Mark-2 Wife

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.

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 hair. 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.’

Mrs Ritchie said that the Lowhrs, she was sure, had not smiled at any predicament that Anna had found herself in, and the General impatiently repeated that the man was drunk.

‘The Lowhrs smiled,’ Anna said, ‘and you have mocked me too. Though perhaps you don’t even know it.’

As she pushed a passage through the people, she felt the sweat running on her face and her body. There was a fog of smoke in the room by now, and the voices of the people, struggling to be heard above the music, were louder than before. The man she had danced with was sitting in a corner with his shoes off, and a woman in a crimson dress was trying to persuade him to put them on again. At the door of the room she found Mr Lowhr. ‘Shall we dance?’ he said.

She shook her head, feeling calmer all of a sudden. Mr Lowhr suggested a drink.

‘May I telephone?’ she said. ‘Quietly somewhere?’

‘Upstairs,’ said Mr Lowhr, smiling immensely at her. ‘Up two flights, the door ahead of you: a tiny guest-room. Take a glass with you.’

She nodded, saying she’d like a little whisky.

‘Let me give you a tip,’ Mr Lowhr said as he poured her some from a nearby bottle. ‘Always buy Haig whisky. It’s distilled by a special method.’

‘You’re never going so soon?’ said Mrs Lowhr, appearing at her husband’s side.

‘Just to telephone,’ said Mr Lowhr. He held out his hand with the glass of whisky in it. Anna took it, and as she did so she caught a glimpse of the Ritchies watching her from the other end of the room. Her calmness vanished. The Lowhrs, she noticed, were looking at her too, and smiling. She wanted to ask them why they were smiling, but she knew if she did that they’d simply make some polite reply. Instead she said:

‘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.’

‘Any time, you said.’

‘Of course.’

‘What has happened is perfectly simple. Edward is with the girl. He is about to arrive here to tell me to clear off. She’s insisting on that. It’s not Edward, you know.’

‘Mrs Mackintosh, I’m going to speak firmly now. We’ve agreed between us that there’s no young girl in your husband’s life. You have an obsession, Mrs Mackintosh, about the fact that you have never had children and that men sometimes marry twice –’

‘There’s such a thing as the Mark-2 wife!’ Anna cried. ‘You know there is. A girl of nineteen who’ll delightedly give birth to Edward’s sons.’

‘No, no –’

‘I had imagined Edward telling me. I had imagined him pushing back his hair and lighting a cigarette in his untidy way. “I’m terribly sorry,” he would say, and leave me nothing to add to that. Instead it’s like this: a nightmare.’

‘It is not a nightmare, Mrs Mackintosh.’

‘This party is a nightmare. People are vultures here.’

‘Mrs Mackintosh, I must tell you that I believe you’re seeing the people at this party in a most exaggerated light.’

‘A man –’

‘A man nibbled your hair. Worse things can happen. This is not a nightmare, Mrs Mackintosh. Your husband has been delayed. Husbands are always being delayed. D’you see? You and I and your husband are all together trying to rid you of this perfectly normal obsession you’ve developed. We mustn’t complicate matters, now must we?’

‘I didn’t run away, Dr Abbatt. I said to myself I mustn’t run away from this party. I must wait and face whatever was to happen. You told me to face things.’

‘I didn’t tell you, my dear. We agreed between us. We talked it out, the difficulty about facing things, and we saw the wisdom of it. Now I want you to go back to the party and wait for your husband.’

‘He’s more than two hours late.’

‘My dear Mrs Mackintosh, an hour or so is absolutely nothing these days. Now listen to me please.’

She listened to the soft voice as it reminded her of all that between them they had agreed. Dr Abbatt went over the ground, from the time she had first consulted him to the present moment. He charted her obsession until it seemed once again, as he said, a perfectly normal thing for a woman of forty to have.

After she had said goodbye, Anna sat on the bed feeling very calm. She had read the message behind Dr Abbatt’s words: that it was ridiculous, her perpetually going on in this lunatic manner. She had come to a party and in no time at all she’d been behaving in a way that was, she supposed, mildly crazy. It always happened, she knew, and it would as long as the trouble remained: in her mind, when she began to worry, everything became jumbled and unreal, turning her into an impossible person. How could Edward, for heaven’s sake, be expected to live with her fears and her suppositions? Edward would crack as others would, tormented by an impossible person. He’d become an alcoholic or he’d have some love affair with a woman just as old as she was, and the irony of that would be too great. She knew, as she sat there, that she couldn’t help herself and that as long as she lived with Edward she wouldn’t be able to do any better. ‘I have lost touch with reality,’ she said. ‘I shall let him go, as a bird is released. In my state how can I have rights?’

