The Edible Woman

armour.

“Who?”

“Them. They always act as though they think I’m trying to gobble you up.”

“Well actually it isn’t that they don’t like you. As a matter of fact, they’ve said that you seem like a nice girl and why don’t I ask you home to dinner sometime, so they can really get to know you. I haven’t told them,” he said, suppressing a smile, “that you’re getting married. So they want a closer look at you to see if you’re acceptable to the family. They’re trying to protect me. They’re worried about me, it’s how they get their emotional vitamins, they don’t want me to get corrupted. They think I’m too young.”

“But why am I such a threat? What are they protecting you from?”

“Well, you see, you’re not in graduate English. And you’re a girl.”

“Well, haven’t they ever seen a girl before?” she asked indignantly.

Duncan considered. “I don’t think so. Not exactly. Oh I don’t know, what do you ever know about your parents? You always think they live in some kind of primal innocence. But I get the impression that Trevor believes in a version of Mediaeval Chastitie, sort of Spenserian you know. As for Fish, well, I guess he thinks it’s all right in theory, he’s always talking about it and you ought to hear his thesis topic, it’s all about sex, but he thinks you’ve got to wait for the right person and then it will be like an electric shock. I think he picked it up from ‘Some Enchanted Evening’ or D. H. Lawrence or something. God, he’s been waiting long enough, he’s almost thirty…”

Marian felt compassion; she started to make a mental list of ageing single girls she knew who might be suitable for Fish. Millie? Lucy?

They walked on, turned another corner, and found themselves in yet another room full of glass cases. By this time she was thoroughly lost. The labyrinthine corridors and large halls and turnings had confused her sense of direction. There seemed to be no one else in this part of the Museum.

“Do you know where we are?” she asked, a little anxiously.

“Yes,” he said. “We’re almost there.”

They went under another archway. In contrast to the crowded and gilded oriental rooms they had been passing through, this one was comparatively grey and empty. Marian realized, from the murals on the walls, that they were in the Ancient Egyptian section.

“I come up here occasionally,” Duncan said, almost to himself, “to meditate on immortality. This is my favourite mummy case.”

Marian looked down through the glass at the painted golden face. The stylized eyes, edged with dark-blue lines, were wide open. They gazed up at her with an expression of serene vacancy. Across the front of the figure, at chest level, was a painted bird with outstretched wings, each feather separately defined; a similar bird was painted across the thighs, and another one at the feet. The rest of the decorations were smaller: several orange suns, gilded figures with crowns on their heads, seated on thrones or being ferried in boats; and a repeated design of odd symbols that were like eyes.

“She’s beautiful,” Marian said. She wondered whether she really thought so. Under the surface of the glass the form had a peculiar floating drowned look; the golden skin was rippling…

“I think it’s supposed to be a man,” Duncan said. He had wandered over to the next case. “Sometimes I think I’d like to live forever. Then you wouldn’t have to worry about Time anymore. Ah, Mutabilitie; I wonder why trying to transcend time never even succeeds in stopping it…”

She went to see what he was looking at. It was another mummy case, opened so that the shrivelled figure inside could be seen. The yellowed linen wrappings had been removed from the head, and the skull with its dried grey skin and wisps of black hair and curiously perfect teeth was exposed. “Very well preserved,” Duncan commented, in a tone that implied he knew something about the subject. “They could never do a job like that now, though a lot of those commercial body-snatchers pretend they can.”

Marian shuddered and turned away. She was intrigued, not by the mummy itself – she didn’t enjoy looking at things like that – but by Duncan’s evident fascination with it. From somewhere the thought drifted into her mind that if she were to reach out and touch him at that moment he would begin to crumble. “You’re being morbid,” she said.

“What’s wrong with death?” Duncan said, his voice suddenly loud in the empty room. “There’s nothing morbid about it; we all do it, you know, it’s perfectly natural.”

“It’s not natural to like it,” she protested, turning toward him. He was grinning at her.

“Don’t take me seriously,” he said. “I’ve warned you about that. Now come on and I’ll show you my womb- symbol. I’m going to show it to Fish pretty soon. He’s threatening to write a short monograph for Victorian Studies called ‘Womb-Symbols in Beatrix Potter.’ He has to be stopped.”

He led her to the far corner of the room. At first in the rapidly fading light she couldn’t make out what was inside the case. It looked like a heap of rubble. Then she saw that it was a skeleton, still covered in places with skin, lying on its side with its knees drawn up. There were some clay pots and a necklace lying beside it. The body was so small it looked like that of a child.

“It’s sort of pre-pyramid,” Duncan said. “Preserved by the sands of the desert. When I get really fed up with this place I’m going to go and dig myself in. Maybe the library would serve the purpose just as well; except this city is kind of damp. Things would rot.”

Marian leaned further over the glass case. She found the stunted figure pathetic: with its jutting ribs and frail legs and starved shoulder blades it looked like the photographs of people from underprivileged countries or concentration camps. She didn’t exactly want to gather it up in her arms, but she felt helplessly sorry for it.

When she moved away and glanced up at Duncan, she realized with an infinitesimal shiver of horror that he was reaching out for her. Under the circumstances, his thinness was not reassuring, and she drew back slightly.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “I’m not going to return from the tomb.” He passed his hand over the curve of her cheek, smiling down at her sadly. “The trouble is, especially with people and when I’m touching them and so on, I can’t concentrate on the surface. As long as you only think about the surface I suppose it’s all right, and real enough; but once you start thinking about what’s inside…”

He bent to kiss her. She swerved, rested her head against his winter-coated shoulder, and closed her eyes. He felt more fragile than usual against her: she was afraid of holding him too tightly.

She heard a creaking of the parquet floor, opened her eyes, and found herself confronted by a pair of austere grey scrutinizing eyes. They belonged to a blue-uniformed guard, who had come up behind them. He tapped Duncan on the shoulder.

“Pardon me, sir,” he said, politely though firmly, “but – ah – kissing in the Mummy Room is not permitted.”

“Oh,” said Duncan. “Sorry.”

They wound their way back through the maze of rooms and reached the main staircase. A stream of schoolchildren carrying folding stools was coming out of the gallery opposite, and they were caught up by the current of small moving feet and swept down the marble stairs in a waterfall of strident laughter.

Duncan had suggested that they go for coffee, so they were sitting at a square grubby-surfaced table in the Museum Coffee Shop, surrounded by groups of self-consciously disconsolate students. Marian had for so long associated having coffee in a restaurant with the office and morning coffee breaks that she kept expecting the three office virgins to materialize across the table from her, beside Duncan.

Duncan stirred his coffee. “Cream?” he asked.

“No thanks,” she said, but changed her mind and took some after she had reflected that it was nourishing.

“You know, I think it might be a good idea if we went to bed,” Duncan said conversationally, putting his spoon down on the table.

Marian blenched inwardly. She had been justifying whatever had been happening with Duncan (whatever had been happening?) on the grounds that it was, according to her standards, perfectly innocent. It had seemed to her lately that innocence had some imperfectly defined connection with clothing: the lines were drawn by collars and long sleeves. Her justifications always took the form of an imagined conversation with Peter. Peter would say, jealously, “What’s this I hear about you seeing a lot of some scrawny academic type?” And she would reply, “Don’t be silly Peter, it’s perfectly innocent. After all, we’re getting married in two months.” Or a month and a half. Or a month.

“Don’t be silly Duncan,” she said, “that’s impossible. After all, I’m getting married in a month.”

“That’s your problem,” he said, “it has nothing to do with me. And it’s me I thought it would be a good idea