‘It’s her own fault,’ said the people opposite.
She began to diet in real earnest. Now that the tasting was over, it wasn’t any great hardship. She had spoken the truth when she said that she by no means grossly over-ate or indeed over-ate at all—not by standards other than her own. It was simply that with her particular metabolism, she more easily put on fat. And with so little cooking to be done for her husband, the weight loss became, if gradual, at least very steady. ‘I live almost entirely on salads now,’ she said to her doctor.
‘If she eats any more of them greens,’ said the old woman on the balcony, watching her stagger home, laden with lettuces, ‘she’ll turn into a rabbit.’
‘Lashings of salad cream,’ said the daughter, who never touched anything, herself, but a dab of malt vinegar, ‘what’ll you bet?’
‘Mind, she’s losing!’
‘Skinny,’ said the old woman. ‘Much more of it and she’ll be skinny.’
‘Doesn’t suit her,’ said the husband. ‘She was better fat.’
‘She was never all that fat. What’s she messing herself about for?’
‘Never get him back that way,’ said the Family, comfortably.
‘You were a lot too fat,’ said Mrs. Jennings’ husband, on one of his now rare visits home, ‘and now you’re a lot too thin.’
‘Don’t you like me thin?’
‘I don’t like you at all,’ he said.
‘Oh,’ she said, shocked. She ventured: ‘You used to like me once. When I was slim.’
‘You’re not slim now,’ he said. ‘You’re gaunt.’
‘She’ll take to the drink,’ said the old grandmother. ‘You watch!’
She had given up even the six o’clock half-glass of sherry. Now, sad and lonely, faced with an evening meal of yet more lettuce, she took to the habit again. Had a half glass—a whole glass—a couple of glasses: before the evening salad—before the lunchtime salad—at eleven o’clock. ‘I see they’re delivering from the wine shop regular,’ said the grandfather. ‘And the hard stuff. Not sherry any more and that derbonny.’
‘You’re not drinking too much?’ said her doctor.
‘Only what they call “socially”.’
‘I’m not too sure that it isn’t a drop more than that?’
‘You’ve been talking to the people opposite,’ she said.
‘The people opposite?’
‘In the flats. They watch me from the balcony there.’
‘Well, I don’t know them, do I?’ said the doctor. ‘How could I talk to them?’
‘They watch me all the time. Criticise me among themselves.’
‘How do you know?’ he said.
‘Well, I’m sure. What else would they watch me for? There’s an old lady, an invalid, she sits in her chair and watches me through the railings of the balcony, she’s got nothing else to do. And the Family come in and out and they talk about me.’
‘How do you know they talk about you? You can’t hear them.’
‘What else would they talk about?—hanging over the balcony up there, looking down, watching me. What else has the old woman got to interest her?—she talks about me to them, and then they all talk about me together. There’s nothing I do that they don’t know about. They’ve watched me get fat and stay fat, and get thinner; and get fat again and now get too thin and stay too thin. I’m so fixated on salad stuffs now, I seem never to eat anything else. I expect they know that too. Everything I do, they see, they comment on.’
‘Maybe they talk kindly?’
‘No, they don’t. Why should they? They’ve seen me drive my husband away, making myself so unattractive, they’ve seen him with his mistress, he brought her to the house once, I smelt her scent on my pillow…’
‘Perhaps they criticise him?’
‘No, they don’t,’ she said. She said again, ‘Why should they? You can’t blame him.’ But in her heart, she blamed him. She had tried very hard and he had been cruel. She thought to herself with fear that by now she was beginning to hate him.
‘Well, well,’ said the doctor. There seemed nothing else to say. But he did advise: ‘Go easy on the booze, my dear.’
‘Alcoholics Anonymous any day now,’ said the old woman, from her wheel-chair.
In the doctor’s waiting room Mrs. Jennings had leafed through the magazines. ‘Go out and get a new hair-do,’ they all advised, as a way to reclaim lost love. ‘Have a facial, dress yourself up a bit glam.’ She went out and got a new hair-do, had a facial, bought some bright-ish new clothes. ‘What in God’s name are you doing to yourself now?’ said Mr. Jennings, on the next of the rare visits. They were becoming almost non-existent.