She had never dared to suggest this to David. It would have outraged him. He would have said, “That’s your perfect-secretary’s mind.” He had told her once, when she had claimed that their relationship was ideal, “For you the ideal relationship is that between a perfect secretary and her boss.”
She was right, nevertheless; she was convinced of that. She understood David. She loved him. So perhaps he was testing her now. Well, she would try to stand up to it. She tightened her lips, as if she were about to be injected with a pain-killer.
She left the study and went into the living room. She sat down on the sofa and wondered who, if not Marcello, David could have gone away with.
She wondered if Marcello was lying. Perhaps David was with him. Perhaps any moment he would come through the door, and say with a grin, “I was at Marcello’s.” If he wasn’t with her he must be with Marcello, because she and Marcello were the only two people in the world David was close to. Perhaps any moment …
But no one came through the door, and the apartment was very quiet, and outside it was dark and cold and November.
She rang everyone she knew, everyone that David knew. No one had any idea where David was.
Finally she rang Mary Emerson.
Iva, the housekeeper, answered, and said, “Ben tornata.” Barbara wanted to ask her if she knew anything about David, but she didn’t feel capable of speaking Italian, so she closed her eyes and held the receiver tight against her ear until she heard Mary Emerson’s deep drawl.
“Barbara, my dear, welcome back. How’re you? And how’s your mother?”
“I’m fine. Mother’s much better. How’s Catherine?”
“Oh, Catherine’s all right. She says she’s missing you.”
“Look,” Barbara said, “I’m terribly sorry to bother you like this, but do you know where David is? I got in this afternoon and he’s not here.”
“No, my dear.” Mrs. Emerson paused, and then went on. “I’ve been wondering myself.”
“What do you mean?” Barbara said. “Hasn’t he been coming?”
“Oh, yes. He came every day. It was all going very well, and Catherine loved him. But the funny thing is, Barbara, David hasn’t come at all this last week. I haven’t even heard from him. I thought — you see, I got your letter saying you were coming back, and then the next day — no, I got it on a Saturday, so it must have been Monday, last Monday, David didn’t show up. I thought he must have gone to England to pick you up, hired a car and driven up or something.”
“David can’t drive.”
“Oh. Well, anyway, I thought it was a little strange he hadn’t said anything, or called, or left a message with Iva, but I said to myself, oh, well, there’s bound to be some logical explanation, and in any case Barbara’s coming back next week, and I just left it at that. I guess it was very wicked of me. I —” she stopped, and cleared her throat. “I don’t know anything else, my dear. I’m sorry. I can’t help you.”
“Perhaps —” Barbara gave a little laugh — “he thought he’d have a week off before I got back.”
Mrs. Emerson laughed.
There was silence, until the deep Southern voice said, “I don’t know what I can suggest, Barbara dear.”
Barbara felt tears in her eyes. “I’m sorry I troubled you,” she whispered. “I’ll see you tomorrow afternoon.”
“Well, don’t worry, please. I’m sure there’ll be some simple explanation. But do call again if — you know.”
Barbara nodded and said, “Yes, thank you. Good-bye.”
“Good-bye, my dear.”
She put the phone down. She had lost David. She was tired and she wanted to sleep, but she couldn’t sleep until she knew where David was. She couldn’t do anything until she knew where David was.
She decided to go to see Marcello. He must be in, if he had told her that she could call back at ten. She put on her coat, and was about to leave when a thought occurred to her. She wrote on a piece of paper, “am at Marcello’s,” and stuck the piece of paper on the door of the living room. Then she turned on every light in the apartment, and left.
*
Marcello lived quite near. Barbara wondered, as she walked up the stairs to his apartment, whether she should have telephoned instead of coming; but she wanted to get out of her empty house, and she wanted to talk to someone.
At first, when he saw her standing at the door, Marcello frowned. Then he smiled and said, “Hello. Have you found him?”
Barbara didn’t like Marcello. He overacted the role of an intellectual, with his unbrushed hair and his droopy moustache and his serious smiles; and he betrayed his convictions — or so it seemed to Barbara — by wearing expensive, if dirty, clothes, and expensive, if trodden-down, shoes. He was too rich for his convictions to be other than pretentions, and he was too intelligent not to realize this. But he was not intelligent enough to do anything about it. Once she had said this to David, and David had said, “What do you expect him to do about it? What can he do about it?”
“I don’t know,” she had said.
David had accused her of viewing Marcello through puritan Anglo-Saxon eyes — through her mother’s eyes — and of resenting Marcello’s wealth.
“That’s not true,” she had said. She loved Marcello’s wealth, just as she loved Mary Emerson’s wealth. But she couldn’t understand why Marcello didn’t make use of its possibilities, acknowledge its origins, or accept the contradictions of his having it in view of the political opinions he held.
Now she looked at him, smiling confidently at her, and said, “No, I haven’t found him. I don’t know where he is.”
“Come in.”
She walked in and heard voices.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “You’ve got people here.”
Marcello shrugged and smiled at her again. He made her feel tight and barren. She wanted to go. She looked round the hall with its peeling red paint and old Venetian furniture, its political posters and copies of old masters — or possibly genuine old masters. She didn’t know, and had never dared ask, in case she should sound bitter.
