The Mark-2 Wife Read Online Free PDF Page A

away and picked up a green corduroy dress which she had laid out on her bed. She was going to be late if she dawdled like this.
    The parties given by Professor and Mrs Skully were renowned neither for the entertainment they provided nor for their elegance. They were, unfortunately, difficult to avoid, the Professor being persistent in the face of repeated excuses – a persistence it was deemed unwise to strain.
    Bidden for half past seven, his history students came on bicycles, a few in Kilroy’s Mini, Ruth Cusper on her motor-cycle, Bewley Joal on foot. Woodward, Whipp and Woolmer-Mills came cheerfully, being kindred spirits of the Professor’s and in no way dismayed by the immediate prospect. Others were apprehensive or cross, trying not to let it show as smilingly they entered the Skullys’ house in Rathgar.
    ‘How very nice!’ Mrs Skully murmured in a familiar manner in the hall. ‘How jolly good of you to come.’
    The hall was not yet decorated for Christmas, but the Professor had found the remains of last year’s crackers and had stuck half a dozen behind the heavily framed scenes of Hanover that had been established in the hall since the early days of the Skullys’ marriage. The gaudy crêpe paper protruded above the pictures in splurges of green, red and yellow, and cheered up the hall to a small extent. The coloured scarves and overcoats of the history students, already accumulating on the hall-stand, did so more effectively.
    In the Skullys’ sitting-room the Professor’s record-player, old and in some way special, was in its usual place: on a mahogany table in front of the french windows, which were now obscured by brown curtains. Four identical rugs, their colour approximately matching that of the curtains, were precisely arranged on darker brown linoleum. Crimson-seated dining-chairs lined brownish walls.
    The Professor’s history students lent temporary character to this room, as their coats and scarves did to the hall. Kilroy was plump in a royal-blue suit. The O’Neill sisters’ cluster of followers, jostling even now for promises of favours, wore carefully pressed denim or tweed. The O’Neill sisters themselves exuded a raffish, cocktail-time air. They were twins, from Lurgan, both of them blonde and both favouring an excess of eye-shadow, with lipstick that wetly gleamed, the same shade of pink as the trouser-suits that nudgingly hugged the protuberances of their bodies. Not far from where they now held court, the rimless spectacles of Bewley Joal had a busy look in the room’s harsh light; the complexion of Yvonne Smith was displayed to disadvantage. So was the troublesome fair hair of Honor Hitchcock, who was engaged to a student known as the Reverend because of his declared intention one day to claim the title. Cosily in a corner she linked her arm with his, both of them seeming middle-aged before their time, inmates already of a draughty rectory in Co. Cork or Clare. ‘I’ll be the first,’ Ruth Cusper vowed, ‘to visit you in your parish. Wherever it is.’ Ruth Cusper was a statuesque English girl, not yet divested of her motor-cycling gear.
    The colours worn by the girls, and the denim and tweed, and the royal blue of Kilroy, contrasted sharply with the uncared-for garb of Woodward, Whipp and Woolmer-Mills, all of whom were expected to take Firsts. Stained and frayed, these three hung together without speaking, Woodward very tall, giving the impression of an etiolated newt, Whipp small, his glasses repaired with Sellotape, Woolmer-Mills for ever launching himself back and forth on the balls of his feet.
    In a pocket of Kilroy’s suit there was a miniature bottle of vodka, for only tea and what the Professor described as ‘cup’ were served in the course of the evening. Kilroy fingered it, smiling across the room at the Professor, endeavouring to give the impression that he was delighted to be present. He was a student who was fearful of academic failure, his terror being that he