The Collected Stories

  Mrs Ritchie said that the Lowhrs, she was sure, had not smiled at any predicament that Anna had found herself in, and the General impatiently repeated that the man was drunk.

  ‘The Lowhrs smiled,’ Anna said, ‘and you have mocked me too. Though perhaps you don’t even know it.’

  As she pushed a passage through the people, she felt the sweat running on her face and her body. There was a fog of smoke in the room by now, and the voices of the people, struggling to be heard above the music, were louder than before. The man she had danced with was sitting in a corner with his shoes off, and a woman in a crimson dress was trying to persuade him to put them on again. At the door of the room she found Mr Lowhr. ‘Shall we dance?’ he said.

  She shook her head, feeling calmer all of a sudden. Mr Lowhr suggested a drink.

  ‘May I telephone?’ she said. ‘Quietly somewhere?’

  ‘Upstairs,’ said Mr Lowhr, smiling immensely at her. ‘Up two flights, the door ahead of you: a tiny guest-room. Take a glass with you.’

  She nodded, saying she’d like a little whisky.

  ‘Let me give you a tip,’ Mr Lowhr said as he poured her some from a nearby bottle. ‘Always buy Haig whisky. It’s distilled by a special method.’

  ‘You’re never going so soon?’ said Mrs Lowhr, appearing at her husband’s side.

  ‘Just to telephone,’ said Mr Lowhr. He held out his hand with the glass of whisky in it. Anna took it, and as she did so she caught a glimpse of the Ritchies watching her from the other end of the room. Her calmness vanished. The Lowhrs, she noticed, were looking at her too, and smiling. She wanted to ask them why they were smiling, but she knew if she did that they’d simply make some polite reply. Instead she said:

  ‘You shouldn’t expose your guests to men who eat hair. Even unimportant guests.’

  She turned her back on them and passed from the room. She crossed the hall, sensing that she was being watched. ‘Mrs Mackintosh,’ Mr Lowhr called after her.

  His plumpness filled the doorway. He hovered, seeming uncertain about pursuing her, His face was bewildered and apparently upset.

  ‘Has something disagreeable happened?’ he said in a low voice across the distance between them.

  ‘You saw. You and your wife thought fit to laugh, Mr Lowhr.’

  ‘I do assure you, Mrs Mackintosh, I’ve no idea what you’re talking about.’

  ‘It’s fascinating, I suppose. Your friends the Ritchies find it fascinating too.’

  ‘Look here, Mrs Mackintosh –’

  ‘Oh, don’t blame them. They’ve nothing left but to watch and mock, at an age like that. The point is, there’s a lot of hypocrisy going on tonight. ‘She nodded at Mr Lowhr to emphasize that last remark, and then went swiftly upstairs.

  ‘I imagine the woman’s gone off home,’ the General said. ‘I dare say her husband’s drinking in a pub.’

  ‘I worried once,’ replied Mrs Ritchie, speaking quietly, for she didn’t wish the confidence to be heard by others. ‘That female, Mrs Flyte.’

  The General roared with laughter. ‘Trixie Flyte,’ he shouted. ‘Good God, she was a free-for-all!’

  ‘Oh, do be quiet.’

  ‘Dear girl, you didn’t ever think –’

  ‘I didn’t know what to think, if you want to know.’

  Greatly amused, the General seized what he hoped would be his final drink. He placed it behind a green plant on a table. ‘Shall we dance one dance,’ he said, ‘just to amuse them? And then when I’ve had that drink to revive me we can thankfully make our way.’

  But he found himself talking to nobody, for when he had turned from his wife to secrete his drink she had moved away. He followed her to where she was questioning Mrs Lowhr.

  ‘Some little tiff,’ Mrs Lowhr was saying as he approached.

  ‘Hardly a tiff,’ corrected Mrs Ritchie. ‘The woman’s terribly upset.’ She turned to her husband, obliging him to speak.

  ‘Upset,’ he said.

  ‘Oh, there now,’ cried Mrs Lowhr, taking each of the Ritchies by an arm. ‘Why don’t you take the floor and forget it?’

  They both of them recognized from her tone that she was thinking the elderly exaggerated things and didn’t always understand the ways of marriage in the modern world. The General especially resented the insinuation. He said:

  ‘Has the woman gone away?’

