time for herself. He had two partners now -and all the help he needed. She had paid her dues. Why not release herself from the office entirely?
Take me to Venice for a week and I might consider it ’ she said.
He told his secretary to fix it and a fortnight later there they were. No longer staying in the unpretentious La Calcina, hotel of their honeymoon and overlooking the Giudecca, but in the Gritti Palace, looking down on the Grand Canal. Which just about symbolized their every achievement.
In the course of the next seven days they screwed like rabbits, drank like fishes, ate like pigs and walked around the city wrapped in their eel-like arms. Ian had kept his golden hair and she had kept her twenty-five-inch waist. It was as if, she thought, they had only just met.
'One day soon,' she whispered as they stared into the moonlit waters of the Grand Canal. 'One day soon it will be like this all the time ...'
'Yes,' he responded firmly. 'Yes.' He was looking at the water and he was thinking how lucky, how very lucky, he was. He could not have achieved the half of it without his wife. It was what he predicted at the Cambridge Union all those years ago. All those years ago ... He turned to his wife. 'Take a break,' he said, even more firmly.
She did not argue. A woman who seeks to control should make sure - just as with a girdle - that the control is well hidden and quite out of sight.
She stopped going into the office from that day forth. And she allowed dashing, dynamic David Draper to accompany Ian on their foreign business trips. Though she did take the one to Hong Kong for the handover. She too relaxed enough to enjoy an almost dowager status. Yes to Hong Kong, no to boring old Brussels and the flatlands.
Just as she felt safe enough to retire a little, to unplug herself from a world where she felt she must be one jump ahead.
Just as she sat back in her sunny garden, smiling and waiting for the final piece to fall into its correct place and Andrew and Claire to go off safely and happily to university.
Just as she thought, ‘I am still only thirty-nine. Bliss. Brilliant. All is going perfectly to plan ’ Recalling that 'Women! Take control of your lives' had once been her watchword in the seventies.
And just as she congratulated herself that, after all, the famous old adage set down by Robbie Burns that 'the best laid schemes o' mice an' men gang aft a-gley' says nothing of women, and only applies to small rodents and the male of her species ... Something in the blue sky darkened above her.
But when she looked up and shaded her eyes she could see nothing.
Nothing at all.
Which perhaps, after attending that Cambridge Union debate, was her second big mistake.
For just at that precise moment, in a small, smart restaurant at 's-Gravenhage, a pretty little woman, attending a conference on Europe and dentistry, and wearing too-high heels, slipped and fell at the feet of a tall golden-haired man, who bent to help her up and Who insisted (as she brushed the pretty little tears from her eyes, and shook her pretty little curls into place, and whose dainty vulnerability was written all over her round little figure and quivering little mouth, and who kept drawing her skirt hem above her sweetly rounded knee and rubbing it to show that she was being brave), who absolutely insisted, that she should join him and his colleague, David, at their table and have a drink until she was calm again. Which same David it was who winked and nudged him and said, much, much later, 'What's The Harm?'
Blue skies, on the whole, are never to be trusted further than you can see them.
Part One
1
April
If I can't have too many truffles, I'll do without.
colette
The day was a warm one. April gold. The sky was celebration blue. Clouds floated by like spoonfuls of buttery mashed potato, and the verdant grasses below them were all sparkling with dew. It was a harbinger of a day, a day of
Take me to Venice for a week and I might consider it ’ she said.
He told his secretary to fix it and a fortnight later there they were. No longer staying in the unpretentious La Calcina, hotel of their honeymoon and overlooking the Giudecca, but in the Gritti Palace, looking down on the Grand Canal. Which just about symbolized their every achievement.
In the course of the next seven days they screwed like rabbits, drank like fishes, ate like pigs and walked around the city wrapped in their eel-like arms. Ian had kept his golden hair and she had kept her twenty-five-inch waist. It was as if, she thought, they had only just met.
'One day soon,' she whispered as they stared into the moonlit waters of the Grand Canal. 'One day soon it will be like this all the time ...'
'Yes,' he responded firmly. 'Yes.' He was looking at the water and he was thinking how lucky, how very lucky, he was. He could not have achieved the half of it without his wife. It was what he predicted at the Cambridge Union all those years ago. All those years ago ... He turned to his wife. 'Take a break,' he said, even more firmly.
She did not argue. A woman who seeks to control should make sure - just as with a girdle - that the control is well hidden and quite out of sight.
She stopped going into the office from that day forth. And she allowed dashing, dynamic David Draper to accompany Ian on their foreign business trips. Though she did take the one to Hong Kong for the handover. She too relaxed enough to enjoy an almost dowager status. Yes to Hong Kong, no to boring old Brussels and the flatlands.
Just as she felt safe enough to retire a little, to unplug herself from a world where she felt she must be one jump ahead.
Just as she sat back in her sunny garden, smiling and waiting for the final piece to fall into its correct place and Andrew and Claire to go off safely and happily to university.
Just as she thought, ‘I am still only thirty-nine. Bliss. Brilliant. All is going perfectly to plan ’ Recalling that 'Women! Take control of your lives' had once been her watchword in the seventies.
And just as she congratulated herself that, after all, the famous old adage set down by Robbie Burns that 'the best laid schemes o' mice an' men gang aft a-gley' says nothing of women, and only applies to small rodents and the male of her species ... Something in the blue sky darkened above her.
But when she looked up and shaded her eyes she could see nothing.
Nothing at all.
Which perhaps, after attending that Cambridge Union debate, was her second big mistake.
For just at that precise moment, in a small, smart restaurant at 's-Gravenhage, a pretty little woman, attending a conference on Europe and dentistry, and wearing too-high heels, slipped and fell at the feet of a tall golden-haired man, who bent to help her up and Who insisted (as she brushed the pretty little tears from her eyes, and shook her pretty little curls into place, and whose dainty vulnerability was written all over her round little figure and quivering little mouth, and who kept drawing her skirt hem above her sweetly rounded knee and rubbing it to show that she was being brave), who absolutely insisted, that she should join him and his colleague, David, at their table and have a drink until she was calm again. Which same David it was who winked and nudged him and said, much, much later, 'What's The Harm?'
Blue skies, on the whole, are never to be trusted further than you can see them.
Part One
1
April
If I can't have too many truffles, I'll do without.
colette
The day was a warm one. April gold. The sky was celebration blue. Clouds floated by like spoonfuls of buttery mashed potato, and the verdant grasses below them were all sparkling with dew. It was a harbinger of a day, a day of
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