Odd Girl Out (13 page)

Janet lay rigidly apart from him: she was cold, her head ached, and what emotion she felt was anaemic outrage. Surely, he could have had the sense and feeling not to try that – straight
from one bed to another: surely he must see that it would take time and affection (the words sounded like pieces of period costume as she thought them) for anything ever to be all right again. So
he was simply trying to prove to her that it wasn’t – never could be. If he loved her, if he cared about her, if he felt anything for the children, surely he would not attempt anything
so important as their lives together with such mechanical unzest? I don’t understand him, she thought: but that thought had no effect upon her at all. I wish I was dead. That, at least, had
the element of gesture about it. She lay under the stiff, felty blankets, hugging this endful possibility and wringing comfort thereby. People would be sorry then: they would have some inkling of
what she must have been through.
He
would be sorry. I hate that young, rich, selfish bitch. Hatred was like brandy, or adrenalin: it did not make her sleep, but almost glad when Luke started
crying and she had to get up to him. She was careful about not waking her anyway wakeful husband.

Arabella lay in bed, with the black cat, Ariadne, beside her. She, the cat, had been in the bedroom, and on the bed at that, when Arabella went upstairs. Arabella had removed
as much of the bedspread as it was possible to do, and Ariadne’s umbrage at being moved at all had quickly died down. She now lay with her body under the clothes and her head leaning heavily
against Arabella’s neck. She was purring with the professional smoothness that denoted both years of practice and incessant vibration. Arabella was smiling in the dark, that suited them both.
Saved, she thought: and, This time yesterday – or the day before that … If Ariadne was thinking, it could only be, Any minute now – as Arabella could feel the minuscule thumping
and writhing within her tightly stretched for. ‘You have them with me: I don’t mind; I would like it,’ Arabella whispered, and Ariadne washed a paw briskly and then
Arabella’s neck. No offence meant, but nobody likes being told what to do when they will be doing it anyway. They’re awfully kind, nice, different people. I hope they will love me.

An owl was near them outside in the garden. The windows were open, and the scent of stocks and tobacco and jasmine and roses could be smelled. The evening silence allowed the night noises.
Moonlight fell in one delicate shaft across the littered carpet. Arabella lay, with the warm fur next to her, absorbing the extraordinary pleasure of being at home in a strange place.

A
WEEK
later, Ariadne had five kittens just below Arabella’s pillows on her bed. This news was broken to Anne and
Edmund by Arabella knocking on their bedroom door while they were having their usual, private breakfast. Anne, wearing his black-and-white-striped pyjama jacket, was eating toast and mulberry
jelly, and Edmund, wearing the other half of the pyjamas, was shaving with the bathroom door open.

‘She’s had them!’

At the same time that Edmund said, ‘What?’ Anne cried, ‘How many?’

‘Five. Three quite black, one striped, and one black and white. I thought she was starting last night, so I slept on the floor.’

‘You
what
?’ Edmund appeared with half his face still soapy: he used a cut-throat.

‘Slept on the floor. I was perfectly comfortable. It was just that I didn’t know how much room she wanted. It was all very neat, though: hardly any blood.’

Anne started to get out of bed, and then changed her mind. She had nothing on beneath the bedclothes. Edmund, who regretted having appeared in such a farcical manner, retreated to the bathroom
again. ‘It’s perfectly absurd to let a mere cat throw you out of your own bed.’

‘No cats are mere,’ Arabella answered. ‘Anyway, it’s not my own bed: I’m just staying: Ariadne
lives
here.’ She sat on the end of the bed on
Edmund’s side. ‘Do you think I could take her some breakfast? Something festive – like sardines?’

Anne smiled at her. Arabella really looked, and was, childishly excited: and Anne felt on her side about it. Birth was no mean affair. ‘Of course,’ she said. ‘On the third
shelf towards the left-hand end of the larder.’

‘The thing is, that I’ll find them all right, but I simply cannot open tins. I break that key thing, and the tin gets all jagged and then I can’t get whatever it is out and cut
myself.’

‘You get them, and a saucer, and bring them up to me.’

‘And some milk,’ she called: Ariadne hated milk that had been heated.

‘All right.’ Arabella had gone, leaving the door open.

