Going Wrong Read Free Page A

opposite, next to the still of Cary Grant in Notorious, a very handsome man with strong classical features, a noble forehead, fine dark eyes, a lock of dark hair falling casually over his tanned brow. He put Cary Grant in the shade. His looks paradoxically made him angrier. It was as if he had everything already—looks, money, success, charm, youth—so what was there left for him to acquire, what was there he could find to sway her when everything was inadequate?
    “I don’t want a sweet,” she said. “Just coffee.”
    “I’ll just have coffee too. D’you mind if I smoke?”
    “You always do smoke,” she said.
    “I wouldn’t if you minded.”
    “Of course I don’t mind, Guy. You don’t have to ask with me. Don’t you think I know you by now?”
    “I shall have a brandy.”
    “Go ahead. Guy, I wish we didn’t quarrel. We’re friends, aren’t we? I’d like us to be friends always, if that’s possible.”
    They had been through that before. I fell in love with him. The words buzzed in his ears. He said, “How’s Maeve? How’re Maeve and Rachel and Robin and Mummy and Daddy?”
    He knew he should have said, “Your mother and father,” and he wished it didn’t give him pleasure to see her small wince when he referred to her parents like that. But he went on, he compounded it, he couldn’t help himself, “And their appendages,” he said, “Step-mommy and Step-daddy, how are they? Still in love? Still making mature second marriages now they’re old enough to know their own bloody minds?”
    She got up. He held her wrist. “Don’t go. Please don’t go, Leonora. I’m sorry. I’m desperately sorry, please forgive me. I go mad, you know. When you’re as unhappy as I am, you go mad, you don’t care what you say, you’ll say anything.”
    She prized his fingers off her wrist. She did it very gently. “Why are you such a fool, Guy Curran?”
    “Sit down again. Have your coffee. I love you.”
    “I know that,” she said. “Believe me, I don’t doubt that. You’ll never hear me say I don’t think you love me. I know you do. I wish you didn’t. God, I wish you didn’t. If you realized what a hassle it is for me, how it blights my life, the way you go on and on, the way you never leave me alone, I wonder if you’d—well, if you’d give up, Guy?”
    “I’ll never give up.”
    “You’ll have to one day.”
    “I won’t. You see, I know it isn’t true, all that. You say you fell in love with what’s-his-name, but it’s infatuation, it’s a passing phase. I know you really love me. You’d hate me to leave you alone. You love me.”
    “I’ve said I do. In a way. It’s just that …”
    “Have lunch with me next Saturday,” he said.
    “I always have lunch with you on Saturdays.”
    “And I’ll phone you tomorrow.”
    “I know,” she said. “I know you will. I know you’ll phone me every day and have lunch with me every Saturday. It’s like being sure Christmas will come round.”
    “Absolutely,” he said, raising his brandy glass to her, sipping it, then drinking it as he might wine. “I’m as reliable as Christmas and as—what’s the word?—inexorable. And I’ll tell you something. You wouldn’t come if you didn’t really love me. The ginge—this William, you’re not in love with him, you’re infatuated. It’s me you love.”
    “I’m fond of you.”
    “Why do you keep on seeing me then?”
    “Guy, be sensible. I only do it now because—well, I needn’t go into that.”
    “Yes, you need go into that. Why do you ‘only do it now because’?”
    “All right, you asked for it. Because I know how you feel, or I try to know how you feel. I want to be kind, I don’t want to be rotten. I did make promises and whatever to you when we were kids. No person in their right mind would call those promises binding, but just the same. Oh God, Guy, you’re on my conscience, don’t you see? That’s why I have lunch with you on Saturdays. That’s why I listen to