Free Falling by Elizabeth Jane Howard Page B

his imagined face looked down upon her. She would touch her breasts with his imagined, well-remembered hands, repeat his
endearments that surrounded her name – and then, just as she seemed to have conjured him up, he was gone and she was saturated with his absence, all the fires hissed out by a tidal wave of
reality. She was staring into the dark and there was no one there. But when she woke the night before he came she at once remembered that he was arriving at six o’clock – a mere eleven
and a half hours away. The thought that if he came, if they talked face to face, he might not want to leave her, kept up a kind of impish nagging – why not? It had been known to happen: many
husbands had abandoned a mistress for their wives and not for reasons of guilt! – rather, that the more serious affection had been recognized. It was not impossible. Not
absolutely
impossible, but very unlikely, she thought, trying to shred the hope.
    He was nearly a quarter of an hour late, and apologized profusely: ‘Really sorry – I got hung up on the phone and then the traffic was awful.’ He dumped a brand new briefcase
on the hall table and walked past her in the narrow passage and she smelt a citrus aftershave – nothing like his old one.
    ‘I’ve given up milk,’ he said, when she began pouring the coffee, ‘on a low-fat diet.’ He was tanned and all his clothes were new. She watched him glance round the
familiar room. He had not, so far, met her eye.
    ‘You wanted to see me,’ he eventually began.
    ‘I think it was you who wanted to see me.’ She had lit her cigarette with a tolerably steady hand while he told her that he had given up smoking. His blond silken hair had been
bleached and streaked, which gave him an oddly theatrical appearance.
    ‘Daisy, you know I’m really sorry about what has happened.’
    ‘Surely not!’
    ‘For you, I mean.’
    It was easy – and pointless – to make him flounder. She felt like Eurydice. He would not look at her, but all hope had died and it would make no difference whether he looked at her
or not.
    ‘. . . but I could probably ante up something. A few thousand if that would help.’
    She stared at him in a silence so long that eventually he did meet her eye.
    ‘I’m sorry I can’t make it more, but you
have
got the flat.’
    I had the flat before I even met you, she thought, but stopped herself saying so: she would not be drawn into a squalid little argument about money.
    ‘I don’t want any money, thank you!’ She stubbed out her cigarette. ‘Or compensation, I suppose you might call it. I assume you came here because you want a
divorce.’
    ‘Well – yes, it would be—’
    ‘Right.’ She wanted him to go now – as quickly as possible. ‘I’ll find a lawyer and get in touch through your agent.’
    ‘You are being awfully good about all this. I’m really—’ He had got up from his chair and she could feel his relief: he would go back to wherever he was staying with her,
and say, ‘My God, it was so
embarrassing
! Thank God it’s over.’ Things like that.
    He had reached the front door, which he opened. A cruising taxi saved him further embarrassment – how do you sign off with someone who has just agreed to divorce you?
‘Taxi!’ he shouted. It stopped, and blowing her a breezy kiss, he was gone. She shut the door as he got into the cab.
    In the silence, impregnated by the citrus scent, her knees buckled and she collapsed in the narrow passage. She wanted to be sick, or faint, become unconscious in some way, anything, but not to
cry.
    This time it was as though any previous weeping had been a mere suggestion of grief: she was racked by a fit of sobbing that only with sheer physical exhaustion began to subside. She thought of
Marianne Dashwood whose sensibility had up until now always provoked her. At least I can remember that sort of thing, can think a bit again . . .
    The doorbell rang. It was laundry day. She could open the door and seize