Married Love by Tessa Hadley Page A

favourite subject; they seemed to think this meant she would go on to win a Nobel Prize or something, though she didn’t really like it all that much, she just found the chemistry lab an orderly and tranquillising place. Peggy kissed Kristen and squeezed her tight against the green dress: its skirts stood out stiffly, the material crackled and was scratchy like coarse paper. — My daughter is the most sensible girl in the world, she said. — Much more sensible than her mother. Don’t be fooled by the crazy plaits.
    A Transglobal wife said Peggy was so clever to wear something old, she’d never dare. Kristen slipped away to watch television in her bedroom, but the waves of noise from below made it difficult to concentrate. After a while departing guests, looking for the room where they’d left their coats, came trekking past her door, and sometimes even opened it by mistake and peered inside: it must be odd for them to stumble on this pocket of dullness tucked away inside the noisy adventure of the party. The music was beginning to get louder: ‘Dancing in the Street’, then ‘Relax, Don’t Do It’, then ‘Purple Rain’. She went to see if things had taken off at last, half sliding on her bottom down the banister; her dad was crossing the hall, fetching more wine from the downstairs bathroom. In photographs from when he was young Jim was almost unrecognisable, with bare feet and long hair; that wild past self was packed away inside his genial, paunchy, present one, and his hair now was normal, wearing thin at the temples and on top. Jim could answer all the difficult questions on the quiz programmes; he seemed too solidly knowledgeable ever to have been a hippie.
    — What are you up to, Pigeon? Are you having a nice time?
    — I hate parties.
    — Oh God, he said, exaggeratedly glumly. — So do I.
    With his shirtsleeves rolled up and his tie loosened, hands bristling with bottles, he didn’t look as if he wasn’t enjoying himself; the tie would come off altogether, later. — I suppose you’re pretty snug in your little bolt-hole of a bedroom. Are you foraging for food?
    — You can come and watch telly with me if you like.
    — Don’t tempt me. I’m a slave chained to the wheel of pleasure down here.
    She stepped out through the door in the extension room, into the garden. Coloured paper lanterns were strung across the patio, floating like balloons filled weightlessly with light; the night stood back among surprised pale trees, cigarette smoke hung motionless. Peggy had put out a rug on the flagstones, and all the big floor cushions: she was sitting cross-legged in a circle of friends like an audience, the Pune lying stretched out with his head in her lap. If Kristen could slip behind the trellis which screened the oil tank, then she could make her escape to the greenhouses.
    — What do you know about our life? Peggy was saying to the Pune, in an amused, scratchy, drawling voice that made Kristen think of the surface of the green dress. Peggy never got really drunk, but if other people were drinking she arrived at a state like an exaggerated performance of her usual self: she held court, she was opinionated and funny, she was less tolerant.
    — Are you accusing us?
    All the time she was doing something to the Pune’s hair. He had his eyes closed. He had taken his glasses off and was holding them in his hand; she was pushing back the long fringe from his white forehead, raking through it with her fingernails (which she had had painted crimson for the party). The sight of his naked head embarrassed Kristen, reminding her of swimming lessons at school, familiar friends translated into seal-creatures under sleeked wet hair, all ears and eyes.
    — I know about Transglobal Services, for instance, said the Pune.
    — Who’s that? asked somebody.
    Jim had arrived in the open doorway. — They paid for the wine, he said. — So don’t bite the bloody hand.
    The Pune craned his head for a moment up off