Odd Girl Out (31 page)

Anne thought, He’d never
think
of asking that: because he’d never
think
of that possibility. Then she thought again, and said, rather timidly, for she was a creature
without natural vanity, ‘You don’t mean that you might feel, you might find that you would be – ’

‘Jealous? No; that’s not what I meant. I think it would be much better if we all loved one another without any secrecy or bad feelings.’

‘Well – I don’t think I’d like – in fact, I’m sure I
wouldn’t
like to spend the night in bed with both of you.’ This seemed to her an
absurd idea; it had not occurred to her that Arabella’s instincts and feelings might be as varied as her own. As usual, when this topic occurred, which it did as little as possible, they
stopped it by mutual consent before it ran either of them into some (possibly different) cul-de-sac. For the rest of the afternoon, they potted tomatoes: Anne did fifty and Arabella ten. Then they
lay under the cedar and drank iced and well-minted Pimm’s and listened to the birds changing from blackbirds to owls as the sun went down, a creamy mist rose from the river at the end of the
garden, and the stocks began to fill the air with their scent.

‘Have you any money?’ Arabella asked, much later, in bed.

‘How do you mean? Oh. None of my own. Edmund gives me everything I need.’

‘Oh. I see,’ she added, with careful lightness.

The beginning of the fourth week of Edmund’s absence, Anne’s illness seemed very much on the wane. Her literary agent friend rang up and asked if she could come down for dinner and
the night, and Anne, although she did not at all want her, was too honest to lie about Edmund’s absence or her illness, and therefore was left with no decent excuse.

‘Len is coming for one night. Just dinner and one night,’ she told Arabella.

‘Who is he?’

‘She’s a she. She’s really called Leonora, but she hates that, so everybody calls her Len. She’s one of my oldest friends,’ she added, not saying that, in fact, she
was her
only
old friend. Except for Mrs Gregory and Dr Travers – who in their different ways hardly counted as company – Anne and Arabella had not spent any time at all with a
third person, since, of course, Edmund. The first question was where Len or Leonora was to sleep. Ordinarily she would have had the room which was now used simply for keeping Arabella’s
numerous possessions, and which was otherwise dominated by increasingly active and rather wicked kittens, whose characters, Arabella said, were going to the dogs, as their mother seemed to have got
tired of them. They were lapping up bowls of milk, Farex and minced-up fish by now, and stamped and swore at each other throughout their numerous meals. Ariadne still cleaned them up, and played a
few half-hearted games of ambush with them – letting them win – but on the whole she preferred to leave them to their intense and monotonous devices. These consisted of fighting/
playing with each other almost all the time that they were not asleep, being washed, or eating. It was decided that Len should be put in the other spare room, and that Arabella, who had, in any
case, been rumpling up her bed each morning for Mrs Gregory’s sake, should spend a night of unknown frightfulness with Ariadne’s brood. ‘Although, really, I think it is time they
were shoved out. Why don’t we do that anyway? They can jolly well sleep in the scullery.’

‘I think I’d like
one
night with them. Let’s do it the next day.’

So Mrs Gregory prepared the spare room, and Anne and Arabella went shopping for food. Their usual ways of eating – delicious snacks whenever they felt like it – would have to be
forgone. ‘Len thinks I’m a frightfully good cook,’ Anne explained, almost apologetically.

‘Well – you are.’

They planned on iced borsch, a haddock mousse and a green salad, and some cheese – whatever could be had.

‘There are always raspberries,’ Anne said. ‘We may be a bit tired of them but
she
won’t be.’

‘And I suppose we can’t watch “The Avengers” if she’s here.’

‘We could, if we brought the set downstairs.’

‘Not worth it: anyway, she’d probably think it rude.’

‘What shall we be talking about?’ she inquired later as she drove – barefoot, as usual – into Henley. With Anne, she drove very slowly and carefully, much in the way she
had driven on the first occasion by herself.

‘It’s funny: I always think of you as a very dashing driver.’

‘Not with people. I don’t mind being driven fast, in fact I like it, but I never do it myself, because I don’t want to be the killer or killing person.’

