In the Lowhrs’ rich drawing-room, its walls and ceiling gleaming with a metallic surface of ersatz gold, Anna listened to dance music coming from a tape-recorder and continued to think about her husband. In a moment he would be at the party too, since they had agreed to meet there, although by now it was three-quarters of an hour later than the time he had stipulated. The Lowhrs were people he knew in a business way, and he had said he thought it wise that he and Anna should attend this gathering of theirs. She had never met them before, which made it more difficult for her, having to wait about, not knowing a soul in the room. When she thought about it she felt hard done by, for although Edward was kind to her and always had been, it was far from considerate to be as late as this. Because of her nervous condition she felt afraid and had developed a sickness in her stomach. She looked at her watch and sighed.
People arrived, some of them kissing the Lowhrs, others nodding and smiling. Two dark-skinned maids carried trays of drinks among the guests, offering them graciously and murmuring thanks when a glass was accepted. ‘I’ll be there by half past nine,’ Edward had said that morning. ‘If you don’t turn up till ten you won’t have to be alone at all.’ He had kissed her after that, and had left the house. I’ll wear the blue, she thought, for she liked the colour better than any other: it suggested serenity to her, and the idea of serenity, especially as a quality in herself, was something she valued. She had said as much to Dr Abbatt, who had agreed that serenity was something that should be important in her life.
An elderly couple, tall twig-like creatures of seventy-five, a General Ritchie and his wife, observed the lone state of Anna Mackintosh and reacted in different ways. ‘That woman seems out of things,’ said Mrs Ritchie. ‘We should go and talk to her.’
But the General suggested that there was something the matter with this woman who was on her own. ‘Now, don’t let’s get involved,’ he rather tetchily begged. ‘In any case she doesn’t look in the mood for chat.’
His wife shook her head. ‘Our name is Ritchie,’ she said to Anna, and Anna, who had been looking at the whisky in her glass, lifted her head and saw a thin old woman who was as straight as a needle, and behind her a man who was thin also but who stooped a bit and seemed to be cross. ‘He’s an old soldier,’ said Mrs Ritchie. ‘A general that was.’
Strands of white hair trailed across the pale dome of the old man’s head. He had sharp eyes, like a terrier’s, and a grey moustache. ‘It’s not a party I care to be at,’ he muttered, holding out a bony hand. ‘My wife’s the one for this.’
Anna said who she was and added that her husband was late and that she didn’t know the Lowhrs.
‘We thought it might be something like that,’ said Mrs Ritchie. ‘We don’t know anyone either, but at least we have one another to talk to.’ The Lowhrs, she added, were an awfully nice, generous couple.
‘We met them on a train in Switzerland,’ the General murmured quietly.
Anna glanced across the crowded room at the people they spoke of. The Lowhrs were wholly different in appearance from the Ritchies. They were small and excessively fat, and they both wore glasses and smiled a lot. Like jolly gnomes, she thought.
‘My husband knows them in a business way,’ she said. She looked again at her watch: the time was half past ten. There was a silence, and then Mrs Ritchie said:
‘They invited us to two other parties in the past. It’s very kind, for we don’t give parties ourselves any more. We live a quiet sort of life now.’ She went on talking, saying among other things that it was pleasant to see the younger set at play. When she stopped, the General added:
‘The Lowhrs feel sorry for us, actually.’
‘They’re very kind,’ his wife repeated.
Anna had been aware of a feeling of uneasiness the moment she’d entered the golden room, and had Edward ‘been with her she’d have wanted to say that they should turn round and go away again. The uneasiness had increased whenever she’d noted the time, and for some reason these old people for whom the Lowhrs were sorry had added to it even more. She would certainly talk this over with Dr Abbatt, she decided, and then, quite absurdly, she felt an urge to telephone Dr Abbatt and tell him at once about the feeling she had. She closed her eyes, thinking that she would keep them like that for only the slightest moment so that the Ritchies wouldn’t notice and think it odd. While they were still closed she heard Mrs Ritchie say:
‘Are you all right, Mrs Mackintosh?’
