When I had finished with the book, I got out of bed and returned it to its place on the shelf: I did not want David to know that I had been consulting it, I felt that he would know the exact references that I had required. I had embarked upon deceit. David woke me an hour later when he came in, at half past two, and started to tell me about what Selwyn had said to him about his performance. I told him to shut up and get out of my bed and go and sleep on the sofa, and that if I didn’t get a decent night’s sleep I’d go back to London in the morning. He said he bloody well wished I would, and we fell asleep side by side. I think that was the first time that he did not know and could not have known, having no access to it, the real reason for my anger.

9

THE next day I took the children to the park. I wandered ghostlike behind the pram, glad that I had its bar to lean on. Flora went on the swings, and wept bitterly when it was time to come off, as I had known she would, and I wondered why she was always so blindly eager to get on when she knew what tears would be entailed in the ending of it. And I wondered, too, how I could even consider Wyndham Farrar: it hardly seemed worth the trouble. I watched Flora’s screwed, woeful face, and I thought, Shall I never, never learn? Other people learn. Other people keep away from the swings and the roundabouts.

I hardly saw David in the last day or two before the opening. The Clandestine Marriage was to open on the Tuesday, and The White Devil on the following Friday. The proximity of the dates was causing much avoidable overwork, late night panic and confusion which everyone involved seemed to need and to enjoy. Various celebrities were due to arrive for the opening night, including an important duchess and Mrs. Von Blerke, the backer. I had nothing to do but to work out what I should wear, having already organized myself an escort, who was at once a coup and a mistake: he was a novelist whom I had known for some years, an American who was currently working as drama critic for the magazine of which I had once graced the cover. He was both intelligent and important, but on the other hand, there are drawbacks in sitting next to critics on first nights, at least when one’s husband is appearing.