The Edible Woman (10 page)

Outside, I leaned my arms against the top of the wall, which came almost to my collarbone, and gazed out over the city. A moving line of lights ran straight in front of me till it hit and broke against and flowed around a blob of darkness, the park; and another line went at right angles, disappearing on both sides into the distance. What could I do? Was it any of my business? I knew that if I interfered I would be breaking an unspoken code, and that Ainsley was sure to get back at me some way through Peter. She was clever at such things.

Far off on the eastern horizon I saw a flicker of lightning. We were going to have a storm. “Good,” I said out loud, “it’ll clear the air.” If I wasn’t going to take deliberate steps, I’d have to be sure of my self-control so I wouldn’t say something by accident. I paced the terrace a couple of times till I felt I was ready to go back in, noting with a faint surprise that I was wobbling slightly.

The waiter must have been around again: there was a fresh gin-and-tonic in my place. Peter was deep in a conversation with Len and scarcely acknowledged my return. Ainsley sat silent, her eyes lowered, jiggling her ice cube around in her ginger-ale glass. I studied her latest version of herself, thinking that it was like one of the large plump dolls in the stores at Christmas-time, with washable rubber-smooth skin and glassy eyes and gleaming artificial hair. Pink and white.

I attuned myself to Peter’s voice; it sounded as though it was coming from a distance. He was telling Len a story, which seemed to be about hunting. I knew Peter used to go hunting, especially with his group of old friends, but he had never told me much about it. He had said once that they never killed anything but crows, groundhogs and other small vermin.

“So I let her off and Wham. One shot, right through the heart. The rest of them got away. I picked it up and Trigger said, ‘You know how to gut them, you just slit her down the belly and give her a good hard shake and all the guts’ll fall out.’ So I whipped out my knife, good knife, German steel, and slit the belly and took her by the hind legs and gave her one hell of a crack, like a whip you see, and the next thing you know there was blood and guts all over the place. All over me, what a mess, rabbit guts dangling from the trees, god the trees were red for yards.…”

He paused to laugh. Len bared his teeth. The quality of Peter’s voice had changed; it was a voice I didn’t recognize. The sign saying
TEMPERANCE
flashed in my mind: I couldn’t let my perceptions about Peter be distorted by the effects of alcohol, I warned myself.

“God it was funny. Lucky thing Trigger and me had the old cameras along, we got some good shots of the whole mess. I’ve been meaning to ask you, in your business you must know quite a bit about cameras …” and they were off on a discussion of Japanese lenses.

Peter’s voice seemed to be getting louder and faster – the stream of words was impossible to follow, and my mind withdrew, concentrating instead on the picture of the scene in the forest. I saw it as though it was a slide projected on a screen in a dark room, the colours luminous, green, brown, blue for the sky, red. Peter stood with his back to me in a plaid shirt, his rifle slung on his shoulder. A group of friends, those friends whom I had never met, were gathered around him, their faces clearly visible in the sunlight that fell in shafts down through the anonymous trees, splashed with blood, the mouths wrenched with laughter. I couldn’t see the rabbit.

I leaned forward, my arms on the black tabletop. I wanted Peter to turn and talk to me, I wanted to hear his normal voice, but he wouldn’t; I studied the reflections of the other three as they lay and moved beneath the polished black surface as in a pool of water; they were all chin and no eyes, except for Ainsley’s eyes, their gaze resting
gently on her glass. After a while I noticed with mild curiosity that a large drop of something wet had materialized on the table near my hand. I poked it with my finger and smudged it around a little before I realized with horror that it was a tear. I must be crying then! Something inside me started to dash about in dithering mazes of panic, as though I had swallowed a tadpole. I was going to break down and make a scene, and I couldn’t.

I slid out of my chair, trying to be as inconspicuous as possible, walked across the room avoiding the other tables with great care, and went out to the Ladies’ Powder Room. Checking first to make sure no one else was in there – I couldn’t have witnesses – I locked myself into one of the plushy-pink cubicles and wept for several minutes. I couldn’t understand what was happening, why I was doing this; I had never done anything like it before and it seemed to me absurd. “Get a grip on yourself,” I whispered. “Don’t make a fool of yourself.” The roll of toilet paper crouched in there with me, helpless and white and furry, waiting passively for the end. I tore some of it off and blew my nose.

