Odd Girl Out (21 page)

‘I’ve broken the damn thing. It wasn’t in its case. Oh blast, there’s glass all over the basin.’ He began picking out the larger pieces, but the scum from his
shaving made this a precarious business, and in no time he cut himself.

‘Oh
damn
!’

‘Now what is it?’

‘Cut myself: that’s all.’

‘You’re always cutting yourself with that razor. Much better if you used the electric one I bought you.’

‘It wasn’t the razor. It was the thermometer.’

‘You don’t mean to say you’ve broken it!’

‘Of course I’ve broken it. How could I have cut myself on it if I hadn’t?’

He ran his right hand under the tap, while with his left he tried to undo the Elastoplast tin.

‘What
are
you doing now?’

‘Oh don’t be maddening, Anne. I’m trying to stop the blood and get a plaster on; then I’ll get you another thermometer.’

‘There isn’t another. You broke the last one last Christmas, don’t you remember?’

He did. ‘Do you mean to say that in all these months you haven’t got another one?’

‘I didn’t see the point. What’s the use of having two of everything? It only makes one break things more.

‘Anyway – ’ she added a moment later. ‘I know I’ve got a temperature; my eyes hurt when I move them.’

‘Better get the doctor then.’

‘You don’t sound very sympathetic, I must say.’

‘I’ve got a train to catch, as you perfectly well know. And there’s a telephone by your bed. Ring him now. Catch him before he goes out.’

She wanted to say, ‘You didn’t have a train to catch yesterday,’ but desisted: she really did feel rotten, and those, as she knew, were the only times when they nearly
quarrelled – not quite but nearly.

‘All right, darling.’

‘Be sure to call me at the office if you’re feeling really bad.’

‘I’ll be all right. I’m sure Arabella will look after me.’

He was getting late, and his hangover had by no means subsided. He seized a shirt and tie out of the drawer without asking her opinion on them and dressed as quickly as possible.

‘Mrs Gregory will look after you anyway. I’m sorry you feel ill. I expect it’s just a summer cold. You stay in bed until she comes.’

He bent down and gave her a cautious peck on the top of her head. He did not want to catch whatever it was. The bed smelled of boiled eggs, which faintly nauseated him. ‘See you this
evening.’

‘At least dinner is done.’

A parting shot, he thought viciously, as he started his car and crashed the gears. Arabella’s white suit lay in a crumpled heap on the front seat. He took it out: it smelled faintly of her
scent: on second thoughts he put it back in the car, and then, on third ones, took it out again and put it on the steps that leaned against one wall of the garage. Then he drove out of the drive as
fast as possible and went to the station.

By the time he reached Paddington, all freshness and brightness of the day had gone, and he was submerged in a sticky, sunless heat. He was late at the office and for once Sir William
wasn’t and had been asking for him. After an hour of shouting on both sides, not acrimonious, but argumentative and conducted on the familiar basis of each thinking the other deaf, it became
clear to him that Sir William had set his heart upon Edmund going to Greece: nobody else would do. ‘Take someone with you. Take your wife,’ he shouted, suddenly remembering
Edmund’s state. ‘You could do the whole thing in a week, but I shan’t complain if you take more. These Greek chaps take their time about things – you’ll probably need
a couple of weeks.’

‘When do you want me to go?’

‘Got your secretary to book you on a plane on Friday night.’

‘Tomorrow?’

‘Friday
night.’

‘That
is
tomorrow.’

‘I said Friday.’

‘It doesn’t give me much time.’

‘What for?’

The alarming simplicity of this question floored Edmund.

‘I don’t speak Greek, you know.’

‘Speak what you like. It’s all the same to them. It’s what you
see
I’m interested in, not what you say to the foreign chaps. But if we’re not quick off the
mark the market will be lost. Lost,’ he repeated loudly, and Edmund’s head ached more than ever.

‘Right: well, I’ll go and consider my plan of action,’ he said. This was what he nearly always said to Sir William when presented with an awful/impossible/absurd mission, and
what he usually meant was that he was going to spend a long time thinking how to do nothing at all about whatever it was, or, if the worst came to the worst, how to effect some compromise (Edmund
not having to do anything, but finding somebody who would or could).

