The Girl Who Passed for Normal (13 page)

Barbara nodded. Catherine sounded as if she knew what they had to do, and if she didn’t — well, they would see as they went along.

By one o’clock the body was lying, face up, in a deep grave. Barbara was working in a sort of trance. Once, around ten, she had said to Catherine, “I can’t do any more.” But Catherine, thin and pale, had ignored her and continued working slowly, and after two minutes Barbara had gone back to help her.

They paused before starting the work of putting the cement and earth in. “I think we should bury her handbag with her,” Catherine said.

“Why?”

“Because if they find her handbag, they’ll know —”

“Yes,” said Barbara. “But they’re going to know anyway.”

Catherine said sulkily, “They might think she’s gone back to America. Like David,” she added quickly.

“I thought David —” Barbara stopped. It didn’t matter anymore where David was. He was gone forever, either to America or dead. If he was dead, then Mary Emerson had been punished for her crime. “They’ll know she hasn’t gone back to America,” she said. “They can check with the airline. They’ll know she wasn’t on the flight. And all her bags are here.”

Catherine looked into the December night sky. It was much darker now, and very quiet. They spoke more softly to each other.

“Then I’ll go,” the girl said.

“What do you mean?”

“I’ll go to America.”

Barbara shivered. What would she do now if Catherine
simply left her here? She couldn’t follow her. She couldn’t stop her, not without the help of the police, and that was out of the question. No, it was impossible. She couldn’t be left alone. Not after all this. “What do you mean?” she said, “you can’t go.”

Catherine smiled. “Why not? I can go with mother’s ticket. Then they’ll think mother went, if they check up. I can take her bags, too, if you like.”

“But you can’t. What’ll you do in America?”

Catherine laughed, as if she had realized what Barbara was thinking. “Oh, I’ll come back, don’t worry.” She added in a plaintive voice, “I’d have to, wouldn’t I?”

“Wait a moment.” Barbara closed her eyes and stood there, thinking, cold and thin in the night.

After a while she said, “If you could go there — I can’t, I don’t have a visa, and anyway they would check my name — then I could book you a flight back tomorrow evening. You’d be terribly tired, but — do you know what time the plane leaves tomorrow?”

“Wait,” Catherine said. “I’ll go and get her purse.” She ran off through the grass toward the house.

Barbara shivered, and wanted to laugh. It was exciting. She was tired beyond tiredness, but it didn’t matter. Mary Emerson’s death had made anything possible. It had made it possible for two thin girls to dig a hole four feet deep in a matter of five hours, and now it was going to make it possible for them to play absurd games, like flying off across the
Atlantic
, and back again. It was stupid and exciting. So many things could go wrong, above all Catherine. At the moment the girl seemed possessed; but eventually there must be a collapse.
If she collapsed on the flight, and they looked at her passport to see her name —

“Two forty-five,” Catherine called, running back through the grass with the bag in one hand and the ticket in the other. “Her passport’s here, too.”

“Put it back in the bag,” Barbara said. She wondered whether the girl’s apparent ability to read would last; that is, if it was a new thing, and no something she had always secretly had and never wanted to use.

Barbara looked at the ticket. TWA. Mrs. Mary Emerson. She thought again for a moment, and then, the efficient
secretary
, said, “If I book you a flight back from New York to Rome under another name, how will that be? I’ll work on the time differences, and then you must wear a wedding ring, in case anyone notices you’re not a Mrs.”

Catherine giggled. “I’ll wear gloves.”

Barbara looked at the girl’s red, swollen, and blistered hands. “Yes, you’d better.”

“And my name is Mary, too, you know. I’m Catherine Ann Mary. So if they look I can always say I’m called Mary.”

“Coming back we’ll just have to risk it. I’ll book you on another airline.” She bent over and picked up her spade. “Come on. Can you put the cement in? And throw the handbag in now.”

Catherine threw, and the brown bag landed on the body’s face. Catherine giggled.

