Free A Wreath Of Roses by Elizabeth Taylor

Liz repeated.
    ‘She goes to lectures on psychology,’ he said briefly, and shut his eyes to hide his impatience.
    ‘It is a compliment that they should have asked you. And – more than that …’ he flushed and put a hand down to the pram and touched his son’s head … ‘it would be a way of … I am afraid that some of the parishioners feel it odd that you should have left me
just
now … with all the trouble about the dry rot in the north wall … and after that contretemps about the magazines they think … it would help me,’ he said, becoming more manly. And then, very simply and looking across at her for the first time … ‘It would help to save my pride.’
    ‘Why did you marry me, Arthur?’
    ‘She is so warm,’ he thought, ‘so impulsive, her arms went round me quickly with a child’s reckless embrace, as sweet as honey, alive, relaxed like a little cat.’ But warmth, impulsiveness, recklessness, sweetness, are advantages in a wife only if they turn inwards upon the home, the husband. And what has always flowed widely, easily, is not so suddenly canalised. Then, too, how often those qualities reflect
too
warm a nature, indicate lack of discrimination, promiscuity in its widest, if not its narrowest sense?
    ‘Because I loved you, my dear. Will always love you.’
    ‘But how will it help you for me to go against my nature, make a fool of myself?’ He glanced at her creased frock, her untidy hair. ‘Oh, I know, I know! But I like to be a fool in my own way,’ she cried. ‘Everybody does.’
    ‘It is an unpardonable word anyhow. A blasphemy against God.’
    ‘God must be brought into everything, into every conversation we ever have.’
    He looked wounded, stubborn.
    ‘Oh, I’ll do anything, anything – scrub the Sunday-School floor, hem all those damned garments, clean the brasses, dig graves,’ she cried, her voice rising shakily, ‘but not the things I
can’t
do.’
    ‘Don’t be childish,’ he said sharply, condemning the quality he had first loved in her. ‘I’ve asked you to do nothing difficult or unsuitable; only to take your place beside me as a wife. There is no need to cry and wring your hands.’
    ‘I haven’t changed.’
    ‘That’s beside the point. We are all changing from one minute to the next.’
    ‘But the core of us remains the same.’
    ‘And marriage changes us quite. How can we enter marriageand remain the same? The circles of our existences become concentric.’
    Tea is ready!’ Frances called from the kitchen doorway.
    Tea is ready,’ Liz repeated to her husband, as if she were the interpreter.
    They moved away from the pram towards the house. Harry began to cry, but they scarcely heard him.
    In the dark parlour, the best china was spread out. As there was a man to tea, the crusts were cut off the sandwiches. Honey ran out of a broken comb on to a painted plate. In the middle of the table, a cactus was in flame-coloured bloom. The flowers sprang from its finger-tips as if by accident.
    Liz went up to call Camilla. She was lying on the bed asleep, a book under her cheek. When she sat up, there was the deep impression of it across her face.
    ‘I do feel like hell. So thirsty.’
    The light hurt her eyes, and she put her hands up as Liz shifted the curtains.
    ‘Arthur’s downstairs.’
    ‘Arthur?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘Good God.’
    ‘Cam, darling, you must support me …’
    Camilla went to the dressing-table and began to comb up her hair.
    ‘What does he want?’
    ‘He wants me to make an exhibition of myself. I am unable …’
    ‘Tell me
quickly!”
Camilla said, her mouth full of hairpins.
    ‘He wants me to give away prizes at a social …’
    Camilla’s eyes, now more accustomed to the light, stretched wide with surprise and laughter. She looked at Liz through the mirror, but Liz looked away.
    ‘And make a speech,’ she added.
    ‘You do it, darling.’
    ‘No.’
    ‘For fun.’
    ‘It wouldn’t be fun. We must go downstairs now. You
are
on my