A Day in the Life of a Smiling Woman Read Free Page B

appeared in Punch in October 1964.
    The details of publication of the stories are as follows:
‘Hassan’s Tower’, Winter’s Tales 12, A. D. Maclean (ed.), London: Macmillan; New York: St Martin’s; Nova , June 1966; Los Angeles: Sylvester and Orphanos, 1980.
‘A Voyage to Cythera’, Mademoiselle , December 1967.
‘Faithful Lovers’ (published in an early version as ‘The Reunion’), Winter’s Tales 14, K. Crossley-Holland (ed.), London: Macmillan; New York: St Martin’s, 1968; The Saturday Evening Post , 6 April 1968.
‘A Pyrrhic Victory’, Nova , July 1968.
‘Crossing the Alps’, Penguin Modern Stories , Volume 3, J. Burnley (ed.), Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1969; Mademoiselle , February 1971.
‘The Gifts of War’, Winter’s Tales 16, A. D. Maclean (ed.), London: Macmillan, 1970; New York: St Martin’s, 1971; Women and Fiction: Short Stories By and About Women , S. Cahill (ed.), New York: New American Library, 1975.
‘A Success Story’, Spare Rib 2, 1972; Ms ., December 1974; Fine Lines: The Best of Ms. Fiction , R. Sullivan (ed.), New York: Scribner’s, 1981.
‘A Day in the Life of a Smiling Woman’, Cosmopolitan , October 1973; In the Looking Glass: Twenty-One Modern Short Stories by Women , N. Dean and M. Stark (eds.), New York: Putnam, 1977.
‘Homework’, Cosmopolitan , November 1975; The Ontario Review 7, Fall–Winter 1977–8.
‘The Merry Widow’, Woman’s Journal , September 1989.
‘The Dower House at Kellynch: A Somerset Romance’, Persuasions 15, 1993.
‘The Caves of God’, Neonlit: Time Out Book of New Writing , Volume 2, N. Royle (ed.), London: Quartet, 1999.
‘Stepping Westward: A Topographical Tale’, The Long Story 18, 2000.

A Day in the Life of a Smiling Woman
    1
    Hassan’s Tower
    ‘If,’ she said, ‘I could be sure they were free, then I would eat them.’ ‘They must be free,’ he said, ‘when you look at the price of the drink.’ ‘But supposing, just supposing,’ she said, ‘they turned out to be as ludicrously expensive as the drink? If you can pay twelve shillings for one gin and tonic, just think what you might have to pay for those.’ He was silenced, for he too had been thinking this thought, though unwilling to admit it to her, unwilling to display before her the full extent of his mercenary fear; and he was annoyed with her for voicing it, for in her such thoughts were merely niceties, whereas to him they were daily bread. He stared glumly at the little squares of toast, with their sadly appetizing decorations of sardine, shrimp and olive, and wondered how much, in the fantastic and unreal financial system which he had entered, they could possibly cost. What, he wondered, was the absolute ceiling for each of those squares? Five shillings? Ludicrous, ludicrous, but alas surely not impossible? Seven and six? Now seven and six was truly impossible. By no stretch even of the Moroccan five-star imagination could they possibly cost seven and six each. So if she were to eat them all (and be assured that she would eat them all, if any, her appetites being as it now appeared insatiable), that would cost him over three pounds. But what was three pounds, after all, amongst friends? Or between bride and bridegroom, rather? Nothing, it wouldappear. To his continuing amazement, even he thought that it was nothing. Although, of course, so much too much for the article. And then, of course, there was the chance, the probability, that they might be free, thrown in, as it were, with the shocking price of the gins. It would be a shame to leave them, if they were free. But then again, if they weren’t free, and she ate them, and then set off towards the lift and the hotel bedroom on the assumption of non-payment, what would happen then? Would the barman in his foolish fez nip deftly out from behind his bar and pursue him? Or would the cost be added, discreetly, within the price of sundries on their anyway colossal hotel bill? Really, he was caught by inexperience between