Read Online When I Was Otherwise by Stephen Benatar - Free Book Online Page B

that case I could certainly do worse. But now I think I really had better be on my way. You need to get your beauty sleep. I need to make Dan his good-night cup of Horlicks.”
    â€œYes, naturally you do! I mustn’t keep you. Perhaps we ought to call you Martha—not Marsha.” Daisy gave a wide yawn.
    â€œOh, don’t do that; you’re making me do it, too!”
    â€œNow just look at you, you poor old thing! You should have been in your bed hours ago. Tell Dan to make his own Horlicks!”
    â€œHere, let me take your aid for you and put it on the table. Do your pillows need plumping again? Is that a little better?”
    Daisy didn’t hear but nonetheless she supplied the right answer. “That’s very nice. Thank you, dear.” She gave another yawn. “Thank you for my hot-water bottle. Just the way I like it. Thank you for sitting and listening to me. I’ve been jawing the hind legs off a donkey— as usual! But tonight, dear, you provided a fair amount of the jawing yourself! Still—mum’s the word—I shan’t tell on you! Don’t forget to say goodnight to Dan for me.”
    Marsha bent and kissed her on the cheek. (It was still as rouged as in the daytime.) Daisy mumbled her customary nocturnal benediction.
    â€œSweet repose. Half the bed and all the clothes… God bless. Happy dreams.”
    â€œThank you, Daisy. Sleep well.”
    â€œNot that there’s much chance of it—but as usual, dear, I’m grateful for the kind wish.”
    When Marsha passed her room again, some fifteen minutes later, Daisy was deeply and rhythmically snoring. Marsha was always thankful for the fact that, in this house at least, the walls were far from paper-thin.

Part Two

11
    When Marsha had been married for about six months—and was now actually enjoying the experience once again, no longer writing notes to Boers or thinking of divorce but freshly inspired by a conscientious will to make her life succeed and riding one of those sporadic waves that could sometimes buoy her up for weeks—during this happy, cheerful and frenetic period she received a phone call from Daisy.
    â€œHello! I want to come and visit you. I want to meet your groom—properly, I mean. Didn’t have a chance to speak two words to him at the wedding.”
    Marsha, feeling skittish, having been brought up always to observe the little niceties of life, considered asking, “Who is this, please?” But she couldn’t quite bring herself to do it.
    â€œWhy, Daisy! Hello! Good morning! How are you?”
    She felt pleased with herself—that for once she had thought so quickly of the right retort. It was a much kinder and more subtle manner of teaching her sister-in-law a little lesson.
    â€œOh, not so bad. Not so dusty. You know— considering !”
    It was a dampening and very necessary reminder; and all Marsha’s pride in her correctness vanished.
    The thing was, of course, so very much had happened in her own life during the past year that she’d forgotten how slow the same passage of time might appear to others: say, to somebody who was mourning the loss of a loved one. And although she’d never been wholly certain—well, nobody had—just how much Daisy had truly cared for Henry she now saw she’d been failing to make allowances.
    Because, after all, the real wonder had to be, didn’t it, not that Daisy had overlooked some trivial piece of etiquette but that she was still managing to function even adequately , let alone robustly, let alone with such resilience? She was a lesson to the world, a study in survival, when Marsha had supposed that she was going to be the teacher! For how could Daisy bear to come and visit newly-weds—and such very playful newly-weds as well, continuously billing and cooing—such bliss—just the way she’d always imagined it was going to be; with Andrew amusingly trying to