Odd Girl Out (22 page)

‘Have you got the doctor’s number?’

‘It’s in the address book in the hall, Miss, but it won’t do any good now. He’ll be out on his rounds – diagnosing ’flu and colds. It’s all he seems to
think of. That and rheumatism – and the Lord knows there’s nothing he can do about that.’

‘Well – when I take the flowers up, I’ll ask her whether she would like me to call him.’

‘You could do that,’ Mrs Gregory conceded, but grudgingly: it was clear that she was going to be off the premises before there could be any emergency for her to rise to. But she had
Miss Blenkinsopp down the lane, and she was getting on the late side. If she arrived in time, Miss Blenkinsopp gave her a hot dinner; if not, not. She took off her overall, hung it on its peg by
the kitchen door, and took her coat and matching bottle-green hat off the hanger and shelf above it. Her hair was the colour of bleached wood. ‘If only her troubles were little ones,’
she remarked as she buttoned up her coat. ‘A house without children isn’t the same at all. But there it is. Nature is mysterious – you have to grant that.’

‘Thank you for all your help,’ Arabella said, wondering what on earth Mrs Gregory had just been driving at.

‘Anyways – I’ll see you tomorrow: you can count on that whatever. And if that Leaf comes round this afternoon, he’s to get one sandwich to his tea and no cake.
That’s what he gets, but he’ll try anything.’ She left then, and Arabella realized that she wanted Anne to be pregnant, and that she had been talking about the gardener.

Arabella threw her mug of Nescafé down the sink, lit a cigarette and tried to sort out whether Mrs Gregory’s views on the seriousness of Anne’s illness could be founded on
anything more than macabre hope. No, she decided: Anne was about as ill as poor Jane Bennet had been after her silly mother had made her ride miles in the rain to catch young Bingley. She went
carefully upstairs with the roses for Anne.

Anne was crying. This shook Arabella so much that she put the roses on the floor and knelt by Anne’s bed: Anne went on not saying anything, with tears falling, and Arabella, after a
moment, took her in her arms, and with one hand stroked the short, damp strands of hair from Anne’s forehead.

‘What is it, darling? Do you feel awful?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Do you think it would be a good idea if I rang the doctor?’

Anne seemed to assent to this, but stayed in Arabella’s arms. Then, she said, ‘I don’t know why. I just have an awful feeling of fear and foreboding.’

‘You mustn’t. It’s just because you feel ill. Have a little more orange juice – you’ve hardly drunk any, and it’s supposed to do you good.’

She relinquished her hold on Anne gently, poured out a glass of the juice, and then propped her up in her arms again to drink it. When Anne had drunk a little, she said, almost pettishly,
‘I
don’t want to see a doctor in the least, but it’ll be the first thing Edmund asks when he comes home and if I haven’t he’ll pretend I’m
pretending.’

‘Well – I’ll call him. Would you like me to change your sheets and get you some water to wash in?’

‘I’d love some clean sheets. I just couldn’t face Mrs Gregory. I could wash, if you could bear to do the sheets.’

‘Of course. Where are they?’

‘The linen cupboard’s at the bottom of the passage, just before you go downstairs. Our sheets are on the second shelf on the left-hand side.’

‘All right. But I’ll ring the doctor first.’

When Arabella had gone on these missions, Anne sat up and swung her legs over the side of the bed. She felt faint, and the effort made her sweat again. She must get a dressing-gown or something
before Arabella came back. What she really wanted was a tepid bath: she felt so squalid and somehow it seemed a waste of clean sheets not to have one. She got herself to the bathroom, put a towel
round her and started both taps of the bath. Then she weakly cleaned her teeth: the inside of her mouth had that slippery, viscous feeling that she associated with fever. Better get on with the
bath before Dr Travers turned up and told her that she’d better not have one.

By the time Arabella returned with the linen, she had run the bath and was sitting on the bathroom stool waiting to explain this so that Arabella would not come in when she was naked. Arabella
said OK, and that Dr Travers was out but that his wife was getting a message to him and was sure he’d be along some time in the afternoon. ‘But don’t lock the bathroom door, in
case you faint or anything,’ she added.

This made Anne try to hurry with her bath, and when she got out of it, everything dissolved and went dark and she found herself on the floor with Arabella bending over her.

‘It’s all right. You did faint. I shouldn’t have let you bath alone.’

