Something in Disguise (23 page)

That evening, because Elizabeth was coming, she realized how very little she and Leslie said to each other; up until now it had not seemed especially strange that she and Leslie talked to each
other much less than she had talked with May, for instance. But now she was afraid that Elizabeth would think it very odd, and in a desperate, last-minute effort to alter this situation, she tried
to chatter to Leslie. But Alice trying to chatter was so unusual, unlikely and unsuccessful, that after a short time Leslie asked her whether she was feverish, and after she’d said
‘no’, she couldn’t think of anything at all.

The next morning, she bought half a rabbit and some whiting for Claude. Leslie needed the car, so she took a bus to the station – a queasy, but not disastrous progress. She was far too
early, but it did not matter. It was a baking hot day and when she reached the platform, the station smelled of cool dirt. She sat on a hard bench and wondered whether anybody could tell, by
looking at her, that she was pregnant. Perhaps Elizabeth would stay for several days – for quite a long time. Her hopes rose as the train did not come. Very few people were waiting for it,
those that were had a holiday air: red-faced women in sleeveless dresses with shopping bags and either silent little babies in blue and pink nylon, like elves, or something out of an egg, or hot
toddlers in dungarees, burdened with awkward and favourite possessions, who tugged at any free hand to try and make something happen.

The signals changed; a feeling of routine or professional expectancy charged the station. Two porters appeared. An old man who had been walking down the track, climbed up on to the platform. A
case of carrier pigeons was moved nearer the line, and somebody cleared their throat into the loud-speaker.

She hardly recognized Elizabeth: new clothes, her hair cut differently and her tan made her look a different person – almost unbearably glamorous to Alice, who had found her marvellous
enough before. She wore a dark blue linen coat and skirt and carried a small red case. Claude was surely not in that?

They kissed, rather shyly, and Elizabeth said:

‘They wouldn’t let him travel with me: he’s in the guard’s van. I did go and see him several times, but I don’t think it made much difference to him.’

The guard was putting what looked like a small picnic basket on to the platform. When they reached it, Alice saw that it had a label saying,
SEYMOUR
,
BRISTOL
on it. No sound came from the basket. She bent over it.

‘I don’t think you’d better open it here. He might rush out.’

So she waited until they were in the taxi.

Claude, looking even larger than she remembered, crouched on his old blanket inside. He looked up at her and opened his mouth, but no sound came out.

‘Oh dear. I’m afraid he’s lost his voice. I’m not surprised, I must say. He went on and on about how much he hated everything all the way to Paddington and whenever I
went to see him in the van.’

She stroked him, and he winced as though he was past any such attention. He went on opening and shutting his mouth and staring resentfully at her: he smelled faintly of circuses. It was lovely
to see him again.

‘It is kind of you to bring him.’

‘That’s all right. It’s jolly nice to see you again.’

‘You look very sunburned.’

‘I’ve been in France.’

There was a silence. After a bit, and after thinking what to say, Alice said, ‘Our house – it’s a bungalow, really – is on a new building estate, so everything looks a
bit unfinished.’

‘I’m longing to see it.’

During the rest of the taxi ride, she asked about Oliver and May, and, finally, her father. Elizabeth was funny and animated about Oliver, said that May did not seem to be very well, and said
that Alice’s father seemed to be looking after her as much as he could.

After that, she suddenly started feeling very sick – so much so that she had to tell Elizabeth.

‘Do you want to stop and get out for a bit?’

‘It’s all right.’

After a bit, she said. ‘I’ll tell you if it isn’t.’

The road to 24 Ganymede Drive was only half made up. They lurched and jolted and dust came in through the windows, so Elizabeth shut them. As she leaned across to do Alice’s window, she
said, ‘Are you excited about the baby?’

And Alice answered in a colourless voice, ‘Oh yes.’

They opened the tricky little gate and walked up the path. Elizabeth insisted on carrying Claude’s basket. The moment Alice put the key in the lock, there was a frantic yapping. The puppy,
who had hurled himself against the shut door and fallen over, had picked himself up in time to hurl himself at them when the door was open. There was a heavy lurch in the picnic basket, and
Elizabeth tried to hold it higher from the ground.

‘Wait a minute: I’ll shut him in the bathroom. Please go in the sitting-room, Elizabeth.’

