Odd Girl Out (37 page)

Both Edmund and Anne came into the kitchen while she was drinking her coffee. Arabella said that she had ordered a taxi (which she had) and would be leaving very soon. Her attitude was both
apologetic and proud. Edmund, not looking at Anne, said, ‘If you are having an abortion, I want to pay for it.’

Arabella said, ‘Thank you; but that really is not necessary. As you know, my mother has a great deal of money.’

Anne said, in tones both guarded and light, ‘Are you going to join her in France?’

‘I don’t know. I haven’t decided.’

There was a silence. Anne was making proper coffee, and Edmund was collecting bread for toast and so forth. Both were wearing dressing-gowns and both looked much older to Arabella than either
had done before.

The front-door bell rang. Everybody knew that it was the taxi, but when they all three went into the hall, Edmund realized that she had, touchingly, or misguidedly, carried all her pieces of
luggage down for herself. The taxi-driver loaded his cab and they all stood, frozen, waiting for this departure. Then, while the man was putting something on the rack of his cab, Arabella said,
‘I’m truly sorry if I’ve made either of you feel unhappy. I didn’t mean to; I really never meant that.’

They did not know how to say good-bye to her, but she made it easy for them by running suddenly out of the hall into the cab. ‘Good-bye,’ she called as though the driver would expect
that. ‘Good-bye,’ they said, galvanized by this end and the lack of pressure. Edmund went outside.

‘Please look after yourself,’ he said.

‘You must know by now, that that is what I am worst at. Still, it is a good thought.’

Anne came out, and Edmund turned away to allow her her chance. But Anne said, ‘If only you’d told me, it would have been all right.’

‘You know that that is not true. You look after Edmund: he will look after you.’

Then she went, and they watched the taxi out of sight with no clear idea of how its occupant might be feeling.

Arabella knew that she had so much to go through that it would be sensible to get out the other side of some of her feelings on the way to the station. So, all the way there, she thought about
Mulberry Lodge, and the haven it had seemed to be, and she made the two people she had known there – agreeable puppets. It was all her fault. She had wanted to belong, to join them; they had
not wanted her to. Perfectly reasonable. It’s lucky I don’t feel sick in the mornings, she thought. She could not think about
them
very much, because she could not bear to think
ill of them.

At the station, she tipped the driver to help her on to the train with all her stuff. Now I am going to London, she thought. I shall never, in my life, go back there.

In London, she went to Cartier. She presented the man who attended her there with her mother’s letter, and after due time, he produced the emeralds. They were in a beautiful and
expensive-looking case. She signed a receipt for them, and then wrapped them in brown paper and put them in a plastic carrier bag. ‘I don’t want to be shot,’ she said to the man,
who seemed to understand this. The commissionaire at Cartier got a cab to take her to Chelsea and Neville’s flat.

Standing outside Neville’s flat made her remember Henry, and for the first time she wondered
what
lies – there were bound to have been some – he had
told her about his wife – what was her name – Marjorie, or Janet? Henry had said that she was very stupid, dull, had not even been a good actress, but with her long, blonde hair and
rather widely spaced but anaemic features, she had been given a chance at an acting school, which was where they had met. No, no children, he had almost snapped; but she had trapped him into
marrying her by saying that she was pregnant. No, he had never found out whether this was an actual lie or whether she had miscarried. All he knew was that she stuck to him like some parasitic
creeper, preventing his growth as an artist. ‘For Christ’s sake, don’t let’s talk about this any more,’ and they hadn’t, and Arabella had not given Janet, she
was sure now that it had been Janet, another thought. Now, she wondered. But she had not any means of getting hold of Henry since she had left him. She asked the driver to wait, until she found out
whether Neville or anybody else was at home. Her luck was in. Neville answered the door in a most gorgeous dressing-gown; his look of dismay was most fleeting, before he got his welcoming smile
into action.

‘My dear girl!’ he said.

‘I haven’t come to stay,’ Arabella said quickly, ‘but I would be grateful if I could dump my stuff here and ask you something.’

‘Of course. I’m afraid Rodney is out, so do you think this frightfully kind man would help with the cases? I’m not supposed to carry anything.’

