Odd Girl Out (25 page)

In Paris, Clara put down the telephone and said, ‘I no longer care whether the damn bottom of the boat falls out or not. I will
not
spend any more time in this
heat in this city. Already it is difficult to sleep at night, and nothing amusing is happening.’

‘Where would the amusing things be being?’

‘Oh –
Vani!
Where one makes them, of course. But my clothes are done, and Paris is filling up with tourists. Everybody is going away to their country houses
or somewhere or other. This hotel is becoming like a railway station. One is continually having to send flowers to arrivals and departures. And there is nobody worth playing bridge with. And
you
aren’t enjoying it, Vani. You said this morning, that you had no plans for the day.’

‘I am immensely accustomed to boredom,’ the Prince reminded her gently. He had never seen the point of life at all, and therefore had few relative values when it
came to entertainment. Comfort was a necessity, and it had taken him all of what little energy he possessed to make sure of that.

‘Well, I’m not. Or, if you like, I refuse to be.’

‘A woman of spirit,’ he said languidly, ‘that is the only thing to be.’

‘I suggest that we go to Cannes and harry them about the yacht, and if they can’t be harried, we just take off.’

‘There would be a spice of danger about that,’ he agreed. He was not uncourageous: the
Titanic
would have suited him down to the floor of the Atlantic.

‘Right. Markham!’

She appeared at once.

‘We’ll go to Cannes tomorrow. Pack. Get my furs stored. Tell Heythrop-Jones. Send a telegram to the hotel and another to the captain of the yacht. Give Cartier the things you know I
won’t want to take. Fetch me the guest list for the yacht.’

Markham, who always mysteriously knew the order in which to carry out batches of directions, reappeared with the guest list at once. Clara and Vani were sitting in their suite. She was drinking
vodka and ice, and he was drinking Ricard en tomate. Neither of them wanted lunch, but there was really nothing else to do with the two hours in the middle of the day. A menu lay on a marble
table.

Clara ran her eye over the list. It had, of course, been made by her, but she was not happy with it. It was too
– familiar.
It contained the usual collection: a dull banker and his
harmless wife, a young American starlet with the French director who believed in certain aspects of her to the point of idolatry, the middle-aged adventurer who had really done one-fifth of the
things he claimed to have done – one of which was totally to lose his Australian accent except when he totally lost his temper; a woman, older than Clara and considerably poorer, who could be
counted on to be a good sport in any sense of that word in return for a little free luxury, and Vani’s dull friend, Ludwig Potsdam – who Clara supposed, might just be suitable for
Arabella since she must marry the girl to someone sooner rather than later. Then there were the possibles; either not yet asked or not yet sure. There was an Italian painter who Clara felt would
probably make the largest contribution to the party, but he had a wife and children, and Italian law interfered with anything but his casual pleasure. There was an unmarried British Cabinet
Minister, but Clara suspected his celibacy as either being a choice (impossible) or the kind of cleverness that she had become rather frightened of. There was the youngish daughter of an English
Duke, but she could only be considered in relation to the rest. She was highly intelligent, totally unselfconscious and extremely rich. She therefore constituted the kind of competition that Clara
could no longer contemplate. Oh dear, the balance between being bored and being humiliated! Vani was not a possible life mate. But she was unused to being alone, and regarded it as out of the
question. Surely the point of the cruise must be to get Arabella married. That would be one load off her mind.

‘Markham! Put in a call to the Cornhills tonight. About eight o’clock.’

The Prince looked gloomily at the menu. It had everything he would expect upon it, and this was exactly what he would have expected. He sighed. They might as well go as stay: the only thing that
he actually enjoyed in life was gambling, and he had used up the allowance Clara gave him for that nearly two days ago. He had considered cutting his wrists in one of the two handsome marble baths
the hotel provided them with, but he had discarded the idea as it might turn out to be uncomfortable, and Clara was notoriously unable to leave him alone in the evenings. Perhaps the yacht would
sink, and he could either save someone’s life, or lose his own. But even there, one would have to use discretion. Clara was as shut as a clam about the contents of her Will, and so, to be on
the safe side, he would probably have to save the life of the English banker, the only results of which could easily amount to no more than a case of champagne or a gold watch. The
uncertainty
of life! If only it amused him.

