Odd Girl Out (23 page)

He arrived by the usual train and his car, which he put straight into the garage. He noticed at once that Arabella had not moved her white trouser suit and felt unnaturally aggrieved. Surely she
would have had the sense? When he went into the house it was to the sound of Scarlatti played by Nina Milkina, that unbeatable and instantly recognizable player of the composer. Arabella met him at
the sitting-room door: she was dressed in a long, crushed-velvet skirt the colour of apricots, and a black chiffon shirt that left everything to be desired, Before he could make any move of the
slightest kind, she said, ‘Anne’s in bed. She’s either got ’flu, or some kind of summer cold. But she’s all right: you needn’t worry: I got the doctor, who was
fearfully sensible and nice, and I’ve done all the proper things about our dinner and fed Mr Leaf and Ariadne, so everything’s fine, really.’

‘Has Anne got a temperature?’

‘Yes – actually. It’s nearly a hundred and one. But she’s asleep now, and I thought the thing would be for us to have dinner and then see if she felt like
anything.’

‘Marvellous idea. What I need is a drink.’

‘Oh – I’ve made you one. With cucumber and vodka. It’s tremendously reviving.’ She went into the kitchen, and returned to the sitting-room with a misty jug. The
Scarlatti was still going on. ‘I adore Scarlatti,’ she said. ‘Partly because only musicians can play him. I bet that Spanish princess was hard put to it, as indeed she should have
been. And that’s my last highbrow remark for the night. Here you are.’

Edmund drank the drink she offered him, sank into one of the two comfortable armchairs, and stopped thinking about anything. This was the way life should be, he thought unthinkingly, no
problems, no decisions; simply a charming situation that he hadn’t arranged, but that was – ever so gently – sprung upon him.

The Scarlatti came to its close. All of life, accepted, understood, sad, gay, heroic, inevitable and absurd had come to their ears in the space of a few sonatas. Then Arabella said,
‘I’ve put our dinner on the trolley. Thought we might eat in here, as it’s cosier.’

‘Do you think I should go up and see if Anne’s all right?’ He very much hoped that she would say no, which she did.

‘I’ve been up at half-hour intervals all the afternoon. She’s fine. If you could just open a tin of consommé for me, I think that’s what she will want when she
wakes up.’

When they had eaten the duck and cherries, and some salad and cheese, Edmund told her about the Greece situation. Her response was immediate and depressing.

‘How lucky that just when you have to go, I am here to look after Anne.’

‘That’s one way of looking at it.’

She lit a cigarette, curled herself more comfortably in the armchair with her legs tucked under her, and said, ‘You mean, she’ll be frightfully disappointed not to be well enough to go with
you?’

‘No. Well – yes, she might be that, but that’s not what I meant.’

She leaned forward to pick up her wine-glass and he noticed the difference of her lips: the top one narrow, indented, very much curved and turning up at the corners; the bottom lip a simple and
rather full crescent, its texture reminding him of some piece of a fruit.

‘I think you know perfectly well what I meant: you’re just pretending not to.’

‘Not pretending: I just wanted to be sure. You seriously think that I could zip off to Greece with you, leaving Anne ill and alone in bed. What would we say to her? “So sorry you
can’t come Anne, but you do understand, don’t you? Edmund hates to go alone, and I’m so used to travelling that I’m practically Miss Cook.”’

When he didn’t reply, she went on, ‘Or had you thought of pretending to go alone; lying to her; pretending to get me sent off to Clara in Paris and then really joining you at the
airport?’

So much had he thought about both these possibilities that he could think of nothing to say. She put down her wine-glass, now empty, and said, ‘Or perhaps you were thinking of all three of
us going together? But Anne being ill has foiled that? Well? Which was it?’

He said miserably, ‘I’ve thought of all of them. All day. I’ve thought of every possible combination – including my not going. But that’s no good. I’ve got to
go. My boss insists. He even suggested coming with me.’

‘But why are you making something so complicated out of such a simple situation?’

‘It doesn’t feel simple to me. You don’t seem to understand me in the least. I love you. I don’t think I’ve ever felt like this in my life.’

