The Queen of the Tambourine Read Free Page A

said, “Not until I’m over the shock.” She walked all round me and said, “She sent me one, too, but yours is better. Lucky old you. Where’s Henry taking you to in that—the Churchmen’s Society Ball?”
    So I had to laugh that off.
    Thank you very, very much, Joan, most sincerely and affectionately,
    Â 
    Eliza
    Â 

  
    December 25th
    Â 
    Dear Joan,
    Â 
    It is Christmas afternoon and I am writing at the far end of the drawing room looking out at the garden all covered in snow. The road is very quiet, most people being away with their families elsewhere, or walking off their Christmas dinner on the Common. I spent Christmas Eve with the Dying. They always make a big effort on Christmas Eve—the nuns, I mean. It’s quite jolly. On Friday was the Wives’ Fellowship Christmas Party and I wore your dress. Unfortunately Henry couldn’t take me as there was a party at work. Charles was attending a similar one, so I went alone as a “help” and served at the Buffet. Lots of people complimented me on the dress and some—but not all—I told where it had come from. I did not tell the ones I feel will still be very upset by what you have done.
    I came home alone and rather late, after the clearing up, and as the car wouldn’t start I had to walk. Have I told you about my new car? It is one that Henry bought me on Charles’s advice. Charles is not exactly a mechanically minded man, is he? Or rather, he has something of a mechanical mind but does not apply it to mechanical things. Also, he isn’t a very talkative man, is he? Not that I’m used to talkative men. Henry over the years has grown more and more silent and, as this is going to he a very momentous letter, Joan, I shall be as outspoken as I was in the fatal note I sent you in the spring.
    I think that the time has come to tell you that Henry is not really fitted out for marriage. This is not the reason why we have no children. That was an academic decision taken years ago. All the mechanical equipment is still there, perfectly normal, as far as I can tell of course. I haven’t seen it for years and the only other I have seen, at least looked squarely in the face, so to speak, is on Michelangelo’s David in Florence, which is of course marble and upsettingly larger than life. What I have come to face has nothing to do with all that sort of thing. Henry does not see women as of any particular interest. He is without curiosity. I said to him once, “Women are governed by the moon,” and his face became taut with distaste. He said, “I am afraid, Eliza, that you want the moon,” and I said, “Well, in love, yes I do,” and he vigorously shook out The Times .
    Soon after our honeymoon he stopped seeing me as something good to touch, Joan, even though in those days people turned in the street to look as I went by. When men sometimes sent me flowers—well, it was usually just duty, after an invitation to dinner—he would open the door on them and say, “Eliza—flowers. Have you seen the dog’s lead?”
    After the first few months lying down together was very like being upon a Church tomb, knight and lady, hand in hand perhaps, but legs crossed, noses skyward. At some moment in any marriage surely, surely, one thinks of the other as a person apart? A woman should be her very self to her husband, interesting to him always even if only as the woman he once loved, chose, negotiated for, was scooped up by or at the very least considered to be adequate. Not Henry. I remember the two of us in our first house in St. John’s Wood in the early sixties. It was scarcely lived in, we were on our travels so much, but I remember our being very happy then because of a delightful feeling of security and promise. It was working. It had not been just an Oxford romance, ending in the usual mess. It was a good time. But already I was no longer special.
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