Odd Girl Out (18 page)

She sat back on her heels and looked up at the sky. It was going to rain quite soon, but meanwhile there was a hot, windless silence: the birds had stopped singing – a sure sign of
impending storm. She must finish staking, or delphiniums, phlox, paeonies, would all suffer. She got up from her weeding: took the trug to the compost heap and fetched bamboo and twine from the
greenhouse. It was silly to think about Waldo any more. He had gone to Canada, she had heard in some remote way, and remembered that his going had seemed the absolute and final release from
him.

It was only, she supposed, because Arabella was so young that she felt anxious for her, and that was what had made her remember her own youth. She was nearly forty: she hoped that Edmund did not
mind; but then she smiled at the mere thought of him and knew that he didn’t. He rather liked being a year younger than she was; he liked, although it was not openly admitted, a degree of
what amounted to almost maternal care – in everything, that is, excepting sex. Only somebody whose sex life was as satisfactory as hers could objectively appreciate the beauty of a young girl
such as Arabella. For she found, during this last week, that Arabella’s appearance had become increasingly fascinating to her: as she came to recognize her looks in general, so particular
aspects of them had continued to reveal themselves. She was marvellously of a piece: it was difficult to imagine, say, somebody with her high, oval forehead,
not
having a long neck to go
with it; that somebody with rounded but elongated limbs would not also have long slender feet with high arches and most articulate toes, and hands whose fingers were long without being bony; whose
skin seemed all of one colour – not white, not cream, but something like the paeony she was now tying. She was dreadfully untidy, of course, but she was always wanting to help, adored
Ariadne, who was still majestically ensconced upon her bed, and she seemed profoundly grateful and happy to stay with them. Edmund seemed to like her quite as well: indeed, the whole experiment was
turning out far better than Anne felt any experiment that had anything whatsoever to do with Clara had any right to do. The first, heavy drops of rain had begun; she was nowhere near finished. She
decided to plough on; even if she got wet through, a hot bath would put her right.

By the time Edmund got back to his car, accompanied by two very pleasant policemen in their patrol car, who told him that they were getting a lot of punctures on this section
of the M4, he found that Arabella, soaked to the skin again, was squatting by the wheel holding the torch while a man in an oilskin was putting the final touches to the bolts on the spare.

‘This tremendously kind man stopped, and he said you always have to kick the thing to move the nuts.’

‘That’s right,’ the man agreed, straightening up. ‘Beats me why the garages have to screw them up so infernally tight. Course you wouldn’t want your wheels flying
off in all directions, but there’s such a thing as compromise. Nasty little jacks, these, too. Course if you’d had one of those flashlamps, your poor daughter wouldn’t have had to
get soaked to the skin.’

There was a brief silence: Edmund fought with resentment, rage, being made to feel a fool in more ways than one, but at once, so to speak: the police walked round the car as though they expected
that there was something more seriously wrong with it, and one of them asked to see the flat tyre.

Finally, Edmund managed to say, ‘It was very kind of you to stop and help.’

‘Don’t mention it,’ the man said cheerfully: he had a small, bright red clipped moustache. ‘Always glad to help a lady in trouble.’

‘Would you like a nip of brandy?’

Edmund cast a furious glance at her. He had been idiotically concerned that his breath smelled of drink, and that one of the policemen would notice and start those ghastly tests, and here was
the wretched girl implying that they always went about loaded with alcohol.

‘No thanks all the same. I must be getting on. It’s a nasty flat, isn’t it? Looks like a big nail to me.’

The policeman examining it shook his head, but in agreement. ‘Had too much of this lately. As though someone was doing it on purpose. Well, there it is, sir.
You
seem all right,
thanks to this gentleman here.’

‘I’m sorry to have bothered you,’ Edmund said, wondering how much longer they were all five of them going to go on standing in the pouring rain.

‘Thank you so very much for all your help.’ This was Arabella to Red Moustache.

‘Pleasure. Good night all.’ And he went off to his own car.

