it. But we are not in love. Not the kind of lightning love which suddenly flashes out of a clear sky and tumbles you on your back.’
‘Good heavens,’ said Brenda. ‘Things like that never happen to me.’
‘It’s your pillar-like legs,’ said Susan. ‘And your matriarchal destiny. Your time will come when you are sixty, surrounded by your grandchildren and bullying your sons. When I am an ageing drunken lush only fit for a mental home, then I daresay you will be glad that you are you and I am I. In the meantime I can fairly say that of the two of us, I have the more style.’
‘Thank you very much, I’m sure.’
‘Unless of course, I compromise, and marry. I might become a poet’s wife. But poets I find, are often rather dull. They are in the habit of expressing themselves through the written word, and not through their bodies. William is awful in bed.’
‘What does that mean?’ asked Brenda. ‘I thought it was the way a girl responded, not what the man did, that mattered. I never have any trouble. I always thought that girls saying men were bad in bed was just a way of making them feel nervous.’
‘Oh you,’ said Susan, ‘you should write a column in a woman’s magazine. I can see it happening yet.’
‘You were talking,’ said Brenda, devastated, ‘about this lightning stroke which flung you back upon your bed with your knees apart.’
‘I didn’t say with my knees apart. Nor did I mention bed.’
‘I thought it was what you meant.’
‘You are not at all open to forces, are you?’ said Susan. ‘You are an artifact. You are not swayed by passions like me. Anyway, there I was, working in this great throbbing organisation, beginning to fancy my boss, and his wife would ring up every day and ask what he wanted for dinner. He would take her so seriously, I couldn’t understand it. He would think and ponder, and sometimes he would ring her back later to give her a considered answer. It bespoke such intimacy. It drove me mad. She had such a soft, possessive voice. I wondered why he took so little notice of me. And why was there no one I could ring up, in the perfect security of knowing they would be home for dinner, come what may, and obliged to eat what I provided? William kept going back home to his wife for dinner and I found this most irritating. And why didn’t Alan’s wife ring up and ask him what did he want to do in bed that night, or something? Why was it always dinner? Poor man, I thought. Poor blind man. Here was I, young, clever and creative, with depths to plumb, able to take a constructive interest in what really interested him, sitting docile and waiting at his elbow, typing and all he’d do was let his eyes stray to my legs and back again. He was too busy telling his wife what he wanted for dinner. It was an insult to me. I wanted to ask about his novel but he seemed to want to keep it secret. He was so clever. Not just with words, but he loved painting, too. He used to be a painter before his wife got hold of him and destroyed him with boredom and responsibilities. Domesticity had him trapped. Can you imagine, he even kept family photographs on his desk!’
‘A commercial artist, do you mean?’
‘No, I do not. He went to art school. He married her very young, on impulse, and had to give up all thought of being a proper painter. She drove him into advertising, and he ended up a kind of co-ordinator of words and pictures. A man with a great deal of power over people of no consequence whatsoever, and a long title on the plate on his door. How bitter! He should never have let her do it to him. Brenda, do stop making eyes at that Siamese gentleman.’
‘He is not Siamese, I don’t think. But he is very handsome.’
‘I wonder why he seems to prefer you to me. Perhaps it’s his nationality. Do you want me to go on with this story?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then try and concentrate. The first time he actually laid hands on me was the day he started his diet, the day he heard from his agent.’
On the first morning of the diet pigeons chose to strut about the windowsill and embarrass Alan with their intimacies. There was a red carpet on the office floor; red curtains at the window. The standard lamp was grey, and so was the upholstery of the armchairs. His desk was large, sleek, new and empty, except for a list of the day’s engagements. He earned £6,000 a year and was not quite on the Board. It seemed doubtful, now, that he would ever get there. One younger, more energetic man had already used him as a footstool for a leap to Board level, and once a footstool, in Company terms, nearly always a footstool. And nothing would deter the pigeons.
Susan came in with a tray of coffee and biscuits. She wore a very short white skirt and a skimpy grey jersey.
‘Mr Sussman –’ said Susan, apologetically. She wore an enormous pair of spectacles. Her eyesight was normal, but the glasses combined frailty of flesh with aggression of spirit, and she enjoyed them. Alan sought for her features behind them. He was flushed after his telephone conversation with his agent.
‘I am really very sorry –’
‘Oh my God, what have you done now?’ He spoke amiably, as well may a man who has just achieved, he thinks, a lifelong ambition.
‘It’s just that I forgot about your biscuits again. I took the milk chocolate, not the plain. My gentleman friend always prefers milk, and I become confused.’
‘Your gentleman friend?’
‘How else would you have me describe him? My quasi-husband, my seducer, my lover, my fiancé? Take your pick. He is a poet.’
‘It is too unsettled a relationship that you describe,’ said Alan, ‘for my peace of mind. Secretaries, however temporary, should maintain the illusion of being either virgins or well-married. Otherwise the mind begins to envisage possibilities. The girl takes on flesh and blood. You are a bad secretary.’
‘I’m sorry about the biscuits.’
‘I was not talking about the biscuits, and well you know it. It does not matter about the biscuits. I am not eating the biscuits.’
‘Not eating the biscuits?’
‘No. And no sugar in the coffee.’
‘No sugar in the coffee?’
‘Stop playing the little girl. You are a grown woman. I am on a diet.’
‘Oh no!’
‘Why not? I’m too fat.’
‘People on diets become cross, bad-tempered. And desire fails. You are not too fat. Why do you want to be thin?’
‘I want to be young again.’
‘Why?’
‘Because when I was young I had hopes and aspirations and I liked the feeling.’
‘I think you
