Odd Girl Out (10 page)

‘… the one thing you can’t expect with nomadic peoples is a sense of responsibility about land. Land is simply something you rove over, and when you feel
like it, depredate – sorry – a little bit sensitive there, are you?’

Edmund, stifled by rolls of cotton wool, a tube in his mouth that was loudly dehydrating him, and terrified that if he made any sound, the high-speed drill would zip through his tongue, at
least, rolled his eyes in a confirming manner.

‘Let’s have a look and see how we are getting on.’

(For heaven’s sake, thought Edmund with hatred and terror, if you don’t know
that,
you don’t know anything.)

‘Quite a bit more to do, I’m afraid. You’ve let this cavity get rather out of hand, you know. I really think a little prick would be the thing,’ he added – for the
third time that morning. When Edmund was able to speak, he had explained that novocaine ruined his taste buds and made his face feel like a huge, painfully mobile boulder. He did not wish to spend
his anniversary with Anne in this manner. Now, however, worn down by time and fear and pain, he sullenly agreed. Mr Berkshire swabbed his gum with ether – witheringly cold – filled his
syringe and stabbed Edmund with all the finesse and consideration of a professional torturer. Edmund felt as though the skin on his gum was being inflated beyond endurance, but this was quickly
followed by a swelling silence, as though size was simply taking the place of pain.

‘… it’s just something that people who don’t know the Arabs cannot understand. The wandering Jew stuff is all nonsense. Jews only wandered when they were forced to. But
you try and keep a Berber or a Kurd pinned down to one spot, and you get trouble at once. How are we getting on?’ He massaged Edmund’s gum with a white, muscular finger. ‘I think
we’re just about ready.’ He unhooked his drill and Edmund watched his foot ready to press on the lever to set it going. ‘You know what my solution to the whole Middle East problem
would be?’ Just as Edmund decided that it would be unwise to shake his head, Mr Berkshire began high-speed drilling again. ‘I’d give the Israelis the whole of North Africa, and
let them get on with it. It would be the end of the desert in half a dozen generations. The Arabs wouldn’t like it, but they never know when they are well off. That’s what I’d do:
rinse would you, please.’

Edmund sluiced water round what felt like the inside of a football, and spat feebly into the bowl with its miniature whirlpool – or rather let the water come out; his muscles for spitting
had vanished.

‘I don’t know what you think, but to me, it’s a perfectly sound and logical solution.’ He stood poised with the drill again, while Edmund feverishly agreed. He always
found himself in this situation with Mr Berkshire, whose interests were wide and whose opinions were many. Mr Berkshire had fixed his life, he thought with vicious weakness, so that nobody could
disagree with him – about anything.

‘Just a little more. I think this will be the end of it. Not feeling anything, are you?’

Edmund indicated, God knew how, that he wasn’t.

‘I once crossed the Sahara in an old Ford that belonged to my wife’s mother. That’s a wide open space for you. It made a very nice change. Bit of an eye-opener, too. The wife
didn’t care for it – just a little wider, please – but there’s nothing like getting first-hand information. The world’s made up these days of vicarious experience
– and we all know what that leads to. Rinse, please.’

‘Don’t we?’ he continued, stuffing new rolls of cotton wool into Edmund’s football mouth. Edmund’s eyes, on these occasions, became, he felt, about as hammily
expressive as a star in an early silent film. Mr Berkshire began mixing something tiny on a glass plate. ‘Everybody thinks they know what life is like for everyone else these days, and if you
ask me, they have less idea than they ever had. Public communications are nothing but a snare and deception.’ He blew some hot, or cold, air into Edmund’s empty cave. ‘It’s all a
question of scale,’ he continued; he really enjoyed talking, and at home his wife interrupted him. ‘One gets into a
rut
,’ He was ramming cement home into the wide open
space he had created for the purpose: ‘Whenever I feel like that, I go off and do something I’ve never done before: it makes a diversion: stops one asking what on earth one is doing
with one’s life. Just stay as you are.’ He was using the miniature battering ram to drive the cement home: this felt to Edmund like dwarf, distant thunderbolts. In front of him was a
picture of two poodles wearing pink and blue ribbons and unbearably anthropomorphic expressions. ‘Boy meets Girl’, the picture was tided. He wondered whether Mr Berkshire’s house
was full of such things. Mr Berkshire was washing his white, clever hands, and drying them on a lilac towel. ‘That’s fixed you up for a bit, I think,’ he said.

