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needn’t worry, these wild lads made wonderful husbands, look at Willie, he’d been one of the worst, and now butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth.
The thought of her husband made her sit up, and say in a determined voice that she really must go; Willie was a pet lamb, he never worried about anything - but all the same, she wasn’t going to start setting a bad example. She struggled out of her chair, drained her glass, and nervously pressed Martha’s hand. ‘Sorry, dear, but I really must - I’ll see you soon, I expect, my Willie and your Douglas being such friends. And now I really …’ She smiled hastily at Stella, waved vaguely, and hurried out. They could hear her running down the stairs on her high heels.
‘Alice is just an old fusser,’ said Stella, settling herself comfortably. ‘If Willie isn’t tied to her apron string she can’t sit still.’ Martha said nothing. ‘That’s no way to keep a man. They don’t like it. You should manage them without them knowing it.’
Martha observed irritably that Stella and Alice talked about husbands as if they were a sort of wild animal to be tamed.
Stella looked at her, and then remarked in an admonishing way that Martha was very young, but she’d soon learn that the way to keep a lad like Douggie was to give him plenty of rope to hang himself.
Irritation was thick in the air, like the tobacco smoke that now made a heavy bluish film between them. Martha was praying, I wish she’d go.
Stella made a few more remarks, which were received in silence. Then she looked angrily across and said that if she were Matty she’d have a good sleep and then take life easy.
She rose, and stood for a moment looking at the mirror inside the flap of her handbag. Everything was in order. She shut the handbag, and gazed around the little room; she adjusted a cushion, then turned her gaze towards Martha, who was sprawling gracelessly in her chair.
Martha looked back, acknowledging the discouragementthat filled her at the sight of this woman. Stella must have gained this perfect assurance with her maturity at the age of - what? There were photographs of her at fifteen, showing her no less complete than she was now.
It appeared that the moment for parting had at last arrived. Martha struggled up. And now Martha was filled with guilt. For Stella’s face showed a genuine concern for her; and Martha reminded herself that Stella was nothing if not kind and obliging - for what was kindness, if not this willingness to devote oneself utterly to another person’s life? Martha was too tired even to instil irony into it. She kissed Stella clumsily on one of her smooth tinted cheeks, and thanked her. Stella brightened, blushed a little, and said that any time Matty wanted anything she had only to … At last she left, smiling, blowing a kiss from the door, in precisely that pose of competent grace which most depressed Martha.
The moment she was alone, Martha rummaged for a pair of scissors and went with determination to the bathroom. There she knelt on the edge of the gleaming and slippery bath, and in an acutely precarious position leaned up to look into the shaving mirror. It was too high for her. There was a large mirror at a suitable height next door, but for some reason this was the one she must use. Nothing in her reflection pleased her. She was entirely clumsy, clodhopping, graceless. Worse than this, she was filled with uncomfortable memories of how she had looked at various stages of her nineteen years-for she might be determined to forget how she had felt in her previous incarnations, but she could not forget how she had looked. Her present image had more in common with her reflection at fifteen, a broad and sturdy schoolgirlishness, than it had with herself of only six months ago.
Her dissatisfaction culminated as she put the scissors to the heavy masses of light dryish hair that fell on her shoulders. She remembered briefly that Stella had laid stress on her hair being properly cut;