AS KATHARINE CAME up the steps after work that evening, she became aware of voices on the threshold of the house next door. Mrs Forsyth’s voice mainly, comforting some unseen sufferer in a voice shrill and purposeful as some predatory night bird.
“My dear, I do know how you feel,” she was saying—and now Katharine could see the thin, neat figure poised dimly in the Prescotts’ doorway. “Douglas is exactly the same. If he feels like going out in the evening, why, then out we have to go. It doesn’t occur to him to think that I might be tired, or busy, or not in the mood. The trouble with men is, they have so little to do that they’re really killing time for more than half their waking hours. Yes, it really is more than half. I’ve worked it out. A man in an ordinary, average job has seventy hours’ leisure a week, apart from sleeping! Seventy hours! Imagine it! I’d think the world was coming to an end if I had as much as seven!”
Katharine could not hear Mary’s softer response from indoors, but it went on for quite a long time, and it was tantalisingly just possible to hear the unmistakable cadences of self-pity at the end of every few sentences. A lovely, anti-husband natter was in progress, and Katharine felt herself drawn by the sound like an alcoholic by the clink of glasses.
The aggrieved pair did not seem to feel that Katharine was intruding. Indeed, from the moment when she settled herself leaning against the other damp pillar at the entrance of the Prescott home, she seemed to fit into the pattern of the conversation like a stopper into a bottle. It was a little disconcerting in a way: as if she had recently passed some test for total membership of an exclusive club: the club of the Unhappy Wives. For a long time she had been as it were an associate member—her temporary differences with Stephen had been just sufficient qualification. Was she to be considered a life member now? Was that how they now regarded her?
“… so when he rang up and said he’d got tickets for the theatre tonight, and wanted me to meet him in town, I didn’t see how I could refuse. How could I?”
Mary’s wide, beautiful eyes stared out bewildered into the damp night. But Mrs Forsyth was once again ready with reassurance of her own inimitable brand.
“Of course you couldn’t! I know just how you felt. They know they’ve got you—like that—(she jabbed her thumb downwards, as if nailing the idea to its appropriate place) when they do something like that to settle an argument. They know there’s no answer to it.”
Mary looked uncertain.
“But he must be doing it to please me, after all, mustn’t he? That’s the awful part. I ought to be pleased. And of course I would be if only I didn’t know—I mean, if I didn’t feel—I mean perhaps all the time he’s thinking——”
She stopped. Only Katharine could appreciate the cause of her confusion. However, Mrs Forsyth thought she could, and that was quite sufficient to enable her to answer in accordance with the principles (few and simple) of the Unhappy Wives:
“Oh, that’s how they always try to work it,” she assured the wavering Mary. “When they know they’re in the wrong. If there’s one thing I can’t stand, it’s when Douglas uses a bunch of flowers or a trip to the theatre as a last word in an argument. It infuriates me! If he knows he’s in the wrong I want him to admit it, not to silence me with sentimental gestures!”
Katharine was in the middle of wondering what kind of sentimental gesture would in fact succeed in silencing Mrs Forsyth, when Mary turned to her:
“Oh, Katharine, perhaps you can help me? I didn’t ask you before, because I seem to be always dumping Angela on you; but if you could possibly have her for this evening, then I wouldn’t so much mind going out. That’s half what I’m worrying about, I think—leaving her alone.”
“Of course,” said Katharine warmly. “Tell her to come over as soon as she likes. We could put up the camp-bed in Jane’s room, and——”
She stopped. Only a few days ago Stephen had been urging her to discourage the friendship between Jane and Angela. True, he hadn’t said anything since, and Katharine was beginning to hope that he had forgotten all about it; but surely this would be the height of tactlessness—gratuitously to remind him of it by inviting Angela to stay the night with them? With practised skill, she proceeded to get herself out of it by sheer reckless improvisation. She was terribly sorry, but she had spoken without thinking; just tonight of all nights it would be impossible to have Angela, because Stephen might be bringing two old college friends back with him for the evening, and he might want to ask them to stay the night, which would mean using the sofa and the camp-bed.
The main thing about this sort of story was not so much that it should be credible as that it should be impervious to evidence of any kind, for or against. She had carefully only said that the friends might be coming, that they might be staying the night. By the time they hadn’t done either, the whole thing would be over and done with.
But all the same, Mary was looking so disappointed that Katharine impulsively added: “But if you like, I’ll keep an eye on Angela for you. I’ll pop in at intervals and see that she’s all right. Will that do? Stephen and his friends won’t mind my not being there all the time,” she added, rather perfunctorily. She realised, with a mixture of relief and chagrin, that no one but herself cared a hang whether her story held water or not. Consistency in lying is an essentially solitary craft, usually quite wasted on its audience.
Mary seemed to be weighing up Katharine’s offer.
“Ye-es,” she said, rather doubtfully—indeed grudingly, Katharine felt. “Yes—I suppose that would do. I mean, thank you very much, that would be marvellous,” she amended, with unconvincing enthusiasm. “The only thing is,” she continued, with renewed hesitancy, “that—that Angela really seems nervous tonight. Nervous of being left alone, I mean. You see, she thinks …”
Her voice grew vague, lost in hesitations, and Mrs Forsyth eagerly broke in:
“Yes, did you know, Katharine, Mary’s just been telling me: Angela thinks she saw the dark man in the raincoat again. This evening! Hanging about outside the house, just like last time. Of course, as I tell Mary, it must be all her imagination mustn’t it? You were saying, weren’t you, that she’s very imaginative….” Her eyes held Katharine’s in a meaning glance which Mary was somehow supposed not to notice, though how she could fail to do so it was hard to see, since they were both standing right in front of her.
