Documente Academic
Documente Profesional
Documente Cultură
WOMAN
Complete Short Stories
Margaret drabble
A DAY in the L I F E
of a S M I L I NG WOM A N
F
Complete Short Stories
MARGARET DRABBLE
Edited by José Francisco Fernández
F
Introduction ix
Note on the Present Edition xxi
F
It was the kind of party at which nobody got intro-
duced. The room was dark, lit only by candles in bottles,
and although a certain amount of feeble shuffling was going
on in the centre of the floor, most of the guests were grouped
around yelling in a more or less cheery fashion to people
whom they were lucky enough to know already. There was
a lot of noise, both musical and conversational, and the gen-
eral tone seemed to Humphrey to be rather high, a kind of
cross between the intellectual and the artistic. He could
hear from time to time words like ‘defence mechanism’ and
‘Harold Pinter’ being bandied about above the deafening
body of sound. He supposed, upon reflection, that one might
have expected this kind of thing from his host, a young man
whom he had met in a pub the week before, who had been
most pressing in his invitation, but who had hardly seemed
to recognise Humphrey at all when he had duly arrived,
some time ago. Now, after half an hour of total neglect, he
was beginning to feel rather annoyed. He was in many ways
a conventional young man, and had not the nerve to go and
accost a group of strangers, who anyway seemed to be get-
ting on quite nicely without him, simply in order to add his
own unoriginal views on Harold Pinter. On the other hand,
he did not really want to leave.
The situation was made even more annoying by the fact
that everyone looked so interesting. That was why they were
2 A Day in the Life of a Smiling Woman
whole dreary scene. He lit his cigarette and stood there, can-
dle and bottle in hand, staring gloomily into the small waver-
ing flame. Thoughts of dramatic calls for attention continued
to flow before him: what about that chap he had once known
who had put a cigarette out on the back of his hand because
some girl said he was a physical coward? He had been drunk
at the time, of course, and it had left a horrible scar, but
the girl had been most impressed: indeed she had screamed
loudly and burst into tears. Humphrey reflected glumly that
he could have put out all twenty of his cigarettes all over his
person and nobody would have batted an eye-lid. One had to
be introduced first, before one could embark on that kind of
thing. One had to have an audience.
When it happened, it happened so suddenly that he never
quite knew whether it was inspiration or accident. As he did
it, he did not quite know what he expected to happen: clearly
he could not have hoped that she would go up in a sheet of
flame, nor even that she should sustain any injury, however
mild, for he was a kind and unmalicious person. She did not
go up in flame, anyway: hair is not a particularly flammable
substance, not even long flowing fiery-red hanks of it, and
he did not apply the candle with much violence. But it did
singe and scorch, with a most alarming and dangerous smell,
strong enough to cause a great commotion.
‘Good Lord, Justina,’ said one of her admirers, ‘you’re
on fire!’ and he only just had time to put the candle down be-
fore she twisted round to clutch at the singed ends, shrieking
with dismay and delight, and lost her balance and fell into his
arms.
‘You did it,’ she said, challengingly, from a breath-taking
proximity. ‘You did it, you set me alight.’
And he, reading in her face nothing but pleasure at having
created so large a disturbance, held on to her tight and said:
‘Let me introduce myself, my name is Humphrey.’
6 A Day in the Life of a Smiling Woman
(1964)