Odd Girl Out (24 page)

He had not expected to see Arabella again, but she was in the kitchen squeezing oranges. She was wearing an extraordinary sea-green garment that trailed upon the floor and had such wide sleeves
that she had to keep tossing them back up to her shoulders to keep them out of the way of her hands and the juice.

‘I’m off now,’ he said as casually as possible.

‘I hope you have a lovely and interesting time,’ she answered politely – but really politely – as though she meant that she did hope just that.

He paused; everything, the time of day, what lay ahead of him, and her attitude precluded any serious leave-taking. Perhaps it was just as well.

‘I’ll do my best to look after everything until you come back,’ she said, and then she turned and saw his face, and immediately went to him and flung her arms round his neck.
‘Dear Edmund; I meant have a lovely time. I know you don’t think you will, but I
hope
you will.’ She kissed him on each side of his face and hugged him. ‘Don’t
look so terribly sad. You are only going to Greece for a fortnight! Think! It might be Siberia for a year. Take your Siberia-for-a-year face off, please: I can’t bear to think of you tooling
off to Paddington and Cavendish Square and Heathrow and all those outlandish places so full of doom.’ She gave him a final hug; he managed a wan smile: shamefully, he was very near tears.

‘Good-bye, Arbell. Look after yourself as well.’

He hurried out to the garage on that.

Arabella finished squeezing the immense number of oranges she thought necessary for Anne, and then trailed slowly and carefully upstairs with the jug. Ariadne, who heard her, came out of their
– by now – joint bedroom to see what arrangements had been made for her. Seeing Arabella, she trotted along the passage after her into Anne’s bedroom.

‘Ariadne has come to see you about the housekeeping. I think, in spite of what I told Dr Travers yesterday, that I had better risk your car and buy some more suitable food for her. She did
not really enjoy the duck much, because of the cherries and orange that was inside it. It was delicious though; I meant to tell you. Supposing I get you some breakfast, and then we do a list of
Ariadne food and I go out and get it?’

Anne, who had been trying hard to read and finding that it only made her headache worse, put down the book and said, ‘I’m just a frightful bore. I’m so sorry.’ She had
reached the stage where self-pity for being ill, and the boredom of not feeling well enough to do anything that she wanted were beginning to weigh upon her, so that these apologies sounded almost
like an accusation.

‘Is the doctor coming?’ she asked.

‘Have you got a temperature?’

‘Ninety-nine, but I feel worse than yesterday – can’t think why – it’s most unfair.’

‘Well, then, I must ring him up: he told me to if you weren’t normal. I’ll find out when he’s coming so that I can time the shopping visit.’

Ariadne jumped up on Anne’s bed; she put out a hand to stroke her, but after a single glance of distaste, Ariadne jumped down again and looked questingly at Arabella.

‘We’ll have to open another tin. She’s frantic. Those kittens have about fifty snacks a day.’

‘Bring up a tin: I’ll open it.’

‘I promise I’ll try and learn how this time.’

‘Will you ring the doctor, or shall I?’

‘Oh – sorry. I will, of course.’

The doctor would come after lunch, Arabella announced, so perhaps she had better do the shopping as soon as Mrs Gregory arrived. Anne drank some orange juice, and then said that she didn’t
feel like it today. Then she added fretfully, ‘It is so like life that Edmund has to go somewhere that I madly want to go to as well, and then I should be ill. I am hardly ever ill: Edmund
can hardly ever be persuaded abroad: it does seem unfair.’

‘Well, if it’s any comfort to you, I really don’t think he wanted to go in the least.’

‘Don’t you? Don’t you think he’s secretly excited? He seemed most odd this morning – not at all himself.’

‘Perhaps that is just because he
didn’t
want to go.’

Anne looked doubtful. ‘Perhaps it was. But I simply can’t
imagine
not wanting to go, can you? Oh yes, I suppose you can, because you’ve travelled so much.’

‘Oh –
I’d
much rather stay here – with you. I hated Greece the only time I went.’

‘Tell me about it.’

‘When I’ve done the shopping. Could I have the keys of your MG?’

‘They’re in my purse: on there.’

‘If you feel up to it, I should have a bath while Mrs Gregory does your bed: then you needn’t get let in for too much doom.’

‘All right: good idea. Remember to drive on the
left,’
she called.

