Collected Stories

Raymond Bamber and Mrs Fitch

For fifteen years, ever since he was twenty-seven, Raymond Bamber had attended the Tamberleys’ autumn cocktail party. It was a function to which the Tamberleys inclined to invite their acquaintances rather than their friends, so that every year the faces changed a bit: no one except Raymond had been going along to the house in Eaton Square for as long as fifteen years. Raymond, the Tamberleys felt, was a special case, for they had known him since he was a boy, having been close friends of his father’s.

Raymond was a tall man, six foot two inches, with spectacles and a small moustache. He was neat in all he did, and he lived what he himself referred to as a tidy life.

‘I come here every year,’ said Raymond at the Tamberleys’, to a woman he had not met before, a woman who was tall too, with a white lean face and lips that were noticeably scarlet. ‘It is an occasion for me. almost, like Christmas or Easter. To some extent, I guide my life by the Tamberleys’ autumn party, remembering on each occasion what has happened in the year gone by.’

‘My name is Mrs Fitch,’ said the woman, poking a hand out for a drink. ‘Is that vermouth and gin?’ she inquired of the Tamberleys’ Maltese maid, and the maid agreed that it was. ‘Good,’ said Mrs Fitch.

‘Raymond, Raymond,’ cried the voice of Mrs Tamberley as Mrs Tamberley materialized suddenly beside them. ‘How’s Nanny Wilkinson?’

‘She died,’ murmured Raymond.

‘Of course she did,’ exclaimed Mrs Tamberley. ‘How silly of me!’

‘Oh no –’

‘You put that sweet notice in The Times. His old nurse,’ explained Mrs Tamberley to Mrs Fitch. ‘Poor Nanny Wilkinson,’ she said, and smiled and bustled off.

‘What was all that?’ asked Mrs Fitch.

‘It’s one of the things that happened to me during the year. The other was –’

‘What’s your name, anyway?’ the woman interrupted. ‘I don’t think I ever caught it.’

Raymond told her his name. He saw that she was wearing a black dress with touches of white on it. Her shoulders were bare and bony; she had, Raymond said to himself, an aquiline face.

‘The other thing was that an uncle died and left me a business in his will. That happened, actually, before the death of Nanny Wilkinson and to tell you the truth, Mrs Fitch, I just didn’t know what to do. “What could I do with a business?” I said to myself. So I made my way to Streatham where the old lady lived. “Run a business, Raymond? You couldn’t run a bath,” she said.’ Raymond laughed, and Mrs Fitch smiled frostily, looking about her for another drink. ‘It rankled, that, as you may imagine. Why couldn’t I run a business? I thought. And then, less than a week later, I heard that she had died in Streatham. I went to her funeral, and discovered that she’d left me a prayer-book in her will. All that happened in the last year. You see, Mrs Fitch?’

Mrs Fitch, her eyes on her husband, who was talking to a woman in yellow in a distant corner of the room, said vaguely:

‘What about the business?’

‘I sold the business. I live alone, Mrs Fitch, in a flat in Bayswater; I’m forty-two. I’m telling you that simply because I felt that I could never manage anything like taking on a business so suddenly. That’s what I thought when I had considered the matter carefully. No good being emotional, I said to myself.’

‘No,’ said Mrs Fitch. She watched the woman move quite close to her husband and engage him in speech that had all the air of confidential talk. The woman wasn’t young, Mrs Fitch noticed, but had succeeded in giving the impression of youth. She was probably forty-four, she reckoned; she looked thirty.

So Mrs Tamberley had seen the notice in The Times, Raymond thought. He had worded it simply and had stated in a straightforward manner the service that Nanny Wilkinson had given over the years to his family. He had felt it her due, a notice in The Times, and there was of course only he who might do it. He remembered her sitting regally in his nursery teaching him his tidiness. Orderliness was the most important thing in life, she said, after a belief in the Almighty.

‘Get me a drink, dear,’ said Mrs Fitch suddenly, holding out an empty glass and causing Raymond to note that this woman was consuming the Tamberleys’ liquor at a faster rate than he.

‘Gin and vermouth,’ ordered Mrs Fitch. ‘Dry,’ she added. ‘Not that red stuff.’

Raymond smiled and took her glass, while Mrs Fitch observed that her husband was listening with rapt care to what the woman in yellow was saying to him. In the taxi-cab on the way to the Tamberleys’, he had remarked as usual that he was fatigued after his day’s work. ‘An early night,’ he had suggested. And now he was listening carefully to a female: he wouldn’t leave this party for another two hours at least.

