ill luck would have it, he had hurried straight indoors, and hadn’t heard a word of the significant exchange on the other side of the fence. Rosamund followed him into the house slowly, trying to think of a way of reporting the incident without sounding catty. How it did cramp one’s style, this not being a jealous wife! How much less interesting it made one, too; for the anecdote, catty or not, would at least have been amusing and stimulating—could have triggered off the kind of conversation that Geoffrey and she had once enjoyed nearly all the time. As it was, there seemed nothing to talk about while they got ready for the party except whether to lock the back door; as to which Rosamund found herself disagreeing with Geoffrey simply for the sake of something to say. Never, ever had it been like this with them before….
The party was in full swing when they arrived, and looking swiftly round Rosamund calculated that every single one of their neighbours must have been invited. How well Lindy had managed to get to know everyone in the three months she had lived here! Better than Rosamund had done in all the past ten years, to judge by all these familiar faces gathered together. Familiar in a sense, that is: in another sense quite unfamiliar, for faces that you are accustomed to meeting under hats or over garden walls look queer indoors, like the postman without his uniform. In a way, it was easier to talk to the total strangers; the bearded artistic men and the un-housewife-looking women who must have come out of Lindy’s former life. Letting herself be pushed unresisting by the surging movements of the crowd, Rosamund presently found herself wedged tête a tête in a corner with a wiry, pale young man who looked like a poet, but who said that he was a Shell Shelder, or something that sounded like that: indeed, for all Rosamund knew, there might really be such a job; anyway, you couldn’t go on asking him to repeat it, any more than you could ask him to go on repeating his name, also lost in the surrounding din.
Gradually, as her ears became accustomed to the noise, she gathered that he was talking to her about modern marriage. Before much longer, she found that she could actually hear everything he was saying, and no longer had to reply with such smiles and platitudes as would be equally appropriate whether he was describing the faithlessness of his wife or the Darby and Joan happiness of his aged parents.
It was neither, and the platitudes couldn’t have been in the least appropriate, but perhaps he hadn’t heard them:
‘The wonderful thing about just living with a girl,’ he was saying, ‘is the privacy and the dignity of it. People aren’t watching you all the time, the way they are when you’re married, to see how you’re making out. I mean, an affair is expected to break up, so people don’t get any kick out ofwatching for it to happen. And they don’t think it’s against the rules for you to go out separately sometimes, or for you to have different tastes, different friends. Stepping out of an affair into marriage is like stepping out of a civilised state into a goldfish bowl. Wherever you look, whichever way you turn, there are great eyes staring at you, hugely magnified, watching to see how you match up to the Perfect Husband. Or Perfect Wife, of course: it’s just as frightful for her, too I’m not saying it isn’t.’
Rosamund laughed. ‘It sounds as if you have a heavy concentration of in-laws,’ she said. ‘And your wife, too. Are you both members of big, devoted families?’
‘On the contrary, we are both orphans. Were, I should say. My wife and I are separated.’
‘Oh! I’m sorry!’ Rosamund felt some embarrassment, but the young man hastened to dispel it, in his rather disconcerting way.
‘Don’t be silly! You don’t have to apologise. Hang it all, I brought up the subject. I wouldn’t have, would I, if I’d wanted it tactfully avoided?’
‘No, that’s true,’ said
The party was in full swing when they arrived, and looking swiftly round Rosamund calculated that every single one of their neighbours must have been invited. How well Lindy had managed to get to know everyone in the three months she had lived here! Better than Rosamund had done in all the past ten years, to judge by all these familiar faces gathered together. Familiar in a sense, that is: in another sense quite unfamiliar, for faces that you are accustomed to meeting under hats or over garden walls look queer indoors, like the postman without his uniform. In a way, it was easier to talk to the total strangers; the bearded artistic men and the un-housewife-looking women who must have come out of Lindy’s former life. Letting herself be pushed unresisting by the surging movements of the crowd, Rosamund presently found herself wedged tête a tête in a corner with a wiry, pale young man who looked like a poet, but who said that he was a Shell Shelder, or something that sounded like that: indeed, for all Rosamund knew, there might really be such a job; anyway, you couldn’t go on asking him to repeat it, any more than you could ask him to go on repeating his name, also lost in the surrounding din.
Gradually, as her ears became accustomed to the noise, she gathered that he was talking to her about modern marriage. Before much longer, she found that she could actually hear everything he was saying, and no longer had to reply with such smiles and platitudes as would be equally appropriate whether he was describing the faithlessness of his wife or the Darby and Joan happiness of his aged parents.
It was neither, and the platitudes couldn’t have been in the least appropriate, but perhaps he hadn’t heard them:
‘The wonderful thing about just living with a girl,’ he was saying, ‘is the privacy and the dignity of it. People aren’t watching you all the time, the way they are when you’re married, to see how you’re making out. I mean, an affair is expected to break up, so people don’t get any kick out ofwatching for it to happen. And they don’t think it’s against the rules for you to go out separately sometimes, or for you to have different tastes, different friends. Stepping out of an affair into marriage is like stepping out of a civilised state into a goldfish bowl. Wherever you look, whichever way you turn, there are great eyes staring at you, hugely magnified, watching to see how you match up to the Perfect Husband. Or Perfect Wife, of course: it’s just as frightful for her, too I’m not saying it isn’t.’
Rosamund laughed. ‘It sounds as if you have a heavy concentration of in-laws,’ she said. ‘And your wife, too. Are you both members of big, devoted families?’
‘On the contrary, we are both orphans. Were, I should say. My wife and I are separated.’
‘Oh! I’m sorry!’ Rosamund felt some embarrassment, but the young man hastened to dispel it, in his rather disconcerting way.
‘Don’t be silly! You don’t have to apologise. Hang it all, I brought up the subject. I wouldn’t have, would I, if I’d wanted it tactfully avoided?’
‘No, that’s true,’ said
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