Maria was up to mischief, and Darcourt knew it. Why else would she present herself in his study at half past four in the afternoon, pretending that she was passing by, and thought that he might give her a cup of tea? She knew perfectly well that he did not go in for elegant tea-drinking, and that it was a nuisance for him to find a pot, and some long-kept tea, and stew up something on his electric hot-plate. He knew perfectly well that if tea was what she wanted she would be welcome in the Common Room of her old college, where there was lots of tea. They both knew that she had come to talk about her adultery, but she was certainly not a repentant Magdalene. She was wearing a red pant-suit, and had a red scarf tied around her hair, and she smiled and tossed her head and rolled her eyes in a way that Darcourt had never seen before. Maria was not there to confess or repent, but to tease and defend.

“Arthur has been to see you,” she said, after some small talk which neither of them pretended was anything but a conventional overture to real conversation.

“Did he tell you so?”

“No, but I guessed it. Poor Arthur is in a terrible state just now, and you’re his refuge in terrible states.”

“He was distressed.”

“And you comforted him?”

“No. Comfort did not seem appropriate. Arthur is not a man to be given sugar-candy, and that’s what an awful lot of comfort amounts to.”

“So you know all about it?”

“I don’t imagine so for a moment. I know what he told me.”

“And you are going to scold me?”

“No.”

“Just as well. I’m not in the mood to be scolded.”

“Then why have you come to me?”

“Is it strange that I should look in on an old friend for a cup of tea?”

“Come on, Maria; don’t play the fool. If you want to talk about this state of affairs, I’ll certainly talk. I’m not the keeper of your conscience, you know.”

“But you think I’ve behaved badly.”

“Don’t tell me what I think. Tell me what you think, if you want to.”

“How was I to know that Arthur can’t beget children? He never told me that.”

“Would it have made a difference?”

“You simply don’t understand what happened.”

“In such a matter nobody understands what happened except the people directly involved, and they are not always clear about it.”

“Oh, so you know that, do you?”

“I know a few things about life. Not many, but a few. I know that when a family friend plays the cuckoo in the nest it is an old, old story. And I know that when you toss your head and roll your eyes like one of Little Charlie’s ponies you probably think that somebody has been using you badly. Was it Arthur?”

“Arthur wasn’t frank.”

“Arthur was distressed and ashamed, and you ought to know that. He would have told you, when a good time came. How frank have you been with him?”

“I haven’t been frank yet. There hasn’t been a good time.”

“Maria, what kind of marriage have you and Arthur set up? You could have made a good time.”

“A good time to crawl and weep and probably be forgiven. I absolutely refuse to be forgiven.”

“You’ve done what you’ve done, and there is a price for that. Being forgiven may be a part of that price.”

“Then I won’t pay.”

“Rather break up your marriage?”

“It wouldn’t come to that.”

“From what I know of Arthur, I don’t suppose it would.”

“It would come to being forgiven, and being one-down on the marriage score-board for the rest of my life. And I simply won’t put up with that. I’m not going to spend years of saying, ‘Yes, dear,’ about anything important because I have a debt I can’t discharge. There’s going to be a child, as I suppose you know. And every time the child is troublesome or disappointing I’m not going to have Arthur sighing and rolling his eyes and being marvellously big about the whole damned thing.”

“You think that’s what he’d do?”

“I don’t know what he’d do, but that’s what I wouldn’t endure.”

“You have the Devil’s own pride, haven’t you?”

“I suppose so.”

“You can never be wrong. Maria can never be at fault. Very well; live that way if you must. But I can tell you it’s easier and more comfortable to be wrong now and then.”

“Comfortable! You sound like Kater Murr. Do you know who Kater Murr is?”

“Why do people keep asking me that? You introduced me to Kater Murr yourself.”

“So I did. Sorry. But since then I’ve got hold of Hoffmann’s astonishing novel, and I feel as if Kater Murr had crept into my life and was making a mess of it. Kater Murr and his horrible, cosy philosophy says far too much about my marriage.”

“Aha.”

“Oh, for God’s sake don’t say Aha as if you understood everything. You don’t understand anything about marriage. I thought I was happy. Then I found out what happiness could mean. For me it meant being less than myself and less than a woman. Do you know what the Feminist League says: ‘A happy wife is a strike-breaker in the fight for female equality’.

“Do they say that? But what kind of happiness are you talking about? It isn’t a simple thing, Maria.”

“It began to seem to me that happiness was what Kater Murr says it is—a cosy place where one is perfectly content with oneself.”

“Well, for a lot of people Kater Murr is dead right. But not for you. And, as if you didn’t know it, not right for Arthur. You underestimate your husband, Maria.”

“Do I? Yes, and he underestimates me! It’s all that bloody money! It cuts me off from everything I have been, and everything I want to be.”

“Which is—?”

“I want to be Maria, whoever Maria is! But I won’t find out in this marriage I’m in now, because everywhere I turn I’m not Maria; I’m Mrs. Arthur Cornish, the very rich bluestocking whose stockings are getting to be a faded puce because all she does is be a slave to that bloody Cornish Foundation, and dish out money to people who want to do a thousand and one things that don’t interest me at all. I’ve given up everything to that Foundation, and I’ve come to the end!”

“Oh, not quite the end, I hope. What about you and Arthur?”

“Arthur’s getting very strange. He’s so God-damned considerate about everything.”

“And now you know why.”

“The mumps thing? Why did it have to be mumps? Such a silly thing, and then it turns out to have a nasty side.”

“Well, call it bilateral orchitis if you want a fancy label. Personally I prefer mumps, because it also means being melancholy, and out of sorts, and plagued by dissatisfaction. Which is what ails Arthur. He’s thoroughly dissatisfied with himself, and being the man he is he thinks he ought to be especially nice to you because you’re married to such a dud. He thinks he’s a wimp and a nerd, and he’s sorry for you. He knows that as he gets older his balls are going to shrivel up, and that won’t be the least bit funny for him. He was afraid he’d lose you, and right now he thinks he’s lost you indeed. Has he?”

“How can you ask?”

“How can I not ask? Obviously you’ve been sleeping with somebody who doesn’t have Arthur’s trouble, and you’ve been so indiscreet as to get pregnant.”

“God, Simon, I think I hate you! You talk exactly like a man!”

“Well—I am a man. And as you obviously think there is some special feminine side to this business, you had better tell me about it.”

“First of all, I haven’t been sleeping with anybody. Not a succession of sneaky betrayals. Just once. And I swear to you it seemed to be somebody I didn’t know; I have never had words with Powell that would have led to anything like that; I’m not really sure I like him. Only once, and it had to get me pregnant! Oh, what a joke! What an uproarious bit of mischief by the Rum Old Joker!”

“Tell me.”

“Yes, yes—’Tell me the old, old story,’ as you like to sing. But it wasn’t quite the old story you think. It was a much older story—a story that goes back through the centuries and probably through the aeons, from a time when women ceased to be sub-humans cringing at the back of the cave.”