“There’s cold chicken in the ice box; please get it out and slice it for salad sandwiches. I don’t think Mr. Martin cares much for beef, I noticed at lunch.”
“What does he think he is? Some kind of Messiah? If he doesn’t like our ways, what did he come butting in for?”
He checked himself. The moment was ripe for quarrel, the gross mustard-sharpened air seemed to suggest it. He put the carcass of fowl on the scrubbed drain board by the sink and began to carve. Standing so, his back was toward her. He made some pretext to turn, hoping to divine her mood; but her face was averted. There was ominous restraint in the shape of her back. The anticlimax of all this, the delicatessen-shop smell, after his ecstasy in the garden, fretted his nerves. Brutal shouts of wrath clamoured in his mind. It was infuriating to see her so appealing: can’t one ever get away from it, must a man love even his wife? He wanted to ask her this, but feared she would miss the humour of it. He longed to horrify her with his rage, so that he could get rid of it and then show the tenderness he secretly felt. Certainly I’m the colossus of sentimentalists, he thought. I can turn directly from one kind of love to another. Queer, the way it looks now it’s my feeling for Joyce that is disinterested and pure, my love for Phyl that’s really carnal. How did this morality business get so mixed up?
He amused himself by putting the slivers of chicken in two piles: the dark meat for Martin, the white for Joyce. How white she had been in the surf.... But that was only a dream. This is real, this is earnest. This is Now, I’m cutting sandwiches for the Picnic. This is what Time is doing to me; what is it doing to her? How did our two Times get all knotted up together? He found himself affectionately stroking a smooth slice of chicken breast.
There was something in Phyllis’s silence that pricked him. He looked uneasily over his shoulder. She had sat down in the chair by the table, her chin leaning on one wrist, watching him. He went to her and touched her shoulder gently.
“Go to bed, Phyl dear.”
“George, can’t we get away from this house?”
“What on earth do you mean?”
“Get away. Take me away, George; we’ll take the children and go. To-night. Before anybody wakes up.”
She rose suddenly.