Imaginative Experience by Mary Wesley Page B

down,’ she said. ‘No, not that chair, that’s Giles’s. Sit there, in that one.’
    Shying from the comfortable chair he had aimed for, Maurice sat in the one indicated. His hostess moved towards a drinks table. ‘Whisky?’ she offered.
    ‘Thank you. Weak, I’m driving.’
    ‘And I am not.’ Mrs May measured a small whisky for her guest and a generous one for herself. ‘Help yourself to water.’
    Maurice sloshed a little water into his miserly portion and resumed his seat. ‘You were saying?’
    ‘I was not saying anything.’
    She was a handsome woman, Maurice thought, long legs, deep bosom, sexy, eat you alive. She would have been his cup of tea a few years ago but was now rather alarming. He searched the room for inspiration. ‘No photos,’ he said.
    ‘Who needs photos?’
    ‘Your friend—um—your neighbour Mrs Brownlow.’
    ‘Miss.’
    ‘Oh? Not married?’
    ‘Old maid.’
    ‘Sentimental?’
    ‘Never experienced passion.’
    ‘I see.’
    ‘You don’t see anything.’
    ‘I don’t?’
    ‘Not a thing.’
    Maurice Benson said, ‘Then tell me.’
    ‘Why not?’ She stretched her legs out, quizzed him over her glass. ‘If I don’t, you will get a garbled version and I will not have my Christy and Giles garbled. Those, by the way,’ she said, pointing to a recess behind Maurice, ‘are my grandson’s toys.’
    Maurice swivelled round to find himself staring at a row of grossly outsized toys. Crushed together on a sofa like rush-hour travellers were a pink bear, a life-size clown, a blue tiger and a green elephant with a sort of boa constrictor round its neck. They looked pristine, new; he almost expected to see their price tickets. He said ‘Oh!’ and gulped his whisky. ‘Was little Christy very fond of them?’
    ‘Of course. Not that she —She would not have them in London. Not that it mattered, of course. This, this was his home. Their home.’
    ‘So—’
    ‘I mean Giles and Christy’s home.’
    ‘Ah.’
    ‘Got that straight?’
    ‘Mrs, I mean Miss Brownlow did indicate—suggest—’
    ‘What?’
    ‘That you—er—that your daughter—’
    ‘I do not regard her as my daughter.’ Clodagh May gulped her whisky and rose to refill her glass. She had splendid legs, Maurice thought, and the arse of a young woman.
    ‘Miss Brownlow called her a vehicle,’ he said, venturing into jocosity.
    Clodagh May’s smile was sardonic. ‘That’s just what she was. Excellent. Quite clever of Madge. So,’ she said, ‘d’you want the truth?’
    Maurice said, ‘Please,’ and waited.
    Clodagh May arranged her thoughts, gazing past her visitor into the garden hedged round with camellias planted by Giles. ‘I married an architect,’ she began. ‘He impregnated me with his sperm. You’re shocked by the word sperm? Some men are. The regrettable result was the girl. He left quite soon. I kicked him out actually, I can’t live with my mistakes. And the girl left too, eventually. One day she was at school as usual and the next gone, something in her genes. I don’t suddenly disappear. She took after her father. To tell the truth, I was glad to be shot of her. There is something about adolescent girls I find intolerable.’
    Maurice laughed and Clodagh, catching his eye, smiled.
    ‘What did she do?’ Maurice asked.
    ‘Do?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘She became a servant.’ Clodagh May’s voice was chill.
    ‘How did she set about that? I thought they were an obsolete species.’ Maurice laughed.
    ‘It’s no laughing matter.’
    ‘Of course not, do go on.’
    ‘It began waitressing in the holidays. Well, that’s all right, I suppose, just. Working behind the bar in the pub I didn’t like, but it was in her holidays. Then one day she was gone and later I heard she had become a “domestic”. I was humiliated. Well, wouldn’t you be?’
    ‘I have no children.’
    ‘No. And I suppose you—’
    ‘Would not be humiliated?’ Maurice grinned. ‘Do go on,’ he said,