Something in Disguise (35 page)

So here she was, in the Mounts’ spare room having a rest so that she would be all right for their party that evening. Mrs Mount had been cooking and/or assembling food for days: Rosemary
had asked several men and Sandra was having her best friend; a number of Mount relations were attending – they would be thirty-eight in all. Alice had never been good at parties (in fact
she’d been to very few), but the Mounts’ parties were the worst she’d ever tried to be good at. Everybody seemed to know everybody else extremely well: there was a great deal of
public badinage, and when – as experience had awfully taught her it invariably was – this was directed at her, she was struck dumb, paralysed, utterly done for. There were always too
many people for the room: the large dining-room table loaded with food took up a good third of it. It was also very hot, as Mrs Mount imported fires and put them all over the place so that the room
was alive with scorching culs-de-sac and perfectly airless. None the less, Mounts and Mount guests managed to eat and drink and think of things to say to one another for hours and hours, and Alice,
as a quasi-Mount, was in agony. Sometimes, late in the evening, they played terrible games that drew attention to people and, she felt, particularly to her: ‘games’ being a kind of
cynical synonym for torture. Hie worst feature of these social nightmares was the feeling that everybody was enjoying themselves except her. It seemed so unfair: like being colour blind or tone
deaf or not being able to smell or something. ‘Relax!’ people would cry; ‘not to
worry
!’ ‘She’s shy,’ someone would inevitably, but publicly,
confide – as though she was, not tone, but stone, deaf. The last, awful thing that Alice had noticed about the Mount parties was that they were all exactly the same. Since knowing and
marrying Leslie, she had been subject to several and she could not find anything different at all about any of them. After hours of refusing more and more food (people always pressed refreshments
upon you if you didn’t talk much) and trying desperately to talk at all; escaping sometimes to ‘powder her nose’ – really to go somewhere where she could open a window and
breathe – she would return to find the hard core of the party plotting some awful game where you were sure to have to stand up in front of everyone and pretend to be somebody or do something
while everyone else shrieked with laughter at how funny you were and how badly you were doing it. She had begged, first the family generally, and finally Leslie, to let her off this particular part
of the festivities, but they wouldn’t: Mrs Mount took the view that the less Alice wanted to play games the more good it would do her to play them, and Leslie always said that he simply
didn’t understand what she was talking about. He always said that. At this point it occurred to her to wonder whether she got on worse – or less – with Leslie than with any of the
rest of the Mounts simply because she saw so much more of him? Because really things had reached a point where even half hours in the nursing home with Leslie had been a peculiar ordeal. At least
Rosemary and Mrs Mount did most of the talking: but Leslie expected her in this, as in most else, to be like his mother and sister. Some part of her had been making kind of emergency allowances for
how everything seemed to her – being in the nursing home, staying at Mount Royal as the house was unlaughingly called – but now, considering Leslie, she inevitably thought of their
bungalow and going back there alone with Leslie to live. For a few moments she thought carefully about each room there; the black glass and black Formica in the bathroom that showed every mark,
even water looked shocking on them, the bleak prettiness of their bedroom (at any moment now, marital relations were to be resumed, according to both the doctor and Leslie: it was like some ghastly
weather forecast), the sitting-room or lounge that never, whatever she did in it, seemed to be inhabited, seemed just to tolerate pieces of furniture, and sometimes people as well, being there: it
was actually filled to the brim with Mount wedding presents – the cocktail cabinet (Mr and Mrs Mount), the coffee table (Rosemary), the corner cupboard (Aunt Lottie), the black armchairs
bought with the Albert Mounts’ cheque and the beetroot-coloured rug that Leslie’s best friend’s mother had made for them; and finally, the spare room – Leslie still called
it his study – that Elizabeth had actually stayed a night in with Claude . . . ‘I do know something – because of loving him,’ she thought gratefully. She thought of the
windswept and scarred piece of ground that was to become a neat little garden (no shade for years, because there were no proper trees on the whole estate), and then she simply thought, ‘I
must put a stop to it – all of it.’ and the next moment she was out of bed and dressing quietly and sensibly in her warmest clothes. She packed her small suitcase with a nightdress, her
kimono, some slippers and her sponge bag. All the time she felt not the slightest excitement or fear; nor did she think about what she was doing – she simply got on with doing it. Her purse
contained only fifteen shillings, but then in the wallet was the five pound note that May had given her on her wedding day – her very own money, and enough. Getting out of the house was easy:
everybody was shopping or at work excepting Sandra, and she was immersed in a bubble bath with Rosemary’s transistor going full blast. The danger was meeting any Mount returning, not so much
just outside the house, as she could hide in the laurel bushes, but in the street itself. It was five o’clock and the lamps were lit: they would recognize her easily if they saw her from a
car or a cab. She turned down the street away from the main road; it would be better to walk round the block. It was all quite easy, really, and in fact, suddenly got even easier. A cab set down a
woman laden with shopping bags: the driver was pleased to pick up a fare at once and take her to the station. In the cab it occurred to her that she had left no letter, no message, nothing. Would
they, would Leslie, perhaps, wonder what had become of her? They would think she was mad; but would they actually
mind
her disappearance? Not awfully, she hoped; she didn’t want to
cause them any trouble. By the time she reached the station she had decided that she had been quite right to leave no note; if she had, and they had found it at all soon, it was just possible that
Leslie would have come to the railway station in search of her. This thought unnerved her so much, that after she had bought her ticket to London, she hid in the Ladies until the train came in. She
would write a letter from Lincoln Street.

