Free Foreign Land by Jonathan Raban Page A

years—February 18th 1837”, like a tombstone.
    “Sweet,” said Diana Pym. “Who was Eliz.?”
    “I’ve no idea,” said George. He stared irritably at the straggling ends of white hair which were distributed aroundthe back of the neck of the black dress. “Some ancestor or other.” He realized that he had completely forgotten her face—if he’d ever noticed it in the first place. When she did eventually turn round, it would hardly have surprised him if she had revealed herself to be wearing a monkey mask. In the event, her face was smudgy; its firmest feature was the web of fine lines round her eyes and mouth. No wonder he’d forgotten it. He saw that her glass was already empty. Was the woman an alcoholic?
    “Do sit down,” George said, putting a testy emphasis on the
do
. He pointed helpfully at his mother’s black vinyl sofa. The plastic had been grained to look like leather; it succeeded only in having the appearance of ferns petrified in coal. The quidnunc seated herself among the fossils. The sofa sounded as if it was discreetly passing wind.
    Diana Pym smiled and held out her glass for more. “Thanks,” she gruffed. As he padded across the slate floor to the kitchen she called: “Watch your head!” Then, a moment later, “Oh—there’s your coat of arms. What does the motto mean?”
    George, unscrewing the cap from the whisky in the kitchen, grunted. He couldn’t remember the motto. He thought—I brought this on myself.
    He returned to the sitting room, handed her the refilled glass, and sank his length in the one bearable chair in the house, his father’s woodwormy chintz buttonback. “So,” he said, smiling as blandly as he dared, “what were
you?”
    A nimbus of cigarette smoke hid her face. She dashed it away with her hand. Her Wedgwood blue eyes were suddenly wary and reproachful. She looked as if he’d threatened to slap her. Oh, damn these people for whom the liberties they take so gaily for themselves are treated as infringements and offences if found in anyone else’s hands! Damn the woman’s impertinent questions! Damn her nettled looks!
    “I was Julie Midnight,” said Diana Pym, “I thought you knew.” She blew smoke like a gusty cherub in a corner of an old map.
    The name was a puzzle of letters. Then they sorted themselves out. It was impossible—surely?
    It wasn’t long ago. A few years, at most. He remembered Julie Midnight. Sitting alone, bored, in his hotel room in St James’s Street, he was watching television. He was half dressed for dinner. The black and white picture was swept by snow flurries of interference. Julie Midnight was singing.
    That was not quite true. She didn’t sing so much as talk, in a sad, flat little voice, over a moody backing of guitar and orchestra. Something-something-laughter … something-something-the
day after
. It was the appearance of the girl under the television lights that had stuck in his head: her helmet of pale hair; her severe black polo-necked jersey; her face, as white and fine boned as the face of a Donatello saint in marble; the way her eyes appealed to the camera. She was irresistibly vulnerable. You wanted to reach out and save her from the brazen glare of the studio. For three or four minutes, watching the shaky image at the end of the bed, George loved Julie Midnight with a heartstopping purity that he’d never be able to summon for a real woman.
    “I’m so sorry—” George said. He was incredulous. “Of course—I should have recognized you—”
    “Oh, no-one does now, thank God,” Diana Pym said. “It’s just that the village knows, like villages do.”
    “Do you—still sing?” he said, feeling stupid as the question escaped him, unbidden.
    “No. I garden.”
    “It was … just recently, though … surely?”
    “No—my last concert was in ’63. They always used to make me up to look dead; I was really dead by the time the Beatles and the Rolling Stones came in.”
    “I thought I saw you singing