‘Do you mean, you wouldn’t mind if someone else killed you?’

‘Yes.’

‘Oh, darling! I would!’

‘Oh, darling, I won’t let them, then.’

They bought the food and then Arabella wanted a Mars Bar, and the shop that sold them also sold ice-cream, so they each had one of those. Anne refused more than a bite of a Mars Bar, because she
said she would get too fat. Arabella said there was nothing more annoying than somebody wanting one bite of anything that the other person was meaning to have all of. Anne then bought six Mars Bars
for Arabella which were put into a weak paper bag.

Len arrived about seven. Arabella, who was changing out of raspberry-stained jeans into something tidier, heard her arrival, looked out of a window and saw a gentle-looking middle-aged woman
with her hair in a white bun get slowly out of a red drophead MG. She carried one small, expensive-looking brief case and was wearing a green linen suit. Arabella, still watching, saw Anne come out
of the house, greet and embrace her in a manner both familiar and perfunctory. They had obviously treated each other in this way for years. Then they disappeared through the front door of the house
and she heard it shut. She picked a jasmine flower from outside her window and idly sucked its nectar. Then she wondered what she ought to wear, as she felt anxious about making a good impression
with Anne’s friend. In the end she settled for a pale pink sleeveless silk jersey that had a gold chain belt to go with it. She had some pink sandals somewhere, if only she could find them.
As she brushed her hair, she suddenly felt rather sick, and then so sick that she knew she would have to go and be it. By the time this was over, she had washed her face, and was again brushing her
hair, Anne was calling to her, ‘Come down and meet Len.’

Len and Anne were sitting at the entrance to the french windows in the sitting-room. Len was drinking a pink gin and soda, and Anne said that she had opened some champagne. Arabella said she
would rather have a brandy and soda. Anne looked faintly surprised, but said nothing, and having introduced the two women went to get Arabella her drink.

‘I hear you’ve been looking after Anne while she’s been ill and Edmund is abroad.’

Len smoked small cigars, and offered one now to Arabella, who shook her head.

‘It hasn’t been very difficult. In fact, I’ve enjoyed it.’

‘And Anne is looking as though she is far better, and Edmund is due back any day now?’

As these seemed to be statements, rather than questions, Arabella simply nodded. Then, she asked, ‘What is being a literary agent like?’ She felt it might be useful to know, in case
she hadn’t enough money and it turned out that she could be one.

‘Well –
I
like it, or I wouldn’t have stuck it for the last fifteen years. But it is rather like dealing with a host of egomaniacs on one side and a lot of artists
manqués or businessmen manques on the other.’

‘How do you mean?’ Anne had come back into the room with Arabella’s drink which she took gratefully – refusing a cigarette at the same time.

‘Well – nearly all authors are in need of endless comfort.
They
call it encouragement, but what it really is is flattery. They can’t help it, poor things, it’s the
solitary confinements they are so constantly prey to. Writing,’ she added to make her point clear. ‘And then, most publishers either think they have a genius for picking a good writer
without anyone else’s help, or, and often and, they think they are public servants, scraping along with the minimum of public backing, and therefore fearfully astute to be there at all. This
makes them tend to be stolid and mean. I’m in between. I have to negotiate the proper price for material that the solitary genius feels is priceless and the publishers often feel it is rather
kind of them to publish at all. It is frightfully funny, a lot of the time. They’re both wrong, you see, nearly always, but it is hopeless to say so.’

‘If you think that, why aren’t you a publisher? Or a writer?’

‘I’m not a writer because I’m not a writer, and I’m not a publisher because nobody has ever asked me to be one. Also I enjoy the freedom of being this kind of middleman.
I
like
flattering authors, because I’ve sincerely learned how awful it must be to be one, and I
like
dealing with publishers because a lot of them care about their product, as
it were. Not all, of course, but some. I’m in it for the people, really,’ she finished. Then, looking at Anne, she said, ‘A far cry from our Pitman’s Intensive Course.
I’ve never seen you looking so well. Glandular fever must have its points.’

‘I feel fine now.’

