Odd Girl Out (11 page)

While Anne cooked the dinner, Arabella did some more unpacking. She felt that both Edmund and Anne should have presents, and this meant a pretty thorough search through
everything that hadn’t been unpacked in order to find suitable objects. Then she decided that she ought to appear in a festive manner, and this, too, took some time. She was feeling
distinctly better and the challenge of being a success with two people whom she hardly knew always made her try – about her appearance and her behaviour. By the time she had dressed and gone
down to the sitting-room, Edmund and Anne were already there. Anne was wearing a blue silk dress and Edmund was opening some champagne. Arabella wore a trouser suit made of brown pleated chiffon:
her hair hung silkily about her shoulders, and in a thin, wandering fringe on her forehead, and she had put on some heavy, dark brown eyelashes that matched her brown velvet slippers. She carried
two very badly packed boxes and reeked of a peppery scent. She did not exactly make an entrance: rather threw open the door as though she had not expected anyone to be there, and then, finding that
they were, became shy – almost coltish.

‘I didn’t mean to interrupt,’ is what she said.

‘You’re just in time for some champagne,’ Edmund said.

Anne said, ‘What a marvellous dress, or outfit, or whatever you call it.’

‘Mummy gave it to me for my birthday: I haven’t worn it before.’

Edmund had got the cork out of the bottle and poured the first fizzy bit into the glass that Anne held out to him. All three glasses were filled, and then, holding hers near her mouth, Arabella
said, ‘Well – jolly good luck, or whatever.’ She drank and then added, ‘Not that you seem to need it.’

‘Why don’t we?’

She turned to Anne. ‘Well – everything seems so marvellous, and usually people drink toasts when they expect everything to be awful.

‘These are for you,’ she added, and presented them each with a box. Everybody became, in different ways, embarrassed. Edmund did not want her to give him a present at all; Anne was
terrified that she wouldn’t like whatever it was and find herself unable to lie about it, and Arabella was seriously concerned that she might have chosen the wrong things.

And so she had, in a way. Edmund’s present was a snuffbox, enamelled in green and set with crystal and rubies. Anne’s was a caftan of peacock silk heavily embroidered in silver.

‘My God – this looks like Fabergé!’

‘It is, actually. One of my stepfathers came by it and then I came by him and subsequently it. So it isn’t at all kind of me.’ She watched Anne now, who had opened her box and
was pulling back the tissue paper.

‘This is beautiful.’

‘You ought to put it on now,’ Edmund said, thereby destroying Anne’s picture of herself, and also making it impossible for her not to change.

‘I will.’ Anne disappeared with the caftan obediently.

Edmund offered Arabella a Gauloise which she accepted as he said, ‘You’ve rather taken the wind out of
my
sails, at least. I haven’t given Anne her present yet, but it
certainly doesn’t match up to yours.’

‘Oh dear. Oh well. I’m not nicer, or anything, I just
have
more. You know how it is. Damn: it’s gone out, I’m hopeless with Gauloises: could you light it,
please?’

Because she smelled so delicious, he tried to ignore that: this made him notice that she had a long, curving mouth, and Italian forehead and those very simple arched eyebrows that made him think
of some painting he knew well. He could not remember what colour the eyes had been or were, but he could not, come to that, determine the colour of Arabella’s.

‘Thank you for my box. It really is a beauty: you shouldn’t have given it to me.’

‘You can’t say that to people! You can say that you don’t like something, but you can’t say that people shouldn’t give you –
anything
!’

There was a silence while she gulped the rest of her champagne before saying, ‘Giving people things is nothing. It’s usually some kind of indirect bribe. Have this, and don’t
be a nuisance for a bit.’

‘Is that why you gave me this box?’

‘No.’ She was blushing, he noticed, and wouldn’t look at him. ‘I just felt like it. But of course I hoped you’d like me more if I gave it to you than if I
didn’t. Or are you chock full of moral rectitude?’

‘Of course not.’ Like most people, Edmund liked to feel that his moral rectitude was a decently chronic, but unflamboyant, affair.

‘Oh good. I haven’t got any. I should think I’m probably the most
un
moral person you’ve ever met.’