Just as Edmund was beginning to worry that his licence was out of date, or that there was some other, unknown and unlawful aspect to his car that the policemen were about to pounce upon him for,
they
said good night, and went off to their car from which distant radio squawks could now be heard. He and Arabella were left alone. He put the flat back in the boot, together with the
tools he had been so useless with, and slammed it shut. ‘For God’s sake! Why don’t you get into the car? You’ll be soaked again.’

‘I’m that already.’

They both got into the car in silence, until she said, ‘Why are you limping?’

‘I fell on that damn slope.’

She laughed with genuine, and therefore maddening amusement. ‘On top of everything else, you sprained your ankle? Oh, poor Edmund!’

‘You don’t sound very sorry for me.’

‘
You
didn’t sound very grateful to that awfully nice man who did all the changing of the tyre.’

‘I thanked him.’

‘Only just. And you sounded sulky about it.’

‘I expect your gratitude more than made up for that.’

She laughed again. ‘It was funny, his thinking I was your daughter.’

‘Was it?’

‘Oh – have some brandy, and stop being cross.’

He took the bottle and when he had drunk some said, ‘And that’s another thing. Why on earth did you shout about brandy in front of the police? You might have got us into
trouble.’

‘There’s no law against having drink in cars in England, is there? You talk as though this was a police state. You sound like a silly student.’

Edmund, who had been about to start the car, lost his temper without in the least meaning to. ‘I suppose you’ve never heard of a breathalyser? I suppose it didn’t occur to you
that after walking miles and getting the police, I felt a bit of a damn fool to come back and find that instead of staying in the car as we arranged, you’d picked someone up and made them do
the job? You simply thought how clever you were and how stupid I was not to
know
that you have to
kick
the bloody wheel?’

Arabella, her teeth chattering, said, ‘I was simply trying to help. After all, it’s I who have got wet through, not you.’

His anger dissolved as suddenly as it seemed to have manifested. ‘Darling!’ He touched her shoulder: she was, indeed, absolutely wet through and obviously very cold. He felt not only
a fool, but a brute, the kind of farcically horrific combination he had only ever attributed to other men.

‘It’s all right,’ she said, but stiffly. ‘And I’m not your darling: that’s all too clear.’

‘Look: have a swig; go on, you need it. And what about your white cardigan thing? You could at least take off that shirt and put it on instead.’

She accepted the brandy – now nearly finished – without answering. Then he saw that she was crying; not a great deal, but any tears at all coming from her were more than he could
bear. He started gently undoing her shirt, and she was quite passive. He pulled it off her shoulders, and then took the cuffs and drew the sleeves from her arms. She felt icy, and her small breasts
were starting with cold. He remembered a chamois leather kept for wiping the windscreen, reached for it and rubbed her back for some minutes with firm, circular movements. She leaned forward a
little to allow this. When he felt that she was a little warmer, and that part of her, at least, was dry, he pushed her back against the seat. The long white cardigan was behind them: he took it
and put it round her shoulders. She remained still: he put her arms into the jacket – it was like dressing a doll. When the garment was on her, he pulled the edges of it together over her
breasts – he wanted to kiss them; not to do that was his penance, but as he began to do up the top button, his face was so near to hers, that he stopped to smooth the tears from it with his
fingers. ‘I do love you, darling Arbell. I am very sorry indeed to have behaved so badly to you. I know you were trying to help. It was entirely my fault. Please forgive me. May I kiss
you?’

She shut her eyes without moving, and he kissed her mouth, tasting the brandy on it, put his hands round her small, rounded waist, feeling her cool, tender skin, smelling, past the brandy, her
own particular scent that he had noticed by the lake, forgotten, and would now never forget: he did not dare to stop kissing her mouth, because, out of his love, all his senses were alerted to
knowing that this was not like the lake – for her, anyway. She needed affection, reassurance, anything but his needing her body. It took him an unknown amount of time to reach the kind of
calm and control where he could take his mouth from hers, stroke back the wet strands of her hair, smile, for she had opened her eyes when he stopped kissing her, and they looked at him with such
appalling uncertainty and practised fear – of, he didn’t know what – that he could only go on doing up her jacket and say, ‘This is really the kind of thing that only
cousins could do for each other.’

