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and white, she also), ‘especially now that the arrangements are all
made and the worst’s over, one can relax. It’s the third wedding I’ve coped
with. My two other daughters. Margaret’s the third. The fourth is still at
school so I suppose we have that to come one of these days. What a pity you
couldn’t have come sooner or stayed on a bit; we could get to know one
another.’
    Her
husband handed his wife a vodka and tonic, clinking with ice. He took a neat
whisky for himself, tossed it back and poured another.
    Hilda
thought, ‘They are quite all right but there’s something wrong.’ Then she
thought, ‘Why should I give a damn?’ She sat back in her chair, knowing herself
to look splendid, and aware, as they must be aware, that she was very rich and
altogether an independent person.
    ‘It was
all so sudden,’ said Greta. Hilda felt she had expected her to say just that.
Was there anything to be said or done that everyone else wouldn’t say or do?
Hilda thought: ‘I have been much too successful. I am out of touch. This,
obviously, is what ordinary life is like.’
    The
Murchies made their living out of quarrying granite and other stone. They had a
well organized small business about which Hilda had found out before she left
Australia. Dan Murchie of Murchie & Sons, Quarriers and Extractors, Mining
Equipment Supplied, was about to retire. But the family business was involved
in a sub-contractual way with the Channel Tunnel; and Hilda assumed they needed
that sort of money which is necessary to make very much more money. If Margaret
had not met William casually in the fruit section of Marks & Spencer’s, she
would have suspected, and without rancour, that the Murchies might be after
William’s, that was to say, her, money. It was a situation that Hilda could not
have it in her to be too sure of, too cynical about. People did fall in love,
quite simply.
    ‘You
must be dead tired,’ said Hilda to Greta.
    ‘No, as
a matter of fact, these days you know with the firms ready to take on
practically the whole wedding, it isn’t so very tiring. They do the flowers,
mail the invitations, set out the presents, everything. One only has to
supervise. The list of guests is always a problem. Your list isn’t so very
long, practically all friends of William.’
    ‘As I
wrote to you, mine are nearly all in Australia,’ said Hilda, sipping her
drink. ‘However those few who can come — it’ll be good to see them.’ And she
thought: William’s first wedding. There will be others.
    She had
met Margaret in London. She didn’t think the marriage would last. That
goody-goody type of girl, how could she be real?
    Hilda
had sat good-humouredly in their too-small flat and chatted as she noticed.
    ‘Marks
& Spencer’s fruit section. What on earth were you doing there, William?’
    ‘Buying
fruit,’ he said. ‘I always went there, it was convenient.’
    ‘And
you,’ she said to Margaret in her best Sandringham-type manner, ‘was that your
favourite fruit shop?’
    ‘No, I
was just there by chance.’ She gave a little smile, put her head on one side.
‘Lucky chance,’ she said.
    William
sat there goggling at his bride-to-be as if she were a Miss Universe who had
taken a double first at Cambridge, or some such marvel.
    ‘I
shall give you a flat for a wedding present,’ Hilda had said. ‘That is all I
propose to do.’
    ‘Why,
it’s too much,’ said Margaret.
    ‘Very
generous,’ said William. After all, what could he say?
    ‘My parents’,
said Margaret, ‘are dying to meet you.
    ‘It’s a
most exciting occasion,’ Hilda had said, holding out her glass to William for
her drink to be repeated.

 
     
     

     
     
     
    ABOUT two weeks before the dinner party, Hurley Reed met Annabel Treece
unexpectedly at the television studios. Hurley had been attending a session as
adviser for a television play in which an artist was depicted. It was six in
the evening. Annabel had just finished her day’s work.