RANDOM REMINDER

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31088, 17 June 1966, Page 18

RANDOM REMINDER

GRATITUDE

Reference has been made in this column from time to time to the diabolical duplicity of women, their extravagances, their incompetence as drivers, their lack of punctuality, to all the characteristics, in fact, which help make men their devoted slaves. They have other attributes, and among them is a strange and often misplaced loyalty. Moreover, they can cook, most of them. This sad little story is about a woman whose sons had grown up and married, except for the youngest, and he was obviously on the point of leaping overboard too. But there was compensation for her, and for her husband, as they settled down to spend a Saturday evening at home

by the fire: Darby and Joan, with television. She had had a tiring but rewarding sort of day, working as usual, like a pack-horse but producing, at the end of the day, her husband's favourite meal—a mixture of tripe and oysters which almost anyone else would have found quite revolting. He had spoken of her industry and culinary skill, in brief but not unkindly terms, and as she sat beside the fire after doing her dishes, she fell into a peaceful little sleep. She woke about 9 p.m. Her husband, perhaps through too prolonged an association with the beasts of the field during his working life, suggested to her that she was not providing the

most sparkling sort of company—this, after all that tripe and all thos< oysters. She dozed off again: she woke late, freezing cold The fire was dead, Alfred Hitchcock had stopped being funny, and her husband was asleep in bed. She shivered her way into .the bedroom, thinking dark thoughts such as that she might have died out there and he would never have known. He had shown sufficient thought to switch on her electric blanket; but not enough to plug in the extension she used. As he lay there, warm and comfortable, and making little trumpeting noises, she did not think he was very sparkling company.