Chapter 7. Free Women 4

Anna and Molly influence Tommy, for the better.

Marion leaves Richard. Anna does not feel herself.

Anna was waiting for Richard and Molly. It was rather late, getting on for eleven. The curtains in the tall white room were drawn, the notebooks pushed out of sight, a tray with drinks and sandwiches already waiting. Anna sat loose in a chair, in a lethargy of moral exhaustion. She had now understood that she was not in control of what she did. Also, earlier that evening she had caught sight of Ronnie in a dressing-gown through Ivor’s half-open door. It seemed that he had simply moved back in, and now it was up to her to throw them both out. She had caught herself thinking: What does it matter? And even that she and Janet should pack their things and move out and leave the flat to Ivor and Ronnie, anything to avoid fighting. That this idea was not far off lunacy did not surprise her, for she had decided she was very likely mad. Nothing she thought pleased her; for some days she had been observing ideas and images pass through her mind, unconnected with any emotion, and did not recognize them as her own.

Richard had said he would pick Molly up from her theatre where she was currently playing the part of a deliciously frivolous widow trying to choose between four new husbands, each one more attractive than the next. There was to be a conference. Three weeks before, Marion, kept late by Tommy, had slept upstairs in the empty flat once inhabited by Anna and Janet. Next day Tommy had informed his mother that Marion needed a pied-à-terre in London. She would of course pay the full rent for the flat, though she intended to use it occasionally. Since then Marion had been to her home only once, to pick up clothes. She was living upstairs, and had in fact quietly left Richard and her children. Yet she did not seem to know she had, for every morning there was a fluttering expostulating scene in Molly’s kitchen, where Marion exclaimed that she was really so naughty to have been kept so late the night before, but that she would go home and look after everything today - ‘yes, really, I promise, Molly’ - as if Molly were the person to whom she was responsible. Molly had telephoned Richard, demanding that he should do something. But he refused. He had hired a housekeeper for form’s sake; and his secretary Jean was practically installed already. He was delighted Marion had gone.