than one at a time was unethical. However it had left me in a sort of vacuum. Peter and I had avoided talking about the future because we knew it didn’t matter: we weren’t really involved. Now, though, something in me had decided we were involved: surely that was the explanation for the powder-room collapse and the flight. I was evading reality. Now, this very moment, I would have to face it. I would have to decide what I wanted to do.
Someone sat down heavily on the bed, mashing me against the floor. I gave a dusty squawk.
“What-the-hell!” whoever it was exclaimed, and stood up. “Someone’s under the bed.”
I could hear them conferring in low tones, and then Peter called, much louder than necessary, “Marian, are you under the bed?”
“Yes,” I answered in a neutral voice. I had decided to be noncommittal about the whole thing.
“Well, you’d better come out now,” he said carefully. “I think it’s time for us to go home.”
They were treating me like a sulking child who has locked itself in a cupboard and has to be coaxed. I was amused, and indignant. I considered saying, “I don’t want to,” but decided that it might be the last straw for Peter, and Len was quite capable of saying, “Aw, let her stay under there all night, Christ
I tried to move: I
Up above, they had another policy meeting. “We’re going to lift up the bed,” Peter called, “and then you come out, got that?” I heard them giving orders to each other. It was going to be a major feat of engineering skill. There was a scuffling of shoes as they took their positions and got purchase. Then Peter said “Hike!” and the bed rose into the air, and I scuttled out backwards like a crayfish when its rock has been upset.
Peter stood me up. Every inch of my dress was furred and tufted with dust. They both started to brush me off, laughing.
“What the hell were you doing under there?” Peter asked. I could tell by the way they were picking off the larger pieces of dust, slowly and making an effort to concentrate, that they’d put away a lot of brandy while I was below ground.
“It was quieter,” I said sullenly.
“You should have told me you were stuck!” he said with magnanimous gallantry. “Then I would have got you out. You look a sight.” He was superior and amused.
“Oh,” I said, “I didn’t want to interrupt you.” I had realized by this time what my prevailing emotion was: it was rage.
The hot needle of anger in my voice must have penetrated the cuticle of Peter’s euphoria. He stepped back a pace; his eyes seemed to measure me coldly. He took me by the upper arm as though he was arresting me for jaywalking, and turned to Len. “I really think we’d better be pushing along now,” he said. “It’s been awfully pleasant. I hope we can get together again sometime soon. I’d really like to see what you think of my tripod.” Across the room Ainsley disengaged herself from the corduroy chair-cover and stood up.
I wrenched my arm away from Peter’s hand. I said frigidly, “I’m not going back with you. I’ll walk home,” and bolted out the door.
“Do whatever the hell you like,” Peter said; but he began to stride after me, abandoning Ainsley to her fate. As I pelted down the narrow stairs I could hear Len saying, “Why don’t we have another drink, Ainsley? I’ll see that you get home safely; better let the two love-birds settle their own affairs,” and Ainsley protesting with alarm, “Oh, I don’t think I should…”
Once I was outside I felt considerably better. I had broken out; from what, or into what, I didn’t know. Though I wasn’t at all certain why I had been acting this way, I had at least acted. Some kind of decision had been made, something had been finished. After that violence, that overt and suddenly to me embarrassing display, there could be no reconciliation; though now that I was moving away I felt no irritation at all towards Peter. It crossed my mind, absurdly, that it had been such a peaceful relationship: until that day we had never fought. There had been nothing to fight about.
I looked behind me: Peter was nowhere in sight. I walked along the deserted streets, past the rows of old apartment buildings, towards the nearest main street where I could get a bus. At this hour though (what hour was it?) I’d have to wait a long time. The thought made me uneasy: the wind was now stronger and colder and the lightning seemed to be moving closer by the minute. In the distance the thunder was beginning. I was wearing only a flimsy summer dress. I wondered whether I had enough money to take a taxi, stopped to count it, and found I hadn’t.
I had been walking north for about ten minutes, past the closed icily lighted stores, when I saw Peter’s car draw up to the curb about a hundred yards ahead of me. He got out and stood on the empty sidewalk, waiting. I walked on steadily, neither slackening my pace nor changing direction. Surely there was no longer any reason to run. I was no longer involved.
When I was level with him he stepped in front of me. “Would you kindly permit me,” he said with iron-clad politeness, “to drive you home? I wouldn’t want to see you get drenched to the skin.” As he spoke, a few heavy preliminary drops were already coming down.
I hesitated. Why was he doing this? It might be only the same formal motive that prompted him to open car doors – almost an automatic reflex – in which case I could accept the favour just as formally, with no danger; but what would it really involve if I got into the car? I studied him: he had clearly had too much to drink, though clearly also he was in near-perfect control of himself. His eyes were a little glazed, it was true, but he was holding his body stiffly upright.
“Well,” I said doubtfully, “really I’d rather walk. Though thank you just the same.”
“Oh come along Marian, don’t be childish,” he said brusquely, and took my arm.
I allowed myself to be led to the car and inserted into the front seat. I was, I think, reluctant; but I did not particularly want to get wet.
He got in and slammed his own door and started the motor. “Now perhaps you’ll tell me what all that nonsense was about,” he said angrily.
We turned a corner and the rain hit, blown against the windshield by sharp gusts of wind. At any moment we were going to have, as one of my great-aunts used to say, a trash-mover and a gully-washer.
“I didn’t request to be driven home,” I said, hedging. I was convinced that it hadn’t been nonsense, but also acutely aware that it would look very much like nonsense to any outside observer. I didn’t want to discuss it; in that direction there could only be a dead end. I sat up straight in the front seat, staring through a window out of which I could see little or nothing.
“Why the hell you had to ruin a perfectly good evening I’ll never know,” he said, ignoring my remark. There was a crack of thunder.
“I don’t seem to have ruined it much for you,” I said. “You were enjoying
“Oh so that’s it. We weren’t entertaining you enough. Our conversation bored you, we weren’t paying enough attention to you. Well, next time we’ll know enough to save you the trouble of coming with us.”
This seemed to me quite unfair. After all, Len was my friend. “Len’s
“Ainsley behaved herself properly, why couldn’t you? The trouble with
His approval of Ainsley was a vicious goad. “Oh, SCREW my femininity,” I shouted. “Femininity has nothing to do with it. You were just being plain ordinary
He glanced quickly over at me, his eyes narrowed as though he was taking aim. Then he gritted his teeth together and stepped murderously hard on the accelerator. By that time the rain was coming down in torrents: the road ahead, when it could be seen at all, looked like a solid sheet of water. When I made my thrust we’d been going down a hill, and at the suddenly increased speed the car skidded, turned two-and-a-quarter times round, slithered backwards down over someone’s inclined lawn, and came to a bone-jolting stop. I heard something snap.
“You maniac!” I wailed, when I had ricocheted off the glove-compartment and realized I wasn’t dead. “You’ll get us all killed!” I must have been thinking of myself as plural.
