Loved and Missed by Susie Boyt

Author:Susie Boyt
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: New York Review Books
Published: 2023-09-19T00:00:00+00:00

SEVEN

It was mid November, another year over, Christmas was ticking, Lily and I were clinging on. Jean had grown closer to her new friend Caroline something double-barrelled; a poet and agitator was how she liked to be styled. Jean was all Caroline says, Caroline thinks. They went on fancy outings together: private views, opening nights. One Sunday they drove to Charleston, Caroline in stunning colours, fearlessly attired. The pink of the dining table impressed Jean with its fierce whimsy, the winter borders she pronounced divine. (What had happened to my old friend who thought gardening outdoor housework?) When Jean said, ‘Caroline likes a velvet cigarette pant in the evening,’ I thought, this won’t end well.

Jean had taken to wearing long floaty scarves, not unusual in the more mature woman, certainly, but these ones were verging on the Guineverian, just over her old sheepskin coat. Caroline seemed to have an endless supply, like an end-of-the-pier magician. Jean looked – well, she looked mad. She looked well mad, in fact, but she was happy. She had those glowing brick-pink circles in her cheeks Lily had when she was teething. She was trying a new apple-flavour two-in-one conditioning shampoo, she told me. A dab of violet scent did I detect? I started to wonder if it was a love affair she was having. Once or twice – unheard of, this – she had been late for school. She had a sort of hazy, questioning vagueness to her now. There was that sense of a phone call from abroad with a delay. She asked you the same thing two or three times. ‘Could you see me in a chandelier earring?’ Her form was merciless.

‘Ruth, my angel, I do believe you’re jealous,’ Mr Machin – geography – said at school, brushing biscuit crumbs from his autumn-coloured cords.

‘Could you be a little jealous?’ Christine said, Sarah said, and Fran, when we met for a slightly dismal drink, ostensibly to Cheer Christine Up.

‘Jealous?’ I boomed. ‘Of that utterly ridiculous person?’ I sighed audibly. ‘Please don’t make me laugh.’ My derision fell flat though because my nonchalant hand gesture knocked over and shattered a whole bottle of white wine. They knew it was serious then. A tiny waitress sank to her knees with cloth, mop and dustpan, apologising.

I thought about Caroline sometimes when I was falling asleep, trying to tease out inconsistencies. She was a low-level irritant, a gnat with inflated ideas about itself, a football team I would not wear the scarf of even if caught in a freak blizzard. The facts of her scraped against my nerves. She detested Wordsworth yet she was a terrific fan of psychoanalysis? That didn’t work. She did not believe in umbrellas – they were a suburban invention; well, she could take it from me that they existed. She thought women with a sweet tooth trivialised themselves. What, all of them? (Jean would have to curb her cake habit – why should she?) She objected to English people who hadn’t grown up in London.

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