Something in Disguise by Elizabeth Jane Howard Page B

activities bring.’
    May, who had taken a sip of sherry and a puff of her cigarette and thought ‘how nice’ on each occasion put down her glass with the small thrill of humility and excitement that she
had so often felt before when she did not understand something that seemed crystal clear to other people. ‘Oh please explain to me,’ she said.
    Dr Sedum shook his head again: his large, round, pale blue eyes were fixed upon her face. ‘On our way here, we stopped to ask the way. A man, wheeling a bicycle – an ordinary man
– replied, “I’m a stranger here myself.” ’
    May waited for him to say more, but he didn’t. Instead he drank some sherry, still watching her as she gazed at him. Even sitting down, he seemed to tower above her, but his smile made her
feel that if anyone could help her understand anything it would be he. It was rather difficult to drink her sherry after that, so she was glad when Lavinia said:
    ‘I think it’s so brave of you to embark on a house this size these days.’
    ‘Oh – it wasn’t me who was brave. It was Herbert: my husband. He simply insisted that I – that we buy it. It’s ridiculous really; Alice, my stepdaughter, is
married, and my two are in London leading their own lives so we rattle about here like two peas in a pod, I don’t mean a pod – you know what I mean.’
    She stopped. Lavinia had a fringe – just like when she was small, she noticed; only then the rest of her hair had been cropped very short, had been thick and silky, and now it hung in
rather greasy strands over the collar of her velveteen dress. Dr Sedum had almost no hair: none at all on the top of his head, which was smooth and the same texture as a close-up photograph of a
wax pear. There were also coarse, reddish tufts at the sides just above his ears. It was extraordinary how, when you knew about people, their appearance took on an entirely different
meaning.
    Dr Sedum had finished his sherry, but as he was probably the only person she had ever met with a clear understanding of how to drink it, one expected him to finish first. She offered more; it
was accepted, and she wondered when the serious talking would begin. Not until she’d got lunch actually on the table by the feel of things. She filled up Lavinia’s glass, and then her
own. There was an astonishingly long silence at the end of which Dr Sedum and Lavinia smiled at each other, and Dr Sedum said,
    ‘That was good; very good.’
    ‘I think Harvey’s are a very reliable brand.’
    A low rumbling broke from Dr Sedum, that, as she got used to it, May recognized as his compassionate chuckle: she had heard him use it when people asked questions at the one Time she had been
to. She felt herself beginning to blush.
    ‘I’m sorry – I thought you meant the sherry. I think I’d better get lunch now.’
    ‘I won’t offer to help you.’ Lavinia made this sound like a really imaginative and generous concession.
    Which May thought, as she started the journey to the kitchen, it was, on the whole, because it would have been frightfully rude to leave someone like Dr Sedum all by himself.
    The colonel lowered himself into a chair at his favourite corner table. He was feeling quite peckish, and looking forward no end to a damn good lunch. Henry, the head waiter,
limped forward:
    ‘Would you care for anything to drink, Colonel?’
    ‘Oh yes, Henry, I should certainly care. A large pink gin.’
    ‘With soda, sir?’
    ‘With soda.’
    It was early, and the dining-room was almost empty: very few people lunched before one, and at these times, Henry always gave any early member his personal attention. His reputation in the club
stood very high; Henry was ‘wonderful’. This simply meant that he remembered what each of them liked to drink and smiled obsequiously at all the monotonous badinage that went on and on
and on about it. ‘Henry must have seen a lot: he must know a thing or two’ was another thing people far too often said