When I Was Otherwise by Stephen Benatar

Author:Stephen Benatar
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781497693654
Publisher: Open Road Distribution

29

Yes, this whole conversation was absurd and he hadn’t got the time for it. Such things had been all right, he supposed, before they were married—even quite charming really, rather sweet, so long as they hadn’t been trotted out in public, as they so often had. But didn’t she realize life had changed? In less than six months she would be giving birth. This was hard to imagine. In some ways she was still such a baby herself. Of course—Daisy was right—her mother was to blame. Florence had never treated her as anything other than a baby: a particularly spoilt one at that. Yet this was really no excuse. It was high time she began to grow up.

“Marsha, do you realize how long we’ve been talking and that there are now a dozen people waiting to use this box?” There was certainly one person, a disgruntled-looking woman who was holding the hand of a recalcitrant pigtailed child.

Which of course made it two.

“Oh, let them wait!” cried Marsha gaily.

“And what’s more I shan’t have any time for lunch.”

“Oh, gracious. Andy, you must eat! Hang up and go at once.”

She had forgotten that he’d spoken of there being a reason for his call…other than the one suggested by herself! Yet perversely, now that he’d been given the opportunity, he experienced some small difficulty in getting to the point. (Any less moral man, he told himself, would have experienced no difficulty at all.) “Oh, well. Perhaps there isn’t that much rush. They can wait a minute longer.”

“But it’s not them I’m thinking of! It’s you!”

“Well, I daresay I shall manage to grab something.”

“But, oh, if you grab something, you know it will only give you indigestion.”

Perversely, too, in such a situation, he found her solicitude oppressive.

Yet perhaps this was helpful: the sheer fact of its being irritating.

“I’m afraid, Marsha, I’ll be home rather late this evening. Boringly I shall have to stay on at the office.”

“Oh, you poor darling! I hate that Colonel Quinn! But do you know how late? I’ll get Mary to hold back the dinner.”

“No, don’t do that. Don’t even wait up. I may not get in much before midnight or beyond.”

“Oh, Andrew!”

He was totally unprepared for such a wail. “Why? What’s the matter?”

“But do you have to stay so long?”

“Of course I do.”

“There’s no way out?”

“No. None whatever.”

She emitted a sigh every bit as exaggerated as his had been when she had been pondering the mystery of dimples and cleft chins.

“Oh, for Pete’s sake,” he exclaimed, “this is the first time the Colonel’s ever requested it! The very first time it’s happened.”

Some women’s husbands, he thought—sailors for instance—were away from home for months on end. Even commercial travellers could escape for five whole days a week. Possibly six.

“You can’t think how boring it is,” she said, “just sitting here on my own every evening until twenty-past-seven or beyond. Sometimes I don’t even know what keeps me from screaming. Or tearing my hair out. And now you say midnight! Possibly even later!”

Good God.

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