The driver, whose feelings were divided between natural amiability and the intuition that Arabella would prove to be a good tipper, agreed, and so he and she made the necessary journeys. She
took the plastic carrier bag first, and dumped it in the kitchen behind the door before going back for some of the other things. She gave the driver 50p for his trouble and he drove off feeling
that it took all sorts to make a world and that he and Arabella were two of the better sort.

‘Now dear,’ Neville said, when the door was finally shut and the small passage crammed with Arabella’s suitcases. ‘Something tells me that all is not well. Let’s
have some coffee and settle down and be comfy and you can tell me anything you wish.’

He bustled about in the kitchen getting a tray, in the middle of which he called out, What an extraordinary carrier bag! One of those psychedelic affairs. Rodney can’t bear them, I must
warn Mrs Hotchkiss – ’

‘It’s all right, it’s mine.’ Arabella came into the kitchen and took it.

‘Whatever have you got in that, dear? Not your style at all, if I may say so.’

‘Emeralds,’ Arabella answered, without thinking.

Neville burst out laughing. ‘That serves me right for asking awkward questions, I must say.’ He brought the wobbly pottery cups full of delicious coffee on a papier
mâché tray into the sitting-room. ‘Here we are. You don’t take sugar, do you? Or cream?’

‘No, thank you. Black’s fine.’

Then, as they both sipped their coffee, Neville put his down, and said, ‘Your mother rang me yesterday: about twelve, I suppose. She seemed to be trying very hard to find out where you
were.’ His bright blue eyes were fixed upon her face.

‘What did she say?’

‘Well, between you and me, dear, rather a lot, but I don’t want to be indiscreet.’ His tone implied, ‘Unless you are, too.’ ‘You’re looking very pale,
darling, has the country air not agreed with you?’

Arabella put her cup down and sought in her bag for a cigarette. She felt suddenly so awful, so much wanting to fling herself into his kind, avuncular arms (if only he
was
her uncle) and
tell him everything, that she had to concentrate very hard on finding and lighting the cigarette not to. He was no relation of hers, rather a friend of her mother’s – one of the very
few whom she liked and who had been kind to her.

‘Come on, dear, just treat me like an old Dutch Uncle. Lots of people do.’

‘Could you tell me first what my mother said to you?’

He looked at her with his head upon one side: he reminded her of some kind of exotic bird, his silvery hair ruffled like a crest and smoothed now by one of his beautifully shaped hands, this
characteristic movement effected without his taking his eyes from her face.

‘Let me see. Of course she is
most anxious
that you should join her on the yacht in Nice. A number of people seem to be going: we were asked, but Rodney insists on going to that
stupendous exhibition in Paris, and that doesn’t leave us enough time. But from what I gathered – ’ he paused, as though choosing his words, but he wasn’t, she knew: he was
a great diplomat, but with a passion for gossip. ‘What I
gathered
was that there is some Italian painter in whom she is interested, and in order to have him there
en famille
(hers, not his, you understand) she has asked one of Vani’s old friends – dearest friends,’ he hastily amended: the idea of age in anyone horrified him.

‘Somebody she thinks I might as well marry.’

‘So you
have
talked to her then! I must say, it is a teeny bit sly of you, darling, not to tell me first. I might have said all sorts of things.’

‘I haven’t talked to her; it’s just that she’s done it before.’

‘Done what, dear?’

‘Tried to palm me off on some awful drip to placate whoever she’s got tired of.’

‘Dear girl, that
is
plain speaking, and no mistake. Well, between you and me, he doesn’t sound exactly right for you. Although I believe he has a most interesting estate. And
frankly, I think there may be something of a
rumpus
on the yacht, as I told Rodney, so that although one adores cruising – ’

‘I’m
not going,’ Arabella said.

‘Ah. And what does that mean, pray?’

‘It means I’m getting out – for good.’

‘Has Mr Right appeared at last? Or
Sir
Bight? Darling – I’m so glad for you.’

‘No.’ She put out the cigarette and lit another one immediately.

‘Tell Neville. I’m the soul of discretion because I so adore being told things.’