He really found decisions of any kind intolerable; he liked things simply to
happen,
or go on in the same way. He sent Miss Hathaway off to do some routine brochure-sending-out to
clients, and sat at his large desk in a state of very unquiet peace. Arabella liked things simply to happen: if he could take
her
to Athens! He thought of it: an evening flight with dinner
on the plane; champagne to celebrate their holiday, emerging into the hot night, lit with yellow lights, pointing out the sights to her from a racketing taxi, taking her to a small taverna that he
happened to know about – tourists didn’t go there, it was the real thing – sharing a bed with her in one of those new, air-conditioned hotels; the night, the morning, with bread
and honey and coffee; the joys of bathing with her both in the sea and the hotel: of going about with her in a place where nobody could know them or mind that they were together. Perhaps, even, she
had never been there; it would be his chance to show her the most beautiful country in Europe – to sit for hours drinking the delicious wine and being kindly, courteously attended by people
who would simply admire him for having such a beautiful girl . . .

Anne would want to go. Anne had never been to Greece, and enjoyed travelling far more than he. She would jump at this chance – want it to be their holiday – to stay far longer than a
week. Anne had always wanted to go to Greece and he had never taken her.

They could not leave Arabella behind, alone.

Perhaps they might all three go?

Oh, God – what a dreadful thought. He could, he hoped, just about manage the situation at Mulberry Lodge, but, on unfamiliar ground, he did not know what he would do. He had some fair idea
of what he would feel like, and this made him terrified of his possible behaviour. Anne would find out: with none of the domestic routine, the props of so many things that were not only taken for
granted but required time and attention, all of her would be centred on Edmund and their common, foreign ground. No, it was out of the question for all three of them to go. But if Anne was ill,
would that make it reasonable for him to take Arabella? Or, if he did not openly do so, supposing she left Mulberry Lodge – Clara wanted her or something of the kind – and then went
secretly to Greece with him? But she had said, with some vehemence, that she would not tell lies. He thought about the lying for a bit, and came to the depressing conclusion that telling them
depended nearly always on how much the person concerned wanted to know. He knew now that
he
would: a situation that twenty-four hours ago
he
would have regarded as wrong, out of
–
his
– character, and not something that any decent, honourable married man would or should dream of. But
she,
Arabella, seemed not to have reached that state, or
perhaps, he thought adoringly, she was immune to it. She was simply too young, too innocent, too pure to allow of such a thing. She had said that she loved Anne, and indeed, she seemed to. If Anne
was ill, and therefore conveniently unable to accompany him to Greece, he had a gloomy feeling that Arabella would
want
to stay and look after her. Perhaps if they all went, it
would
be better. It would be best if they need not go at all, but when he had suggested that young Geoffrey should go instead of him, Sir William had, with some reason, replied that he must be mad. Young
Geoffrey was just about up to doing the donkey-work about the house in Barnet, but to send him on this kind of thing – new baby and all – was out of the question. He’d
go
,
of course, if he was sent, but he’d make a mess of it. Edmund was going to have to go: he decided to postpone whether this should be alone or in whatever company until he got home in the
evening and could test the atmosphere. He sent for Geoffrey, and briefed him on the Barnet house. At this point, Sir William got him on the intercom, and made the really terrible suggestion that he
and Edmund should go to Greece together. By the time Edmund got himself out of that one, he knew that he was in for the journey, either fictitiously accompanied or no.

‘I’ve brought you this.’ It was a huge glass jug of what looked like orange juice.

‘Oh, thank you. The only thing I feel like. But what a lot!’

‘I squeezed twenty oranges. It’s so awful not having enough. And if you’ve got a temperature, it’s jolly good for you.’

‘I think I must have. My eyes don’t fit.’

‘If you think you have, you certainly have, and the kinds one has when one doesn’t notice don’t often matter. I think thermometers are silly, really. Suppose it broke in your
mouth and you swallowed the mercury. Ariadne’s starving. Could I cook her the rabbit I saw in the larder?’

‘It would be very kind of you.’

