When I Was Otherwise by Stephen Benatar Page A

home.
    â€œWell, I’ll tell you one thing,” offered Daisy.
    â€œYes? What?”
    â€œThat good-looking husband of yours—dour, crabby, earnest individual though he well may be—you know, he could do with a spot more liveliness; we’ll have to see what we can think of—anyway, with him in mind, at least I can make one prophecy with some assurance. He ’llnever be a poor fish. He may be the bane of your existence; but he’ll never be a poor fish!”
    Marsha laughed. “Oh, precious bane!” she said happily.
    â€œDid you ever read that?” asked Daisy.
    â€œNo. And I never read The Card either.” Then she looked down at her lap with carefully suppressed pride. “But I heard of both of them.”
    When she raised her eyes she was surprised to see that Andrew was smiling; very nearly grinning. Had she said something silly? But she didn’t care—oh, not at all! She would have to call him precious bane again. Perhaps ‘Bane’ could get to be a nickname and in the end might even encourage him to discover one for her. Actually she had several times suggested the odd possibility—just very casually, of course—trying not to let him see what she was up to. But it hadn’t worked.
    She would have to borrow Andrew’s dictionary without his knowing and find out what ‘bane’ meant.
    She smiled back at him. Sadly, she didn’t think he saw.
    â€œI’ll tell you what, Daisy. I’ll have a game of chess with you if you like.” His tone grew even more expansive. “The best of three! And then we’ll see which of us is really the poor fish! And which is the praying mantis.”

15
    But first there was the business with the makeup; Marsha insisted on that. Daisy indulgently complied—“She wants to use me as a guinea pig, is determined not to let me escape!”—but Andrew shrugged with some annoyance at the frivolity of it all.
    â€œFor the love of Mike!” he exclaimed. “What’s wrong with her as she is? At least she doesn’t spend half of her life in front of a mirror endlessly prinking and preening!”
    Daisy considered this, with her head a little to one side. “Will somebody tell me, please, if I’ve just received a compliment? It doesn’t happen often and I’d like to know.”
    â€œNo,” said Andrew. “I don’t picture you as the type of person whose life can only be sustained by compliments.”
    â€œNot like some that we could mention!” said Marsha, almost before she’d realized she had any intention of saying it.
    â€œMeaning?”
    But now that she had started, it seemed easier to go on than to back off. And certainly their guest ought to approve. To judge from what she had been saying Daisy wouldn’t have backed off.
    â€œMeaning that those in glass houses oughtn’t to throw stones, because I too may have seen people prinking and preening in front of a mirror when they thought nobody was watching. Though naturally I should never dream of naming names.”
    It occurred to her that he hadn’t actually named names either.
    â€œOr doesn’t posing in front of the wardrobe door just before you have your bath, or just after you’ve had it, or both—doesn’t that happen to count for some reason? I’m very sorry if I thought it did.”
    â€œFor heaven’s sake, Marsha!” He looked at her as though he couldn’t at all understand what accounted for this. “Have you gone clean out of your mind? Have you forgotten that we have a visitor?”
    â€œOh, pay no attention to me,” said Daisy—who, for once in her life, really wished that people wouldn’t. “I’m still trying to work out whether, on aggregate, I come out of this with a fiercely swollen head or just my usual hangdog expression. In any case, Marsha, I do admire a man who wants to keep himself in