The Mark-2 Wife Read Free Page A

he said.
    She shook her head, feeling calmer all of a sudden. Mr Lowhr suggested a drink.
    ‘May I telephone?’ she said. ‘Quietly somewhere?’
    ‘Upstairs,’ said Mr Lowhr, smiling immensely at her. ‘Up two flights, the door ahead of you: a tiny guest-room. Take a glass with you.’
    She nodded, saying she’d like a little whisky.
    ‘Let me give you a tip,’ Mr Lowhr said as he poured her some from a nearby bottle. ‘Always buy Haig whisky. It’s distilled by a special method.’
    ‘You’re never going so soon?’ said Mrs Lowhr, appearing at her husband’s side.
    ‘Just to telephone,’ said Mr Lowhr. He held out his hand with the glass of whisky in it. Anna took it, and as she did so she caught a glimpse of the Ritchies watching her from the other end of the room. Her calmness vanished. The Lowhrs, she noticed, were looking at her too, and smiling. She wanted to ask them why they were smiling, but she knew if she did that they’d simply make some polite reply. Instead she said:
    ‘You shouldn’t expose your guests to men who eat hair. Even unimportant guests.’
    She turned her back on them and passed from the room. She crossed the hall, sensing that she was being watched. ‘Mrs Mackintosh,’ Mr Lowhr called after her.
    His plumpness filled the doorway. He hovered, seeming uncertain about pursuing her. His face was bewildered and apparently upset.
    ‘Has something disagreeable happened?’ he said in a low voice across the distance between them.
    ‘You saw. You and your wife thought fit to laugh, Mr Lowhr.’
    ‘I do assure you, Mrs Mackintosh, I’ve no idea what you’re talking about.’
    ‘It’s fascinating, I suppose. Your friends the Ritchies find it fascinating too.’
    ‘Look here, Mrs Mackintosh –’
    ‘Oh, don’t blame them. They’ve nothing left but to watch and mock, at an age like that. The point is, there’s a lot of hypocrisy going on tonight.’ She nodded at Mr Lowhr to emphasize that last remark, and then went swiftly upstairs.
    ‘I imagine the woman’s gone off home,’ the General said. ‘I dare say her husband’s drinking in a pub.’
    ‘I worried once,’ replied Mrs Ritchie, speaking quietly, for she didn’t wish the confidence to be heard by others. ‘That female, Mrs Flyte.’
    The General roared with laughter. ‘Trixie Flyte,’ he shouted. ‘Good God, she was a free-for-all!’
    ‘Oh, do be quiet.’
    ‘Dear girl, you didn’t ever think –’
    ‘I didn’t know what to think, if you want to know.’
    Greatly amused, the General seized what he hoped would be his final drink. He placed it behind a green plant on a table. ‘Shall we dance one dance,’ he said, ‘just to amuse them? And then when I’ve had that drink to revive me we can thankfully make our way.’
    But he found himself talking to nobody, for when he had turned from his wife to secrete his drink she had moved away. He followed her to where she was questioning Mrs Lowhr.
    ‘Some little tiff,’ Mrs Lowhr was saying as he approached.
    ‘Hardly a tiff,’ corrected Mrs Ritchie. ‘The woman’s terribly upset.’ She turned to her husband, obliging him to speak.
    ‘Upset,’ he said.
    ‘Oh, there now,’ cried Mrs Lowhr, taking each of the Ritchies by an arm. ‘Why don’t you take the floor and forget it?’
    They both of them recognized from her tone that she was thinking the elderly exaggerated things and didn’t always understand the ways of marriage in the modern world. The General especially resented the insinuation. He said:
    ‘Has the woman gone away?’
    ‘She’s upstairs telephoning. Some silly chap upset her apparently, during a dance. That’s all it is, you know.’
    ‘You’ve got the wrong end of the stick entirely,’ said the General angrily, ‘and you’re trying to say we have. The woman believes her husband may arrive here with the girl he’s chosen as his second wife.’
    ‘But that’s ridiculous!’ cried Mrs Lowhr with a tinkling laugh.
    ‘It is