Читать книгу Imagined Selves - Willa Muir - Страница 19

Mabel was feeling pettish. For days John had been mooning about as if bewitched, shutting himself up all evening and either looking at her as if she were not there or evading her irritably whenever he came out of the study. One might as well be married to a log. It was a pity John was so old.

Their marital relationship had been well regulated during the two years of their marriage. After John’s first ardours were over she had escaped his embraces except on Sunday mornings when they lay longer in bed. These Sunday- morning embraces now had the sanction of tradition, and Mabel sometimes wondered if John kept them up because they were a tradition. It was a pity John was so old. A woman so well made as she was should have a husband to match her.

She looked up resentfully from her magazine as John came in.

‘Are you going to change?’ she asked.

‘Won’t take me a minute,’ said John, balancing himself on his toes before the fire.

He would break it to her after dinner, he was thinking.

‘You’re growing fat, John. Must do something to take down your tummy.’

‘Am I?’ John looked down at his waistcoat and fingered his beard. Mabel noted with satisfaction that he seemed dashed.

‘Do I look very old, Mabel?’ he asked in a surprisingly humble tone. Mabel’s possessiveness reasserted itself.

‘No, you don’t, darling; you look very dignified, but not old. A little less on the tummy would be an improvement, though.’

‘I’ll do exercises every morning,’ decided John. He still lingered, however, and then brought out the question which had been troubling him.

‘Should I shave my beard off, Mabel, do you think?’

Mabel was astounded. She had never seen him without a beard.

‘I don’t know what you’d look like without it!’ she cried. ‘Oh no, darling. It gives you such a distinguished look.’

John went upstairs to change and as he looked in the glass he could hear Lizzie saying: ‘Saves you washing your neck, doesn’t it?’

He laughed out loud.

If he took off his beard, Mabel was thinking downstairs, I might as well be married to anybody.

She gazed idly at an illustration to the story she was reading. The hero and heroine were standing clasped in each other’s arms, a typical magazine embrace, with the woman swaying backwards and the man masterfully overtopping her. She had a hand on each of his shoulders, pushing him away; when the inevitable kiss came she would enjoy it with a good conscience because of this show of resistance. Mabel’s eye lingered on the picture. It came into her mind that the hero’s shoulders were like Hector’s, and although startled, even shocked, she felt for an infinitesimal space of time that it would be thrilling to stem her hands against Hector’s broad shoulders and push him away with all her strength.

During dinner and afterwards John and Mabel were more talkative than usual. Perhaps they were each trying to atone to the other for a secret feeling of guilt. John found it easy, at any rate, to confess all, or nearly all, of what was in his heart. Mabel, apparently, had nothing to confess.