its web, had come fluttering out of the parlour and were gathered at the foot of the stairs, gazing up with a certain gloating alarm. The child was among them, still holding a plate of cakes, her mouth slackly open, her eyes wide. The lady down below in black silk and pearls was being dignified in the background.
Len looked over his shoulder, then down the stairs. Retreat was impossible. He was surrounded by the enemy; there was no choice but to go bravely forward.
Not only that, he had an audience. His eyes rolled in his head like those of a frenzied spaniel. “All you clawed scaly bloody predatory whoring fucking bitches can go straight to hell! All of you! Underneath you’re all the same!” he shouted, with, Marian thought, rather good enunciation.
He wrenched his sleeve out of Ainsley’s clutch. “You’ll never get me!” he screamed, charging down the stairs, his coat streaming behind him like a cape, scattering the assembled ladies before him in a blither of afternoon prints and velvet flowers, and gained the front door, which closed behind him with a thunderous crash. On the wall the yellowed ancestors rattled in their frames.
Ainsley and Marian retreated up the stairs, to the sound of excited bleating and twittering from the ladies in the parlour. The voice of the lady down below was rising above the others, calm and soothing: “The young man was obviously inebriated.”
“Well,” Ainsley said in a clipped practical voice when they were in the living room once more, “I guess that’s that.”
Marian didn’t know whether she was referring to Leonard or to the lady down below. “What’s what?” she asked.
Ainsley pushed her hair back over her shoulders and straightened her blouse. “I don’t think he’s going to come round. It’s just as well: I doubt if he’d make a very good one anyway. I’ll simply have to get another one, that’s all.”
“Yes; I guess so,” Marian said vaguely. Ainsley went into the bedroom, her firm stride expressing determination, and shut the door. The matter sounded ominously settled. She seemed to have decided on another plan already, but Marian didn’t even want to think about what it might be. Thinking would be of no use anyway. Whatever course it took, there would be nothing she herself could do to prevent it.
25
She went into the kitchen and took off her coat. Then she ate a vitamin pill, remembering as she did so that she had not had any lunch that day. She ought to put something in her stomach.
She opened the refrigerator to see what was in there that might be edible. The freezing-compartment was so thickly encrusted with ice that its door wouldn’t stay shut. It contained two ice-cube trays and three suspicious- looking cardboard packages. The other shelves were crowded with various objects, in jars, on plates with bowls inverted over them, in waxed-paper packets and brown-paper bags. The ones toward the back had been there longer than she cared to remember. Some of them were definitely beginning to smell. The only thing she could see that interested her at all was a hunk of yellow cheese. She took it off the rack: it had a thin layer of green mould on the underside. She put it back and closed the door. She decided she wasn’t hungry anyway.
“Maybe I’ll have a cup of tea,” she said to herself. She looked into the cupboard where they kept the dishes: it was empty. That meant she would have to wash a cup, they had all been used. She went to the sink and peered in.
It was full of unwashed dishes: stacks of plates, glasses half-filled with organic-looking water, bowls with vestiges of things that had ceased to be recognizable. There was a saucepan that had once held macaroni and cheese; its inner surface was spotted with bluish mould. A glass dessert dish sitting in the puddle of water at the bottom of the pot was filmed over with a grey slippery-looking growth reminiscent of algae in ponds. The cups were in there too, all of them, standing one inside another, ringed with dregs of tea and coffee and scums of cream. Even the white porcelain surface of the sink had developed a skin of brown. She did not want to disturb anything for fear of discovering what was going on out of sight: heaven only knew what further botulisms might be festering underneath. “Disgraceful,” she said. She had a sudden urge to make a clean sweep, to turn the taps full on and squirt everything with liquid detergent; her hand even moved forward; but then she paused. Perhaps the mould had as much right to life as she had. The thought was not reassuring.
She wandered into the bedroom. It was too early to start dressing for the party, but she couldn’t think of anything else she could do to fill up the time. She took her dress out of its cardboard box and hung it up; then she put on her dressing gown and gathered together her bath equipment. She would be descending into the lady down below’s territory and might have to brave an encounter; but, she thought, I’ll just deny any connection with the whole mess and let her battle it out with Ainsley.
When the bathtub was filling she brushed her teeth, examining them in the mirror over the basin to make sure she hadn’t missed anything, an established habit, she did it even when she hadn’t been eating; it was remarkable, she thought, how much time you spend with a scouring brush in your hand and your mouth full of foam, peering down your own throat. She noticed that a tiny pimple had appeared to the right of one of her eyebrows. That’s because I’m not eating properly, she decided: my metabolism or chemical balance or something has got upset. As she gazed at the small red spot it seemed to shift position a fraction of an inch. She ought to have her eyes examined, things were beginning to blur; it must be an astigmatism, she thought as she spat into the sink.
She took off her engagement ring and deposited it in the soap dish. It was a little too large for her – Peter had said they should get it cut down to size, though Clara said No, it would be best to leave it, since your fingers swelled up as you got older, especially when you were pregnant – and she had developed a fear of seeing it disappear down the drain. Peter would be furious: he was very fond of it. Then she clambered into the bathtub over the high old-fashioned side and lowered herself into the warm water.
She occupied herself with the soap. The water was lulling, relaxing. She had lots of time; she could indulge her desire to lie back with her enamelled hair placed for security against the slope of the tub, to float with the water washing gently over her nearly submerged body. From their elevated position her eyes had a long vista of white concave enclosing walls and semi-transparent water, her body islanded, extending in a series of curves and hollows down towards the terminal peninsula of legs and the reefs of toes; and beyond that a wire rack with the soap dish, and then the taps.
There were two taps, one for the hot and one for the cold. Each had a round bulb-shaped silver base and there was a third bulb in the middle with the spout where the water came out. She looked more closely: in each of the three silver globes she could see now that there was a curiously sprawling pink thing. She sat up, stirring the water into minor tidal waves, to see what they were. It was a moment before she recognized, in the bulging and distorted forms, her own waterlogged body.
She moved, and all three of the images moved also. They were not quite identical: the two on the outside were slanted inwards towards the third. How peculiar it was to see three reflections of yourself at the same time, she thought; she swayed herself back and forth, watching the way in which the different bright silver parts of her body suddenly bloated or diminished. She had almost forgotten that she was supposed to be taking a bath. She stretched one hand towards the taps, wanting to see it grow.
There were footsteps outside the door. She had better get out: it must be the lady down below trying to get in. She began to splash off the remaining traces of soap. Looking down, she became aware of the water, which was covered with a film of calcinous hard-water particles of dirt and soap, and of the body that was sitting in it, somehow no longer quite her own. All at once she was afraid that she was dissolving, coming apart layer by layer like a piece of cardboard in a gutter puddle.
She pulled the plug hastily and scrambled out of the tub. It was safer on the dry beach of the cold tiled floor. She slid her engagement ring back onto her finger, seeing the hard circle for a moment as a protective talisman that would help keep her together.
But the panic was still with her as she climbed the stairs. She could not face the party, all those people, Peter’s friends were nice enough but they didn’t really know her, fixing their uncomprehending eyes on her, she was afraid of losing her shape, spreading out, not being able to contain herself any longer, beginning (that would be worst of all) to talk a lot, to tell everybody, to cry. She contemplated bleakly the festive red dress hanging in her closet. What can I do? her mind kept thinking. She sat down on her bed.
