Something in Disguise (8 page)

‘And now it’ll go on for ever and ever,’ thought Alice. It seemed impossible that somebody could turn out to be so different all the time; surely they must
sometimes have been it before – and she had simply never noticed? And it was no good saying that love was blind, because she was far from sure what love was – now. It was obviously her
own fault for expecting a miracle, but she had thought that the reason that people made so much fuss about (going to bed with someone) was because it was the only certain way of having an intimate
friend. All that (sex) would only be possible if you felt really close to the person all the time when they weren’t (making love to you). He wasn’t unkind to her: she simply felt
miserably shy with him – in fact, exactly as she felt with everyone else, only now, with him, there were more, and more awful opportunities for feeling shy. For the hundredth time she went
back to her meeting with Leslie: on a beach in Sitges. He and some friends were playing with a large rubber ball which had fallen near her and bounced off her back. He had come to apologize and she
had sat up. She had been wearing a navy one-piece bathing suit and a huge pink straw hat (she always had to be careful of the sun on her skin). He had lingered, asked her if she would like to join
in the game: she had shaken her head, smiling too much to conceal how nervous she felt and also not to seem rude. It was very kind of him to ask her. Then, a bit later, they had met in the sea, and
he had asked her whether she was enjoying herself and she had said yes, although she hadn’t been, much. Holidays were always difficult if you were on your own. How had he known that? He could
tell. He was bronzed which made his eyes look bluer, more piercingly kind. She had had drinks with him and his friend (who’d been best man at the wedding), and then lunch.

After that, they had met every day until her holiday time was up. He had proposed to her their last evening among the floodlights, red gravel and green hillocks of the miniature golf course. She
had admired him; she was deeply flattered by his attentions to her (nobody had ever treated her like that in her life; or anything like that when she came to think of it, which during the holiday
she unceasingly did); he was all masculine steadiness and assurance and she imagined that he understood her. She was nearly twenty-six and nobody had ever proposed to her before, or for that matter
got anywhere near it. She had said yes and found she was trembling so much that he had given her a brandy before walking her home to her hotel. On the way back, he’d found a dark archway and
kissed her in an exploring kind of way. Distaste and gratitude and the odd tremor of nervous curiosity. ‘You’re shy – you’re very tense,’ he’d murmured.
‘Don’t worry, I’ll always be kind to you.’ Gratitude had welled over everything else: indeed, now, when she remembered his voice saying that, she was back to her nearest
point of loving him, of knowing now, that then she had thought it was the beginning of love. Perhaps if they’d gone back to Sitges for their honeymoon it would have been better? But he had
said it was too early in the year; they wouldn’t be able to bathe, and the golf course in Cornwall was a very good one. And the hotel, he had assured her, would be first class – nothing
on the cheap and much more reliable food. She had had a couple of lessons at golf, but she was absolutely no good and uninterested in the game: so then she’d walked around with him for a day
or two, and then, because she felt tired nearly all the time, she’d simply stopped walking round. ‘Have a nice rest,’ he had said: he seemed very much in favour of that. So
she’d tried, but lying down in the afternoon simply made her feel restless and a bit guilty. (Daddy would have roared with laughter at a healthy woman mollycoddling herself.) So she used to
go for walks on the cliffs above the sea, making sure that she got back to the hotel before Leslie returned from his afternoon round. Once she wrote a poem about a seagull and being lonely, and
this made her feel much better for a day or two. When, at tea, she told Leslie that she had been for a walk and watched this seagull he said he was glad she had been amusing herself, so she
didn’t tell him about the poem. He frequently asked her if she was happy and she knew that he felt sure she was, so of course she said yes. She supposed the sex part of marriage got better as
you got used to it. It couldn’t possibly go on being like it was in Cornwall, because otherwise people surely wouldn’t stay married even the amount that they did. Once she had rung up
home, and May had fortunately answered (she’d picked the afternoon when Daddy would be having his rest) and apparently Claude was perfectly all right except that he’d given the window
cleaner an awful fright by jumping on to the top of a sash window while it was open and being cleaned so that it slammed down on the man’s arms and nearly knocked him off his ladder. He was
marvellously agile for his weight and age, Alice thought, and he’d always liked giving people surprises. His canker was worse, and when May had managed to get a few drops in his ears,
he’d gone on shaking them out for hours over all kinds of things . . . Her father was fine, May had volunteered, adding, ‘He keeps buying things for the lawn. You know how the moment
he’s stopped worrying about the Budget, he starts on the lawn.’ She had not said anything about herself, and Alice afterwards felt ashamed of having forgotten to ask.

