Finding Out

Ward could suddenly see his wife making love with someone. Despite the distortion, he recognised her straight away. He put down his can of pitch. He couldn't see them directly through the skylight; from his roof he spied them moving against each other in a mirror. He leaned this way and that. The skylight glass was softened and rippled with time and it took a while before he made out what he saw - a gentleman's cheval mirror in a plush dressing-room and in the mirror, a doorway, his wife, a part of a bed, and the factory-owner lovingly over his wife who was on all fours. The factory-owner! One of whose managers had just a few moments ago asked Ward to take the pitch up to the roofs and search out rain damage. The irony of this unknowing manager's request (to shin up to the roofs with the intention of protecting himself) was at first lost on Ward. For the moment he was overwhelmed by strong emotions and one puzzlement. He knew well enough what he felt (hurt) but what was his reaction supposed to be? All his life he had been disgusted by the cheapness of girls' reactions to almost everything, and now that it was his turn, a man's turn, to show some better acting, he was for the time being at a loss. He did not wish to reach for the ready-made ham acting got from soap-operas, and cheap film-talk that, as he saw it, a girl would badly act out were she to find her boyfriend caught like this in flagrante. He prided himself on being above that. But he could recall no man's pattern to reckon, he had seen so little, and so how should he react? That was a puzzle. He should move from 'hurt' to .  .  . what? To anger? Towards whom? The factory-owner? Because men are more guilty (they contrive and pursue) and women are guilty only of the lesser crime of 'giving in'? Towards his wife then? If not 'anger', then what? Self-destruction? In true cheap soap-opera fashion, should he jump up, arch, and dive head first through this skylight and dash himself to death right before their eyes, perhaps right at the point of their cheap orgasm? He peers once more through the skylight, only briefly, then moves over to other roofs as far away as he can get.