The Man Who Loved His Wife

Femmes Fatales restores to print the best of women's writing in the classic pulp genres of the mid-twentieth century. From mysteries to hard-boiled noir to taboo lesbian romance, these rediscovered queens of pulp offer subversive perspectives on a turbulent era.

Faith Baldwin

SKYSCRAPER

Vera Caspary

BEDELIA

LAURA

THE MAN WHO LOVED HIS WIFE

Gypsy Rose Lee

THE G-STRING MURDERS

MOTHER FINDS A BODY

Evelyn Piper

BUNNY LAKE IS MISSING

Olive Higgins Prouty

NOW, VOYAGER

Valerie Taylor

THE GIRLS IN 3-B

STRANGER ON LESBOS

RETURN TO LESBOS

Tereska Torrès

WOMEN'S BARRACKS

BY CECILE

Published in 2013 by the Feminist Press

at the City University of New York

The Graduate Center

365 Fifth Avenue, Suite 5406

New York, NY 10016

feministpress.org

First Feminist Press edition

Text copyright © 1966 The Authors League Fund, as literary executor of the Estate of Vera Caspary

Originally published by G.P. Putnam's Sons, New York.

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, used, or stored in any information retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without prior written permission from the Feminist Press at the City University of New York, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Cover and text design by Drew Stevens.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Caspary, Vera, 1899-1987.

  
The man who loved his wife / Vera Caspary.

       
pages cm

  
Includes bibliographical references and index.

  
ISBN 978-1-55861-847-3

  
I. Title.

  
PS3505.A842M36 2014

  
813'.52—dc23

  
2013035186

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

1

THE DIARY WAS STARTED, PROPERLY, ON JANUARY first. More than merely the beginning of another year, it marked a new phase in the life of a man. Fletcher Strode had always known quick satisfactions, easy delight, and the exercise of such teeming energy that if one of his many projects failed, he had at once plunged into more extravagant activities. The written word had neither dazzled nor distressed him; the only books he had read all the way through were detective stories. There can be no doubt of their influence on the purpose and content of his diary.

It was a good thick book, beautifully bound in dark green morocco stamped with his initials. He had got it as a Christmas present, one of many useless, expensive trinkets elaborately wrapped to make a show under the tree. Together he and Elaine had selected the Douglas fir, trimmed it, admired their work but there had been no surprise in it and no one to help them celebrate. Over an abundant Christmas dinner at a charming table, merriment was pretense. They had hoped on New Year's Eve to recapture some of the old joy, wore New York clothes and drank Cordon Rouge '59. For a short time, dancing to a tune that had driven them half out of their minds that first whirlwind season, they had let themselves believe a miracle would bring about a return of that delightful fever. They hurried out of the nightclub, leaving half a bottle of champagne.

On the hilltop their house was as lonely as a ship far out at
sea. The night was silent, the world exclusively theirs. In the hall Elaine dropped the fur-lined cloak, left it crumpled on the floor. Before they reached her room, Fletcher had jerked down the zipper of her dress and kissed her back, inch by inch. The chiffon fell about her feet. She stepped over it grandly and, with a fine disregard for things treasured by colder women, tossed upon the dressing table encumbrances of gold, jade, and pearls. Long legs shining in misty stockings, thighs round and female, a narrow strip of satin girdling her hips, she teased and pranced before him like one of those naughty French girls on posters. Fletcher played at the game of pursuit until he had caught her and performed the ritual of the bra, unfastening the single hook, pulling her to him with rough joy, circling her torso with his heavy arms, cupping big hands over her breasts. They kissed like new lovers. This was how it had been in the beginning; they followed the routine for luck.

Out in the dark an owl hooted.

Fletcher cursed, but silently, because Elaine actually liked having an owl screeching on the telephone pole near the house. It was
amusing
(Shakespearean, she said) to hear
to-whit, to-who
in the night. Fletcher regarded the owl as an enemy. A city man who had learned to live with crickets and night birds, he could not tolerate the mockery of the raucous tones. In the pause between the cracked cries, Fletcher lay tense, waiting for the unbearable repetition.