‘It was quite a blow to me,’ said Raymond, handing Mrs Fitch a glass of gin and vermouth, ‘hearing that she was dead. Having known her, you see, all my life –’

‘Who’s dead now?’ asked Mrs Fitch, still watching her husband.

‘Sorry,’ said Raymond. ‘How silly of me! No, I meant, you see, this old lady whom I had known as Nanny Wilkinson. I was saying it was a blow to me when she died, although of course I didn’t see much of her these last few years. But the memories are there, if you see what I mean; and you cannot of course erase them.’

‘No,’ said Mrs Fitch.

‘I was a particularly tall child, with my spectacles of course, and a longish upper lip. “When you’re a big man,” I remember her saying to me, “you’ll have to grow a little moustache to cover up all that lip.” And declare, Mrs Fitch, I did.’

‘I never had a nanny,’ said Mrs Fitch.

‘ “He’ll be a tennis-player,” people used to say – because of my height, you see. But in fact I turned out to be not much good on a tennis court.’

Mrs Fitch nodded. Raymond began to say something else, but Mrs Fitch, her eyes still fixed upon her husband, interrupted him. She said:

‘Interesting about your uncle’s business.’

‘I think I was right. I’ve thought of it often since, of sitting down in an office and ordering people to do this and that, instead of remaining quietly in my flat in Bayswater. I do all my own cooking, actually, and cleaning and washing up. Well, you can’t get people, you know. I couldn’t even get a simple char, Mrs Fitch, not for love nor money. Of course it’s easy having no coal fires to cope with: the flat is all-electric, which is what, really, I prefer.’

Raymond laughed nervously, having observed that Mrs Fitch was, for the first time since their conversation had commenced, observing him closely. She was looking into his face, at his nose and his moustache and his spectacles. Her eyes passed up to his forehead and down the line of his right cheek, down his neck until they arrived at Raymond’s Adam’s apple. He continued to speak to her, telling of the manner in which his flat in Bayswater was furnished, how he had visited the Sanderson showrooms in Berners Street to select materials for chair-covers and curtains. ‘She made them for me,’ said Raymond. ‘She was almost ninety then.’

‘What’s that?’ said Mrs Fitch. ‘Your nurse made them?’

‘I measured up for her and wrote everything down just as she had directed. Then I travelled out to Streatham with my scrap of paper.’

‘On a bicycle.’

Raymond shook his head. He thought it odd of Mrs Fitch to suggest, for no logical reason, that he had cycled from Bayswater to Streatham. ‘On a bus actually,’ he explained. He paused, and then added: ‘I could have had them made professionally, of course, but I preferred the other. I thought it would give her an interest, you see.’

‘Instead of which it killed her.’

‘No, no. No, you’ve got it confused. It was in 1964 that she made the curtains and the covers for me. As I was saying, she died only a matter of months ago.’

Raymond noticed that Mrs Fitch had ceased her perusal of his features and was again looking vacantly into the distance. He was glad that she had ceased to examine him because had she continued he would have felt obliged to move away from her, being a person who was embarrassed by such intent attention. He said, to make it quite clear about the covers and the curtains:

‘She died in fact of pneumonia.’

‘Stop,’ said Mrs Fitch to the Tamberleys’ Maltese maid who happened to be passing with a tray of drinks. She lifted a glass to her lips and consumed its contents while reaching out a hand for another. She repeated the procedure, drinking two glasses of the Tamberleys’ liquor in a gulping way and retaining a third in her left hand.

‘Nobody can be trusted,’ said Mrs Fitch after all that. ‘We come to these parties and everything’s a sham.’

‘What?’ said Raymond.

‘You know what I mean.’

Raymond laughed, thinking that Mrs Fitch was making some kind of joke. ‘Of course,’ he said, and laughed again, a noise that was more of a cough.

‘You told me you were forty-two,’ said Mrs Fitch. ‘I in fact am fifty-one, and have been taken for sixty-five.’

Raymond thought he would move away from this woman in a moment. He had a feeling she might be drunk. She had listened pleasantly enough while he told her a thing or two about himself, yet here she was now speaking most peculiarly. He smiled at her and heard her say:

‘Look over there, Mr Bamber. That man with the woman in yellow is my husband. We were born in the same year and in the same month, January 1915. Yet he could be in his thirties. That’s what he’s up to now; pretending the thirties with the female he’s talking to. He’s praying I’ll not approach and give the game away. D’you see, Mr Bamber?’

‘That’s Mrs Anstey,’ said Raymond. ‘I’ve met her here before. The lady in yellow.’

