Odd Girl Out (35 page)

Luke lay on his back, and simply endured, or perhaps accepted, her kiss. His skin was so soft and felt so thin stretched on his forehead that she kissed him very gently. ‘Me too,’
called Samantha from the top. She was jealous of Luke. Luke began his thumb-sucking and ear-pulling while she gave Samantha a final hug.

‘That’s that,’ she thought, with no emotion at all. It was now nearly nine o’clock: there was still time to put in. The rules she had set herself were now rigidly
superstitious: she must wait until he
couldn’t
come home from the pubs before she posted the letter. She spent the next hour and a half trying to read: a paperback of a novel about
prisoners trying to escape. At half past ten, the children were quiet, and she let herself out of the house and went the block up the hill to the letter-box. She hadn’t got a stamp, but she
had put THE POLICE on the envelope in capital letters and was fairly sure that this would mean delivery. She had included her address, and a Yale key to the flat that Henry must have left. She
walked very slowly down the hill back to the flat. It was hot, and there was a smell of cooking, dust, petrol, and dogs’ shit.

I wish I had something to drink, she thought; Dutch courage, or cowardice, or whatever. But she hadn’t. The plane trees were dry, and their leaves crackled slightly in any faint breeze.
Their zebra bark, a piecemeal way of tidying themselves up, looked simply unsuccessful and alien. She let herself into the flat very slowly, looking round once more at the long road, lined by these
trees, that had cars streaming up and down it with people who were doubtless going through all sorts of things. When she shut herself into the flat, the silence struck her. She went straight to the
kitchen where she had put the bottle of carefully saved Carbitrol – given her by a doctor after the birth of Samantha. She filled the largest glass she could find with cold water –
running the tap until it really was cold so that the taste of chlorine wouldn’t be so bad. She went to the lavatory, brushed her hair, kicked off her shoes, and took the pills with systematic
care. Not too fast, or she might choke or retch: not too slowly, in case she should change her mind. The glass of water just about did for the pills. She lay down on her and Henry’s bed to
wait. She had one, fleeting thought that he might have effected some reconciliation with that rich bitch, but this passed, and in the end, she simply lay, looking at the damp patches on the ceiling
and waiting to die. I hope I haven’t been too wicked, was the last thing that she thought before she could no longer think anything and she was past fear or anxiety or responsibility or
life.

‘But you have no appointment made.’

‘I know. I said I’ll wait.’

‘The doctor is extremely busy.’

‘I only want to ask him one thing: it won’t take a moment.’

The woman went away, and Arabella tried to read a very old copy of
Country Life.
Any room in which one waited for anything was always, somehow, depressing. This one contained an ugly
stained wood table on which out of date periodicals and magazines were stacked. It also had four ugly, uncomfortable, high-backed oak chairs with plastic seats. After she had waited for what seemed
like ages, the door opened and the foreign bitch ushered a nervous-looking woman into the room.

‘Vill you chust vait here,’ she said. She did not look at Arabella, or rather she looked firmly through her – once – to make her point, whatever the hell that might
be.

The newcomer sat down: she was neither young nor old, neither pretty nor plain. She met Arabella’s eye once, and then looked down at the table with the papers on it. She did not attempt to
read one. She behaved, not exactly as though Arabella was not there, but in the classic way that patients in waiting rooms do behave, as though the other person, or people, were there, but would be
there anyway, like the table and the chairs. Arabella had noticed this before, at all kinds of doctors and dentists. A feeling of anonymous tension simply grew. Eventually, the foreign bitch
returned, and said, with evident sulkiness, ‘The doctor will see you for a minute, Miss
Smith.’

On the table once more, she said, ‘I thought you could probably tell whether I am, whether I’ve – ’

‘If you are pregnant again? I have told you, my dear, that you should be particularly careful after what you have a few weeks ago had. You are much more open to conception at those
times.’

‘Well – could you tell me, please?’

‘It is possible – not certain – but possible. But I warn you, my dear, that I will do nothing about it at this stage. I do not agree with the English doctors on this point. I
will do nothing until three months, you understand.’