The moment that she had left, Anne leapt out of bed and put on her dressing-gown. Edmund, who had cut himself, reappeared with a bit of Kleenex stuck to the wound, and said, ‘Really! You
shouldn’t have let her do that.’

‘Let who do what?’

‘Let that blasted spoiled cat have her kittens all over the poor girl’s bed.’

‘The poor girl has been encouraging her. I don’t think it matters at all. All
you’ve
ever said is, “As long as it’s not on
our
bed”.’

‘She’s been ill, and needs proper sleep. Besides, she’s coming to London with me today.’

‘Is she?’ It was the first time that Anne had heard of this plan.

Edmund started rummaging in his shirt drawer. After a moment of this, he said, without looking up, ‘She said she wanted to do some shopping, and so I thought we might as well go on the
same train. It saves trouble.’

Before Anne had time to ask – or to decide not to ask – ‘What trouble?’ Arabella returned with the sardines and a bottle of milk.

‘She won’t need a whole tin.’ Anne, who opened it with instant skill, put two fish on her coffee saucer and mashed them up with her knife. Then she took Edmund’s saucer
and said, ‘I’ll come with you. You’ll have to hurry if you’re going on the same train as Edmund.’

‘Oh Golly! I thought you said car, so there wasn’t such a hurry.’

‘I did: but still we’ll have to be off in twenty minutes.’

While Anne followed Arabella to her bedroom, she wondered why Edmund had said train when he obviously meant car. He only went to London by car when he had to view some house outside London, and
this, she knew, usually meant that he was away for the night. But he never went away for the night without saying something about it – usually several things about it – the previous
evening.

Ariadne lay on her side in the shape of a half-moon. She was purring, and flexing and reflexing her paws as the five tadpole heads butted and felt for milk. When she saw Anne and Arabella, she
raised her head slightly, the volume of purring increased, and she opened and shut her eyes very slowly as though she was broad-mindedly acknowledging outrageous compliments. Her thick black tail
beat gently against the pillows: she was in a state of voluptuous triumph. Anne held out the saucer of sardines; she observed, but did not attend to them. But when Arabella dipped her finger in the
saucer of milk and held it out, Ariadne cleaned it with her raspberry tongue, and then, getting slowly to her feet, arched her back in a luxurious stretch, yawned, and walking carefully over her
children, jumped lightly to the floor and settled down to the milk that Arabella had placed for her.

‘You’d better get dressed quickly if you’re going with Edmund.’

‘I’ll have a lightning bath.’

While she was gone, Anne looked with mingled irritation and amusement at the state of the room. Arabella had slept under an eiderdown and with what looked like her winter coat as a pillow.
Clothes, as usual, were everywhere, powder spilled, scent prevalent. On the dressing-table chair lay a buttercup-yellow linen suit with navy-blue stockings and yellow shoes beside it. Her London
outfit, thought Anne. Some feeling of – not precisely anxiety, nor resentment – touched her: she imagined a day in London with Arabella: shopping for things that she, Anne, could not
possibly afford. Anne would sit in a spidery gilt chair, while Arabella paraded and asked her advice. They would lunch off a little, very expensive food – like oysters at the bar at
Bentley’s. Perhaps they would look at some pictures in the afternoon, and then Anne would do the one dull thing she had to do in London – take that wretched lamp to be mended at a place
in the King’s Road. But she had not been asked. Edmund and Arabella had made this plan without reference to her at all. But then, Edmund had to go to his office, and heaven only knew what
Arabella had to do. She probably had friends in London; people of her own age whom she wished to see. She would have a good chance to get on with some serious gardening – something that had
proved impossible with Arabella about. There was plenty to do: she hated London, really: it was foolish to worry.

Arabella came back in her bathrobe with wet hair. She dressed with a speed that was remarkable, but her hair dripped on down her back, making small dark circles on the yellow linen.

‘You can’t go to London with your hair like that!’

‘It’ll dry in half an hour if Edmund’ll put the hood down. It was filthy: practically lice-ridden.’ She began cramming all kinds of things into a yellow leather bag. She
hung a heavy gold pendant round her neck. It had a complicated safety clasp. ‘Could you do it for me? It’s an awful nuisance, but Greg gave it to me, and swore it was pre-Columbian, so
Clara
forced
me to have this done.’

