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By Root 555 0

at her. The angles and curves of his face were highlighted by the orange glow from the shaded candle at the side of the table; in the shadow his chin was stronger, his features not so smooth. Really, she thought, anyone seeing him would find him exceptionally handsome. He was wearing one of his suave winter costumes – dark suit, sombrely opulent tie – not as jaunty as some of his young-man-about-town suits, but more quietly impressive. Ainsley had once called him “nicely packaged,” but now Marian decided that she found this quality attractive. He knew how to blend in and stand out at the same time. Some men could never wear dark suits properly, they got flaky on the shoulders and shiny at the back, but Peter never shed and never shone in the wrong places. The sense of proud ownership she felt at being with him there in that more or less public way caused her to reach across the table and take his hand. He put his own hand on top of hers in answer.

The waiter appeared with the wine, and Peter tasted it and nodded. The waiter poured and stepped back into the darkness.

That was another nice thing about Peter. He could make that kind of decision so effortlessly. She had fallen into the habit in the last month or so of letting him choose for her. It got rid of the vacillation she had found herself displaying when confronted with a menu: she never knew what she wanted to have. But Peter could make up their minds right away. His taste ran towards steak and roast beef: he did not care for peculiar things like sweetbreads, and he didn’t like fish at all. Tonight they were having Filet Mignon. Already it was fairly late, they had spent the earlier hours of the evening at Peter’s apartment, and they were both, they had told each other, ravenous.

Waiting for their food, they resumed the conversation they had begun earlier, while they were getting dressed again, about the proper education of children. Peter talked theoretically, about children as a category, carefully avoiding any application. But she knew perfectly well that it was their own future children they were really discussing: that was why it was so important. Peter thought that all children ought to be punished for breaches of discipline; even physically. Of course no one should ever strike a child in anger; the main thing was to be consistent. Marian was afraid of warping their emotions.

“Darling, you don’t understand these things,” Peter said; “you’ve led a sheltered life.” He squeezed her hand. “But I’ve seen the results, the courts are full of them, juvenile delinquents, and a lot of them from good homes too. It’s a complex problem.” He compressed his lips.

Marian was secretly convinced she was right and resented being told she had led a sheltered life. “But shouldn’t they be given understanding, instead of …?”

He smiled indulgently. “Try giving understanding to some of those little punks: the motorcycle boys and the dope addicts and the draft dodgers up from the States. You’ve never even seen one up close, I bet; some of them have lice. You think you can solve everything by good will, Marian, but it doesn’t work; they have no sense of responsibility at all, they run around smashing things up just because they feel like it. That’s how they were brought up, nobody kicked hell out of them when they deserved it. They think the world owes them a living.”

“Perhaps,” Marian said primly, “somebody kicked hell out of them when they didn’t deserve it. Children are very sensitive to injustice, you know.”

“Oh, I’m all in favour of justice,” Peter said. “What about justice for the people whose property they destroy?”

“You’d teach them not to drive around mowing down other people’s hedges, I suppose.”

Peter chuckled warmly. Her disapproval of that incident and his laughter at her for it had become one of the reference points in their new pattern. But Marian’s serenity had vanished with her own remark. She looked intently at Peter, trying to see his eyes, but he was glancing down at his wineglass, admiring perhaps the liquid richness of the red against the white of the tablecloth.