The Edible Woman

has been destroyed.” He shook his head gently and sipped at his drink. “I can see it happening with my own female students. But it would be futile to warn them.”

Marian turned to look at Clara where she stood talking, dressed in simple beige, her long hair a delicate pear- pale yellow. She wondered whether Joe had ever told Clara her core had been destroyed; she thought of apples and worms. As she watched, Clara made an emphatic gesture with one of her hands and a soap-wife stepped back looking shocked.

“Of course it doesn’t help to realize all that,” Joe was saying. “It happens, whether you realize it or not. Maybe women shouldn’t be allowed to go to university at all; then they wouldn’t always be feeling later on that they’ve missed out on the life of the mind. For instance when I suggest to Clara that she should go out and do something about it, like taking a night course, she just gives me a funny look.”

Marian looked up at Joe with an affection the precise flavour of which was blurred by the drinks she had had. She thought of him shuffling about the house in his undershirt, meditating on the life of the mind and doing the dishes and tearing the stamps raggedly off the envelopes; she wondered what he did with the stamps after that. She wanted to reach out and touch him, reassure him, tell him Clara’s core hadn’t really been destroyed and everything would be all right; she wanted to give him something. She thrust forward the plate she was holding. “Have an olive,” she said.

Behind Joe’s back the door was opened and Ainsley came through it. “Excuse me,” Marian said to Joe. She set the olives on the hi-fi set and went over to intercept Ainsley; she had to warn her.

“Hi,” Ainsley said breathlessly. “Sorry I’m later than I thought but I got this urge to start packing…”

Marian hurried her into the bedroom, hoping that Len hadn’t seen her. She noted in passing that he was still fully enclosed.

“Ainsley,” she said when they were alone with the coats, “Len’s here and I’m afraid he’s drunk.”

Ainsley unswathed herself. She looked magnificent. She was dressed in a shade of green that bordered on turquoise, with eyelids and shoes to match; her hair coiled and shone, swirled around her head. Her skin glowed, irradiated with many hormones; her stomach was not yet noticeably bulbous.

She studied herself in the mirror before answering. “Well?” she said calmly, widening her eyes. “Really Marian, it doesn’t matter to me in the least. After that talk this afternoon I’m sure we know where we stand and we can both behave like mature adults. There’s nothing he could say now that could disturb me.”

“But,” said Marian, “he seems quite upset; that’s what Clara says. Apparently he’s gone to stay at their place. I saw him when he came in, he looks terrible; so I hope you won’t say anything that could disturb him.”

“There’s no reason at all,” Ainsley said lightly, “why I should even talk to him.”

In the living room the soap-men on their side of the invisible fence were becoming quite boisterous. They gave forth bursts of laughter: one of them was telling dirty jokes. The women’s voices too were rising in pitch and volume, soaring in strident competitive descants over the baritone and bass. When Ainsley appeared, there was a general surge towards her: some of the soap-men predictably deserted their side and came to be introduced, and the corresponding wives, ever alert, rose from the sofa and took rapid steps to head them off at the pass. Ainsley smiled vacantly.

Marian went into the kitchen to get a drink for Ainsley and another one for herself. The previous order of the kitchen, the neat rows of glasses and bottles, had disintegrated in the process of the evening. The sink was full of melting ice cubes and shreds of food, people never seemed to know what to do with their olive pits, and the pieces of a broken glass; bottles were standing, empty and partially empty, on the counters and the table and the top of the refrigerator; and something unidentifiable had been spilled on the floor. But there were still some clean glasses. Marian filled one for Ainsley.

As she was going out of the kitchen she heard voices in the bedroom.

“You’re even handsomer than you sound on the phone.” It was Lucy’s voice.

Marian glanced into the bedroom. Lucy was in there, gazing up at Peter from under her silver lids. He was standing with a camera in his hand grinning boyishly, though somewhat foolishly, down at her. So Lucy had abandoned the siege of Leonard. She must have realized it was futile, she had always been more astute about those things than the other two. But how touching of her to try instead for Peter; pathetic, actually. After all Peter was off the market almost as definitely as if he was already married.

