Wives and Lovers by Margaret Millar Page A

accuracy, all the words he had spoken in her presence, as if she had deliberately, right from the first, set out to memorize them. Why? Gordon thought. Why me? He saw himself as an ordinary man crowding forty, getting a little bald, a little stooped, a little tired. There was nothing about him to appeal to a young girl, yet for Ruby his departure had murdered a city. She loves me, Gordon thought, and he felt a nameless fear draining the blood out of his head.
    Love, I’m not sure what it is, what does it mean? Elaine loves to love things. She loves tweed suits, mush­rooms, bleached mahogany furniture, bridge, even me. “I love you, Gordon, naturally I do, for heaven’s sake you’re my husband, aren’t you?” She loves the children too. Eat your custard because Mummy loves you and wants you to be big and strong. Elaine wants to be loved in return, she’s always asking me if I love her and I always say I do. “Certainly, of course, absolutely, sure, naturally, why shouldn’t I love you, you’re my wife, aren’t you?” What have we been talking about all these years, Elaine and I? I never killed a city for Elaine.
    â€œI remember,” Gordon said.
    â€œI felt dead too, Gordon. I knew I was moving around, sometimes I could feel my legs walking up the streets but they didn’t have any connection with me, they just walked by themselves automatically.”
    â€œIdidn’t—I didn’t mean to make you feel this way about me.”
    â€œI know, but I do. It’s happened. You don’t really want me to go home, do you, Gordon?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œWell, that’s settled then. And you mustn’t worry, promise?”
    â€œI promise, Ruby.”
    She pressed her head against his shoulder. Her mouth trembled and her eyes were blurred with tears. “I’ve never loved anyone before and nobody’s ever loved me either, not my father or mother or my aunt or another man, no one.”
    â€œI’ll make it up to you,” Gordon said. He felt a new and grave responsibility for her. She had such stubborn naiveté, she was so ignorant of the world and of the diffi­culties ahead of them both.
    In fear and love and desperation he put his arm around her and held her close.
    For Gordon, who was by nature a blunt and honest man, life became a series of sly, awkward deceptions.
    He lied to Hazel: “You’d better phone Mrs. Hathaway and cancel her five o’clock appointment. I have a bit of a headache.” He lied to Elaine: “That walk last night set me up. I think I ought to get more exercise—” and to the children: “Daddy can’t read to you tonight, he’s going down to the Y to have a swim.”
    Later, he and Ruby parted at the front door of Ruby’s boarding house. The proprietress, who didn’t allow visitors of the opposite sex in any of the rooms, had lately become suspicious of one or two of her tenants, and she sat all evening in the parlor with the blinds up, looking alert.
    â€œThe old biddy’s watching,” Ruby said. “Don’t kiss me.”
    â€œAll right.”
    â€œWill I see you tomorrow, Gordon?”
    â€œI don’t know.”
    â€œWhat did you tell Elaine tonight?”
    â€œThat I was going for a swim at the Y.”
    â€œYou better wet your hair some place.”
    On his way home he went into the public lavatory and dampened his hair under the tap. He splashed some water in his eyes to make them a little red, and dried his face with his handkerchief. He walked home along the dark quiet streets with the smell of the lavatory in his nostrils and despair and degradation in his heart.
    On his arrival Elaine noticed his damp hair and reddish eyes, but she also noticed that he didn’t smell of chlorine as he always did after a swim in the pool. She didn’t make any comment to Gordon, she merely noted the discrepancy in the little account