She left the room and slowly descended the stairs. There were framed prints of old motor-cars on the wall and she paused now and again to examine one, emphasizing to herself her own continued calmness. She was thinking that she’d get herself a job. She might even tell Edward that Dr Abbatt had suggested their marriage should end since she wasn’t able to live with her thoughts any more. She’d insist on a divorce at once. She didn’t mind the thought of it now, because of course it would be different: she was doing what she guessed Dr Abbatt had been willing her to do for quite a long time really: she was taking matters into her own hands, she was acting positively – rejecting, not being rejected herself. Her marriage was ending cleanly and correctly.

She found her coat and thanked the dark-skinned maid who held it for her. Edward was probably at the party by now, but in the new circumstances that was neither here nor there. She’d go home in a taxi and pack a suitcase and then telephone for another taxi. She’d leave a note for Edward and go to a hotel, without telling him where.

‘Good-night,’ she said to the maid. She stepped towards the hall door as the maid opened it for her, and as she did so she felt a hand touch her shoulder. ‘No, Edward,’ she said. ‘I must go now.’ But when she turned she saw that the hand belonged to Mrs Ritchie. Behind her, looking tired, stood the General. For a moment there was a silence. Then Anna, speaking to both of them, said:

‘I’m extremely sorry. Please forgive me.’

‘We were worried about you,’ said Mrs Ritchie. ‘Will you be all right, my dear?’

‘The fear is worse than the reality, Mrs Ritchie. I can no longer live with the fear.’

‘We understand.’

‘It’s strange,’ Anna said, passing through the doorway and standing at the top of the steps that led to the street. ‘Strange, coming to a party like this, given by people I didn’t know and meeting you and being so rude. Please don’t tell me if my husband is here or not. It doesn’t concern me now. I’m quite calm.’

The Ritchies watched her descend the steps and call out to a passing taxi-cab. They watched the taxi drive away.

‘Calm!’ said General Ritchie.

‘She’s still in a state, poor thing,’ agreed his wife. ‘I do feel sorry.’

They stood on the steps of the Lowhrs’ house, thinking about the brief glance they had had of another person’s life, bewildered by it and saddened, for they themselves, though often edgy on the surface, had had a happy marriage.

‘At least she’s standing on her own feet now,’ Mrs Ritchie said. ‘I think it’ll save her.’

A taxi drew up at the house and the Ritchies watched it, thinking for a moment that Anna Mackintosh, weak in her resolve, had returned in search of her husband. But it was a man who emerged and ran up the steps in a manner which suggested that, like the man who had earlier misbehaved on the dance-floor, he was not entirely sober. He passed the Ritchies and entered the house. ‘That is Edward Mackintosh,’ said Mrs Ritchie.

The girl who was paying the taxi-driver paused in what she was doing to see where her companion had dashed away to and observed two thin figures staring at her from the lighted doorway, murmuring to one another.

‘Cruel,’ said the General. ‘The woman said so: we must give her that.’

‘He’s a kind man,’ replied Mrs Ritchie. ‘He’ll listen to us.’

‘To us, for heaven’s sake?’

‘We have a thing to do, as I said we might have.’

‘The woman has gone. I’m not saying I’m not sorry for her –’

‘And who shall ask for mercy for the woman, since she cannot ask herself? There is a little to be saved, you know: she has made a gesture, poor thing. It must be honoured.’

‘My dear, we don’t know these people; we met the woman quite in passing.’

The girl came up the steps, settling her purse into its right place in her handbag. She smiled at the Ritchies, and they thought that the smile had a hint of triumph about it, as though it was her first smile since the victory that Anna Mackintosh had said some girl was winning that night.

‘Even if he’d listen,’ muttered the General when the girl had passed by, ‘I doubt that she would.’

‘It’s just that a little time should be allowed to go by,’ his wife reminded him. ‘That’s all that’s required. Until the woman’s found her feet again and feels she has a voice in her own life.’

‘We’re interfering,’ said the General, and his wife said nothing. They looked at one another, remembering vividly the dread in Anna Mackintosh’s face and the confusion that all her conversation had revealed.

The General shook his head. ‘We are hardly the happiest choice,’ he said, in a gentler mood at last, ‘but I dare say we must try.’

He closed the door of the house and they paused for a moment in the hall, talking again of the woman who had told them her troubles. They drew a little strength from that, and felt armed to face once more the Lowhrs’ noisy party. Together they moved towards it and through it, in search of a man they had met once before on a similar occasion. ‘We are sorry for interfering,’ they would quietly say; and making it seem as natural as they could, they would ask him to honour, above all else and in spite of love, the gesture of a woman who no longer interested him.

‘A tall order,’ protested the General, pausing in his forward motion, doubtful again.

‘When the wrong people do things,’ replied his wife, ‘it sometimes works.’ She pulled him on until they stood before Edward Mackintosh and the girl he’d chosen as his Mark-2 wife. They smiled at Edward Mackintosh and shook hands with him, and then there was a silence before the General said that it was odd, in a way, what they had to request.