*

They worked until four in the morning. The sky was
changing
color. The squares of turf didn’t fit exactly, but well enough. The only real mess was where they had thrown out the earth while they were digging. Even when they had replaced as
much of the earth as possible, a whole area of grass remained flat and muddy. It looked just as if someone had been burying a body, Barbara thought. But there was nothing to be done, except pray for rain, and hope no one went near the spot for a little while. They tried to cover it with grass they pulled up from around, but that made it look worse. So finally they left it, and they had finished.

The only thing that really bothered Barbara, from a technical point of view, was the cement; she was afraid it might prevent the grass on the surface from growing. But Catherine told her not to worry, that there was enough earth between to permit anything, except a tree, to grow.

They put the spades away, and took the empty cement bags into the house; Barbara said she would throw them away the next day. She washed herself perfunctorily, and put some antiseptic cream on Catherine’s and her hands. Then she made some bacon (she didn’t feel like eating eggs), toast, and coffee, and they sat in the kitchen and ate, both of them light-headed with weariness — or, at least, she supposed that was the
explanation
of Catherine’s gaiety.

After they had eaten she sent Catherine to have a bath, and sat and thought of their plan for that day. They had
discussed
it all the time they’d been filling in the grave, and all the time they’d been eating, but they hadn’t thought of
anything
that could go wrong, or even anything particularly
complicated
. In fact, apart from the inherent risk in Catherine it all seemed far too easy. They had decided that Catherine should take one of her mother’s bags — it might attract
attention
if she traveled without any luggage — and bring it back; then they would destroy it and its contents.

Catherine didn’t seem the least bit concerned about the
journey; she seemed to have no doubts about her ability to go and come back within a period of twenty-four hours. But then she never seemed to have any doubts about her ability to do what she wanted. Barbara shuddered. She was cold and tired and in pain. She felt confident about their plan, she had only her body to think about, and her body told her to sleep. But she was too tired, or too excited by all that had happened.

She went up to her room and set an alarm for eleven, then got into bed — she was filthy, but she didn’t care — and thought that if, some weeks ago, she had reckoned she had come far, now she had traveled an immeasurable distance. And though at the moment she was physically destroyed, the actual distance she had come hadn’t tired her at all. She
wondered
if this was something Catherine had taught her. The foreign world that Catherine saw was flat, and therefore she could always travel in a straight line and arrive wherever she wanted without effort, whereas the inhabitants of that flat world had created a round world for themselves in order to make feasible their concepts of truth, reality, and eternity; and it limited them, wore them out, and destroyed them.

Barbara felt suddenly quite exhilarated. Oh, she
knew
that the world was round but —

*

They slept till eleven. Barbara got up and made some
breakfast
; cereal and bacon and toast and coffee. They used the same plates they had used earlier.

“If anything goes wrong in New York, call me collect,” Barbara said.

“I can’t speak on the telephone,” Catherine said.

Barbara glanced at her and wondered if this was the
beginning
of the collapse. “I’ll go and call Alitalia,” she said quickly.

She managed to book a seat on a flight from New York to Rome that left four hours after Catherine’s flight arrived. She asked if she could pay for this ticket in Rome, and was told that she could.

“I think we should take that brace off your teeth,” Barbara said to Catherine. “I’m sure you don’t need it anyway, and it might make you conspicuous.”

She took the brace off the girl and dressed her in a gray skirt and a gray sweater, a red coat and brown shoes. She put her passport in the coat pocket, and the ticket inside her passport. Catherine might lose a handbag.

She called a taxi, and they went to the airport. Mary
Emerson
had given her $500 to cover the period from her departure to the day of Catherine’s birthday, the 30th of December, when the first $1000 from the trustees would arrive. In the taxi Barbara said, “Do you realize, I arrived in Italy on your birthday last year. I didn’t know. I’ll have been here exactly a year on your birthday.”

“You were away for three months.”

“Yes, I was, wasn’t I. Oh, well, I’ll have been here exactly nine months on your birthday.” She remembered her idea of giving birth to Catherine, and she thought that if she believed in God or the stars, she would have seen some great significance in the coincidence of the dates. But it was just a coincidence. “You’re not nervous, are you?” she said.

