He did not understand himself.
‘Perhaps you have more poetry in you than you guess,’ she returned, smiling, and for the rest of the evening she refrained from lapsing into seriousness.
‘Well,’ said Emily, whirling round upon her when she went upstairs for her wraps, ‘well, what do you think of my husband?’
‘I think he’s a darling.’
‘Isn’t he clever?’ said Emily, with satisfied triumph. She then handed Elizabeth a compliment: ‘He’s a shy creature, you know, and he doesn’t usually trot out his pet ideas before company. He must have liked you.’
‘Do you know,’ said Elizabeth, flattered, ‘he has such a lovely mouth that I couldn’t keep my eyes off it.’
‘Better not tell Mr Shand.’
It occurred to Elizabeth that she ought to return the lead and ask for a verdict on Hector, but Emily had already screwed down the gas. Elizabeth obediently went downstairs.
But when Hector was fumbling with the latch-key at their own door she was appalled to hear him say: ‘Thank God, that’s over!’
‘What’s the matter, Hector?’ she called, pursuing him into the drawing-room, where he was striking matches. She thought that he was jealous, perhaps, and perhaps even a little excited with wine.
‘I can’t stand that woman,’ retorted Hector, pitching his coat on a chair and unwinding his muffler. His nose was very high and haughty.
Elizabeth’s eyes widened.
‘She was very nice to you.’
‘Nice to me! Huh! Expects every man she meets to eat out of her hand, doesn’t she? Bloody bitch, that’s what she is. Thinks everybody’s going to fall for her. She makes me sick.’
Hector stuck his pipe between his teeth and reached for the tobacco-jar.
‘But heaps of people like her.’
‘You bet your boots they don’t,’ said Hector through his clenched teeth as he stuffed his pipe.
‘Oh, nonsense, Hector; I know they do.’
‘She only tells you they do. I tell you she would turn any decent fellow sick.’
‘I can’t see what’s the matter with her.’
‘The matter with her,’ said Hector between puffs, ‘is that she’s all my eye. I’d like to smack her skinny little bottom good and hard.’
Elizabeth burst out laughing.
‘Is that all you have against Emily, that she’s too skinny for your taste?’
‘No!’ said Hector, with unexpected ferocity.
Elizabeth, however, went on laughing. Fresh from a new environment she had not yet accommodated herself to the familiar room and all that it connoted. At the moment she was not a wife.
‘Oh, Hector, didn’t you once tell me you couldn’t look at a woman without thinking of going to bed with her? It’s not really Emily’s fault if you think she’s too skinny.’
‘If you must have it,’ said Hector, rising and standing on the hearthrug; ‘I don’t think she’s the kind of woman you should associate with.’
‘Indeed!’ Elizabeth sobered all at once. ‘And why?’
‘Look at the kind of talk she hands out. Tells me her baby’s first sense of beauty comes from feeling her breasts. Feeling her breasts, she tells me! Might as well ask me to feel her bubs and be done with it. And her husband’s no better.’
‘Do you mean to tell me that you were shocked?’
‘I should damn well think I was.’
‘You’ve said many worse things to me.’
‘Not before other people.’
‘And you’ve done many worse things.’
‘Damn it all, haven’t I been sorry for them? What’s that got to do with it?’
Hector too was defending something he valued that he felt to be in danger. He was particularly indignant that it should be threatened by a woman, since women were its natural defenders.
‘You’re a stupid fool!’ cried Elizabeth, her eyes hard.
‘Go on.’ Hector was grim. ‘Go on. Spit it all out.’
Elizabeth remembered her wifehood. She went up to him and locked her hands round his unyielding arm.
‘Don’t you see, Hector, don’t you see, darling, that it’s simply stupid to be shocked at things?’
‘I may be stupid, but I don’t see. I’m only thinking of you,’ he went on less grimly. ‘I don’t want my wife to be an easy mark for other people to sneer at, and that’s what will happen to you if you get into that woman’s habits.’
Elizabeth unloosed her hands.
‘The Scrymgeours are the only intelligent people I’ve met in Calderwick. I intend to go on being friendly with them.’
‘Intelligent be damned! Don’t come with that highbrow stuff to me.’
‘I’m not going to stultify myself, not even for you. You can do what you like about it.’
‘So that’s that,’ said Hector in a stifled voice. He did not know the meaning of the word that Elizabeth had brought out with such a grand air, and his ignorance made him savage.
‘That,’ responded Elizabeth, ‘is that.’
She felt such a cold ferocity in herself that she was frightened. This was like none of their previous quarrels. There were tears in her eyes as she walked upstairs, but they were tears of mortified pride, not of wounded love. How dared he dictate to her what she was to think? Stupid, sulky fool. He was as bad as Aunt Janet. She grew hot again as she remembered how near she had been to asking Emily: ‘And what do you think of my husband?’
Disjointed sentences started up in her mind. She walked about the bedroom saying, ‘Oh, my God.’ Then she flung herself on the bed and stared dry-eyed at the wall. She was terrified at herself. ‘If I don’t believe what I feel what am I to believe?’ she had said to Dr Scrymgeour. And at the present moment what she felt was that she didn’t give a damn for Hector.
Hector poured himself a glass of whisky and gulped it down. As he found himself biting on his pipe-stem so fiercely that he was afraid he would break it he emptied out his pipe and lit a cigarette…. The cigarettes and the glasses of whisky went on in an uninterrupted chain.
So that was that. She despised him for a stupid fool. Now he knew where he stood. Nothing more to expect.
Using words he didn’t understand, by God! And all he asked for was a little