Marian smiled to herself and retreated, but not before Peter had spotted her and called, waving the camera, his face guiltily over-cheerful. “Hi honey, the party’s really going! Almost picture time!” Lucy turned her head towards the doorway, smiling, her eyelids raising themselves like window shades.

“Here’s your drink, Ainsley,” Marian said, breaking through the circle of soap-men to hand it.

“Thanks,” said Ainsley. She took it with a certain abstraction that Marian sensed as a danger signal. She followed the direction of Ainsley’s gaze. Len was staring across the room towards them, his mouth slightly open. Millie and Emmy were still tenaciously holding him at bay. Millie had moved round to the front, blocking as much space with her wide skirt as possible and Emmy was sidestepping back and forth like a basketball guard; but one of the flanks was unprotected. Marian looked back in time to see Ainsley smile: an inviting smile.

There was a knock on the door. I’d better get it, Marian thought, Peter’s busy in the bedroom.

She opened the door and found herself confronting Trevor’s puzzled face. The other two were behind him, and an unfamiliar figure, probably female, in a baggy Harris-tweed coat, sunglasses and long black stockings. “Is this the right number?” Trevor asked. “A Mr. Peter Wollander?” He evidently did not recognize her.

Marian blenched inwardly; she had forgotten all about them. Oh well, there was so much noise and chaos in there anyway that Peter might not even notice them.

“Oh, I’m so glad you could come,” she said. “Do come in. By the way, I’m Marian.”

“Oh, hahaha, of course,” shrilled Trevor. “How stupid of me! I didn’t recognize you, my dear you look elegant, you should really wear red more often.”

Trevor and Fish and the other one passed by her into the room, but Duncan remained outside. He took hold of her arm, tugged her into the hall, and closed the door behind her.

He stood for a moment peering silently at her from under his hair, examining every new detail. “You didn’t tell me it was a masquerade,” he said at last. “Who the hell are you supposed to be?”

Marian let her shoulders sag with despair. So she didn’t look absolutely marvellous after all. “You’ve just never seen me dressed up before,” she said weakly.

Duncan began to snicker. “I like the earrings best,” he said, “where did you dredge them up?”

“Oh stop that,” she said with a trace of petulance, “and come inside and have a drink.” He was very irritating. What did he expect her to wear, sackcloth and ashes? She opened the door.

The sound of talking and music and laughter swelled into the corridor. Then there was a bright flash of light, and a loud voice cried triumphantly “Aha! Caught you in the act!”

“That’s Peter,” Marian said, “he must be taking pictures.”

Duncan stepped back. “I don’t think I want to go in there,” he said.

“But you have to. You have to meet Peter, I’d like you to really.” It was suddenly very important that he come with her.

“No no,” he said, “I can’t. It would be a bad thing, I can tell. One of us would be sure to evaporate, it would probably be me; anyway it’s too loud in there, I couldn’t take it.”

“Please,” she said. She was reaching for his arm, but already he was turning, almost running back down the corridor.

“Where are you going?” she called after him plaintively.

“To the laundromat!” he called back. “Good-bye, have a nice marriage,” he added. She caught a last glimpse of his twisted smile as he rounded the corner. She could hear his footsteps retreating down the stairs.

For an instant she wanted to run after him, to go with him: surely she could not face the crowded room again. But, “I have to,” she said to herself. She walked back through the doorway.

The first thing she encountered was Fischer Smythe’s broad woolly back. He was wearing an aggressively casual striped turtleneck sweater. Trevor, standing beside him, was immaculately suited, shirted and tied. They were both talking to the creature in the black stockings: something about death symbols. She sidestepped the group deftly, not wanting to be forced to account for Duncan’s disappearance.

She discovered that she was standing behind Ainsley, and realized after a minute that Leonard Slank was on the other side of that rounded blue-green form. She couldn’t see his face, Ainsley’s hair was in the way, but she