‘Her mother lives out there,’ Flora went on. ‘She has a gallery. In Sydney.’
‘No kidding,’ said Simon. Flora glanced at him. Well! It was, after all, he who had raised the topic of Lydia. ‘Isn’t it time old Lydia found herself a bloke?’ he’d said, as they were driving along the embankment. ‘She isn’t old,’ Flora had replied.
Simon thought, for one last moment, of Lydia: there was only one way to find out who she was, and he wasn’t going to do so. He didn’t even want to. Would anyone?
‘All the same,’ said Flora, ‘I think I should ask her to come to France with us.’
‘Please, Mum, don’t,’ said Janey. ‘Please.’
‘She can sleep in my room,’ said Nell. ‘She can come with me.’
‘Can Fergus come too?’ asked Thomas. ‘Can we ask Fergus to come to France with us? Fergus can sleep with me.’
‘You won’t even have room for her,’ said Simon. A futile discussion ensued about the number and disposition of the beds and bedrooms at the gîte; ‘I mean in the car, anyway. It’ll be a squash as it is.’
‘It would have been even squashier if you’d been coming,’ said Flora.
‘The whole advantage of my not coming,’ said Simon, ‘is that you won’t be squashed in the car. Just think about it.’
‘Can Fergus come?’ Thomas asked again. ‘Fergus won’t squash.’
‘She probably can’t come anyway,’ said Flora. ‘She probably has too much to do here, at this time of the year.’
‘Sure to,’ said Simon. ‘Leave her to get on with it.’
Lydia with advancing years and a receding economy had become unemployable, so had had perforce to employ herself: she was now the sole proprietor – and, indeed, employee – of Floating World Postcards Ltd, and had been trading, latterly at a small profit, for almost three years. The postcards depicted London in its more insolite aspects (she resorted to a small stable of freelance photographers, followers of E. Atget and A. Monnier and that ilk) and were gradually finding their way into the collections of the better class of tourist. ‘I’ll give her a ring, anyway,’ said Flora weakly.
‘Please don’t ask her to come to France, Mum, said Janey. ‘I do implore you.’
‘Can Fergus come?’ said Thomas again. ‘Please, Mum, I do implore you.’
Flora, who was sitting to one side of him, and Nell, on the other, began to tickle him. ‘No, you silly sausage,’ Flora said. ‘He can’t. Fergus is going to Italy, so there!’ Fergus Carrington! That was all they needed.
‘Can we go to Italy?’ asked Thomas.
This time everyone spoke with one voice. ‘No,’ they cried. ‘We’re going to France!’
‘If she’d got herself a bloke,’ said Simon, ‘the problem wouldn’t arise.’
‘Oh, Mother of God,’ said Flora, taking off her make-up. ‘If..’
‘What’s all this Mother of God racket we’ve been hearing lately?’ said Simon. He was lying in bed looking at a script.
‘Oh, it’s nothing,’ said Flora.
‘Then I wish you’d knock it off,’ said Simon. ‘It’s making me nervous.’
‘Why should it do that?’
‘Well, since there’s no such being as God, it’s a bit too spooky by half to be hearing about the Mother of. Be reasonable.’
‘Ah,’ said Flora. ‘Reasonable. Raisonnable. Well, who are we to know what’s reasonable. Let alone raisonnable.’
‘The very people,’ said Simon. ‘That’s who.’
‘Us sinners,’ said Flora. ‘We sinners.’
‘Yes, that’s one of many possible appellations.’
‘It’s the most raisonnable.’
‘Listen, Flora,’ said Simon. ‘I married you for your looks, not your brains.’
‘I’m one seamless whole,’ said Flora. ‘Take it or leave it.’ She got into bed.
‘It’s too late even to talk about leaving it,’ said Simon. He turned off the lamp and held her in his arms, still lying on his back, and kissed the top of her head. ‘I’m stuck with it,’ he said.
‘Brains and all.’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I’m doomed.’ Flora said a few Hail Marys to herself, and fell asleep. Simon disengaged his arms, and turned over, and, after a while, fell asleep too.
Flora was thinking about the vast existential difference – it was, wasn’t it? – between being right, and having, as the French say, right, or right-ness: raison: reason. There, right-ness, or even righteousness, was reasonableness; and wrongness was therefore the consequence – or was it the condition? – of a logical error, a mistake. In French, to be right, d’avoir raison, was to have worked out a sum correctly, whereas in English there was no necessary suggestion of the reasonable: to be right in English was more like a piece of luck. Or a gift of God. Or a doom.
Flora was thinking about all this because she wanted to be right; the desire had arisen and was growing in her, she knew not why. The necessity was becoming almost urgent, whether to be right, or d’avoir raison, whichever it might more accurately be; and if it were a question after all of working out a sum correctly, then that would be existentially a rather different or even an entirely different affair from succumbing to a doom.
In any event, insofar as she could do the sum at all, or insofar as she could embrace her doom, Flora concluded that it would only be right to ask Lydia to come to France with them.
‘Floating World, hello.’
‘Oh Lydia is that you? Flora here.’
‘Oh Flora, hello, how nice.’
‘I know I mustn’t keep you during working hours, you must be so busy –’
‘So must you –’
‘Yes, thank God, I suppose, it’s just, I was wondering, are you going away this summer, have you anything planned?’
‘Yes, I’m going down to Italy for ten days; I’m sharing that villa in Sardinia for a bit that the Carringtons have taken with Robert’s sister, but she can’t go down until after – anyway – so that’s what I’m doing.’
‘Ah. Yes, well – I’d been wondering whether you might like to come to France with us – Simon can’t get away after all, you see, so we’ve some space –’
‘Oh, so sorry, I would’ve loved to, but it’s all settled now. You were sweet to think of me.’
‘Couldn’t you come on?’
‘Now that would