THE MAN IN THE BROOKS SHIRT
325
the girl was no longer fully aware of them: they existed, as it were, only
to give the perspective, .to deepen that warm third dimension that had
been established within the compartrrcnt. The man was lit up with mem–
ories of the war, droll stories of horse-play and drinking parties, a hero
who was drowned while swimming in a French river, trips to Paris, Notre
Dame, and target-practice in the Alps. It had been, she could see, an
extension of college days, a sort of lower-middle-class Grand Tour, a
wonderful male rough-house that had left a man such as this with a per–
manent homesickness for fraternity al)d a loneliness that no stag party
could quite ease.
"I suppose I'm boring you," said the man, still smiling to himself,
"but-it's a funny thing to say-1 haven't had such a good time since the
war. So that you remind me of it, and I can't stop talking, I don't
know why."
"I
know,'' she said, full of gentle omniscience. (This was her best
side, and she knew it. But did that spoil it, keep it from being good?)
"It's because you've made a new friend, and you probably haven't made
one for twenty years, not since the war. Nobody does, after they've
grown-up."
"Maybe so," said the man. "Getting married, no matter how many
times you do it, isn't the same thing. .
If
you even
think
you'd like to marry
a girl, you have to start lying to her. It's a law of nature, I guess. You
have to protect yourself. I don't mean about cheating-that's small
potatoes. . . .''
A meditative look absorbed his face. "Jesus Christ," he said, "I don't
even
know
Leonie any more, and vice versa, but that's the way it ought to
be. A man doesn't want his wife to understand him. That's not her job.
Her job is to have a nice house and nice kids and give good parties he can
have his friends to.
If
Leonie understood me, she wouldn't be able to do
that. Probably we'd both go to pot."
Tears came to her eyes again. The man's life and her own life seemed
unutterably tragic.
"I was in love with my husband," she said. "We understood each
other. He never had a thought he didn't tell me.''
"But you got a divorce," said the man. "Somebody must have mis·
understood somebody else
somewhere
along the line."
"Well,'' she admitted, "maybe he
didn't
understand
me
so well. He
was awfully surprised...." She giggled like a soubrette. The giggle was
quite out of character at the moment, but she had not been able to resist
it. Besides (she was sure) it was these quick darts and turns, these flash–
ing inconsistencies that gave her the peculiar, sweet-sour, highly volatile
charm that was her
specialite de la maison.
"Surprised when you picked up with somebody else?" asked the man.
She nodded.
"What happened to that?"
"After I got divorced, I didn't want to marry him any more."
"So now you're on your own?"