‘The other good thing is that every now and then, out of the blue, one finds a really good writer. That makes a lot of the rest of it worth while. I’ve always told Anne that she
would make a marvellous reader. She’s omnivorous, you see. And if you stay like that long enough, you acquire a taste. Are you a great reader?’

‘I’m hardly a reader at all. Anne has been introducing me, as it were. It isn’t one of my resources, if indeed, I have any.’

‘You have music. Arabella is devoted to music and she knows a hell of a lot about it.’ Anne said this to Len, and, in a way, this set the tone for the evening. Anne was constantly
extolling one to the other, and having these encouragements either ignored, or given the minimum of attention. Len wanted to talk about the past with Anne, and the present in her work. Arabella
wanted to talk about the present with Anne, and not very much at all with Len, whom she did not dislike, so much as feel afraid of. She had some odd idea that a person who read constantly, and
chiefly fiction at that, might know some difficult things about human nature that she did not want to have explained to her. They had dinner in the kitchen. Arabella ate very little, which worried
Anne, who tried to conceal this and succeeded with Len and not at all with Arabella. ‘I ate some Mars Bars: they’ve filled me up,’ she explained to Len. Len ate a great deal,
talked considerably, and not boringly, Arabella decided, and the small forays that were made into Anne and Len’s past were obviously now too routine to them both to require much audience or
indeed time. After raspberries – only Len had them – they decided to have coffee in the sitting-room.

While Anne was making this, Len and Arabella were left on their own.

‘What are you going to do when you leave here?’ Len asked.

‘I haven’t the slightest idea.’ Arabella said this stiffly, because she was so frightened by the prospect that she could not imagine anyone asking her from either idle or
amiable curiosity.

I’d like to get some sort of job, I suppose.’

‘What kind?’

‘Well – you see, I don’t know. I’m not in the least qualified for anything.’

‘Can you type?

‘No.

‘Honestly, I can’t do anything,’ she said, having tried a Gauloise and found that she still didn’t want to smoke.

‘
Get
qualified, my dear. That’s the only thing to do unless you fall in love or don’t care who you marry.’

Anne arrived with the coffee at this point. Arabella felt then so unhappy, so hopelessly out of what must be presumed to be her depth, that she felt she should go to bed. However, she did not
want to worry Anne, so she drank some coffee and a little green chartreuse that Len turned out to have brought with her as a present.

‘Do you remember?
Don’t
overtype, Miss Hayling. That awful woman in a spotted muslin dress and spots everywhere else who prowled about and changed the gramophone
records.’

‘And you always managed to get away with murder. They simply gave me up when it came to shorthand.’

‘Nonsense!
You
gave it up. You met Edmund. People like Edmund are thin on the ground,’ she added, turning to include Arabella in this part of the conversation.

‘I met Edmund
long
after that – ’ Anne began, and then couldn’t be bothered to finish the argument. She suggested that Arabella put on some music, and so she did.
This did not precisely bring all conversation to an end, but it provided, as Arabella had previously noticed that it often did, a let-out in the way of serious attention. Divide the attention: that
was the thing.

But the time came when Anne said that she was going to do one or two things in the kitchen, and would Arabella look after Len. She said this so firmly, that neither of the other two thought of
arguing with her. When she had gone, shutting the door behind her, Arabella got to her feet to take off the record, and said, ‘Would you like some more of your own drink to drink?’

‘What I would really like would be a whisky and soda if that’s possible.’

‘Oh yes, I think so.’ Glad of the employment, she opened the drinks cupboard and found the whisky and a glass. It’s really Edmund’s evening drink, that’s why
it’s put away.’

‘Have you known Edmund and Anne for long?’

‘Only a few weeks. And Edmund had to go away after I’d been here about a week.’ She decided to give herself a stiff brandy and soda, and to have one more shot at a cigarette.
She sensed danger, not hostility, but danger, which was somehow far worse. The cigarette seemed all right: she took a deep draw on it and said, ‘Edmund and I are sort of related. My mother
was once married to his father.’

‘And are you and Anne sort of related too?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘You know what I mean.’

Arabella turned to face her steadily. ‘Right. Well, yes, we are – since you ask.’

‘I didn’t really have to ask: I knew.’