‘My husband has eternal youth,’ said Mrs Fitch. She took a mouthful of her drink and reached out a hand to pick a fresh one from a passing tray. ‘It’s hard to bear.’

‘You don’t look fifty-one,’ said Raymond. ‘Not at all.’

‘Are you mocking me?’ cried Mrs Fitch. ‘I do not look fifty-one. I’ve told you so: I’ve been taken for sixty-five.’

‘I didn’t mean that. I meant –’

‘You were telling a lie, as well you know. My husband is telling lies too. He’s all sweetness to that woman, yet it isn’t his nature. My husband cares nothing for people, except when they’re of use to him. Why do you think, Mr Bamber, he goes to cocktail parties?’

‘Well–’

‘So that he may make arrangements with other women. He desires their flesh and tells them so by looking at it.’

Raymond looked serious, frowning, thinking that that was expected of him.

‘We look ridiculous together, my husband and I. Yet once we were a handsome couple. I am like an old crow while all he has is laughter lines about his eyes. It’s an obsession with me.’

Raymond pursed his lips, sighing slightly.

‘He’s after women in this room,’said Mrs Fitch, eyeing her husband again.

‘Oh, no, now –’

‘Why not? How can you know better than I, Mr Bamber? I have had plenty of time to think about this matter. Why shouldn’t he want to graze where the grass grows greener, or appears to grow greener? That Anstey woman is a walking confidence trick.’

‘I think,’ said Raymond, ‘that I had best be moving on. I have friends to talk to.’ He made a motion to go, but Mrs Fitch grasped part of his jacket in her right hand.

‘What I say is true,’ she said. ‘He is practically a maniac. He has propositioned women in this very room before this. I’ve heard him at it.’

‘I’m sure –’

‘When I was a raving beauty he looked at me with his gleaming eye. Now he gleams for all the others. I’ll tell you something, Mr Bamber.’ Mrs Fitch paused. Raymond noticed that her eyes were staring over his shoulder, as though she had no interest in him beyond his being a person to talk at. ‘I’ve gone down on my bended knees, Mr Bamber, in order to have this situation cleared up: I’ve prayed that that man might look again with tenderness on his elderly wife. But God has gone on,’ said Mrs Fitch bitterly, ‘in His mysterious way, not bothering Himself.’

Raymond did not reply to these observations. He said instead that he hadn’t liked to mention it before but was Mrs Fitch aware that she was clutching in her right hand part of his clothes?

‘He shall get to know your Anstey woman,’ said Mrs Fitch. ‘He shall come to know that her father was a bearlike man with a generous heart and that her mother, still alive in Guildford, is difficult to get on with. My husband shall come to know all the details about your Anstey woman: the plaster chipping in her bathroom, the way she cooks an egg. He shall know what her handbags look like, and how their clasps work – while I continue to wither away in the house we share.’

Raymond asked Mrs Fitch if she knew the Griegons, who were, he said, most pleasant people. He added that the Griegons were present tonight and that, in fact, he would like to introduce them to her.

‘You are trying to avoid the facts. What have the Griegons to recommend them that we should move in their direction and end this conversation? Don’t you see the situation, Mr Bamber? I am a woman who is obsessed because of the state of her marriage, how I have aged while he has not. I am obsessed by the fact that he is now incapable of love or tenderness. I have failed to keep all that alive because I lost my beauty. There are lines on my body too, Mr Bamber: I would show you if we were somewhere else.’

Raymond protested again, and felt tired of protesting. But Mrs Fitch, hearing him speak and thinking that he was not yet clear in his mind about the situation, supplied him with further details about her marriage and the manner in which, at cocktail parties, her husband made arrangements for the seduction of younger women, or women who on the face of it seemed younger. ‘Obsessions are a disease,’ said Mrs Fitch, drinking deeply from her glass.

Raymond explained then that he knew nothing whatsoever about marriage difficulties, to which Mrs Fitch replied that she was only telling him the truth. ‘I do not for a moment imagine,’ she said, ‘that you are an angel come from God, Mr Bamber, in order to settle the unfortunateness. I didn’t mean to imply that when I said I had prayed. Did you think I thought you were a messenger?’ Mrs Fitch, still holding Raymond’s jacket and glancing still at her husband and the woman in yellow, laughed shrilly. Raymond said:

‘People are looking at us, the way you are pulling at my clothes. I’m a shy man –’

‘Tell me about yourself. You know about me by now: how everything that once seemed rosy has worked out miserably.’