“Marcello,” she said. Then she whispered, “Are you sure you don’t know here he is? He didn’t say anything? Anything at all?”
Marcello said “No,” and smiled again. He took her arm and led her into a large peach-colored room with too much furniture and too many paintings; his living room. The air was smoky, and there were five or six young men sitting around with pipes and cigarettes and glasses, with full ash trays at their feet, and, like Marcello, with carefully unbrushed hair. She sat down in a modern and uncomfortable armchair and nodded when Marcello said “Whiskey?” She wanted to go. She didn’t want to sit here with these ridiculous frightening people. She didn’t want to sit there with her beige sweater and beige skirt, with her brown shoes and handbag, with her hard, brown, dyed hair, with her pale face and living red lips that she’d repainted as she walked over to Marcello’s. She looked down at her bright-red fingernails. She didn’t want to stay. She just wanted to find out where David was, and then go.
Marcello brought her a glass of whiskey and she drank it quickly, hoping it would do something to make her less tall, less thin, and to take the look of disapproval from her face.
The young men talked among themselves, ignoring her. Marcello sat on the arm of her chair and said, “Don’t look so frightened. David must have gone away. He’ll be back.”
It was absurd to be frightened of these young, stupid intellectuals. “I’m not frightened,” she said loudly. “I just don’t understand it. I wrote David that I was coming back, and he got the letter, because it was in his desk. So he knew. He wouldn’t do anything mean like this. Something must have happened to him.”
Marcello nodded. “Would you like to call round the hospitals — see if there’s been an accident or something?”
“But he’s been gone a week. Someone would have heard something by now if anything like that had happened.”
“A week?”
<
br /> “Yes. I rang up the Emersons. Apparently he didn’t turn up last Monday when they were expecting him, and they haven’t seen or heard from him since.”
Marcello looked down into his glass, and Barbara lit a cigarette. She knew what he was thinking. David had gone. He had left her. Soon he would write her and say he wasn’t coming back.
“But he wouldn’t have left me like that, would he?” she said. “I mean he would have said something to you, wouldn’t he? He —” she stopped, and Marcello took her arm. She stood up and they left the room together.
“I’ll walk you home,” Marcello said. “Come on.”
She held his arm and they walked back to her apartment; he helped her up the stairs and when they were inside he said, “I suppose you don’t have any milk or anything? I’ll make you something to drink.”
Barbara went into the living room and sat down. She could hear Marcello in the kitchen, opening the fridge, closing it, opening drawers.
When he came back he had two glasses of whiskey with ice. He gave one to her and sat down. “There was some milk but it had gone bad,” he said. “It must have been there quite a long time.”
They finished their drinks in silence and Barbara said, “You’d better go back to your friends.”
Marcello stood up. “Are you going to be all right?”
She looked up at him and nodded, and as she did so, tears came into her eyes. She whispered, “Yes, I’ll be all right. Please go, Marcello. And thank you for —” she stood up, and took Marcello to the door. She said “Thank you” again, and after he had gone she closed the door. She wished she hadn’t gone to see him, because she hated him.
She undressed and lay on her bed and thought how pleased her mother would be if she knew; her plan had worked perfectly. Her mother had thought that if she could get her away from David for a certain amount of time, David would realize that he preferred his freedom. She had had her away for three months, and David had gone. So it seemed she had been right.
But, Barbara told herself as she lay on her bed, it only seemed that way. For David had always been free, and now he had not gone to be free. He had disappeared. There was a difference. She lay on her bed and cursed her mother. It was her fault. But she would get her revenge somehow. She would get her revenge on all the people she hated; and she hated almost everyone except David and Catherine. It was strange. Nearly everyone who knew her liked her. They liked her because she was always pleasant, amusing, intelligent — and, above all, because she was never a burden; she never appeared to have any problems. She was like a perfect secretary. Yet no one really loved her. Whereas she liked almost nobody. She loved David and Catherine, and she hated everyone else. She started crying, then stopped abruptly. There was no point in feeling sorry for herself. She’d be all right in the morning. And one day she’d get her revenge on them all. She grinned, alone in the bedroom, and told herself that she sounded like some silly, spiteful adolescent. She wiped her eyes and started to fall asleep.
*
The next morning she was awakened by the telephone. She sat up in her bed, thinking it must be David. She said “Hello” quickly, and with a smile. There was a moment’s silence, and then a voice, that sounded as if it were trudging through melting snow, said “Hello.”
Her eyes stung for a second, and then she said warmly, “Hello, Catherine. How are you?”
Another silence. Then the voice said, “Hello, I’m very well, thank you.”
“I’m coming this afternoon. How did you get on with your reading?”
The voice, with difficulty, said “Yes.” There was a pause, and Barbara was about to say something when the voice went on, quite clear suddenly. “Barbara — Mother told me last night that Mr. Jacks — David — had gone away. Dis —” the voice slid back into a drift. “Dis —”
“Disappeared,” suggested Barbara.
