A Few of the Girls Read Online Free PDF Page A

mother, say?
    “Oh, about ninety percent,” he said. “You were right to finish with Alec. What we must do is make sure that the cure isn’t worse than the disease.”
    “I didn’t say his name, how did you know?” asked Catherine. She made a point of not mentioning Alec’s name, ever. It made him seem like more of a person if his name was allowed to occur in conversation.
    “Suzi told me,” he said calmly.
    “But how could Suzi possibly know? I send her a Christmas card once a year. I send her a note of three lines thanking her for whatever she has sent me by one of her ghastly friends. I never mentioned Alec to her, not once. I haven’t seen Suzi for ten years. Nobody ever seems to believe that.”
    “Chuck told her,” said Bob.
    Chuck? Chuck! The man with the smelly socks and no money; the man who had eaten the jar of ginger, the man who met Alec twice. How dare Chuck mention Alec’s name at the other side of the world? She was speechless with rage and shock.
    “Chuck told Suzi that it was a bad scene, and Suzi asked me to see if I could help you straighten your problems out. I guess I arrived just in time. At least I’m able to fix your sleeping problems. That’s better than talking you out of Alec.”
    “You couldn’t have talked me out of Alec, nobody could,” Catherine said, stunned by his intrusion and confidence. “I don’t know what makes you and Suzi think you have any right to interfere in other people’s affairs. People you don’t even know. It’s outrageous!”
    “Yeah, but you were agreeing earlier that we are all too buttoned up about getting to know people, the British particularly.”
    “But it’s
my
business, nobody else’s.”
    “Your friends care,” said Bob simply.
    “You’re not my friend. Suzi’s not my friend. I’ve no friends who care.”
    “Margie might care if you talked to her about it,” said Bob.
    Catherine felt weak at her thighs, as if she were going to fall. She didn’t know whether it was tiredness or the sense of unreality. How did this old, old American man know about Margie? She never told people about Margie, only Alec had known, for all the good he had been.
    “Mitzi mentioned to Suzi that you had a sister who was a problem to you. She said she was in a hotel somewhere and you were ashamed to include her in your life. That’s why I was so anxious we should meet her today and talk, all three of us.”
    Yes, Mitzi had been told about Margie. That’s because Mitzi had stayed three weeks in Catherine’s flat, and had asked where she went every Sunday. God damn Mitzi and Suzi and whatever other transatlantic spies she had harbored.
    They were passing a seat and Catherine sat down. Bob talked on in his calm voice. “I’ve rented a car; we could ride out and see your sister. I could act as an intermediary, you and she could discuss how she could participate more in your life. You would feel the benefit,
she
would feel the benefit.”
    Catherine spoke slowly and carefully. “I know you mean well. I know Suzi means well. I know Americans are thicker-skinned than we are; they are also more friendly and they risk insult more easily out of kindness. I also know it’s foolish to make generalizations about my nationality. Now given all this, can I thank you for your interest, and walk back to a bus stop with you, and part friends in some sort of way? I won’t begin to tell you how impossible I would find it to thrash out my whole life and problems with a stranger, however kind.”
    “But you were very frank about your relationship with Alec.”
    “Because I thought you were someone who hadn’t much interest and whom I would never meet again!” said Catherine desperately.
    “You mean you’d prefer to talk to someone who could be of no help?” asked Bob.
    “I don’t want help,” she said, choked.
    “You do, my dear Catherine, you do, you’re just afraid to admit it. This British reserve may have got you all through national crises but it’s no