‘Wha you doagh this ear?’ Edmund heard himself trying to say.

Mr Berkshire laughed genially. ‘Just popping over to Corsica for a couple of weeks. It’s the wife’s turn, you see. We take turns. Next year, I’m taking her to the Cape
Verde Islands. If you don’t like it, you can lump it, I’ve said – because between you and me there would be a lot to be said for married couples having separate holidays. We all
need a real change from time to time.’ He began removing the cotton wool and dehydrating tube from Edmund’s mouth. ‘We’ve had fifteen years of an exceptionally happy marriage, but
you’ve only got one life, haven’t you? Rinse now, if you would. It isn’t, of course, that one
wants
another woman, but one doesn’t like to feel that one can’t
have onf. If the occasion arose, that is. Well,’ he finished sincerely and kindly, ‘I hope I shan’t have to see you for many a long day.’

Edmund tried to smile with the rubber earthquake that was presumably his face.

‘Thang you,’ he said.

Later, in Bond Street, wandering, waiting for inspiration about Anne’s present to strike him, Edmund wondered fleetingly what it would be like to be buying a present for
a woman he hardly knew. Much more difficult in some ways: he probably wouldn’t know her taste or even her size (he was here seized by a spasm of what he refused to admit was excitement), but
then again, much easier in others: if she hardly knew him she would probably like any present, or at least couldn’t say that she didn’t. Eventually, after looking at several pieces of
jewellery which he either didn’t like or couldn’t afford, he settled for a shop that sold expensive and pretty sports wear. Here again, he seemed unlucky – the suede waistcoat was
two sizes too small, the sweaters much too thick for the time of year, and a royal blue silk shirt again too small. In the end he found something that would fit Anne and thought would do, but he
didn’t feel the usual glow of triumphant kindness that he associated with these occasions.

Anne and Arabella lunched off salami and salad in the garden. They sat, or rather lay upon the lawn close to the herbaceous border that Anne worked so hard to make. Bees and
butterflies were busy or happy according to their natures; the sky was that heavy, pale blue that goes with hot and humid days in England, and there were the merest breaths of wind. Arabella had
tied back her hair; her white jeans were stained with raspberry juice. When they had finished the meal, she produced two Mars Bars from nowhere in particular and offered one to Anne.

‘I can’t. I have to think of my shape.’

‘Poor you.’ In the end Arabella ate them both, and then lay on her front and said, ‘Would you mind if I took off my shirt?’

‘Of course not,’ Anne said immediately and dishonestly. (But why should she mind? What difference did it make?)

As Arabella lay there, Anne, looking, realized how extraordinarily beautiful a young, bony back could be. The colour, the texture and the curves, the delineation of bone and muscle suddenly made
her wish that she was able to sculpt or in some way fashion this position, age, and quantity of shape that was alive, and changing, and there.

‘I know this is an awkward question.’

‘What?’

‘Do you, by any chance, have some of those god-damn-awful sanitary towels?’

‘I don’t, I’m afraid. I’ve got Tampax.’

‘I don’t think I can cope with them yet. I had an abortion yesterday. I’m still bleeding like a pig.’

‘Arabella! Oh! Poor girl! Why didn’t you tell me earlier?’ She had made an instinctive move towards the prone figure, and when she touched her, Arabella sat up. ‘Sorry
– I didn’t think. Also, honestly, I didn’t know you well enough to ask you when you went out this morning. Also – I didn’t think I’d need them. Perhaps that bloody man
was a charlatan. Could I borrow your car and get some?’

She was sitting, three-quarters facing Anne. Her nipples really were like the raspberries.

‘I’ll get them for you. You have a rest, and I’ll get them.’

And that was how they both spent their afternoons. Arabella slept on the lawn, while Anne, having cleared up the lunch, went back to the chemist in Henley to buy what was needed. She was full of
anonymous indignation and the warm and faintly exciting sensation of being needed by someone other than Edmund.

