Odd Girl Out (6 page)

‘Well, could you
wet
it then, and trim it, and I’ll set it when I get home?’

‘You beat me, madam, you really do. I give in. I capitulate.’ He snapped his fingers. ‘Marily! Would you rinse madam for a trim immediately.’

A lethargic girl, in the heaviest eyelashes Anne had ever seen, drifted over. ‘Mr Reginald, I have to take Mrs Blueberry out in three minutes.’

‘Well get Sharon then. Be quick now; madam hasn’t got all day.’

Sharon, the newest, youngest apprentice, with greasy hair and frightened eyes, came running over with a mauve nylon overall in which she inexpertly smothered Anne.

‘Put madam in number three,’ called Mr Reginald, as he went to collect his razor and a Polo Mint.

When she had been scalded, frozen and half drowned by Sharon, he returned with razor in hand, mint in mouth, and settled down to his usual monologue upon sex crimes. He had just read a book
about Rillington Place, and Anne heard far more than she cared to about exactly what Christie had done to various people and why Mr Reginald thought he had done it. A miasma of sexual outrage,
violence and peppermint descended upon her and she gave up any pretence of reading
Country Life
or
Punch
as she weakly agreed with the random, and rhetorical questions he periodically
put to her. When he got to, ‘You get some very funny people in this queer old world of ours,’ she knew he had more or less finished. Good thing too: she was going to be late home
anyway.

Edmund caught his usual, but only just. This meant that he would have difficulty in finding a seat. He stumbled down the corridor of a coach that seemed entirely full of purple
canvas luggage of varying shapes and sizes. It must all belong to one person, because it was all purple, but it seemed incredible that in this day and age anybody could travel with so much. It was
a damned nuisance, anyway, he thought, as he stubbed his toe yet again on yet more of it.

When he got out at Twyford to change for Henley, he noticed that the purple luggage was being put out of the train too. Instantly, he thought of Clara’s daughter. Of course! That was
exactly the kind of luggage the girl would have. He looked up and down the platform for her. But the guard seemed to have got the only porter in sight to do the job and there was no sign of any
owner. Eventually, when presumably all the luggage was out of the train, this fact seemed to strike the guard as well, and he disappeared, to return a moment later with a fair, tall girl with
spindly legs who looked half asleep. She wore a dark-brown suede miniskirt, white shirt and dark glasses. She fumbled in some mysterious side pocket of her skirt and handed the guard what looked to
Edmund like a pound. Then she turned to the porter.

‘Apparently, I have to catch another train. Could you take me to it, with all this?’ She absently kicked the nearest piece of luggage. The porter went to collect a barrow. Edmund
advanced upon her.

‘Are you by any chance Miss Dawick?’

‘You must be Edmund Cornhill!’

‘How did you know that?’

‘Because you pronounced my name properly. Hardly anyone says Doik: they say Daywick, or Darwick. How do you do.’

Edmund took her hand. It was dry, but very hot. ‘I take it,’ he said, trying to sound very cosmopolitan about it, ‘that you are on your way to stay with us.’

‘That’s right. Mummy, Clara, you know, told me to come down as soon as possible. Tonight was very nearly as soon as possible.’ Her white shirt, he noticed, was rather grubby;
her thin legs were bare, and she wore old and rather dirty sandals that did up with a lot of leather thongs. The porter returned with the barrow and was now making a dog’s dinner of getting
all the cases and bags on to it.

‘The train will come in here. It’s hardly any distance,’ Edmund said clearly. ‘Did you ring Anne?’

‘Anne?’

‘My wife. To tell her that you were coming.’

‘Oh – your wife. No – I’m afraid I didn’t.’ He could not tell anything about her expression because of the dark glasses. ‘I’m sorry. I see I
should have. I hate the telephone so much, you see.’ She fumbled in her bag, a battered looking Greek one, slung over her shoulder, and produced another note, indubitably a pound this time,
for the porter.

‘That’s far too much,’ Edmund muttered to her.

‘I expect you’re right. But I’ve got quite a lot of them, and I seem to have spent the whole day fumbling for change.’

The train came in, and they and Arabella’s luggage got and were put into it.

Once seated, Arabella took off her glasses and said, ‘It is extremely kind of you to have me.’ She had what really were violet shadows under her eyes and looked distinctly ill.

