you.’
‘You never did,’ said Eleanor, brutally. Poor Prune always made her feel brutal. ‘And to be Rasputin’s wife hardly counts as fame.’
‘I don’t know why you don’t just do a nude centrefold and have done with it,’ said Prune. ‘Aren’t you going to ask me about me? Don’t you care? I’m so unhappy. I am a failure. Three miscarriages and a stillbirth.’
She was peeling onions and seemed in no hurry to stop.
‘If you didn’t keep rubbing your eyes, and pressing more and more onion juice into your eyeballs,’ said Eleanor, ‘I expect you would soon feel better. What are you making? Stew?’
‘Steak and onion pie,’ said Prune. ‘Jed loves steak and onion pie.’
‘Love my pie, love me,’ said Eleanor. ‘You’ve got a hope. Why don’t you just give him frozen curry? How is Jed?’
‘Working in his study,’ said Prune. ‘Poor. Jed. He works so hard. He longs for a son and I can’t give him one. And if I gave him frozen curry I’d feel even more useless. One day he’ll leave me and it will all be my fault. Then what will I do?’
‘Begin your life,’ said Eleanor. ‘You’d better begin soon or it’ll all be gone.’
‘You’ve changed,’ said Prune, through onion tears. ‘You’re hard and cynical. I’m glad I’m not like you. Besides,’ she added, ‘what can I do? I never got my degree; I’m not trained for anything; I can’t do anything. I get asthma if I try. All I do is cry all the time, or gasp for breath, so who would ever employ me? What kind of CV have I got?’
‘Spent life trying to have babies,’ said Eleanor, ‘and failing,’ and went on up to see Jed.
‘Are you staying to lunch?’ Prune called after her. She had long straight hair and wore flat wide shoes. ‘Do stay to lunch. I’m sorry if I was rude. I’m upset, that’s all. Jed would love you to stay to lunch. We never see anyone.’
Eleanor went up the red-carpeted suburban stairs and knocked at the door on the left, where a little white plaque with a rim of roses said ‘Study’. Inside, in a leather chair, sat Jed, at ease and happy, smoking a pipe, reading galley proofs. He had a pleasant, lined face and a jaw which protruded, as a goat’s does, and slightly rheumy eyes, though Eleanor remembered them as bright, bright, bright. Books lined the walls; papers lay on the floor: on ledges stood mandalas, icons, pentacles. A book jacket rough lay on the table—‘The Story of the Pentacle: a Study in Self-oppression’.
Incense burned and mixed with the pipe smoke: the room was warm, scented, foggy.
‘I know why you’ve come,’ said Jed. ‘You’ve come looking for the villain of the piece. Well, you’re looking in the wrong place. How healthy you seem. The high life suits you.’
‘It suits everyone,’ said Eleanor.
He rose to his feet. His jacket was brown and tweedy, and had orangy leather patches on its sleeves at the elbow. He smelt of pipe tobacco and wet dogs; a Labrador lay by the hearth. Jed was taller than she was by some four inches. She laid her head on his shoulder; she could not do that with Julian. He wore sandals and no socks. He would never wear red sock suspenders. His feet would look strange in the shiny, elegant, pointed shoes which Julian wore. Jed and Julian were two bookends. Other men took their place in between.
‘Yes, you are a villain,’ said Eleanor. ‘You seduced your best friend’s wife.’
‘You seduced me,’ he said. ‘You were bored.’
‘And Brenda?’
‘She asked me to. She was inquisitive.’
‘And Nerina?’
‘She wanted a little excitement before she settled down. It was not my idea.’
‘She was a student. You were her teacher.’
‘Quite so. I taught her and her friends what they wanted to know. All anyone really wants to know about is sex. Information is second best.’
He undid the buttons of her blouse. She stayed where she was, for once indecisive.
‘Same shape,’ he said, ‘same size. I have good tactile memory.’
‘And poor Prune. What about poor Prune?’
‘Sex is the great energizer,’ he said. ‘I wish poor Prune could understand that. She only gets pregnant so we can’t have sex: she’s liable to miscarriage, you know. I see it as an act of vengeance. It is not a happy marriage. But I can’t just ditch her, can I? Where would she go? What would she do? Poor Prune. She loves me.’
‘Poor Prune,’ said Eleanor. ‘Was she always poor Prune?’
‘When I married her,’