She
smiled then, and it brought tears to his eyes. Without knowing why, he said briskly, ‘I’m going to take you to a pub to dry out, and give you more ham sandwiches and
altogether stop you getting pneumonia.’

He started the car, turned on the heater, and waiting for a gap between lorries, drove back on to the road.

‘Yes,’ she said, to any or all of that.

By the time Anne finished her staking, she was soaked through. She had not realized how long this had taken her, but when she went back into the house, meaning to have a hot
bath and change, some instinct made her go and see how Ariadne was getting on. It was a good thing she did so; one of the kittens had died, and Ariadne was in a state of great distress. She had
removed all her live children on to the eiderdown on the floor: but she kept going back and forth to the dead one – cleaning it, picking it up by its poor little inert scruff of the neck and
putting it down again. Had it died earlier, she would have demolished it. Anne got her some milk and some of the ox liver which she chopped raw, and while Ariadne was examining these offerings,
removed the dead kitten. She then got half a cardboard dress-box which she lined with newspaper and Ariadne’s own blanket, and put her and the kittens into it. Ariadne, who had drunk some of
the milk, instantly began lifting each protesting kitten out of the box and back on to the eiderdown. Anne decided that they were in no state to argue with each other, and so she waited until all
four kittens had been moved, and then tried to feed Ariadne with some of the liver by hand. Ariadne took one piece out of courtesy, but dropped it on the carpet and returned to her young, carefully
washing the taint of Anne’s hands upon them from their meagre fur. Anne then considered Arabella’s now vacated bed: it was true that it had been an extremely tidy birthing, but there
was still some blood on pillow cases and the top sheet. The bed would have to be changed. For no reason that she could afterwards understand, Anne felt that she must change and make the bed before
she did anything else. The result of this was that by the time she had finished she was shivering, and cold to the bone. It was nearly six o’clock. Should she have a bath, and then light the
sitting-room fire and start on cooking dinner, or should she get the chores over and
then
have a bath? She decided on one whisky to keep her going, and at least start the fire and the duck
in the oven, as she liked to cook the duck very slowly. She bent down to kiss Ariadne’s forehead. This was endured, rather than enjoyed: she thought that perhaps she had better grill the
liver slightly, as this was usually more popular. She took the saucer downstairs. By now she was shivering much more. She poured herself a generous whisky, and drank a little of it neat, before
putting any water into it. At this point she began to wonder whether Edmund and Arabella would return together, or whether she would get a call from the station and have to fetch the girl. She lit
the sitting-room fire, grilled the liver, and put the duck in the oven. If Arabella
did
ring up, she would have to go quickly and so she had better get dry and changed as fast as possible.
She compromised with a hot shower and put on a jersey trouser suit. The drawing-room fire had gone out, and this annoyingly meant going out of doors to fetch more coal, and a hunt for the fire
lighters that Edmund disapproved of because he said they made the room smell of paraffin. By now it was nearly seven. The fast train from London would have arrived by now, so it looked as though
Arabella might be returning with Edmund. And Edmund, since he had not been going away for the night, might be home at any minute. She fetched material for relighting the fire, stayed with it until
it was going, and turned the duck over on to its other breast. It was still raining hard. She drew all the curtains, and even considered putting on the heating, as it felt so dank – or she
did. Then she had another drink, curled up on the sofa and went on with her novel. But it did not, or could not, absorb her as it had before. She kept thinking that she heard a car, listening, and
either she had heard one, but it was going on up the lane, or she was mistaken. She decided to play the gramophone, so that she would not hear the cars, if there were any, and so that she could do
the rest of the cooking with something to take her mind off being alone. She had a soup in her deep freeze; chestnut, but, she felt, suitable for this weather. She had an orange and watercress
salad, and there was a ripe piece of Brie. By a quarter to eight, the duck was nearly ready, she had had a third drink, and was both irritated and anxious.