When Anne got back, there was no sign of Arabella on the lawn. She hurried into the house and called, but there was no answer. Unaccountable anxiety (she might simply be asleep
on her bed, after all) made her run upstairs to Arabella’s room. The door was open and there were a whole lot of new clothes all over the floor, but still no sign of Arabella. She called
again, and then, from the window at the end of the passage, saw her in the vegetable garden. She was walking slowly about, examining things and occasionally picking them. She was wearing her shirt
again, which was just as well, in case old Leaf took it into his head to come and water something – a useful whim that seized him on hot evenings. She opened the sash window and called, and
Arabella turned at once to the window.

‘I’ve done a surprise for you.’

‘What?’

‘I’ll come in and show you. Don’t go into the sitting-room until I come.

‘I do hope you’ll like it – them actually. You see, I’m not much good at cooking, so I thought at least I could do these for you.’

She opened the sitting-room door and preceded Anne into the room, turning so that she could watch her face.
‘Do
you like them?’

‘They’ were two flower – or rather vegetable and plant – arrangements. One was almost entirely of runner-bean flowers, the scarlet and white set off by pieces of ilex.
This had been arranged in Anne’s only piece of Dresden – a china basket embossed with clove carnations. The other arrangement had been made in Edmund’s much-prized and extremely
valuable Sung jar. This consisted of artichokes and sprays of Albertine roses and some white phlox that Anne had been meaning to keep for seed. The jar, which Anne knew leaked slightly, was on
Edmund’s inlaid chess table. Then she noticed Arabella watching to see whether she was – not just pleased – but amazed and delighted.

‘They’re lovely. Tremendously unusual,’ she added, feeling inadequate.

‘I thought you’d like them. After all, you oughtn’t to do flowers for your own anniversary.’ She looked so anxious to have pleased, and so pleased at having tried, that
Anne felt awful to have to start worrying about a mat for the jar and the risk of Mrs Gregory next morning. Mrs Gregory, as Edmund had remarked, broke only the best.

‘They’re marvellous, and it was kind and sweet of you to take the trouble. Now. Supposing you have a rest and a bath while I get dinner under way and then we’ll both be ready
for drinks when Edmund gets back?’

‘All right. You do
like
them, don’t you? You don’t regard the whole thing as a presumption? I so love doing it, and usually they’re just awful shop flowers that
you can’t.’

‘Yes, I do.’ More reassurances, and Arabella went upstairs. Anne fetched a deep soup-plate for the Sung jar and dried the table that fortunately had only begun to be damp. My
artichokes, she thought: six of them! Goodness knows how many runner-beans had been left. But why should it matter? Poor Arabella, not feeling well at all, had tried to be helpfully surprising.
Nobody could resent that. She was not much more than a child. I’m nearly old enough to have been her mother, she thought, rubbing away at the chequered satin and ebony woods. But not quite.
Heavens – that
would
make her feel old.

Edmund had had a really fearful day. The heat in London had been the worst sticky, breathless kind, where any gust of air reeked of diesel fumes or hot people. His face had
gone on seeming to be a large, different, alien part of himself: he had not wanted lunch: Sir William had sent for him with some crackpot suggestion of going to Greece – to
Greece
of
all places – to look at villas for rich, nomadic clients, a proposition that Edmund had said he would consider, meaning that he would allow time to elapse before turning it down. He had also
found himself obliged to look at a huge and horrible house near Ladbroke Square (Mr Hacking, who usually did this kind of thing, being on holiday) which was inhabited by an old, mad, midget-sized
widow who was so demented by loneliness that it took him the best part of two hours to see the property while she pattered and chattered after him. All the windows in the seven-storeyed house were
tightly closed so that everything smelled of dust and sweat and old clothes. The widow insisted on making him a cup of tea that he had neither the heart nor the spirit to refuse, but with which,
due to the partial paralysis of his mouth, he scalded his tongue. There were also some rock cakes – most rightly named – they reminded him of tiny, flyblown crags: these he managed to
reject. By the time he escaped, he had just decided to take a taxi to Paddington and blow the expense, when he remembered that he had left Anne’s present in the office, and if he wasn’t
very careful, it would get locked up there. This meant abandoning the taxi and queuing for a call-box and getting Miss Hathaway to wait for him. He finally caught his train and had one, irritable,
wish that that girl was not going to be there interrupting his quiet, soothing anniversary, before he settled down to his paper. At least he wasn’t going to have to struggle with hundreds of
pieces of purple luggage.