Elizabeth had plenty of time to look around the sitting-room. It had streaky black and grey Marley tiles on the floor, a fireplace of the kind that Oliver had once described as Builders’
Revenge, with cute little shelves made of tiles. There was a coffee table also made of tiles – rather improbable tropical fish – a sofa and two armchairs upholstered in black imitation
leather, a corner cupboard of limed oak and a rather large cocktail cabinet of walnut veneer. On this stood a wedding photograph of Alice and Leslie. Alice looked as though she had just sneezed and
Leslie seemed to have too many teeth. The curtains were blue linen, and Elizabeth suspected that Alice had chosen and made them. There was a fluffy rug the colour of beetroot juice in front of the
fireplace. There was a reproduction of Degas’s ‘Dancer’ in colour, and a mirror with the most serpentine wrought-iron frame. In the corner cabinet were some silver cups that she
guessed Leslie had won playing golf. She had put Claude’s basket down in the middle of the room, but she knew that Alice would want to open it herself. Just as she was beginning to wonder
what could have happened to her, Alice came in.

‘The puppy had made another mess: I’m so sorry.’ She looked rather green.

The basket was opened and Alice lifted him out, Claude turned his head from her and jumped clumsily to the ground. He then prowled slowly around the door and the windows with exaggerated
caution, his belly touching the ground. When he could find no way out, he went and crouched under the coffee table. He looked dusty and disgruntled. When Alice went to stroke him, he got up wearily
and crouched somewhere else.

‘He doesn’t remember me!’

‘He’s just upset. Perhaps he’s hungry.’

She fetched him a plate of rabbit: he sniffed at it and sneezed.

‘Perhaps he’s thirsty.’

Milk was brought. He grudgingly drank some of that, and then, with a gesture that seemed to Elizabeth deliberately involuntary he knocked over the saucer with one paw. Alice had made him a tray
with sand in it. He sauntered to that (‘He’s feeling more at home!’ Alice said) and spent about five minutes walking round and over it, scuffing sand out, settling himself with
his face turned towards the ceiling and a fixed expression and then changing his mind. When most of the sand was on the floor he got into the right position, his eyes became glassy and one natural
function, at least, was achieved.

‘Do you think he will get on with the puppy?’

‘No. I know he won’t. My mother-in-law gave it to me: I asked her not to but she did. I don’t know what to do. Perhaps they will keep out of each other’s way.’

But this, of course, was not possible in a small bungalow. After they had had lunch, Alice and Elizabeth made the experiment of bringing the puppy into the sitting-room. Claude uttered a single
cry of rage and despair and tried to get under the sofa while the puppy gambolled around and fell over him. He swiped at the puppy who retreated yelping. As it was clear that he could not possibly
get under the sofa, he jumped on to it and crouched there swearing continously under his breath. The rest of the afternoon was in the same key and Elizabeth realized that the situation was a crisis
for poor Alice. ‘You see, Leslie
likes
the puppy because his mother gave it to us. He doesn’t do anything about it, but he would never agree to getting rid of it. What shall I
do?’

Elizabeth did all she could. She helped with dinner: she cleared up after both the puppy and Claude. She even took the puppy for a short walk and he laddered her stockings. Taking these off in
the spare room that had been shown her with such humble anxiety for her comfort, she saw how brown her legs still were and felt so miserable, so homesick for John, so bewildered by the sudden,
horrible, inexplicable change in her life, that all Oliver’s cheering-up went for nothing and she wept. As she was washing her face she remembered what Oliver had said about having to spend a
fortnight in Cornwall with Leslie. Being in this house made that seem about like having measles compared to a life sentence. It was all too clear that poor old Alice was not happy. Why on
earth
had she done it? A mystery and as Oliver had once pointed out, many of them were horrid if you got at all close.

