Gray Ladies

I drove to the quiet house in the village near Oxford up the hill from the Cowly car assembly plant. The village where the grey ladies live, where the bridge evenings are dry though they are always tempted but never succumb to drink.

The paintings that came from the art gallery in Barcelona at a cost of nine thousand pounds were still unframed lent against the dining room wall. The teak table for twelve was half set and much polished. I have known that room used only once. Susan hosted a bridge evening for the ladies and one man plus me.

“Have you got any fags?”
I have.
“Do you still smoke?”

“Only when I see you”

Susan said  “I have not had a fag since the last time you were here”

“I have some. Where shall we smoke? In the conservatory?

An equally expensive painting from the same art gallery is hanging on the conservatory wall.
It was the hot weather week of September 2011, so the conservatory in the cold house was just beyond pleasantly warm. Susan removed her long jumper, her trousers I could see filled her tightly and pleasantly. I am sure she noticed me looking

“Do you live here?”

“When I am England. Of course I do. It is my house. You know that.”

Susans accent had got a bit plumb.

How often are you in England.?  You see me on Skype.

The next day we walked to Wheatley to buy food in the Coop supermarket there because she said there is none in the house. I bought two bottles of beer because there was none of that either. She bought some pasta:

“We can have pasta and cheese”

“It will be better with bacon”

We went to the aisles again.

“Have you wine?”
“Lots of wine”
“Good. I have not found it yet”
“I will put a bottle in the fridge”

On the way back a lorry, a crew and a land rover 110 were making a mess of moving a mobile home.

“There is a mobile home site down that track. My cleaning lady lives in a mobile home down there”
“You have a cleaning lady?
“She only comes when I am not in England”


The quiet house did look as if the cleaning lady had been yesterday, the washing up done but not put way.The crisp of the sheets, the make of my bed in the guest room looked like cleaning lady work.
  
“My cleaning lady and her husband once had a house but they sold it because they are spend thrifts and used up all their money”


Back at home Susan went to repose so as to fend off a migraine. I drank the two beers, smoked two cigarettes, poured with delighted defiance a good full glass of the wine now in the fridge. I was thus tongue loosened. The September sun, these clear blue skies, faded, the quiet house is soon cold.

Susan came, no glass, no water. I gave her a fag, she lit it with style, I took a draught. She had released, let loose, her hair, a mane of many blonds. I admired, I wondered, but she had told many times that she has had no lovers for many many years.

“There is quite a difference in what is on the audio and what you report that Lars said in the showers”

A touch lip puff. The as the smoke curled in the cooling air.

"So tell what Lars said in the bathroom."


I had reported it, written it verbatim as I remembered.

Susan is very professional, has been doing this stuff since she was twenty five, which, I distracted, note is twenty five years ago. It is what she does bored and fed up with it as she is. The Washerman has no pastimes either and in retirement is bored and lost.

“Golf is boring. I hate golf”

“I don’t find it boring- it is a pastime when there is a lot of time to pass”

I have had that conversation with both of them.  Golf has no meaningful result.

I told her what Lars said. Sarah kept my gaze, as far as I could see the only recording device was her own listening. This soft persistent interrogation is the English style. She kept her eyes steady at mine, lips pursed tight enough to whiten.

Then.

“You got back to Hamburg at six thirty five, you left just after ten. That was not the scheme. Your contract said you leave on arrival. You did not. What did you do?”
“I had never been to Hamburg before, the trip had gone well, so I went to a pub”
“Did you drink?”

It was a pub, they sell drinks, I had money, I bought their products.

“Who did you talk to?”

No one. It was Hamburg, I don’t speak the lingo

“You stayed three hours in a bar and spoke to no on

Exactly. I can do that in the English pub I visit every day.

Susan said “Men can do that. You are a man who can do that”

She said “One more time, it is my job, tell me again, word by word, what Lars said in the shower”

I am a bit drunk now. I can see that. It is not that she wants to catch me out in a lie, I am paid to lie, but she does want to confirm that I am consistent, cupped or not.

Not that drunk, we went to play bridge, three rubbers with the grey ladies. There was coffee, tea, pineapple cake. The sugar, the charm, the deprivation swayed them. The bridge session was divided into two tables which were not changed between rubbers. One of these ladies would be working with Susan but I could not tell which one. All of them could spot the inconsistencies and bullshit which I laded on.

The day before.

“I have booked us to go to a lecture, in Oxford, the afternoon, on climate change and economics. Would you like to go?”

I would. We did, the lecture very well attended presented by Professor Hendry was interesting, a huge canvas, a paper he said that had been fifteen years in the writing. Professor Hendry said that “if the distribution changes the mathematical models on which economics is based do not apply.” Gosh now there is a thing.


After the lecture she said we can go to the pub if you like. I did like. Susan is the only person I know that can order a pint of tap water in a pub with out showing any sign of embarrassment. I ordered two pints of beer and one pint of tap water, I am more easily embarrassed and can drink two pints if needs must.


We looked for a table outside so we could have another fag. We were invited to join a bench for four occupied by two students just, they declared, in their first week of a postgraduate in environmental something. Susan told them of her interest in natural bee keeping.

One said, the wit of youth.

“Is this new love or old love”

Answer that Susan

Her silent steel stare provoked a “whoops, wrong question.” Sarah asks she does not answer. A job to do. I am fed up with it, but it is what I do. And no hobby or good works has fired that barren.

“We seek to resolve conflicts. But more, to see the conflicts that are inherent in the contract, because, Michael, these contracts are complex. We seek to avoid litigation”

As one would.