greeting.
‘I think we must go in now, Mrs Angusthorpe,’ Daphne said.
In her weariness she smiled at Mrs Angusthorpe, suddenly sorry for her because she had so wretched a marriage that it caused her to become emotional with strangers.
‘It was just,’ said Mrs Angusthorpe, pausing uncertainly in the middle of her sentence and then continuing, ‘I felt that perhaps I should say something. I felt, Mrs Jackson –’
‘Let’s just forget it,’ interrupted Daphne, sensing with alarm that Mrs Angusthorpe was about to begin all over again, in spite of her protestations.
‘What?’
‘I think we must forget it all.’
Daphne smiled again, to reassure the woman who’d been outrageous because her temper had run away with her. She wanted to tell her that just now in the bar she herself had had a small outburst and that in the end she had seen the absurdity of certain suggestions she had made. She wanted to say that her husband had asked her what the matter was and then had said he was sorry. She wanted to explain, presumptuously perhaps, that there must be give and take in marriage, that a bed of roses was something that couldn’t be shared. She wanted to say that the tension she’d felt was no longer there, but she couldn’t find the energy for saying it.
‘Forget it?’ said Mrs Angusthorpe. ‘Yes, I suppose so. There are things that shouldn’t be talked about.’
‘It’s not that really,’ objected Daphne softly. ‘It’s just that I think you jumped to a lot of wrong conclusions.’
‘I had an instinct,’ began Mrs Angusthorpe with all her previous eagerness and urgency. ‘I saw you at breakfast-time, an innocent girl. I couldn’t help remembering.’
‘It’s different for us,’ said Daphne, feeling embarrassed to have to converse again in this intimate vein. ‘At heart my husband’s patient with me. And understanding too: he listens to me.’
‘Of course,’ agreed Mrs Angusthorpe, slowly nodding her head and moving at last towards the dining- room.
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:
