6 The Lovers

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A man and a woman stroll or stand in a garden. By inference – their clothing denotes them of the same social class – they are a married couple. While the woman's eyes are on the man, he is looking elsewhere. Following his gaze, we see a second woman, standing at the edge of the scene, returning his glance or actively beckoning him. Compared to the soberly dressed and rather dowdy wife, she is dressed to kill and looks younger and more attractive. Above her in the sky, the most destructive god of all, the cherub archer Cupid/Eros, is aiming an arrow at the man.

Well, we've all heard the grass is greener on the other hill… this card is about choices and decisions. Yes, the most obvious one here is the seven-year itch when one's husband or wife may not seem as attractive as they once were. Then a new possibility comes along… dissatisfaction with your current life and a desire to find something better. Temptation. Do you give into it? The message is that you cannot be blamed for temptation – we all face it. The choices you make are all yours and you will be judged by others on the choices you make, especially if you are seen to hurt people by selfishly following your whim. And depending on where you stand, you could be any of the four characters in this card…

In a rare quiet moment, Sacharissa Cripslock sat in the living room in her marital home and sipped a lukewarm cup of tea.

Normally life for the city's first lady of letters was a rush of meetings, interviews, editorial discussions, marketing meetings, conferences with sub-editors at both the Times and the plethora of magazines to which she was Executive Editor. But today was a quiet newsday, and her junior editors were well enough embedded in their jobs now to be able to do the bulk of it for themselves, without needing to ask her or William every five minutes.

William.

Thought of him hit her like a quiet rebuke to her conscience. She pushed it away. He could manage.

Then she looked at her wedding ring, and once again, as she had done almost continually for nearly two years, asked herself if she'd made an awful mistake. Oh, her husband was kind, and attentive, and was a good provider, and in his own way he certainly cared for her. But she wasn't sure, when she got right down to it, if she cared all that much for him.

And they'd had arguments.

He bitterly resented her refusal to use his name and her insistence that she remained Sacharissa Cripslock even after marriage. He also deplored her desire for a career for something other than being his wife. But she'd won both arguments by force of personality. And… her eyes flickered to the thing that was in the glass case in the centre of the mantelpiece, which she'd retrieved from childhood debris in the attic.

Sacharissa found she was easing her wedding ring up and down her finger, as if playing with the idea of taking it off completely.

She pushed it resolutely right down to the base of her finger, although not very tightly. She had decided, hadn't she? There were Standards to be kept up. She was his wife so long as he lived.

But something in her soul screamed at the idea of being Mrs Sacharissa Carney forever.

And the decision, when caught between two men with an interest in her, had been so straightforward. She had known Ronnie Carney for years. He was the nearest thing she had had to a childhood sweetheart. There was no real malice in him, even though Sacharissa considered him a little bit weak-willed. Besides, they were both of the same social class – Sacharissa had heard the Quirmian words bourgeoisie and poujadiste in discourse with the Widdershinist(1) political thinker Reg Shoe, a man who could be counted on to use them in their correct context. She felt they fitted her station in life. And Ronnie's. There had been fit there, in a way she would not have felt with William. It would not have been fitting for one of her social standing to have leapt up a few rungs of the ladder and become Lady de Worde. She knew this to the pit of her middle-middle class soul.

And William had taken it philosophically enough when she'd told him of her decision. He had wished her well, and wished Ronnie well, and then said to her to let him know if things changed. He had attended the wedding, but left the reception diplomatically early.

Well, it kept their working relationship purely professional and above-board.

But she still wanted him.

She sighed and put the treasonous thought out of her mind. Nearly three. At three-thirty she had an interview with the Woman of the Week candidate, Miss Sanderson-Reeves from the Assassins' Guild, a woman tipped to be the first-ever Guild Mistress(2). And she knew this particular Assassin was a stickler for punctuality.

She finished her tea, then put her gloves on again, prior to going out in the street and hailing a cab.

I'm having a working dinner with William later, she thought, happily, as she left to resume her work.

And from the glass case atop the mantelpiece, a three-legged wooden cow stared wobbily back, a relic of a shared childhood with Ronald Carney and an ever-present threat to him not to step too far in his dealings with her.(3)

(1) Widdershinist:- Playing with words here and trying to get a Discworld variant of "left-wing". "Poujadiste" refers to a specific middle-class mentality where appearances count, Keeping Up Standards is all and everything, nobody has affairs or goes into debt, and people of all other social classes (and ethnicities) are viewed with deep suspicion. Above all, people stay in bad marriages because it Does Not Do to divorce or have an affair, and For The Sake Of The Children is embossed in gold letters. To be poujadiste is a slightly more genteel version of the Cockbill Street Mentality.

(2) See my Assassins' Guild School stories The Graduation Class, Murder Most 'Orrible and others. Joan Sanderson-Reeves is a fearsome classroom monster - until you get past the pineapple.

(3) See The Truth by Terry Pratchett for how the wooden cow lost one of its legs.