She opened her eyes and saw that General Ritchie and his wife were examining her face with interest. She imagined them wondering about her, a woman of forty whose husband was an hour late. They’d be thinking, she thought, that the absent husband didn’t have much of a feeling for his wife to be as careless as that. And yet, they’d probably think, he must have had a feeling for her once since he had married her in the first place.
‘It’s just,’ said Mrs Ritchie, ‘that I had the notion you were going to faint.’
The voice of Petula Clark came powerfully from the tape-recorder. At one end of the room people were beginning to dance in a casual way, some still holding their glasses in their hands.
‘The heat could have affected you,’ said the General, bending forward so that his words would reach her.
Anna shook her head. She tried to smile, but the smile failed to materialize. She said:
‘I never faint, actually.’
She could feel a part of herself attempting to bar from her mind the entry of unwelcome thoughts. Hastily she said, unable to think of anything better:
‘My husband’s really frightfully late.’
‘You know,’ said General Ritchie, ‘it seems to me we met your husband here.’ He turned to his wife. ‘A fair-haired man – he said his name was Mackintosh. Is your husband fair, Mrs Mackintosh?’
‘Of course,’ cried Mrs Ritchie. ‘Awfully nice.’
Anna said that Edward was fair. Mrs Ritchie smiled at her husband and handed him her empty glass. He reached out for Anna’s. She said:
‘Whisky, please. By itself.’
‘He’s probably held up in bloody traffic,’ said the General before moving off.
‘Yes, probably that,’ Mrs Ritchie said. ‘I do remember him well, you know.’
‘Edward did come here before. I had a cold.’
‘Completely charming. We said so afterwards.’
One of the dark-skinned maids paused with a tray of drinks. Mrs Ritchie explained that her husband was fetching some. ‘Thank you, madam,’ said the dark-skinned maid, and the General returned.
‘It isn’t the traffic,’ Anna said rather suddenly and loudly. ‘Edward’s not held up like that at all.’
The Ritchies sipped their drinks. They can sense I’m going to be a nuisance, Anna thought. ‘I’m afraid it’ll be boring,’ he had said. ‘We’ll slip away at eleven and have dinner in Charlotte Street.’ She heard him saying it now, quite distinctly. She saw him smiling at her.
‘I get nervous about things,’ she said to the Ritchies. ‘I worry unnecessarily. I try not to.’
Mrs Ritchie inclined her head in a sympathetic manner; the General coughed. There was a silence and then Mrs Ritchie spoke about episodes in their past. Anna looked at her watch and saw that it was five to eleven. ‘Oh God,’ she said.
The Ritchies asked her again if she was all right. She began to say she was but she faltered before the sentence was complete, and in that moment she gave up the struggle. What was the point, she thought, of exhausting oneself being polite and making idle conversation when all the time one was in a frightful state?
‘He’s going to be married again,’ she said quietly and evenly. ‘His Mark-2 wife.’
She felt better at once. The sickness left her stomach; she drank a little whisky and found its harsh taste a comfort.
‘Oh, I’m terribly sorry,’ said Mrs Ritchie.
Anna had often dreamed of the girl. She had seen her, dressed all in purple, with slim hips and a purple bow in her black ha
ir. She had seen the two of them together in a speedboat, the beautiful young creature laughing her head off like a figure in an advertisement. She had talked for many hours to Dr Abbatt about her, and Dr Abbatt had made the point that the girl was simply an obsession. ‘It’s just a little nonsense,’ he had said to her kindly, more than once. Anna knew in her calmer moments that it was just a little nonsense, for Edward was always kind and had never ceased to say he loved her. But in bad moments she argued against that conclusion, reminding herself that other kind men who said they loved their wives often made off with something new. Her own marriage being childless would make the whole operation simpler.
‘I hadn’t thought it would happen at a party,’ Anna said to the Ritchies. ‘Edward has always been decent and considerate. I imagined he would tell me quietly at home, and comfort me. I imagined he would be decent to the end.’
‘You and your husband are not yet separated then?’ Mrs Ritchie inquired.
