that. And lots of husbands are. Patrick Mottram is always going off and having affairs with other women but Henry’s been very good in that respect. He may be quiet and not very pushing but no one could call him a gadabout.’
‘Oh sure,’ said Gaskell, ’so he’s got a hang-up about sex. My heart bleeds for him.’
‘I don’t see why you should say he’s got something wrong with him because he’s faithful,’ said Eva.
‘G didn’t mean that, did you, G?’ said Sally. ‘He meant that there has to be true freedom in a marriage. No dominance, no jealousy, no possession. Right, G?’
‘Right.’ said Gaskell.
‘The test of true love is when you can watch your wife having it off with someone else and still love her,’ Sally went on.
‘I could never watch Henry…’ said Eva. ‘Never.’
‘So you don’t love him. You’re insecure. You don’t trust him.’
‘Trust him?’ said Eva. ‘If Henry went to bed with another woman I don’t see how I could trust him. I mean if that’s what he wants to do why did he marry me?’
‘That,’ said Gaskell. ‘is the sixty-four-thousand dollar question.’ He picked up his sleeping bag and went out on deck. Behind him Eva had begun to cry.
‘There, there,’ said Sally, putting her arm round her. ‘G was just kidding. He didn’t mean anything.’
‘It’s not that.’ said Eva, ‘it’s just that I don’t understand anything any more. It’s all so complicated.’
‘Christ, you look bloody awful,’ said Peter Braintree as Wilt stood on the doorstep.
‘I feel bloody awful,’ said Wilt. ‘It’s all this gin.’
‘You mean Eva’s not back?’ said Braintree, leading the way down the passage to the kitchen.
‘She wasn’t there when I got home. Just a note saying she was going away with the Pringsheims to think things over.’
‘To think things over? Eva? What things?’
‘Well…’ Wilt began and thought better of it, ‘that business with Sally I suppose. She says she won’t ever forgive me.’
‘But you didn’t do anything with Sally. That’s what you told me.’
‘I know I didn’t. That’s the whole point. If I had done what that nymphomaniac bitch wanted there wouldn’t have been all this bloody trouble.’
‘I don’t see that, Henry. I mean if you had done what she wanted Eva would have had something to grumble about. I don’t see why she should be up in the air because you didn’t.’
‘Sally must have told her that I did do something,’ said Wilt, determined not to mention the incident in the bathroom with the doll.
‘You mean the blow job?’
‘I don’t know what I mean. What is a blow job anyway?’
Peter Braintree looked puzzled
‘I’m not too sure,’ he said, ‘but it’s obviously something you don’t want your husband to do. If I came home and told Betty I’d done a blow job she’d think I’d been robbing a bank.’
‘I wasn’t going to do it anyway,’ said Wilt. ‘She was going to do it to me.’
‘Perhaps it’s a suck off,’ said Braintree, putting a kettle on the stove. ‘That’s what it sounds like to me.’
‘Well it didn’t sound like that to me,’ said Wilt with a shudder. ‘She made it sound like a paint-peeling exercise with a blow lamp. You should have seen the look on her face.’
