A Secret Madness, by Elaine Bass

The loneliness of marriage to a man trapped inside his own illness

Gerald had given his wife a clue while standing on a platform, waiting to catch the train home, when her "charming, masterly lover" let drop that he had been "mentally ill". The admission left her frightened, but there were many former servicemen like Gerald in the 1950s, struggling with their demons. For their wives, it was a problem they kept to themselves. Bass found herself "alone on an unknown planet which I was plainly not equipped to explore".

When the couple move to a cottage in Devon, the eccentricity of Gerald's behaviour becomes more severe. She notices his need to maintain an unvarying routine; every evening he brushes his overcoat before ensuring it is hung at a precise angle, before reversing his turn-ups in the conservatory. He surrounds himself with a sea of dictionaries, desperate to define each word he finds in the newspaper. By the time Bass falls pregnant with her first child, Gerald has become so deeply withdrawn that he is barely functioning and loses his job.

There is worse to come when Gerald vents his pent-up frustrations on his wife, once threatening to kill her with the carving knife over Sunday dinner. Bass takes refuge in an affair with a sympathetic local doctor whose wife suffers from a mental illness that also goes unacknowledged. Eventually, Bass leaves her husband after finding a position as a housekeeper, then a euphemism for a woman who does the housework and provides her employer with "companionship".

This was a startlingly courageous move for a woman with a young child at the time, and Bass conveys poignantly the poverty of her choices. She is a keenly observant writer who maintains a fine balance between the drama of her failing marriage and her awakening, independent self.