Stanley and the Women Read Free Page A

moment of hesitation he hurled
the half-full glass on to the floor and rushed out. Finally I heard the faint
slam of the door of his old bedroom at the top of the house.
    Susan
found me brushing the pieces of glass into the dustpan. I tried to make what
had happened sound more ordinary than it had been, but without getting anywhere
much. She listened carefully and said in a reasonable tone that no one in fact
wanted or needed so much water. I agreed with her.
    ‘He’s
not normally given to throwing glasses on the floor, is he?’ she asked. ‘No,
that’s just it.’ He had always been a quiet, easy-going sort of fellow, rather
apt to walk out of situations when he felt cross or frustrated, but less so
lately than as a boy, and never inclined to violence in any form.
    ‘He
doesn’t seem to be… Something’s upset him.’
    ‘Something
certainly has,’ said Susan, nodding her head several times. She clearly thought
there was more in the phrase than I had reckoned with. ‘I bet you I know where
that young man has just come from, and it’s a long way from Spain. Unless of
course she happens to have been there, which would explain a good deal,
I suggest.’
    The
person referred to was my former wife and Steve’s mother, Nowell by name, now
married to somebody called Hutchinson. She had left me for him in 1974 and
since then, or rather since the end of the legal hassle, we had not met more
than a couple of times. Steve hardly ever mentioned her and I had stopped asking
him about her. ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I don’t think he sees her much
these days.’
    ‘What
about the time he appeared out of the blue after that cricket match and didn’t
speak the whole evening? And it turned out she was stoned in the Shepherd’s Bush
flat the entire time he was there. You remember.’
    If
other things had been different I would have enjoyed as usual her tone of voice
for talking about Nowell, not a bit hostile, better than objective, sort of interested, putting the expression in like someone reading aloud in the family circle. ‘Yes,
but that was years ago.’ I wondered if she would still be able to go on like
that having met Nowell even for five minutes.
    ‘And
the school outing.’ Susan glanced at me and went on in her usual way, though quieter.
‘Tell me what you think is wrong.’
    ‘I don’t
know what I think is wrong. He could have had a row with Mandy. They haven’t
been going together very long, but …’
    ‘Three
months? I expect that’s quite a long time in their world, don’t you?’
    ‘Yeah.’
    Having
turned off lights and locked windows we got to our bedroom on the second floor.
Steve’s room was up a curving flight of stairs at the far end of this floor,
and for a moment I tried to remember if the bed in it would be made up before
telling myself that there were plenty of blankets within reach and that anyway
he was not five years old any longer. I shut our door behind us. Susan came
over and put her arms round me.
    After a
couple of minutes she said, ‘You’re upset too, aren’t you? In a different way.’
    ‘I
suppose I am. I didn’t think I was.’
    ‘Have
one of my sleepers. Quick and no hangover.’
     
     
    The next morning things
had settled back into proportion. The main event of last night had of course
been the dashing and enjoyable dinner party. Steve would probably have slept
off whatever had been bothering him and might be talked into staying on for a
couple of days. He had always got up late and it came as no surprise that he
was still out of sight when I cleared off my Blue Danube coffee and boiled egg in
the kitchen and checked my stuff before leaving for the office. Susan appeared
in a white terry robe just as I was on my way to the door. She had never been a
great early riser either and had her hair hanging down loose round her face.
There were faint brownish blotches on the fine skin near her eyes.
    ‘I’m
off this morning,’ she said.
    ‘I
thought as