She sipped the drink very quickly. She’s nervous, he thought, not as collected as she likes to appear, she’s a highly strung young woman.
“You have to ask for what you want,” he said gently, as if instructing a child.
She smiled. “Yes, I know.”
There was a pause.
“Sylvia always—Sylvia is my wife.”
“I didn’t think you were married.”
“No? I don’t look married?”
“You look unkempt.”
“She tries,” Colin said dismally. “I’m just an untidy person. I’m sorry. I don’t know why I brought my wife into the conversation.”
“There was no conversation for you to bring her into,” Isabel said. “There seems to be one now.”
“I suppose now that—well, you won’t want to…”
“What?”
“Have a drink.”
“Because you are married?”
“Yes.”
“Drinking gin is not really the same as committing adultery. Though I daresay it sometimes precedes it. I don’t know. I have no experience.” She took a sip from her glass, her eyes fixed on his face. “Would she mind?”
“I don’t know,” Colin said. He honestly did not. He wracked his brains, but could get no further. It must be very remote from Sylvia’s reckoning, that anyone would agree to have a drink with him. He wanted to say, why are you here, I am not good-looking, I have nothing you could possibly want.
“There’s Mr. Cartwright,” Isabel said. “His ears stick out, don’t they? I hope they’re not all going to come in here. Mr. Cartwright writes fairy stories.”
“What? Oh, yes,” Colin said. “I thought he wrote Humour in Uniform.”
“And fairy stories. Didn’t you listen?”
“No, I never listen.”
“He showed me one last week. I suppose he thought I might be sympathetic.”
Colin looked at her appraisingly. He would not have thought so, himself.
“Do you find it, you know, valuable, this class?” he asked her.
“No.”
“You don’t?”
“It’s not much our sort of thing, is it?”
Then she did see, she did feel, that there was some bond between them; Colin put the back of his hand to his forehead, as if he expected to find it warm. “Then why do you come?” he said.
“I don’t know. Why do you?”
“To get away from Sylvia.” He hunched forward. It had taken such a long time to grasp, such a short time to say. “Last year I took Italian conversation and car maintenance and Poets of the First World War.”
“Ah, yes,” Isabel said.
“You see some connection?”
“No.”
“You sounded as if you saw some connection. As if it were significant.”
“There is no connection. That is what is significant.”
“I am a schoolteacher,” Colin said.
“Ah, then the general information is of use to you.”
“No, not really.” He felt defeated. “I just do it, as I say, I want to get away from my wife.”
“What’s wrong with her?”
“Nothing. She’s a nice woman.”
“How many children have you got?”
“Three. Suzanne, she’s eight, Alistair’s nearly six, Karen’s three.”
“Are you going to have any more?”
“Not if I can help it.”
“I was watching you,” she said. “In the classroom. Trying to analyse you. You seem so discontented.”
