Kid Gloves Read Online Free Page A

that she had spoiled his party and must leave immediately. She was
horrified and did what she could to make amends, saying that casting any sort of shadow on his
special day had been the furthest thing from her mind. She was terribly sorry if she had given
offence. Again it may have been the influence of the cocktail, multicultural in its own right,
combining champagne and brandy from the Old World, sugar and bitters fromthe New, which gave Dad’s verdict its austere force. ‘That,’ he said, ‘is something you
will have to live with for the rest of your life.’
    This was a dismal own goal, to send a guest away,
taking all the shine off the occasion, and a warning that some of Dad’s less appealing behaviour
patterns were still some way from retirement.
    There were times after he retired when Dad would
have to be helped the two hundred yards home from Hall, more or less to the point of being
carried by Inn staff or fellow benchers. This was hideously embarrassing, for my mother having
to receive this stumbling procession of dignitaries, for me if I happened to run into them as
they tried to negotiate the steps outside number 3 Gray’s Inn Square, but it was nowhere as bad
as it might have been if he had felt any shame himself. Hangdog wasn’t his style, or it wasn’t
until the next morning. He was serene, as if this was the way he always came home, or as if
these nice fellows had wanted to give him a treat and he hadn’t liked to say no. The whole
charade made it surprisingly easy to play along.
    Sometimes he would remain roughly vertical until
he reached the bedroom, then topple slowly sideways without distress to the floor, perhaps
pulling some bedclothes with him in what was more a slide than a fall, a controlled descent with
a touch of the maladroit grace of the performers he most admired, Max Wall, Tommy Cooper, Ralph
Richardson.
    Moderation didn’t come naturally to Dad, and
self-discipline needed reinforcement from outside. At various points in later life Dad went to a
luxurious health farm, his favoured being called Champneys, to lose a few pounds. The regime
also required abstinence from alcohol. These expensive bouts of self-denial could be redeemed if
he happened to coincide with a woman who shared his taste and talent for flirting. Flirtationwithout possibility made the hours speed by. Age didn’t disqualify such
compatible women, but nor certainly did youth. The word he used of them was ‘sparklers’.
    Flirtation as he practised it wasn’t any sort of
rehearsal for infidelity but a formal vocal display, lyrical rather than heroic, little Wigmore
Hall recitals rather than opera house
tours de force
. When a woman friend of mine paid
a visit to the Gray’s Inn flat, Dad called her ‘darling’. My mother was only marginally piqued,
but decided to patrol the marital perimeter by asking sweetly, ‘If Frances is Darling, what then
am I?’
    In general Dad imposed himself on company by
force of personality rather than brute quickness of wit. His preferred style was the polished
story (‘Did I ever tell you about the time …?’), not the dazzling improvisation. It helped
that from his perch among the higher ranks of a hierarchical profession he didn’t often meet the
Challenge Direct. But now he had to exert steady pressure on the charm pedal if he was to
accelerate safely out of danger. ‘Sheila is Darling One,’ he said, ‘Frances is Darling Two.’
This formula not only smoothed any ruffled wifely feathers but passed into currency. If Frances
was visiting, or if Dad answered the phone to her, he would greet her as Darling Two, and be
rewarded, as we all hoped to be, by her throaty smoker’s laugh.
    In the absence of sparklers Champneys could be a
bit of a martyrdom, forcing his thoughts inward. Once I received a postcard from him at that
address, saying: ‘No sparklers here this time. You have always been a rewarding son.’ The lack
of a logical connection only added to the touchingness of