‘My dear,’ said Mrs Angusthorpe, ‘I’ve seen the seamy side of Jackson Major. The more I think of him the more I can recall. He forced his way up that school, snatching at chances that weren’t his to take, putting himself first, like he did in the half-mile race. There was cruelty in Jackson Major’s eye, and ruthlessness and dullness. Like my husband, he has no sense of humour.’
‘Mrs Angusthorpe, I really can’t listen to this. I was married yesterday to a man I’m in love with. It’ll be all right –’
‘Why will it be all right?’
‘Because,’ snapped Daphne Jackson with sudden spirit, ‘I shall ask my husband as soon as he returns to take me at once from this horrible hotel. My marriage does not concern you, Mrs Angusthorpe.’
‘They are talking now on a riverside, whispering maybe so as not to disturb their prey. They are murmuring about the past, of achievements on the sports field and marches undertaken by a cadet force. While you and I are having a different kind of talk.’
‘What our husbands are saying to one another, Mrs Angusthorpe, may well make more sense.’
‘What they are not saying is that two women in the bar of this hotel are unhappy. They have forgotten about the two women: they are more relaxed and contented than ever they are with us.’
Mrs Angusthorpe, beady-eyed as she spoke, saw the effect of her words reflected in the uneasy face of the woman beside her. She felt herself carried away by this small triumph, she experienced a headiness that was blissful. She saw in her mind another scene, imagining herself, over lunch, telling her husband about the simple thing that had happened. She would watch him sitting there in all his dignity: she would wait, until he was about to pass a forkful of food to his mouth and then she would say: ‘Jackson Major’s wife has left him already.’ And she would smile at him.
‘You walked across the dining-room at breakfast,’ said Mrs Angusthorpe. ‘An instinct warned me then that you’d made an error.’
‘I haven’t made an error. I’ve told you, Mrs Angusthorpe –’
‘Time will erode the polish of politeness. One day soon you’ll see amusement in his eyes when you offer an opinion.’
‘Please stop, Mrs Angusthorpe. I must go away if you continue like this –’
‘ “This man’s a bore,” you’ll suddenly say to yourself, and look at him amazed.’
‘Mrs Angusthorpe –’
‘Amazed that you could ever have let it happen.’
‘Oh God, please stop,’ cried Daphne, tears coming suddenly from her eyes, her hands rushing to her cheeks.
‘Don’t be a silly girl,’ whispered Mrs Angusthorpe, grasping the arm of her companion and tightening her fingers on it until Daphne felt pain. She thought as she felt it that Mrs Angusthorpe was a poisonous woman. She struggled to keep back further tears, she tried to wrench her arm away.
‘I’ll tell the man Doyle to order you a car,’ said Mrs Angusthorpe. ‘It’ll take you into Galway. I’ll lend you money, Mrs Jackson. By one o’clock tonight you could be sitting in your bed at home, eating from a tray that your mother brought you. A divorce will come through and one day you’ll meet a man who’ll love you with a tenderness.’
‘My husband loves me, Mrs Angusthorpe –’
‘Your husband should marry a woman who’s keen on horses or golf, a woman who might take a whip to him, being ten years older than himself. My dear, you’re like me: you’re a delicate person.’
‘Please let go my arm. You’ve no right to talk to me like this –’
‘He is my husband’s creature, my husband moulded him. The best head boy he’d ever known, he said to me.’
Daphne, calmer now, did not say anything. She felt the pressure on her arm being removed. She stared ahead of her, at a round mat on the table that advertised Celebration Ale. Without wishing to and perhaps, she thought, because she was so upset, she saw herself suddenly as Mrs Angusthorpe had suggested, sitting up in her own bedroom with a tray of food on her knees and her mother standing beside her, saying it was all right. ‘I suddenly realized,’ she heard herself saying. ‘He took me to this awful hotel, where his old headmaster was. He gave me wine and whiskey, and then in bed I thought I might be sick.’ Her mother replied to her, telling her that it wasn’t a disgrace, and her father came in later and told her not to worry. It was better not to be unhappy, her father said: it was better to have courage now.
