Odd Girl Out by Elizabeth Jane Howard Page B

got in .’
    ‘Do you do all the gardening?’ Arabella asked, as they walked back up the path.
    ‘A very old man called Leaf comes once a week. Otherwise I do.’
    ‘Is he really called that? Mr Leaf?’
    ‘Well, people who’ve known him for more than forty years call him Ken, but I’m not in that privileged position. He’s very good at fruit and vegetables, but otherwise he
only likes dahlias and chrysanthemums the size of soup-plates. Size is what he goes in for.’
    They had reached the kitchen. It was completely tidy and there was the sound of a Hoover from upstairs. Ariadne had gone.
    Anne explained that she had to go to collect some fish (tact forbade her saying ‘a fish’); she would not be long, she said, implying that she did not wish Arabella to go with her,
and Arabella, whose manners for all occasions of this kind were excellent, said she would love to go and look at the books and records in the sitting-room, if that was all right. Mrs Gregory,
upstairs, was apprised of Arabella, and Anne set off for Henley with feelings of some relief. It was oddly tiring, being all the time with somebody whom you did not know at all. In a way, you were
forced to find out too much about them too fast. But then, I am used to and happy about being alone, except for Edmund, she reflected.
    Mrs Gregory left quite soon, and the moment that she had done so, Arabella rushed to explore the house properly. She started upstairs on the basis that Anne would not get back
for at least another twenty minutes, and she could presumably be anywhere on the ground floor with impunity. But not in their bedroom. This was the place that she most wanted to see, and she found
it easily – it being the opposite end of the small house to hers. The walls were covered with a Morris wall-paper of tiger lilies: the curtains were pale-green raw silk, the carpet looking
like gros point of fleur de lys. They had an enormous bed, covered with a patchwork quilt, and very pretty, if sparse, furniture. There was a photograph of Anne, in trousers, on some sort of yacht,
on what was clearly Edmund’s chest of drawers, and a picture of Edmund, looking incredibly inexperienced, sitting in a deckchair with a drink in his hand, on Anne’s dressing-table. The
bathroom led off the bedroom, and this was a little den of luxury, Arabella quickly observed. Thick white carpet, sunken bath, shower, mahogany and gilt fittings, and a shelf of books by the loo.
She looked: Diary Of A Nobody, The Specialist, Giles’s cartoons and a Penguin book of crosswords: the stock shelf for lavatories, she knew. There was a Venetian blind over the window,
and a huge, old print of Oxfordshire hung on the wall over the bath. There were also some dull, cautiously green, plants on a shelf near the window. There was Guerlain soap and Weil oil and an
electric toothbrush. On the back of the door hung white and blue peignoirs of rich towelling. There was a basket rocking-chair covered with the same Morris pattern of lilies as the paper in the
bedroom. What did she expect to find? Because all of this was neither surprising nor un surprising: it didn’t tell her anything, and she had told herself that her curiosity was not
idle: she needed to know what they were like, these people she was going to live with. Back in the bedroom, she opened a few cupboards and drawers. Everything lay or hung in perfect order.
Anne seemed to go in for conservative, rather mannish clothes, and Edmund just for Englishmen’s suits: dull and expensive and well cared for. No powder was spilt, no dirty clothes tucked
away, each shoe was shining, the drawers were all lined with flowered paper or felt; everything was comfortable and all right. She thought about Anne. Small, boyish, except for her breasts,
very short hair, little make-up, pleasant, not a sexy character at all. She thought about Edmund. He had the slightly haggard, unfinished appearance of somebody who ought to be twenty years
younger