‘Tell me about the room, Mrs Mackintosh.’
‘There’s black leather on the wardrobe and the dressing-table. Curtains and things match. Dr Abbatt?’
‘Yes?’
‘The Ritchies are people who injure other people, I think. Intentionally or unintentionally, it never matters.’
‘They are strangers to you, these Ritchies?’
‘They attempted to mock me. People know at this party, Dr Abbatt; they sense what’s going to happen because of how I look.’
Watching for her to come downstairs, the Ritchies stood in the hall and talked to one another.
‘I’m sorry,’ said Mrs Ritchie. ‘I know it would be nicer to go home.’
‘What can we do, old sticks like us? We know not a thing about such women. It’s quite absurd.’
‘The woman’s on my mind, dear. And on yours too. You know it.’
‘I think she’ll be more on our minds if we come across her again. She’ll turn nasty, I’ll tell you that.’
‘Yes, but it would please me to wait a little.’
‘To be insulted,’ said the General.
‘Oh, do stop being so cross, dear.’
‘The woman’s a stranger to us. She should regulate her life and have done with it. She has no right to bother people.’
‘She is a human being in great distress. No, don’t say anything, please, if it isn’t pleasant.’
The General went into a sulk, and at the end of it he said grudgingly:
‘Trixie Flyte was nothing.’
‘Oh, I know. Trixie Flyte is dead and done for years ago. I didn’t worry like this woman if that’s what’s on your mind.’
‘It wasn’t,’ lied the General. ‘The woman worries ridiculously.’
‘I think, you know, we may yet be of use to her: I have a feeling about that.’
‘For God’s sake, leave the feelings to her. We’ve had enough of that for one day.’
‘As I said to her, we’re not entirely useless. No one ever can be.’
‘You feel you’re being attacked again, Mrs Mackintosh. Are you calm? You haven’t been drinking too much?’
‘A little.’
‘I see.’
‘I am being replaced by a younger person.’
‘You say you’re in a bedroom. Is it possible for you to lie on the bed and talk to me at the same time? Would it be comfortable?’
Anna placed the receiver on the bed and settled herself. She picked it up again and said:
‘If he died, there would be a funeral and I’d never forget his kindness to me. I can’t do that if he has another wife.’
‘We have actually been over this ground,’ said Dr Abbatt more softly than ever. ‘But we can of course go over it again.’
‘Any time, you said.’
‘Of course.’
‘What has happened is perfectly simple. Edward is with the girl. He is about to arrive here to tell me to clear off. She’s insisting on that. It’s not Edward, you know.’
‘Mrs Mackintosh, I’m going to speak firmly now. We’ve agreed between us that there’s no young girl in your husband’s life. You have an obsession, Mrs Mackintosh, about the fact that you have never had children and that men sometimes marry twice –’
‘There’s such a thing as the Mark-2 wife!’ Anna cried. ‘You know there is. A girl of nineteen who’ll delightedly give birth to Edward’s sons.’
‘No, no –’
‘I had imagined Edward telling me. I had imagined him pushing back his hair and lighting a cigarette in his untidy way. “I’m terribly sorry,” he would say, and leave me nothing to add to that. Instead it’s like this: a nightmare.’
‘It is not a nightmare, Mrs Mackintosh.’
‘This party is a nightmare. People are vultures here.’
‘Mrs Mackintosh, I must tell you that I believe you’re seeing the people at this party in a most exaggerated light.’
‘A man –’
‘A man nibbled your hair. Worse things can happen. This is not a nightmare, Mrs Mackintosh. Your husband has been delayed. Husbands are always being delayed. D’you see? You and I and your husband are all together trying to rid you of this perfectly normal obsession you’ve developed. We mustn’t complicate matters, now must
