It was true that, carrying so much overweight, Mrs. Jennings got easily tired, doing housework. ‘But I’m not going to eat anything,’ she said to herself. ‘I know that old hag up there watches everything I touch.’ She could not resist a cup of coffee, however, and an hour later was still stretched out on the sofa, doing the crossword. ‘A bit more exercise would do her good,’ said the old grandfather. ‘All that money—better for her to be a bit hard up, have to go out to work. And on foot,’ he added, almost savagely.
‘And how did you bestir yourself today?’ asked Mr. Jennings, sitting down to a well-filled dinner plate. He was not such a beauty himself, reflected Mrs. Jennings; not as svelte as all that. ‘I did a big household shop,’ she said. Only at the last minute had she succumbed and taken a taxi home. ‘All by bus,’ she said, fibbing. ‘Parcels and the lot.’
‘I bet,’ said Mr. Jennings on an unlovely, jeering note.
‘Well, nearly all. Oh, and I took your suit to the cleaners. There was a letter in the pocket. I put it on your desk.’
He went a shade pale. ‘Having had a good look at it first?’
‘No, I didn’t,’ she said. ‘I don’t read other people’s letters.’
‘All women read other people’s letters,’ he said. ‘Especially their husbands’.’
‘Well, I don’t and I didn’t. Why should I?’
‘I simply took the girl out to lunch,’ he said, defensive.
‘The girl? What girl?’
‘The girl in the letter. A thin girl,’ he said.
‘Got a girl friend now,’ the old woman was saying, cosy now indoors in the sitting room. Friends had come in for coffee and the Family were regaling them with the continuing story of That Woman Opposite. ‘Brought her home the night old Fatso was away—whatever took her away, but she was gone for the night. And in they come, like a couple of rabbits to the burrow, him and this floosey with him. You could follow the lights—hall, sitting room—lights on in the sitting room—lights out in the sitting room, lights on up the stairs—lights on in the bedroom, lights off in the bedroom…’
‘What’s she like?’ said the grandchildren.
‘Thin,’ said the old woman.
So now she really went to work, dieting hard. It was a weary business all the same, depriving yourself, starving yourself, losing weight, yes, but so gradually that nobody noticed it—never really anything to show. ‘Well, you’re not all that fat,’ said her doctor. ‘Lose a couple more and you’ll be a sylph.’ A couple more stone he meant.
‘I’m eating literally nothing.’
‘What’s nothing?’ he said.
‘No meals,’ she said. ‘But I pick when I’m cooking. I lick the spoon. Well, I can’t help it. I’ve got to cook rich things for my husband and I have to taste while I’m going along, haven’t I?’
‘Why must you cook rich things for him?’ he said. ‘Couldn’t he manage on something less destructive to you?’
‘Oh, no, he loves those things, he wants everything cooked in cream. And I’ve got to give him what he wants.’
‘I expect it’s really because you like licking the spoons,’ he said, laughing.
‘Licking the spoons,’ said the old woman’s daughter, leaning over the balcony rail to look down into the lighted kitchen. ‘See her? Half a pint of double cream, that looks like to me; and there she’ll be, dipping the spoon in every other minute, licking away… And chocolate sauce, that’ll be for the ice-cream; hot chocolate sauce, that’s her favourite. Some stuff she puts into it, fetches the bottle from the dining room, and then great spoonfuls to see she’s got it just right…’
‘What’s this muck?’ said Mr. Jennings that night. ‘It’s got far too much kirsch in it. You haven’t got it right.’
‘I’m trying to keep off tasting all the time.’
‘Yes, well while you’re on that lark, I’ll have my dinners elsewhere,’ he said.
So there was no more tasting. Sick with knowledge of her own lack of appeal, Mrs. Jennings accepted his absences, increasingly frequent and prolonged, and since she made no objection, he shrugged and went his way. ‘He’s left her,’ said the Family, adding pity to contempt. ‘Well, almost. Keeps up the outward pretence. But it won’t be long now.’
Mr. Jennings kept up the pretence because it suited him to do so; the thin lady was keeping up pretences of her own. But at home, he troubled not at all. ‘If you don’t like it,’ he said, ‘look in the mirror. Just ask yourself, whose fault is it? You’re disgusting.’