Free Goodnight Lady by Martina Cole Page B

their brand new bathroom, a marble and brass affair that she thought vulgar in the extreme, she splashed cold water on to her face and looked at herself in the mirror. She was twenty-five years old and had been married to Henry Dumas for seven years.
    Her dark brown eyes took in the slight droop of her generous mouth and premature lines under her eyes from sleepless nights. Nights when she tossed and turned until she saw the daylight creep under her heavy bedroom curtains and intrude on her private world. She had long thick brown hair that had lost its gleam; her whole appearance was dull. It broke her heart every time she looked too closely at herself. She fancied sometimes that she was getting so sad and grey that eventually she would pass through the world completely unnoticed. Her mind went back to her husband caressing his five-year-old niece and she felt a wave of nausea engulf her.
    It was true about Henry, she knew it. There was nothing for her with him any more, she couldn’t hide from that fact. Her marriage was a lie, a blatant lie that she was beginning to regret with all her heart. All the long, lonely nights!
    After their marriage her fine new husband had taken her up to bed and, after kissing her perfunctorily, had left her. She had assumed he was being kind, thinking of her, of how it was all new and the wedding had been tiring, and at first she had actually felt a surge of happiness to have such a thoughtful husband. But as the months passed it had become a nightly ritual. Henry pecked her on the cheek and went straight to his own room or left the house altogether. She had begun to think that something was dreadfully wrong with her. How was she to get a child if he never came near her? The worst of it all was that it was not something she could discuss with anyone. Her mother would have a fit of the vapours and be taken to bed for the day with a liberal supply of brandy if Isabel so much as mentioned it to her. So she had kept it to herself, and every month the strain was telling on her more. As friends had babies and talked of their husbands’ indelicate appetites she felt like screaming, because everyone assumed her childlessness was her own fault.
    ‘Oh, Isabel must be barren.’ She knew what was being said after seven years of marriage, and the sympathy all went to Henry. Poor Henry. To be saddled with a barren wife. She gritted her teeth together and pressed her forehead on the cool glass of the mirror.
    After a year of marriage, one night she had brushed out her long brown hair and, when she was sure the servants were all in bed, crept surreptitiously to her husband’s room wearing just her chemise. She was a buxom girl with large firm breasts, and had slipped into bed beside Henry, thinking that maybe he was shyer than she was. She had put her arms around him and tried to draw him to her. In his sleep he had put out his own arms and then, opening his eyes, had recoiled from her.
    She would never forget the look of horror and repulsion on his face. He had stood by the bed and upbraided her soundly on the wantonness she had displayed. He had reminded her that good women from good families did not lower themselves to the same level as harlots. Isabel had sat up in the bed white with shame and shock and listened to him. But after that night a hatred for him had begun to grow in her.
    Isabel wanted a man, and she desperately wanted a child. The two went together. But as the years had gone on she had despaired of ever getting what she wanted. Her father would not hear of divorce, and so she was stuck. Sometimes she daydreamed that Henry got hit by one of the new motorcars and died, or that he fell under a train. She knew these thoughts were wicked but his dying was the only way she could escape from this life.
    She closed her eyes to stop the tears from falling.
    ‘Isabel! Are you staying in here all night? My sister has come all the way to visit us and bring the children and you’re not even trying to