I made no answer, so she repeated the question, louder this time.
I told her politely that I didn’t know.
‘I don’t think I like them very much,’ she said. ‘Especially him.’
‘No dear, all right.’
‘Arthur. I said I don’t think I like them very much.’
I lowered my book and looked across at her lying with her feet up on the sofa, flipping over the pages of some fashion magazine. ‘We’ve only met them once,’ I said.
‘A dreadful man, really. Never stopped telling jokes, or stories, or something.’
‘I’m sure you’ll manage them very well, dear.’
‘And she’s pretty frightful, too. When do you think they’ll arrive?’
Somewhere around six o’clock, I guessed.
‘But don’t you think they’re awful?’ she asked, pointing at me with her finger.
‘Well…’
‘They’re too awful, they really are.’
‘We can hardly put them off now, Pamela.’
‘They’re absolutely the end,’ she said.
‘Then why did you ask them?’ The question slipped out before I could stop myself and I regretted it at once, for it is a rule with me never to provoke my wife if I can help it. There was a pause, and I watched her face, waiting for the answer – the big white face that to me was something so strange and fascinating there were occasions when I could hardly bring myself to look away from it. In the evenings sometimes – working on her embroidery, or painting those small intricate flower pictures – the face would tighten and glimmer with a subtle inward strength that was beautiful beyond words, and I would sit and stare at it minute after minute while pretending to read. Even now, at this moment, with that compressed acid look, the frowning forehead, the petulant curl of the nose, I had to admit that there was a majestic quality about this woman, something splendid, almost stately; and so tall she was, far taller than I – although today, in her fifty-first year, I think one would have to call her big rather than tall.
‘You know very well why I asked them,’ she answered sharply. ‘For bridge, that’s all. They play an absolutely first-class game, and for a decent stake.’ She glanced up and saw me watching her. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘that’s about the way you feel too, isn’t it?’
‘Well, of course, I…’
‘Don’t be a fool, Arthur.’
‘The only time I met them I must say they did seem quite nice.’
‘So is the butcher.’
‘Now Pamela, dear – please. We don’t want any of that.’
‘Listen,’ she said, slapping down the magazine on her lap, ‘you saw the sort of people they were as well as I did. A pair of stupid climbers who think they can go anywhere just because they play good bridge.’
‘I’m sure you’re right dear, but what I don’t honestly understand is why –’
‘I keep telling you – so that for once we can get a decent game. I’m sick and tired of playing with rabbits. But I really can’t see why I should have these awful people in the house.’
‘Of course not, my dear, but isn’t it a little late now –’
‘Arthur?’
‘Yes?’
‘Why for God’s sake do you always argue with me. You know you disliked them as much as I did.’
‘I really don’t think you need worry, Pamela. After all, they seemed quite a nice well-mannered young couple.’
‘Arthur, don’t be pompous.’ She was looking at me hard with those wide grey eyes of hers, and to avoid them – they sometimes made me quite uncomfortable – I got up and walked over to the french windows that led into the garden.
The big sloping lawn out in front of the house was newly mown, striped with pale and dark ribbons of green. On the far side, the two laburnums were in full flower at last, the long golden chains making a blaze of colour against the darker trees beyond. The roses were out too, and the scarlet begonias, and in the long herbacious border all my lovely hybrid lupins, columbine, delphinium, sweet-william, and the huge, pale, scented iris. One of the gardeners was coming up the drive from his lunch. I could see the roof of his cottage through the trees and beyond it to one side, the place where the drive went out through the iron gates on the Canterbury road.
My wife’s house. Her garden. How beautiful it all was! How peaceful! Now, if only Pamela would try to be a little less solicitous of my welfare, less prone to coax me into doing things for my own good rather than for my own pleasure, then everything would be heaven. Mind you, I don’t want to give the impression that I do not love her – I worship the very air she breathes – or that I can’t manage her, or that I am not the captain of my ship. All I am trying to say is that she can be a trifle irritating at times, the way she carries on. For example, those little mannerisms of hers – I do wish she would drop them all, especially the way she has of pointing a finger at me to emphasize a phrase. You must remember that I am a man who is built rather small, and a gesture like this, when used to excess by a person like my wife, is apt to intimidate. I sometimes find it difficult to convince myself that she is not an overbearing woman.