Miss Chance. Simon Barnes

      She arrived, the house now reeking of wine. ‘Oh, you heavenly infant,’ she said, ‘I know I ought to prefer you to come to Marce, but it is truly wonderful to come home to your cooking. I shall surely go to hell for thinking such a thing.’

      ‘Do you think,’ Mark asked, ‘it’s time for Drinks Before?’

      It was over the port, Mark taking a mere half-glass, since he had to drive, that his mother at last brought up the subject that had been oppressing them both all weekend. ‘This business with Morgan,’ she said. ‘Is it irrevocable?’

      Mark had been quietly terrified of this moment. He feared the weight of her disapproval: of his fecklessness, of his helplessness. Once again ruining his life in a moment of folly. No Oxford, no proper job, now no wife, ‘I think it might be.’

      ‘Oh dear. Oh dear. And are you – er – committed elsewhere?’

      He decided not to make a joke about Miss Chance. ‘No. Not my line, really.’

      ‘Oh, what a pit-pit. What a pit-pit.’ Mark had heard her use the expression to cover eventualities from a disappointing birthday present to the outbreak of nuclear war. ‘I am very sorry to hear it. But, Mark, listen to me. I have known parents express dismay when their children have problems with their spouses. I remember when Madeleine took sides and blamed Anthony for the break-up with his girlfriend. As a result, she didn’t see Anthony for two years. Or perhaps he turned up, grudgingly, at Christmas. But he married Anne, as you know, and everything worked out for him. And Madeleine accepted the situation and there was a reconciliation. And a scar too, no doubt, and certainly a long and painful gap. I don’t intend to have a long and painful gap. So please understand this. I know you think me a judgmental person, and with justice. But there will be no judging from me in this matter. I value you more than I value my own capacity for judging.’

      Mark laughed, touched, and said: ‘In this one instance?’

      ‘In this one instance.’

13

      For once, Mark was able to park right outside, so that was a bonus. He lugged the trunk, step by step, up to the front door, and then with a brief back-snapping exertion carried it into the hall. The rugs? Too stinky. He would leave them in the car till he had bought the re-proofing stuff. He fetched the bag of bachelor shopping, the heat-up meals, the beer; also a treat he had planned for himself, beancurd, oyster mushrooms, fresh chillies of the terrifying little green wrinkled kind. He knew what to eat, but not how to fill up the evening.

      She had been.

      At first nothing more than a twitchiness. Mark felt like James Bond finding that the hair he had stuck to the wardrobe door was no longer there. There had been an invasion, he was sure of it before he found any hard evidence. Then things became clearer. There was a coat missing from the hall, the one that billowed about when she wore it, as she almost always did, unbuttoned. And the Burberry was gone too, her famous spy’s mac.

      Would there be a note? His heart stopped for a second as he considered for the first time the fantastic possibility that she was still there. He wanted that very much, and wished with all his heart to avoid it. And of course she had gone. And anyway, he would have noticed her car in the street, the famous Flying Toad Citroën DS. No, she had come and she had gone. Taking, no doubt, papers from her study and books from her shelves and clothes from her wardrobe. And some treasures, of course. Had she taken her less portable treasures? The snowstorm collection? Dancing Shiva? That would be an irrevocable step. But come. That had already been taken, had it not?

      He walked into the sitting room: the great Islamic drapes were still there. And then a double take: his own, or Callum’s addition to the décor had gone. Marianne Faithfull and Brigitte Bardot were no longer pinned to the gorgeous fabric. How childish: she had torn them up in a fit of post-feminist fury. No she hadn’t: there they were on the long, long sofa, rolled loosely together. And something pinned to the drape behind the sofa, where Marianne had, hand on zip, so recently pouted.

      Mark went to inspect it. It was a snapshot he had taken himself. It showed a naked woman. She was looking at the camera with an expression of frank irritation. The woman was Morgan.

      He laughed out loud. He laughed in sheer delight at the beauty of the move. The picture was years old. He and Morgan had once spent some weeks in Greece and, in a deserted cove, Morgan had removed her clothes to swim and bask. She was caught half sitting, half lying, drying in the sun after her swim when Mark, driven by twin irresistibles, lust and the love of a jest, had sneaked up on her with the camera. She had divined his intention a fraction before he had pressed the shutter, hence the irritation.

      But she liked it, when they examined the pictures in post-holiday nostalgia, ‘I like the way that clothes or their lack is a matter of supreme indifference to me. All that concerns me is my urgent need to give you a bollocking.’ And she had pinned the picture to her notice board in her study, along with odd postcards, notes to herself, various trouvailles. She received visitors in the study, and some of them remarked on the picture, ‘It’s very revealing, isn’t it?’ she always said, ‘It reveals my temper.’

      But it didn’t, not really, because the incident had ended as such incidents must, when people take off their clothes in the sun. The picture was revealing all right, and it revealed a great deal more than temper or tits. Perhaps, Mark thought, it revealed their marriage.

      ‘But it’s not an erotic picture at all,’ she said, ‘I am unaware of my nakedness.’

      ‘Precisely what makes it erotic.’

      ‘Besides, I’ve got no tits.’

      ‘It was you that lectured me on the power of understatement.’

      ‘I did not lecture you on the power of no statement at all.’

      ‘Nor would it be relevant to do so, in this case.’

      ‘Lordy, Mr Brown, you say the sweetest things to a girl.’

      And so on. Mark looked around the burgled flat, seeking a note. There was none. Just the picture, then. What was its meaning? For surely it had a meaning. ‘Why do people always ask me this?’ Morgan said, ‘If it had a meaning, I would hardly waste my time with it, now would I?’ It could not have been the work of a moment to find it. It had served its turn on the notice board, and must have been fairly deeply buried. She had gone to some trouble to make this meaningful statement, if statement it was, if meaning it had.

      Did it mean that he was to forget her? Or did it mean that she knew who dominated his heart and mind, and that it was neither Brigitte nor Marianne? Was she in some way offended, to the point of jealousy (remember Sexuella) by the garlanded and zippered pin-ups? Was she competing with them? Saying that her own naked irritation was a more potent matter than anyone else’s seductiveness? And perhaps she was right.

      Perhaps that was the meaning. Lust, and the love of a jest.

      What does it mean, Morgan? I loved Alice but what does it mean? I loved Arachne but what does it mean? And she would reply to them all only with an expression, the one he called your bloody little sphinxy smirk.

      ‘Listen to this one, Morgan.’ He was brandishing the newspaper from which he had extracted a gem. ‘This bloke, mean, miser, hoarder, larder full of tins for when the bomb drops. But his crusty old heart is touched by a local convent’s appeal for food for the starving orphans. So he gives away a box of tins. Realises a week or so later that he has given away his dummy tins. In which he kept a fortune in cash, jewels, gold coins …’

      And Morgan had snapped into wonder at this, head on one side, cogs of her brain visibly turning. ‘Yes. Yes. Yes.’

      ‘But it gets better; there’s a pay-off. One of the nuns is last seen heading for the airport in plain clothes and a taxi …’

      She