‘Oh, come now,’ said Raymond, causing Mrs Fitch to repeat her laughter and to call out for a further drink. The Tamberleys’ maid hastened towards her. ‘Now then,’ said Mrs Fitch. ‘Tell me.’

‘What can I tell you?’ asked Raymond.

‘I drink a lot these days,’ said Mrs Fitch, ‘to help matters along. Cheers, Mr Bamber.’

‘Actually I’ve told you quite a bit, you know. One thing and another –’

‘You told me nothing except some nonsense about an old creature in Streatham. Who wants to hear that, for Christ’s sake? Or is it relevant?’

‘Well, I mean, it’s true, Mrs Fitch. Relevant to what?’

‘I remember you, believe it or not, in this very room on this same occasion last year. “Who’s that man?” I said to the Tamberley woman and she replied that you were a bore. You were invited, year by year, so the woman said, because of some friendship between the Tamberleys and your father. In the distant past.’

‘Look here,’ said Raymond, glancing about him and noting to his relief that no one appeared to have heard what Mrs Fitch in her cups had said.

‘What’s the matter?’ demanded Mrs Fitch. Her eyes were again upon her husband and Mrs Anstey. She saw them laugh together, and felt her unhappiness being added to as though it were a commodity within her body. ‘Oh yes,’ she said to Raymond, attempting to pass a bit of the unhappiness on. ‘A grinding bore. Those were the words of Mrs Tamberley.’

Raymond shook his head. ‘I’ve known Mrs Tamberley since I was a child,’ he said.

‘So the woman said. You were invited because of the old friendship: the Tamberleys and your father. I cannot tell a lie, Mr Bamber: she said you were a pathetic case. She said you hadn’t learned how to grow up. I dare say you’re a pervert.’

‘My God!’

‘I’m sorry I cannot tell lies,’ said Mrs Fitch, and Raymond felt her grip tighten on his jacket. ‘It’s something that happens to you when you’ve been through what I’ve been through. That man up to his tricks with women while the beauty drains from my face. What’s it like, d’you think?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Raymond. ‘How on earth could I know? Mrs Fitch, let’s get one thing clear: I am not a pervert.’

‘Not? Are you sure? They may think you are, you know,’ said Mrs Fitch, glancing again at her husband. ‘Mrs Tamberley has probably suggested that very thing to everyone in this room. Crueller, though, I would have thought, to say you were a grinding bore.’

‘I am not a pervert –’

‘I can see them sniggering over that all right. Unmentionable happenings between yourself and others. Elderly newspaper-vendors –’

‘Stop!’ cried Raymond. Tor God’s sake, woman –’

‘You’re not a Jew, are you?’

Raymond did not reply. He stood beside Mrs Fitch, thinking that the woman appeared to be both drunk and not of her right mind. He did not wish to create a scene in the Tamberleys’ drawing-room, and yet he recognized that by the look of her she intended to hold on to his jacket for the remainder of the evening. If he attempted to pull it away from her, she would not let go: she did not, somehow, seem to be the kind of woman who would. She wouldn’t mind a scene at all.

‘Why,’ said Mrs Fitch, ‘did you all of a sudden begin to tell me about that woman in Streatham, Mr Bamber, and the details about your, chair-covers and curtains? Why did you tell me about your uncle dying and trying to leave you a business and your feeling that in your perverted condition you were unfit to run a business?’

Raymond’s hands began to shake. He could feel an extra tug on his jacket, as though Mrs Fitch was now insisting that he stand closer to her. He pressed his teeth together, grinding his molars one upon another, and then opened his mouth and felt his teeth and his lips quivering. He knew that his voice would sound strange when he spoke. He said:

‘You are being extremely offensive to me, Mrs Fitch. You are a woman who is a total stranger to me, yet you have seen fit to drive me into a corner at a cocktail party and hold me here by force. I must insist that you let go my jacket and allow me to walk away.’

‘What about me, Mr Bamber? What about my husband and your Anstey woman? Already they are immoral on a narrow bed somewhere; in a fifth-class hotel near King’s Cross station.’

‘Your husband is still in this room, Mrs Fitch. As well you know. What your husband does is not my business.’

‘Your business is your flat in Bayswater, is it? And curtains and covers from the Sanderson showrooms in Berners Street. Your world is people dying and leaving you stuff in wills – money and prayer-books and valuable jewellery that you wear when you dress yourself up in a nurse’s uniform.’

‘I must ask you to stop, Mrs Fitch.’

‘I could let you have a few pairs of old stockings if they interest you. Or garments of my husband’s.’