‘This is the way it is happening,’ Anna repeated. ‘D’you understand? Edward is delayed by his Mark-2 wife because she insists on delaying him. She’s demanding that he should make his decision and afterwards that he and she should come to tell me, so that I won’t have to wait any more. You understand,’ she repeated, looking closely from one face to the other, ‘that this isn’t Edward’s doing?’
‘But, Mrs Mackintosh –’
‘I have a woman’s intuition about it. I have felt my woman’s intuition at work since the moment I entered this room. I know precisely what’s going to happen.’
Often, ever since the obsession had begun, she had wondered if she had any rights at all. Had she rights in the matter, she had asked herself, since she was running to fat and could supply no children? The girl would repeatedly give birth and everyone would be happy, for birth was a happy business. She had suggested to Dr Abbatt that she probably hadn’t any rights, and for once he had spoken to her sternly. She said it now to the Ritchies, because it didn’t seem to matter any more what words were spoken. On other occasions, when she was at home, Edward had been late and she had sat and waited for him, pretending it was a natural thing for him to be late. And when he arrived her fears had seemed absurd.
‘You understand?’ she said to the Ritchies.
The Ritchies nodded their thin heads, the General embarrassed, his wife concerned. They waited for Anna to speak. She said:
‘The Lowhrs will feel sorry for me, as they do for you. “This poor woman,” they’ll cry, “left in the lurch at our party! What a ghastly thing!” I should go home, you know, but I haven’t even the courage for that.’
‘Could we help at all?’ asked Mrs Ritchie.
‘You’ve been married all this time and not come asunder. Have you had children, Mrs Ritchie?’
Mrs Ritchie replied that she had had two boys and a girl. They were well grown up by now, she explained, and among them had provided her and the General with a dozen grandchildren.
‘What did you think of my husband?’
‘Charming, Mrs Mackintosh, as I said.’
‘Not the sort of man who’d mess a thing like this up? You thought the opposite, I’m sure: that with bad news to break he’d choose the moment elegantly. Once he would have.’
‘I don’t understand,’ protested Mrs Ritchie gently, and the General lent his support to that with a gesture.
‘Look at me,’ said Anna. ‘I’ve worn well enough. Neither I nor Edward would deny it. A few lines and flushes, fatter and coarser. No one can escape all that. Did you never feel like a change, General?’
‘A change?’
‘I have to be rational. I have to say that it’s no reflection on me. D’you understand that?’
‘Of course it’s no reflection.’
‘It’s like gadgets in shops. You buy a gadget and you develop an affection for it, having decided on it in the first place because you thought it was attractive. But all of a sudden there are newer and better gadgets in the shops. More up-to-date models.’ She paused. She found a handkerchief and blew her nose. She said:
‘You must excuse me: I am not myself tonight.’
‘You mustn’t get upset. Please don’t,’ Mrs Ritchie said.
Anna drank all the whisky in her glass and lifted another glass from a passing tray. ‘There are too many people in this room,’ she complained. ‘There’s not enough ventilation. It’s ideal for tragedy.’
Mrs Ritchie shook her head. She put her hand on Anna’s arm. ‘Would you like us to go home with you and see you safely in?’
‘I have to stay here.’
‘Mrs Mackintosh, your husband would never act like that.’
‘People in love are cruel. They think of themselves: why should they bother to honour the feelings of a discarded wife?’
‘Oh, come now,’ said Mrs Ritchie.
At that moment a bald man came up to Anna and took her glass from her hand and led her, without a word, on to the dancing area. As he danced with her, she thought that something else might have happened. Edward was not with anyone, she said to herself: Edward was dead. A telephone had rung in the Lowhrs’ house and a voice had said that, en route to their party, a man had dropped dead on the pavement. A maid had taken the message and, not quite understanding it, had done nothing about it.
‘I think we should definitely go home now,’ General Ritchie said to his wife. ‘We could be back for A Book at Bedtime’
‘We cannot leave her as easily as that. Just look at the poor creature.’
‘That woman is utterly no concern of ours.’
‘Just look at her.’
