Trevor, William - Mark-2 Wife

‘You shouldn’t expose your guests to men who eat hair. Even unimportant guests.’

She turned her back on them and passed from the room. She crossed the hall, sensing that she was being watched. ‘Mrs Mackintosh,’ Mr Lowhr called after her.

His plumpness filled the doorway. He hovered, seeming uncertain about pursuing her. His face was bewildered and apparently upset.

‘Has something disagreeable happened?’ he said in a low voice across the distance between them.

‘You saw. You and your wife thought fit to laugh, Mr Lowhr.’

‘I do assure you, Mrs Mackintosh, I’ve no idea what you’re talking about.’

‘It’s fascinating, I suppose. Your friends the Ritchies find it fascinating too.’

‘Look here, Mrs Mackintosh –’

‘Oh, don’t blame them. They’ve nothing left but to watch and mock, at an age like that. The point is, there’s a lot of hypocrisy going on tonight.’ She nodded at Mr Lowhr to emphasize that last remark, and then went swiftly upstairs.

‘I imagine the woman’s gone off home,’ the General said. ‘I dare say her husband’s drinking in a pub.’

‘I worried once,’ replied Mrs Ritchie, speaking quietly, for she didn’t wish the confidence to be heard by others. ‘That female, Mrs Flyte.’

The General roared with laughter. ‘Trixie Flyte,’ he shouted. ‘Good God, she was a free-for-all!’

‘Oh, do be quiet.’

‘Dear girl, you didn’t ever think –’

‘I didn’t know what to think, if you want to know.’

Greatly amused, the General seized what he hoped would be his final drink. He placed it behind a green plant on a table. ‘Shall we dance one dance,’ he said, ‘just to amuse them? And then when I’ve had that drink to revive me we can thankfully make our way.’

But he found himself talking to nobody, for when he had turned from his wife to secrete his drink she had moved away. He followed her to where she was questioning Mrs Lowhr.

‘Some little tiff,’ Mrs Lowhr was saying as he approached.

‘Hardly a tiff,’ corrected Mrs Ritchie. ‘The woman’s terribly upset.’ She turned to her husband, obliging him to speak.

‘Upset,’ he said.

‘Oh, there now,’ cried Mrs Lowhr, taking each of the Ritchies by an arm. ‘Why don’t you take the floor and forget it?’

They both of them recognized from her tone that she was thinking the elderly exaggerated things and didn’t always understand the ways of marriage in the modern world. The General especially resented the insinuation. He said:

‘Has the woman gone away?’

‘She’s upstairs telephoning. Some silly chap upset her apparently, during a dance. That’s all it is, you know.’

‘You’ve got the wrong end of the stick entirely,’ said the General angrily, ‘and you’re trying to say we have. The woman believes her husband may arrive here with the girl he’s chosen as his second wife.’

‘But that’s ridiculous!’ cried Mrs Lowhr with a tinkling laugh.

‘It is what the woman thinks,’ said the General loudly, ‘whether it’s ridiculous or not.’ More quietly, Mrs Ritchie added:

‘She thinks she has a powerful intuition when all it is is a disease.’

‘I’m cross with this Mrs Mackintosh for upsetting you two dear people!’ cried Mrs Lowhr with a shrillness that matched her roundness and her glasses. ‘I really and truly am.’

A big man came up as she spoke and lifted her into his arms, preparatory to dancing with her. ‘What could anyone do?’ she called back at the Ritchies as the man rotated her away. ‘What can you do for a nervy woman like that?’

There was dark wallpaper on the walls of the room: black and brown with little smears of muted yellow. The curtains matched it; so did the bedspread on the low single bed, and the covering on the padded headboard. The carpet ran from wall to wall and was black and thick. There was a narrow wardrobe with a door of padded black leather and brass studs and an ornamental brass handle. The dressing-table and the stool in front of it reflected this general motif in different ways. Two shelves, part of the bed, attached to it on either side of the pillows, served as bedside tables: on each there was a lamp, and on one of them a white telephone.

As Anna closed and locked the door, she felt that in a dream she had been in a dark room in a house where there was a party, waiting for Edward to bring her terrible news. She drank a little whisky and moved towards the telephone. She dialled a number and when a voice answered her call she said:

‘Dr Abbatt? It’s Anna Mackintosh.’

His voice, as always, was so soft she could hardly hear it. ‘Ah, Mrs Mackintosh,’ he said.

‘I want to talk to you.’

‘Of course, Mrs Mackintosh, of course. Tell me now.’

‘I’m at a party given by people called Lowhr. Edward was to be here but he didn’t turn up. I was all alone and then two old people like scarecrows talked to me. They said their name was Ritchie. And a man ate my hair when we were dancing. The Lowhrs smiled at that.’

‘I see. Yes?’

‘I’m in a room at the top of the house. I’ve locked the door.’

‘Tell me about the room, Mrs Mackintosh.’

‘There’s black leather on the wardrobe and the dressing-table. Curtains and things match. Dr Abbatt?’

‘Yes?’

‘The Ritchies are people who injure other people, I think. Intentionally or unintentionally, it never matters.’

‘They are strangers to you, these Ritchies?’

‘They attempted to mock me. People know at this party, Dr Abbatt; they sense what’s going to happen because of how I look.’

Watching for her to come downstairs, the Ritchies stood in the hall and talked to one another.

‘I’m sorry,’ said Mrs Ritchie. ‘I know it would be nicer to go home.’

‘What can we do, old sticks like us? We know not a thing about such women. It’s quite absurd.’

‘The woman’s on my mind, dear. And on yours too. You know it.’

‘I think she’ll be more on our minds if we come across her again. She’ll turn nasty, I’ll tell you that.’

‘Yes, but it would please me to wait a little.’

‘To be insulted,’ said the General.

‘Oh, do stop being so cross, dear.’

‘The woman’s a stranger to us. She should regulate her life and have done with it. She has no right to bother people.’

‘She is a human being in great distress. No, don’t say anything, please, if it isn’t pleasant.’

The General went into a sulk, and at the end of it he said grudgingly:

‘Trixie Flyte was nothing.’

‘Oh, I know. Trixie Flyte is dead and done for years ago. I didn’t worry like this woman if that’s what’s on your mind.’

‘It wasn’t,’ lied the General. ‘The woman worries ridiculously.’

‘I think, you know, we may yet be of use to her: I have a feeling about that.’

‘For God’s sake, leave the feelings to her. We’ve had enough of that for one day.’

‘As I said to her, we’re not entirely useless. No one ever can be.’

‘You feel you’re being attacked again, Mrs Mackintosh. Are you calm? You haven’t been drinking too much?’

‘A little.’

‘I see.’

‘I am being replaced by a younger person.’

‘You say you’re in a bedroom. Is it possible for you to lie on the bed and talk to me at the same time? Would it be comfortable?’

Anna placed the receiver on the bed and settled herself. She picked it up again and said:

‘If he died, there would be a funeral and I’d never forget his kindness to me. I can’t do that if he has another wife.’

‘We have actually been over this ground,’ said Dr Abbatt more softly than ever. ‘But we can of course go over it again.’