‘I very much doubt it.’ Gallantry, and slight resentment at his supposed inexperience combined here, but before he was able to enlarge upon either, Anne could be heard coming
uncertainly down the stairs. I suppose she talks so much, poor girl, because she hasn’t had enough people to talk
to
, Edmund thought, his mind still confusedly upon Arabella.

‘It’s a little too long for me,’ Anne said, and indeed it was. She could not walk without holding it up, and this did not suit the dress. It was also too shapeless for so small
a woman, making her look as though underneath it all, she was probably pregnant. But Edmund admired her in it, and poured them all more champagne: Arabella glowed with successful generosity, and
both Anne and Edmund worried and wondered about their private presents to each other. These were, as they had always been, duly presented before dinner. Anne had a pair of eighteenth-century
cufflinks of purple foiled paste for Edmund. Edmund’s present was a very thin, chiffon shirt embroidered with cornflowers and tying round the waist. Arabella exaggerated her admiration for
both presents, which embarrassed Anne, who realized this, and charmed Edmund, who did not. When the champagne was finished, they went in to dinner.

The dining-room was small and rich and dark, and Anne had lit candles round which tiny moths were hopelessly riveted. On the round rosewood table lay three plates of hors d’oeuvre: tomato,
anchovy, some kind of egg, and two or three huge prawns. A bowl of creamy roses lay in the centre: these were Anne’s – she had explained about Arabella’s touching extravaganzas
and begged Edmund not to mind about his Sung jar.

As they sat down, Arabella looked expectantly from one to the other. They saw this, and Edmund said, ‘Well? Do you want me to pass you the salt, or are you wondering what you are going to drink
with this?’

‘I was wondering what you were – what we were – going to talk about. I mean, it’s not like a restaurant, where either someone is trying to seduce you or get you to buy
something silly, and isn’t like dinner with Mummy and whoever it might be, because she often plays Scrabble through meals, and I get heavy looks from the current stepfather and I sulk. So I
just wondered.’

Anne, who, by now, thought she understood that Arabella must be used to so many and such varied parties where people talked all the time, said kindly, ‘What would you like to talk
about?’

‘Well – the state of the world?’

‘Very bad for the digestion,’ Edmund said promptly.

‘The arts: religion: social progress. What happened to you today. Then,’ she added.

Anne said, ‘I can’t talk about the arts. I love reading, but I don’t know enough about all the arts to talk about them. I don’t believe in God. You know what happened to
me today. That pretty well rules me out.’

Edmund said, ‘I went to the dentist. But not unnaturally, he did all the talking. I was cowed and gagged into agreeing with every single thing he said.’ Then he turned to Anne and
said, ‘Are you sure you don’t believe in God? I don’t mean any particular established Church, but just God?’

‘I’m not sure, I suppose. I don’t think I like thinking about it for long enough to come to an opinion.’

Arabella seized on this. ‘That’s the trouble, isn’t it? God has got pre-empted by so many awful people who make a society out of Him that you haven’t a hope of finding
anything out for yourself. But I bet there’s a God, all right. And I think He’s pretty malevolent if you ask me. Nobody agreed with Him enough, and that always makes organizers angry.
They’d rather you didn’t know and cared, than didn’t care and knew. What about politics? Are they a topic?’

Edmund said, ‘Anne and I agree about that. We’re both Tory to the bone.’

‘But doesn’t that mean that you talk about it more, rather than less? I mean if you disagreed, I can see you’d have one whacking argument, but if you agree, don’t you
keep on worrying about details? Details in politics are enormous.’

She picked her prawns to pieces with delicate, sharp fingers and sucked the heads and tails with animal enjoyment.

Anne said again, ‘What would
you
like to talk about, Arabella?’

‘Well, if I’m not very careful about it – and I hardly ever am – I end up talking about myself. Often simply
to
myself, but that doesn’t make it any more
interesting.’

Anne said to Edmund, ‘But you often
do
talk about the state of the world. When you’re very tired and have had an awful day.’

Before Edmund could reply, Arabella remarked cheerfully, ‘But then, there’s other things; like malnutrition and sex and what people smell like and whether it matters whether
you’re brave or not.’

Edmund fetched a bottle from the sideboard, and began pouring wine. ‘I talked about the train strike rather a lot, because it was such a damn nuisance to me. Perhaps that comes under the
heading of talking about myself?’

‘Well, darling, it was natural: it
was
awful for you.’

