Stanley and the Women Read Free Page B

much.’
    ‘You
haven’t forgotten mummy’s coming to lunch?’
    ‘I had.
Or else you forgot to tell me.’
    ‘Perhaps
I did. Anyway, can you come? Please? I know it’s a nuisance but she does like
to see you.’
    Susan
did it just right, appealing to me without putting the pressure on, making her
mother out to be fond of her own way but in an amount I could probably put up
with or not far off. In fact I was a long way from clear whether the old girl
did like to see me in quite the usual sense of the words, but I was as ready as
I ever was to see her any time, that is any time bar a Friday lunchtime, my
preferred procedure being to take a sandwich at work midday and then beat the weekend
rush-hour. Susan knew that perfectly well, and I was just going to remind her
of it when I realized she had not tried to use my perhaps difficult son as an
extra reason why I ought to be around. I thought that was excellent.
    ‘All
right then,’ I said, ‘I may be a bit late but if I am I’m still slated to
attend.’
    ‘Oh
Stanley, you are gorgeous.’
    She
came round the table and began kissing me in a very friendly way. In a moment I
tried to put my hand in under the terry robe, but she prevented me.
    ‘Later,’
she said. ‘I’m not awake yet.’
    Susan
knew I worried about being on time at work. The weather that morning was damp
and blowy and I got a sufficient sample of it just walking the few yards to my
garage door. Inside and soon afterwards outside was the Apfelsine FK 3. I could
really have managed my surface travel perfectly well with taxis and the
occasional hire, but I could hardly have justified keeping the Apfelsine if I
had done that, and I was set on keeping it until something replaced it in its
class. It was what used to be called a status symbol. I always thought it was
much easier to understand than most symbols. I parked it at the other end in my
personal space in the office park without turning a hair.
    It
happened by chance to be motorcars that I discussed in the way of business a
couple of hours later. This was in a wine bar just off Fleet Street called La Botella
that when I first went to it had been a sort of local for men from the nearby
newspaper offices and law places, but for some years now had attracted drinkers
mostly of no particular description. Spirits were sold there as well as wine.
    As well
as operating a stuffy rule about men wearing ties, the management at La Botella
was hard on women, forcing them to sit down in the long narrow room at the side
of the premises and then making it next to impossible for them to order drinks
once they had done that. Lone women who were new to the place or had screwed
their plans were always being stood or advanced drinks in the side room by
decent chaps. When the man I was talking to there that morning had been called
to the telephone, much to his disgust, and half a minute later Lindsey Lucas
pitched up in search of a seat and a gin and tonic, I could hardly have turned
her down even if we had been total strangers.
    I had
known her much longer than I had known Susan, though the two were exact
contemporaries and old friends without ever having been close. In fact I had an
affair with Lindsey after my first wife left me and had given her one or two a
bit casually a couple of extra times between then and taking up with Susan. In
those days a husband of Lindsey’s had come and gone, perhaps still did. She was
reddish-fair and well formed, medium-sized, with a good skin, very well-chosen
glasses and a banked-down manner like a newscaster’s. With this went a hard
flat Northern Ireland accent which I liked as a noise without feeling it suited
her especially well. For the past three years she had had a column on the women’s
page of one of the down-market dailies.
    ‘You
saw your ex was on the box the other night,’ she said with very little delay.
To someone else she might have sounded accusing but I could tell it was only
those tight vowels.
    ‘Yes I
did