Читать книгу Glamorous Powers - Susan Howatch - Страница 52

‘I’m sorry you thought I was being so paradoxical yesterday,’ I said to Francis when we next met. ‘With your permission I’d now like to explain my marriage in a more comprehensible way.’

Francis kept his expression bland and motioned me to continue.

‘What I was really trying to imply,’ I said, ‘is that I was probably as happy with Betty as I would have been with any other woman. The problem wasn’t Betty; it was marriage itself – the whole business of living in close proximity to another person. The truth was I shouldn’t have married at all, but as I was neither a eunuch nor a homosexual it never occurred to me at the tender age of twenty-three that I’d be better off as a celibate. So I married and was often very happy. It’s true that I did find my spiritual vitality was being sapped, but since I loved my wife and children I was prepared to tolerate that. All marriages involve some degree of compromise and mine was certainly no exception.’

But Francis merely said: ‘I do see the distinction you’re trying to make when you blame your discomfort on the institution of marriage rather than on your wife, but nevertheless if living in close proximity to another person was so difficult for you one can’t help but wonder if that other person might be part of the problem. Forgive me for asking, but did you in fact marry her for any reason other than the sexual and the economic?’

‘No, but that doesn’t mean the marriage was doomed. Most marriages founder over either money or intimacy. It was our modest bank balance and our intimate relationship which held the marriage together.’

‘Well, there wasn’t much else to hold it together, was there?’ said Francis bluntly. ‘She shared none of your intellectual interests; she was spiritually illiterate; she came from a different class, a fact which must have complicated your professional and social life in all kinds of difficult ways –’

‘But I’ve told you – I didn’t care about any of those disadvantages! All I wanted was a morally acceptable outlet for my sexual inclinations –’

The trap sprang shut.

‘How very humiliating for your wife,’ said Francis brutally, and at once I was slammed on the rack.