The New Collected Short Stories Read online

  ‘And will you accept his offer?’ I asked.

  ‘Steady on, Jeff,’ Max replied as we entered the visits room. ‘I won’t be able to answer that question until next week, when I’ve had a visit from his brother James.’

  ‘MIND YOUR OWN business,’ was Carol’s advice.

  ‘But it is my business,’ I reminded my wife as I climbed into bed. ‘Bob and I have been friends for over twenty years.’

  ‘All the more reason to keep your own counsel,’ she insisted.

  ‘But I don’t like her,’ I replied tartly.

  ‘You made that abundantly clear during dinner,’ Carol reminded me as she switched off her bedside light.

  ‘But surely you can see that it’s going to end in tears.’

  ‘Then you’ll just have to buy a large box of Kleenex.’

  ‘She’s only after his money,’ I muttered.

  ‘He hasn’t got any,’ replied Carol. ‘Bob’s practice is quite successful, but hardly puts him in the Abramovich league.’

  ‘That may well be the case, but it’s still my duty, as a friend, to warn him not to marry her.’

  ‘He doesn’t want to hear that at the moment,’ said Carol, ‘so don’t even think about it.’

  ‘Explain to me, O wise one,’ I said as I plumped up my pillow, ‘why not.’

  Carol ignored my sarcasm. ‘If it should end up in the divorce courts, you’ll just look smug. If the marriage turns out to be wedded bliss, he’ll never forgive you – and neither will she.’

  ‘I wasn’t planning to tell her.’

  ‘She already knows exactly how you feel about her,’ said Carol. ‘Believe me.’

  ‘It won’t last a year,’ I predicted, just as the phone rang on my side of the bed. I picked it up, praying it wasn’t a patient.

  ‘I’ve only got one question for you,’ said a voice that needed no introduction.

  ‘And what’s that, Bob?’ I asked.

  ‘Will you be my best man?’

  Bob Radford and I first met at St Thomas’ Hospital when we were both house officers. To be more accurate, we had first come into contact with each other on the rugby field, when he tackled me just as I thought I was about to score the winning try. In those days we were on opposite sides.

  After we were appointed senior house officers at Guy’s, we started playing for the same rugby team and regularly had a mid-week game of squash – which he invariably won. In our final year we ended up sharing digs in Lambeth. We didn’t need to look far for female companionship as St Thomas’ had over three thousand nurses, most of whom wanted sex and for some unfathomable reason considered doctors a safe bet. Both of us looked forward to taking advantage of our new status. And then I fell in love.

  Carol was also a house officer at Guy’s, and on our first date made it abundantly clear that she wasn’t looking for a long-term relationship. However, she underestimated my one talent, persistence. She finally gave in after I’d proposed for the ninth time. Carol and I were married a few months after she’d qualified.

  Bob headed off in the opposite direction. Whenever we invited him to dinner, he would turn up escorted by a new companion. I sometimes got their names muddled up, a mistake Carol never made. However, as the years passed, even Bob’s appetite to taste some new delicacy from the table d’hôte became less hearty than it had been during his student days; after all, we had both recently celebrated our fortieth birthdays. It didn’t help when Bob was named in the student rag as the most eligible bachelor in the hospital, not least because he had built up one of the most successful private practices in London. He had a set of rooms in Harley Street, with none of the expenses associated with marital bliss. But now that finally seemed to be coming to an end.

  When Bob invited Carol and me to join him for dinner so that he could introduce us to Fiona, whom he described as the woman he was going to spend the rest of his life with, we were both surprised and delighted. We were also a little perplexed as we couldn’t recall the name of his last girlfriend. We were fairly confident it wasn’t Fiona.

  When we arrived at the restaurant, we saw the two of them seated in the far corner of the room, holding hands. Bob rose to greet us and immediately introduced Fiona as the most wonderful girl in the world. To be fair to the woman, no red-blooded male could have denied Fiona’s physical attributes. She must have been about five foot nine, made up of thirty inches of leg, attached to a figure honed in the gym and no doubt perfected on a diet of lettuce leaves and water.

  Our conversation during the meal was fairly limited, partly because Bob spent most of the time staring at Fiona in a way that should be reserved for one of Donatello’s nudes. By the end of the meal, I had come to the conclusion that Fiona would end up costing about as much, and it wasn’t just because she read the wine list from the bottom upwards, ordered caviar as a starter and asked, with a sweet smile, for her pasta to be covered in truffles.

  Frankly, Fiona was the type of long-legged blonde whom you hope to bump into, while perched on a stool in a hotel bar, late at night and preferably on another continent. I am unable to tell you how old she was, but I did learn during dinner that she had been married three times before she met Bob. However, she assured us that, this time, she had found the right man.

  I was only too happy to escape that night and, as you have already discovered, I didn’t waste much time making my wife aware of my views on Fiona.

  The marriage took place some three months later at the Chelsea Register Office in the King’s Road. The ceremony was attended by several of Bob’s friends from St Thomas’ and Guy’s – some of whom I hadn’t set eyes on since our rugby days. I felt it unwise to point out to Carol that Fiona didn’t seem to have any friends, or at least none who were willing to attend her latest nuptials.

  I stood silently by Bob’s side as the registrar intoned the words, ‘If anyone can show lawful reason why these two should not be joined in matrimony, then they should declare that reason to me now.’

  I wanted to offer an opinion, but Carol was too close at hand to risk it. I must confess that Fiona did look radiant on that occasion, not unlike a python about to devour a lamb – whole.

  The reception was held at Lucio’s on the Fulham Road. The best man’s speech might have been more coherent if I hadn’t consumed quite so much champagne, or if I’d believed a word I was uttering.

  When I sat down to indulgent applause, Carol didn’t lean across to congratulate me. I avoided her until we all joined the bride and groom on the pavement outside the restaurant. Bob and Fiona waved goodbye before stepping into a white stretch limousine that would take them to Heathrow. From there, they were to board a plane to Acapulco, where they would spend a three-week honeymoon. Neither the transport to Heathrow, which incidentally could have accommodated the entire wedding party, nor the final destination for the honeymoon, had been Bob’s first choice. A piece of information I didn’t pass on to Carol, as she would undoubtedly have accused me of being prejudiced – and she would have been right.

  I can’t pretend that I saw a lot of Fiona during their first year of marriage, although Bob called from time to time, but only from his practice in Harley Street. We even managed the occasional lunch, but he no longer seemed to be able to fit in a game of squash in the evening.

  Over lunch Bob never failed to expound the virtues of his remarkable wife, as if only too aware of my attitude to his spouse – although I never at any time expressed my true feelings. I could only assume that this was the reason Carol and I were never invited to dinner at their home, and whenever we asked them to join us for supper, Bob made some unconvincing excuse about having to visit a patient, or being out of town on that particular evening.

  The change was subtle to begin with, almost imperceptible. Our lunches became more regular, even the occasional game of squash was fitted in, and perhaps more relevant, there were fewer and fewer references to Fiona’s pending sainthood.

  It was soon after the death of Bob’s aunt, a Miss Muriel P