A Shock to the System Read Free Page A

success at Crasoco, threatened to rise again.
    Their altered circumstances were reflected in that year’s holiday. Instead of the customary fortnight in Cyprus, they decided to economise by renting a cottage in South Wales. Appalling weather ensured that the holiday was a disaster and necessitated long drives to find diversions for the children, which made the whole exercise almost as expensive as going abroad.
    The children did not enjoy it and were not of an age to disguise their disappointment. Graham found he spent much of the holiday shouting at them. They had lost the charm which smallness had imparted, and their physical development presaged worse problems ahead. Henry already had the downy lip, swelling nose and moody secrets of adolescence. Emma, though only eleven, had lost her spontaneity of affection and replaced it with a kind of mannered coquettishness, which augured badly for the future.
    Also, they were getting expensive. Both went to private schools and, apart from the inevitable cost of replacing the clothes they outgrew with such rapidity, they were getting to the age of costly entertainments. Graham found himself sounding more and more like his father as he grudgingly paid out for school trips or cinema seats or the hire of tennis courts. They seemed incapable of doing anything that didn’t cost money.
    And, as they grew more expensive, so he seemed to get less out of them. They were just two young people who happened to be growing up in his house, and at his expense. When he looked at them objectively he realised they held no interest for him whatever.
    The habit of objectivity, or even remoteness, increasingly coloured his view of his wife, too. Having not thought about her much for some years, he now found he was looking at her as an outsider might.
    And what did the outsider see? A thin, materialistic, rather silly woman of nearly forty.
    The waiflike beauty which had been crowned with flowers at their wedding had hardened into angularity. Childbearing had deflated the breasts and spread the hips. And the waiflike charm which went with the appearance had degenerated into empty mannerism.
    There was no split in the marriage. They were faithful to each other, and still made love at least once a week, murmuring apposite endearments as they did so. But love-making had become routine for both of them, almost a chore, better than stacking the dishwasher, but less exciting than having a gin and tonic.
    As he had with his children, Graham now looked increasingly at his wife with detachment. He realised, with only the mildest of shocks, that she meant nothing to him.
    And she did bring with her positive disadvantages, mostly in the form of her mother. Initially, Graham had got on well with Lilian Hinchcliffe. He enjoyed the reflection of her fame as an actress, and the studied bohemianism of her lifestyle contrasted favourably with his own parents’ mouselike reticence. Visits to Lilian’s cottage near Abingdon ensured varied – sometimes eminent – company, plentiful alcohol and occasional cannabis. Her extravagant personality and his limited connection, through her, with the unconventional world of show business gave him an extra dimension to his colleagues. He could still hold attention in the Crasoco canteen with accounts of her outrageousness, of her much-vaunted affairs, of the fifteen-year marriage to Charmian and Merrily’s playwright father (long vanished into alcoholism and death), and, more significantly, of the supposed early liaison with the internationally known and fabulously wealthy film actor, William Essex. All these details gave Graham’s mother-in-law very positive advantages.
    But Lilian changed as she grew older. Her youthful looks, skilfully maintained into her sixties, suddenly gave way, and cosmetic attempts to repair them made her grotesque. Round the same period, acting work seemed to dry up, and her longterm live-in lover, a costume designer, suddenly