‘Let me tell Doyle to order a car at once.’ Mrs Angusthorpe was on her feet, eagerness in her eyes and voice. Her cheeks were flushed from sherry and excitement.
‘You’re quite outrageous,’ said Daphne Jackson.
She left the bar and in the hall Doyle again desired her as she passed. He spoke to her, telling her he’d already ordered a few more bottles of that sherry so that she and Mrs Angusthorpe could sip a little as often as they liked. It was sherry, he repeated, that was very popular in the locality. She nodded and mounted the stairs, not hearing much of what he said, feeling that as she pushed one leg in front of the other her whole body would open and tears would gush from everywhere. Why did she have to put up with talk like that on the first morning of her honeymoon? Why had he casually gone out fishing with his old headmaster? Why had he brought her to this terrible place and then made her drink so that the tension would leave her body? She sobbed on the stairs, causing Doyle to frown and feel concerned for her.
‘Are you all right?’ Jackson Major asked, standing in the doorway of their room, looking to where she sat, by the window. He closed the door and went to her. ‘You’ve been all right?’ he said.
She nodded, smiling a little. She spoke in a low voice: she said she thought it possible that conversations might be heard through the partition wall. She pointed to the wall she spoke of. ‘It’s only a partition,’ she said.
He touched it and agreed, but gave it as his opinion that little could be heard through it since they themselves had not heard the people on the other side of it. Partitions nowadays, he pronounced, were constructed always of soundproof material.
‘Let’s have a drink before lunch,’ she said.
In the hour that had elapsed since she had left Mrs Angusthorpe in the bar she had changed her stockings and her dress. She had washed her face in cold water and had put lipstick and powder on it. She had brushed her suede shoes with a rubber brush.
‘All right,’ he said. ‘We’ll have a little drink.’
He kissed her. On the way downstairs he told her about the morning’s fishing and the conversations he had had with his old headmaster. Not asking her what she’d like, he ordered both of them gin and tonic in the bar.
‘I know her better than you do, sir,’ Doyle said, bringing her a glass of sherry, but Jackson Major didn’t appear to realize what had happened, being still engrossed in the retailing of the conversations he had had with his old headmaster.
‘I want to leave this hotel,’ she said. ‘At once, darling, after lunch.’
‘Daphne –’
‘I do.’
She didn’t say that Mrs Angusthorpe had urged her to leave him, nor that the Angusthorpes had lain awake during the night, hearing what there was to hear. She simply said she didn’t at all like the idea of spending her honeymoon in a hotel which also contained his late headmaster and the headmaster’s wife. ‘They remember you as a boy,’ she said. ‘For some reason it makes me edgy. And anyway it’s such a nasty hotel.’
She leaned back after that speech, glad that she’d been able to make it as she’d planned to make it. They would move on after lunch, paying whatever money must necessarily be paid. They would find a pleasant room in a pleasant hotel and the tension inside her would gradually relax. In the Hurlingham Club she had made this tall man look at her when he spoke to her, she had made him regard her and find her attractive, as she found him. They had said to one another that they had fallen in love, he had asked her to marry him, and she had happily agreed: there was nothing the matter.
‘My dear, it would be quite impossibl
e,’ he said.
‘Impossible?’
‘At this time of year, in the middle of the season? Hotel rooms are gold dust, my dear. Angusthorpe was saying as much. His wife’s a good sort, you know –’
‘I want to leave here.’
He laughed good-humouredly. He gestured with his hands, suggesting his helplessness.
‘I cannot stay here,’ she said.
‘You’re tired, Daphne.’
‘I cannot stay here for a fortnight with the Angusthorpes. She’s a woman who goes on all the time; there’s something the matter with her. While you go fishing –’
‘Darling, I had to go this morning. I felt it polite to go. If you like, I’ll not go out again at all.’
‘I’ve told you what I’d like.’
‘Oh, for God’s sake!’ He turned away from her. She said:
‘I thought you would say yes at once.’
