Other Women: Unabridged [Audiobook] (Audio Cassette)

Reviewers praise this book as entertaining and yet poignant
"A small steely gem ..Bacon's writing is a precision instrument with a sharp,satirical edge."SUNDAY TELEGRAPH. "Beautifully written..Bacon has genuinely captured the poignancy of her characters..Although an emotional journey,Bacon's story is so full of surprises that it reads like a thriller." PUBLISHERS'WEEKLY. "Other Women takes a wry and recognisable look at the shifting sands of family life and human relationships..highly entertaining."THE LADY --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

The ridiculous thing was that it had all come out by mistake. They had been driving back from London after a dinner party > or rather she had been driving, Grover being well over the limit. There was a surprising amount of traffic about still, and Grover was a bad passenger, constantly pointing out hazards that she'd already seen. She hadn't enjoyed the dinner party;the head of Grover's section, a fat American in his late middle-age, was showing off his latest wife, a former model, baby-faced and sulky, wearing something bright blue designed to reveal the maximum amount of flesh. The other husbands paid homage to her obvious charms with ogling eyes and fatuous remarks, which their wives bore with varying degrees of strain on their faces. 'Very nice girl, Stella,' Grover remarked as she drove. 'There's a car parked by the lights.' 'I've seen it, thank you. ' 'Lucky chap, old Leary.' 'Well named, too.' 'That remark is unworthy of you, Corinne. He is an excellent businessman and must be worth at least a billion dollars.' 'Yes. Stella said she thought of him not so much as a husband as a hedge against inflation.' 'Oh, did she say that?' Grover had asked, deflated. She had meant him to be. But it was true all the same. After the meal Stella had led the women into her bedroom, kicked off her shoes and lain down on the vast bed. The bedroom was palatial, carpeted with what felt like tufted angora, so deep that you lost your feet in it. Stella encouraged them to prowl around and admire. 'Don't be jealous,' she said suddenly. 'There's not much to be jealous of really.' It was then that she made the remark about not thinking of Leary as a husband so much as a hedge against inflation. 'But didn't you want a proper husband?' one of them asked. 'A girl like you of twenty-one--' 'I've had one "proper" husband, thank you,' Stella said. 'I married him when I was eighteen and stuck him a year. We had no money and two abortions. And now I've got all this,' she said, indicating the vast room. 'And an impotent old man for a husband. Well, you can't have everything, can you?' She went and sat in front of a dressing table the size of a small boat, and examined her profile in its triple mirror, then began delicately to probe, with a scarlet fingernail, a minute pimple lurking in the fold of her left nostril. 'He tried sobe dreatment last year,' she said, speaking adenoidally as she pressed her finger against her nose. 'He'd read aboud dis doctor who dreated impodent men wid injections dey gabe demselves.' 'That's nice,' Corinne had put in, embarrassed. Stella released the blemished nostril. 'Not really,' she said. 'He couldn't manage the needle either.Not that I care,'she added,"I'd sooner have scrambled eggs any time.' Corinne had repeated this conversation with some relish to Grover as they drove. 'There's a pedestrian crossing coming up,' he said. 'I have seen the pedestrian crossing,' she told him sharply. 'And the elderly couple waiting to cross it. I wasn't planning to mow them down. It isn't the season for culling old age pensioners.' 'All right. I just thought you might not have noticed.' 'If I hadn't noticed it, I'd be no more fit to drive than you are.' 'I'm perfectly fit to drive. It's just that I don't want some officious bobby, with nothing better to do, to come breathalysing me and taking away my licence.' 'Have you ever thought of joining the firm's scheme for drying out executives?' 'I am not in need of drying out, Corinne, as you well know. Besides, when Jameson went away to be dried out he came back teetotal but addicted to smoking. Everyone knows that nicotine is more dangerous to a man's health than alcohol.' 'But less dangerous to other people's lives,' Corinne pointed out. They drove in silence for a while.Grover dozed off, began to snore. Corinne relaxed. She enjoyed night driving; you could go faster, knowing there were no oncoming lights. Grover woke with a start. 'It's still limited to sixty you know,' he said. She tensed immediately 'Oh, go back to sleep,' she told him. 'I wasn't sleeping.' 'Then why were you snoring like a pig?' 'There's no need to be abusive. A man can't help snoring.' 'Especially if he's too fat. I noticed you didn't worry much about your diet this evening.' He sighed. 'Must you nag so?' 'When the doctor gave you that diet, you asked me to help you keep to it." 'It's better to be overweight than anorexic.' It was hopeless trying to argue with Grover. 'Well, I'm fed up with thinking up slimming dishes for you,' she said. 'Messing about with steamed fish and salads.' They were approaching a side road on the left. A van was waiting there, giving way to them. A car was approaching. 'And then the minute you're out of the house,' Corinne went on, 'you stuff yourself with expense account food and-' 'Look out,' Grover yelled. 'There's something coming out of that turning.' Thinking he had seen something she had missed, she swerved violently over to the right and would have hit the oncoming car if its driver had not pulled off the road, bounded along the grass verge , before getting himself back on to the road. Then he blasted his horn,shook his fist in the driving mirror and disappeared round the next corner. Shaken, Corinne pulled into the side of the road and stopped. 'What did you yell like that for?' she demanded furiously 'There was nothing there.' 'I was just warning you.I thought you hadn't seen the van. " 'If I hadn't seen the damned van, I shouldn't be fit to have a driving licence,' she said. 'I saw it way back, waiting for us to pass. You nearly caused a very bad accident.' Suddenly her temper snapped. 'You're a menace,' she said. 'And stupid with it. How would you feel if you were driving and I pointed out every sign, every car, every crossing? You'd go mad. And don't forget you took your test three times to my one.' Grover was sitting speechless, which encouraged her to rage on. 'Don't you stop to think how distracting it is? How can anyone concentrate with you nagging and fussing away the whole time? You can bloody well drive yourself now. I've had enough. You've been foul the whole evening, slobbering away over that pathetic little Stella, swilling wine and overeating. God knows what you're like when you're abroad. And don't think I don't have a pretty shrewd idea of what you get up to there either. It would hardly be in character to spend your nights alone in your luxury hotels, would it?' The odd thing was that she hadn't meant it. She was still thinking of boozing companions, but she saw his expression change, read plainly in his eyes what he thought she had guessed. The anger left her, something awful was happening inside her. Oh no, please no, not that. She took a grip on herself. 'Well?' she said quietly 'How did you know?' he asked. Since she hadn't known, that was impossible to answer. 'I've no intention of telling you,' she said. 'Wives always find out in the end.' 'Have you known for long?' That was difficult too. 'Quite a while,' she said, hedging her bets. 'Maybe not the first few times,' she risked. From his silence she knew that she'd guessed right. 'What do you intend to do about it?' he asked. He was subdued. For once she had the upper hand. She chose the way of dignity. She said in as queenly a manner as she could, 'We will discuss it in the morning. Now it is neither the time nor the place. And you will kindly refrain from making any more comments on my driving.' Then she turned on the ignition and put the car into gear. Unfortunately it was the wrong gear and the car shot backwards into a tree. Somehow in the days that followed, Grover contrived to make it seem that the wrong that he had done her had paled into insignificance in comparison with the damage she had done to his expensive car. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.