An Affair to Remember by Virginia Budd Page A

on.
    “No you haven’t, you idiot, and I don’t want to hear it – anyway, you’re a damned sight shrewder than you make out, so don’t pretend otherwise,” she gives him a friendly kick on the shins, then gets serious again. “Honestly, Jack, I mean it, there is something odd about this Beatrice, there really is.”
    “Alright then, I’m not that stupid, I can spot a bright bird when I see one, I give you that, and it’s plain this Beatrice has upset you. So… you’d better tell me all about it, I reckon I won’t get any peace until you do.”
    Clarrie goes quiet for a moment, trying to put what she feels about Sel’s new secretary into words. “Well, for a start it’s like she’s looking through you rather than at you. I know it sounds ridiculous, but it’s as though every now and then she leaves you, becomes a different person, then just as you’re trying to make out what’s going on, she’s back again. The first time this happened I thought it was me, I know I’m a bit over sensitive when I meet new people,” (you could have fooled me, Jack thinks) “but after it had happened several times, I realised it was her. It’s odd Sel hasn’t noticed it. He insists it’s all in my imagination, and says I’ve overdone things and need a break. Anyway, if that was all, it wouldn’t amount to much, but something much odder happened when I was showing her round the place this afternoon. We’d finished going over the house, I was explaining some of the things Sel and I were planning to do, and happened to mention we were thinking of having the rookery behind the barn cut down, as it was a bit of an eyesore with all the mess they made, let alone the noise, and do you know what she said?”
    “Search me.” Jack buries his face in her hair, sniffs her expensive perfume, must have cost a bloody fortune. Wasn’t this bird just a little out of his league? Truth to tell, he’s getting the tiniest bit impatient; the barmaid back at the hotel was showing signs of interest, and he’d got a date.
    Clarrie pauses to light another cigarette, takes a puff, goes on with her story. “Using this weird voice, not like her own at all, she said that to destroy the rookery was out of the question, it belonged to the rooks, was their home and that was that. What on earth can she have meant? I mean it was none of her business anyway, and she hadn’t even seen the rookery.”
    “Funny lady,” Jack tosses his cigarette out of the car window, sits up, “she sounds a bit bonkers to me, but keep me posted. Look pet, it’s time I made tracks, I’ve an early start in the morning and there’s still a mountain of paperwork to do.”
    “Oh naff off,” Clarrie bites him on the ear, opens the car door and eases herself out. The Grove fox wakes, stretches himself, and watches incuriously from the shadow of the oak tree as the two cars turn and make their separate ways down the hillside, their headlights flickering in the gathering dusk. When the sound of their engines has finally died away he trots out from under the tree and lopes off into the night. Sommewhere quite close an owl hoots, then silence.
    Back at Brown End Beatrice stands in her sea green sunken bath looking at her naked body in the mirror. The mirror, covering the entire wall, has a pink tinge to it designed to make anyone looking at themselves in it appear to have a tan normally only acquired after long months spent in the sun, it also, miraculously, irons out any blemishes. Slowly Beatrice raises her arms above her head, her straight blonde hair, damp now from steam, just brushing her nipples. I look beautiful, she thinks with something like wonder, and smiles into the cheating glass; her image smiles back at her with a hint of mockery.
    *
    “Turn it off, Sam, will you. I can’t stand any more of this rubbish.”
    “At least it’s better than most of the rubbish they churn out these days, actually I think it’s rather interesting. Anyway, it finishes in