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figure, doesn’t even look as plump as she
used to. (Cruelly, I tell myself that it’s easier for women to stay that way when
they haven’t had children.) I ask for a Bloody Mary and Phil sees to it. (They’ve
already clocked that Patrick is underage—not difficult, to be honest—and are
refusing to serve him.) There’s a decent-sized crowd in there. “Have they all come
for the music?” I ask. Philip nods. He’s in a good mood, proud that so many people
have turned out for Benjamin. As I said, Philip was always the best-natured of us
all. It’s not hard to define the crowd’s demographic: they nearly all seem to be men
on the cusp of early middle age. I see incipient paunches everywhere. But most of
the band members have got families by now, as well, so wives are also in evidence,
and a few confused-looking teenagers. Altogether there are about sixty or seventy
of us, maybe, gravitating in small groups towards the stage, which is in a far
corner of the pub, and where the band is setting up. Benjamin is sitting at his
keyboard, frowning in concentration, pushing buttons. There are beads of sweat on
his brow already: the ceiling is low, and it must be hot up there, under the lights. I
look around for his friend, Malvina, and spot her at a table by herself, in another
corner. We make eye contact but that’s about all: I don’t know what the protocol is.
She’s not socializing with any of the others and my guess is that she hasn’t met any
of them before tonight. Am I supposed to make introductions? Too risky—I don’t
want to complicate an already ambiguous situation. I wonder if Emily knows this
woman exists, if Benjamin’s ever mentioned her. I bet he hasn’t. Emily is gazing
up at him on stage, now, and her eyes are rapt, hero-worshipping. All he’s doing is
plugging a keyboard into an amplifier and setting up a piano stool. It’s not like he’s
building a model of Westminster Abbey out of matches or making an ice sculpture
or anything like that. But she still adores him, after sixteen years of marriage. I
never expected Benjamin and Emily to last that long, I have to say. I suppose in a
way it makes sense: Benjamin would always find it hard to split up with anyone,
because he hates difficulty, he hates confrontation. Anything for a quiet life, is his
unspoken motto, and I imagine that life with Emily must be very quiet indeed.
But really, they are not well suited. Benjamin always struck me as rather a self-centred person. I don’t mean that he’s greedy or (consciously) unkind, I mean that
he has a strong sense of self—a good sense of self—and he doesn’t really need anybody’s company other than his own. He’s not very
giving
of himself, that’s for sure.
Whereas Emily gives a lot of herself. She is happy to spread herself around, generously, among her friends, and I expect that within a relationship, or a marriage,
she will give herself entirely, hold nothing back: no secrets or no-go areas. But
surely there must have come a point where that’s started to frustrate her—giving
so much of herself to him, and getting so little back? There must have been such
disappointments for her, in that time. Not just the children, the lack of children. I
mean the small disappointments. The many little ways, the hundreds of ways, in
which he has probably let her down. Over the years.
    I know that I’m right. I know that what I’m thinking about Benjamin and
Emily is true. I see it in her eyes, later that evening.
    The gig (is that the word? It’s a word I can never take seriously) goes well. I
remember hearing this band play a few times back in the 1980s, and thinking
how out of date they sounded. They were doing these long, funky instrumentals,
but this was a few years before somebody coined the phrase “acid jazz,” and that
kind of thing became fashionable again. Back then, what they