She said, more gently, ‘But you love Anne. You’ve loved her for years, and she feels the same.’

‘I don’t know what I feel about Anne any more. I don’t know what I feel about anything – even you – except that I can’t bear the thought of going away from
you. But whatever it is that I do feel about you has stopped me knowing what I feel about anything else. Can’t you understand that?’

He got up to get them some brandy.

When he returned, and handed her a glass, she said, ‘Look. I may
not
understand what you are saying
or
feeling because every time anyone says anything like that they usually
mean something different by it. But I do know one thing. If you aren’t jolly careful, you’ll ruin everything.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Can’t say any more. The awful thing is that if one has to try and give anyone advice about
themselves
– not what they ought to do for a living, or whether they should
believe in God, but advice about the sort of thing you’re trying to make me give you advice about – one disrespects the person. If they take the advice, you simply feel they’re a
weaky, and if they don’t, they’re a baddy. It gets like Western films. So it’s no good from either of our points of view for me to try to tell you what you ought to feel and then what
you ought to do about it. You stick to what you know about the situation and I’ll stick to what I know. If you decide to tell lies, that’s up to you, but I’ve told you I
won’t.’

‘But I have to ask you something.’

She turned her pale, carved face to him and said impassively, ‘Yes?’

‘Do you – do you love
me
at all?’

‘Oh – that. I love you, I love Anne, I love Ariadne, I love this house and your and my life in it: I love the summer here, and the garden and the river. I love Scarlatti and being in
one place and not being with Clara and having money and my good health. But in the sense you mean, no: I don’t love you – I don’t love anyone. I never have. Except the one, dead
person I told you about. And as I don’t love anyone, I’m a private menace. That will be the next thing you tell me when you are angry. That, and that it would have been so much better
for me if I hadn’t had so much money. Although why money should make me – in your sense – heartless, I really don’t know. But those are the two things people say. Could I
have some more brandy, please? These conversations always seem to use up a hell of a lot of alcohol.’

He gave her some more brandy in silence. Then, he said, ‘You don’t know what it’s like to yearn for someone? To feel that every moment that you aren’t with them is dead time:
that you are either half asleep or too much alive waiting to be with them again? That if other people say their name, or if you see or touch anything that belongs to them you get a kind of
second-hand shock of joy and longing? You don’t know any of that?’

She shook her head.

He wanted then to take her firmly in his arms and impose any of his heart or body upon her without any more words, since they seemed to do nothing but make fragments of his pride, but before he
could begin to do this, she said something that made it impossible.

‘Of
course
I know about yearning for someone. And all the other things you say about it happen to me too, but you see I don’t know
who for.
I’ve never met the
person. I can’t imagine what they are like. I have to make them up. I have to invent their names or what belongs to them. It’s all pretending – quite useless.’ She looked
down at the glass she was holding in her lap and then said so that he could hardly hear her, ‘It isn’t that I don’t try. I’ve tried all the ways I can think of.’

Because he
did
care for her he had then a sudden, uncertain, but fearful glimpse of her life and knew that he would have neither the courage nor resolution to live it. This appalled him:
he had always thought of himself as the protector, the manly man who arranged for the comfort and security of others. But what she had just said seemed almost to reverse their positions: it was she
who seemed able to pioneer, to settle for no half-truth or mere comfort: it was he who, like a woman, wanted now to pick over their personal situation with no reference to the generalities of their
lives. He wanted to talk about his love for her – to be domestically reassured – even to be emotionally pressed into a difficult scene in which the only agonizing comfort was that they
each felt the same. That was it: he wanted them to feel the same about each other: it would then follow that they would be in the same cleft stick: every cliché about the
ménage à
trois
that every
ménage à trois
has been through would be pursued: the caring about the third person, the anxiety for them, the private, unspoken determination to do what
they
wanted to do while of course wishing very much not to hurt them: the mounting amazement that the third person did not see what was so patently and violently felt: the
conclusion that they were of different clay, the snatched moments of lust that simply could not be forgone: the guilt that they had occurred, the resentment that they had had to be snatched, the
paralysis of being driven into a situation where there was no going back and no way out except through action – violence and guilt, and decision of one awful kind or another: the very things
that went most against his emotional grain. Yes, but if only they could
talk
about them, surely everything would seem easier – easier and better? He looked at her so gracefully
disposed in her chair, head a little bent, so that the high, oval forehead and the marked curve of her eyelids were best seen: as he watched her, she put up one hand to move the shorter strands of
hair to one side of her face. There was something weary about the gesture, as though a piece of her had been worn and used past bearing: for the first time it occurred to him that perhaps she
suffered, although in a way that he could not conceive of. He said heavily, but with intended kindness, ‘Perhaps it is a good thing that I am going to Greece alone: it will give me a chance
to think.’

