The Girl Who Passed for Normal by Hugh Fleetwood Page B

stay.”
    Barbara shook her head. “I don’t believe you. David liked having me there. He likes me. I know he does.”
    “David likes most people.”
    “He pretends to.”
    “Exactly.”
    “Did you love him?”
    “Yes.”
    “So he’s left you, too, hasn’t he?”
    “I don’t look at it like that. David was ready to leave. And he’s left. That’s good. It’s nothing to do with me.”
    “That’s just talk. You must mind.”
    “I’m glad,” Marcello said.
    *
    She had never been able to forget Marcello. He moved out of David’s apartment and she moved in, but every day David would speak to him on the telephone, talking and laughing about things he never talked or laughed about with her. They all ate together three or four times a week, and she sometimes felt like a secretary at a business dinner, as if she was there just to take notes. She thought, one evening, watching them at a table in a trattoria, that Marcello had always been in a position to choose the facts of life, whereas she, like most people, had had them forced on her. He could choose to live on bread because he had, and had always had, the possibility of eating cake; but she denied his right to claim that bread was the best of all possible diets. And that is what he did.
    She had said to David that evening, when they were finally alone, “Marcello makes his choice from a position of power, and he doesn’t see that even if his choice is right his position isn’t.”
    David had laughed and said, “Marcello would say that one must reject the individual. He thinks he has rejected his position of power, and then made his choice.”
    “But he’s wrong, isn’t he?”
    “It doesn’t really make any difference.”
    *
    But it did; Barbara was sure. She sat with her coffee cup in her hand and said, “Did you see David all the time I was away? I mean — as much as usual.”
    “No. In fact I saw him very little.”
    “Why?”
    “The woman he worked for — Emerson — her son was here for most of September and October. David was showing him round, looking after him.”
    “How strange.” She stared at Marcello. “He never mentioned it in his letters, at all. Mary Emerson told me her son was here. But she didn’t say anything about their being friendly either.”
    “David came around a couple of times with the boy. And then once on his own about ten days ago, I think I told you. He was quite — normal. He said the Emerson boy had gone back to college in California.”
    Barbara frowned. “You only saw David three times while I was gone?”
    Marcello nodded.
    “But you used to see David almost every day. Didn’t you think it was odd?”
    “I never asked David questions. If he wanted to come round he came.”
    “You don’t think it’s possible he’s gone to California?”
    “No. David wouldn’t do that.”
    Barbara felt like she was going to cry. “What am I going to do, Marcello?”
    “Do you have to do something?”
    “Yes — I mean, the apartment, for example. It’s David’s. There’s rent to be paid — I must get in touch with the landlord and — there are hundreds of things. What do I do with letters that arrive?”
    “Have any arrived?”
    “Not yet.”
    Marcello smiled. “You’re quite certain David’s not coming back?”
    Barbara said, “I’m not certain. But I feel it. I feel that it’s all over.”
    “What’ll you do?”
    “I’ll either go back to England or I’ll go and live with Catherine Emerson. Her mother’s going to America for good. She wants me to go and live there.”
    “The mother really is going to America? When you mentioned that the girl said —”
    “Yes, she’s really going. And she’s not coming back, I’m sure.”
    Marcello nodded. “I guess it’s just a strange coincidence — and convenient.”
    “What, Mary Emerson and David?”
    “No. Convenient for the Emersons, I mean. David goes off, and you’re free to come to them.”
    “That’s what Catherine said, in a way. That