The fortnight in Cornwall had got used up: now she was packing to go. She wondered how much she would remember it when she was old. Four kinds of meals every day. Breakfast with Leslie in the
dining-room: stewed prunes or corn flakes, bacon and egg or sausages and tomato, tea or coffee, rubbery toast, not enough butter and Cooper’s Oxford marmalade. Leslie read the
Express
and she had
The Times
, which impressed him. In between reading their papers, people looked out of the windows and wondered aloud about the weather, which was showery enough to keep them
wondering. Lunch in the Golf Club, a room which gave the impression of being a Tudor swimming bath, as it was immense, very low-ceilinged, with oak panelling and incredible clashing echoes: people
laughed like horrible giants about their morning game, and a fork dropped was like the clash of spears in a Roman epic film. Tea in the television lounge at the hotel; deep chairs and little
rocking tables covered with scalding silver jugs and teapots (she liked China and he liked Indian), mercilessly dainty sandwiches and very small, evil, shining cakes. Dinner in a short silk dress
– a bit shivery but everyone wore them; thick or clear, turbot or sole, chicken or veal, crème caramel or ice cream and cheese. A drink in the bar with coffee, perhaps a bit more
television – and bed. Leslie always let her go to the bathroom first; she undressed in there. The worst part was lying in bed waiting for him to come out in his pyjamas, because sometimes he
climbed into her bed and sometimes he didn’t, and whichever he did seemed wrong. Afterwards she would lie awake in the dark blaming herself variously for not having the right instincts, not
being attractive enough, for not, perhaps, recognizing that this was what women had to do in return for being clothed and fed and looked after all their lives. This last was the worst, and she
tried strenuously not to believe it, at the same time feeling that as it was the most despairing likelihood it was probably true. It would be better for there to be something wrong with
her
than for it to be awful for everyone – all women, at least. She was docile, passive, even brave when he hurt her, which he did a good deal at first; she tried to be affectionate, to conceal
her senses of isolation and embarrassment and inadequacy, but in the end she decided that he did not seem to notice her much. One night he gently touched her breasts – which were large and
painfully tender – and murmured something about them being lovely: she felt her whole body begin to respond, as though sealed eyelids had opened for the first time inside her, but then he had
crushed himself upon her and the feeling vanished. She only had it once, and even by the end of two weeks she began to wonder if she had imagined it.

She had finished the packing – Leslie’s and her own. Leslie was downstairs paying the bill, and just as she closed the last case, there was a knock on the door.

‘Porter, madam.’ He was old and short and very broad, and came sideways through the door out of habit. His ears stuck out and he leered like a horrid old version of Punch.

‘Just the four. And I hope you’ve enjoyed your
stay
, madam.’

‘I hope I have.’ It came out before she could stop it, and, blushing, she stalked angrily out of the room, slipped on one of the brass studs that nailed the carpet down and nearly
tripped.

‘Oops-a-daisy,’ he said in his mechanically fruity old voice. In the lift, he fixed his eyes on a point just below her stomach and remained unwinking and motionless as they
descended. If he’d moved or said anything, she could have told him to stop staring at her, but he’d had far too much practice: the lift cage simply became charged with unclean
thoughts.

In the reception hall he turned into a bustling, obsequious crab – treating all their luggage as though it was desperately heavy and very fragile – filled with atom bombs. Leslie
gave him a pound.

They had lunch on the train. There was a small, brilliant slug in her watercress: she thought it looked very pretty, but it made her not want the watercress and when Leslie discovered she
wasn’t fancying it, he gave her an immensely knowing smile and said he wondered whether there might not be – you know – a little stranger on the way. He hadn’t seen the
slug. After lunch, Leslie went to sleep and she did some of
The Times
crossword – she still felt privileged to have this newspaper all to herself, instead of yesterday’s
scrumpled up by Daddy and with all the easiest clues done. London: Paddington station. It was very hot; the air under the glass-domed roof was thick with dust and illuminated by majestic shafts of
sunlight – cosmic revelation falling upon the paltry antics of arrival and departure.

‘Come
on
, dear. You’re daydreaming!’

She wondered how quickly he would descend from admiring her for constantly doing something which was to him so incomprehensible, into irritation at having to keep prodding her into life on his
terms. Getting used to people cut both ways. They were going to the Station Hotel – have a gin and tonic while they waited for the Bristol train. In the bar she remembered that May had said
that Elizabeth had gone to stay with Oliver in London. ‘I could ring her up,’ she thought suddenly, feeling urgent and homesick. So she told Leslie, who was having an argument with a
man at the bar about underfloor heating, and the woman at the desk put her in a telephone booth and got the number.

