The answer should be: literally anything other than this. So what else can she do but take a random lover? Although she likes Tony, she’s also… bored. His wife Brenda is less fond of Hetton – she prefers the liveliness and thrills of London. The house is a terrible, ugly nineteenth-century building deep in the countryside, but Tony is devoted to its upkeep and spends most of his money on the estate. They live at Hetton, the estate of Tony’s family, with their young son and loyal staff. Luckily, Evelyn Waugh is far more eloquent than I am, so instead of generic noises, he produces subtle, beautiful prose and a wonderful satire of rich people’s lives. With A Handful of Dust (1934) it was all three: it’s the story of a marriage that spins disastrously out of control and then just goes on spinning until you go ‘huh’. It might be that the ending was sudden, or not what you expected, or more depressing than what you knew you signed up for.
Once in a while, I finish a book and just go ‘huh’.
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