Two Women of London by Emma Tennant

Author:Emma Tennant [Emma Tennant]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780571280155
Publisher: Faber & Faber
Published: 2011-11-27T05:00:00+00:00

‘So you decided not to wait for Eliza’s dinner party?’ Mara Kaletsky said when Jean paused, as if trying to find words to convey what she had then seen. ‘You were worried for her, right? How much you need to be I don’t really know. But she seems the kind of woman who can look after herself – wouldn’t you say?’

Jean said she had been worried all the same. If her old friend was actually being menaced by some kind of psychotic – well, she was in need of help and there was an end to it. If she was simply going through one of her foolish phases – then Jean would refuse absolutely to draw up any legal documents for her.

‘I was let in by entryphone – actually it turns out to be video,’ Jean said, with some of the naïvety of a countrywoman. ‘A woman who was tidying up in there let me into Eliza’s ground-floor flat. I must say, I was most impressed.’

Robina Sandel and Mara had difficulty in avoiding each other’s glances at Jean’s reverence for the décor installed by Eliza – a good deal more sophisticated, as Jean pointed out, than anything she would have expected of her at art school in Oxford. The front hall, Jean said, had been mirrored with old glass so that it was impossible to tell where it ended and the rest of the flat began; and when you did go through, ushered in by … who was it … Grace …?

‘Yes. Roger Poole the gardener’s wife,’ Robina said, impatient already with these eulogies for a lifestyle of which she could only disapprove. ‘She cleans for people round the gardens – on occasions.’

‘I was lucky, though.’ Jean was breathless now with her description of the living room and its all-embracing mural, where every available surface was covered with what appeared to be ancient scenes. ‘I was lucky, I mean, to be able to talk to Grace. Because she enabled me to feel that there is indeed something the matter with poor Eliza’s life: that she is, certainly, in desperate need of some assistance; and that I am the one to help her – as no one else would be able to do.’

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