The first that Ted Bilborough knew of his wife's good fortune was when one of his friends, an elderly wag, shook his hand with mock gravity and murmured a few words of manly but inappropriate sympathy. Ted didn't know what to make of it. He had just stepped from the stairway on to the upper deck of the 6:15 P.M. ferry from town. Fred Lewis seemed to have been waiting for him, and as he looked about he got the impression of newspapers and grins and a little flutter of half derisive excitement, all focused on himself. Everything seemed to bulge towards him. It must be some sort of leg pull. He felt his assurance threatened, and the corner of his mouth twitched uncomfortably in his fat cheek, as he tried to assume a hard boiled manner.
"Keep the change, laddie," he said.
"He doesn't know, actually he doesn't know."
"Your wife's won the lottery!"
"He won't believe you. Show him the paper. There it is as plain as my nose. Mrs.Grace Biborough, 52 Cuthbert Street," A thick, stained forefinger pointed to the words. First prize, five thousand pounds, Last Hope Syndicate."
"He's taking it very hard," said Fred Lewis, shaking his head.
They began thumping him on the back. He had traveled on the ferry every week-day for the last ten years, barring a fortnight's holiday in January, and he knewnearly everyone. Even those he didn't know entered into the spirit of it. Ted filled his pipe nonchalantly but with unsteady fingers. He was keeping that odd unsteadiness, that seemed to begin somewhere deep in his chest, to himself. It was a wonder that fellows in the office hadn't got hold of this, but they had been busy today in the hot loft under the chromium pipes of the pneumatic system, sending down change and checking up on credit accounts. Sale time. Grace might have let him know. She could have rung up from Thompson's. Bill was always borrows the lawn mower and the step ladder, so it would hardly be asking a favour in the circumstances. But that was Grace all over.
"If I can't have it myself, you're the man I like to see get it."
They meant it too. Everyone liked Ted in a kind sort of way. He was a good fellow in both senses the word. Not namby pamby, always ready for a joke but a good citizen too, a good husband and father. He wasn't the sort that refused to wheel the perambulator. He flourished the perambulator. His wife could hold up her head, they paid their bills weekly and he even put something away, not much but something, and that was a triumph the way things were, the ten per cent knocked off his salary in the depression not restored yet. and one thing and another. And always cheerful, with a joke for everyone. All this was vaguely present in Ted's mind. He'd always expected in a trusting sort of way to be rewarded. but not through Grace.
"What are you going to do with it, Ted?
"You won't see him for a week, he's going on a jag." This was very funny because Ted never did, not even on Anzac Day.
A voice with a grievance said, not for the first time, "I've had shares in a ticket every week since it started, and I've never won a cent." No one was interested.
"You'll be going off on a trip somewhere?"
"They ll make you president of the Tennis Club and you'll have to donate a silver cup."
They were flattering him underneath the jokes.
"I expect Mrs. Bilborough will want to put some of it away for the children's future." he said. It was almost as if he was giving an interview to the press, and he was pleased with himself for saying the right thing. He always referred to Grace in public as Mrs Bilborough. He had too nice a social tense to say "the Missus."
Ted let them talk, and looked out of the window. He wasn't interested in the news in the paper tonight. The little boat vibrated fussily, and left a long wake like moulding glass in the quiet river. The evening was drawing in. The sun was sinking into a bank of grey cloud, soft and formless as mist. The air was dusky, so that its light was dosed into itself and it was easy to look at, a thick golden disc more like a moon rising through the smoke than the sun. It threw a single column orange light on the river, the ripples from the ferry fanned out into it. and their tiny shadows truncated it. The bank, rising steeply from the river and closing it in till it looked like a lake, was already bloomed with shadows.
Five thousand pounds," he thought: "Five thousand pounds." Five thousand pounds stewing gently in its interest, making old age safe. He could do almost anything he could think of with five thousand pounds. It gave his mind a stretched sort of feeling, just to think of it. It was hard to connect five thousand pounds with Grace, She might have let him know. And where had the five and threepence to buy the ticket come from? He couldn't help wondering about that. When you budgeted as carefully as they did there wasn't five and threepence over. If there had been, well, it wouldn't have been over at all, he would have put it in the bank. He hadn't noticed any difference in the housekeeping, and he prided himself he noticed everything. Surely she hadn't been running up bills to buy lottery tickets. His mind darted here and there suspiciously. There was something secretive in Grace, and he'd thought she told him everything, He'd taken it for granted, only, of course, in the ordinary run there was nothing to tell. He consciously relaxed the knot in his mind. After all, Grace had won the me thousand pounds. He remembered charitably that she had alway been a good wife to him. As he thought that he had a vision of the patch on his shirt, his newly washed cream trousers laid out for tennis, the children's neatness, the tidy house. That was being good wife. And he had been a good husband, ahways brought his money home and never looked at another woman. Theirs was a model home, everyone acknowledged it, but-well-somehow he found it easier to be cheerful in other people's homes than in his own. It was Grace's fault. She wasn't cheery and easy going. Something moody about her now. Woody. He'd worn better than Grace, anyone could see that, and yet it was he who had had the hard time. All she had to do was to stay at home and look arter the house and the children. Nothing much in that. She always seemed to be working, but he couldnt see what that was to do that could take her so long. Just a touch of woman's perversity. It wasn't that Grace had aged. Ten years married and with two children, there was still something girlish about her-raw, hard girtishness that had never mellowed. Maybe she'd be a bit brighter now. He could not help wondering how she had managed the five and three. If she could shower five and three about like that, he'd been giving her too much for the housekeeping. And why did she want to give it that damnfool name, "Last Hope." That meant there had been others. didnt it? It probably didnt mean a thing. Just a lucky tag.
A girl on the seat opposite was sewing lace on silkies for her trousseau, working intently in the bad light.
"Another one starting out," Ted thought.
"What about it?" said the man beside him.
Ted hadn't been listening.