Remember Me by Fay Weldon Page B

someone did.’
    But whether or not Margot hears her Hilary does not know.
    And where is Hilary’s mother, the while? Out having a good time.
    Oh, yes.
    Madeleine arrives in Cambridge at seven forty-five, her little Mini having lost its fan-belt on the way. The Mini is fifteen years old, and always losing something—exhaust system, door, oil, power, clutch, petrol cap. But it is loved by Madeleine. It cost £50 eight years ago, patiently saved. The car is Madeleine’s freedom, Madeleine’s pride. Lily doesn’t drive. Mind you, Lily doesn’t have to. There seems always to be someone waiting to take lovely Lily from place to place.
    By the time Madeleine has found the cinema and parked the car, it is past eight o’clock. Madeleine’s computer date, rather to Madeleine’s disappointment, for the journey seemed pleasure and event enough, is still waiting for her in the foyer of the cinema, his pale eyes darting from side to side, distressed. Mr Quincey is a short, pale, plump man in his middle forties. He has a nervous manner, and smells strongly of acetone. Some liver disorder, Madeleine wonders? His tones are precise and careful: he comes from the Midlands. His hands are white and pudgy. He pulls at his fingers incessantly. And what does he think of me, Madeleine wonders? How will he describe me to his friends? Does he have friends? No, he blinks and twitches too much. Madeleine is sorry for him. One of the world’s rejects, she thinks. As I am. Is this a good reason for us to get together?
    No.
    After the film, a lengthy tale of handsome spies and beautiful unerotic girls, sparsely attended, Mr Quincey takes Madeleine to a Chinese meal. He talks of Loneliness over the sweet-and-sour. ‘I feel the same,’ she says, munching her spring roll, and so she does. Madeleine goes back with him to his bed-sitting room.
    The house smells of cabbage. His room smells of tooth powder. He is careful, as he lets her in, in case the landlady sees.
    Madeleine lies upon the bed, without ado, and lets him make love to her. Mr Quincey thinks he offers sex, but in fact it is love; he has books of poetry upon his shelves; he talks; he would rather talk than have sex, but feels he needs the latter as an excuse for the former; he works as a computer programmer: he was brought up in foster homes; he has been in a mental home twice: his erection is difficult to achieve, but good enough.
    Madeleine feigns excitement, pleasure. She does not know why she bothers, nor why she came so far to this purpose, to perform what in the end is an act of kindness. Well, it is easy enough to be kind to strangers.
    She says little about herself. He does not seem to notice. Madeleine says she is going away soon, leaving the country: she cannot see him again much as she would like to. He is relieved; it is the best possible ending to the evening. She presumed it would be.
    ‘I’ve had a wonderful time. An evening to remember. Some enchanted evening …’ he murmurs. ‘You begin to feel left out of things, sometimes. Those girls in that film, those men—are there really people like that?’ He seems to think that Madeleine, from London, is some kind of link with the outside world. He asks questions as a little boy asks questions of his mother.
    Madeleine starts the journey back to London at twelve twenty-five. Her car smells of acetone, tooth powder, sex, and old Chanel No. 5, from a bottle given to her in 1959 by a friend returning from a trip to France.
    Those were the days, the good old days, of friends, holidays, youth, possibilities. The night is clear. The motorway is deserted. The moon shines. The car rattles. It is a homely, familiar sound. Is the back left wheel wobbling? No. Too bad if it is.

13
    G OOD NIGHT!
    Hilary shuts her eyes and prepares for sleep. Hilary thinks, defining her being, naming herself to herself, preparing for her drift from consciousness, the better to awake:
I am Hilary. I am the daughter of. two houses, at home in neither.