Connie Willis - The Best of Connie Willis

I wondered if Cath would still want to go to a play, convinced as she was that Sara was having an affair, but as we passed the Savoy, its neon sign for Miss Saigon blazing, she asked, “What play did you get tickets for?”

“I didn’t,” I said. “I ran out of time.” I started to say that I intended to get them tomorrow, but she wasn’t listening.

“Harrods didn’t have my china,” she said, and her tone sounded as hopeless as it had telling me about Sara. “They discontinued the pattern four years ago.”

We were nearly an hour and a half late for the party. Elliott and Sara have probably long since left for dinner, I thought, and was secretly relieved.

“Cath!” Marjorie said as we walked in the door and hurried over with her nametag. “You look wonderful! I have so much to tell you!”

“I’m going to go look for the Old Man,” I said. “I’ll see if he wants to go to dinner afterward.” He would probably drag us off to Soho or Hampstead Heath. He always knew some out-of-the-way place that had eel pie or authentic English stout.

I set off through the crowd. You could usually locate the Old Man by the crowd of people gathered around, and the laughter. And the proximity to the bar, I thought, spotting a huddle of people in that direction.

I waded toward them through the crush, grabbing a glass of wine off a tray as I went, but it wasn’t the Old Man. It was the people who’d been at lunch. They were discussing, of all things, the Beatles, but at least it wasn’t the Decline and Fall.

“The three of them were talking about a reunion tour,” McCord was saying. “I suppose that’s all off now.”

“The Old Man took us on a Beatles tour,” I said. “Has anybody seen him? He insisted we re-create all the album covers. We nearly got killed crossing Abbey Road.”

“I don’t think he’s coming down from Cambridge till tomorrow,” McCord said. “It’s a long drive.”

The Old Man had driven us four hundred miles to see London Bridge. I peered over their heads, trying to spot the Old Man. I couldn’t see him, but I did spot Evers, which meant Sara and Elliott were still here. Cath was over by the door with Marjorie.

“It was just so sad about Linda McCartney,” the Disney woman said.

I took a swig of my wine and remembered too late this was a sherry party.

“How old was she?” McCord was asking.

“Fifty-three.”

“I know three women who’ve been diagnosed with breast cancer,” the Gap woman said. “ Three . It’s dreadful.”

“One keeps wondering who’s next,” the other woman said.

“Or what’s next,” McCord said. “You heard about Stewart, didn’t you?”

I handed my sherry glass to the Disney woman, who looked at me, annoyed, and started through the crowd toward Cath, but now I couldn’t see her, either. I stopped, craning my neck to see over the crowd.

“ There you are, you handsome thing!” Sara said, coming up behind me and putting her arm around my waist. “We’ve been looking all over for you!”

She kissed me on the cheek. “Elliott’s been fretting that you were going to make us all go see Cats . He loathes Cats , and everyone who comes to visit drags us to it. And you know how he frets over things. You didn’t, did you? Get tickets for Cats ?”

“No,” I said, staring at her. She looked the same as always—her dark hair still tucked behind her ears, her eyebrows still arched mischievously.

This was the same old Sara who’d gone with us to Kismet , to Lake Havasu, to Abbey Road.

Cath was wrong. She might pick up subliminal signals about other people, but this time she was wrong. Sara wasn’t acting guilty or uneasy, wasn’t avoiding my eyes, wasn’t avoiding Cath.

“Where is Cath?” she asked, standing on tiptoe to peer over the crowd. “I have something I’ve got to tell her.”

“What?”

“About her china. We couldn’t find it today, did she tell you? Well, after I got home, I thought, ‘I’ll wager they have it at Selfridge’s.’ They’re always years behind the times. Oh, there she is.” She waved frantically. “I want to tell her before we leave,” she said, and took off through the crowd. “Find Elliott and tell him I’ll only be a sec. And tell him we aren’t seeing Cats ,” she called back to me. “I don’t want him stewing all night. He’s over there somewhere.” She waved vaguely in the direction of the door, and I pushed my way between people till I found him, standing by the front door.

“You haven’t seen Sara, have you?” he said. “Evers is bringing his car round.”

“She’s talking to Cath,” I said. “She said she’ll be here in a minute.”

“Are you kidding? When those two get together—” He shook his head indulgently. “Sara said they had a wonderful time today.”

“Is the Old Man here yet?” I said.

“He called and said he couldn’t make it tonight. He said to tell you he’ll see us tomorrow. I’m looking forward to it. We’ve scarcely seen him since he moved to Cambridge. We’re down in Wimbledon, you know.”

“And he hasn’t swooped down and kidnapped you to go see Dickens’s elbow or something?”

“Not lately. Oh, God, do you remember that time Sara mentioned Arthur Conan Doyle, and he dragged us up and down Baker Street, looking for Sherlock Holmes’s missing flat?”

I laughed, remembering him knocking on doors, demanding, “What have you done with 221B, madam?” and deciding we needed to call in Scotland Yard.

“And then demanding to know what they’d done with the yard,” Elliott said, laughing.

“Did you tell him we’re all going to a play together Saturday?”

“Yes. You didn’t get tickets for Cats , did you?”

“I didn’t get tickets for anything,” I said. “I ran out of time.”

“Well, don’t get tickets for Cats . Or Phantom .”

Sara came running up, flushed and breathless. “I’m sorry. Cath and I got to talking,” she said. She gave me a smacking kiss on the lips. “Good-bye, you adorable hunk. See you Saturday.”

“Come on ,” Elliott said. “You can kiss him all you like on Saturday.” He hustled her out the door. “And not Les Miz !” he shouted back to me.

I stood, smiling after them. You’re wrong, Cath, I thought. Look at them. Not only would Sara never have kissed me like that if she were having an affair, but Elliott wouldn’t have looked on complacently like that, and neither of them would have been talking about china, about Cats .

Cath had made a mistake. Her radar, usually so infallible, had messed up this time. Sara and Elliott’s marriage was fine. Nobody was having an affair, and we’d all have a great time Saturday night.

The mood persisted through the rest of the evening, in spite of Marjorie’s latching onto me and telling me all about the Decline and Fall of her father, who she was going to have to put in a nursing home, and our finding out that the pub that had had such great fish and chips the first time we’d been here had burned down.

“It doesn’t matter,” Cath said, standing on the corner where it had been. “Let’s go to the Lamb and Crown. I know it’s still there. I saw it on the way to Harrods this morning.”

“That’s on Wilton Place, isn’t it?” I said, pulling out my tube map. “That’s right across from Hyde Park Corner Station. We can take—”

“A taxi,” Cath said.

Cath didn’t say anything else about the affair she thought Sara was having, except to tell me they were going shopping again the next day. “Selfridge’s first, and then Reject China…” and I wondered if she had realized, seeing Sara at the party, that she’d made a mistake.