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Salley Vickers's novels, Instances of the Number 3 and Miss Garnet's Angel, have been bestsellers in England. She divides her time between London and Bath

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Instances of the Number 3

Picador USA

Chapter One

AFTER PETER HANSOME died, people were surprised that hiswidow seemed to be spending so much time with his mistress.Bridget Hansome was not the kind of woman who could havefailed to notice her husband's discreet, but regular, visits to theflat in Turnham Green where Frances Slater lived. And, indeed,anyone married to Peter Hansome would have needed to learnthe art of turning a blind eye. Had the various friends and acquaintancesof the Hansomes' been asked to bet on how the wifemight deal with a mistress discovered in the aftermath of thehusband's death (were it the thing to gamble on the likely effectson a widow of the discovery of a long-established infidelity), theodds would probably have been on Bridget allowing Frances toattend the funeral, but with an unspoken provision that no mentionbe made of the reason for her being there.

    In the event the punters would have lost their bets for this isnot what occurred. In spite of the fact that she lived nearby ? thecremation was conducted at a cemetery off the Lower RichmondRoad ? Frances did not attend the funeral ceremony. She had astill lively recollection of a warm evening, on which the samecemetery had been the scene of one of Peter's more flamboyantacts of lovemaking. Whether it was this, and the fact that shecould not, therefore, easily reconcile herself to it as the placefrom which she must make a final farewell to the body that ? flankedby marble angels and other funerary pieces ? had latelyenjoyed her own, must rest as one of those matters into whichwe shall not, for the moment, enquire. What is known is that onthe day of the funeral, Frances took the Eurostar to Paris, whereshe concluded a walk by the Seine with a visit to Notre-Dame ? stopping,before entering the cathedral, to buy a bunch ofanemones from a flower seller.

    Bridget Hansome was well aware that she was not the onlywoman to enjoy her husband's affections. `Handsome is as handsomedoes!' she had been in the habit of saying, making a smallpun on her husband's name. This observation was generally accompaniedby one of her little ironic smiles. These smiles mighthave been described as affectionate, but they might equally havebeen described as sly. Whatever the truth of the matter (and it isalso a truth that human emotion tends to be made up of different,and often competing, strands), Peter took the smiles in goodpart. He was a physically vain man and, not quite understandingthe point of the saying ? more accurately, for he was not stupideither, not really troubling to comprehend it ? was mildlypleased to have a wife who appreciated his looks enough to jokeabout them, despite the fact that they brought with them certainconsequences.

    One of these `consequences' was Frances. There had beenothers ? not too many ? over the years, but Frances was the onlyone who could be said to have stuck. In fact it was Bridget herselfwho had been the cause of the introduction, during one ofher trips abroad.

    Early on in her marriage Bridget had discovered that herhusband disliked her being away from home. It is unlikely thatPeter himself was aware that his extramarital escapades hadmore to do with an incapability with his own loneliness than theoutward appearance he was quietly proud of ? women tending,perversely perhaps, to be more susceptible to marks of inwardfrailty than rugged good looks. It is a fact, however, that it is easierto be tender towards a failing when it is not part of one's dailydealings. Bridget had been first alarmed, then concerned and finallyincreasingly impatient when she found that Peter becamefractious, and prone to what she privately termed `sillinesses',when she made one of her regular trips abroad.

    Bridget sold old French bric-à-brac. She had started with astall on the Portobello Road but now ran a thriving shop in Fulham,which traded in garden furniture, aged linen, enamel pans,lace curtains, parasols ? items of faded beauty from a Frenchpastoral past for which she had a particular eye. In these days ofshabby chic such shops are commonplace. But Bridget, in perceivingthat something worn and traditional might be what wasmissing from modern lives, had been in the vanguard of contemporarytaste. It was she who pioneered the belief that the venerablemight be more stylish than the smart ? the glass and steeldesigns which were once the height of interior fashion for thewell heeled. Ahead of her imitators, she became established as a`name', of sorts; the `Living' pages of newspapers and magazinesdeferred to her for hints on the newest `old' styles.

    Bridget was also blessed with sources of supply for the itemsshe sold in her shop ? still-secret places in the heart of ruralFrance which her later competitors had neither the luck nor thestamina to discover. The stamina was required for the combinationof long drive and longer conversations in vernacularFrench, accompanied by large quantities of coffee or wine or, asthe day went on, spirits drawn from complicated bottles. Thesetête-à-têtes would be conducted with elderly men or women inminor decaying châteaux, who were pleased to offload the moulderingrelics of a bygone way of life to the blonde Anglaise whoseemed sincere in her love of their country and its artefacts.