‘Not at all,’ said Edmund heartily. ‘We’ve been looking forward to it.’

‘Will she be angry?’

‘Who?’

‘About me not ringing up.’

‘Anne? Good Lord, no!’ Edmund backed up this statement with a reassuring laugh. As a matter of fact, he knew that she would rather have been told: she was a great preparer, and not,
bless her heart, at her best with the impromptu.

‘How many children have you got?’

‘We haven’t got any.’

‘Oh.’

‘Why did you think we had?’

‘I don’t know. Married people do, don’t they? Especially if they live in the country. From what Mummy said about you, you sounded so settled, that I thought you must have. Does
she mind?’

‘It was a mutual decision,’ said Edmund, a trifle stiffly.

‘Oh,’ she said again, and then added, ‘A jolly patriotic one, if you ask me. Did you know that in – I think it is two hundred years’ time, there will be only one
square yard of earth for each person? And I can’t think what they will do about gorillas. They really need square miles.’ She looked at him expectantly, to see whether he was interested
in gorillas.

‘Poor things,’ said Edmund. He clearly didn’t mind a bit really.

‘Although, I suppose if you
did
have children, it would be nice for
them.’

‘Oh? Why do you think so?’

‘Well – being settled and all that. Children don’t like being nomadic. I was one, so I know.’

Edmund could think of no reply to this.

‘I see you have an evening paper. Do read it, if you want to. I had some vodka at Paddington and it’s made me rather loquacious, but it will soon wear off.’

Edmund, who had been thinking longingly of his
Standard
– he always read it on this last bit of the journey – picked it up from the seat beside him. This made him notice her
feet; her ankles were elegantly crossed, but her toes did not look very clean. Clara’s daughter, he thought: how extraordinary. He had not expected her to look like this, and was too tired
and hot to start imagining what he had expected her to look like.

‘Your mother rang me today,’ he said.

Arabella did not reply.

‘She was on her way from Switzerland to Paris. She did not seem to know where you were.’

‘Well, she wouldn’t have. I didn’t tell her. I didn’t know where
she
was, you see. But I don’t suppose I would have if I had.’

She shut her eyes. She really did not look at all well. Whooping it up at Annabel’s or something of the kind, he thought with indulgent envy. Girls like that probably spent their nights in
night-clubs, and their days getting ready for their nights.

‘I hope you won’t find it too quiet in the country.’

‘Why should I? Is it especially quiet?’

‘Well – it is not at all like London.’

‘If it was, you wouldn’t come all this way, would you? It is funny, how small journeys in England always seem so long and complicated. In Africa or America you go hundreds – or
thousands – of miles and hardly notice it.’

‘Have you travelled a great deal?’

‘Far too much. I think I’d better go to sleep for a bit so that I make sense when we arrive.’

The bit, however, was only about ten minutes – Edmund had to touch her to make her wake. When she woke up, she looked frightened. She sat up, and put on her dark glasses.

‘Why do you wear them?’

‘Oh – just so that I can see people first. Before they see me, I mean.’

There ensued a long and, to Edmund, awful time during which they heaved and lumped her eleven pieces of luggage to the car park. By the time they reached that, he had no doubt at all about the
number, and each one seemed to be filled with stones. The Rover was not a small car, but by the time everything had been stowed, Arabella was sitting in front with two bags on her knees and two at
her feet and Edmund had difficulty in changing gear. He was sweating, and wondering whether he should have rung Anne from the station to warn her. Too late now. They set off.

‘I think Oscar Wilde was quite wrong about Nature, don’t you? Green is the only colour you can’t have too much of. Think of red: butchers’ shops and the insides of people
and communism. Or black: all the old Greek women in the world gathered together and execution blocks and a good many people’s hair. Green is much more accommodating.’

‘I suppose it is.’

‘I’m sorry I bore you. I probably won’t tomorrow. It’s quite difficult at first finding out what the other person is interested in. That’s why dinner parties are
such a boon.’

He nearly looked at her – took his eyes off the road and looked at her. ‘How do you mean?’

‘Well – I mean, if one is turning out to be no good at it, one gets a kind of commercial break between courses. Then you try the other person. Do you have television?’

‘We hardly ever watch it though.’