‘How the hell can I say yes when we’ve booked a room for the next fortnight and we’re duty-bound to pay for it? Do you really think we can just walk up to that man and say we don’t like his hotel and the people he has staying here?’
‘We could make some excuse. We could pretend –’
‘Pretend? Pretend, Daphne?’
‘Some illness. We could say my mother’s ill,’ she hurriedly said. ‘Or some aunt who doesn’t even exist. We could hire a car and drive around the coast –’
‘Daphne –’
‘Why not?’
‘For a start, I haven’t my driving licence with me.’
‘I have.’
‘I doubt it, Daphne.’
She thought, and then she agreed that she hadn’t. ‘We could go to Dublin,’ she said with a fresh burst of urgency. ‘Dublin’s a lovely place, people say. We could stay in Dublin and –’
‘My dear, this is a tourist country. Millions of tourists come here every summer. Do you really believe we’d find decent accommodation in Dublin in the middle of the season?’
‘It wouldn’t have to be decent. Some little clean hotel –’
‘Added to which, Daphne, I must honestly tell you that I have no wish to go gallivanting on my honeymoon. Nor do I care for the notion of telling lies about the illness of people who are not ill, or do not even exist.’
‘I’ll tell the lies. I’ll talk to Mr Doyle directly after lunch. I’ll talk to him now.’ She stood up. He shook his head, reaching for the hand that was nearer to him.
‘What’s the matter?’ he asked.
Slowly she sat down again.
‘Oh, darling,’ she said.
‘We must be sensible, Daphne. We can’t just go gallivanting off –’
‘Why do you keep on about gallivanting? What’s it matter whether we’re gallivanting or not so long as we’re enjoying ourselves?’
‘Daphne –’
‘I’m asking you to do something to please me.’
Jackson Major, about to reply, changed his mind. He smiled at his bride. After a pause, he said:
‘If you really want to, Daphne –’
‘Well, I do. I think perhaps it’ll be awkward here with the Angusthorpes. And it’s not what we expected.’
‘It’s just a question,’ said Jackson Major, ‘of what we could possibly do. I’ve asked for my mail to be forwarded here and, as I say, I really believe it would be a case of out of the frying pan into nothing at all. It might prove horribly difficult.’
She closed her eyes and sat for a moment in silence. Then she opened them and, being unable to think of anything else to say, she said:
‘I’m sorry.’
He sighed, shrugging his shoulders slightly. He took her hand again. ‘You do see, darling?’ Before she could reply he added: ‘I’m sorry I was angry with you. I didn’t mean to be: I’m very sorry.’
He kissed her on the cheek that was near to him. He took her hand. ‘Now tell me,’ he said, ‘about everything that’s worrying you.’
She repeated, without more detail, what she had said already, but this time the sentences she spoke did not sound like complaints. He listened to her, sitting back and not interrupting, and then they conversed about all she had said. He agreed that it was a pity about the hotel and explained to her that what had happened, apparently, was that the old proprietor had died during the previous year. It was unfortunate too, he quite agreed, that the Angusthorpes should be here at the same time as they were because it would, of course, have been so much nicer to have been on their own. If she was worried about the partition in their room he would ask that their room should be changed for another one. He hadn’t known when she’d mentioned the partition before that it was the Angusthorpes who were on the other side of it. It would be better, really, not to be in the next room to the Angusthorpes since Angusthorpe had once been his headmaster, and he was certain that Doyle would understand a thing like that and agree to change them over, even if it meant greasing Doyle’s palm. ‘I imagine he’d fall in with anything,’ said Jackson Major, ‘for a bob or two.’
They finished their drinks and she followed him to the dining-room. There were no thoughts in her mind: no voice, neither her own nor Mrs Angusthorpe’s, spoke. For a reason she could not understand and didn’t want to bother to understand, the tension within her had snapped and was no longer there. The desire she had felt for tears when she’d walked away from Mrs Angusthorpe was far from her now; she felt a weariness, as though an ordeal was over and she had survived it. She didn’t know why she felt like that. All she knew was that he had listened to her: he had been patient and understanding, allowing her to say everything that was in her mind and then being reassuring. It was not his fault that the hotel had turned out so unfortunately. Nor was it his fault that a bullying old man had sought him out as a fishing companion. He couldn’t help it if his desire for her brought out a clumsiness in him. He was a man, she thought: he was not the same as she was: she must meet him half-way. He had said he was sorry for being angry with her.
