The Rules of Engagement Read Online Free PDF Page B

beauties of Apulia or Turkey or Corfu. These served as conversational fare, and vague plans were made to visit all or any of these places. At the same time, as soon as the table had been cleared, I knew that Digby would take the evening paper into the other room, switch on the television, and fall asleep. He slept heavily, more heavily than I did, and seemed unable to invest any energy into keeping awake. I was careful not to disturb him; I laid aside the travel brochures and picked up a novel, Vanity Fair or The Professor. I thought that I might seek out a few evening classes, educate myself in something like the Victorian novel. Those I had read were a source of endless fascination. How brave the female characters were! How noble or resolute the men! I told myself that that was why novels were written, to give ordinary men and women a better idea of themselves, and, more important, to show how fate might take a hand even when the given circumstances appeared to militate against a significant outcome.
    On my walks I had noticed a school building which advertised some sort of programme of tuition for adults, and I had even lingered by the school gates, suddenly homesick for a much earlier time. To be part of an attentive group once again seemed to promise companionship of a kind in which I knew myself to be lacking. If this were regression, I did not much care. It would be part of the general regression signified by my obedient childlike wifeliness. Even I knew that the submissiveness of those Victorian heroines had nothing to do with weakness; on the contrary they were fearless, those women, as perhaps I had once been, even in Paris, where there was no one to mark my heroism. There was a lesson there for me. I mentioned the idea of evening classes to Digby, but he demurred. “ I like to see you here when I get home, ” he said. “ I look forward to it all the afternoon. ”
    It was true that he was an attentive husband. I was not able at the time to evaluate the limits of normal attentiveness before it spilled over into watchfulness. He needed to know where I was at all times of the day; I knew that even if I achieved his permission to attend evening classes he would insist on driving me to the school and no doubt be waiting for me afterwards. He did not quite believe me when I told him that I had spent the afternoon walking, and once I had even caught sight of the car which must have been following me. Though I did not know this at the time, there were moves at the office to demote him from his present functions and to make him some sort of honorary chairman. This enabled him to spend hours away from his desk, so that on certain afternoons we might even have been circling one another on our solitary excursions. When I became aware of this it struck me as exceedingly odd, even bizarre, but I gave no sign that I had noticed this behaviour. I knew that he was conscious of the discrepancy in our ages, that he feared and distrusted all the feminist propaganda which was so widespread at the time, and that in an unacknowledged part of his mind he even feared that I might seek pleasure elsewhere and betray him. I think that is what men most fear: betrayal. Therefore I made no mention of the fact that I had seen the car, merely welcomed him when he came home in the evening after what might have been a normal day. For we both maintained the fiction that he was returning from the office just like any other husband. I got used to this, but it made me uncomfortable.
    He loved me. That was what had always impressed me. He loved me rather too much, in ways I could hardly accommodate. He was occasionally impotent, which increased his vigilance. Neither of us alluded to this; I knew that any such allusion would be a mortal affront to my husband, whose ardour was growing more desperate. Our nights, in that dark bedroom, were often silent, though not restful. I assumed that Digby had known physical passion for his first wife, had maybe not