‘I do: all the time, when it’s available. It’s the most marvellous way of taking your mind off something and putting it on to something else.’

Edmund, turning off into the lane that led to his house, thought longingly of the candlelit evening when either he told Anne what had happened that day, or they listened to records chosen by
him. Perhaps
she
would watch TV by herself. She’s like a sort of old child, he thought irritably.

‘I’m most dreadfully sorry, but I’m going to be sick. Could you stop the car please, for a moment?’

Edmund speeded up round the bend to where there was a comparatively straight piece of road: not the ideal place to park by any means, but road caution fought with his loathing of anyone being
sick, and lost.

‘Open the door, please,’ she said in a muffled voice.

Edmund leaned over her gingerly, and opened the door. Arabella shot out and disappeared towards the back of the car. He turned on the car radio in order not to hear her.

She came back, looking paler, if possible, than before. After a moment, when she had settled herself into the front seat again, Edmund asked as heartily as he could, ‘Everything all right
now?’

‘Better, anyway. Oh, don’t turn off the Haydn. I like these variations.’

‘Do you like music, then?’

‘That’s like saying do you like people, or children, or animals. I like some. I think Haydn’s keyboard music is his best thing. The opposite of Mozart, really.’

Edmund said nothing to this. It was very tiring, getting real answers back to formal, or rhetorical questions. Then, a few minutes later, he was able to say, ‘Here we are.’

The narrow, curving drive was empty. Anne must have put her car away. He drove to the front door, because of all the luggage, and when he switched off the engine, there was the sound of bees and
the delicious smell of lemons and honey that came from the Kiftsgate that covered the porch. Arabella got stiffly out and looked at the house and then round it. It was very pretty, she decided, and
her spirits, that seemed to have sunk to below zero, rose a point.

Edmund, anxious to lose no time about it, began calling for Anne while Arabella stood on one leg and watched him. After a moment, a towel-turbaned head looked out of a top window, saw Arabella,
nearly withdrew, and then changed its mind.

‘Hullo,
darling.
This is Miss Dawick. By an extraordinary chance she was on the same train.’

‘One second.’ The head disappeared. Edmund laughed uncomfortably. ‘She’s obviously setting her hair,’ he explained, but did not add that she loathed anyone to see
her doing it. He began to heave the luggage out of the car, with Arabella ineffectually helping.

Just as he had finished, Anne appeared, in a housecoat and without the turban.

‘This is Clara’s daughter, Annabel, isn’t it? This is Anne.’

‘How do you do,’ Anne said.

‘My name is actually Arabella – but sometimes I am called Arbell. How do you do. It is very kind of you to have me.’

‘Is this all your luggage?’

‘If you mean is this
all
my luggage, yes it is. If you mean what a lot, I’m afraid I had to bring everything, because there was nowhere to put it, really.’

‘I’m sorry nothing is ready for you: Edmund didn’t tell me you were coming, you see, or of course I would have got everything ready.’

‘I did tell you she was coming, darling.’

‘Yes, but not when.’

‘I didn’t know when. I just met her on the train.’

‘It’s my fault,’ said Arabella quickly. ‘I’m awfully sorry. I didn’t know until yesterday that I could come today, and I’m terribly bad at ringing up
people I don’t know.’

‘Well, it’s lovely that you’ve got here.’

Edmund glanced at his wife approvingly.

‘Edmund, you take the two big ones, and we’ll follow you with what we can manage.’

They trooped, or filed, into the house; Edmund led the way with the women after him. At the head of the stairs, he paused, and asked, ‘Which room, darling?’

‘I think the big spare, then she’ll have plenty of room.’

The spare room had three windows, white-painted panelling and a yellow carpet. Anne put down the bag she had been carrying, and began opening the sashes. ‘Goodness, it is hot in
here,’ she was saying. There were a number of dead bluebottles on the sills. ‘I don’t think Mrs Gregory can even have
done
this room today. I’ll get you some sheets
and things.’ She bustled away, and Edmund plodded after her to get more of the purple luggage.

Arabella stood in the middle of the room alone. A pang of sharp, familiar sadness overcame her. Here she was again: staying somewhere where other people spent their lives. It had obviously been
a very bad thing not to ring up. I’ve started all wrong, she thought miserably: I’ve got to make it all right somehow.