Somewhere Beyond Reproach by Tim Jeal

trains. This would almost certainly be followed by an attempt to restrict the amount of freight travelling by road. Manufacturers would probably object to the delays at the stations and so would their clients. Nevertheless there would be difficulties. I had left the press interviews to Tim after one of our lorries had been stopped in one of the random safety checks and had been found to have loose brakes and a back tyre with inadequate treads. A very nasty business.
    Cathy noticed the presents under the tree.
    ‘Oh goodee, presents for me.’
    ‘Not all of them,’ I replied laughing, I hoped heartily. ‘What will you have? Champagne or Scotch?’
    My mother arrived next. She didn’t like Tim. I saw her eyeing his silk suit with disapproval. Mummy never likes anything excessive. She embraced me and then walked over to Cathy and Tim. I poured her a small Scotch, nothing excessive. I guessed that she had wanted to be first so that she could have a quiet talk to me about why she was not becoming a grandmother.
    Mrs Jameson, Lotte, had dressed herself in a full-length blood-red evening dress. She had had her hair tinted and curled.
    ‘How nice of you to have invited me….’ she murmured.
    ‘No party would be complete without you,’ I quickly assured her.
    My mother turned to Tim:
    ‘Well, doesn’t she look splendid,’ she drew out the last word. Lotte, not knowing my mother, merely looked pleased.
    My cousin Peter was the next to arrive. He had just givenup the law to become a market gardener. Tim advanced and wrung his half-extended hand:
    ‘How’s the onion patch?’ he guffawed heartily.
    ‘Tomatoes,’ replied Peter quietly.
    I was getting him a drink when his sister Joan arrived to complete the party. Later in the evening she confessed to having had an affair with Tim several years before. I don’t think anyone heard. She looked so nice that I was glad she was a relation.
    *
    At dinner I didn’t have to talk at all. The party was under way. The constant babble of conversation, occasionally punctuated by a laugh. My mother had been persuaded to drink four glasses of champagne. I heard her say to Cathy:
    ‘It really is time he got married.’
    The conversation died and everyone looked at me. I did not feel embarrassed at their concern. If anything I felt pleased.
    ‘It’s just a matter of the right girl,’ I said sagely.
    ‘They don’t grow on trees, do they?’ my mother chipped in sardonically.
    Tim bellowed at Peter:
    ‘Ask the market gardener.’
    Everybody laughed. I wondered what sort of a Christmas Dinah was having. Had Andrew forgiven her yet? The activity round the table had an anaesthetising effect on me. I did not for the moment feel nervous about the coming weekend. I felt a certain pride in being responsible for everybody’s presence round my table. I hoped the Simpsons were having a spartan meal. I visualised it and experienced a delicious pang of sympathy for Dinah.
    I raised my glass and murmured:
    ‘Absent friends.’
    Joan drunkenly raised hers. I supposed toasting her mother. Had the old people had nothing except Peter’s tomato juice? I giggled fatuously.
    *
    That night I was surprised not to sleep well. I was now absolutely committed. The weekend would decide so much. I had so far been obsessed with details and tactics. But what had these to do with people? It was so easy to be so content with ideas about people that the people themselves disappeared . What would my first words be? What would hers? How far can a conversation be plotted? Is it like a game of chess? How many moves ahead is it possible to see? If it is plotted does it still carry the feeling of sincerity? In literature I have always been certain that sincerity is skill, the skill of the author. One has only to hear letters read out in the divorce courts to realise this. Suicide notes can seem the most contrived and insincere things ever written. Yet how much they must have meant to the desperate people who wrote