Mrs Fitch saw Raymond close his eyes. She watched the flesh on his face redden further and watched it twitch in answer to a pulse that throbbed in his neck. Her husband, a moment before, had reached out a hand and placed it briefly on the female’s arm.

‘So your nanny was a guide to you,’ said Mrs Fitch. ‘You hung on all her words, I dare say?’

Raymond did not reply. He turned his head away, trying to control the twitching in his face. Eventually he said, quietly and with the suspicion of a stammer:

‘She was a good woman. She was kind in every way.’

‘She taught you neatness.’

Raymond was aware, as Mrs Fitch spoke that sentence, that she had moved appreciably closer to him. He could feel her knee pressing against his. He felt a second knee, and felt next that his leg had been cleverly caught by her, between her own legs.

‘Look here,’ said Raymond.

‘Yes?’

‘Mrs Fitch, what are you trying to do?’

Mrs Fitch increased the pressure of her knees. Her right hand moved into Raymond’s jacket pocket. ‘I am a little the worse for wear,’ she said, ‘but I can still tell the truth.’

‘You are embarrassing me.’

‘What are your perversions? Tell me, Mr Bamber.’

‘I have no perversions of any kind. I live a normal life.’

‘Shall I come to you with a pram? I’m an unhappy woman, Mr Bamber. I’ll wear black woollen stockings. I’ll show you those lines on my body.’

‘Please,’ said Raymond, thinking he would cry in a moment.

Already people were glancing at Mrs Fitch’s legs gripping his so strongly. Her white face and her scarlet lips were close to his eyes. He could see the lines on her cheeks, but he turned his glance away from them in case she mentioned again the lines on her body. She is a mad, drunken nymphomaniac, said Raymond to himself, and thought that never in all his life had anything so upsetting happened to him.

‘Embrace me,’ said Mrs Fitch.

‘Please, I beg you,’ said Raymond.

‘You are a homosexual. A queer. I had forgotten that.’

‘I’m not a homosexual,’ shouted Raymond, aware that his voice was piercingly shrill. Heads turned and he felt the eyes of the Tamberleys’ guests. He had been heard to cry that he was not a homosexual, and people had wished to see for themselves.

‘Excuse me,’ said a voice. ‘I’m sorry about this.’

Raymond turned his head and saw Mrs Fitch’s husband standing behind him. ‘Come along now, Adelaide,’ said Mrs Fitch’s husband. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said again to Raymond. ‘I didn’t realize she’d had a tankful before she got here.’

‘I’ve been telling him a thing or two,’ said Mrs Fitch. ‘We’ve exchanged life-stories.’

Raymond felt her legs slip away, and he felt her hand withdraw itself from the pocket of his jacket. He nodded in a worldly way at her husband and said in a low voice that he understood how it was.

‘He’s a most understanding chap,’ said Mrs Fitch. ‘He has a dead woman in Streatham.’

‘Come along now,’ordered her husband in a rough voice, and Raymond saw that the man’s hand gripped her arm in a stern manner.

‘I was telling that man,’ said Mrs Fitch again, seeming to be all of a sudden in an ever greater state of inebriation. Very slowly she said: ‘I was telling him what I am and what you are, and what the Tamberleys think about him. It has been home-truths corner here, for the woman with an elderly face and for the chap who likes to dress himself out as a children’s nurse and go with women in chauffeur’s garb. Actually, my dear, he’s a homosexual.’

‘Come along now,’ said Mrs Fitch’s husband. ‘I’m truly sorry,’ he added to Raymond. ‘It’s a problem.’

Raymond saw that it was all being conducted in a most civilized manner. Nobody shouted in the Tamberleys’ drawing-room, nobody noticed the three of them talking quite quietly in a corner. The Maltese maid in fact, not guessing for a moment that anything was amiss, came up with her tray of drinks and before anyone could prevent it, Mrs Fitch had lifted one to her lips. ‘In vino Veritas,’ she remarked.

Raymond felt his body cooling down. His shirt was damp with sweat, and he realized that he was panting slightly and he wondered how long that had been going on. He watched Mrs Fitch being aided through the room by her husband. No wonder, he thought, the man had been a little severe with her, if she put up a performance like that very often; no wonder he treated her like an infant. She was little more than an infant, Raymond considered, saying the first thing that came into her head, and going on about sex. He saw her lean form briefly again, through an opening in the crowded room, and he realized without knowing it that he had craned his neck for a last glimpse. She saw him too, as she smiled and bowed at Mrs Tamberley, appearing to be sober and collected. She shook her head at him, deploring him or suggesting, even, that he had been the one who had misbehaved. Her husband raised a hand in the air, thanking Raymond for his understanding.