Arabella went off after putting on some jeans and a shirt, collecting some sandals and shopping baskets. She hadn’t the slightest idea how to get to Henley or Maidenhead, but felt no
qualms about this. Someone would tell her, or she would simply find one of them.

Left-hand side of the road, she told herself as she got into the car. I wish I had a friendly small dog with me:
my
dog, was what she thought next. It was another lovely day: wild roses
were out in the hedgerows, and poppies and cow-parsley. There were many other pretty decorations to the banks and hedges of the lane that led to and from Mulberry Lodge, but soon she was on a
wider, duller, road. The sky was unusually blue for England, and the road like steel. She drove with great caution, letting everyone pass her because then she could notice things and think about
them. She was also making a mental list of what she wanted to buy. It was true what Neville – of the Chelsea flat – had said: she did love shopping: if that was all she had inherited
from Clara, she would be lucky, she thought. She had planned to buy Anne a present – or even several presents, as well as unheard-of delicacies for Ariadne. She landed up in Maidenhead, which
was probably just as well, since the larger the place, the better the choice. She put the car in a car park, locked it, and started to explore. She bought a huge boiling-fowl for Ariadne and then
two rabbits and then, passing a fishmonger who looked quite good, she asked him what fish would be suitable for a cat. Whiting or coley, he said, pointing to rather dry, curled-up silvery fish, and
slabs of awful stuff that wasn’t even white. She bought some plaice for Ariadne, and a lump of cod, which was much whiter than the other stuff, and saw scarlet contorted crabs on display.
Surrounded by crushed ice and parsley they looked most inviting, and Arabella bought two. All this food shopping first was a mistake, she realized, as it had used up the shopping basket and was
heavy and hot to carry. So she asked the fishmonger if she could leave the basket with him while she got some other things. She then bought a hundred Disque Bleu and some toothpaste, and set about
the present. She had wanted to find a night-gown for Anne that was neither dull nor vulgar, but this proved extremely difficult. Then she passed a jeweller who had a mixture of antique and everyday
stuff. In the window, amongst almost everything else one could think of, was an eighteenth-century ring: crystal and enamel and gold. She went in. It was thirty-five pounds, the man said. Arabella
tried it on. It slipped on to her second finger easily, therefore it must fit a finger of Anne’s. She bought it at once. The jeweller put it into a dull little box with the cheapest kind of
cotton wool. ‘Haven’t you anything nicer than that?’ He hadn’t, nor did he care. She put the box in her bag, and went to Boots for better cotton wool. Then she bought some
toilet water of reliable make, was astounded that they did not sell Guerlain soap, and wondered whether she would find her way back to the fishmonger. On her way back to him, she found one of the
innumerable boutiques that spring like mushrooms on any reasonably well-heeled ground. They had a night-gown – made of chiffon and lace – that she decided would be perfectly suitable
for Anne. It was the colour of the inside of an avocado pear with charcoal-coloured lace, and was, she was told, indelibly pleated. It was expensive, but Arabella did not notice the cost of things
much, so she bought it with nothing but a feeling of triumph. Then she bought a bottle of Delamain, since she did not really enjoy the Cornhills’ brandy, and finally staggered from the
fishmonger with the shopping basket plus everything else to the small, boiling hot car. It took her some time to find her way home, but she did not mind.

She was wondering what she should tell Anne about Greece. Was she meant to tell her about its beauties, so that she, Anne, would feel happy about Edmund going there, or should she say what a
frightful time she, Arabella, had had there thus making Anne less envious? It did not matter from her own point of view in the least: it
was
a most beautiful country and she
had
had a
perfectly awful time there. It had been during the Comte de Rossignol’s era; Clara had rented a yacht, and the Comte had (practically simultaneously) tried to rape her and to marry her off to
one of his hideous, half mad or at any rate moronic relatives. The yacht had been of the size to make bedroom intrigue all too easy: the crew were well trained and practised in ignoring all
relationships between their employers: Clara had been tiring of the Comte (and about time too, Arabella had thought) but her worst moment had been when she had realized, or thought that she had
realized, that Clara’s intention had been to give the Comte his
congé
on account of his behaviour with her daughter. What Arabella might have to go through to achieve this
denouement seemed not to have mattered to Clara in the least. I think I started actually hating her then, Arabella thought.

