Mischief¹
Rose fell in love with Clifford at a party which Clifford and Jocelyn gave and Patrick and Roseattended. They had been married about three years at this time, Clifford and Jocelyn a year or solonger.
Clifford and Jocelyn lived out past West Vancouver, in one of those summer cottages,haphazardly winterized, that used to line the short curving streets between the lower highway andthe sea. The party was in March, on a rainy night. Rose was nervous about going to it. She feltalmost sick as they drove through West Vancouver, watched the neon lights weeping in thepuddles on the road, listened to the condemning² tick of the windshield wipers. She would oftenafterwards look back and see herself sitting beside Patrick, in her low-cut black blouse and blackvelvet skirt which she hoped would turn out to be the right thing to wear; she was wishing theywere just going to the movies. She had no idea that her life was going to be altered.
Patrick was nervous too, although he would not have admitted it. Social life was a puzzling,often disagreeable business for them both. They had arrived in Vancouver knowing nobody. Theyfollowed leads. Rose was not sure whether they really longed for friends, or simply believed theyought to have them. They dressed up and went out to visit people, or tidied up the living room andwaited for the people who had been invited to visit them. In some cases they established steadyvisiting patterns. They had some drinks, during those evenings, and around eleven or eleven-thirty—which hardly ever came soon enough—Rose went out to the kitchen and made coffee andsomething to eat. The things she made to eat were usually squares of toast, with a slice of tomatoon top, then a square of cheese, then a bit of bacon, the whole thing broiled⁵ and held together witha toothpick. She could not manage to think of anything else.
It was easier for them to become friends with people Patrick liked than with people Rose likedbecause Rose was very adaptable⁶, in fact deceitful, and Patrick was hardly adaptable at all. But inthis case, the case of Jocelyn and Clifford, the friends were Rose’s. Or Jocelyn was. Jocelyn andRose had known enough not to try to establish couple-visiting. Patrick disliked Clifford withoutknowing him because Clifford was a violinist; no doubt Clifford disliked Patrick because Patrickworked in a branch of his family’s department store. In those days the barriers between peoplewere still strong and reliable; between arty people and business people; between men and women.

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