‘The only thing is, how do I do it? I’ve been looking up rabbit in some of your marvellous cookery books and they go on and on about prunes and cream and cider and bits of streaky
bacon, and I shouldn’t think Ariadne would care for any of those.’

‘You just put it in a saucepan with cold water and a little salt and stew it gently until it is cooked.’

‘Nothing about your Aga seems very gentle to me: kettles boil while you sneeze, and toast blackens in that grill thing in a second.’

‘You use asbestos mats. Mrs Gregory will show you.’

‘Is there anything else that you would like?’

‘I’d love some paper handkerchiefs from the bathroom.’ She watched Arabella, looking very business-like in faded jeans and what looked like a man’s shirt. She had tied
her hair back with a piece of blue wool, and she was barefoot as usual.

‘What else shall I do?’ she asked eagerly. ‘Just tell me, and I’ll do it. I’ll pretend to be you for the day and run the house and all.’

‘I did all the shopping yesterday, and there’ll be the duck for you and Edmund tonight. Mrs Gregory will change the sheets – oh – I don’t think there’s
anything special. Your lunch. Can you manage that?’

‘I’ll come and ask you what I’d better have when I’ve had a bit of a choose out of what’s around. I had scrambled eggs with Ariadne for breakfast. I mean I
scrambled rather a lot, and she seems to favour them so we shared. Although you wouldn’t think so to see her now. I could pick the fruit and take off dead heads and other ladylike things. Or
I could just play the gramophone, or would you rather I mowed the lawn?’

Anne smiled weakly. ‘You do whatever you like.’

‘All right.’

She went away, but came back shortly with a rather ugly little brass gong that Edmund’s father had once given them for Christmas. ‘If you want me, bang on this: I’ll be bound
to hear.’

When she had gone again, Anne took some Codis with some of the orange juice and fell into a feverish trance. Her throat was sore, her glands round her neck hurt if she touched them, and her head
ached: she began to wonder whether she had ’flu.

The morning passed with the single interruption of Mrs Gregory inquiring in a stage whisper whether she would like her bed made or the room done. Unable to face the conversation that this would
entail, Anne said no thank you, and Mrs Gregory padded forlornly away. She loved illness; Mrs Cornhill looked very poorly to her, and she began to consider from her personal experience of medical
predicaments what they might all be facing now. Glandular fever, she thought, remembering Auntie going right through from Michaelmas to the New Year with it. Or mumps, she speculated, thinking of
Lizzie and the twins and that dreadful holiday they had in Ilfracombe. Jaundice struck her as an inspiration just as she entered the kitchen to find Miss Dawick messing up the kitchen table (just
scrubbed) with ever so many roses. This last notion seemed to her such a good one and so terrible that she had to voice it. ‘It could be jaundice,’ she said in what Arabella by now
described as her Church voice. ‘Too soon to say, but it’s quite on the cards. It’s About: Mrs Mixmaster from the School said there was ever such a lot of it About.’

‘But Mrs Cornhill doesn’t go to school.’

‘If it’s About – people who catch it, catch it. In my opinion, Miss, the doctor should be informed.’

‘But don’t people go all yellow with jaundice?’

‘By the time they do that, it’s been known to be too late.’

‘Oh Mrs Gregory!’

‘Mark you, Dr Travers is no good at all: his patients never seem to have anything. But any professional opinion is better than nothing, which, with the best will in the world, is all that
you or I can be. We don’t
know
all the diseases, you see. It’s no good barking up the wrong tree when the horse is out of the stable. That’s what did for Gregory. He would
not
have a doctor until his legs were so bad that nothing could be done with them.’ By now, she had made two huge mugs of Nescafé and drank hers standing to show that it was not
an actual break. But conversation – particularly of a disastrous nature – was something she was perennially short of, and Miss Dawick, a nice young girl, although she looked a touch
tubercular to her – small chance there of making old bones – was very nice to
talk
to. She was doing the roses for Mrs Cornhill, she said. Mrs Gregory instantly forgave her the
mess on the table. All sick rooms should have flowers and real ladies nearly always made a mess whatever they did. ‘Only don’t forget to remove them at night. Flowers do terrible things
at night to sick people. That’s why you’ll find the corridors of hospitals lined with the vases.’