When I Was Otherwise (20 page)

“Oh, good heavens no, not Erica! She was long ago made over. She's become one of
them
, now. Insufferable.”

“And where is Marsha going to fit in? What about Henry?”

“We reclaimed them.” She added, with the air of someone determined to be absolutely impartial, “Well, up to a point, I mean.”

“What are the aims of this society? Is there an annual dinner?”

For the time being, though, she dispensed with the aims and dealt only with the dinner.

“Oh, yes, there has to be. Every couple of months, I'd say.”

“I feel I could be interested.”

And about a week after that—without any accompanying note—a FRILs membership card arrived at his office. It had been beautifully executed in black ink and for the first three seconds or so, as he drew it out of its envelope, he felt puzzled. He thought it was a wedding invitation.

By the second post of the morning there turned up something to go with it; a piece of literature equally well-produced.
Statement of Further Aims
. It was all extremely juvenile of course but at odd moments throughout the day Andrew took time off to jot down additional goals—as well as a suggestion here and there concerning management policy or a club motto or even a password. And it was often noticed that he was wearing an abstracted expression and that for much of the time he appeared to be staring rather vacantly through the window.

When he telephoned her at the end of the afternoon, to share the fruits of his preoccupation, he asked the logical follow-up question.

“Oh, by the way, when does that first annual dinner come up? I've got a note in my diary it's on Tuesday of next week. To be held at your place. Can that be right?”

A moment elapsed before she answered.

“As regards the date—yes. Wrong location, though.”

“Oh. I thought according to the rules of the society it had to be somewhere private.”

“On the contrary,” she replied. “The only ruling is, we have to go in disguise. I myself shall wear a beard and eyepatch.”

He felt uncertain but said eventually, “Well, just so long as you don't expect
me
to wear a frock.” His tone had grown slightly fractious.

“I warn you I'd lose interest if you did. But I'll bring one along and then it's up to you whether or not you'll want to wear it.”

The following Tuesday it was Marsha whom he telephoned.

This was the first time he'd ever done so for such a reason. As he sat at his desk and steeled himself to pick up the receiver he was surprised to discover how nervous he felt.

Why nervous? It wasn't as if Marsha were going to be awkward. She knew nothing about his work and in fact never wanted to. Oh, at the beginning maybe she'd shown a certain curiosity but her enquiries had been childish and she had seldom remembered what he'd said. On three occasions in the first week following their honeymoon she had asked precisely the same question—and each time with a look of such lively attention and anticipation—dear God, it had infuriated him! So he had soon stopped making any effort to tell her what he actually did…no matter how enormously abridged or simplified.

Of course, what she did want to know, always, was whom he'd lunched with, what he'd eaten, what his companions had eaten and what they'd spoken about. She seemed almost passionately interested in the social lives of everyone he worked with: their state of health, their wives' and children's states of health, their leisure activities, their servant problems, their grocery bills: just as she must have assumed—to begin with—that he would be passionately interested in every small exchange of her own boring little day. She told him of her telephone conversations, of her encounters at the shops or on her way to the shops, of the afternoons spent with her mother or with Erica, of her lunchtime visits to the cinema…when the admission prices were cheaper and she went with her little packet of sandwiches and, frequently, one or other of her equally garrulous friends.

And soon, God help him, there'd be all the baby talk as well!

For even though she must have realized by now that he
wasn't
passionately interested, still it rolled out each evening, the full saga of her unmomentous day, as though this had indeed been history in the making and no detail of it should be left unrecorded. The end to the saga would only see the start to the inquisition; if he was still sitting there, which as often as not he wasn't. “Did you have a long wait for your bus this morning? Who did you sit next to—anybody interesting—no glamorous stranger who tried to move her thigh a little too close to yours? And that reminds me. At the butter counter in Cullen's I saw the
handsomest
man I've seen for ages. Or it might have been the bacon counter. But then I went and stood next to him by the biscuits. Was Walter Jennings late again today?”

He had told her once—
once
—that Walter Jennings had been nearly an hour late that morning and had got into trouble with the Colonel. Otherwise, for all she knew, this man might never have been late in his entire life—a paragon of punctuality. (Actually, he wasn't.) But perhaps once a week, almost without fail, and with a mischievous elbow-nudging twinkle in her eye she would ask him: “Was Walter Jennings late again today?” He always thought that, maybe, the very next time she asked he would really shout at her, but somehow, no matter how his stomach tightened, even in advance, in sheer anticipation, that moment hadn't yet arrived. Instinctively he knew it would be killing something in her if it did. Perhaps in himself too.

But for all her questions, or, rather, for all his answers, she apparently couldn't get it into her little head that the people in his office were just as monosyllabic as he wished to make them seem; that this applied equally to anybody whom he met upon the floor of the Exchange; and that his place of work was almost in its entirety a bastion of dignity and of male reserve. No fit subject for tattle. In short he would have hoped that Ignorance might produce Awe. The fact that it didn't was disappointing.

Yet this was no reason for him to feel nervous as he sat at his desk waiting to ask the woman on the switchboard to get him his own number.

28

But he suddenly wondered if he ought to do it from a call box. Yet he hadn't spoken to Daisy from a call box. It would be stupid if he was going to let himself get paranoid.

“Marsha?”

“Yes. Who did you think it was? Mae West?”

“No, I didn't think it was Mae West. I thought that just conceivably it could have been Mary.”

“Oh, you fibber! You know she hardly ever answers the phone and that even when she does she sounds like Mr Baldwin. Oh, Lord, I do so hope she didn't hear me! You don't suppose she did? But you always say ‘Marsha?' in that way. Always.”

“Nonsense! How often do I ring?”

“Come up and see me sometime.”

“What?”

“Oh and by the way? Who's speaking please? I'm sure I should have asked.”

