A Spot Of Bother

21

Jean met Ursula in the coffee shop in Marks and Spencer.

Ursula snapped the little biscuit over her cappuccino to stop the crumbs falling on the table. “I’m really not meant to know about this.”

“I know,” said Jean, “but you do know about it. And I need some advice.”

She didn’t really need advice. Not from Ursula. Ursula only did Yes and No (she’d gone round the Picasso Museum saying exactly that, “Yes…No…No…Yes,” as if she was deciding which ones to get for the living room). But Jean had to talk to someone.

“Go on, then,” said Ursula, eating half her biscuit.

“David is coming to supper. George invited him. We bumped into him at Bob Green’s funeral. David couldn’t really refuse.”

“Well…” Ursula spread her hands on the table, as if she was flattening a big map.

And this was what Jean liked about Ursula. Nothing fazed her. She’d smoked a marijuana cigarette with her daughter (“I felt seasick, then threw up”). And, in actual fact, a man did try to mug them in Paris. Ursula shooed him away as if he were a bad dog, and he retreated at speed. Though, when Jean thought about it later, it was possible that he was simply begging or asking for directions.

“I don’t really see the problem,” said Ursula.

“Oh, come on,” said Jean.

“You’re not planning to be lovey-dovey with each other, are you?” Ursula ate the second half of her biscuit. “Obviously you’ll feel uncomfortable. But, frankly, if you can’t live with a bit of discomfort you really shouldn’t embark on that kind of adventure.”

Ursula was right. But Jean returned to the car feeling troubled. Of course the dinner would be fine. They’d survived far more uncomfortable dinners. That dreadful evening with the Fergusons, for example, when she found George in the toilet listening to cricket on the radio.

What Jean didn’t like was the way everything was becoming looser and messier, and moving slowly beyond her control.

She pulled up round the corner from David’s house knowing that she had to apologize to him for George’s invitation, or tell him off for accepting it, or do some third thing she couldn’t quite put her finger on.

But David had just been phoning his daughter.

His grandson was going into hospital for an operation. David wanted to go up to Manchester to help out. But Mina had got in first. So the kindest thing he could do was to keep his distance. Which Mina would doubtless chalk up as further proof of his failure as a father.

And Jean realized that everybody had a messy life. Except Ursula, maybe. And George. And if you were going to have any kind of adventure it was going to be uncomfortable now and then.

So she put her arms around David and they held each other, and she realized that this was the third thing she couldn’t quite put her finger on. This was the thing which made it all right.