Arabella lay back so that she need not see his face while he prodded about with his rubber gloves. He took some time, feeling deeply inside her, which was unpleasant. ‘Relax more,’
he said once, and it was not so bad. When he had finished, he shook a rubber finger at her and said, with what seemed to her horrible jocularity, ‘Indeed, I am afraid you have done it again.
What a girl! What a life, eh? You may have a urine test if you wish, but there is little point: I am very seldom wrong in these matters.’

Arabella sat up, to finish things off, but he pushed her gently back, saying, ‘You go to many lengths for so small a pleasure. Do you know if I touch you – here – and in the
right way, you can have an orgasm?’

Arabella swung her legs over the side of the high table. ‘I don’t want one, thank you.’

He shrugged – perfectly amiable. ‘You must come back and see me in two weeks. Make an appointment next time, you naughty girl.’

‘Thank you.’ It was difficult to maintain her dignity, putting on her knickers.

He watched her, but he was also washing his gloved hands in Dettol and water. The smell rose strongly in the room.

‘What do I owe you?’

‘Nothing now. You will pay what you paid before next time you come.’ He smiled quite kindly and patted her shoulder. ‘Do not upset yourself: you will be quite safe with me. I
am a very good doctor for women. But you must be more careful next time. Next time, I will arrange matters for you so that you will not need to get into this condition.’ He was still smiling
in the middle of his moustache: his dark eyes fixed on her face with an expression both cynical and understanding. ‘Men are devils,’ he said. ‘I hope at least you make him pay for
it.’

‘Good-bye, and thank you for seeing me.’

‘Good-bye for the present. No funny business, you understand? Or I will not touch you. In my hands you are safe: go to no others.’ He nodded, and turned away again to wash the hand
that had patted her shoulder. He is at least conscientious, she thought, as she walked, rather slowly, out of the room. Outside, the foreign woman sat at a desk with an appointment book.

‘You wish to make a further appointment?’

‘I’ll ring about it, if I may.’

‘It is better if you make it now.’

‘I’ll ring you.’

Outside, she walked slowly down the street feeling very strange. There was an extraordinary gap between suspecting something and having it more or less confirmed by someone else. For she had no
doubt that he knew his job. She felt suddenly very hungry, and went into a very small Italian-run coffee and sandwich place. Even if one of them accepted the idea, would the other? Reason rejected
this ideal as absurd: but her feelings were stronger at the moment than anything she could do about it. She ordered a salami sandwich and a cup of coffee. If she called her mother at the villa and
told her
this,
she would be let off the yacht: might even be let off any more ghastly getting-through-the-days-in-different-climes nonsense. It was much simpler for Ariadne, she thought
sadly when she had finished her sandwich and asked for another. As she paid, and walked out, she thought that all she could do was ask them: she would not lie about it, but she could, at least, ask
them.

Anne was rung by Clara at about three thirty. Where was Arabella? In London? Oh: well, would she kindly call the following number the moment she got back? The number was given.
Was Arabella, by the way, out of quarantine, or whatever it was? When Anne said yes, Clara said that she hoped that
she
(she could not remember Anne’s name) was better as well. Anne
said that she was. Then Clara said that she had had an awful time trying to get Edmund at his office, but he appeared to be out having what seemed like an interminable lunch. She tried at half past
twelve, and again now, and still he was out, that was why she had troubled Anne. She would be most grateful if Anne (only she still said ‘you’) would exercise her influence on Arabella
to come to Nice by Thursday. The air ticket had been sent; it was quite simple. She rang off after that.

Anne, whose feelings about Arabella going to London without telling her why had not yet subsided, was put back entirely on to Arabella’s side by this conversation. Even from a distance,
Clara sounded awful: a totally unsuitable person for poor Arabella to have to deal with. She is not capable of machination, Anne thought tenderly: her mother could easily manoeuvre her into an
impossible position about having to marry someone. She thought that she must have a really serious talk with Edmund about Arabella’s future. It would bring her and Edmund together: make
everything much sounder and more complete. She decided to make an especially good dinner for both of them when they returned. This prospect galvanized her: she loved the idea of them sitting
– Edmund on her right, Arabella opposite – praising and enjoying what she had made for them. Arabella would not go to London every day. She started planning and collecting
ingredients.

