The Facts of Life Read Free Page A

suggested we go to a concert,’ Sally explained.
    ‘So you threw yourself at him!’
    Sally pushed back her chair as her mother laughed.
    ‘I can’t sit here explaining all evening,’ she said. ‘He’ll be here any minute and I’ve got to polish my shoes.’
    ‘Which are you wearing?’
    ‘The black.’
    ‘Don’t you think the blue’d go better with that dress?’
    ‘I’m wearing the black.’
    ‘Suit yourself.’
    ‘They match my bag.’
    ‘Suit yourself.’
    A car pulled up outside the terrace; a rare enough occurrence to silence everyone and send her mother scurrying to the window to peer around the curtain. Sally glanced at the clock.
    ‘Oh God! That’ll be him. Let him in, would you, Mum? While I do my shoes. Please?’
    ‘He’s a kike!’ her mother exclaimed, turning back from the window. ‘He’s a bloody kike and you’re a cradle snatcher!’
    The revelation that he was German, thought Sally, could wait for another occasion. If one should arise, that was. As her mother walked, hair-fluffing, into the hall, Sally dived into the kitchen and rubbed fiercely at each shoe with a tea towel. She could hear Edward’s voice.
    ‘Hello. I’m Edward Pepper. You must be Sally’s mother.’
    He said it too precisely, of course.
    ‘He sounds like a bloody spy!’ Sally hissed under her breath and stopped to dab a little vanilla essence behind each ear. Edward was ushered into the front room where he was joined by Sally and her father. Sally made formal introductions then her father started to ask why they were wasting money going to a concert and she herded Edward back into the hall, out of the front door and into the waiting Wolseley.
    ‘Don’t wait up,’ she told her father. ‘I’ve got my key.’
    They drew away with a jolt and Sally found herself glowering out of the window.
    ‘Doctor?’ he asked at last and she saw he was smiling quizzically at her.
    ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘My parents are hell.’
    ‘Yes,’ he sighed. ‘That is, they all are. You look so different,’ he added.
    ‘Do I say thank you?’
    ‘Yes. I mean, you look most elegant out of uniform.’
    ‘Thank you, then. You look better out of pyjamas!’
    ‘And you smell delicious. Like … like freshly baked biscuits.’
    ‘It’s vanilla essence,’ she confessed. ‘I don’t have any scent. Nothing nice anyway.’
    ‘You must wear it always,’ he laughed. ‘It suits you.’
    She smiled, looking down at her hands then out of the window, uncertain how to take this. She disliked ambiguity.
    She would have liked to have said, ‘Look, they were starting to make a fuss because they think we’re courting.’ But contented herself with, ‘It’s a nice car.’
    ‘It’s my old tutor’s. He hardly ever uses it. In fact he can scarcely drive. He bought it in the hope that his students would take him on outings but they tend to borrow it and leave him behind.’
    ‘Oh. Poor man.’
    ‘Not really. He has a private income and a good life.’
    She smiled to herself at this literal interpretation.
    ‘Which college were you at?’ she asked.
    ‘Tompion. But only for two years. Then the war came and I was interned. I never finished my degree.’
    His colour had returned and his black hair had regained its glossiness but he was still painfully thin. Perhaps he had always been thin? Perhaps he had been underfed as a child? Sally wanted to know.
    ‘Tell me about all that,’ she said. ‘You’ve told me nothing really. Tell me about yourself.’
    ‘No,’ he said, firmly. ‘Not yet. I’d rather not. Would you mind?’
    ‘No,’ she said and reassured him with a smile, even as her own assurance was jolted.

2
    Edward watched her throughout the concert. He had chosen it for its accessibility, sensing her ignorance.
Eine Kleine Nachtmusik
, a middle period Mozart Piano Sonata and, after the interval, the
Trout Quintet
. Austrian music. Music he had missed through the years of patriotic self-censorship when every other