over. It began
“My Very Dear.”
She looked at the signature. “Your (no longer a maid!) Marian.” I am not a fool, Olive said to herself. It is much more sensible not to read this, which is not addressed to me. She read it.
My Very Dear
You have been gone for so short a time, and yet already everything, the whole world, is quite another place, emptier and fuller. I truly do not know who I was, or how I lived, before I first saw and heard you. The woman I now am came into being as you spoke about the lovely equality of the bantering lovers in Much Ado About Nothing, about how a man and a woman can love, and not know they love, and how very rarely lovers in plays and stories are at ease with each other. I thought I would teach my students that wisdom, and did not see, until too late (blessedly too late), how my deepest desire was to be at ease in that way with you, you your very self. If I fought your ideas in public it was only in search of that ease where anything may be said. And when you said other things—when I felt myself personally valued and for the first time (however illusorily, however guardedly) to be beautiful and desired—I became your slave, and will remain your slave. Though I cannot imagine you wanting to play master, you are a friend first, and a lover second, and I, I am shining with joy.
I wrote as far as this, yesterday, my darling. I did not say I was feeling unwell, while you were here, for I wanted not to waste one moment of our secret and precarious time. But I was unwell, and now I know the cause, the most natural of all, and truly a matter of rejoicing, for me at least. I am to be a Mother. I ask for nothing—no help, no advice—I am an independent woman, and trust to remain so. If all goes well, and if we can continue to be at ease with each other in these new circumstances, I should like my child to know his father in some way—though never to ask for any material thing. Oh, my Very Dear, of course I am afraid, but I am also resourceful, and will put no burden on you, believe me—only a prayer that, if it can conveniently happen, we may continue to see each other.
Your (no longer a maid!) Marian
Olive refolded this document, and said Damn, several times. This was bad, very bad. This was a woman who was somebody, not a frivolous bit of skirt. This was a person not unlike Olive, to whom Humphry was real, and who was, as she said, at ease with him, which must mean that he, in turn, was at ease with her. Some sort of teacher, who had heard him talk on Shakespeare. Someone to whom he indubitably owed something, despite her disclaimers and his financial position. “Damn,” said Olive again, beginning to be angry, stoking an inner flame. “Damn and damn.” She was quite sincerely worried about the predicament in which this strange woman found herself. Humphry must of course offer help, it was his duty. She knew only too well the special feeling he gave of being comfortable and at ease with women—it was what she loved in him, herself. She thought it went with one kind of promiscuous love-making, rarer than the Don Juan with his sequential conquests, the man who found women truly interesting. If Humphry had come home at that moment, she would have embraced him, perhaps, and smiled ruefully, and made sure of her own charm and her own central place in his affections—which she had never, really, had cause to doubt. But Humphry did not come home, and Olive’s mood veered into grievance. She began, almost vindictively, to read the other letters on the desk, and discovered two rejected articles. “A very clever analysis, but so opinionated that I can’t quite see it as an expression of the beliefs of our journal.” “Very interesting, as always, but I am afraid we have no room for articles of such limited appeal to the general public.” Olive felt threatened—she should be earning money with her little prince and her sinister fat rat, not standing here waiting to discuss peccadilloes, or worse. Todefright was threatened. Olive said Damn.
• • •
By the time Humphry came in, she was like a humming top, spinning with wrath. He was followed by Violet, gathering up his coat and hat.
“I have sent a telegram,” he said. “I think I must go and see Basil, I am absolutely certain I know dangerous things he does not know. I’ll wait for an answer to my telegram and then set off. This will have far-reaching and terrible consequences, if Barnato’s nets are unravelling—and I know it is not if, it is when—”
“You can go and see Marian,” said Olive.
“Don’t be silly, she’s in Manchester,” said Humphry, preoccupied with gold mines and brothers.
He saw what he had been led to betray, and took in his wife, and the dissipated heap of letters. He smiled his foxy, intent smile, interested in Olive’s reaction.
“Touche,” he said. “You of all women should know better than to read private papers. It’s not serious, you know that. Nothing to do with you and me, which is why you shouldn’t stoop to reading private papers.”
He put out a hand to caress her, and Olive slapped it down.
“It is to do with me, it is deeply to do with me, we shall lose Todefright unless we earn some money, and don’t do things which create more dependent mouths. I work and work, I have to keep Todefright going by myself, and I am sick and anxious and should be resting—”
“Money,” said Humphry. “Money, or sex relations, which comes first, which is more certain to cause arguments and harm marriages? An interesting problem.”
“It isn’t an interesting problem, it’s my life—” cried Olive. Up to that point, it had not been clear to either of them whether a monstrous row was going to happen, or could be avoided. Now it was clear that it was to happen, it had to be gone through with. Olive clasped her hands round the unborn infant, and began to shout, like an operatic fishwife. Humphry could have tried to calm, or apologise—in any case he had to abandon his attitude of detached amusement and calm certainty. He was never defensive. When threatened, he attacked. “Listen to yourself,” he said. “How can a grown-up woman make such a racket? I thought you had become a civilised being, but no such thing, you rant like a skivvy, like a washerwoman—”
There were various shapes the rows took, various cycles of reproach and counter-reproach, various sabre- slashes at the whole fabric of the marriage. This row was long, and bad.
Tom and Dorothy and Phyllis stood on the stairs, listening, ready to scurry up to the bedrooms before they were caught. They heard the sentences they always heard.
“I have always tried to love all your children equally, you cannot say I have not. It has not been easy, though you may think it has. You do not thank me.”
“I might say the same. You cannot claim I distinguish your children from my own. All of them have their place, equally, equally, you must admit that.”
Dorothy put her face in her hands. She was the one