Katharine ignored the look, and spoke directly to Mary:
“Of course the child’s nervous, all alone,” she agreed briskly. “And I expect you’ll be out pretty late. I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’ll collect up all my mending and bring it in, then I could stay the whole time.” She was about to invent hastily some further reason why Stephen’s friends could totally dispense with their hostess, but thought better of it; everyone but herself had forgotten about them so completely. Instead, she went on: “I certainly think you ought to take this chance, Mary, and go out and have some fun. It will do you a world of good—both of you.”
This time the meaning glance excluded Mrs Forsyth, and serve her right, thought Katharine cheerfully, as she hurried back to her own house and set about preparing supper.
This must be done even more hastily than usual is she was to be free in time to fulfil her promise to Mary: so she found it hard not to show her impatience when she turned round from tipping the potatoes into boiling water and found herself confronted by Clare’s face, at its very gloomiest, peering with maddening hesitancy round the kitchen door.
Gerunds? Compound Interest? The Anglicans and the Rump Parliament? How could anyone be expected to cope with it while mincing Sunday’s joint with enough onions and breadcrumbs to make it stretch for five? But the poor child looked so woebegone, so sure that she was going to be snubbed.
“What is it, Clare? Do come right in, and don’t hang about in the door like that. The draught’ll put the oven out.”
Like a general deploying his troops to face a new threat, Katharine consciously rearranged her faculties so as to release a proportion of them from attention to the mince and the onions and the chopping of cabbage, and laid them at Clare’s disposal.
But it wasn’t homework, apparently. It was something much, much worse, to judge by the slow widening of Clare’s already horror-stricken eyes, and by the increasing confusion of her speech as she came, via innumerable detours and irrelevancies, to the crux of the disaster.
She had been invited to a party. It was out at last; and Clare gazed at her mother with despairing expectancy, as if awaiting a flood of commiseration.
“But that’s nice, darling,” said Katharine obtusely. “Your red dress will be back from the cleaners by then, and we’ll get you some new shoes, something pretty——”
“But, Mummy, I haven’t got to go, have I?” interrupted Clare, incredulously, as if she had not known before that such ruthlessness existed in the world. “You don’t mean that, do you? I’ve got to go?”
“But why not, darling?” asked Katharine helplessly, flinging into the pan an assortment of vegetables further to eke out the mince. “Why don’t you want to?”
“But it’s Sandra’s party!” explained Clare, with such an air of having clarified the whole problem that Katharine began to feel that she must be being unforgivably stupid. Fancy not understanding why it is utterly impossible to go to the party of someone called Sandra.
“You see, Mummy …”
The explanation that followed, comprising a minute-by-minute account of the complex and fluctuating exchanges of best friends that had been taking place since the beginning of term, left her little the wiser. She could only take Clare’s word for it that going to the party would be “Awful. Mummy. I couldn’t!”
Clare paused, twirling the handle of the mincer. “And anyway, Sandra doesn’t want me.”
“Then why has she asked you?” asked Katharine reasonably—or so she naïvely supposed.
“Oh, Mummy!” Clare stared at her parent forlornly. Language contained no words in which to explain anything so obvious as why someone called Sandra should invite you to a party when she didn’t want you and you didn’t want to go.
“Well, tell her you can’t go,” suggested Katharine, abandoning the impenetrable maze into which the contemplation of acceptance was leading them. “Tell Sandra—nicely, of course—that you have a previous engagement.”
“But Mummy, I’ve already accepted!” waited Clare; and then, in touching, total surrender, she flung the whole matter into Katharine’s lap. “Mummy, will you ring up Sandra’s mother and say I can’t go? Please!”
“But what shall I say? Why shall I say you can’t? I mean, if you’ve already told Sandra that you can?”
“Oh, anything.” The situation was plainly desperate. “Say you don’t let me go out so late. Say you’re ill and I’ve got to stay at home to look after you. Say anything, except don’t say I’m going out somewhere else, because they know I’m not. Oh, please, Mummy! You must! Oh, it’ll be so awful!”
Wondering how many other mothers gain their reputation for possessiveness and over-protectiveness in this sort of way, Katharine gave a half-hearted promise to ring up the unknown Mrs Sandra and say something appropriate. And by now it was time to put the meal on the table; to summon the rest of the family; to serve out helpings which unobtrusively avoided giving onions to Jane, cabbage to Flora, or anything at all to Clare, who was still brooding over her only partially averted doom. The conversation also had to be steered away from channels which could lead to such subjects as Curfew, or parties, or homework, or why Clare wasn’t eating anything, or to anything at all which Flora would be likely to contradict in that know-all manner which always infuriated Stephen. And on top of all this, Katharine had to tell Stephen that she would be spending the evening next-door looking after Angela; tell him, too, in such a way that he didn’t really quite take it in—not enough to protest then and there, anyway.
And so, what with one thing and another, by the time Katharine was staggering down the front steps with her gigantic pile of mending, she felt exactly as if she was setting off on holiday.