He decided upon
œufs Bénédictine
and cold roast beef. He did not wish to die: he wished to be young with illusions: something he had never managed. He wondered whether
he would, in fact, prefer the company of handsome young men. The trouble about money was that it seemed to prolong all kinds of things one had not thought of, and then give one far too much time in
which to think about them.

Anne had followed Arabella’s advice about Mrs Gregory, who practically spring-cleaned her bedroom, and won, because Anne could not think of anything more to do in the
bathroom, and longed weakly to be back in bed. Mrs Gregory hoped she was feeling better, but clearly did not think so. Anne said she
was
better, but Mrs Gregory looked at her with such dark
solicitude that when she had left, Anne felt obliged to take her temperature again. It was over a hundred: and forgetting the likely effects of a hot bath, Anne, with nothing to do but fret about
her condition, accepted the hot drink offered her by Mrs Gregory, took two more Codis and fell asleep. Mrs Gregory, who had realized that Mr Cornhill was going abroad, and also from a note left for
her in Arabella’s large, clear writing that she had gone shopping but would be back in plenty of time for lunch, tidied Arabella’s room ferociously, putting away every single object
that was lying about the room. This was to register her approval of Arabella, whom she regarded as a very nice young lady indeed, but her system for the storage of Arabella’s numerous and
assorted possessions underwent several changes of policy while she was doing it, which meant that Arabella was unable to find anything she wanted for days. Long-playing records went into the
underclothes drawer, mainly because Arabella had so few underclothes, but many other strange combinations were effected before Mrs Gregory was satisfied that nothing – excepting Ariadne, of
course – was lying about. Then she tiptoed to Anne’s bedroom, found her asleep, took the empty cup away and left to catch a bus to Henley to do her shopping.

Janet stood patiently in the queue in the post office with her book in her hands. Henry had been offered two days’ filming as the man who drove the getaway truck in a
robbery for a TV series. Naturally he was not paid in advance, but it made Janet feel slightly better about drawing out three more of her private, precious pounds. She gazed at the posters of
places in the country or by the sea that told you how to address an envelope properly. The handwriting had that anonymous clarity that she associated with letters in films. She looked at the
thatched cottages and seaside bungalows with longing. If only she could take the kids away for a week or two; Luke might get over his tonsillitis. The doctor had said that he would have to have
them out, really, but not until he had thoroughly recovered from his present bout. Samantha was better: she had reached the whining stage where she could not think of anything to do, and indeed
there was precious little – poor little sod. But Luke still sat about listlessly – cried a good deal at night, and was off his food. The woman in front of her was buying fifteen postal
orders of different denominations: she always got behind someone like that, Janet thought. When it was her turn and she pushed the Post Office Savings book through the grid and asked for three
pounds, the woman counted them out in a second, stamped her book and returned it. Janet looked at the page. Now she had precisely twenty-three pounds left. She went to one of the form-filling
booths to look once more at her shopping list. Bread, two Penguin biscuits for the children, half a pound of Stork, two pounds of granulated, one packet of Corn Flakes, a packet of Tide, a quarter
of tea, one Nescafé (save enough to pay milkman), a pound of sausages, a half of streaky bacon, two lambs’ breasts, bones for stock, five pounds of potatoes, one of carrots (old),
three of onions, one pound of tomatoes (Luke would sometimes eat a tomato sandwich), three oranges, and one lettuce. Cheese! She must somehow have enough for cheese. One pound of Cheddar, she
wrote, and crossed Tampax and lavatory paper off the list. Substitutes could be found for them. Perhaps a tin of peaches – for the children. But really she needed a pound of Stork, they ate
so much bread. One pot of Hartley’s jam. Two tins of corned beef and two of sardines. She felt a surge of panic. She was going to have to write down the price of every bloody thing she
collected in the supermarket, in case she outran her budget. This had happened to her once, and the embarrassment and humiliation had been so awful, with the woman at the adding machine furious at
having to do it again, and the people behind her irritable and impatient, and trying to think what to do without – she would not on any account go through that again. Sometimes there were
bargains to be picked up at the supermarket, and the butcher was always nice to her. She decided to start with him, since what she spent there depended so much on his mood/generosity. Her luck was
out. Ernie was on holiday, a sour-faced man said: he had gone to Eastbourne for two weeks. What could he do for her? Janet looked anxiously about: not much was on display because of the heat.
Breasts of lamb? she asked. He’d have to cut her them, he said grudgingly, how about some nice lamb chops. At 32½p a pound they were out of the question. Well, stewing lamb, she said,
but that was 18, as opposed to the breasts at 12. It would have to be breasts. When he returned from the deep freeze with a side of lamb the telephone rang, and he went to answer it. His demeanour
changed on the telephone. Yes, they had some lovely fillet. A whole one. Yes: yes, he would bring it round himself between one and two. While he was on the telephone, Janet tried to see whether
there were any bones in sight. There weren’t. She hadn’t the courage to ask, since the moment he was off the telephone, the man reverted to his sourness. Damn it, she thought, it is for
the kids: I ought to have more guts. ‘Have you any marrow, or veal bones?’ ‘Got a dog, have you?’ ‘No I want them for soup.’