‘Don’t cry,’ she added, and Anne realized that tears of weakness and of shame had begun again. Arabella picked up the bath towel, lifted Anne under her arms and put her on the
stool. Then she wrapped the towel round her and began gently to dry her.

‘I feel so – ’

‘Never mind.’

‘So squalid – and hopeless.’ Then she looked up at Arabella who was leaning over her carefully drying the back of her neck. ‘I’m no good without clothes: I look
awful: can’t help it, it simply makes me feel – ’

‘You look lovely.
Far
better without clothes. That’s jolly unusual, I must say. If I was Edmund I would say, “Do meet Mrs Cornhill: she looks much better out of her
clothes.”’

Anne looked up at her: the clear, heavy-lidded eyes looked into her own with nothing but the sweet sincerity of truth. Then, she bent down and kissed Anne’s mouth – a cool, still
kiss that seemed to go on for a long time. She did not say anything at all, but when she stopped, she wrapped the towel round Anne and led her back into the bedroom. The room had been aired: the
bed was made. ‘The only thing is,’ Arabella said in a perfectly normal voice, ‘that I didn’t know where your night-gowns were, and doctors usually seem to expect
night-gowns.’

Anne sat on the edge of the bed. She felt now entirely at ease, even light-hearted: almost as though she was enjoying being ill and Arabella looking after her.

‘In the second drawer down. You choose. They’re pretty dull, I’m afraid, because I hardly ever wear them.’

Arabella had a careful search. ‘They are, aren’t they? Well, try this.’ She threw an old white nylon one edged with coffee-coloured lace into Anne’s lap.

Anne stood up to pull it over her head. Arabella was not looking at her, but the feeling of intimacy and ease permeated the room. She was putting the bowl of roses on the dressing-table where
Anne could see them.

‘Is there any champagne in the house?’

‘I’m almost sure there is. Why?’

‘Because, before the doctor comes, I thought we might have a little orange juice and champagne together, if you see what I mean. It doesn’t do you anything but good, but doctors
aren’t trained to think like that.’

‘Let’s have some then.’ Anne got gratefully into bed, and Arabella pulled the sheets and (now, only two) blankets over her. ‘Right,’ she said gaily. ‘If there
is
any in the house, you can trust me to find it. Don’t get cold. Would you like some kind of bed wrap?’

‘No. It’s hot, really: I’ll just lie down till you come back.’

While Arabella was away, Anne lay and thought about her; about being ill, and the fact that up till now, nobody had ever been kind about it. In the rectory in Leicestershire, the medical minimum
was done for you, but you were made to feel that you were letting the side down. When she had married Waldo, any indisposition was a personal cut at him. When she married Edmund, he had contrived
to fuss, something which he did not at all like to do. That seemed to sum up her experience of being ill and people’s responses to it. Arabella contrived to make her feel unfortunate, all
right, and even attractive: she made a party out of what had previously turned out to be various kinds of bloody nuisance. The roses were beautifully arranged. One window was open, and warm
sunlight streamed across a band of carpet and the bed. It would be lovely to drink the drink that Arabella had suggested. She got out of bed, and found her scent spray with Bandit in it. A little
of that, and she felt better than ever, although too weak to brush or comb out her hair. Arabella will do it for me, she thought, subsiding among the pillows (Arabella had thoughtfully provided her
with two extra ones).

Arabella duly returned with a bottle of champagne. ‘Couldn’t find any halves, but so much the better,’ she said. She seemed to have no difficulty in opening it: clearly
champagne had come her way far more often than sardines. She had also brought some ice. When she had made two glasses, she handed one to Anne and said, ‘What a lovely smell. Bandit,
isn’t it?’

‘Yes. Do you know
all
the scents?’

‘Well, most of them. Clara is always trying out new ones – or she
was
– but now she has one made for her. I used to get the rejects. You know, when she changed men, she
nearly always changed scents. What shall we drink to? You getting well?’

‘And you not catching whatever it is.’

‘All right then, to both of us.’

When they had both drunk a glass each and Arabella had recharged them, she said, ‘Would you like me to do your hair? I mean, I know it’s awfully tiring when one’s feeling
awful.’

‘Yes, please. I was going to ask you, actually.’

