She hummed a little tune. “Jesus lover of my soul, let me to thy bosom
fly.” George was vulgar, but he was amusing. When the beetle buzzed
down inside her blouse at the beach supper, tickling and crawling so
far that she had to go into the bushes to take him out, George said
“That must have been the bosom-fly you’re always singing about.”
Sometimes it seemed as though the world was made for the vulgar people,
there are always so many ridiculous embarrassments lying in wait for
the sensitive. When the wind blew, her skirts always went higher than
any one else’s. She would wear the new pink camisole at the Picnic,
that fitted very snugly ... still, a thing like that bosom-fly would
hardly happen twice. George always wanted to take jam and sardines on a
picnic; sticky stuff that attracts the bees and ants. Fortunately we’re
all wearing knickers nowadays.... Poor old blundering, affectionate,
and maddening George. Still it was something to have married a man with
brains. There were so many, so much more attractive, she could have
had, as Mother (dear loyal Mother) often reminded her. It’s a good
thing people don’t know what mothers and married daughters talk about.
That is the rock that life is founded upon: an alliance against the
rest of the world. Away off in the future, when her own daughters were
married, she would have _them_ to confide in. You must have _someone_
to whom you can say what you think. But which of the three? You can’t
confide in more than one. Three little girls, three darling little
girls, like dolls. Thank goodness there wasn’t a boy to grow up like
George: obstinate, greedy, always wanting to do the wrong thing ...
it was enough to break any woman’s spirit, trying to teach a man to
do things the way nice people do them. If George wanted to lead an
unconventional life, he ought to have been an artist, not gone in for
business.... And such a crazy kind of business, Publicity, now working
for one company, now for another, here there and everywhere, neither
flesh nor fowl nor good red income. A man ought to have a settled job,
with an office in some fixed place, so you always know where he is.
A country club is a good thing for a husband, too, where he can meet
the right sort of men (how handsome they are in those baggy breeches
and golf stockings), lawyers and a banker or two, influential men with
nice manners. You can always ’phone to the clubhouse and leave word;
or drive up in the coupé (it ought to be a coupé) and bring him home
to dinner. She could hear voices, voices of young pretty wives (not
too young, not quite as pretty): “Who is that in the green dress, with
the three little girls all dressed alike, aren’t they _cunning_!--Oh,
that’s Mrs. Granville, Mrs. George Granville, her husband’s in the
advertising business, he adores her.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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