Pulse

bottle opener, even the ice tray.
    The trolley clattered away. Alice found herself regretting the days of proper restaurant cars with silver service and white-jacketed waiters skilled at delivering vegetables withclasped fork and spoon while outside the landscape lurched. Life, she thought, was mostly about the gradual loss of pleasure. She and Jane had given up sex at about the same time. She was no longer interested in drink; Jane had stopped caring about food – or at least, its quality. Alice gardened; Jane did crosswords, occasionally saving time by filling in answers which couldn’t possibly be right.
    Jane was glad Alice never rebuked her for taking a drink earlier than some. She felt a rush of affection for this poised, unmessy friend who always made sure that they caught their train.
    ‘That was a nice young man who interviewed us,’ said Alice. ‘Properly respectful.’
    ‘He was to you. But he did that thing to me.’
    ‘What thing?’
    ‘Didn’t you notice?’ Jane gave a sigh of self-pity. ‘When he mentioned all those books that my latest reminded him of. And you can’t very well say you haven’t read some of them or you’ll look like an ignoramus. So you go along with it and then everyone assumes that’s where you got your ideas from.’
    Alice thought this unduly paranoid. ‘They weren’t thinking that, Jane. More likely they were writing him down as a show-off. And they loved it when he mentioned Moby-Dick and you put your head on one side and said, “Is that the one with the whale?”’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘Jane, you’re not telling me you haven’t read Moby-Dick ?’
    ‘Did it look as if I hadn’t?’
    ‘No, not at all.’
    ‘Good. Well, I wasn’t exactly lying. I saw the film. Gregory Peck. Was it good?’
    ‘The film?’
    ‘No, the book, silly.’
    ‘Since you ask, I haven’t read it either.’
    ‘Alice, you’re such a friend , you know.’
    ‘Do you read those young men everyone’s going on about?’
    ‘Which ones?’
    ‘The ones everyone’s going on about.’
    ‘No. I think they’ve got quite enough readers already, don’t you?’
    Their own sales were holding up, just about. A couple of thousand in hardback, twenty or so in paper. They still had a certain name-recognition. Alice wrote a weekly column about life’s uncertainties and misfortunes, though Jane thought it would be improved by more references to Alice’s own life and fewer to Epictetus. Jane was still in demand when radio programmes needed someone to fill the Social Policy/Woman/Non-Professional/Humour slot; though one producer had firmly added ‘BIM’ to her contact details, meaning ‘Best in Morning’.
    Jane wanted to keep the mood going. ‘What about the young women everyone’s going on about?’
    ‘I suppose I pretend a little more to have read them than with the boys.’
    ‘So do I. Is that bad?’
    ‘No, I think it’s sisterly.’
    Jane flinched as a great wind-blast from a train going in the opposite direction suddenly rocked them. Why on earth did they put the tracks so close together? And instantly her head was full of helicopter news-footage: carriages jackknifed – they always used that verb, making it sound the more violent – trains strewn at the bottom of embankments, flashing lights, stretcher crews and, in the background, one carriage mounting another like mating metal. Quickly her mind ran on to plane crashes, mass slaughter, cancer, the strangling of old ladies who lived alone, and the probable absence of immortality. The God Who Approved of Things was powerless against such visions. She tipped the last of the cognac into her tea. She must get Alice to distract her.
    ‘What are you thinking about?’ she asked, timid as a first-timer in a book-signing queue.
    ‘Actually, I was wondering if you’d ever been jealous of me.’
    ‘Why were you wondering that?’
    ‘I don’t know. Just one of those stray thoughts that arrive.’
    ‘Good. Because it’s hardly kind.’
    ‘Isn’t it?’
    ‘Well, if I admit I’ve been jealous of you, that makes me a mean-spirited friend. And if I say I haven’t, it sounds as if I’m so smug I can’t find anything in your life or your books worthy of jealousy.’
    ‘Jane, I’m sorry. Put like that – I’m a bitch. Apologies.’
    ‘Accepted. But since you ask …’
    ‘Are you sure I want to hear this now?’ Strange how there were still times when she underestimated Jane.
    ‘… I don’t know if “jealous” is the right