“Yes,” the voice said. “Barbara. I know where Mr. Jacks is. I’ll tell you this afternoon. I can’t —” the voice faltered — “talk very well on the phone, you know. Good-bye.”
2
Barbara had met Mary Emerson at a party in London, the first party she had gone to after her husband’s death.
She had heard her before she had seen her; the deep Southern voice from the middle of a group of people. Then, as she approached the group, she had heard someone she knew say, “You should ask Barbara.”
“Ask Barbara what?” she said.
The people around the Southern voice stood back to reveal a handsome red-headed woman in an expensive, white silk dress.
“Are you Barbara?”
Barbara nodded, and the woman said, “I’m Mary Emerson. Someone —” she turned and vaguely indicated one of the people she had been talking to, the man Barbara knew — “said something about your looking after children.”
Mrs. Emerson was attractive, Barbara decided, even if she did play the role of a Southern lady a bit too self-consciously. She was big, and soft, and ripe.
“No,” Barbara said. “I’ve never looked after children in my life.”
“Oh,” Mary Emerson said.
Barbara went on, as if she hadn’t heard the interruption. “I trained as a dancer, but I thought I should do something more useful than just dance, so I used to give movement training, a type of therapy, to retarded children. But I don’t really know anything about looking after children.”
Mary Emerson looked as if she found Barbara noble.
“But I haven’t worked for about six years now,” Barbara added. “I was married.”
“You’re not thinking of taking up your old job?”
“Yes, actually, I am.”
“Have you ever been to Rome?” Mary Emerson asked.
*
They had made an appointment for the following day, and soon afterward Mary Emerson had left the party.
Before leaving she had said to Barbara, “If you would come and teach my daughter I’d be delighted. She’s not very retarded, but she is retarded. She’s twenty and as educated as she’s ever going to be, but she’s fat and her mouth hangs open all the time and she cries when she sees a stranger. If you could just make her move — preferably not in my direction — I’d pay you anything, my dear. But we’ll talk about that tomorrow.”
Later at the party Barbara had met a young American man; he was standing with the group that had previously been surrounding Mary Emerson. The same man who had mentioned her name before now said to the American, “You just missed a compatriot of yours who lives in Rome.”
“Thank God. What’s her name?”
“Emerson.”
“Never heard of her. What does she do?”
“She’s rich.”
“Do you live in Rome?” Barbara said.
The American looked at her nervously. “Yes.”
“I might be coming to Rome soon.”
“What are you going to be doing in Rome?”
Barbara smiled. “I don’t know. But possibly teaching this Mrs. Emerson’s daughter.”
“She has an idiot child,” someone said.
“My name’s David Jacks,” the American said. “Look me up if you come to Rome.” He wrote his name and address and telephone number on a piece of paper and gave it to Barbara, then more or less turned his back on her and started talking to someone else.
“Thank you,” said Barbara and moved away.
Mrs. Emerson had booked her a room at a hotel, and after checking in she took a taxi to the address on the Appia Antica that she’d been given. The city, as she drove through it, was cold and decorated. She had been to Rome for the first time for her not very successful honeymoon. She had been back twice since then, though always in the summer. Now, five days after Christmas, the city looked more serious, less monumental, and more shabby than before.
Nevertheless, she was excited. She was abroad. She was free. She had spent a terrible, sad Christmas with her mother in a cold flat in London; and that had been the end. Now she was starting something new.
The taxi stopped by the tomb of Cecilia Metella. On the other side of the road there was a small pine wood with a gravel drive running through it to a high red-brown wall with a green metal gate. Above the wall she could see the roof of a villa that seemed to be long and, from where she stood, windowless.
She walked up the drive and rang a bell by the side of the green gate. She shivered as she waited, feeling nervous and young. The gate opened.
Mary Emerson, in a brown mink coat, smiled and said, “Welcome to Rome, Barbara, and do come in quickly. It’s freezing out here.”
Inside the gate the gravel drive continued; to the left there was a garage with a station wagon parked in it, and to the right, the long villa.
“It’s like the country here,” Barbara said. No other houses were visible; behind the garage there was a high wall, which ran along the left-hand side of the property; and beyond the house, on the right, a row of cypress trees stretched into the distance. The land behind the house seemed endless.
Mary Emerson made a face and said, “It is the country.”
“It’s beautiful.”
Inside the house, it was warm. It was also, as Barbara was to describe it later, decorated in a style that she could only call Southern Colonial.
In the hall there were empty white bookshelves from floor to ceiling, white cane chairs, and inside a large white bird cage a myna bird, which screamed when Barbara walked past, “My name’s George,” and laughed a deep laugh when Mary Emerson said, “Oh, shut up.” Turning to Barbara, Mary Emerson said, “That’s Catherine’s bird.”
In the living room were heavy, dark pieces of Victorian furniture, white rugs, and plants everywhere. They sat down on a sofa and Mary Emerson called languidly, “Iva!” She hummed, smiling at the floor, until a plump, gray-haired woman in a white apron came in.
“Iva, this is Barbara Michaels. She’s going to look after Catherine. Barbara, this is Iva, who looks after us all.”
Barbara stood up, and the two women shook hands and smiled.
The Girl Who Passed for Normal Page 3