Raymond edged his way through all the people and went to find a bathroom. He washed his face, taking his spectacles off and placing them beside a piece of lime-green soap. He was thinking that her husband was probably just like any other man at a cocktail party. How could the husband help it, Raymond thought, if he had not aged and if other women found him pleasant to talk to? Did she expect him to have all his hair plucked out and have an expert come to line his face?

Leaning against the wall of the bathroom, Raymond thought about Mrs Fitch. He thought at first that she was a fantastic woman given to fantastic statements, and then he embroidered on the thought and saw her as being more subtle than that. ‘By heavens!’ said Raymond aloud to himself. She was a woman, he saw, who was pathetic in what she did, transferring the truth about herself to other people. She it was, he guessed, who was the grinding bore, so well known for the fact that she had come to hear the opinion herself and in her unbalanced way sought to pretend that others were bores in order to push the thing away from her. She was probably even, he thought, a little perverted, the way in which she had behaved with her knees, and sought to imbue others with this characteristic too, so that she, for the moment, might feel rid of it: Mrs Fitch was clearly a case for a psychiatrist. She had said that her husband was a maniac where women were concerned; she had said that he had taken Mrs Anstey to a bed in King’s Cross when Mrs Anstey was standing only yards away, in front of her eyes. In vino veritas, she had said, for no reason at all.

One morning, Raymond imagined, poor Mr Fitch had woken up to find his wife gabbling in that utterly crazy manner about her age and her hair and the lines on her body. Probably the woman was a nuisance with people who came to the door, the deliverers of coal and groceries, the milkman and the postman. He imagined the Express Dairy on the telephone to Mrs Fitch’s husband, complaining that the entire milk-round was daily being disorganized because of the antics of Mrs Fitch, who was a bore with everyone.

It accounted for everything, Raymond thought, the simple fact that the woman was a psychological case. He closed his eyes and sighed with relief, and remembered then that he had read in newspapers about women like Mrs Fitch. He opened his eyes again and looked at himself in the mirror of the Tamberleys’ smallest bathroom. He touched his neat moustache with his fingers and smiled at himself to ascertain that his teeth were not carrying a piece of cocktail food. ‘You have a tea-leaf on your tooth,’ said the voice of Nanny Wilkinson, and Raymond smiled, remembering her.

Raymond returned to the party and stood alone watching the people talking and laughing. His eyes passed from face to face, many of which were familiar to him. He looked for the Griegons with whom last year he had spent quite some time, interesting them in a small sideboard that he had just had french polished, having been left the sideboard in the will of a godmother. The man, a Mr French amusingly enough, had come to Raymond’s flat to do the job there in the evenings, having explained that he had no real facilities or premises, being a postman during the day. ‘Not that he wasn’t an expert polisher,’ Raymond had said. ‘He did a most beautiful job. I heard of him through Mrs Adams who lives in the flat below. I thought it was reasonable, you know: seven guineas plus expenses. The sideboard came up wonderfully.’

‘Hullo,’ said Raymond to the Griegons.

‘How d’you do?’ said Mrs Griegon, a pleasant, smiling woman, not at all like Mrs Fitch. Her husband nodded at Raymond, and turned to a man who was talking busily.

‘Our name is Griegon,’ said Mrs Griegon. ‘This is my husband, and this is Dr Oath.’

‘I know,’ said Raymond, surprised that Mrs Griegon should say who she was since they had all met so pleasantly a year ago. ‘How do you do, Dr Oath?’ he said, stretching out a hand.

‘Yes,’ said Dr Oath, shaking the hand rapidly while continuing his conversation.

Mrs Griegon said: ‘You haven’t told us your name.’

Raymond, puzzled and looking puzzled, said that his name was Raymond Bamber. ‘But surely you remember our nice talk last year?’ he said. ‘I recall it all distinctly: I was telling you about Mr French who came to polish a sideboard, and how he charged only seven guineas.’

‘Most reasonable,’ said Mrs Griegon. ‘Most reasonable.’

‘We stood over there,’ explained Raymond, pointing. ‘You and I and Mr Griegon. I remember I gave you my address and telephone number in case if you were ever in Bayswater you might like to pop in to see the sideboard. You said to your husband at the time, Mrs Griegon, that you had one or two pieces that could do with stripping down and polishing, and Mr French, who’ll travel anywhere in the evenings and being, as you say, so reasonable –’

‘Of course,’ cried Mrs Griegon. ‘Of course I remember you perfectly, and I’m sure Archie does too.’ She looked at her husband, but her husband was listening carefully to Dr Oath.

