Free Wish Her Safe at Home by Stephen Benatar

Bristol?”
    “Very much so.”
    I bought a tablet of lavender soap; the same as the one I’d got here previously. I decided the Paracetamol would certainly be cheaper at Boots.
    “Have you settled nearby?” he asked.
    “Buckland Street.” It was the first name I could think of.
    “Oh, just around the corner.” That, too, seemed an unnecessary scrap of information. I definitely wouldn’t be returning here. “Then maybe we’ll be seeing something of you. Nice.”
    It was almost what he’d said before. This time I wasn’t fooled. They could make a dupe out of you once... because, after all, you were only human, you didn’t set out to be cynical. But in their arrogance they supposed that they could go
on
doing it, time after time after time.
    I thanked him with dignity and in a very natural manner whose slighter degree of coolness such a person could hardly be expected to appreciate. But that was good. I didn’t want him thinking his rebuff had been important.
    Outside, a few doors along, I passed the marriage bureau through which he’d probably met her. I had never understood how anybody, no matter how lonely, could be sufficiently lost to all sense of pride as to resort to that.
    But I wreaked, I thought, a rather subtle form of revenge. I went into another chemist’s shop (it wasn’t Boots) where the prices were most likely as inflated as his own. And I not only bought the Paracetamol. “Do you happen to stock Badedas?” I asked, with a merry ripple of laughter. “Because, if so, I’ll take the very largest size you have.”

16
    Yet despite such inspired retaliation I knew I needed to cheer myself up. I recognized the signs. For the first time since coming to Bristol I felt quite low. Help! I went to the public library.
    Where I quickly began to recover. The woman at the desk might have been no older than I was but unquestionably she looked it. Someone should have told her about touching up her hair or even about the invention of contact lenses. I wanted to say, “You know, my dear, men seldom make passes at girls who wear glasses.”
    I said: “Men seldom make passes at girls who wear glasses.”
    I tried to convey that it was really neither here nor there but that it might still be as well to think about it. I didn’t want to hurt her.
    “Excuse me?”
    I considered adding that they only caused you trouble for the first week. Contact lenses I mean.
    I flashed her a winning smile. “Errol Flynn,” I said.
    “Oh. Books on the cinema are over there.”
    I saw that she wasn’t wearing a wedding ring. I automatically liked her and despised her and felt sorry for her and was glad.
    “Would you know offhand if you’ve anything on Horatio Gavin?”
    “Is he connected with the cinema?”
    “Oh! You can’t be serious!”
    She led me across to the biography section. “I’m sorry,” she said. “What was that name again?”
    It was all very well—she was certainly not unpleasant but I began to feel resentful. Both on Mr. Gavin’s behalf and more obscurely on my own. Probably the fact that I now owned the house in which he’d lived entitled me to some measure of sensitivity.
    There was nothing on the shelves. “I’ll check the cards,” she said.
    This was more successful. “Ah, yes, I’ve found something! Oh? Was he a local man?”
    I answered with both relish and severity. “He lived barely half a mile from where we stand now. Why?”
    “This booklet was published by a local press. I’ll go to check if we’ve still got it.”
    After five minutes she returned empty-handed—and apparently they couldn’t even acquire it for me.
    “Well, never mind,” I said. “At least you can give me the name of the press.”
    “I’m afraid the press closed down. Several years ago.”
    “This is absurd!”
    I felt prepared to make a scene. What had started out as almost an idle enquiry had now become a matter of some urgency.
    She said: “I suppose you could try in the secondhand bookshops.”