They had all three sat through the candlelit dinner that Anne had taken so much trouble over: Edmund had eaten very little; he had explained and complained to everyone about
his lengthy lunch with Sir William. Arabella’s condition, as she by now very well knew, precluded her eating very much in the evenings, but she had picked at everything with loyal intent,
although, as Anne had observed, to little purpose. All three turned out to have so little to say to one another at dinner, that Anne’s intention of having a good, private talk to Edmund about
Clara and her machinations had by now evaporated. Arabella had arrived much earlier than Edmund, but she had not called Anne from the station; had taken a taxi and arrived saying that she
didn’t want to be a bother.

‘This is your home: you’re never a bother,’ Anne had said, and for a moment, Arabella had clung to her. Then she had detached herself and said that she wanted to have a bath
and a rest, if Anne didn’t mind, and Anne, who did, couldn’t.

Now they all sat, not eating the
fromage à la crème
and black cherries that Anne had provided for the end of the meal. Interrupting Edmund’s desultory, and clearly
forced, narration about Greece and Sir William’s reaction to it, Arabella had suddenly said, ‘I think we have all got to talk.’

Both Edmund and Anne looked frightened by the prospect. Arabella went on, ‘I think we’d better make a lot of coffee and have it in the sitting-room.’

So Anne obediently made coffee while Arabella and Edmund variously cleared the table. Anne, who hoped that the talk would turn out to be about Clara and how they were going to deal with that
situation, tried to believe or pretend that she was looking forward to it. She had told them that Clara had rung, and Edmund turned out to have known that Clara had twice rung and failed to get him
at his office. But Edmund did not look as though he was looking forward to a talk – of any kind.

Eventually, in the sitting-room, with everybody provided with coffee and brandy and ensconced in their customary places, there was no putting this off. Anne had turned on only one light, so that
it was a kind of electric twilight in the room towards the centre of which moths collided and stunned or hypnotized themselves. There was a complete silence.

Arabella said, ‘I am having a baby. That’s what I went to London about. It isn’t absolutely certain, but pretty nearly. And
I
am sure.’

There was another – more charged – silence.

Then Anne said uncertainly, ‘How
can
you be? I mean, you said that you had an abortion just before you came to stay.’

‘That was perfectly true. I wouldn’t have said it otherwise.’ She took a cigarette and lit it, hoping that she would be able to smoke it. ‘I had to tell you, because
you’ve been so very kind to me.’

Anne thought back to the day that Arabella had gone to London with Edmund. So did Edmund.

‘You mean that day when you went to London and there was that awful storm?’

‘Yes.’

‘My poor darling – we’ll help you – won’t we, Edmund?’

Edmund said nothing. His heart was pounding and he thought that everybody must hear it, but he couldn’t speak.

Arabella said, ‘How?’

‘Well, you don’t want to have it, do you?’

‘That depends upon you.’

‘Upon
me
?’ Anne put down her coffee cup. She was beginning to be afraid now of what Arabella might be going to say about them.

‘Upon both of you.’

Anne said faintly, ‘How do you mean?’

‘It is Edmund’s child. That’s what I mean.’

The silence now was horrible.

Arabella looked desperately at Edmund, who still seemed speechless:
he
was not going to have an atom of courage: he was going to leave it all to her. She looked at him steadily for a
moment, and Edmund felt more awful than he had ever felt in his life.

Then Arabella said, ‘I have not been to bed with any other man. So it must be his.’

Anne looked at Edmund: his silence, and his face, and indeed everything about him proclaimed this confounding truth.

Anne, looking at Arabella as though she had only just seen her, said, ‘Do you mean to say – can you honestly admit, that you – that you went to bed with Edmund in order to have
his child?’

‘I didn’t do it for that. But that is what has happened.’ She tried again with the cigarette, and knowing that she would be feeling sick anyway, decided to go on with it.