Part 32 (2/2)

I was down by then to only two or three Distalgesics a day and would soon have stopped taking them, though the one I'd just swallowed in Greville's house was still an inhibitor for the evening. I wondered too late which would have made me feel better, a damper for the ankle or a large scotch everywhere else.

Clarissa was wearing a blue silk dress with a doublestrand pearl necklace, pearl, sapphire and diamond earrings and a sapphire and diamond ring. I doubted if I would have ttoticed those, in the simple old jockey days Her hair, smooth as always curved in the expensive cut and her shoes and handbag were quiet black calf. She looked as she was, a polished, well-bred woman of forty or so, nearly beautiful, slender, with generous eyes 'What have you been doing since Sat.u.r.day?' she asked, making conversation.

'Peering into the jaws of death. What have you?'

'We went to . . .' She broke off. 'What did you say?'

'Martha and Harley Ostermeyer and I were in a car crash on Sunday. They're OK, they went back to America today, I believe. And I, as you see, am here in one piece. Well . . . almost one piece.'

She was predictably horrified and wanted to hear all the details, and the telling at least helped to evaporate any awkwardness either of us had been feeling at the meeting.

STRA IGHT.

'Simms was shot?'

'Yes'

'But . . . do the police know who did it?'

I shook my head. 'Someone in a large grey Volvo, they think, and there are thousands of those.'

Good heavens' She paused. 'I didn't like to comment, but you look . . .' She hesitated, searching for the word.

'Frazzled?' I suggested.

'Smooth.' She smiled. 'Frazzled underneath.'

'It'll pa.s.s.'

The waiter came to ask if we would be having dinner and I said yes, and no argument, the dinner was mine.

She accepted without fuss and we read the menus The fare was chiefly Italian, the decor cosmopolitan, the ambience faintly European tamed by London. A lot of dark red, lamps with gla.s.s shades, no wallpaper music. A comfortable place, nothing dynamic. Few diners yet, as the hour was early.

It was not, I was interested to note, a habitual rendezvous place for Clarissa and Greville: none of the waiters treated her as a regular. I asked her about it and, startled, she said they had been there only two or three times, always for lunch.

'We never went to the same place often,' she said. 'It wouldn't have been wise.'

'No.'

She gave me a slightly embarra.s.sed look. 'Do you disapprove of me and Greville?'

'No,' I said again. 'You gave him joy.'

'Oh.' She was comforted and pleased. She said with a certain shyness, 'It was the first time I'd fallen in love. I suppose you'll think that silly. But it was the first time for him, too, he said. It was... truly wonderful. We were like . . . as if twenty years younger . . . I don't know if I can explain. Laughing. Lit up.'

'As far as I can see,' I said, 'the thunderbolt strikes at any age. You don't have to be teenagers.'

'Has it . . . struck you?'

'Not since I was seventeen and fell like a ton of bricks for a trainer's daughter.'

'What happened?'

'Nothing much. We laughed a lot. Slept together, a bit clumsily at first. She married an old man of twentyeight.

I went to college.'

'I met Henry when I was eighteen. He fell in love with me... pursued me... I was flattered... and he was so very good looking . . . and kind.'

'He still is,' I said.

'He'd already inherited his t.i.tle. My mother was ecstatic . . . she said the age difference didn't matter. . .

so I married him.' She paused. 'We had a son and a daughter, both grown up now. It hasn't been a bad life, but before Greville, incomplete.'

'A better life than most,' I said, aiming to comfort.

'You're very like Greville,' she said unexpectedly.

'You look at things straight, in the same way. You've his sense of proportion.'

'We had realistic parents.'

'He didn't speak about them much, only that he became interested in gemstones because of the museums his mother took him to. But he lived in the present and he looked outward, not inward, and I loved him to distraction and in a way I didn't know him . . .' She stopped and swallowed and seemed determined not to let emotion intrude further.

'He was like that with me tog,' I said. 'With everyone, I think. It didn't occur to him to give running commentaries on his actions and feelings. He found everything else more interesting.'

'I do miss trim,' she said.

'What will you eat?' I asked.

She gave me a flick of a look and read the menu without seeing it for quite a long time. In the end she said with a sigh, 'You decide.'

'Did GreviUe?'

'Yes.'

'If I order fried zucchini as a starter, then fillet steak in pepper sauce with linguine tossed in olive oil with garlic, will that do?'

'I don't like garlic. I like everything else. Unusual.

Nice.'

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