Books: Anatomy of Jealousy

THE BODY (215 pp.)—William Sansom—Harcourt, Brace ($2.75).

From the garden of his London house, Henry Bishop peered at the red-faced stranger in the yard next door. The man was staring straight up at the bathroom where Bishop’s wife was making splashing sounds in the wash basin; suddenly he burst into a clumsy dance of delight and blew a kiss to the window.

Henry Bishop, a middle-aged shopkeeper, trembled with shock. Was that kiss the first? Had Madge encouraged it, had she smiled back at the man? A muddled rush of feeling seized him: pity for himself as a rejected husband, envy of the stranger’s virile appearance, guilt that he had failed to step up and challenge the fellow. Bishop felt even more confused when the stranger bounced over to introduce himself as the new neighbor, Charles Diver. The man invited them to dinner, and Madge, who had come downstairs, cheerfully said yes.

This sad and ridiculous situation is the starting point of William Sansom’s smoothly joined and brightly told study of middle-aged delusional jealousy. Henry Bishop yearned for the days when people gently chased butterflies with nets; by contrast, he found modern life crude and vulgar. Until Diver’s appearance, his 20 years of marriage with Madge had been plain, placid and passionless. Diver was all energy and heartiness. To Madge’s amusement, he thrust trick gadgets at Henry—a golden dog whose eyes lit up, a dinner plate that leaped up convulsively.

Like an amateur detective, Henry searched his wife’s room. In her diary he found an entry: Dined C. D. evening. Party. Nuff Said. To Henry, Nuff Said meant wickedly delightful. Reveling in his betrayal, Henry manufactured situations to throw Madge and Diver together. He faked a business trip and returned unexpectedly to find somebody’s cigarette in Madge’s bedroom (the window cleaner’s, she said). In a little notebook he carefully wrote down all his “evidence.”

When Henry worked up enough nerve to accuse his wife, he learned at last that the betrayal had been strictly in his own undernourished and perverse imagination.

He had been no Othello, merely a self-deluded little man; Diver no Don Juan, only a seedy blusterer. Henry’s final feeling was the sour taste that comes from a strong swallow of reality.

This seemingly overworked situation has been used by Author Sansom with both sympathy and artistic guile. Readers naturally feel superior to Henry; they may also have an uneasy feeling that Henry’s kind of foolishness is pretty common.