LITMIR.BIZ

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end that’s what shocks you. That life has such a damned limited amount of options. That in the end you have to fall one side of that bisecting line or the other.

      Of course, you can pretend, if you like. You can tell the world you’ve found some grand, adventurous new way of living, get yourself interviewed for one of those life-style features and boast about how you and your Significant Other have cracked the whole companionship and solitude/ intimacy and distance thing, how you have this perfect relationship, which allows you both space and comfort, sanctuary and safety. And you can even imagine, if you like, that anyone out there is believing you when all they’re really asking is how significant is that Significant Other anyway, when what you really want is to go off and fuck other people.

      I said, ‘I guess what everyone wants is the best of both worlds. To have their cake and eat it.’

      ‘And why the hell shouldn’t we?’ Her words were combative, deserving of an answer. She said, ‘Life’s a compromise however you look at it. Single or married, it’s all the same. Doesn’t mean we didn’t start off wanting the same thing. Doesn’t mean we still don’t, one way or another.’

      Meanwhile, truth to tell, I wasn’t that thrilled at the prospect of celebrating Fergie’s retirement. Not that I had anything against him retiring. Quite the reverse. I was delighted for him. I figured he deserved it, teaching science for close on thirty years.

      ‘Selfless years, dedicated years.’ I clinked my glass against his in the Apple Tree.

      ‘Cherishing young minds … nourishing them.’

      ‘Ripping off all their duty-free allowances so you could bring back all that wine and Stella.’

      Some people, politicians mainly, like to retire to spend more time with the family. Fergie was retiring to spend more time in his shed at the bottom of the garden. It’s there he makes lovely mellow imitation Shaker chairs and tables, which he sells for such wonderfully inflated prices to owners of weekend cottages, the reason he’d been pushing for early retirement.

      He’s a craftsman, is Fergie. Watch him lathing and planing. Watch the way he runs a hand along with something approaching joy, something so much more than satisfaction. It’s the same look I’d see on our father’s face, bending inside a bonnet, which was why, I guess, the pair of them got on so well from the moment Cass and Fergie first got together. They’d spend hours together in the garage, Fergie alongside my father, learning, working on whatever was his current old banger. Taking tea out to them, you could feel the mutual appreciation, the companionable nature of the silence.

      Anyway, like I say, I wished Fergie well in his new life. I just wasn’t that crazy on the idea of a party to celebrate it.

      ‘Oh God, it’ll be full of teachers moaning about their pensions.’

      Look, the way I feel about teachers is this: whereas it’s just possible that putting the proverbial monkeys in a room for a trillion years with a bunch of typewriters might result in the plays of Shakespeare, teachers would still be talking about their pensions.

      I’m only jealous, of course. I don’t have a pension. Something of which my mother constantly likes to remind me.

      ‘I don’t know what you think you’re going to do. There won’t be anything from me, you know. I’ll need the money from this house for a nursing home.’

      ‘No you won’t.’

      ‘What do you mean?’

      ‘Oh, I’m sorry. I thought I’d mentioned it. I fully intend to murder you.’

      For the record I have made no provision for my retirement, my only plan being a note in my diary to steal a supermarket trolley and put it by, this because I expect there to be a run on them from the several million or so old sixties swingers who, when we all come finally of age, will start moving, pensionless, around the country, probably in marauding gangs, our progress charted each night just before the news using those little triangular symbols rather like the ones for rain, and sleet and snow, which will be slapped onto the weather chart then as now by one of those eternally smiling, highly irritating young women clearly enjoying flaunting her fingernails.

      From all this you will deduce that my economic position can best be described as precarious, a major reason why the news that Archie had been invited to the party fell like a dead hand on my heart.

      ‘Oh God. Not Archie.’

      Cassie raised an eyebrow in that elder sister way she has, denoting disapproval. ‘Of course. Why not?’ There was an edge of irritation in her voice. ‘Really. I don’t know. What is it with you and Archie?’

      Precisely how Archie got his squillions is a mystery to me, but then high finance has never been my chosen subject. All I know is (I have chosen not to know more) he was involved in some dot com company selling pet food, or perfume, or toys or something on-line. When it went public he became a zillionaire along with everyone else including the tea lady. Not, you understand, that I am remotely jealous. Something I constantly have to make clear to my mother.

      ‘See … see …’ she said the day the news broke on the financial pages. (‘See …’, such a small and insignificant word and yet so pregnant with meaning.) Just in case I should fail to appreciate every last nuance of her wrath, she thundered a pan down on the stove top.

      My mother is unable to mention Archie’s name these days without adding the rider, ‘He’s worth a fortune now. You know that, don’t you?’ And of course I do know it. I know it very well and it doesn’t improve my temper, so that to save face I have to come back with a lofty little rejoinder.

      ‘Really, it’s of no conceivable interest to me, Mother.’ Which is totally untrue because in my heart of hearts I’m as mad as hell, in fact possibly even more pissed off than my mother. Something Danny understands perfectly.

      ‘I mean, the least you can expect from an ex-lover is that he’ll have the decency to remain an abject failure.’

      ‘It’s not like you’re asking for skid row or anything.’

      ‘He doesn’t have to be in the gutter.’

      ‘Just respectably hard up.’

      ‘Decently overdrawn.’

      ‘But not, definitely not, a fucking dot com millionaire, darling.’

      Despite all the above, Fergie remained firmly unashamed of his decision to invite Archie to the party.

      ‘Never thought he’d accept, if you want to know the truth of it.’ He smiled amiably, clutching a pint of his beloved Butcombe to his chest. ‘I mean, these days it’s practically impossible to get him off that island of his.’

      ‘Of his. His?’ My mood was getting decidedly nasty. ‘You’ll be telling me next he owns the bloody thing.’

      ‘No, of course not. He’s just got a villa there, that’s all.’

      ‘Oh, a villa. Excuse me.’

      ‘Well, probably it’s not really a villa.’ He was backtracking now and I knew it. ‘Probably it’s just a house. A very small house. Really no more than an apartment.’

      ‘Bollocks. It’s a villa. You know it’s a villa. And I bet it’s got its own pool.’

      ‘I wouldn’t know.’

      ‘Yes you would. You’ll have seen pictures of it.’

      ‘OK. Yes. It’s got a swimming pool.’

      ‘And I suppose the whole thing is surrounded by olive groves.’

      ‘I believe I saw olive groves, yes.’

      ‘And I’ll warrant it’s set on the side of a hill overlooking the bay.’

      ‘It’s true. You can see the sea.’

      ‘And, no doubt, just for

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