“Don't be ridiculous.”

“Crosspatch! I wasn't really laughing at you! Or only the littlest, littlest bit.”

“I can't see why you should be laughing at me at all.”

“Sorry! I've got a perfectly straight face now. Promise. Not a dimple anywhere in sight.”

“Right. Now the reason I've rung you—”

“Darling, what causes dimples? Why do some people have them and others not?”

“Marsha,” he said, with a sigh. “I have no idea what causes dimples.”

There was a pause.

“It isn't a riddle. I suddenly wondered, that's all. Don't you ever think about these things? I find them fascinating. This morning I saw a man with a cleft chin. It was oddly attractive, somehow.”

“I'm certain it was.” The same tone as before: exaggerated patience.

“Andrew, has it ever occurred to you it's only men who have cleft chins? I wonder why that is. Or do you suppose I could have got it wrong? But I've never seen a woman who has one.”

“I've got to confess, Marsha, that I haven't recently reflected on the problem. Not with complete and utter single-mindedness.”

“It must make it difficult to shave.”

“Perhaps.” Was there ever a greater preventative to—what?—a husband's dining with another woman—than a wife who just wouldn't give him the opportunity to say he wouldn't be dining with
her
?

Was there ever a greater inducement?

“Why are you phoning from a call box?”

“What?”

“Why aren't you phoning from the office?”

“Oh, I don't know. It's lunchtime. I was out. I saw this box. Does it matter?”

“No, of course not. It makes life more exciting. When I heard button A being pressed I even had time to think for one thrilling moment it might be somebody tall, dark and handsome, his heart aflame with love. That gorgeous man I told you about whom I nearly held hands with over the biscuit tins. It's just as well I didn't. The biscuits would have crumbled. The glass lids would have shattered. Cullen's would have sent you a simply
hair-raising
bill.”

“Why me; not him?” Even to his own ears his voice sounded aggrieved. Almost as though the event she described had been factual.

Or was it possible that she had indeed stood next to this man and talked to him? Could that be a rare conversation she hadn't actually passed on? Heaven knew, she was perfectly capable of talking to anyone.

“I don't know,” she said. “Life is
so
unfair! You poor darling. And I even poked fun at you just now when you were being so very sweet and impulsive. Aren't I a beast?”

“Impulsive?”

“Yes. You saw a phone box and you thought of me. Who feels the need of any tall dark stranger? Not I—quoth the raven!”

“You never mentioned his being dark.”

What an imbecilic thing to say! And why would he remember anyway? It wasn't as if she had recounted it last night. This whole conversation was absurd.

“I thought you didn't like dark men,” he said. “You always led me on to believe that. The fairer the better.”

“Yes, of course, darling.”

“What does that mean? ‘Yes, of course, darling.' That you were saying it just because you had to?”

“No, no, I only meant it must be the exception, the one that proves the rule. There's really no comparison. I
much
prefer blond men.”

He felt mollified, although he was vaguely annoyed with himself when he realized it. “Then as long as we've got that settled…?” He ended on a surly note.

“So now you can tell me about
your
preferences,” she suggested blithely. “You probably don't know it yet but that must have been the reason why you telephoned. Mummy is reading a book by Sigmund Freud and over coffee this morning was giving me the lowdown. Over coffee and shortbread. And such
delicious
shortbread! You've no idea. I meant to bring you a piece.”

29

Yes, this whole conversation was absurd and he hadn't got the time for it. Such things had been all right, he supposed, before they were married—even quite charming really, rather sweet, so long as they hadn't been trotted out in public, as they so often had. But didn't she realize life had changed? In less than six months she would be giving birth. This was hard to imagine. In some ways she was still such a baby herself. Of course—Daisy was right—her mother was to blame. Florence had never treated her as anything
other
than a baby: a particularly spoilt one at that. Yet this was really no excuse. It was high time she began to grow up.

“Marsha, do you realize how long we've been talking and that there are now a dozen people waiting to use this box?” There was certainly one person, a disgruntled-looking woman who was holding the hand of a recalcitrant pigtailed child.

Which of course made it two.

“Oh, let them wait!” cried Marsha gaily.

“And what's more I shan't have any time for lunch.”

“Oh, gracious. Andy, you must eat! Hang up and go at once.”

She had forgotten that he'd spoken of there being a reason for his call…other than the one suggested by herself! Yet perversely, now that he'd been given the opportunity, he experienced some small difficulty in getting to the point. (Any less moral man, he told himself, would have experienced no difficulty at all.) “Oh, well. Perhaps there isn't
that
much rush. They can wait a minute longer.”

“But it's not them I'm thinking of! It's you!”

“Well, I daresay I shall manage to grab something.”

“But, oh, if you
grab
something, you know it will only give you indigestion.”

Perversely, too, in such a situation, he found her solicitude oppressive.

Yet perhaps this was helpful: the sheer fact of its being irritating.

“I'm afraid, Marsha, I'll be home rather late this evening. Boringly I shall have to stay on at the office.”

“Oh, you poor darling! I hate that Colonel Quinn! But do you know
how
late? I'll get Mary to hold back the dinner.”

“No, don't do that. Don't even wait up. I may not get in much before midnight or beyond.”

“Oh, Andrew!”

He was totally unprepared for such a wail. “Why? What's the matter?”

“But do you
have
to stay so long?”

“Of course I do.”

“There's no way out?”

“No. None whatever.”

She emitted a sigh every bit as exaggerated as his had been when she had been pondering the mystery of dimples and cleft chins.

“Oh, for Pete's sake,” he exclaimed, “this is the first time the Colonel's ever requested it! The very first time it's happened.”

Some women's husbands, he thought—sailors for instance—were away from home for months on end. Even commercial travellers could escape for five whole days a week. Possibly six.