Chapter 48. Girl Talk
That was how Scarlet, gardenia scented and comfortable in a warm dressing gown, came to be curled up in bed over a tray of hotpot and pie while Enid toasted bread over a roaring fire.
Enid had divided the “magic wine” between their glasses.
“I hear there’s plenty more where this came from,” she colloquialized while Scarlet laughed.
“Feeling better now?”
“Strangely wonderful,” said Scarlet, “Being Pom’s friends guarantees us the best solicitor, and belonging to the Norfolk Crescent Irregulars somehow protects against fear itself.”
“Power of groups,” Enid suggested. “Finding one’s footing among the right people.”
“It’s a paradigm shift, Pom says. I so naively assumed – I don’t know how to explain this – that Ian was always right. It sounds shamefully stupid but in the old US of A girls are trained to mold themselves to the man. It’s his desires, his personality, his future that’s important. We turn ourselves into a sort of mush. We become strangers to ourselves.”
“It isn’t only in America,” said Enid.
“Looking back on it, I can hardly believe it was me, agreeing to move into that ridiculous old house in the country. But he bought it without telling me – putting it in his own name, also without telling me – and he wanted it so badly! How was I to know he planned only to park me there?”
“It’s the English way – country life and city life – and trust me, they have a whole third life “abroad.” My husband seems to think that around foreigners, Englishmen can degrade others without degrading themselves – some leftover right of empire, I suppose. Their obvious theory is that no one will ever believe anything foreigners say.”
“Horrifying! But it isn’t just the Brits – seems to be the colonizing impulse,” Scarlet considered. “It’s always an excuse to degrade people.”
“And here’s resources at home – as Esme shows us – so poorly managed they’re going to waste! This big house!”
“It’s the same thing at the publishers. Their focus was on degradation, never improving or lifting-up. Can it be that only women know how to share?”
Enid changed course on her second glass of wine.
“Do you think you’d still be together if it weren’t for that property purchase?”
“Actually, no. I don’t even have that much comfort. Now I can clearly see that Ian’s been looking for a way to become Machiavelli’s Prince ever since college. What I regret most is that I thought it was sexy. I thought it made him a prize. Everyone congratulated me on winning the trophy. Turned out to be a booby prize and I was the booby.”
“I’ve said the same exact thing to myself a hundred times,” Enid agreed. “Colin was shopping for a booby! We mustn’t be so hard on ourselves. I was trying to please my parents,” said Enid. “In my day, they kept us so sexually ignorant we studied flowers to earn about marriage! My parents were panicking about finding a man who could reliably launch their grandchildren into the correct class. To them, Colin seemed to be “the one”. I felt nothing when he kissed me, but everyone told me that was because I wasn’t making myself pleasing or exciting enough.
Colin wasn’t interested in my body. I never claimed to be Brigitte Bardot, I hated being pawed, so I thought I had finally found a man in control of his desires. He was so uninterested in sex that conceiving each child was a full-scale battlefield campaign – you can’t imagine.” Enid shook her head. “We were both pretending. Operating on rote.”
“I hope he’s a better father than he was a husband,” said Scarlet.
“To my amazement, he can be. He was very unenthusiastic at first – really didn’t want to accept parenting status, much less become a grandparent. But kids are so winning. They kept bringing him interests to share and he enjoyed widening their world. That part’s been wonderful. And they were at school so much they missed seeing the worst of it. I think having the lawyers lay out clear guidelines will be good for Colin’s relationships. But now, without him to punish me, I punish myself over perpetuating my parents’ mistakes. But our children’s marriages seem solid so far – and much more grounded emotionally.”
“You’re right about being too hard on ourselves. We should be congratulating ourselves that we got out of it!”
“Seen the light, as the preachers say,” agreed Enid. “We do seem to be very lucky just now, all of a sudden.”
“Serendipity, they call it,” Scarlet agreed, touching her sore face. Enid winced empathetically.
“Do you suppose good fortune like that was always there and we simply didn’t know how to find it?”
“To some extent,” said Scarlet. “The nanny agency rejecting to represent the exact sort of person I actually needed for the job probably happens all the time. But someone like Miss Bottomley winning the tontine – surely that sort of good fortune is very rare.”
“Pom’s right about the paradigm shift,” Enid nodded. “It depends how you look at things. Fingers crossed that our luck holds out.”
As they crossed fingers, Scarlet thought, it all depends on whether the police can talk any sense into Ian.
“What I know for certain,” Scarlet averred, “Is that your hotpot is perfection.”
Alysse Aallyn 
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