Raymond smiled. ‘It looks even better now that the initial shine has gone. I’m terribly pleased with it.’ As he spoke, he saw the figure of Mrs Fitch’s husband entering the room. He watched him glance about and saw him smile at someone he’d seen. Following the direction of this smile, Raymond saw Mrs Anstey smiling back at Mrs Fitch’s husband, who at once made his way to her side.

‘French polishing’s an art,’ said Mrs Griegon.

What on earth, Raymond wondered, was the man doing back at the Tamberleys’ party? And where was Mrs Fitch? Nervously, Raymond glanced about the crowded room, looking for the black-and-white dress and the lean aquiline features of the woman who had tormented him. But although, among all the brightly coloured garments that the women wore there were a few that were black and white, none of them contained Mrs Fitch. ‘We come to these parties and everything’s a sham,’ her voice seemed to say, close to him. ‘Nobody can be trusted.’ The voice came to him in just the same way as Nanny Wilkinson’s had a quarter of an hour ago, when she’d been telling him that he had a tea-leaf on his tooth.

‘Such jolly parties,’ said Mrs Griegon, ‘The Tamberleys are wonderful.’

‘Do you know a woman called Mrs Fitch?’ said Raymond. ‘She was here tonight.’

‘Mrs Fitch!’ exclaimed Mrs Griegon with a laugh.

‘D’you know her?’

‘She’s married to that man there,’ said Mrs Griegon. She pointed at Mr Fitch and sniffed.

‘Yes,’ said Raymond. ‘He’s talking to Mrs Anstey.’

He was about to add that Mr Fitch was probably of a social inclination. He was thinking already that Mr Fitch probably had a perfectly sound reason for returning to the Tamberleys’. Probably he lived quite near and having seen his wife home had decided to return in order to say goodbye properly to his hosts. Mrs Anstey, Raymond had suddenly thought, was for all he knew Mr Fitch’s sister: in her mentally depressed condition it would have been quite like Mrs Fitch to pretend that the woman in yellow was no relation whatsoever, to have invented a fantasy that was greater even than it appeared to be.

‘He’s always up to that kind of carry-on,’ said Mrs Griegon. ‘The man’s famous for it.’

‘Sorry?’ said Raymond.

‘Fitch. With women.’

‘Oh but surely –’

‘Really,’ said Mrs Griegon.

‘I was talking to Mrs Fitch earlier on and she persisted in speaking about her husband. Well, I felt she was going on rather. Exaggerating, you know. A bit of a bore.’

‘He has said things to me, Mr Bamber, that would turn your stomach.’

‘She has a funny way with her, Mrs Fitch has. She too said the oddest things –’

‘She has a reputation,’ said Mrs Griegon, ‘for getting drunk and coming out with awkward truths. I’ve heard it said.’

‘Not the truth,’ Raymond corrected. ‘She says things about herself, you see, and pretends she’s talking about another person.’

‘What?’ said Mrs Griegon.

‘Like maybe, you see, she was saying that she herself is a bore the way she goes on – well, Mrs Fitch wouldn’t say it just like that. What Mrs Fitch would do is pretend some other person is the bore, the person she might be talking to. D’you see? She would transfer all her own qualities to the person she’s talking to.’

Mrs Griegon raised her thin eyebrows and inclined her head. She said that what Raymond was saying sounded most interesting.

‘An example is,’ said Raymond, ‘that Mrs Fitch might find herself unsteady on her feet through drink. Instead of saying that she was unsteady she’d say that you, Mrs Griegon, were the unsteady one. There’s a name for it, actually. A medical name.’

‘Medical?’ said Mrs Griegon.

Glancing across the room, Raymond saw that Mr Fitch’s right hand gripped Mrs Anstey’s elbow. Mr Fitch murmured in her ear and together the two left the room. Raymond saw them wave at Mrs Tamberley, implying thanks with the gesture, implying that they had enjoyed themselves.

‘I can’t think what it is now,’ said Raymond to Mrs Griegon, ‘when people transfer the truth about themselves to others. It’s some name beginning with an R, I think.’

‘How nice of you,’ said Mrs Tamberley, gushing up, ‘to put that notice in The Times’ She turned to Mrs Griegon and said that, as Raymond had probably told her, a lifelong friend of his, old Nanny Wilkinson, had died a few months ago. ‘Every year,’ said Mrs Tamberley, ‘Raymond told us all how she was bearing up. But now, alas, she’s died.’

‘Indeed,’ said Mrs Griegon, and smiled and moved away.