The only good thing that happened to May on Christmas Eve was that she got a telephone call from Elizabeth – all the way from Round Hill, Jamaica. It came through in the
afternoon while Mrs Green was still there, and she having, just that minute, witnessed May’s will, was very pleased: events of this kind were what she went out to work for.

‘Yes – it is really me,’ Elizabeth was saying.

‘Oh – darling, how lovely.’

‘How are you?’

‘I’m fine,’ May lied; what else could one possibly say? It didn’t matter anyhow, it was each other’s voices they were after, not what either of them thought or said
about anything. Mrs Green was going round the den shutting the narrow, gothic windows with the utmost meaning, although May couldn’t think why.

‘How’s Jamaica?’

‘It’s almost more like one imagines than I thought it possibly could be. Tremendously beautiful and worrying. Is Oliver spending Christmas with you?’

‘No, darling – he doesn’t seem able to make it. He seems rather low. Depressed,’ she added: the full luxury of talking to her daughter was beginning to penetrate: she
knew she would remember everything they said all day. ‘How is John?’

‘Well, he’s very well: only his daughter is threatening to come out here and she never seems to have a good effect upon anyone. That’s the only thing. How is
Herbert?’

‘He’s fine,’ May lied again. What could she say about him? Pride, unhappiness, years of protecting Elizabeth and months of not wanting to be possessive or get in her way
stopped her crying out, ‘He’s awful! He’s turned into a quite different person. I think he even hates
me
some of the time. I’m miserable and a lot of the time I feel
so ill I think I’m going to die.’ None of this came out: there was simply a short, and, Mrs Green thought, an unbelievably expensive silence. At
last
Mrs Browne-Lacey was
behaving like a lady: sitting about and wasting other people’s money in unusual ways.

‘When are you coming back?’ It would be lovely to know that: something to look forward to.

‘I don’t know. Well, I do, really. By the end of January, anyhow. Did you know I was having a baby?’

‘Oh
good
. When?’

‘May.’

‘Yes?’

‘I’m
having
it in May you idiot.’

And just as May was thinking that in that case, she must have been having the baby for quite a long time, Elizabeth said, ‘What I most wanted to say was, I’m sorry I sort of got
married behind your back: it wasn’t exactly not wanting you to be there –’ her voice tailed off.

May said, ‘Darling, that’s
quite
all right – of course.’ Indeed it was far more than all right, she thought, after they had said good-bye. Both of them knew
perfectly well why Elizabeth had behaved in this way; what they had both needed was for it to be made clear that the exclusion had nothing really to do with Elizabeth not wanting her mother. No
need to go further.

Mrs Green was simply waiting about in the hall outside the den.

‘I shut the windows because of the noise from the bird,’ she said, ‘as soon as I realized where your call come from.’ She waited, expecting news.

‘Elizabeth is having a baby,’ May said happily. ‘Isn’t that lovely?’

‘Oh madam!’