‘You probably talked about it a good deal
to
yourself as well, I expect. Golly – what super wine. Sancerre. One of my best wines.’

‘You mean Edmund thought about it to himself.’

‘No; talked. That’s what people do nearly all the time. They call it thinking. In my opinion, hardly anyone thinks at all. I expect financiers and novelists and scientists and that
crowd think a bit in their baths, but ten to one, when they do get any idea about anything, they haven’t the slightest notion where it came from.’

‘You think most of the inventions and ideas in the world have been accidents?’

Anne was collecting plates. Everything else, being cold, was in the room.

‘Not
accidents,
exactly. More like dandelions. There’s such a terrific amount of seed that some of it’s got to get rooted. Like sperm and children.’

This last observation unhinged both Anne and Edmund: Anne because of Arabella’s earlier confidence that day, and Edmund because he spasmodically, and uncomfortably, wondered whether Anne
didn’t have any children because she knew he didn’t want them.

Anne laid on the table a silver lustre dish of cold sole covered with a sauce that she had almost invented, of sour cream, chopped walnuts and horseradish. There was a large salad in an
olive-wood bowl that Edmund began dressing. Arabella finished the wine in her glass and said, ‘What I really meant, was please do talk about whatever you
would
talk about if only I
wasn’t here. I just meant that I don’t want to change, or spoil anything.’

Anne put another dish of beautifully made new-potato salad beside the fish. Edmund passed the bottle to Arabella. ‘Help yourself.’

As Edmund watched Anne helping the fish, he said, almost belligerently, ‘Of
course
you can talk about the arts, Anne darling; you love pictures and music and far more poetry than I
do.’

‘Loving or liking isn’t knowing.’

‘But God’s trewth, hardly anyone
knows
what they are talking about, do they?’

Anne passed a plate to Arabella, and said, almost maternally, ‘I suppose knowing is a relative business. I live on such an island, that I don’t feel I know anything outside it any
more. Not that I
mind
,’ she added, seeing Edmund’s face, and at the same time choosing the best piece of fish for him. ‘I couldn’t wish for anything more: you
know
that.’

‘What a marvellous dinner.’ Arabella had helped herself to the salads and begun upon her fish. She had decided to coast a bit, and also discovered that she was ravenously hungry.

Edmund met Anne’s eyes and raised his glass. They drank to each other silently while Arabella’s silky hair was bent over her plate.

‘The thing is that of course you’re not spoiling anything, but you can’t expect not to change it.’

Arabella looked at her. ‘I suppose not. But this is family life, isn’t it? I’m totally inexperienced about that. I had a kind of nursery life until I went to schools, but after
that – ’

‘After that?’

She gave Edmund a look that was not really describable – or that, anyway, he would not have attempted to describe. ‘Oh – after that. Nothing. You know. Moving around.
Night-clubs. Restaurants. Hotels. Rented villas. Millions of schools, of course. Nowhere you could take for granted. All places where people had to take
you
for granted, if you know what I
mean. Or not, as the case might be. Often not, in fact. I should think I’ve been a howling failure most of the time, but you bet, I made sure of it being howling while I was about it.
“Could not do worse if she tried”, is what I aimed at in school reports, but nobody had the wit for
that
kind of nutshell.’

Edmund, who found his curiosity about her proliferating, said, ‘What would you
like
to do?’

‘Have some more fish.’ She passed her plate. ‘Oh – find some cause, I suppose. It is so awful finding that nearly everything that people say are the best things in life
aren’t. I don’t care a damn what they cost, I mind what they turn out to be.’

‘What sort of things?’ Anne handed back her plate.

‘Oh – drink, and freedom, and things being beautiful, and sex. A total frost, if you ask me. But I suspect that that is because I’ve been so damnably brought up. I’m
frigid I think, and they tell me. And I don’t know what to
try
for. It’s like any serious experience: hardly anyone can describe them: they simply bore you by going on about
whatever it is being unique. I wouldn’t mind if all my best things were everybody else’s, as long as they really were mine too. The opposite of Mummy, in fact. She can’t bear
having a dress that anyone else has got. Well, I wouldn’t care a damn if a million people were wearing it, so long as
I
liked wearing it. But somehow, nothing works out that way.
I
don’t like whatever it is, and people keep saying that it’s an exception to some bloody rule. What would you do about that?’