Leslie came back at a quarter to six, and by then Elizabeth felt as though she’d been in the bungalow a week. He embraced her facetiously, kissed Alice with more social practice, and said
he’d make them all a drink. This was a good idea, but when he went into the sitting-room to do this, he encountered Claude, who, having demolished the plate of rabbit and a raw whiting, was
grandiosely engaged upon the only other natural function left to him. The smell was awe-inspiring and Elizabeth had to admit that it was reasonable of Leslie to object. So Claude and his tray were
moved to Elizabeth’s room: she said she didn’t mind a bit. (This was true: she felt she would never mind anything again.) But Leslie was somebody who continued to discuss something
after it was over. The windows had all been opened; the puppy had been let in, the drinks were made, and Leslie had only just got into his stride about what coming into his home and finding Claude
doing that had been like. After two gins and tonics he was still on the subject of how much worse (worse?) cats were than dogs. ‘You’ve got a nice little pup for company,’ he said
over and over again. ‘You don’t want a dirty creature like that.’

They had dinner in the dining alcove. Roast lamb, mint sauce, rather old new potatoes and ageless, frozen peas. The summer pudding was excellent, and Elizabeth told Alice this but the poor thing
was by then too distressed to eat any of it. While she was making coffee, Leslie told Elizabeth that women who were expecting were always touchy; his mother had warned him of it; he was glad of
course that Alice had a stranger on the way and that he was sure it would be a boy. Elizabeth looked at her beautiful watch while he was getting his pipe, it was twenty to nine. She went to the
kitchen to see if she could help with the washing up and found Alice in floods of tears. There is a curious sensation of genuinely trying to comfort somebody who is sincerely unhappy when they are
utterly unused to being comforted. Elizabeth found that you quickly reach a point where anything you do feels dishonest; you are embracing or stroking a tree, not a person; any words you say sound
as though you have not understood or do not care: added to this, she felt that if Leslie came into the kitchen and found them, a kind of spurious treachery would be added to the scene.

They went to wash Alice’s face and to see Claude in the spare room. At first they could not find him but this was because he had gone to sleep on Elizabeth’s bed
in
her open
suitcase and mysteriously covered himself with her white cashmere cardigan. It was Alice who found him and who sank to her knees beside the suitcase to tell him he’d been hiding. He stared at
her coldly: his whole routine had been upset and grudges were very much his line, but Alice seemed neither to know this nor to mind. ‘The thing is, Elizabeth, that he
is
my cat and I
can’t – I don’t see why I should –’ And Elizabeth realized that she would start crying again if something were not done about it.

‘Of course he is,’ she said briskly. ‘I’m sure they’ll settle down together in a day or two. Don’t you think we had better take the coffee in to Leslie before
it gets cold?’

Alice nodded dumbly, sat at the dressing-table to powder her nose and met Elizabeth’s eye in the glass. It was funny, Elizabeth suddenly thought: if you didn’t say
anything
to
Alice you felt she understood everything you hadn’t said, but if you
said
anything at all, somehow you felt that whatever you’d said had been wrong and all communication with her
got blocked. She was trying to smile now: but as Elizabeth touched her shoulder – rigid with the inexperience of being comforted – the smile somehow turned into a face that Alice was
making – absurd and repelling: you had to think hard to be sorry for her.

But as soon as they were back in the sitting-room with the coffee, she felt sorry for Alice all right. Leslie put down his evening paper and started.

He didn’t want them to think him an unreasonable man, as a matter of fact that was the last thing that he was, so he defied anyone to think it, but he
did
believe in plain speaking,
he’d never been someone who minced their words and he had no intention of starting this evening. Everybody had got their coffee by now, and the two women were seated looking – he
thought expectantly – at him. In fact Alice was trying not to hate him, and Elizabeth was trying not to yawn. What it amounted to – after what seemed like hours but was, in fact, about
forty minutes – was that Leslie would not have that cat in the house. At any price, he had reiterated many times as though there could possibly be one. The third time that he said that Alice
had got the puppy after all, Alice said that she had had Claude first and that she didn’t really
like
the puppy. It was a present from his mother, Leslie said, thus putting it beyond
the realm of liking. The argument about whether Claude was clean in the house began. Leslie said look at what he had had to come home to, and Alice said that as soon as he was settled down Claude
would use the garden, but this simply drove Leslie back to square one: he would not have that cat in his house. Just as he was saying that Alice had got the puppy, after all, the telephone rang,
and this was so loud and surprising that Elizabeth, at least, jumped, thinking ‘Thank God’ without knowing why. Leslie went to answer it (the telephone was in his study) and came back a
moment later saying that the call was for Elizabeth. This seemed both to amaze and annoy him. Wondering what on earth Oliver was up to now, Elizabeth escaped to the study.