Catherine shook her head. “No, not at all.”

Barbara paid for Catherine’s return ticket at the Alitalia counter at the airport, and gave the name as Catherine Smith.

As Catherine went through the passport control Barbara said, “And remember, whatever you do, don’t leave the airport in New York, don’t tell anyone your name, and I’ll meet you here tomorrow morning. All right?”

Catherine nodded and smiled. “Good-bye,” she said.

*

Barbara took a taxi back to the villa, and when she was alone, she started to worry that things might go wrong; started to feel, even, that things had gone wrong. She had been mad not to have called the police. She would have been all right. She would have been able to stay in Rome — perhaps Marcello would have helped her find another job — and she would have met someone else like David. There must be other Davids in the world. She told herself that she shouldn’t have been so negative; she should have been calm, and realized that she had as much chance of happiness as anyone else if she led a normal life. But now she could never lead a normal life, ever again. She knew too much now, ever to do more than pass for normal.

She lit a cigarette. There was no point in thinking about it. Whatever had gone, or went wrong, at least she had acted on the side of life. And even if things did go wrong, at least no one could ever consider her as a secretary again. Her mother would disown her, of course, but she would be secretly pleased and proud of her daughter; and Marcello would envy her — for she had struck a blow against the bourgeoisie — though he would moralize about her actions, and say, with a smile, to his intellectual friends, that he was glad he had escaped her.

Meanwhile, there was a bathtub full of eggs upstairs that
she had to get rid of, and she was sure that that wouldn’t be easy. She’d have to break them up, because egg yolks didn’t just slip away … she wanted to vomit again, thinking about it. Then she would have to clean the stairs, clean the bathroom and Mary’s bedroom. She would have to rake the gravel on the driveway, in case there were bits of Mary on the tiny stones. She would have to check that none of the woman’s rings or bracelets had fallen off. She had so much to do.

She drew in on the cigarette and thought how pleasant it would be to call the police — easy, and pleasant. She would tell them everything, and then they’d have to clean up. They could pick Catherine up in New York, and she’d never have to see the girl again. She would be taken care of, somewhere. And as for her — well, she’d be given a trial, and a small sentence. She’d be all right. And at least, that way, there’d be an end to it.

No. She was all right. She was safe and free. It was weakness to want things to be other than they were. And David would be proud of her if he knew. He would think she had struck a blow for anarchy, or something. No, it was better like this. She didn’t want the same chance of happiness as a normal person; she’d been normal all her life, and that had got her — she almost said to herself — “Nowhere.” But it wasn’t true. It had got her where she was now. She had come a long way, being normal.

*

She had finished cleaning up by seven o’clock that evening, and sat in the living room with a whiskey. She had decided that the best solution for Mary’s bags would be to unpack them when Catherine returned and repack their contents in
the trunks, unless there was something perishable, which would have to be destroyed. Then she would wait until she heard from Mary in New York, as to what to do with the trunks. She smiled, sitting alone in the living room, and
listened
to the wind blowing and the rain outside. She thought of the rain washing the mud they’d left where they’d been digging, and sipped her whiskey.

It was up to Catherine now. If Catherine made a scene on the plane going or coming back, someone would check up on her. They would remember her name in a week or so when people started asking the airlines if they had any record of a woman called Mrs. Mary Emerson traveling to New York. They wouldn’t remember ordinarily, but Catherine wasn’t always ordinary. Or if she wandered out of the airport while she was waiting in New York, she might not be able to find her way back. Or she might simply go up to a policeman, or call a stewardess, and say, “Excuse me, but I’ve murdered my mother.”

Barbara started to fall asleep. She hoped Mary had been right when she’d said that no one would go to the airport to meet her. If someone did … she put her glass on the floor and, listening to the rain, fell asleep.

She slept until ten, then went upstairs to her bed, and slept again till seven the next morning. She had a quick bath, put on a pair of jeans, a sweater, and a pair of gloves. Her hands were so blistered she could hardly hold anything.
Yesterday
she hadn’t really noticed them; she’d been too tired,
probably
, or too nervous.