But she answered at once, ‘There is nothing whatever to think about.’ She unexpectedly put out a hand to touch his, and repeated almost as though she was pleading with him,
‘Nothing. Don’t do that: I beg you.’

It was a plea, but one that he could not in the least understand. He took her hand and kissed it: she smiled, her faint and ageless smile of sheer and mere acceptance.

Upstairs, after she had had some hot consommé, Anne said, ‘Darling, I really don’t think you should sleep in here tonight: I must be awfully
infectious.’

So he went to the other spare room alone without even having to try, for the sake of appearances, not to want
her
the whole night.

The next morning, Anne’s temperature was down to ninety-nine, but she felt, if anything, worse, she said. Edmund explained about Greece while he was shaving: he felt so
exhausted by his wakeful night that he hardly cared about her response, and was therefore uncharacteristically uncircuitous. He had to go that evening, he said: Sir William insisted upon it. He
might be away a couple of weeks: he was not sure until he got to Athens how many islands he was supposed to visit. It was a pity that she was ill and could not go, but he was sure that Arabella
would look after her. He would send a cable or telephone as soon as he knew when he would be able to return. He did not at
all
want to go alone, he said more than once, and Anne knew better
than to pity herself aloud for being too ill to accompany him. ‘About Arabella, though – ’ she began, and his heart leapt. Was she, as a miracle, going to suggest herself that
Arabella went with him? For company? He was tying his tie when she said this and his fingers froze, but he managed not to turn from the glass.

‘What about her?’

‘Supposing Clara rings up with one of her imperative telephone calls? You know – saying Arabella must go to Paris or Nice or somewhere immediately. What shall I do?’

‘Tell her you’re ill and that Arabella is nursing you. Tell her Arabella is ill. For goodness’ sake, tell her anything you like. Only don’t let Arabella go. She –
she doesn’t want to. She told me.’

‘She told me too. All right – I’ll be brave, if I have to, and cope with her.’

As Edmund bent hurriedly to kiss the top of her head as a farewell, she said, ‘So funny. Dr Travers called her that Botticelli-like creature when he saw her yesterday. He only saw her for
a moment, and it had never occurred to me, but he’s quite right, isn’t he? She’s like that girl, or goddess or nymph or something out of
Primavera.’

Edmund was cramming spare shirts etc. into his case. He did not answer at once, but eventually said coldly, ‘What an extraordinary thing for a doctor to say.’

Anne laughed in the indulgent way that she had done for years, but that now maddened him for the first time. ‘You are so narrow-minded, darling. Why you should think a doctor neither knows
nor cares about pictures, I cannot imagine.’

Finally, before he actually left, she said, ‘Please. If you find somewhere very beautiful, do consider it for us. Dr Travers is going to Greece in September. People do go there, you know,
and I should love it so much.’

‘You sound as though you are in love with Dr Travers.’

‘Of course I am. Madly. Arabella did my hair specially for him. Have a good time, my darling. Take care of yourself. I shall miss you.’

He did not answer this, but turned towards her with a fleeting, harassed smile and lifted his hand as a kind of indoor wave of good-bye. Poor Edmund, Anne thought, as she lay back again in bed
(her throat still hurt); he so much
hated
going abroad, and going abroad alone must be anathema to him.