A Natural Curiosity by Margaret Drabble

Bowen to try to contact his mother. He has not heard from his mother since she ran away, fifteen years ago. He knows that in similar cases parents have been retraced, interrogated, their memoirs have been purchased for vast sums by the tabloids.
    So far, he has not dared to suggest this course of action to Alix. He does not quite know how to bring the subject up. It is a little delicate. He is hoping that she might think of the idea for herself. On her next visit, perhaps, he will drop another hint. By months, her visits are measured. He will wait for the next moon.
     
    It is early March, and daffodils bloom in London window boxes. A faint false spring deceives the buds, and trees turn bronze, pink, lime green. Liz Headleand is lunching with her old friend and enemy Ivan Warner, as she does once or twice a year. They gossip. On Ivan’s part, at least, seriously, professionally. Ivan is a gossip columnist. He likes to pick Liz’s brains. He is always hoping that Liz will present him with a psychiatric scoop. As one of her specialities has been the problems associated with the reuniting of adopted children with their true parents, maybe she will one day find for him an abandoned princeling, a reclaimed cabinet minister, a film star’s rejected babe, a tycoon’s incestuous marriage with his own daughter? The plot possibilities in Liz’s line of business are endless, he reminds her, as he plies her with Pinot Chardonnay and admires the little pastry fish swimming in the saffron sauce of her ivory sole.
    ‘No,’ says Liz, ‘nothing. Nothing exciting at all. Sorry.’
    She smiles at him, amiably. It is only a game. He knows she will not tell. Her heart softens to Ivan, over the years. She used to think him a dangerous little man, but time has mellowed him or strengthened her, she is not sure which, and she no longer half fears him. She indulges him. And he her.
    ‘I
had
heard,’ said Ivan, in that inimitably suggestive way of his, ‘that we were to be honoured with the sight of you on television? Can this be true, I asked myself? I
had
thought you didn’t approve of the television.’
    ‘Who told you?’ asked Liz, disconcerted despite herself.
    ‘I can’t remember,’ said Ivan.
    ‘Well,’ said Liz. ‘I did agree to be on this panel thing. That’s all.’
    ‘I wonder why?’ insinuates Ivan.
    ‘I don’t know
why
,’ says Liz. ‘I mean, why not?’ But she also wonders why. She admires, yet again, his sense of her weak spots, her Achilles’ heel.
    ‘It’s just not your style, that’s all,’ says Ivan.
    ‘No, I suppose not,’ says Liz. ‘But they were very pressing. And I thought it was time
somebody
talked some sense.’
    ‘So we shall have the pleasure of seeing you talking sense?’
    ‘I hope so,’ says Liz, briskly, staring hard at his inquiring small black well-hidden eyes.
    ‘Well,’ says Ivan, ‘you’re a brave woman.’
    ‘But of course,’ says Liz.
    ‘I didn’t know you knew Christopher?’ says Ivan, gently probing, cutting in half a green bean with the edge of his flat fork.
    Liz’s mind races. Christopher? Does she know a Christopher? Ah, yes, she has got it. Christopher What’s-his-name, newly appointed Director of Programmes for PPS. What
is
his name? A false trail. An utterly false trail. So
that’s
why Ivan was interested in her TV appearance.
    ‘Oh,
Christopher
,’ she says. ‘Of course I know Christopher. I’ve know him
for years!
    Ivan can tell he has drawn a blank. He loses interest in the pursuit, switches track, starts again.
    ‘And your ex?’ he inquires. ‘How’s old Charles?’
    ‘Oh,
Charles!
’ says Liz. ‘He’s mad, poor darling.’
    ‘I heard he broke his nose?’
    ‘Mugged,’ says Liz. ‘Nothing personal. Just mugged.’
    ‘And how’s his business?’
    Liz shrugged. ‘Oh, I don’t know. I don’t understand such stuff. He seems to have switched his interests to some kind of Euronews project. It’s all to do with satellites. I’m sure