That's a good description of the progress of their marriage: "much like many others . . . happy to begin with, then satisfactory and finally dull."
Mrs. Donaldson's Simulated Patient work is just one factor in her transformation. The other factor is far more intimate. In order to supplement her income, Mrs. Donaldson rents a room to a young couple, Andy and Laura. Struggling students that they are, they get behind on the rent, so they offer another type of compensation: She can watch them make love.
" 'Have you ever seen anyone making love?' said Laura.
" 'To tell you the truth,' said Mrs. Donaldson pretending to cast her mind back, 'I don't think I have.'
" 'Oh good,' said Laura. 'We were bothered it might not be much of a novelty.' "
As Mrs. Donaldson takes on more varied Simulated Patient roles for the medical students, and continues as observer of her randy students at home, her emotional fog lifts.
She realizes her role-playing hospital work had been "a softening-up for what was to come and an unlooked-for initiation into candor even though the candor was put on and was not candor at all."
Her confidence and cheerfulness increase, and she becomes less an observer of life and more a participant. As the story ends, the wildly impossible yields to the somewhat unlikely.
One quibble: Mrs. Donaldson seems much older and out of touch than the typical 55-year-old. After she takes up her boarders' offer, her curiosity is piqued: "She had heard that there were all sorts to be seen on the Internet. She didn't know about the Internet but thought there must be courses one could go on . . . . " Are there any 55-year-olds these days who are so unfamiliar with the Internet?
Still, Bennett entertainingly mines the power of secrets, equally so with the second novella, "The Shielding of Mrs. Forbes."