In the hall they met the Angusthorpes on their way to the dining-room also.
‘I’m sorry if I upset you,’ Mrs Angusthorpe said to her, touching her arm to hold her back for a moment. ‘I’m afraid my temper ran away with me.’
The two men went ahead, involved in a new conversation. ‘We might try that little tributary this afternoon,’ the headmaster was suggesting.
‘I sat there afterwards, seeing how horrid it must have been for you,’ Mrs Angusthorpe said. ‘I was only angry at the prospect of an unpleasant fortnight. I took it out on you.’
‘Don’t worry about it.’
‘One should keep one’s anger to oneself. I feel embarrassed now,’ said Mrs Angusthorpe. ‘I’m not the sort of person –’
‘Please don’t worry,’ murmured Daphne, trying hard to keep the tiredness that possessed her out of her voice. She could sleep, she was thinking, for a week.
‘I don’t know why I talked like that.’
‘You were angry –’
‘Yes,’ said Mrs Angusthorpe.
She stood still, not looking at Daphne and seeming not to wish to enter the dining-room. Some people went by, talking and laughing. Mr Gorman, the solicitor from Dublin, addressed her, but she did not acknowledge his greeting.
‘I think we must go in now, Mrs Angusthorpe,’ Daphne said.
In her weariness she smiled at Mrs Angusthorpe, suddenly sorry for her because she had so wretched a marriage that it caused her to become emotional with strangers.
‘It was just,’ said Mrs Angusthorpe, pausing uncertainly in the middle of her sentence and then continuing, ‘I felt that perhaps I should say something. I felt, Mrs Jackson –’
‘Let’s just forget it,’ interrupted Daphne, sensing with alarm that Mrs Angusthorpe was about to begin all over again, in spite of her protestations.
‘What?’
‘I think we must forget it all.’
Daphne smiled again, to reassure the woman who’d been outrageous because her temper had run away with her
. She wanted to tell her that just now in the bar she herself had had a small outburst and that in the end she had seen the absurdity of certain suggestions she had made. She wanted to say that her husband had asked her what the matter was and then had said he was sorry. She wanted to explain, presumptuously perhaps, that there must be give and take in marriage, that a bed of roses was something that couldn’t be shared. She wanted to say that the tension she’d felt was no longer there, but she couldn’t find the energy for saying it.
‘Forget it?’ said Mrs Angusthorpe. ‘Yes, I suppose so. There are things that shouldn’t be talked about.’
‘It’s not that really,’ objected Daphne softly. ‘It’s just that I think you jumped to a lot of wrong conclusions.’
‘I had an instinct,’ began Mrs Angusthorpe with all her previous eagerness and urgency. ‘I saw you at breakfast-time, an innocent girl. I couldn’t help remembering.’
‘It’s different for us,’ said Daphne, feeling embarrassed to have to converse again in this intimate vein. ‘At heart my husband’s patient with me. And understanding too: he listens to me.’
‘Of course,’ agreed Mrs Angusthorpe, slowly nodding her head and moving at last towards the dining-room.
The Mark-2 Wife
Standing alone at the Lowhrs’ party, Anna Mackintosh thought about her husband Edward, establishing him clearly for this purpose in her mind’s eye. He was a thin man, forty-one years of age, with fair hair that was often untidy. In the seventeen years they’d been married he had changed very little: he was still nervous with other people, and smiled in the same abashed way, and his face was still almost boyish. She believed she had failed him because he had wished for children and she had not been able to supply any. She had, over the years, developed a nervous condition about this fact and in the end, quite some time ago now, she had consulted a psychiatrist, a Dr Abbatt, at Edward’s pleading.
The Collected Stories Page 32