By now, she was nearly home, and pretended that she was returning to a large family, one of whom was having a birthday. The dog, she thought, if only there was a dog sitting on the front seat
beside her now, pretending it could see out of the window.

By the time she got back, Mrs Gregory had left. As she put the car into the garage, she thought, Supposing this was
my
house,
my
home, and all the children were sitting in the
kitchen having lunch with Nan. But everything was silent.

Once Edmund had announced his intention of going alone to Greece Sir William treated him with grandiose compunction – as though he was about to embark upon a very
expensive and dangerous operation from which there was but a small chance of his recovery. ‘Got the right stuff to take with you? I don’t mean clothes and all that, I mean really good
stuff for the stomach: you can’t keep your bowels sound over there for twenty-four hours. Either you’re so bound up you’re swilling down Andrews every other minute and can’t
eat a thing, or else – and Irene always used to find this – you’ve got the trots. And Greek lavatories are no joke. Mind you, I haven’t been there since Irene and I went
together before the war, and they have tarted them up a bit since my day, but in my day they took a lot of beating. It’s not simply the
stench
, it’s finding them at all, and then
keeping them to yourself; I used to have to stand guard for Irene.
Lavatories
,’ he roared, mistaking Edmund’s expression for one of non-comprehension. ‘I’d advise you
to take these,’ and he thrust an old, round, discoloured pill-box into Edmund’s unwilling hands.
The Pills
was written on it in faded spidery ink.
Take three every two
hours.
‘Mind you, if you can get that floor polish they call wine down, you’ll stand a much better chance. I used to drink a tumbler before breakfast. Very binding, and all that
pine whatsit they put in acts as some kind of disinfectant.’ Mercifully, at this point his telephone rang, and he stumped back into his own office to take the call.

Young Geoffrey knocked and entered with a sheaf of papers. Edmund was about to say that he would deal with them on his return, when he noticed that some of the papers were photographs and his
eye was attracted by a huge cedar tree with a house showing framed within its gigantic branches.

‘The owners of the Barnet property have sent these.’

‘Oh, good: let me have them. When are you going up there to measure?’

‘I thought this afternoon, sir, if that’s all right with you. The pictures aren’t very good, sir, I wondered whether you’d like me to take some more.’

‘I’ll look through them, and let you know.’

Alone, Edmund lit a cigarette and putting all the photographs aside, started to look at the one that had first attracted him. It was the tree under which she had been standing with her head
turned to the sky – he would never forget seeing her thus. There were a number of dull pictures taken from different aspects, but showing the house to be what it was: Georgian – late
– with a good deal of mucking about. Then there were three pictures of the garden. One taken from the house and showing the descending lawns and beautiful trees; one rather blurred of the
rose garden and its sun-dial, and one of the lake, taken, he thought, much from where he and Arabella had lain together during the storm. He put the first one of the tree and this last one of the
lake into his wallet: they were a little too large and he had to cut one side with his pocket knife. Then he returned the rest of the pictures to the sheaf. He called Geoffrey and told him yes,
take as many pictures as he could, and particularly of the garden. ‘The lake,’ he said, wondering whether his voice could be heard to be shaking, ‘take the lake from several
aspects. The garden is the best part of the property; that and its proximity to London, of course.’

‘I hope you have a good trip, sir.’

‘Thanks.’

He looked at his watch. It was only twelve, and his aeroplane did not take off until nine. He decided to get the hell out before Sir William asked him to lunch or gave him any more frightening
and useless advice. He had the memoranda of whom he was to see and when, neatly typed by Miss Hathaway, in his briefcase. He checked once more that he had his passport, air ticket and
travellers’ cheques. Oh yes – he had all of them. He wanted badly to ring Mulberry Lodge, but even if
she
answered, there was a fair chance that Anne would pick up the extension
in the bedroom. There were hours to get through: he did not feel at all like lunch: he had a few things to get, like film for his camera, dark glasses and some paperbacks to read on the plane, but
however much he spun out these missions there was going to be hours in which to dread the journey, the flight, leaving Arabella, his feelings about her, and worse, his feelings about Anne. He would
do his shopping, take his bags to the Air Terminal, and then find some quiet, cool, cinema with a meaningless film where he could make a definite attempt to think things out. And he would have his
hair cut. It always looked better a couple of weeks after it had been cut, and he did not intend to be away for more than two weeks.