Dreaming of the Bones

side of the table these days—she’s been on a lecture tour.” An eminent mathematician, Christine Peregrine looked on her husband’s passion for books with the same fond incomprehension he felt for her maths.
    What an attractive man Ralph was, thought Margery, glancing at him in the candlelight. Thin and dark, with that certain indefinable air of bookishness that she had always found appealing—though she had to admit his dark hair had thinned in the years she’d known him. They’d met at some literary’ soiree given in her honor, he with a fresh degree in classics and a dream he had no money to implement, and she’d been captivated. She had helped him, although few people even now were aware of it, and today the familiar Peregrine Press logo was synonymous with the leading edge in fiction and poetry.
    At the other- end of the table Iris gave a bark of laughter at something Adam said. She’d held the floor long enough for Adam to polish off a large serving of Grace’s veal osso buco, and now he seemed to be proving he could hold his own against Iris’s rather domineering conversational style.
    Adam’s job would have given him considerable experience, thought Margery, in dealing with formidable older women, and she imagined he would listen attentively while suspecting the little weaknesses Iris’s manner concealed. Iris, the terror of both staff and students, was madly devoted to her Persian cat, and could not sleep at night without a cup of Horlicks and a hot-water bottle.
    Margery brought her attention back to Ralph, who had begun telling her about a new talent he’d discovered, and as she listened to his voice interspersed with the soft, rhythmic clinks of silver and crystal, she found herself glad of having made tonight’s effort.
    They’d finished the veal and started on Grace’s chocolate mousse when Margery heard the distant ringing of the telephone.
    ”Dame Margery, this pudding is absolutely heavenly,” said Adam. ”If you’ll forgive me the rather inappropriate adjective,” he added with a self-deprecating chuckle.
    ”Surely your boss would allow you the slight impertinence, given the exquisite nature of Grace’s mousse?” said Darcy.
    ”Or you could substitute ambrosial,” suggested Ralph, ”which is both inoffensive and true.”
    The door to the kitchen opened, and as Grace came in, Darcy said, ”How do you do it, Grace? Do tell us your secret.”
    ”Yes,” said Christine, ”do tell, please. It’s so amazingly light—”
    ”I’m sorry,” said Grace, interrupting the flow of compliments, ”but there’s a phone call for Miss Iris. It’s Miss Enid, and she sounds dreadfully upset.”
    Iris paled, and her spoon clattered into her dish. ”Oh, God. It’s Orlando , something’s happened to Orlando .” She rose, knocking the table, and turned to Grace.
    ”You can take it in the sitting room, Miss Iris,” said Grace, and led her out.
    ”Who is Orlando ?” asked Adam, understandably puzzled.
    ”Her cat,” explained Margery. ”She dotes on him. He’s named after Virginia Woolf’s character.”
    ”Rather suitably, don’t you think?” said Darcy. ”Since the poor emasculated beast is neither one thing nor the other.”
    This comment brought a few guilty smiles, but the silence round the table grew uneasy as they waited for Iris to return. What on earth would they say to her, thought Margery, if something had indeed happened to the poor cat?
    But when Iris came back into the dining room a few moments later, she showed no sign of incipient hysterics. She walked slowly to her chair and stood behind it, grasping its back with her hands. How odd, thought Margery, who prided herself on her powers of observation, that she had not noticed her friend’s enlarged knuckles, white now with the strength of her grip on the chair.
    ”I’m sorry, Margery—all of you—to spoil such a lovely party, but I’m afraid I have some very distressing news. Vic McClellan died this afternoon.”

Part 2

    [W]omen have been deprived of the narratives, or the texts, plots, or examples, by which they might assume power over... their lives.

    CAROLYN HEILBRUN,
    from Writing a Woman’s Life

9

    …Do you think there’s a far border town, somewhere,
    The desert’s edge, last of the lands we know,
    Some gaunt eventual limit of our light,
    In which I’ll find you waiting; and we’ll go
    Together, hand in hand again, out there.
    Into the waste we know not, into the night?

    RUPERT