‘Who was Greg?’

‘Greg? Well – he was a kind of a film-star Mummy married for a bit. The only good thing about him was his place in Mexico. Otherwise he was just a muscle-bound bore. A sort of
out-of-work Tarzan, not able to make up his mind whether it was Mummy or I who was Jane. Mummy won, of course, but
I
didn’t want him, so there was no problem: except it would be lovely
to beat her at her own game.’

Edmund called – without much hope, as Anne could hear – ‘Are you ready?’

‘Two ticks.’ She brushed her wet hair vigorously, and drops of water spurted from the brush and her head. Ariadne had finished her milk and returned to her young.

‘I’ll get her off here before you come back.’

‘No need. No need at all.’

‘You
are
coming back?’

Arabella swung round from the dressing-table. ‘Of course I am! I love it here! It’s just that I’ve got to do some things in London. I rather left things in a mess. You
know.’

Anne didn’t know, but thought she understood. Arabella had never referred to the situation that had led to her abortion, and Anne now imagined that there must be things she had to settle,
somehow, with someone. For all Anne knew, the poor girl had been suffering about whoever it was, but not feeling strong enough to face it.

‘You’d better take a mac,’ she said, far more confidently. ‘They said it was going to thunder and rain.’

‘Haven’t got one. They’re either too cold, or else you sweat in them. I really prefer getting wet.’

Edmund now appeared at the door. There was hardly any Kleenex stuck to his face now.

‘Look!’ said Anne.

‘Very nice,’ he answered absently, and then looked across the room at Arabella. ‘How much longer are you going to be?’

Anne said, ‘If you’re taking the car, it doesn’t matter so much.’

Edmund said – almost sharply, ‘I have to take the car when I’m going out of town to view. But don’t worry, we’ll be back for dinner.’

Which they were not.

Edmund had decided to take the MG, but it took some time to get the hood down.

‘In America, you simply push a button and it all folds up of itself.’

‘I dare say it does,’ Edmund replied. He hated getting his hands dirty with the hood, and he did not like driving with it down as the wind always messed up his hair. He could not
think why he had bought the car in the first place, and determined upon changing it as soon as possible.

‘What a heavenly car.’ Arabella said this in what he privately described as her affected voice. ‘And my hair will soon dry in the sun.’

‘There isn’t much sun.’ There wasn’t; it was hazy and still, with the feeling of a storm lying in wait.

‘In a minute, I shall say, “Are you cross with me?” and you’ll say, “Of course not”, but you will have been and you’ll be glad I noticed and
minded.’

Edmund found himself smiling. He glanced at her; the tobacco hair was streaming out behind her so that one ear could be seen – not quite so pale as her face, and charmingly elaborate in
contrast to the long, simple curve from her cheekbone to her chin.

‘All right; and then what will you say?’

‘I don’t know whether you like having conversations when you are driving. Only very good and very bad drivers do, I find.’

‘And which am I?’

‘Well – you might be somewhere in between.’

Edmund decided to use the M4 after all.

‘Let’s assume I’m very bad,’ he said, ‘and see what that leads to.’

There was a short silence and he glanced at her again. Her long pale hands were folded together in her lap. She bit her nails, he noticed, as he had noticed before.

‘Do you ever have parties?’ she asked eventually.

‘Not really what you would call parties. Sometimes a friend of Anne’s comes to stay the night, and once a year my father comes to visit us – ’

‘The one who married Clara?’ she interrupted.

‘Of course. I’ve only got one father.’

‘Lucky old you. So – in a way, we are related?’

‘Only by marriage. Not really related.’

‘Oh.’

She sounded so forlorn that he added, ‘But in a way, of course, we are quite as much related as some cousins are.’

‘It’s clever of you not to have parties.’

‘Why?’

‘I suppose it’s because you simply don’t need them. Parties are for hunting, aren’t they?’

‘You could say that,’ he answered, although the idea had never actually struck him.

‘And for being hunted, of course.’

‘Do you like parties, Arabella?’

‘You mean, do I like being hunted? That’s a hopeless question. To begin with, hunters and hunted aren’t divided between the sexes. To go on with,
people
aren’t.’