Odd Girl Out (8 page)

‘Here’s your breakfast: I hope you slept well.’

‘Marvellously.’ She sat up. ‘It’s awfully kind of you. When you said breakfast in bed, I never thought – ’

‘Of course you didn’t. But it’s quite all right. We have to start early because of Edmund getting to London.’ She had moved Arabella’s bedside table so that it
swivelled over the bed. Sunlight filled the room, and also showed that it was covered with slightly unpacked luggage. Arabella saw Anne seeing this and said quickly, ‘I was so tired last
night, I couldn’t even remember where my night things were. That’s why it’s such chaos.’

She swung her legs over the side of the bed and then said, ‘Actually – that’s barely true. I’m
always
chaotic, and so I’ve got awfully good at thinking of
reasons why I’m like that. I must go along the passage. Please don’t go – won’t be a minute.’

So Anne waited while Arabella put on the sort of dressing-gown that fearfully fat opera singers wear for evening love scenes – a huge, apparently shapeless but trailing garment of
sea-green wool – and disappeared for a long time. At least it seemed long to Anne, who felt a mixture of curiosity and discomfort at the girl being here at all. When she returned, Anne saw
that the dressing-gown – or whatever it called itself – was, in fact, mysteriously attractive, or at least Arabella had got the secret of wearing it: with her single plait of hair and
colourless face, she looked like some majestic, and at the same time touching, invalid. She threw the wrap aside and climbed carefully back into bed.

‘Edmund said you’d been ill.’

‘I don’t know why he said that. I haven’t been exactly
ill.
What a lovely breakfast.’

‘Perhaps it was just that Clara – your mother – said you needed a rest.’

‘She always says something like that. I need rests, and she needs new men.’ She drank some orange juice and began pouring out coffee. ‘And an egg!’ she exclaimed, with
what seemed to Anne simulated gaiety. ‘Goodness! You are kind to me.’

‘You look as though you need feeding up a bit.’

‘Oh – I always look like that. Even after huge meals in French restaurants I look like an advertisement for Oxfam. So don’t worry. I’m the kind of person who doing good
to doesn’t make the slightest difference, and doing bad to …’ Her voice trailed off. They looked at each other. ‘Makes the slightest difference,’ Arabella finished.
There was a short, charged silence.

‘Eat your egg before it gets cold,’ Anne said gently. She felt as though she was dealing with some foreign child, and for someone who had never cared about or wanted children, this
was strange.

Arabella ate her egg and indeed everything else that was edible upon the tray while Anne smoked and talked to her. Their conversation actually consisted of them asking each other questions;
neither felt able to comment upon many of the replies; each felt a certain constraint, or shyness, with the other. Each had a genuine desire to know about the other’s life, but Arabella felt
that hers had been too improper for Anne, and Anne felt that hers had been too dull for Arabella for either to enlighten the other very much Their day was therefore fraught with half-truths
embedded in much goodwill.

‘Goodness, what a lot of marvellous clothes you have!’ Anne had exclaimed during the hour that it took her to help with the tremendous unpacking. ‘Did Clara – your mother
– give them all to you?’

‘Well – some. She’s always buying new clothes because she’s always changing her size and she hates waste, so she makes Markham alter them for me. Markham’s her creepy
maid. Whenever she has a new honeymoon, I come in for a lot of junk. Don’t wear it, though. But due to my Scottish blood, I suppose, I don’t throw it away, either. Except that
dressing-gown. I do wear that. It’s Dior, and it wasn’t actually made for her – she just bought it off the top floor.’

‘The top floor?’

‘Where they sell off the actual models. Frightfully cheap; in a way.’

‘Don’t you have
any
clothes that were yours to start with?’

‘Some: not many – but some. Jeans and things. I usually buy a lot of one thing while I’m at it. Like that suitcase. It’s full of shirts that I bought in Rome.
Haven’t worn most of them.’

There must have been dozens of them, Anne thought, as the case was carelessly opened to display the neat Cellophane envelopes each containing a different-coloured shirt – all made by
Pucci, she noticed.

‘How beautiful!’ Anne was particularly fond of shirts: Edmund liked her in them, especially with men’s trousers that suited that part of her figure so well.

‘Have some!’

‘Oh, no!’

‘Please do. Please choose whatever you like. I haven’t worn them, honestly.’

