Daisy followed, but she parted company from the other women on the landing and went on upstairs, still feeling angry, wanting to be alone. How could Boy say such a thing? Did he really believe it had to be her fault that she was not pregnant? It could just as easily be his! Perhaps he knew that, and tried to blame her because he was afraid people would think he was infertile. That was probably the truth, but it was no excuse for a public insult.
She went to his old room. After they had married the two of them had lived here for three months while their own house was being redecorated. They had used Boy’s old bedroom and the one next door, although in those days they had slept together every night.
She went in and turned on the light. To her surprise she saw that Boy appeared not to have completely moved out. There was a razor on the wash stand and a copy of
The lower drawer was locked, but she knew he kept the key in a pot on the mantelpiece. She had no qualms about prying: in her view a husband should have no secrets from his wife. She opened the drawer.
The first thing she found was a book of photographs of naked women. In artistic paintings and photographs, the women generally posed to half conceal their private parts, but these girls were doing the opposite: legs akimbo, buttocks held open, even the lips of their vaginas spread to show the inside. Daisy would pretend to be shocked if anyone caught her, but in truth she was fascinated. She looked through the entire book with great interest, comparing the women with herself: the size and shape of their breasts, the amount of hair, their sexual organs. What a wonderful variety there was in women’s bodies!
Some of the girls were stimulating themselves, or pretending to, and some were photographed in pairs, doing it to each other. Daisy was not really surprised that men liked this sort of thing.
She felt like an eavesdropper. It reminded her of the time she had gone to his room at Ty Gwyn, before they were married. Then she had been desperate to learn more about him, to gain intimate knowledge of the man she loved, to find a way to make him her own. What was she doing now? Spying on a husband who seemed no longer to love her, trying to understand where she had failed.
Beneath the book was a brown paper bag. Inside were several small, square paper envelopes, white with red lettering on the front. She read:
‘Prentif ’ Reg. Trade Mark
SERVISPAK
NOTICE
British made
Latex rubber
Withstands all climates
None of it made any sense. Nowhere did it say what the package actually contained. So she opened it.
Inside was a piece of rubber. She unfolded it. It was shaped like a tube, closed at one end. She took a few seconds to figure out what it was.
She had never seen one, but she had heard people talk about such things. Americans called it a Trojan, the British a rubber johnny. The correct term was condom, and it was to stop you getting pregnant.
Why did her husband have a bag of them? There could be only one answer. They were to be used with another woman.
She felt like crying. She had given him everything he wanted. She had never told him she was too tired to make love – even when she was – nor had she refused anything he suggested in bed. She would even have posed like the women in the book of photographs, if he had asked her to.
What had she done wrong?
She decided to ask him.
Sorrow turned to anger. She stood up. She would take the paper packets down to the dining room and confront him with them. Why should she protect his feelings?
At that moment he walked in.
‘I saw the light from the hall,’ he said. ‘What are you doing in here?’ He looked at the open drawers of the bedside cupboard and said: ‘How dare you spy on me?’
‘I suspected you of being unfaithful,’ she said. She held up the condom. ‘And I was right.’
‘Damn you for a sneak.’
‘Damn you for an adulterer.’
He raised his hand. ‘I should beat you like a Victorian husband.’
She snatched a heavy candlestick from the mantelpiece. ‘Try it, and I’ll bop you like a twentieth-century wife.’
