The Ends of Our Tethers Read Online Free PDF Page B

seen with you wearing that!”
    â€œWhat’s wrong with it?”
    â€œIt’s years out of date. Ten or twenty years out of date.”
    â€œMale clothing doesn’t date like women’s does.”
    â€œThat shows you know nothing about it.” Yet she was generous and I had no objection to the new clothes she bought me: they always fitted well and were smart without being eccentric. But I was appalled when I came home one evening and found she had given all my former clothes to Oxfam, so appalled that I packed the few things I needed with the firm intention of leaving that house forever, though invitations had been posted for our wedding reception afortnight hence. She had a master key and used it to lock me in. I managed to open a window and would have jumped out but her anger suddenly turned to a terrible storm of weeping and pleading. I had never before seen anyone in that state. I could not possibly leave her in it, so stayed and comforted her until we were friends again and got married after all.
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    Through number 2 I met people whose lives seemed jumpier and more erratic than I was used to: journalists, broadcasters, women who managed their own shops. All had children by former husbands or wives and lived with partners they seemed to leave or change without conspicuous fuss. Despite her ex-husband’s warning I am sure number 2 was not promiscuous while we lived together. She enjoyed declaring her feelings too openly to hide them for long and in five or six years confessed only twice to having brief affairs with other men. These confessions were made partly to annoy me so I annoyed her back by saying I did not care what she did when I could not see it, which was true. Yet despite our main faithfulness to each other, and thelovely tricks and eccentricities by which she turned ordinary meals and events into pleasant occasions, every month came a huge explosion of grief and rage which made a hell of that marriage. They were provoked by trivialities that I could never foresee and can now hardly remember. I think her love of drama was the main cause. While stooping to lift a fallen pencil at work I struck the corner of a desk with my brow and raised a small lump. When I got home she screamed, “What’s happened to your face? You look horrible!”
    I could not take that seriously and a week later referred to it as proof of how easily she was upset. She laughed and said, “I wasn’t upset at all! I just felt wicked and wanted to annoy you.”
    But the longer we lived together the more explosive our quarrels became until I was pointing out, again and again, that the misery we gave each other was far greater than the comfort. But whenever I packed up to leave, again and again came appalling grief of the sort that had got me marrying her after seeing it was a bad idea.
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    She was fond of children, the youngerthe better, and was visiting someone with a new baby one evening when I decided to eat out alone. In the restaurant I met friends of number 2 with a woman I had never seen before. They invited me to join them, jocularly remarking that this was the first time they had ever seen me without a wife. I enjoyed that meal, drank more than my usual glass of wine and found the friends were leaving me with the stranger. “Don’t worry, we won’t clype,” they said, pretending to creep away on tiptoe. So I spent that night in the stranger’s home.
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    I call my wives by number instead of name to shield them from readers who may meet them, and I also disguise them with a few inaccuracies. With this in mind let me say that number 3 was a senior hospital nurse of a sort that used to be called matrons. She was as tall as me but so slimly built that she looked taller, with a delicate oval head and a thatch of blonde hair cut very short. More attractive than her beauty was her quietness. When not sleeping or sulking number 2 talked almost