‘It’s extraordinary, isn’t it, how ill one has to be before one
doesn’t
sort of tidy up for doctors.’ She had sought and found Anne’s brush and comb
and now sat herself beside Anne so that she could get to work on it. ‘Mrs Gregory seems rather keen on illness. She quite seemed to hope that you had jaundice.’

‘I’ve had it years ago. What Mrs Gregory is always hoping is that I’m pregnant.’

‘Oh.’ Arabella brushed away for a moment, before she asked casually, ‘And do you wish you were?’

‘God, no. Edmund would hate it. It isn’t his line at all. He likes to be the first person to be looked after in this house, and if I had a baby he mightn’t be.’

‘Oh. What lovely, thick hair you have. Shall I backcomb it a little? It will make it even prettier.’

‘Do you know
how
to?’

‘Easy. Easier on someone else, of course.’

‘Would you like children, Arabella?’

‘I’d like six. A huge family, and I’d live in one place except they’d all go for their holidays to another same place every year. With me, of course.’

‘And your husband?’

‘Haven’t thought about him. Whenever I try, all the men I’ve ever met sort of go misty and merge: I feel I wouldn’t know which was which, or who they were. Still,’
she added cheerfully, ‘I could always just have the children and to hell with whoever begot them.

‘Like Ariadne,’ she ended, after further thought.

‘I wouldn’t like that for you. I’d like you to be tremendously happily married: have the children, of course, if that’s what you want, but have a really reliable, good
man.’

‘Like Edmund?’

‘Mm. Something like that.’

Arabella did not reply, but when she had finished Anne’s hair, she fetched a hand mirror, and as she gave it to her said, ‘Of course, I could always adopt them. Then there would be
no fuss about a man at all. There. Do you like it?’

She had somehow managed to make Anne look as though she had been to the most expensive hairdresser and/or at the same time done absolutely nothing about her hair.

‘It’s marvellous. I
am
impressed.’

‘It’s easy, really. I’ve watched fiendish old Markham doing Clara’s for years. You can’t help learning – even without meaning to. Look – we’d
better sink this before the good doctor comes.’

By the time Dr Travers did arrive, Anne had had another sleep, and although when he took her temperature it was over a hundred, she seemed in good spirits to him. ‘Another of these summer
colds,’ he said. ‘They always seem to be worse than the winter ones, because one doesn’t expect them. Let’s look at your throat, now.’

‘My glands hurt,’ Anne said, beginning to feel an impostor.

He felt them with cool, dry, experienced fingers. ‘Yes: a bit swollen. Had a headache, have you?’

Anne nodded. He looked approvingly at the glass of orange juice by her bed. ‘Plenty of fluids – that’s the thing. I think we won’t put you on any antibiotic straight
away. Probably no need. But if your temperature is up tonight, better let me know tomorrow morning early.’

‘I’m afraid my husband broke the thermometer.’

‘Well – couldn’t that remarkably attractive Botticelli-like creature who let me in nip into Henley and get one?’

‘I don’t know whether she can drive.’ As Anne said this, she thought, of course, she
is
like Botticelli. Her opinion of Dr Travers – never very low – went
up.

He said, ‘Well, I’ll ask her as I go down, and if she can’t, you’ll just have to have this one. Don’t worry: it’s always happening to me. People these days
seem to regard a thermometer much as they regard a leech – an outmoded manner of dealing with ailments. But if you have a temperature tonight or tomorrow morning, you’ll have to stay
put. All right?’

‘Can I eat things?’

‘Anything you feel like. You’re a sensible young woman, aren’t you; well, stick to your instincts. They’re thoroughly reliable if kept in a sensible working
condition.’

He stood up, and something prompted Anne to say, ‘Have you had your holiday yet?’

‘No: we’re going in September: to Greece. Before the ’flu starts, and after the children are back at school. I’m damn well having a holiday without them. Never see my
wife nowadays. Death to the National Health.’

And off he went.

A bit later, Arabella came up to say that although she
could
drive a car, she hadn’t for ages in England, so Dr Travers had left a thermometer. Also Mr Leaf had turned up, and she
was making him one sandwich, but what of? Anne told her. Arabella reported that Ariadne had eaten enough rabbit for five, which was just about fair considering her family, but left her supper
rather in question. Anne said there were bound to be pieces of duck, so that was all right. Anne felt sleepy, and slightly drunk from the champagne. When Arabella suggested some more Codis and a
sleep, she thankfully agreed. She was still fast asleep when Edmund got home.