Old Acquaintance by David Stacton Page B

have been thinking of that too, for her face had the faintly puzzled look it got sometimes, when she was thinking of one of those few of her many temporary houses in which she had felt at home. Yes, she was definitely doggy. That’s the expression a dog sometimes gets when you take him back to visit the new tenants in the old house.
    There were times when Charlie repented of having so suavely groomed himself into a cat. But there had been no choice. No other role had been possible. It was also true that you can’t make a sow’s ear out of a silk purse.
    He wished he hadn’t thought of that, because he couldn’t remember, come to think of it, whether a sow’s ear had any down on it or not. If it didn’t have any, then the point of the proverb wasn’t quite what he had always thought it was.
    He wanted to ask her, but thought better not. Sometimes people shook like whippets when you asked them things like that. So he said nothing.
    After a while, as though in a temper at being ignored, the rain even stopped, and the sky, like a tractable child, brushed back its clouds, forgot its tantrum, and took once more to smiling.

XII
    “ WHAT’S she like?” asked Lotte.
    “What’s who like?”
    “The current wife.”
    Charlie was willing, in general terms, to talk about his young men. He didn’t like to talk about his marriages. They were one of the few things in his life he was ashamed of.
    “My first wife I went to bed with; my second wife went to bed with my young men, she saved a good many souls in her time, I can tell you that; and the third I don’t know anything about. The current one lives in Switzerland. Which is why I’m here. She collects antiques. Stocks and bonds mostly.”
    He had forgotten his monocle. He seemed to miss it.
    “Oh,” said Lotte. It was one of his set pieces. She could remember the first wife, vaguely, a mousy, boyish, unobtrusive little creature who had thought Charlie a genius, and had no other interests in life at all. She didn’t even seem to mind the young men much. In those days they had all been young together. As for these divagations, they had been the thing to do.
    … and later, the one thing one could not help doing. He never referred to her. But Lotte did know that even now, when he was lonely, he sent her money. When eventually she had given up hope that he would come back, she had remarried. She had also aged. He refused to see her.
    Number two had been Jewish. She was dead now. You heard her records, sometimes, authentically scratchy, in thehouses of fanciers of the early 1930’s. Whatever magic they had had was long gone. And number three?
    She couldn’t remember number three, either.
    But number four had been going on for a long time now, almost six years. It was because they seldom saw each other, she supposed.
    She thought she understood. She should not have teased him by bringing the subject up. And so she turned it, like an old dress, and the other side did quite well.
    She asked about Paul to prevent Charlie’s asking about Unne.
    The truth about the Unnes in her life was Lotte’s best-kept secret. The way to protect one’s virtues is to assume a mask of vice. Then everyone is so mollified to have an excuse to think the worst of you, that they are quite content to leave you alone. She had tried women, of course. When we are young and bored and rich for the first time we try everything. But she hadn’t cared for that sort of thing. Now she just kept them round for company, which was what Charlie did, she suspected, with his young men. Her young women were rather like Charlie’s wives, in a way, except that she didn’t have anything anywhere quite to match his young men. But she, too, wrote checks when she was lonely, to people she preferred not to see.
    There was Bill, her accompanist, of course. She was fond of Bill. But as for emotion, she had carefully locked that away in a box years ago.

XIII
    AT one-thirty Unne came in to ask if they might go swimming.