He went away again, and returned with a few miserable bones that he chopped viciously on his board and charged her 7½p for. So much for the butcher. Why the hell didn’t Henry get
his National Assistance? But she didn’t want to go into that, because she was fairly sure that he did, and the money went on booze and fags when he was out. She tried the baker for any of
yesterday’s bread – far cheaper when they had it, but today there was none. She was sweating with the heat, and at the same time feeling cold. The supermarket was cool, but very full.
This meant that people were always jostling you when you stopped to write down the price of anything, and she had never been very good at adding up. The bargains were some Polish jam of unnamed
variety, which she bought instead of Hartley’s, and some very battered looking tins of sardines. She bought them as well. She did the cheese last, when she could work out how much she dared
buy. The woman cut the Cheddar and said, ‘24, is that too much?’ It was, but Janet didn’t dare say so – it simply meant that she would have to cut down on the milk for a
day. It was better than having a scene about the cheese: she really had to cut down on them these days.

She walked the quarter of a mile home weighed down with two string bags. Henry would be waiting for her. I am going back to my family, she thought: two children I can’t afford to look
after properly, and a husband who thinks they are entirely my fault. She wondered fleetingly how much longer she was going to be able to stand any of it. She felt weak from lack of affection and
food and any kind of hope. If she tried to divorce him, perhaps then, one way or another, she
would
get some money: the lawyers or whoever would force him to send her enough for the
children, or she would be able to claim National Assistance for herself. But she hadn’t the faintest idea how to set about any of it, and the thought of trying to find people who might tell
her, irrationally terrified her. She didn’t want people to
know.
Lawyers cost money: she didn’t know any: it was almost impossible to get out without the children, and with Henry
going to be out on location for – she didn’t know how many days it would turn out to be – she was stuck. She had never been a very practical creature: had shown a small talent for
acting at the school which had given her a scholarship (where she had met Henry), and her family had emigrated to Australia just after she had married him. They had no idea – and not much
interest – about her circumstances, and she retained a kind of pride (Scots) that had narrowed down now to her only form of self-respect. She must just grit her teeth and get on with it. As
she walked down the hill, she stopped for a rest from the shopping bags, and found she was crying. If I could go back now and he would say ‘What marvels you have done with three
pounds,’ she thought, instead of ‘Why the hell have you been so long?’ She picked up the bags again, having wiped her face with her hot, dirty fingers. Only fifty yards to go.

He opened the door when she rang and looked at her as though she was someone he – quite objectively – simply did not want to see. ‘Why the hell have you been so long?’ he
said.