  ‘She’s upstairs telephoning. Some silly chap upset her apparently, during a dance. That’s all it is, you know.’

  ‘You’ve got the wrong end of the stick entirely,’ said the General angrily, ‘and you’re trying to say we have. The woman believes her husband may arrive here with the girl he’s chosen as his second wife.’

  ‘But that’s ridiculous!’ cried Mrs Lowhr with a tinkling laugh.

  ‘It is what the woman thinks,’ said the General loudly, ‘whether it’s ridiculous or not.’ More quietly, Mrs Ritchie added:

  ‘She thinks she has a powerful intuition when all it is is a disease.’

  ‘I’m cross with this Mrs Mackintosh for upsetting you two dear people!’ cried Mrs Lowhr with a shrillness that matched her roundness and her glasses. ‘I really and truly am.’

  A big man came up as she spoke and lifted her into his arms, preparatory to dancing with her. ‘What could anyone do?’ she called back at the Ritchies as the man rotated her away. ‘What can you do for a nervy woman like that?’

  There was dark wallpaper on the walls of the room: black and brown with little smears of muted yellow. The curtains matched it; so did the bedspread on the low single bed, and the covering on the padded headboard. The Carpet ran from wall to wall and was black and thick. There was a narrow wardrobe with a door of padded black leather and brass studs and an ornamental brass handle. The dressing-table and the stool in front of it reflected this general motif in different ways. Two shelves, part of the bed, attached to it on either side of the pillows, served as bedside tables: on each there was a lamp, and on one of them a white telephone.

  As Anna closed and locked the door, she felt that in a dream she had been in a dark room in a house where there was a party, waiting for Edward to bring her terrible news. She drank a little whisky and moved towards the telephone. She dialled a number and when a voice answered her call she said:

  ‘Dr Abbatt? It’s Anna Mackintosh.’

  His voice, as always, was so soft she could hardly hear it. ‘Ah, Mrs Mackintosh,’ he said.

  ‘I want to talk to you.’

  ‘Of course, Mrs Mackintosh, of course. Tell me now.’

  ‘I’m at a party given by people called Lowhr. Edward was to be here but he didn’t turn up. I was all alone and then two old people like scarecrows talked to me. They said their name was Ritchie. And a man ate my hair when we were dancing. The Lowhrs smiled at that.’

  ‘I see. Yes?’

  ‘I’m in a room at the top of the house. I’ve locked the door.’

  ‘Tell me about the room, Mrs Mackintosh.’

  ‘There’s black leather on the wardrobe and the dressing-table. Curtains and things match. Dr Abbatt?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘The Ritchies are people who injure other people, I think. Intentionally or unintentionally, it never matters.’

  ‘They are strangers to you, these Ritchies?’

  ‘They attempted to mock me. People know at this party, Dr Abbatt; they sense what’s going to happen because of how I look.’

  Watching for her to come downstairs, the Ritchies stood in the hall and talked to one another.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Mrs Ritchie. ‘I know it would be nicer to go home.’

  ‘What can we do, old sticks like us? We know not a thing about such women. It’s quite absurd.’

  ‘The woman’s on my mind, dear. And on yours too. You know it.’

  ‘I think she’ll be more on our minds if we come across her again. She’ll turn nasty, I’ll tell you that.’

  ‘Yes, but it would please me to wait a little.’

&nbs
p; ‘To be insulted,’ said the General.

  ‘Oh, do stop being so cross, dear.’

  ‘The woman’s a stranger to us. She should regulate her life and have done with it. She has no right to bother people.’

  ‘She is a human being in great distress. No, don’t say anything, please, if it isn’t pleasant.’

  The General went into a sulk, and at the end of it he said grudgingly:

  ‘Trixie Flyte was nothing.’

  ‘Oh, I know. Trixie Flyte is dead and done for years ago. I didn’t worry like this woman if that’s what’s on your mind.’

  ‘It wasn’t,’ lied the General. ‘The woman worries ridiculously.’

  ‘I think, you know, we may yet be of use to her: I have a feeling about that.’

  ‘For God’s sake, leave the feelings to her. We’ve had enough of that for one day.’

