The lady down below gasped a little when she saw Marian’s new ensemble – bare arms and barish dress and well-covered face – but her real target was Ainsley, who stood bare-footed in her slip with one eye black-ringed and her auburn hair tendrilling over her shoulders.
“Miss Tewce,” the lady down below began. She was still wearing her tea dress and her pearls: she was going to attempt dignity. “I have waited until I am perfectly calm to speak to you. I don’t want any unpleasantness, I’ve always tried to avoid scenes and unpleasantness, but now I’m afraid you’ll have to go.” She was not at all calm: her voice was trembling. Marian noticed that she was clenching a lace handkerchief in one hand. “The drinking was bad enough, I know all those bottles were yours, I’m sure Miss MacAlpin never drank, not more than one should” – her eyes flicked again over Marian’s dress; her faith was somewhat shaken, but she let the comment pass – “though at least you were fairly discreet about all the liquor you were carrying into this house; and I couldn’t say anything about the untidiness and disorder, I’m a tolerant person and what a person does in their own living quarters has always been entirely their own business as far as I’m concerned. And I turned the other way when that young man as I’m perfectly aware, don’t try to
Ainsley glared at her; the black-rimmed eye flashed. “So,” she said in an equally accusing voice, tossing back her hair and planting her bare feet further apart on the floor, “I’ve always suspected you of being a hypocrite and now I know. You’re a bourgeois fraud, you have no real convictions at all, you’re just worried about what the neighbours will say. Your precious reputation. Well, I consider that kind of thing immoral. I’d like you to know that
The lady down below had turned quite pale. “Oh,” she said faintly, clutching at her pearls. “A baby! Oh, oh, oh!” She turned, emitting small cries of outrage and dismay, and tottered away down the stairs.
“I guess you’ll have to move,” said Marian. She felt safely remote from this fresh complication. She was leaving for home the next day anyway; and now that the lady down below had finally forced a confrontation she couldn’t imagine why she had ever been even slightly afraid of her. She had been so easily deflated.
“Yes, of course,” Ainsley said calmly, and sat down and began to outline her other eye.
Downstairs the doorbell rang.
“That must be Peter,” Marian said, “already.” She had no idea it was so late. “I’m supposed to go over with him and help get things ready – I wish we could give you a ride, but I don’t think we’ll be able to wait.”
“That’s okay,” said Ainsley, drawing a long gracefully curved artistic eyebrow on her forehead in the place where hers ought to have been. “I’ll come on later. I’ve got some things to do anyway. If it’s too cold for the baby I can always take a taxi, it isn’t that far.”
Marian went into the kitchen, where she had left her coat. I really should have eaten something, she said to herself, it’s bad to drink on an empty stomach. She could hear Peter coming up the stairs. She took another vitamin pill. They were brown, oval shaped, with pointed ends: like hard-cased brown seeds. I wonder what they grind up to put into these things, she thought as she swallowed.
26
Peter unlocked the glass door with his key and fixed the latch so that the door would remain open for the guests. Then they stepped into the lobby and walked together across the wide tiled floor towards the staircase. The elevator was not yet in working order, though Peter said it would be by the end of next week. The service elevator was running but the workmen kept it locked.
The apartment building was almost finished. Each time Marian had come there she had been able to notice a minor alteration. Gradually the clutter of raw materials, pipes and rough boards and cement blocks, had disappeared, transmuted by an invisible process of digestion and assimilation into the shining skins that enclosed the space through which they were moving. The walls and the line of square supporting pillars had been painted a deep orange-pink; the lighting had been installed, and was blazing now at its full cold strength, since Peter had turned all the lobby switches on for his party. The floor-length mirrors on the pillars were new since the last time she had been there; they made the lobby seem larger, much longer than it really was. But the carpets, the furniture (imitation-leather sofas, she predicted) and the inevitable broad-leaved philodendrons twining around pieces of driftwood had not yet arrived. They would be the final rich layer, and would add a touch of softness, however synthetic, to this corridor of hard light and brittle surfaces.
They ascended the staircase together, Marian leaning on Peter’s arm. In the hallways of each floor they passed as they went up Marian could see gigantic wooden crates and oblong canvas-covered shapes standing outside the apartment doors: they must be installing the kitchen equipment, the stoves and refrigerators. Soon Peter would no longer be the only person living in the building. Then they would turn the heat up to its full capacity; as it was, the building, all except Peter’s place, was kept almost as cold as the outside air.
“Darling,” she said in a casual tone when they had reached the fifth floor and were pausing for a moment on the landing to catch their breath, “something came up and I’ve invited a few more people. I hope you don’t mind.”
All the way there in the car she had been pondering how she would tell him. It would not be a good thing for those people to arrive with Peter not knowing anything about it, though it had been a great temptation to say nothing, to rely on her ability to cope with the situation when the moment came. In the confusion she would not have to explain how she had come to invite them, she didn’t want to explain, she couldn’t explain, and she dreaded questions from Peter about it. Suddenly she felt totally without her usual skill at calculating his reactions in advance. He had become an unknown quantity; just after she had spoken, blind rage and blind ecstasy on his part seemed equally possible. She took a step away from him and gripped the railing with her free hand: there was no telling what he might do.
But he only smiled down at her, a slight crease of concealed irritation appearing between his eyebrows. “Did you, darling? Well the more the merrier. But I hope you didn’t ask too many: we won’t have enough liquor to go around, and if there’s anything I hate it’s a party that goes dry.”
Marian was relieved. Now he had spoken she saw that it was exactly what he would have said. She was so pleased with him for answering predictably that she pressed his arm. He slid it around her waist, and they began to climb again. “No,” she said, “only about six.” Actually there were nine, but since he had been so polite about it she made the courteous gesture of minimizing.
“Anyone I know?” he asked pleasantly.
“Well… Clara and Joe,” she said, her momentary elation beginning to vanish. “And Ainsley. But not the others: not really…”
“My, my,” he said, teasing, “I wasn’t aware you had that many friends I’ve never met. Been keeping little secrets, eh? I’ll have to make a special point of getting to know them so I can find out all about your private life.” He kissed her ear genially.
“Yes,” Marian said, with feeble cheerfulness. “I’m sure you’ll like them.” Idiot, she raged at herself. Idiot, idiot. How could she have been so stupid? She foresaw how it was going to be. The office virgins would be all right – Peter would just look somewhat askance at them, particularly Emmy; and Clara and Joe would be tolerated. But the others. Duncan would not give her away – or would he? He might think it was funny to drop an insinuating remark; or he might do it out of curiosity. She could take him aside when he arrived though and ask him not to. But the roommates were an insoluble problem. She did not think either of them knew yet that she was engaged, and she could picture Trevor’s shriek of surprise when he found out, the way he would glance at Duncan and say, “But my dear,
