suggestion. It wasn’t what grown-up people did; it was for little kids. Besides, if she’d shared a bathful of water with him she’d only have had to take another bath on her own afterward. He never seemed to think of that.
For a moment, naked, she half wanted to see him. She opened the bathroom door, stepped outside, crossed to her bedroom. He was nowhere. In the clean clothes she’d wear for the evening, an evening of a hygienic meal, an hour of television, two hours of cleaning up, she went downstairs into the dark hall. The ghost came in darkness or in light, nothing seemed to make a difference to that. She felt it with her, all around her, though she couldn’t see it. As she was peeling her two potatoes and carving her home-cooked cold chicken, his voice came singing, like music heard from a long distance away:
Today I started loving you
again . . .
Chapter 7
ONCE SHE HAD said yes, Zillah thought she and the kids would move in with Jims and arrangements would be made for the wedding to take place later, say six months later. Jims had different ideas about that. The proprieties must be observed. The chairman of the South Wessex Conservative Association had said only last week, apropos of some local pop singer, his girlfriend, and their baby, that couples living together outside marriage should be banned from owning property and have their passports and driving licenses withdrawn. Jims could think of no surer way of losing his seat at the next election than by letting Zillah move in with him. Besides, he’d engaged the services of a PR company and the woman acting for him was doing her best to get photographs of Zillah and himself into national newspapers. That slum in Long Fredington would be an unsuitable background and his duplex in Great College Street an improper one. He took a three-month lease on a flat in a purpose-built block in Battersea with a view of the river and the Houses of Parliament from the front windows. Jims, who knew about these things, said this struck just the right note. It was more
serious
than Knightsbridge and less raffish than Chelsea; it was dowdy but solid, besides having a suitably political air. As to her possessions and property in Willow Cottage, he recommended she set fire to the lot, then revised this advice, remembering the owner of the house, his old pal Sir Ronald Grasmere.
Much as she’d have liked to tell Jims she was now a widow, Zillah didn’t quite dare do this. The first thing he’d have wanted to know was when did she hear of Jerry’s death and why hadn’t she told him before. So she plucked up the courage needed to tell him a lie he wouldn’t much like but would mind less than the truth. “I wasn’t actually ever really married to Jerry.”
“What d’you mean, darling, ‘really’ married? Did you have one of those funny affairs on the beach in Bali like Mick Jagger?”
“I mean we weren’t married at all.”
He accepted it. The South Wessex Conservative Association chairman would very likely never find out. Zillah had a few qualms when she remembered her wedding to Jerry in St. Augustine’s Church, Kilburn Park—but not many and not for long. The PR woman, Malina Daz, was told Zillah was single but had lived for several years in a “stable relationship” with the children’s father. Wisely, she decided to say nothing to the newspapers about Zillah’s marital or nonmarital status and not to mention the children, counting on Jims’s relatively low notoriety quotient to make it unlikely questions would be asked. She was counting also on Zillah’s beauty to solve everything. Zillah looked ravishing when the photographer arrived and she had dressed herself in her new Amanda Wakeley cream silk trouser suit with the Georgina von Etzdorf scarf knotted at her throat. Handsome Jims leaned negligently over the back of her chair, his perfectly manicured hand lightly caressing her long black hair.
But when Malina changed her mind about Jims’s fame
For a moment, naked, she half wanted to see him. She opened the bathroom door, stepped outside, crossed to her bedroom. He was nowhere. In the clean clothes she’d wear for the evening, an evening of a hygienic meal, an hour of television, two hours of cleaning up, she went downstairs into the dark hall. The ghost came in darkness or in light, nothing seemed to make a difference to that. She felt it with her, all around her, though she couldn’t see it. As she was peeling her two potatoes and carving her home-cooked cold chicken, his voice came singing, like music heard from a long distance away:
Today I started loving you
again . . .
Chapter 7
ONCE SHE HAD said yes, Zillah thought she and the kids would move in with Jims and arrangements would be made for the wedding to take place later, say six months later. Jims had different ideas about that. The proprieties must be observed. The chairman of the South Wessex Conservative Association had said only last week, apropos of some local pop singer, his girlfriend, and their baby, that couples living together outside marriage should be banned from owning property and have their passports and driving licenses withdrawn. Jims could think of no surer way of losing his seat at the next election than by letting Zillah move in with him. Besides, he’d engaged the services of a PR company and the woman acting for him was doing her best to get photographs of Zillah and himself into national newspapers. That slum in Long Fredington would be an unsuitable background and his duplex in Great College Street an improper one. He took a three-month lease on a flat in a purpose-built block in Battersea with a view of the river and the Houses of Parliament from the front windows. Jims, who knew about these things, said this struck just the right note. It was more
serious
than Knightsbridge and less raffish than Chelsea; it was dowdy but solid, besides having a suitably political air. As to her possessions and property in Willow Cottage, he recommended she set fire to the lot, then revised this advice, remembering the owner of the house, his old pal Sir Ronald Grasmere.
Much as she’d have liked to tell Jims she was now a widow, Zillah didn’t quite dare do this. The first thing he’d have wanted to know was when did she hear of Jerry’s death and why hadn’t she told him before. So she plucked up the courage needed to tell him a lie he wouldn’t much like but would mind less than the truth. “I wasn’t actually ever really married to Jerry.”
“What d’you mean, darling, ‘really’ married? Did you have one of those funny affairs on the beach in Bali like Mick Jagger?”
“I mean we weren’t married at all.”
He accepted it. The South Wessex Conservative Association chairman would very likely never find out. Zillah had a few qualms when she remembered her wedding to Jerry in St. Augustine’s Church, Kilburn Park—but not many and not for long. The PR woman, Malina Daz, was told Zillah was single but had lived for several years in a “stable relationship” with the children’s father. Wisely, she decided to say nothing to the newspapers about Zillah’s marital or nonmarital status and not to mention the children, counting on Jims’s relatively low notoriety quotient to make it unlikely questions would be asked. She was counting also on Zillah’s beauty to solve everything. Zillah looked ravishing when the photographer arrived and she had dressed herself in her new Amanda Wakeley cream silk trouser suit with the Georgina von Etzdorf scarf knotted at her throat. Handsome Jims leaned negligently over the back of her chair, his perfectly manicured hand lightly caressing her long black hair.
But when Malina changed her mind about Jims’s fame
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