Without any bidding, there arrived in Raymond’s mind a picture of Mrs Fitch sitting alone in her house, refilling a glass from a bottle of Gordon’s gin. ‘In vino veritas,’ said Mrs Fitch, and began to weep.

‘I was telling Mrs Griegon that I’d been chatting with Mrs Fitch,’ said Raymond, and then he remembered that Mrs Tamberley had very briefly joined in that chat. ‘I found her strange,’ he added.

‘Married to that man,’ cried Mrs Tamberley. ‘He drove her to it.’

‘Her condition?’ said Raymond, nodding.

‘She ladles it into herself,’ said Mrs Tamberley, ‘and then tells you what she thinks of you. It can be disconcerting.’

‘She really says anything that comes into her head,’ said Raymond, and gave a light laugh.

‘Not actually,’ said Mrs Tamberley. ‘She tells the truth.’

‘Well, no, you see –’

‘You haven’t a drink,’ cried Mrs Tamberley in alarm, and moved at speed towards her Maltese maid to direct the girl’s attention to Raymond’s empty glass.

Again the image of Mrs Fitch arrived in Raymond’s mind. She sat as before, alone in a room, while her husband made off with a woman in yellow. She drank some gin.

‘Sherry, sir?’ said the Maltese maid, and Raymond smiled and thanked her, and then, in an eccentric way and entirely on an impulse, he said in a low voice:

‘Do you know a woman called Mrs Fitch?’

The girl said that Mrs Fitch had been at the party earlier in the evening, and reminded Raymond that he had in fact been talking to her.

‘She has a peculiar way with her,’ explained Raymond. ‘I just wondered if ever you had talked to her, or had listened to what she herself had to say.’ But the Maltese maid shook her head, appearing not to understand.

‘Mrs Fitch’s a shocker,’ said a voice behind Raymond’s back, and added: ‘That poor man.’

There was a crackle of laughter as a response, and Raymond, sipping his sherry, turned about and moved towards the group that had caused it. The person who had spoken was a small man with shiny grey hair. ‘I’m Raymond Bamber,’ said Raymond, smiling at him. ‘By the sound of things, you saw my predicament earlier on.’ He laughed, imitating the laughter that had come from the group. ‘Extremely awkward.’

‘She gets tight,’ said the small man. ‘She’s liable to tell a home truth or two,’ He began to laugh again. ‘In vino veritas,’ he said.

Raymond looked at the people and opened his mouth to say that it wasn’t quite so simple, the malaise of Mrs Fitch. ‘It’s all within her,’ he wished to say. ‘Everything she says is part of Mrs Fitch, since she’s unhappy in a marriage and has lost her beauty.’ But Raymond checked that speech, uttering in fact not a word of it. The people looked expectantly at him, and after a long pause the small man said:

‘Mrs Fitch can be most embarrassing.’

Raymond heard the people laugh again with the same sharpness and saw their teeth for a moment harshly bared and noted that their eyes were like polished ice. They would not understand, he thought, the facts about Mrs Fitch, any more than Mrs Griegon had seemed to understand, or Mrs Tamberley. It surprised Raymond, and saddened him, that neither Mrs Griegon nor Mrs Tamberley had cared to accept the truth about the woman. It was, he told himself, something of a revelation that Mrs Griegon, who had seemed so pleasant the year before, and Mrs Tamberley whom he had known almost all his life, should turn out to be no better than this group of hard-eyed people. Raymond murmured and walked away, still thinking of Mrs Griegon and Mrs Tamberley. He imagined them laughing with their husbands over Mrs Fitch, repeating that she was a bore and a drunk. Laughter was apparently the thing, a commodity that reflected the shallowness of minds too lazy to establish correctly the facts about people. And they were minds, as had been proved to Raymond, that didn’t even bother to survey properly the simple explanations of eccentric conduct – as though even that constituted too much trouble.

Soon afterwards, Raymond left the party and walked through the autumn evening, considering everything. The air was cool on his face as he strode towards Bayswater, thinking that as he continued to live his quiet life Mrs Fitch would be attending parties that were similar to the Tamberleys’, and she’d be telling the people she met there that they were grinding bores. The people might be offended, Raymond thought, if they didn’t pause to think about it, if they didn’t understand that everything was confused in poor Mrs Fitch’s mind. And it would serve them right, he reflected, to be offended – a just reward for allowing their minds to become lazy and untidy in this modern manner. ‘Orderliness,’ said the voice of Nanny Wilkinson, and Raymond paused and smiled, and then walked on.