Instances of the Number 3. Salley Vickers

ancient cricket score. This last had tried Bridget’s patience too far and she had remarked, rather acidly, that she hoped he was not going to make use of their relationship to become ‘infantile’. Peter had sulked for several days until by a mixture, on her part, of unvarying good temper and ignoring his ill one, harmony had been restored.

      It was eight weeks to the day from Peter’s death that Zahin had appeared. In those eight weeks Bridget had found that on the occasions when she was not either missing Peter, or, as she had intimated to Frances, had been unable to believe that his absence was to be permanent, she had failed to recover her old pleasure in her own company. It was true that it was theoretically pleasant to be able to do as you liked; but what she liked was compromised by an awful, lowering sense of futility which had insinuated itself into everything. Without quite recognising that she was doing so, she had turned the beam of her attention towards her husband, whose regular little demands had first irritated, then amused and finally made up much of the regular substance of her life. Now, without spectacles and missing papers to find, calls to make, tickets to order, diets to cook for—Peter had been prone to hypochondria, which had expressed itself in various and often conflicting culinary regimes—she felt dry as dust. The tears the boy had wept so bitterly in her kitchen had somehow fallen upon that ‘dried-up’ feeling, so that when he spoke of his being at a loss where to live it was not merely sympathy for his plight which had led her to say, ‘You can come and stay with me, if you like,’—though caution made her add, ‘until you find something more settled.’

      Zahin had given an impression which had reminded her of the occasion when she had bestowed Peter’s ‘bequest’ on Mickey: he accepted her suggestion without protest, as if it were his due. Mr Hansome, he told her, had also said that if necessary he could stay at his house with him. The news of this offer, and the fact that Peter had evidently neglected to mention that there was also a Mrs Hansome who might need to be consulted on such a matter, had neither surprised nor angered Bridget. She was used to Peter’s quixotic moods: had the boy actually turned up while Peter was alive, he might easily have denied the fact that any such suggestion had been made by him. ‘Nonsense, the lad’s making it up,’ he quite likely would have exclaimed—and Bridget would have had to suggest that in the circumstances it would not inconvenience them greatly if the boy stayed a night or two.

      In a sense, then, she was doing no more than she might have done anyway, in proposing that Zahin bring his things over from the flat where he had been living in St John’s Wood in time for Christmas Day. I might as well have someone to cook Christmas dinner for, she thought, conscious that this was solving a problem for her which she had not looked forward to having to face.

      Frances, who was accustomed to making her Christmas arrangements in time to avoid the sense of aloneness which Bridget was experiencing for the first time, spent the festival with her brother’s family. Her brother was a judge on one of the northern circuits and lived in a large house in Northumberland. James’s family was large too—also his wife. She and the five girls were good-hearted and energetic—‘excellent people’ a friend had once called them.

      It is a sad fact that ‘excellent people’ are often dull. Frances, who began her visits to her brother’s home with a pang of envy, usually left the substantial household with a stab of relief: the peace and quiet, if loneliness, of Turnham Green was at least air she could breathe freely.

      What with the Northumberland visit and the recovery from it, it was some days into the new year before Frances finally called by with a present for Bridget.

      ‘I’m sorry,’ she said frankly, ‘I was too busy to call by sooner. It’ll have to be a New Year’s gift.’ There was a particular reason why she had felt reluctant to see Bridget before Christmas: for the last five years Peter had found time to visit Frances on Christmas Eve.

      Bridget, who had already worked out that it must have been Frances over whom Peter had made up the Christmas Eve excuses, had bought her nothing for Christmas. Unwrapping the gift, a glazed dish, which she recognised as bearing a likeness to a dish which Peter had been ‘given by a customer at work’ one previous Christmas, Bridget surmised that what was being presented to her had been originally bought for Peter. Frances looked the type to plan ahead for Christmas.

      ‘How nice,’ she said, without enthusiasm, ‘a bowl.’ Then, catching sight of Frances’s hand clenching the back of a chair, ‘Peter would have liked this—it’s the sort of thing he often brought home.’

      Frances flushed: the frosty jibe didn’t escape her. She said, rather strained, ‘Did your Christmas go well? How was it with the boy?’

      ‘You can meet him.’ Bridget called out, ‘Zahin! Come and meet a friend of Mr Hansome’s.’ Her voice was surprisingly guttural; Frances wondered if Peter had found it sexy.

      When the boy came through the door she almost gasped aloud at his beauty. ‘Heavens,’ she couldn’t help exclaiming, ‘where ever did you get those eyes, child?’

      Zahin, to whom nothing, Bridget had observed, was a compliment said only, ‘My mother’s people come from near the Caspian Sea. They have blue eyes. Mrs Hansome, may I have some milk?’

      ‘Help yourself.’

      In his white shirt, pouring milk, he looked, Frances thought, like some cool-toned modern painting—maybe Hockney?

      ‘Frances knew Mr Hansome, Zahin.’

      Intrigued that Peter seemed to have become ‘Mister’, Frances asked, ‘How did you know—er, Mr Hansome, Zahin?’

      ‘It was through his work,’ said Bridget, smoothly. ‘Remember, I told you—Zahin was one of the families the firm sponsored.’

      Peter had confessed to Frances that being confined to England made him restless. Frances, conscious of—indeed, benefiting from—Bridget’s own trips abroad, had sometimes wondered why Peter’s wife had not noticed that he, too, might have done with a more regular change of scene. Now she said, ‘Where is the Caspian Sea? My geography’s hopeless.’

      The boy was swilling his milk in the glass, watching the viscous surface slew round the side. His blue eyes stared at Frances for a second. Then he said, placidly, ‘The part my mother came from is now Iran. My mother is from the old Median people.’ It was as if he were speaking of someone known to him long ago.

      ‘The Medians are very ancient,’ Bridget said. As usual, Frances thought, she seemed to know all about it.

      Noticing that Bridget had plonked the bowl down on the dresser and was carelessly brushing crumbs from the surface around it, Frances suddenly burst out with, ‘You needn’t keep the bowl if you don’t want it, Bridget. It was silly of me to think of giving it to you. Mistake.’

      There was a silence during which the three people in the room all looked at the bowl.

      Bridget had been correct in her hunch that Frances had planned to give the Chinese bowl to Peter. Taking it down from the wardrobe shelf, where she amassed her Christmas gifts, she had debated what to do with it: to keep it seemed ghoulish; also, it would be a gesture to give something to Bridget: the thought had given substance to Frances’s wish to be generous to Peter’s widow.

      ‘It is beautiful.’ The boy’s words spoken into the charged atmosphere had the quality of some bell—whose authority was no less for its comparative softness—rung as part of some obscure but picturesque ritual. ‘I would like to have it in my room. May I, please?’

      Bridget was rummaging in a drawer. She said without looking at Frances, ‘If Miss Slater doesn’t mind…’

      ‘Frances,’ said Frances firmly—she had had enough of this ‘Miss’, ‘Mrs’ business. ‘Please, Zahin, do call me Frances. Of course I don’t “mind”—it was intended as a present. I just thought maybe Bridget had enough dishes…’

      Bridget had found Mickey’s bath cubes. ‘Here you are, present for you.’

      Zahin had finished his milk. He walked round the table to the bowl and picked it up, turning it over with delicate fingers. ‘The