Free Mr Wrong by Elizabeth Jane Howard Page A

haven’t lost your husband. She’s gone off. Some boring little yob she met on the Costa Brava
last year
. When I asked her, last year, whether she’d enjoyed
herself, she just said the place was fabulous, but she’d missed me. She never said a word about him. I knew something was wrong about a month ago, but she was so sensitive, she didn’t
want to tell me. I forced it out of her in the end. She just couldn’t stand our situation. I see it’s an awful one for a woman – feeling that whatever a man feels about it
he’s got his life elsewhere; that she can never be more than a sort of fringe part of his life. So there it is. It’s all over. She was married exactly three weeks and two days after
Margaret. I’m glad I told you, really. I’ve been feeling so lousy. You see, I don’t know whether she hasn’t resorted to marriage just to get away from me. I asked her and
all she would say was that she and Lionel had a lot in common. She was being tactful – loyal – about him. I quite see that. I quite see that if she was going to marry him, she had to,
you know,
stand
by him.’
    ‘Yes,’ Ruth said – it being the safest if not the only thing to say.
    ‘You agree? You probably know much better than I how a woman’s mind works – even if you aren’t familiar with the circumstances. Anyway, she’s left the office. There
it is. Here I am, as it were.’ He tried to laugh; it clearly hurt him.
    ‘Poor Alan.’ Her remarks, she thought, were like the exit signs from a motorway; inevitable, evenly spaced, designed for safety.
    Again he tried to laugh. ‘The thing is – what I
can’t
convey – is, well, I was in love with her, that’s all. I’m
still
in love with her.
She’s so
young
, you see. Life seems utterly meaningless: the thought of it going on and on and on . . .’ He buried his head in his large, freckled hands for a moment, and when he took them away, she saw that his eyes were full of tears.
    ‘Time will make it easier in the end.’ A cliché had always to be offered tentatively to be accepted, she had discovered.
    ‘That’s what they all say, isn’t it?’ He blew his nose, and then took one of her cigarettes. As she lit it for him, she said:
    ‘Perhaps it’s better to have had a little of something that was good, rather than nothing at all.’
    He looked sharply at her, to see whether there was anything of self-pity or autobiography behind this suggestion, but her face was blank of anything but proper concern. He looked – of
course without knowing it – so like a large dog that had been suddenly and savagely kicked.
    ‘Yes,’ he said, but in his own case entirely disagreeing with her: ‘I know.’
    ‘I’ve got you, though, haven’t I?’ he said. ‘I mean – a lot of people – well – not a lot, but people who get into this situation, often
haven’t anyone – have to face it alone. I’m lucky, really, aren’t I? I mean,
you’ll
always be there. We’ve been together – what is it –
twenty-something years now. It’s a long time when you come to think of it.’
    ‘A very long time.’ She got to her feet. ‘Do you think perhaps that we should join the girls now?’
    ‘Good old Ruth.’ He put his hand painfully on her sunburned shoulder.
    While they walked, as briskly as the heat would allow, down the dusty road and the steps to the river, she thought of that weekend in Westmorland – in March it had been – when she
and Mervyn had camped in a friend’s cottage – slept on a mattress in front of a huge log-fire for comfort, lived on ham, bananas, oatcakes and honey and sardines and Terry’s
bitter chocolate. She had picked wild daffodils for the first time in her life, and one morning they had climbed to the summit of Scafell where there was still early spring snow on which they had
lain to make love. The soft, cold air had carried only the rasping cry of young lambs across great shoulders and valleys of silence. ‘I have much more than