Nicci French - Beneath The Skin

At six o’clock I had a long bath and washed my hair. Downstairs, I heard the door open and Lena come in with Chris. I put on a dressing gown and sat in front of my mirror. Lots of makeup this evening. Not just foundation, but blusher on my cheekbones, gray-green eye shadow, dark gray eyeliner, my beloved wrinkle concealer, plum-colored lipstick, my favorite perfume behind my ears and on my wrist-I’d splash more on later as well. Usually, between courses, I come up to my bedroom to repair my face and put on perfume. It gives me courage.

I put on a long black dress with spaghetti straps, and over it a delicate maroon lace top with black velvet around the neck and cuffs, which I bought for a small fortune in Italy last year. High-heeled shoes. My diamond choker, my diamond earrings. I examined myself in the long mirror, turned slowly round so I could see myself from every angle. Nobody would think I was nearly forty. It takes a lot of effort, to stay young.

I heard Clive come in. I must go and say good night to Chris, make sure he’s properly settled before everyone arrives. Had I remembered to put the chocolates on the sideboard?

Chris was sunburned and fretful. I left him listening to a Roald Dahl tape with the night-light on, and prayed he wouldn’t make a fuss during the meal. Clive was in the shower. Downstairs I put a voluminous apron over my glad rags, and spooned the wild mushrooms over the canapés, shredded lettuce into the salad bowl: just a green salad with the fish. Elegance lies in simplicity. The sky outside the kitchen window was the color of raspberries. Red sky at night, shepherd’s delight. Josh and Harry would be at their camp by now, American time.

“Hello,” said Clive. He looked bronzed and gleaming in his suit; there was a sheen of success about him.

“You look smart. But I haven’t seen that tie before,” I said. I wanted him to tell me how chic I looked tonight.

He fingered the knot of the tie.

“No, it’s new.”

The doorbell rang.

Neither Sebastian nor his wife, Gloria, was the least bit like I had expected. Sebastian was tall, with a startlingly bald head. He would have been rather distinguished-looking in a sinister, Hollywood way if he hadn’t been so obviously on edge. There was a faint air of contempt in Clive’s manner toward him, a touch of the bully. With a sudden flash of intuition, I realized that Clive was going to shaft Sebastian in his wretched takeover bid, and this dinner party was a cruel charade of friendliness. Gloria, the City headhunter, was much younger than her husband-in her late twenties, I would have guessed. And her blond, almost silver hair didn’t come from a bottle after all. She had pale blue eyes, brown slim arms, neat ankles with a thin silver chain around one of them, and she wore a perfectly simple white linen shift and very little makeup. She made me feel overdressed; she made Emma look blowsy.

All three men were attentive to her, turning their bodies subtly toward her as we stood on the half-built patio and drank champagne. She knew how pretty she was too. She kept lowering her lashes and giving secretive smiles. Her laugh was a little silvery peal, like a delicate bell.

“Nice tie,” she said to Clive, giving him that smile. It made me want to spill wine on her dress.

They had obviously met before; well, I suppose they would have, given their jobs. She and Sebastian and Clive and Jonathan stood in a group and talked about the Footsie and the futures market, while Emma and I stood by like gooseberries.

“I always think the Footsie index is such a comical name,” I said loudly, determined not to be ignored.

Gloria turned politely toward me.

“Do you work in the City too?” she asked, although I knew she knew I didn’t.

“Me? Goodness, no.” I laughed loudly and took a gulp of champagne. “I can’t even add up my bridge hand. No, Clive and I decided that when we had children I would stop working outside the home. Do you have children?”

“No. What did you do before?”

“I was a model.”

“A hand model,” said Emma. My friend, Emma.

“They are nice hands,” said Sebastian, rather stiffly.

I waved them in front of everyone. “These were my fortune,” I said. “I used to wear gloves all the time, even during mealtimes. Sometimes I even wore them in bed. Mad, eh?” Jonathan poured more champagne in our glasses. Gloria was saying something softly to Clive, who was smiling down at her. Upstairs Chris started crying. I poured the champagne down my throat.

“Excuse me, everybody. Carry on. Duty calls. I’ll tell you when dinner’s ready. Please have some more canapés.”

I turned over the tape for Chris and kissed him again, and told him if he called downstairs again I’d be annoyed. Then I went into our room. I put on more lipstick and brushed my hair and splashed perfume down my cleavage. I felt the teeniest bit tipsy. I wanted to be lying in bed, between clean, ironed sheets. Alone, thank you very much.

I drank fizzy water with the soup, but then I had some lovely Chardonnay with the fish, a glass of claret with the Brie, a rather nice dessert wine with the apricot pudding, and the coffee was like a little jolt of clarity in between the alcohol fuzz.

“What a manipulative girl,” I said to Clive, afterward, when I was wiping off my makeup with a cotton pad and he was cleaning his teeth.

He rinsed his mouth carefully. He looked at me, with my one eye on and one eye off. “You’re drunk,” he said.

I had a sudden, utterly disconcerting fantasy of slapping him, plunging my nail scissors into his stomach. “Nonsense.” I laughed. “I’m just tipsy, darling. I think it all went quite well, don’t you?”

My big vice is catalogs, mail order. That’s mad in a way because it’s not me at all. If there’s one thing I believe in it’s that the objects in your home have to be exactly right. The thought of having the second-best object, that you chose because it was a little bit-or a lot-cheaper, and having it squatting there in the corner of the room year after year, accusing you, well, that’s my idea of torture. You need to touch things before you buy them, walk around them, get a feeling of how they would look in the particular space you’ve envisaged.

So I shouldn’t bother with catalogs. The towels that look fluffy in the picture may feel synthetic when they arrive and be just a different enough shade to clash with the wooden frame of the wonderful mirror you found in that market last summer. The salad spoons may look heavy but feel tackily light when they arrive. And I know that theoretically you can return them and get your money back, but somehow you never get around to that. It’s indefensible and Clive is pretty contemptuous of it, if he happens to notice it, but then he’s got his wretched wine catalogs, which he pores over late into the night.

So when catalogs arrive I can’t resist flicking through them, and there’ll always be something that catches my eye: trainers or a baseball jacket for the boys, or a clever pencil holder or a slotted spoon or an amusing alarm clock or a wastepaper basket that might look good up in the den. As often as not they’ll end up stuffed in the loft or the back of a cupboard, but sometimes they’ll turn up trumps. In any case, it’s such fun when they arrive, brought by special delivery that you have to sign for. It’s like an extra birthday. Better in some ways. If I were being sarcastic, I might say that while boys-and certain men who shall remain nameless-might forget a birthday, at least overnight delivery doesn’t fail to deliver the lampshade you ordered, even if you don’t care for it quite as much as you expected to.

Slightly naughtily, these mail-order companies then pass your name on to other companies, especially when their computers have probably cottoned on to the fact that you’re pathetically likely to buy things you don’t really need. It’s a bit like being the most popular girl in the school. Everybody wants to be your friend and you don’t always want to be theirs. I mean honestly, sometimes I get advertisements from the most extraordinary people. Just last week I got a brochure from a company that makes ponchos out of llama hair. Twenty-nine pounds ninety-nine, and you could get two for thirty-nine ninety-nine, as if anybody who wasn’t living in the Andes would even want one . I didn’t consider it for a second.