Chapter Eighty-Five
Arthur Drig, at that moment, was not swearing revenge on anyone, but was, rather, weeping into his untucked shirttail. He wasn’t the sort of man for duelling, was Arthur. No, in the face of his wife’s abandonment, stewing in his own misery was really the only practical option which sprang to mind. Having surrendered his own dreams for the noble pursuit of raising a loving family, he couldn’t comprehend how Fate had granted him this particular reward for such selflessness.
In his unlit bedroom, in the stench of his unwashed person, he lay on his bed and proceeded to make a pathetic, snivelling display of himself. In the absence of orgasm, his past presented itself to his teary eyes here: His parents had had little money, and, one son among a pack of siblings, he was easily lost. As a boy, he’d dreamt of being a soldier and travelling the world, but when he’d reached the age where the enlistment sheet beckoned, he chickened out and learnt bookkeeping instead. His sexual experience no greater than a handful of visits to a brothel, he met Charlotte at the bar of a music hall. She flirted shamelessly, he did not resist, and within half a year they were married. The house was run, and their children reared, according to her say-so, and he came to love and admire her, and to adore their kids. His passion for his wife, it was true, had settled over the years from the roar of an orchestra to the hushed wheeze of a bent flute, but they were always civil to each other, when she wasn’t bawling him out in public, and he could get by perfectly sedately on intercourse once a year. He certainly couldn’t have told anyone, even if anyone, not counting himself, had been in the room, why he deserved all this. His pride, such as it had ever been, was a tattered thing; his sole achievement, a loving family, was wrecked; the life whose halfway point he’d already passed was a shed snakeskin crackling in a shallow breeze.
A knock at the door. Thank God—he’d forgive her everything!
But it was Betsy.
“Daddy. . .are you all right?”
“Don’t turn on the light!” He wiped his eyes. “It would only hurt me head.”
“All right, Daddy.” She stepped in and quietly closed the door. He could barely make her out: a liquidy black shape cast by the thin light from the corridor from under the door.
“Daddy’s going to be just fine, sweetheart. I’m a strong man. You know that.”
“I know it, Daddy.” She came closer and rested her head on his shoulder. He put his arm around her. “Mummy’s been naughty, hasn’t she?”
“You mustn’t talk that way about your mother.”
“Of course not. But Daddy. . .”
“What is it?”
“You know you can win her back.”
“I don’t know who’s put such ridiculous thoughts in your head, child! You know perfectly well that Mummy’s staying with a male nurse because she hasn’t been feeling well.”
“It’s not too late. That’s all I was saying.”
“Well. . .thank you, sweetheart. It’s kind of you to say.”
“We can all be a family again. . .if that’s what you really want.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“I’m only saying. . .” She wandered around the dim room, picking things up and examining them. “If I were a husband, whose wife had humiliated him—”
“Now hold on! Betsy, you—”
“And shamed her children—”
“That’s not at all—”
“I’d want to humiliate her—before I took her back.”
“Well. . .” He considered her. She’d grown, and he wasn’t sure where along the line she’d acquired the impressive bearing of—well, of her mother. “How exactly would you recommend I do that?”