Paula Inchon

Paula Inchon is Gerard Inchon’s wife, seen chiefly through Sarah Trafford’s perspective during a social visit and a country weekend. Sarah’s nickname for her, the Trophy Wife, captures the novel’s deliberately barbed first impression: Paula appears expensively composed and socially assured, yet bored by her surroundings. The episodes do not disclose much about Paula beyond these encounters, but they make her a vivid counterpoint to Sarah and show how quickly appearance, class, and behavior become material for judgment.

Identity and Presentation

At first, Mark Trafford greets Wigwam with false warmth, while Paula regards Wigwam as though she were an exhibit that had wandered out of a zoo. The scene establishes Paula through her response to someone she considers out of place: the distance between the women is social as well as visual. Sarah’s account makes clothing the most immediate sign of that distance, but it does not present the contrast as neutral. The descriptions carry Sarah’s own comic impatience with the gathering and its carefully managed manners.

Paula’s red dress is cut four measured inches above the knee, with matching lipstick; Sarah’s narration associates the look with a face suited to an advertising slogan and a figure presented for other people’s appraisal. The description is pointedly gendered: Paula’s entrance into the scene is rendered through the public image of her body, and the joke depends on how readily that image seems to fit a recognizable social type. That framing tells as much about the observing voice as it does about Paula. The passage offers no access to Paula’s private thoughts, and its judgments should not be mistaken for an independent account of her character.

The Gathering and Gerard’s Arrival

When Paula is introduced by name, she wears a lilac skirt and jacket that Sarah thinks could have appeared at a West End opening without alteration. Her air of boredom seems to belong to the same polished ensemble. Sarah imagines that a weekend in the country might feel, from Paula’s perspective, like a sentence without hope of parole. The comparison turns an ordinary visit into a comic imprisonment, but it also suggests that Paula’s cultivated appearance does not amount to visible pleasure in her circumstances.

That boredom eases when Sarah and Mark accept Gerard’s offer of drinks. Paula makes the conventional inquiry about their journey, and Mark replies that it was fine. Later, when the doorbell announces Gerard’s arrival, Paula shows undisguised relief: he has parked the Porsche and comes in alone and unarmed, while Sarah catches the couple exchanging pantomimed kisses. The small performance makes their reunion look both familiar and staged. Paula’s relief at his arrival is clear in Sarah’s observation; what it means to Paula beyond that moment remains unstated.

The Country Weekend

The weekend’s outdoor activity gives way to drinking. Gerard opens several bottles of wine, and the long afternoon becomes difficult for Sarah to measure: time seems to pause and then race ahead. Paula drinks steadily and talks about London, including the best places to be seen and what makes them desirable. Sarah finds the talk increasingly ridiculous, comparing its sound to that of a Muppet. Her amused perspective shapes the whole episode; Paula’s conversation is presented not as a considered account of her interests but as something Sarah listens to while struggling to keep track of her own suspicions and enjoyment.

Sarah becomes drunk enough to giggle uncontrollably and is led upstairs by Mark. Several hours later, she wakes in a dark room, cleans herself up, and hears a noise from the adjoining room. Paula is fully clothed on the bed, snoring loudly. The contrast between the socially polished woman and this unguarded aftermath supplies the scene’s comic reversal: the supposed survivor of countless city nights is, in Sarah’s eyes, no better off for the country air. The moment punctures the image established by Paula’s clothes and social talk, without establishing that the image was anything more than Sarah’s partial view.

Domestic Setting and Narrative Function

The next morning, Gerard makes a tray for Sarah and says that he and Paula are going to mass, expecting to return in about an hour. Mark is out of the running as company, so Sarah drinks tea alone and begins thinking about the rooms of the cottage she has not yet seen. When she looks into the couple’s bedroom, it strikes her as little different from a second guest room; even the clothes in the wardrobes seem like spares. She imagines that Gerard and Paula may have matching counterparts in their London wardrobes, sparing them the trouble of carrying clothes back and forth. This is Sarah’s conjecture, not confirmed information about the couple’s habits, but it extends the impression of a life arranged for convenience and display.

Paula’s role in these episodes is therefore less a fully explored personal history than a social image repeatedly tested by circumstance. The red dress and lilac suit, the bored manner, the relief at Gerard’s arrival, the steady drinking, and the snoring collapse all come to the reader through Sarah’s watchful, often uncharitable eye. Their comedy depends on the gap between public composure and private discomfort, but the narrative leaves that gap unresolved: Paula is seen clearly as an object of Sarah’s attention, while her own explanation of herself remains beyond the scenes provided.