Some shoes appeared. I watched them carefully from under the door of my cell. They were, I decided, Ainsley’s shoes.

“Marian!” she called. “Are you all right?”

“Yes,” I said. I wiped my eyes and came out.

“Well,” I said, trying to sound controlled, “getting your sights set?”

“We’ll see,” she said coolly. “I have to find out more about him first. Of course you won’t say anything.”

“I suppose not,” I said, “though it doesn’t seem ethical. It’s like bird-liming, or spearing fish by lantern or something.”

“I’m not going to
do
anything to him,” she protested. “It won’t hurt.” She took off her pink bow and combed her hair. “But what’s wrong? I saw you start to cry at the table.”

“Nothing,” I said. “You know I can’t drink very much. It’s probably the humidity.” By now I was perfectly under control.

We walked back to our chairs. Peter was talking at full speed to Len about the different methods of taking self-portraits: with reflecting images in mirrors, self-timers that let you press the shutter-release and then run to position and pose, and long cable-releases with triggers and air-type releases with bulbs. Len was contributing some information about the correct focussing of the image, but several minutes after I had sat down he gave me a quick peculiar look, as though he was disappointed with me. Then he switched back to the conversation.

What had he meant? I glanced from one to the other. Peter smiled at me in the middle of one of his sentences, fondly but from a distance, and then I thought I knew. He was treating me as a stage prop; silent but solid, a two-dimensional outline. He wasn’t ignoring me, as perhaps I had felt (did that account for the ridiculous flight?) – he was depending on me! And Len had looked at me that way because he thought I was being self-effacing on purpose, and that if so the relationship was more serious than I had said it was. Len never wished matrimony on anyone, especially anyone he liked. But he didn’t know the situation; he had misinterpreted.

Suddenly the panic swept back over me. I gripped the edge of the table. The square elegant room with its looped curtains and muted carpet and crystal chandeliers was concealing things; the murmuring air was filled with a soft menace. “Hang on,” I told myself. “Don’t move.” I eyed the doors and windows, calculating distances. I had to get out.

The lights flicked off and on and one of the waiters called “Time, gentlemen.” There was a pushing back of chairs.

We descended in the elevator. Len said as we stepped off, “The evening’s young, why don’t you all come over to my place for another
drink? You can take a look at my teleconverter,” and Peter said “Great. Love to.”

We went out through the glass doors. I took Peter’s arm and we walked on ahead. Ainsley had cut Len out from the herd and was allowing him to keep her safely behind.

On the street the air was cooler; there was a slight breeze. I let go of Peter’s arm and began to run.

I
was running along the sidewalk. After the first minute I was surprised to find my feet moving, wondering how they had begun, but I didn’t stop.

The rest of them were so astonished they didn’t do anything at all for a moment. Then Peter yelled, “Marian! Where the hell do you think you’re going?”

I could hear the fury in his voice: this was the unforgivable sin, because it was public. I didn’t answer, but I looked back over my shoulder as I ran. Both Peter and Len had started to run after me. Then they both stopped and I heard Peter call, “I’ll go get the car and head her off, you try to keep her out of the main drag,” and he turned around and sprinted off in the other direction. This disturbed me – I must have been expecting Peter to chase me, but instead it was Len who was galloping heavily along behind me. I turned my head to the front just in time to avoid collision with an old man who was shambling out of a restaurant, then glanced back again. Ainsley had hesitated, not knowing which of them to follow,
but now she was bouncing off in the direction Peter had taken. I saw her wobble in a flounce of pink and white around the corner.

I was out of breath already, but I had a good head start on them. I could afford to slow down. Each lamp post as I passed it became a distance marker on my course: it seemed an achievement, an accomplishment of some kind to put them one by one behind me. Since it was bar-closing time there were quite a few people on the street. I grinned at them and waved at some as I went by, almost laughing at the surprise on their faces. I was filled with the exhilaration of speed; it was like a game of tag. “Hey! Marian! Stop!” Len called behind me at intervals.