‘It’s not that. I wouldn’t mind
that
in the least. They wouldn’t fit me. I’m – I’m much larger than you.’

‘Try one on. They’re quite loose on me.’

‘Well, I will, some time. That’s very sweet of you.’

‘No,
now.
Otherwise, we might forget. What’s your favourite colour?’ She was sitting on her heels in front of the open case, rummaging among the collection of packets.
‘Blue! I bet it’s blue.’ She held up a turquoise silk shirt, and before Anne could stop her, she had pulled it out and was undoing the buttons.

Anne was wearing a trouser suit, navy, with a sleeveless top and white shirt. She had taken off the sleeveless top and received the shirt that Arabella held out to her before she realized that
undressing further in front of the girl was going to embarrass her – so much, that she could not possibly do it. This shocked her, and for a minute she could not think what to do to get out
of the silly, entirely surprising, but impossible situation. Finally, she gabbled something about wanting to see what it looked like in her own glass and escaped to her bedroom.

What’s the
matter
with me? she thought, but really, she knew. Her breasts had always been too large for the rest of her: she had suffered agonies as a schoolgirl, and all her life
she had worn heavily built brassières that were a little too tight. Since she had married Edmund, she had been able to afford to have them specially made for her, but nobody
but
Edmund
– or the lady who made the bras – ever saw her in or out of them.

She shut the door, took off the white shirt and thrust her arms into the delectable turquoise silk, but, of course, the two edges did not begin to meet in front. She got out of it quickly: she
could not have borne to do that in front of Arabella.

When she went back to return the shirt, Arabella was standing by the window. She was wearing a pair of white jeans and nothing else at all. She turned to face Anne with total
unselfconsciousness.

‘No good?’

‘I’m afraid not. Thank you all the same.’ Oh God, she thought; she’s like I’ve always wanted to be. Small, and firm, and perfect.

‘Chuck it over, then. I might as well wear it.’

‘How old are you, Arabella?’

‘Twenty-two.’

Anne was thirty-nine, but she had never looked like that – not at any age.

Arabella was buttoning on the turquoise shirt. Then she pulled off the elastic band holding her plait and ran her fingers through her hair. In the sunlight, it was the colour of tobacco.

‘Did we unpack my brush?’

‘Yes. I put it on the dressing-table. What about the rest of your cases?’

‘Let’s leave them. Do one or two a day.’ Her head was tilted to one side as she vigorously brushed hair down on to one shoulder. ‘What would
you
be doing if I
wasn’t here?’

‘Why do you ask that?’

‘Well – I hoped I could help you to do it – whatever it was. I went to a finishing-off place where they even taught you to do housework. And wait at table. I’m a
marvellous parlourmaid. I was awfully bad at the housework, though. Another girl used to do it for me. You don’t have any servants, do you?’

‘We have a very nice daily woman who cleans everything. But otherwise, no, we don’t.’

‘Oh goody. It’s much more peaceful – and free. What
would
you be doing?’

Anne explained about the anniversary – ten years of marriage – to be celebrated that evening.

‘Golly! Ten years! How marvellous! Wouldn’t you like me to go out, or something? I mean, I could go to the cinema and have a Wimpy or whatever they’re called. Honestly, I
wouldn’t mind a bit.’ She was rubbing cream from a tiny pot on to her face. ‘Or I could dress up and pretend to be the parlourmaid. No. That would be silly and ghastly. Forget it.
I often have ideas with no discrimination about them. But I’ve never
met
anyone who’s been married for ten years and pleased about it. You should see Clara after eighteen months
with anybody. Like a rogue elephant in velvet.’

‘She’s not
fat,
is she?’

‘No: but elephants aren’t
fat
. Just overpowering. Mammalian juggernauts. That’s like Clara.’

‘Do you – find her – difficult?’

‘Difficult? Yeah – that’s about what I find her.’

She was stuffing the clothes she had worn yesterday into the wastepaper-basket.

‘That’s not a dirty clothes basket!’ Anne said, wondering how on earth Arabella could think that it was.

‘It’s a trash basket, isn’t it? I don’t want these clothes, you see. Ever again.’

‘Oh.’