Elaine kissed him with many small kisses, touched and teased in a way that would once have aroused superior power. “Be patient, darling.” In aborted groans Fletcher cursed the earth and heaven, himself, the owl. “Try, darling, to relax. Just a bit longer, dear.” Into Fletcher's mind hobbled the memory of a boy whose unequal arms trembled, whose drawn legs jerked at every step. Sick at the sight of deformity, Fletcher had admitted the poor cripple to his office to offer an unsteady tray of pencils and shoelaces. A dollar had brought tears to the animal eyes, spittle had caked loose lips while, gulping and winking, the poor fellow had spewed out gratitude. Fletcher's generosity had been the easy penance of a healthy man. He did not like to
remember this, but the spastic ghost came to haunt him during those fragile, important moments when he could least afford to be tormented by memories.

“Patience, dear.”

Her voice was like a breeze sweeping his cheek. A man's patience could not hold forever. Her whispers grew fainter, endurance flagged, the owl hooted. Worn and disgusted, he left her.

“Sorry, darling.”

The owl hooted again. “Damn you!” Fletcher cursed the owl because he could not curse a wife who pretended the failure was her own. She had no right to remorse. Alone in his bed he thought of Elaine alone in hers, and became resentful of her suffering. Had she been older, less lusty, merely performing her duty toward the husband who kept her, he would not need to have tortured himself with the concern of her. He lay and listened to the faint stir of her restlessness, heard the click of a light switch, the sound of running water, the clatter of a cupboard door.

Neither slept much. At half-past seven on New Year's Day Elaine found Fletcher in the den with a cup of instant coffee grown cold at his elbow. She wore a smile. “Oh, darling, you're writing in your diary.”

He covered the page with his arm.

If she had noticed the gesture of concealment she gave no sign of it. “You'll enjoy keeping a diary,” she said, finding some pleasure in his using her gift. “Don't have any inhibitions. About anything. Just put it all down, your craziest notions. Later when you read it over, you'll find it terribly amusing.”

Elaine had a lot of favorite words. The way she emphasized and thrust them at him sometimes annoyed Fletcher. He found
amusing
a reproach. A man who could not satisfy nor be satisfied ought, at least, to be amused. His first entry would never amuse anyone:

Happy New Year, Fletcher J. Strode. Oh, yeah. A lousy lot you have to be happy about. Just another 365 days to wonder
about what FJS is doing here. I would be a lot better burning down there and so would my wife. She knows it. I know it. God knows it. She is getting to despise me and I do not blame her for it. I would not blame her for anything she might do.

“What have you written?”

He looked up sheepishly. His eyes, in spite of all that he had gone through, were still childishly wide and blue, fringed by lashes that women remarked upon enviously. His wife laughed at the secrecy, swooped down to kiss him. His covering the diary did not displease her because she felt that Fletcher ought to have something, if only the diversion of recording secret thought, to reawaken the spirit of that vital and impetuous man with whom she had fallen so vitally and impetuously in love.

IT WAS NOT that love had died. Quite the opposite. Circumstance had reshaped their lives and emotions. Elaine had become softer, more mature, in many ways, maternal; Fletcher more dominating and willful. He had to possess her fully. She was the ether and the substance, the strength and the ornament, the reason and despair of his life. In this lay their tragedy.

Five years earlier, a hearty man of forty-two, Fletcher J. Strode had fallen so profoundly in love that he felt that he would die unless he won the darling creature. At this time Fletcher had been boisterous, given to impulse and high living, easy laughter and hard work. In Elaine Guardino he had found more than a desirable girl. She had, as he had, a madness for living, spent her energy and her earnings with a zest that had been due not simply to youth but to a freedom of spirit which he had never before found, nor expected, in a woman.