Oliver answered. There was a lot of talking in the background.

‘
Who
? Hold on a sec while I turn the gramophone off.

‘My dear Alice. No – she’s out. She’s cooking dinner for some Christian Scientists in Pimlico. Me? Oh – I’m doing a spot of reviewing:
Julius Caesar
on
L
.
P
.
S
for a friend’s magazine. Just a little job. How are you? Was it foul in Cornwall? The weather, I mean,’ he
added.

‘A bit changeable. I’m at Paddington.’ She could not think of anything interesting to say. There was a short pause, then she said, ‘We’re off to Bristol on the six
forty-eight.’

Another short pause. ‘I see,’ he said.

‘How’s May?’

‘I don’t know, really. She keeps saying she’s coming up, and then she doesn’t seem to make it I’ll give her your love.’

‘And to Elizabeth.’

‘Of course. Come and see us if you’re in London.’

‘I will. Goodbye.’

He said goodbye at once: she imagined him starting his gramophone again; immediately devoting his brilliant, critical attention to the schemes of the Roman senate. If he hadn’t been so
brilliant, she would have been hopelessly in love with him. He was so attractive, so entertaining; he had such an air of constantly finding life easy and amusing, of being able to do anything if
only he felt like it, that even things like going with him to return the empties to the pub turned into a sort of holiday venture. But he was far, far too clever for her: also she was two years
older than he was, and anyway, almost as soon as she met him, he became a kind of relation. And this last, she thought, going to pay for her telephone call, did not seem to make knowing people or
being able to talk to them any easier. She thought of the Mount family – now all turned at one stroke into relations – waiting in Bristol for her to get on with them . . . Her
mother-in-law at least was kind.

Mrs Mount
was
kind. As they did not arrive until nearly ten o’clock, she was sure they must be very tired and hungry, in spite of them having had, as they had told her they would,
dinner on the train. There was an immense cold collation laid out in the Mounts’ gloomy dining-room: ham, tongue, spiced loaf, potato salad, beetroot, pickles and radishes, tinned fruit,
home-made caraway seed cake and bakewell tarts and some pastel coloured junkets. There was tea, coffee, whisky and pale ale. Mr Mount said it was quite a feast, whereupon Mrs Mount described it as
just a snack. Rosemary, dressed in ski pants and smoking through an exceptionally long holder, rolled her eyes knowingly at Alice and said that she was sure Alice knew what parents were. Sandra,
wearing white tights, an imitation lizard skin tunic and silver plastic boots, said nothing at all. She was so staggered by her own appearance that she was entirely taken up with looking at herself
in various mirrors, or watching the others seeing her for the first time and willing them to be amazed. But, ‘
You
look smart, Sandra,’ Leslie said kindly, spoiling it all. It was just
as well he was so frightfully stupid and tasteless; it knocked out any possibility of incest, which otherwise appealed to her as the simplest and wickedest way of shocking everyone at once.

Alice, who was really tired and had eaten a large dinner on the train to fortify herself against this homecoming to her inlaws’ house, looked frantically at the plate that Mrs Mount had
heaped up for her. She said that she was not very hungry and looked at Leslie for support, but he quelled her by saying that he could always fancy Mother’s food, however much he had eaten
elsewhere. The room was very hot: her hay fever had started with the country air and the anti-histamine pills always made her feel stupid, but some, at least, of the food on her plate had to be
eaten; some questions – about Cornwall, the hotel, her family’s health and so on – answered. Leslie was soon engaged upon business gossip with his father while Mrs Mount told her
which shops were reliable in Whiteladies Road, Rosemary told her about a hairdresser whose favourite client she was – he was Italian and need she say more? Sandra stared at her and asked
whether she had ever learned judo or been to America. Halfway through the meal, there was a scratch on the door which Mrs Mount then opened, and a huge, heavy dog waddled in. It lay down at once
between two electric fires and immediately began to snore. At intervals, and in comparative silence, it emitted offensive, and seemingly endless smells. Mrs Mount, Alice discovered, was the sort of
person who, when she found that you did not eat what was put in front of you, simply gave you a huge plate of something else. This did not strike Alice as especially kind, but obviously Mrs Mount
thought it was: she knew everybody knew that she was kind and she was the sort of person who always said things and always did them, too.