The General sighed and swore and did as he was bidden.
‘My husband was meant to turn up,’ Anna said to the bald man. ‘I’ve just thought he may have died.’ She laughed to indicate that she did not really believe this, in case the man became upset. But the man seemed not to be interested. She could feel his lips playing with a strand of her hair. Death, she thought, she could have accepted.
Anna could see the Ritchies watching her. Their faces were grave, but it came to her suddenly that the gravity was artificial. What, after all, was she to them that they should bother? She was a wretched woman at a party, a woman in a state, who was making an unnecessary fuss because her husband was about to give her her marching orders. Had the Ritchies been mocking her, she wondered, he quite directly, she in some special, subtle way of her own?
‘Do you know those people I was talking to?’ she said to her partner, but with a portion of her hair still in his mouth he made no effort at reply. Passing near to her, she noticed the thick, square fingers of Mr Lowhr embedded in the flesh of his wife’s shoulder. The couple danced by, seeing her and smiling, and it seemed to Anna that their smiles were as empty as the Ritchies’ sympathy.
‘My husband is leaving me for a younger woman,’ she said to the bald man, a statement that caused him to shrug. He had pressed himself close to her, his knees on her thighs, forcing her legs this way and that. His hands were low on her body now, advancing on her buttocks. He was eating her hair.
‘I’m sorry,’ Anna said. ‘I’d rather you didn’t do that.’
He released her where they stood and smiled agreeably: she could see pieces of her hair on his teeth. He walked away, and she turned and went in the opposite direction.
‘We’re really most concerned,’ said Mrs Ritchie. She and her husband were standing where Anna had left them, as though waiting for her. General Ritchie held out her glass to her.
‘Why should you be concerned? That bald man ate my hair. That’s what people do to used-up women like me. They eat your hair and force their bodies on you. You know, General.’
‘Certainly, I don’t. Not in the least.’
‘That man knew all about me. D’you think he’d have taken his liberties if he hadn’t? A man like that can guess.’
‘Nonsense,’ said Mrs Ritchie firmly. She stared hard at Anna, endeavouring to impress upon her the errors in her logic.
�
��If you want to know, that man’s a drunk,’ said the General. ‘He was far gone when he arrived here and he’s more so now.’
‘Why are you saying that?’ Anna cried shrilly. ‘Why are you telling me lies and mocking me?’
‘Lies?’ demanded the General, snapping the word out. ‘Lies?’
‘My dear, we’re not mocking you,’ murmured Mrs Ritchie.
‘You and those Lowhrs and everyone else, God knows. The big event at this party is that Edward Mackintosh will reject his wife for another.’
‘Oh now, Mrs Mackintosh –’
‘Second marriages are often happier, you know. No reason why they shouldn’t be.’
‘We would like to help if we could,’ Mrs Ritchie said.
‘Help? In God’s name, how can I be helped? How can two elderly strangers help me when my husband gives me up? What kind of help? Would you give me money – an income, say? Or offer me some other husband? Would you come to visit me and talk to me so that I shouldn’t be lonely? Or strike down my husband, General, to show your disapproval? Would you scratch out the little girl’s eyes for me, Mrs Ritchie? Would you slap her brazen face?’
‘We simply thought we might help in some way,’ Mrs Ritchie said. ‘Just because we’re old and pretty useless doesn’t mean we can’t make an effort.’
‘We are all God’s creatures, you are saying. We should offer aid to one another at every opportunity, when marriages get broken and decent husbands are made cruel. Hold my hands then, and let us wait for Edward and his Mark-2 wife. Let’s all three speak together and tell them what we think.’
She held out her hands, but the Ritchies did not take them.
‘We don’t mean to mock you, as you seem to think,’ the General said. ‘I must insist on that, madam.’
‘You’re mocking me with your talk about helping. The world is not like that. You like to listen to me for my entertainment value: I’m a good bit of gossip for you. I’m a woman going on about her husband and then getting insulted by a man and seeing the Lowhrs smiling over it. Tell your little grandchildren that some time.’
The Collected Stories Page 33