So she told him what she wanted.
She
did, indeed, choose her words with care, because she was in no position to trust anybody for the moment. She wanted to hock the emeralds and the air
ticket. She was a bit short of money, and she wanted to start a sensible life on her own –
not
dependent upon her mother’s innumerable whims. The thing was, that she didn’t
at all know how to set about hocking the emeralds, without being done by someone.

Neville listened to all this in sparkling silence. She could not tell what side he was on, but she kept telling herself that, really, she had no choice: if he would not help her, she did not
know who could, or would, and she knew that she would make a mess of it by herself.

‘One cannot help wondering where you got the emeralds from,’ he said at last. She knew that he knew that her mother was particularly fond of emeralds.

‘Oh, from Cartier,’ she said carelessly. ‘You know how Clara loves them. Well, I went to get some from there. I knew they would be good, you see.’

‘But why did you get them, if all you want to do is sell them?’

Arabella gathered herself together for a really intricate and convincing lie. ‘I didn’t exactly get them. They were – sort of – given to me. But I’ve finished with
him, so now I want the money. I don’t want to go back to Cartier with them, it would embarrass Mummy.’

‘I
see.
’

She wondered anxiously how much he did.

At that moment, both heard a key in the front door, its slamming and somebody coming upstairs. It was Rodney. Luckily, Arabella had met him before, which meant that he knew who she was, which,
in turn, meant that he did not have to worry about her.

‘Ara
bella
!’ he cried. ‘What a marvellous, gorgeous surprise. No sooner is my back turned,’ he added to Neville, ‘than you collect the most attractive girl in
London and indulge in wild orgies of coffee, I see.’

‘Rodney will help you,’ said Neville fondly. ‘He is simply marvellous at selling things for more than one has paid for them.’

‘What things?’

‘Arabella has some dear little emeralds in that disgusting bag. She wants thousands of pounds as quickly as possible.’

And it all worked out. They went to lunch in some bistro for which Neville insisted on paying, and Arabella, with her new-found – perhaps comparative – poverty did not struggle.
Rodney, once he had seen the emeralds, was wild about them. ‘All that platinum
thrown in,
’ he kept saying.
‘So
ugly, and
so
valuable. I shall feel of real use
to you if I can rid you of such horrendous luxury.’

He bought an evening paper after lunch to look at the racing. On the back page there were four lines that said an actor’s wife had committed suicide in North London, leaving two children.
None of them saw or read this. After lunch, Arabella agreed, at Neville’s instigation, to write a letter to her mother. They did not want, and indeed did not have room for her to stay, so it
was easy for her to depart. She did not want them to know where she would be, and they were, really, glad to see the end of her. She arranged that the money from the emeralds and the air ticket be
sent to her bank in London. She trusted them, she said, and meant this; she did. She had – as delicately as possible – offered Rodney a commission for his work, but before he could
reply, Neville seized one of her hands and cried, ‘My dear, don’t be so utterly absurd! Rodney would do anything for you – and so would I – you must know that!’

‘Thank you very much. Will you – will you manage to do it fairly soon? I am a bit short of money, you see.’

‘Rodney will
shoot
out first thing tomorrow morning. We have a nice friend who will be able to value them, so Rodney will be sure to get the right price. So tiresome having to worry
about money. Are you sure you’re all right, dear?’

‘Fine, and thank you for my lovely lunch.’

She acquired another taxi, and Rodney this time helped her downstairs with all her luggage. She kissed them both, got into the taxi, thanked them again, and was off.

‘Well, well, well,’ said Neville, as he climbed the narrow stairs again with his friend. ‘She’s in some sort of trouble, poor dear, but whatever it is, we must be on her
side about it.’ Clara had once made an absent-minded pass at Rodney, and Neville, who was fully aware of Rodney’s penchant for high life, had been made quite upset. Rodney fervently
agreed. He divided his time between doing this, and sulking, and he knew that if he did his best about the emeralds, Neville would make it up to him in Paris. ‘I’ve brought you your
paper,’ he said. ‘Have a little rest now; you know the doctor said it was sensible.’ He tucked Neville up on the sofa, putting a rug over him and an ashtray and cigarettes within
reach. Then he went to the other room and started telephoning the friend who would be so good at valuing the jewels.