  ‘As I said to her, we’re not entirely useless. No one ever can be.’

  ‘You feel you’re being attacked again, Mrs Mackintosh. Are you calm? You haven’t been drinking too much?’

  ‘A little.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘I am being replaced by a younger person.’

  ‘You say you’re in a bedroom. Is it possible for you to lie on the bed and talk to me at the same time? Would it be comfortable?’

  Anna placed the receiver on the bed and settled herself. She picked it up again and said:

  ‘If he died, there would be a funeral and I’d never forget his kindness to me. I can’t do that if he has another wife.’

  ‘We have actually been over this ground,’ said Dr Abbatt more softly than ever. ‘But we can of course go over it again.’

  ‘Any time, you said.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘What has happened is perfectly simple. Edward is with the girl. He is about to arrive here to tell me to clear off. She’s insisting on that. It’s not Edward, you know.’

  ‘Mrs Mackintosh, I’m going to speak firmly now. We’ve agreed between us that there’s no young girl in your husband’s life. You have an obsession, Mrs Mackintosh, about the fact that you have never had children and that men sometimes marry twice –’

  ‘There’s such a thing as the Mark-2 wife!’ Anna cried. ‘You know there is. A girl of nineteen who’ll delightedly give birth to Edward’s sons.’

  ‘No, no –’

  ‘I had imagined Edward telling me. I had imagined him pushing back his hair and lighting a cigarette in his untidy way. “I’m terribly sorry,” he would say, and leave me nothing to add to that. Instead it’s like this: a nightmare.’

  ‘It is not a nightmare, Mrs Mackintosh.’

  ‘This party is a nightmare. People are vultures here.’

  ‘Mrs Mackintosh, I must tell you that I believe you’re seeing the people at this party in a most exaggerated light.’

  ‘A man –’

  ‘A man nibbled your hair. Worse things can happen. This is not a nightmare, Mrs Mackintosh. Your husband has been delayed. Husbands are always being delayed. D’you see? You and I and your husband are all together trying to rid you of this perfectly normal obsession you’ve developed. We mustn’t complicate matters, now must we?’

  ‘I didn’t run away, Dr Abbatt. I said to myself I mustn’t run away from this party. I must wait and face whatever was to happen. You told me to face things.’

  ‘I didn’t tell you, my dear. We agreed between us. We talked it out, the difficulty about facing things, and we saw the wisdom of it. Now I want you to go back to the party and wait for your husband.’

  ‘He’s more than two hours late.’

  ‘My dear Mrs Mackintosh, an hour or so is absolutely nothing these days. Now listen to me please.’

  She listened to the soft voice as it reminded her of all that between them they had agreed. Dr Abbatt went over the ground, from the time she had first consulted him to the present moment. He charted her obsession until it seemed once again, as he said, a perfectly normal thing for a woman of forty to have.

  After she had said goodbye, Anna sat on the bed feeling very calm. She had read the message behind Dr Abbatt’s words: that it was ridiculous, her perpetually going on in this lunatic manner. She had come to a party and in no time at all she’d been behaving in a way that was, she supposed, mildly crazy. It always happened, she knew, and it would as long as the trouble remained: in her mind, when she began to worry, everything became jumbled and unreal, turning her into an impossible person. How could Edward, for heaven’s sake, be expected to live with her fears and her suppositions? Edward would crack as others would, tormented by an impossible person. He’d become an alcoholic or he’d have some love affair with a woman just as old as she was, and the irony of that would be too great. She knew, as she sat there, that she couldn’t help herself and that as long as she lived with Edward she wouldn’t be able to do any better. ‘I have lost touch with reality,’ she said. ‘I shall let him go, as a bird is released. In my state how can I have rights?’

  She left the room and slowly descended the stairs. There were framed prints of old motor-cars on the wall and she paused now and again to examine one, emphasizing to herself her own continued calmness. She was thinking that she’d get herself a job. She might even tell Edward that Dr Abbatt had suggested their marriage should end since she wasn’t able to live with her thoughts any more. She’d insist on a divorce at once. She didn’t mind the thought of it now, because of course it would be different: she was doing what she guessed Dr Abbatt had been willing her to do for quite a long time really: she was taking matters into her own hands, she was acting positively – rejecting, not being rejected herself. Her marriage was ending cleanly and correctly.

