Reginald Hill: Death of a Dormouse

‘How?’

‘Well, I was approached by this chap in a hotel bar when I was waiting once; he fitted the general description, so I gave a big smile and chatted away merrily and thought that maybe I’d struck lucky till he suddenly produced the key of his room, asked me how much and whether I took American Express!’

‘Janet!’

‘Sorry. Joking again, but it was almost like that. Hey, what are we worrying about? Here. Here’s the ideal place! Lots of people, but wide open, very mixed population. And it’s familiar ground.’

‘Here’ was the open-plan bar-foyer of the Crucible, Sheffield’s civic theatre, where the two friends often came either for coffee or for a lunch-time drink and snack.

‘Now, one thing you’ve got to recognize, Trudi, is that men lie. Even more than us. We may trim our ages a bit, but men lie about everything . So you’ve got to use your eyes and your ears. He may say he’s a brain-surgeon on eighty thousand pounds per annum basic, but check his shirts for frayed cuffs. Have a close look at his shoes. Big money buys real leather. Check his mouth. If his dental jobs have been done by some NH jockey on piece-work, it shows. Ask him to spell pericranium. Tell him you’re doing a crossword or something.’

‘But what if he’s a radical brain-surgeon who likes gardening, has no interest in clothes and can’t spell?’ said Trudi.

‘Drop him,’ said Janet with a shudder. ‘You’re like me, dear. Too old for radicals. Next thing. No body contact. Shaking hands is the limit. Nudges, squeezes, accidental brushes, they deserve one warning. Hand up your skirt or erection against your bum, that’s it. Walk away.’

‘With his hand up my skirt?’ said Trudi. ‘That could be awkward.’

She was still surprised to discover how lively she could be in Janet’s company. The renewal of their girlhood friendship had not after all simply meant a renewal of the dormouse – cat relationship. Perhaps those years of catatonic domesticity had been a necessary fallowness rather than a needless waste.

Janet said, suddenly serious, ‘Trudi, joking apart, are you sure this is for you?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘The agency. Meeting men like this. It’s a step in the dark in a way. Are you sure you’re ready for it? I mean, it’s really no time at all …’

‘You mean it’s only five months since Trent died, and am I really such a callow, unfeeling cow as to put myself back on the market so quickly?’

‘No! I didn’t mean that, you know I didn’t,’ Janet protested.

‘Yes, I know,’ said Trudi. ‘But I wonder about it myself, Jan, so there’s no reason why you shouldn’t wonder it too. The way it seems to me, looking back, is that it was almost inevitable, like a good play I mean. If it had happened while I was still in Vienna, comfortable, secure, almost torpid, God knows what the effect would have been. But I’d been suddenly uprooted and dumped here at a moment’s notice, in a strange town, in a strange house, without even my own furniture to keep me company. It was like being woken up out of hibernation to find it’s still winter! And then, Trent’s death. It was as if I had been nudged towards it somehow. God help me, it almost nudged me over the edge. If you hadn’t come along …’

‘You’d still have spewed up and been all right,’ said Janet sensibly.

‘Perhaps. But it wasn’t grief that got me to that point; it was selfish terror, I think. Just as violent in its effect, but not so long-lasting.’

She fell into an introspective silence and Janet said, ‘Well, that wasn’t what I meant anyway. I just meant that maybe you’re not, well, tough enough to be doing this. I mean, it’s all right for the bold, brash types like me …’

‘But I thought that the whole idea of marriage agencies was to help the shy, the timid, the socially static?’ said Trudi ironically. ‘What you really mean is, if things go disastrously wrong, you don’t want to feel responsible.’

‘All right. That’s what I really mean.’

‘You won’t be,’ said Trudi. ‘Janet, don’t take me wrong, but a good reason for me to do this is that I want to be responsible for myself. Or rather, I can feel something in me that’s crying out desperately to find someone else who’ll take the responsibility off me, and I’ve got to be careful not to let that happen, not like it happened before. I can’t afford another twenty years, not at my age!’

‘But I don’t understand. Why go looking for another man at all if you’re so worried about someone taking over and making your decisions for you?’ queried Janet.

Trudi smiled and took her friend’s hand.

‘Darling,’ she said. ‘At the moment I haven’t got another man, and sufficient be the evil, etc. At the moment I’m afraid I’m talking about you!’

She squeezed Janet’s hand to remove any offence and went on, ‘And to start with, in this bold new bid for independence, I’m breaking our date on Saturday.’

‘Oh, hoity-toity! The Lewis Agency have fixed you up already, have they?’

‘Nothing so dull,’ said Trudi, smiling. ‘And I did tell you. I’m spending a couple of days in Vienna, that’s all.’

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