The Love Object Read Free Page B

wait outside until he was ready. I felt no pity for her. Sometimes I wondered if we would ever meet or if in fact we had already met on an escalator at some point. Though that was unlikely because we lived at opposite ends of London.
    Then to my great surprise the opportunity came. I was invited to a Thanksgiving party given by an American magazine. He saw the card on my mantelshelf and said, ‘You’re going to that, too?’ and I smiled and said maybe. Was he? ‘Yes,’ he said. He tried to make me reach a decision there and then but I was too canny. Of course I would go. I was curious to see his wife. I would meet him in public. It shocked me to think that we had never met in the company of any other person. It was like being shut off … a little animal locked away. I thought very distinctly of a ferret that a forester used to keep in a wooden box with a sliding top when I was a child, and once of another ferret being brought to mate with it. The thought made me shiver. I mean I got it confused; I thought of white ferrets with their little pink nostrils in the same breath as I thought of him sliding a door back and slipping into my box from time to time. His skin had a lot of pink in it.
    ‘I haven’t decided,’ I said, but when the day came I went. I took a lot of trouble with my appearance, had my hair set, and wore a virginal attire. Black and white. The party was held in a large room with panelled walls of brown wood; blown-up magazine covers were along the panels. The bar was at one end, under a balcony. The effect was of shrunken barmen in white lost underneath the cliff of the balcony which seemed in danger of collapsing on them. A more unlikely room for a party I have never seen. There were women going around with trays, but I had to go to the bar because there was champagne on the trays and I have a preference for whisky. A man I knew conducted me there and en route another man placed a kiss on my back. I hoped that he witnessed this, but it was such a large room with hundreds of people around that I had no idea where he was. I noticed a dress I quite admired, a mauve dress with very wide, crocheted sleeves. Looking up the length of the sleeves I saw its owner’s eyes directed on me. Perhaps she was admiring my outfit. People with the same tastes often do. I have no idea what her face looked like, but later when I asked a girl friend which was his wife she pointed to this woman with the crocheted sleeves. The second time I saw her in profile. I still don’t know what she looked like, nor do those eyes into which I looked speak to my memory with anything special, except, perhaps, slight covetousness.
    Finally I searched him out. I had a mutual friend walk across with me and apparently introduce us. He was unwelcoming. He looked strange, the flush on his cheekbones vivid and unnatural. He spoke to the mutual friend and virtually ignored me. Possibly to make amends he asked, at length, if I was enjoying myself.
    ‘It’s a chilly room,’ I said. I was referring of course to his manner. Had I wanted to describe the room I would have used ‘grim’, or some such adjective.
    ‘I don’t know about you being chilly but I’m certainly not,’ he said with aggression. Then a very drunk woman in a sack dress came and took his hand and began to slobber over him. I excused myself and went off. He said most pointedly that he hoped he would see me again, some time.
    I caught his eye just as I left the party and I felt both sorry for him and angry with him. He looked stunned as if important news had just been delivered to him. He saw me leave with a group of people and I stared at him without the whimper of a smile. Yes, I was sorry for him. I was also piqued. The very next day when we met and I brought it up he did not even remember that a mutual friend had introduced us.
    ‘Clement Hastings!’ he said, repeating the man’s name. Which goes to show how nervous he must have been.
    It is impossible to insist that