SIDE BENEFITS
509
darkness as
it
had an hour ago in front, the two
found themselves
on their way out, by the bed, a slight detour and a temporary shed–
ding of their first-night parties being necessary. Looking at the pillow
case, which should have been fresh for the just-completed perform–
ance, she noted a smear of lipstick - hers, from the dress rehearsal.
"Really," she said, irritably, "I do think they might have remem–
bered to put on a clean pillow case for the first night." "I quite
agree," he said, cool, and with precisely the same degree of pro–
fessional irritation at incompetence, "that lipstick must have been
visible from half way up the stalls." With which they kissed each
other, comradely and brisk, as is customary, said goodnight, and
parted, she to reaffiml to her lover that no, she would not marry
him, and he to disagree with his wife who was saying that really,
as responsible and adult people they should try again.
Or take that well-known playwright, now dead, whose dis–
satisfaction with his wives was not so much proclaimed - they were
all damned fine women, he told the newspapers - as demonstrated
by the fact that he dismissed them one after another, usually about
four years after marrying them. He was on his sixth wife when she
met, by chance, wives five and four, and confessed that things were
not as they ought to be. Remarks were made that caused them to
contact previous wives. Six women, five ex-wives and the present
incumbent, met one afternoon - not, they said, in any spirit of
anger, but from a scientific desire for psychological clarity. In each of
this man's plays( we will call him John ) appeared a woman, some–
times in a leading part, sometimes not, who was wise, witty, warm,
tender, beautiful and all-forgiving, the last quality being most valu–
able, in life if not theatrically, as each of these women had discovered.
They were all actresses and all had played this woman, presented
under different names, in different clothes and in different epochs.
The first wife had played her in his first-performed playas a sub–
urban school teacher ; the current wife had played her, evolved into
full flower, four years previously in the shape of an Italian princess.
They all had had the same experience, an uneasiness which developed
even during those first rapturous days of an at-last-discovered perfect
love, that made them feel - and all of them said they had felt it, as
if they were not themselves, as if, in life, they were being forced into
a role, and even, as one of them put it, as if there were always a