    And there was no doubt that Bridget was sincere. One of herhallmarks was that she was a person who lacked `side'?toomuch so for some, who found her blunt. This did not mean,however, that she necessarily revealed all that she thought. Indeed,experience had taught her to keep many of her observationsto herself, full revelation, she couldn't help feeling, beingsomething which was a virtue only among the reckless or thecruel. So that finally ? for her rather late in the day ? perceivingthat her husband missed her, she did not voice this realisation directlybut instead asked Mickey, who lived next door, if shewould `keep an eye' on Peter.

    Mickey had lived in their terraced street since long beforePeter and Bridget had married and bought their house. Althoughthe house had not been fashionable when they bought it,they had had to scrape around to find the deposit as these werethe days when Bridget was just starting her Fulham shop andPeter had another wife and another establishment ? one withchildren in it ? to keep. The area had `come up' since, butMickey was a survivor of its more modest past, having inheritedthe house from her mother whom she had womanfully lookedafter till the day the old lady died.

    `It's my pride my mum never saw the inside of a hospital,'Mickey had said to Bridget when the latter had called asking toborrow sugar for the removal men's tea, thus setting the tone fora relationship in which Mickey had continued, on and off, tosupply sugar for twenty years. Mickey loved to chat and as Peterliked, in a certain mood, to chat himself ? chatting being somethingwhich Bridget was conscious of not always sufficientlysupplying either for her husband or her neighbour ? the hopehad been that Mickey might go some way to fill the gap made byBridget's periodic `French leaves'.

    Mickey also liked her drink. Driving through the quietcountryside of mid France, observing the boles of mistletoe silhouettedin the columns of poplars against a wide azure sky,Bridget would think of her husband and Mickey sippingwhiskies together; it was easier to feel fond of them both whenshe was away.

    It was on just such an occasion, when Bridget was off inNormandy for a pre-Easter run, that Mickey invited Peterround. The weather was unseasonably fine, the sun quite searchingfor March, and they sat outside admiring the smart ranks ofcolour-coordinated daffodils in Mickey's garden.

    `This is my friend Frances,' Mickey had said, indicating athin, dark woman, considerably younger than her hostess, butwith what Peter was later to describe as `old' eyes. It was not exactlythe case that Frances was a `friend'. Mickey was liberal inher friendships and Frances turned out to be someone Mickeyhad met casually at the estate agents where she worked part-timeon Wednesdays and Saturdays.

    Frances was looking for a house in the area and Mickey,who liked to be of help (it was also to soak up some of that likingto help ? where she was conscious of giving disappointment ? thatBridget had made the suggestion about Peter), had askedFrances back for a drink to `give her an idea of what these arelike', since Frances had indicated it was such a house that shewas hoping to buy.

    In the end Frances bought a flat in Turnham Green, theprices of the Fulham houses having risen beyond her pocket,Where, after a suitable lapse of time, Peter visited her during oneof Bridget's summer trips to the Vichy area.

    `I love my wife,' he had declared, this being the gesture of fidelityto Bridget he was in the habit of making on such occasions.`If we are going to do this you must understand I willnever leave her.'

    And in saying he `loved' Bridget Peter was not, as it happens,speaking to deceive. His liking for chat was not, as is sometimessupposed, a sign of superficiality, any more than a tendencyto silence necessarily indicates depth. `Chatting' was one of Peter'smeans of helping himself to stay alive.

    Frances, who had closed down an affair when the man wasfoolish enough to suggest that he was `misunderstood', was notdispleased to hear a man speak unashamedly of love for his wife.Although Frances was not prone to introspection, unconsciouslyshe was aware that as a man speaks so he is: a declaration of conjugallove was a sign of an affectionate nature ? and a loyal one,of a kind. At least Peter was not going to `explain' any entanglementwith her as a product of ill treatment meted out to himelsewhere. Frances did not care to be seen as some sort of therapist ? sexualor otherwise. She liked ? as most of us do ? to beliked for her own inherent qualities, good and bad, and not as areaction to qualities in another person.

    Frances was thirty-six when she first met Peter ? an agewhen women often suffer degrees of anxiety about settlingdown. Whether her liking for Peter was as innocent of a reactivecomponent as his was for her is another question entirely.

Continues...

Excerpted from Instances of the Number 3by Salley Vickers Copyright © 2003 by Salley Vickers. Excerpted by permission.
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