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she should marry before William’s marriage broke up.
    Hilda
had a woman friend who, in the early days of one of her wealthy widowhoods, sat
in the lobby of the Excelsior Hotel in Rome with a little dog on her lap.
Before long, a man of suitable age and means turned up to caress the little dog
and get into conversation with the widow. Hilda’s friend didn’t look further.
She married this man, who was verging on elderly, and remained happily married
till he died. She then returned to the lobby of the Excelsior. Another of
Hilda’s women friends, well on in her sixties and three times widowed, decided
to find a husband about her own age. She went to the Bahamas, where she had
some property, and soon met a charming business man at a smart cocktail party.
He was her fourth husband and they were still married — she, wrapped in a cloud
of contentment. These were the sort of examples Hilda had in mind. She felt,
reasonably, that it was a matter of focusing one’s mind on the possibility:
someone would come and fill the screen. Someone, perhaps, on the plane to or
from Australia. Hilda had even thought, how nice it would be to meet a future
partner at William’s wedding.
    The
Murchies had made a very good, unspectacular wedding for their daughter. They
lived in a turreted edifice near St Andrews called Blackie House, with fewer,
and more poky, rooms than the outside suggested. The fact that the rooms were
so small was, according to Margaret’s mother, Greta, a godsend: ‘Otherwise we
could never afford to heat the place.’ Her husband, Dan Murchie, said his
family had occupied the place since 1933. He put a strong emphasis on this
insignificant fact, as if 1933 was hundreds of years ago.
    ‘Oh,
how often’, Dan said to Hilda, ‘I was a page-boy at weddings! How I remember
the satin suits, the tartan kilts. The blond heads of hair at those weddings,
the bridesmaids’ curls, and our curls — I could show you photographs. Every
month or so a yellow satin suit, a pale blue suit! In a way our parents had
money to burn. In another way they didn’t have a penny.
    ‘Luxuries,
as we would call them luxuries today, were cheaper. Dressmakers were cheap,’
said Greta.
    Hilda
let them speak on as much as possible. It was her habit to let people speak on.
    Hilda
stayed with the Murchies for one night, before the wedding. Her room was
comfortable in a way that was irreproachable. It had the right curtains
co-ordinated with the right bedcovers. It had paper tissues and cotton wool.
There was a bathroom attached, pale mushroom-coloured with white birds in
flight on the tiles. The towels were right. Everything was right. Hilda had
just arrived, been shown to her room. Everything was right, including the piece
of Dresden china on a shelf, a silly little man with pink breeches playing a
violin. What was wrong with these people? Hilda changed her clothes, which
wasn’t necessary, or should not have been, as she had arrived in a very smart
pair of trousers and a woollen jacket. She looked at the bedside books: three paperbacks
by Anthony Powell, The Trumpet Major by Thomas Hardy, Palgrave’s Golden
Treasury, three paperbacks by Agatha Christie, one by P. D. James,
something by Thackeray, something by Alan Sillitoe. Nothing wrong with that
selection, not a hair out of place. Hilda wore a dress and jacket, black with
some white, very good and striking. She went down to meet the Murchies. It was
seven-thirty in the evening.
    For the
first time she met Dan Murchie, Margaret’s father. He wore tinted glasses and
came into the room with that stiff, correct, Jaruzelski walk that we used to
see on the television when the Polish news came up.
    ‘Well,
Hilda (if I may),’ he said, ‘what sort of a journey did you have? Sit down. I’m
glad you found us without difficulty. What would you like to drink? Whisky,
gin, vodka, sherry, anything.’
    She
asked for a whisky and soda. In came Greta. ‘So lovely to see you,’ said Greta
(in black