They went downstairs to the kitchen; Anne carrying the breakfast tray in spite of Arabella’s protests. The kitchen was a large country one: slate-floored, with an Aga and pine dresser that
occupied one whole wall. It looked out on to the kitchen part of the garden. There were geraniums on the window sill, in front of which was a round pine table where Ariadne sat watching the flies
that skittered and zoomed above her head.

‘Is that cat yours?’

‘Yes. Ariadne. She’s half Greek, and about to produce a huge family.’

Arabella sat on the edge of the table and stroked the cat’s head. Ariadne rose to her feet, arching her neck in acknowledgement, but her attention was still upon the flies: she knew that
sooner or later one of them would make a mistake and fly too low; nothing could distract her from this eventuality.

‘What will you do with them all?’

‘Find homes for them,’ Anne answered more lightly than she felt. Ariadne’s procreative life was as regular as it was prolific, and all obvious oudets for her progeny were long
used up. ‘Why? Do you know anybody who would like one?’

‘I hardly know anyone in England. I mean –
know. I
would love one all to myself.’ A picture of her living in a tiny, thatched cottage on the edge of some moor with a cat
came to mind.

‘But you travel so much, you couldn’t really have an animal, could you?’

‘It might pin me down. There!’

A fly had come down, Ariadne had caught it with one, neat movement, and crunched it up almost before she had resumed sitting on the table.

‘Isn’t it bad for her?’

‘It doesn’t matter what it is for her. She just does as she likes.’

‘All the time?’

‘I think all the time.’

‘Goodness! I wish I was a cat. Even if it meant being demoted from the reincarnation point of view, I think I should prefer it.’

Anne was clearing up everybody’s breakfast. ‘Don’t you like – ’

‘Being me? No. Hardly ever. I simply haven’t got the hang of it at all. I just don’t know what – ’ She stopped and stared at the bare foot she was swinging against
the table leg.

‘What? What don’t you know?’

‘What to do with myself, I suppose.’ Her hair hung down so that Anne could not see her face.

‘What are
you
going to do?’ she added almost at once. (To stop me asking anything more, Anne thought.)

‘Pick raspberries for dinner. Like to come?’

‘Oh
yes
! I haven’t done that since I was in Scotland when I was four.’

What an extraordinary thing to be able to say and remember, Anne thought.

They took a colander and a chip basket and went out of the back door to the kitchen garden. The fruit cage was at the end of it. It was already hot, and the air smelled of lavender and warm box
from the miniature hedges each side of the cinder paths. Arabella was barefoot.

‘Don’t you mind no shoes?’

‘Not really. Anyway, we didn’t get to the case with the shoes in it. No – honestly, I like the feeling.’

When they reached the cage, there was the usual adventurous and panic-stricken bird inside, making short spluttering flights up to the chicken wire and down again, then bustling and clucking
about the bushes and canes of fruit.

‘We’ll leave the door open for him, and he may have the sense to find it.’

‘Supposing he doesn’t, he’d still be all right, wouldn’t he, with so much to eat?’

‘He’d start fussing about his family.’

‘Do
all
birds have families?’

‘I think so; most of them. At this time of year, anyway.’

‘Lucky them.’

‘To have a family? Or just to have a family for part of the year?’

‘Oh – both, I should think. Where shall I start?’

‘Let’s do a row each. There won’t be an awful lot yet, as it’s rather early for them.’

‘You mean “Don’t eat any or there won’t be enough”?’

Anne, feeling rather caught out, laughed, and said, ‘Something like that.’

They picked in silence until Arabella said, ‘Do you have brothers and sisters?’

‘No. I’m an only child.’

‘I’m one of them too. I hate it, don’t you?’

‘I’ve never really thought about it. My mother died when I was born, so I was brought up with an aunt and her child.’

‘What became of it, the other child? Do you see him or whoever it is?’

‘She was a girl, and the moment she was old enough, she emigrated to New Zealand. She’s married there, now.’

‘Still – you had someone to be a child
with.
That must have been fun.’

‘Well – in a way.’ Anne thought, as she had not done for some time, of the bleak and run-down rectory in Leicestershire where nothing had been fun, really, but one had always known,
with dismal certainty, where one was. ‘It was the kind of house where one was always eating the stale bread to use it up and never having new. And the garden. You could see everything in it
from everywhere – it wasn’t at all exciting: just safe. I don’t know whether that constitutes a happy childhood, do you?’