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.”“Why would she want to make her own grandson feel crummy, when getting divorced is bad enough?” I asked in a low voice.“Sport,” Jeremy muttered.“Habit.And opportunity, not to be missed.The trick is to keep moving here, don’t stay in one spot too long.Stick with me and we’ll get through it.”As he guided me through the labyrinth, I saw that this was actually a fairly swish and sophisticated affair, with loads of impressive guests, young and old, who all felt obliged to show up at Margery’s cocktail party or else face dire consequences: an earl here, an ambassador there, a music conductor there.but Aunt Sheila was not here.Her younger brother Giles was, however.“Uncle Giles, this is Penny Nichols,” Jeremy said in the tone of a man determined to run the gauntlet and be done with it.When Uncle Giles turned round to see me, I tried not to grin, for he actually looked a bit like Jeremy.True, there were significant differences: Uncle Giles was older, heftier, with green eyes like Aunt Sheila.He had a silvery-blond receding hairline, and the tightly wound body of a man who worked out religiously at his private gym.This was very different from Jeremy’s natural slenderness, and deep blue eyes and dark hair, which he’d inherited from his Italian-American father.Nevertheless, Uncle Giles made certain expressions involving the eyebrows, nose, mouth and jaw exactly as Jeremy did; and the bone structure and shape of the face was undeniably similar, so there was definitely a family resemblance here, which I had not seen with Grandmother Margery.Perhaps it came from the English grandfather, who was no longer alive.“Ah, so this is ‘the one’,” Uncle Giles said.“Penny Nichols! Whoa, you won’t be saddled with that name much longer, eh?”“Actually, we rather like it,” Jeremy replied, nipping that old joke in the bud.I’d been intending to call myself Penny Nichols Laidley once we were married, but I said nothing, mindful of Jeremy’s warning not to volunteer information about my own thoughts.I figured that this caveat extended to uncles as well.Still, how could a man of this century automatically assume that I’d dump my maiden name? Didn’t he know any career women at the office, for Pete’s sake?“My wife, Amelia,” Giles was saying.“She ran a sewing magazine, years ago.Before she married me and had the kids, of course.” Ah.That would be that, then.Amelia had the carefully straightened, blonded hair identical to so many of the other women her age in the room.She studied me with a friendly but wary look that she probably used with all new females.“Welcome to the family,” she murmured.“And what have you two been up to lately?” Jeremy asked quickly.To my surprise, this caused Giles and Amelia to launch into a recitation of what schools their kids had gotten into, where they’d spent their last vacations, the styles of their new cars (his and hers), the endless remodeling of their house in the suburbs, and what lovely misfortunes had befallen their mutual acquaintances.I grinned at Jeremy, who carefully avoided smiling back.It was as if he’d just pressed a button, and the conversation went into automatic pilot.It was restful, in a way, since the spotlight had moved off us.But then Jeremy’s mobile phone rang, so he vanished into a nearby study to take the call.By now I was approaching this party with the interest of a bridal anthropologist doing research on a foreign tribe she’d just stumbled across on some remote island.Marriage was very big in this neck of the woods, I could see that.But what did it mean to them? The joint recitation of Giles and his wife seemed designed to prove what sterling trophies they were for each other in a “perfect” marriage: he as a big moneymaker, and she as a well-placed society girl with a father retired from the diplomatic service.They were hugely pleased that they’d outlasted all their friends without the taint of divorce; yet whenever one of them spoke of a hobby (her tennis club or his favorite cricket team) the other wore a look of resigned patience, as if they each knew the other’s best anecdotes and could perhaps recite them verbatim.Particularly Amelia, calmly but absently listening as Giles nattered on about his investments.When Jeremy rejoined us and spoke to Giles about businessmen they both knew, Amelia turned away from the guys and said to me, “How nice that you and Jeremy are getting married.I envy you!”“Why?” I asked.“You’re just starting out,” she said.“You’re free and unfettered.Enjoy it.It won’t last.” She took a deep sip of her white wine.“Well, you’ll find out what I’m talking about, soon enough,” she said, in the manner of a fortune-teller predicting cards of doom that could not be avoided.“How did you two meet?” I asked, trying Jeremy’s trick of keeping the focus off myself.“Oh, school and chums,” Amelia replied, as if an unimaginative god of destiny had arranged the whole thing.“Practically everybody here grew up with everybody else.”I wondered if Giles and Amelia had ever been giddy-in-love.Surely they had, for there was definitely a partnership here.And, despite her stoic attitude that the glow of excitement invariably wears off after the knot of marriage is tied, I saw a flicker of spirit in her eyes, as if she possessed a lingering romantic hopefulness.This made me like her, and I suddenly had one of those inconvenient moments when I feel sorry for the whole wistful world.“You and Jeremy seem to enjoy each other,” she noted.“But, you have to work at it,” she added in a lowered voice, eyeing the guys [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]