ABSTRACT
BIDDY. I didn't at first understand what washappening. For someone like me, who was used to being tolerated, it came as a surprise. You see, before, everything I said was passed over. Well, smiled at, but the conversation would continue elsewhere. I was like the final touches of a well decorated house. It gives pleasure, but you don't notice it. England still had women who went to good schools, and looked after large homes in the country, horses, dogs, children, that sort of thing, that was my voice. Tony-that's my first husband-said he found my conversation comforting background noise when he read the papers. But then, silences began to greet everything I said. Heavy silences. I thought there was something wrong. Then I noticed they were waiting for more words, and these words had suddenly taken on a tremendous importance. But I was still saying the same things. You know, about shopping at Harrods, and trains being slow, and good
avocados being hard to come by, and cleaning ladies even harder. And then, I understood. You see, I had become tremendously rich. Not myself, but my husband, my second husband. And when you're that rich, nothing you dois trivial. If! took an hour telling a group of people how I had looked for and not found a good pair of gardening gloves, if I went into every detail of the weeks I had spent on this search, the phone bills I had run up, the catalogues I had returned, they were absolutely riveted. Riveted. Because it seemed everything I did, now that I was so tremendously wealthy because of my second husband, mattered. Mattered tremendously. I hadn't expected this, because you see, my husband was foreign, Greek actually, and I found that not - well, not quite properly English you know, to be married to a Greek - after all, Biddy Andreas? I could imagine my headmistress - we had a Greek girl at Benenden, we all turned down invitations to her island - and Yoyo - that's my husband, George, Giorgos, actuallyhe didn't even go to school here - but he was so rich and I became used to it - him, and me: being important.
