Something in Disguise by Elizabeth Jane Howard

Author:Elizabeth Jane Howard [Howard, Elizabeth Jane]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781447217640
Publisher: Pan Macmillan UK

3. Surrey Blues

It wasn’t until after Elizabeth had rung up that May realized how down she had been. Three or four times a day she had been telling herself that this was absurd. The weather had been good: Herbert had alternated trips to Lord’s with a much keener and more practical interest in the garden than he had shown before. He treated the lawn with various chemicals, hosed it, rolled it, mowed it, and walked about it discussing its future perfection and the possibility of croquet. It kept him happy. He was just the kind of man to get obsessive about lawns, she thought. Mrs Green had been angelic: especially when May’s digestion had been so stupidly bad that she hadn’t felt like cooking – let alone eating – anything. Mrs Green had even got her nephew to repair May’s electric pad because she simply couldn’t get her feet warm at night. Of course she worried about Oliver – not having a proper job, not seeming to care to get on with his life – but what she had already learned from the League had taught her to despise that kind of practically dishonest concern. Dr Sedum would simply ask who she was really worrying about – Oliver or herself? And as it was clearly worse to worry about herself, she knew that that was what she must really be doing. Elizabeth she suspected of being in love; a perfectly natural and reassuring condition. Lavinia had said that the impression she was creating upon other members of the League was largely favourable. The few people with whom she had obliquely discussed the difficulties of living with Herbert had treated him as a chronic natural hazard – like a degree of fall-out or the buildup of pesticides. It had – reasonably enough – been a reflection upon her that she was allied to such a man. Quite right (she was sure that anybody who could point to any of her behaviour and pronounce it shoddy, dishonest, underhand in some sickeningly unconscious manner must be right): but the facts were that she had to go on living and dealing with what she had done. The house, for instance. The curious thing about that was that she (not forgetting darling Oliver and Elizabeth) seemed to be the only person who really hated this awful house. Herbert, naturally (it was he who made her buy it), adored the place; but, far more mysterious, Dr Sedum and co. seemed also to think well of it. Lavinia had pointed out that many of the rooms were ideally suited to communal activities, although she was maddeningly unprepared to say what they might be. May was in a curious position vis-à-vis the League. At steady intervals she was invited to a Time – in a garden flat in St John’s Wood – but she could not go unless it happened to coincide with one of Herbert’s cricket days. When she did go, she came away feeling curiously depressed.

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