  She found her coat and thanked the dark-skinned maid who held it for her. Edward was probably at the party by now, but in the new circumstances that was neither here nor there. She’d go home in a taxi and pack a suitcase and then telephone for another taxi. She’d leave a note for Edward and go to a hotel, without telling him where.

  ‘Good-night,’ she said to the maid. She stepped towards the hall door as the maid opened it for her, and as she did so she felt a hand touch her shoulder. ‘No, Edward,’ she said. ‘I must go now.’ But when she turned she saw that the hand belonged to Mrs Ritchie. Behind her, looking tired, stood the General. For a moment there was a silence. Then Anna, speaking to both of them, said:

  ‘I’m extremely sorry. Please forgive me.’

  ‘We were worried about you,’ said Mrs Ritchie. ‘Will you be all right, my dear?’

  ‘The fear is worse than the reality, Mrs Ritchie. I can no longer live with the fear.’

  ‘We understand.’

  ‘It’s strange,’ Anna said, passing through the doorway and standing at the top of the steps that led to the street. ‘Strange, coming to a party like this, given by people I didn’t know and meeting you and being so rude. Please don’t tell me if my husband is here or not. It doesn’t concern me now. I’m quite calm.’

  The Ritchies watched her descend the steps and call out to a passing taxi-cab. They watched the taxi drive away.

  ‘Calm!’ said General Ritchie.

  ‘She’s still in a state, poor thing,’ agreed his wife. ‘I do feel sorry.’

  They stood on the steps of the Lowhrs’ house, thinking about the brief glance they had had of another person’s life, bewildered by it and saddened, for they themselves, though often edgy on the surface, had had a happy marriage.

  ‘At least she’s standing on her own feet now,’ Mrs Ritchie said. ‘I think it’ll save her.’

  A taxi drew up at the house and the Ritchies watched it, thinking for a moment that Anna Mackintosh, weak in her resolve, had returned in search of her husband. But it was a man who emerged and ran up the steps in a manner which suggested that, like the man who had earlier misbehaved on the dance-floor, he was not entirely sober. He passed the Ritchies and entered the house. ‘That is Edward Mackintosh,’ said Mrs Ritchie.

  The girl who was pay
ing the taxi-driver paused in what she was doing to see where her companion had dashed away to and observed two thin figures staring at her from the lighted doorway, murmuring to one another.

  ‘Cruel,’ said the General. ‘The woman said so: we must give her that.’

  ‘He’s a kind man,’ replied Mrs Ritchie. ‘He’ll listen to us.’

  ‘To us, for heaven’s sake?’

  ‘We have a thing to do, as I said we might have.’

  ‘The woman has gone. I’m not saying I’m not sorry for her –’

  ‘And who shall ask for mercy for the woman, since she cannot ask herself? There is a little to be saved, you know: she has made a gesture, poor thing. It must be honoured.’

  ‘My dear, we don’t know these people; we met the woman quite in passing.’

  The girl came up the steps, settling her purse into its right place in her handbag. She smiled at the Ritchies, and they thought that the smile had a hint of triumph about it, as though it was her first smile since the victory that Anna Mackintosh had said some girl was winning that night.

  ‘Even if he’d listen,’ muttered the General when the girl had passed by, ‘I doubt that she would.’

  ‘It’s just that a little time should be allowed to go by,’ his wife reminded him. ‘That’s all that’s required. Until the woman’s found her feet again and feels she has a voice in her own life.’

  ‘We’re interfering,’ said the General, and his wife said nothing. They looked at one another, remembering vividly the dread in Anna Mackintosh’s face and the confusion that all her conversation had revealed.

  The General shook his head. ‘We are hardly the happiest choice,’ he said, in a gentler mood at last, ‘but I dare say we must try.’

  He closed the door of the house and they paused for a moment in the hall, talking again of the woman who had told them her troubles. They drew a little strength from that, and felt armed to face once more the Lowhrs’ noisy party. Together they moved towards it and through it, in search of a man they had met once before on a similar occasion. ‘We are sorry for interfering,’ they would quietly say; and making it seem as natural as they could, they would ask him to honour, above all else and in spite of love, the gesture of a woman who no longer interested him.