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time. It wasn’t just the fact that the man before her had had his way with a kitchen slut; she was no fool, there was hardly a household of any standing for miles around where the masters did not demand their pleasures from their female employees, and not only from girls not yet wedded; a working man’s wife had to have a strong personality and indeed be virtuous if at least one of her many children did not show a marked resemblance to the man who employed her husband. And the husband might black his wife’s eyes because he couldn’t dole out that very medicine to the man on whom he relied for his bread.
    No, it wasn’t entirely the fact that her husband had been sporting with that skit of a girl while she herself was carrying his child, but what was indeed filling her with rage was that this man, who was looked up to, whom she herself had been forced to respect even while she had stopped loving him, was nothing but a hypocrite, a sanctimonious mealy-mouthed hypocrite, daring to stand in the pulpit Sunday after Sunday and read the lesson, and sit smugly in their pew listening to old Parson Wainwright singing his praises after yet another donation towards the upkeep of the church: ‘Our good Brother McBain has yet again come to our rescue . . . ’ She could hear the thick fuddled voice of the minister who more often than not was still carrying the previous night’s load of port when he ascended the pulpit. And then Sir Alfred Tuppin, she could hear his thick guttural voice saying, ‘Your husband, Mrs McBain, is an upright man. There are so few left in this England of ours today. Good stock, good stock, the McBains.’ Such praise had even silenced her cynical self, which at times would rise up and present her with a picture of McBain in the night; and she would recall the advice her cousin had given her before she married: ‘There are two men in every husband,’ she had said, ‘a night man, and a day man. See that you satisfy the night man and you will be both master and mistress of the day man.’ Yet even as she offered this sop to herself from time to time she knew it to be trite, untrue, except in very rare cases. There was no opportunity given a woman to satisfy a man; the animals and birds were more courteous to each other, more patient than a husband.
    But still she could have forgiven all that, as she had done, accepting it as part of a woman’s existence; but not his play-acting, his lapping up of homage as due payment for his integrity: the head held high, the clear eyes, the tones of the sage, in all appearing like a reflection of God as it were.
    ‘TAKE YOUR HANDS OFF ME!’
    ‘Now Delia, you must listen to me . . . I, I want you to listen to me.’
    ‘You may want, Mr McBain, you may want.’
    ‘DELIA!’
    ‘That, Mr McBain, is your “Thou shalt not” tone. Well, I may tell you that for some time now it has ceased to fill me with awe. Yet I have respected you . . . but never no more.’ They were glaring at each other when she asked grimly, ‘Will you go to church on Sunday, Mr McBain, and read the lesson? Will you?’ The last words were high piercing, and he answered coolly, ‘Delia, I command you, be quiet, keep calm for your own good. You must not get excited; you must think of the child.’
    ‘Which child? Whose child? Mine or hers?’
    ‘Don’t talk stupidly, Delia.’ He again extended his hand towards her, saying briskly, ‘Come.’ But she stepped back from him, and she said again, ‘I ask you, will you go to church on Sunday and read the lesson?’
    His patience was running short now and he answered grimly, ‘Very likely. I see no reason why I shouldn’t.’
    ‘Do, do that, Mr McBain, go to church and read the lesson. And you know what I shall do? I shall scream the truth to the rafters. Enter that church again and I shall scream the truth to the rafters. I could forgive you for sporting with a low scut if you had ever accepted that you were an ordinary man, but you sported