Then Peter’s car turned the corner in front of me on to the main street. He must have driven around the block. That’s all right, I thought, he’s got to go across to the other lane, he won’t be able to reach me.

The car was on the far side of the road, coming towards me; but there was a gap in the line of traffic, and it spurted forward and swivelled into a reckless U-turn. It was parallel to me now, slowing down. I could see Ainsley’s round expressionless face peering at me through the back window like a moon.

All at once it was no longer a game. The blunt tank-shape was threatening. It was threatening that Peter had not given chase on foot but had enclosed himself in the armour of the car; though of course that was the logical thing to do. In a minute the car would stop, the door would swing open … where was there to go?

By this time I had passed the stores and restaurants and had come to a stretch of large old houses set well back from the street, most of which, I knew, were no longer lived in but had been converted into dentists’ offices and dress-making establishments. There was an open wrought-iron gateway. I plunged through it and ran up the gravel drive.

It must have been some sort of private club. The front door of
the house had an awning over it, and the windows were lit up. As I hesitated, hearing Len’s footsteps pounding nearer along the sidewalk, the front door started to open.

I couldn’t be caught there; I knew it was private property. I leapt the small hedge by the side of the driveway and skittered diagonally across the lawn into the shadows. I visualized Len pelting up the driveway and colliding with the outraged forces of society, which I pictured as a group of middle-aged ladies in evening dress, and was momentarily conscience-stricken. He was my friend. But he had taken sides against me and would have to pay the price.

In the darkness at the side of the house I paused to consider. Behind me was Len; on one side was the house, and on the other two sides I could see something that was more solid than the darkness, blocking my way. It was the brick wall attached to the iron gate at the front; it seemed to go all the way around the house. I would have to climb it.

I pushed my way through a mass of prickly shrubberies. The wall was only shoulder high; I took off my shoes and threw them over, then scrambled up, using branches and the uneven bricking of the wall as toe-holds. Something ripped. The blood was throbbing in my ears.

I closed my eyes, knelt for a moment on the top of the wall, swaying dizzily, and dropped backwards.

I felt myself caught, set down and shaken. It was Peter, who must have stalked me and waited there on the side street, knowing I would come over the wall. “What the hell got into you?” he said, his voice stern. His face in the light of the streetlamps was partly angry, partly alarmed. “Are you all right?”

I leaned against him and put my hand up to touch his neck. The relief of being stopped and held, of hearing Peter’s normal voice again and knowing he was real, was so great I started to laugh helplessly.

“I’m fine,” I said, “of course I’m all right. I don’t know what got into me.”

“Put on your shoes then,” Peter said, holding them out to me. He was annoyed but he wasn’t going to make a fuss.

Len heaved himself over the wall and landed on the earth with a thunk. He was breathing heavily. “Got her? Good. Let’s get out of here before those people get the police after us.”

The car was right there. Peter opened the front door for me and I slid in; Len got into the back seat with Ainsley. All he said to me was, “Didn’t think you were the hysterical type.” Ainsley said nothing. We pulled away from the curb and rounded the corner, Len giving directions. I would rather have gone home, but I didn’t want to cause Peter any more trouble that night. I sat up straight and folded my hands in my lap.

We parked beside Len’s apartment building, which as far as I could tell at night was of the collapsing brown-brick ramshackle variety, with fire escapes down the outside. There was no elevator, just creaky stairs with dark wooden railings. We ascended in decorous couples.

The apartment itself was tiny, only one main room with a bathroom opening to one side and a kitchen to the other. It was somewhat disarranged, with suitcases on the floor and books and clothes strewn about: Len evidently hadn’t finished moving into it yet. The bed was immediately to the left of the door, doubling as a chesterfield, and I kicked off my shoes and subsided onto it. My muscles had caught up with me and were beginning to ache with fatigue.

Len poured the three of us generous shots of cognac, rummaged in the kitchen and managed to find some Coke for Ainsley, and put on a record. Then he and Peter began to fiddle with a couple of cameras, screwing various lenses onto them and peering through them and exchanging information about exposure times. I felt
deflated. I was filled with penitence, but there was no outlet for it. If I could be alone with Peter it would be different, I thought: he could forgive me.