Pack of Cards by Penelope Lively

Author:Penelope Lively
Language: eng
Format: mobi
ISBN: 9780802136244
Publisher: Grove Press
Published: 1989-01-02T06:00:00+00:00

Corruption

THE JUDGE and his wife, driving to Aldeburgh for the weekend, carried with them in the back of the car a Wine Society carton filled with pornographic magazines. The judge, closing the hatchback, stared for a moment through the window; he reopened the door and put a copy of The Times on top of the pile, extinguishing the garish covers. He then got into the driving seat and picked up the road atlas. ‘The usual route, dear?’

‘The usual route, I think. Unless we spot anything enticing on the way.’

‘We have plenty of time to be enticed, if we feel so inclined.’

The judge, Richard Braine, was sixty-two; his wife Marjorie, a magistrate, was two years younger. The weekend ahead was their annual and cherished early summer break at the Music Festival; the pornographic magazines were the impounded consignment of an importer currently on trial and formed the contents of the judge's weekend briefcase, so to speak. ‘Chores?’ his wife had said, and he had replied, ‘Chores, I'm afraid.’

At lunch-time, they pulled off the main road into a carefully selected lane and found a gate-way in which to park the car. They carried the rug and picnic basket into a nearby field and ate their lunch under the spacious East Anglian sky, in a state of almost flamboyant contentment. Both had noted how the satisfactions of life have a tendency to gain intensity with advancing years. ‘The world gets more beautiful,’ Marjorie had once said, ‘not less so. Fun is even more fun. Music is more musical, if you see what I mean. One hadn't reckoned with that.’ Now, consuming the thoughtfully constructed sandwiches and the coffee from the thermos, they glowed at one another amid the long thick grass that teemed with buttercup and clover; before them, the landscape retreated into blue distances satisfactorily broken here and there by a line of trees, the tower of a church or a rising contour. From time to time they exchanged remarks of pleasure or anticipation: about the surroundings, the weather, the meal they would eat tonight at the little restaurant along the coast road, tomorrow evening's concert. Richard Braine, who was a man responsive to the moment, took his wife's hand; they sat in the sun, shirt-sleeved, and agreed conspiratorially and without too much guilt that they were quite glad that the eldest married daughter who sometimes accompanied them on this trip had not this year been able to. The daughter was loved, but would just now have been superfluous.

When they arrived at the small hotel it was early evening. The judge carried their suitcase and the Wine Society carton in and set them down by the reception desk. The proprietor, bearing the carton, showed them to their usual room. As she was unpacking, Marjorie said, ‘I think you should have left that stuff in the car. Chambermaids, you know …’ The judge frowned. ‘That's a point.’ He tipped the contents of the box into the emptied suitcase and locked it. ‘I think I'll have a bath before we go out.

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