But that was all about the day that
was
lovely. Mrs Green went just before lunch. May then realized that she had not bought enough bread to make bread sauce for the chicken that she and
Herbert were to celebrate Christmas with. This meant walking to the end of the drive and half a mile to the crossroads for the bus into the nearest place to shop. It was extraordinarily cold:
people kept looking at the still, congested sky and prophesying snow. She was frozen by the time she caught the bus, and never got warm again that day. The only bread left in the shop was the much
advertised pre-sliced Sorbo rubber so she bought one or two other things to make the whole journey feel more worthwhile. Then she longed for some tea or coffee before waiting for the bus back, but
the only place had a queue of people waiting for a table, there was only one bus back, and she had to give it up. It was nearly dark by the time the bus set her down, and she plodded back along the
road, up the drive, her exhaustion tinged with slight, persistent, humiliating fear. The dogs barked on her return: they had no discrimination, and were, in any case, bored to death. She knew that
the first thing would be to feed them.

One way and another, by the time Herbert returned – much later than she had thought he possibly would – she was feeling thoroughly overdone and worked up, and longing for a cosy
drink and chat.

She knew Herbert was in a bad temper before she even saw him, as he did not call out, ‘Here we are, m’dear; all present and correct.’ He didn’t call out at all, but she
heard him crashing about in his den, swearing in that peculiarly savage way that alarmed her enough to make interrupting him a minor ordeal.

‘Why the devil didn’t you light a fire in here?’

She had forgotten. At least, it hadn’t been worth lighting before she went shopping because it would simply have gone out. And since she’d been back she’d had so much
–

‘Give me a box of matches.’ He fumbled angrily with shiny, purple hands.

She had turned on the bigger electric fire just before lunch –

‘I can see that. I’m not a complete fool. It may be easier for you to use the electricity in this irresponsible manner, but it costs far more than lighting a good, old-fashioned
fire.’

‘Really, Herbert, I told you I had to go
out
.’

‘What on earth did you have to do that for?’

‘And anyway, good, old-fashioned fires have to be cleaned out and re-laid. They’re not necessarily cheaper – just nicer in some way. Let’s have a drink –’

‘What are we having for dinner?’

‘Well – I didn’t know what you’d feel like –’

He sat slowly back on his heels. While he turned his head slowly towards her as though he had a stiff neck and it was painful to look at her.

‘Didn’t know what I’d feel like,’ he echoed, ‘I see. So I come back frozen to the marrow after slaving away all day to a cold room and no food at all – in
order to have the pleasure of choosing which tin you will open –’

Here without either meaning to or being able to help it, she burst into tears. At once everything got better. While she was crying and explaining, more or less incoherently, that it wasn’t
just tins, she’d laid the fire specially to save Mrs Green – they’d run out of bread and what with waiting for the bus both ways you couldn’t leave the fire and she was
sorry she was such a hopeless housekeeper but she felt so rotten – he, making loud clucking noises, had helped her into (his!) chair and put her poor feet that she couldn’t feel on to a
footstool and found her a paper handkerchief and a cigarette and said that what they both needed was a stiff drink. So while she worked the bellows on the reluctant fire, he fetched glasses,
unlocked his cupboard, and for once gave her a whisky that was quite dark brown. He put her Christmas-present ostentatiously on top of his roll-top desk and she told him about the little mixed
grill she had planned for them. They listened to the seven-thirty news and then, just as he was getting himself a second drink and she was talking of going to the kitchen, the pains began. They had
never been so bad: appalling stomach cramps that doubled her up and made her sweat with pain, until she knew that she must vomit somehow or other. He supported her upstairs, put her in the bathroom
and when, gasping, retching minutes later, she was fairly sure she had finished, he practically carried her to bed. He said he would fill her a hot-water bottle and call the doctor (the only
telephone was in his den). She lay for what seemed a long time, shivering and sweating in bed: the nausea was dying down, and she felt thirsty and frightened. She knew she ought to undress, but
felt too weak to make the attempt. The question ‘What
is the matter
with me?’ recurred urgently in her mind and perhaps what frightened her most was finding that she was afraid
to think at all of an answer. It was awful feeling this kind of fright, and at the same time feeling too tired to bear it: she cried a little and couldn’t find a handkerchief and snuffled
quietly against the sheet. She tried to think what Dr Sedum would say to her in these horrible despairing circumstances, but nothing either useful or comforting came to her mind. It was cowardly to
be frightened like this: but she mustn’t make too much fuss or Herbert might get fed up with her, and she was utterly dependent upon him. ‘Like this, at any rate,’ she thought.
Her teeth were chattering and she felt clammy and squalid. She could hear Herbert’s measured tread on the stairs and then in the passage and tried to smile at him when he came in with the
hot-water bottle.