The Spider-Orchid

by Celia Fremlin

  “Well, Dorothy, I hope it’s taught you a lesson!” Adrian had said severely, after the thing had finally spluttered to its ignominious end. “I’ve always said you were crazy to keep that back door unlocked at all hours so that just anybody can walk in whenever they like! It’s asking for trouble—didn’t I always tell you so?”

  And Dorothy, gazing at him respectfully, hadn’t really known what to reply. Because, of course, it had taught her a lesson: it had taught her that even at sixty-seven, life can still be full of adventures and surprises: and if they could sometimes cost you four hundred pounds—well, so could a holiday in the South of France, and this way you escaped all that oily food and picking up stomach-bugs.

  It was difficult to put into words, though; you could never explain it to someone as clever as Mr Summers, and so Dorothy didn’t try. She just went on leaving the back door unlocked just as she’d always done. It was easier on her feet, for one thing. People could just come in and dump the laundry or the groceries or whatever on to the kitchen table without her having to stir from her chair: nor did she have to drag herself out of bed late at night to let in people who’d forgotten their keys.

  *

  “And you’re sure that was the last time Daddy was here?” Amelia was asking anxiously. “On the Friday morning? And he didn’t seem —you know—as if anything had happened? He didn’t say anything about going away, or anything? Because that’s what I can’t understand. Rita says he suddenly had to go on a business trip—but then, why didn’t he ring up? He always rings us up—me or Mummy—if anything like that happens!”

  Dorothy shook her head enigmatically. She was torn between a real desire to comfort the child and a bounding hope that something exciting might have gone wrong.

  “Yes, well, dear, it is a bit of a puzzle, I grant you,” she said. “I wish I could tell you that I knew the answer, but I don’t. He didn’t say anything to me about any business trip! And he would, you know, if he knew he had anything like that coming up. He always does. He’s very considerate, is your Pa—well, in those sort of ways, anyway. No, dear, I’ll tell you what I think—” —here Dorothy leaned closer, lowering her voice to a confidential murmur —“I think they’ve had a quarrel! Your Pa, I mean, and Her! A real, dreadful row I reckon they’ve had—in fact, I know they have! I heard them, the Thursday night—broken glass and all sorts! She’s not right for him, dear, that Rita isn’t. Not for a clever gentleman like your Pa, she’s just not in his class, I’ve always said so. Right from the start, when I first set eyes on her, I said …”

  “Oh, Dorothy, please …!” begged Amelia, jigging about in her impatience. “Please help me decide what I’d better do! You see, even if it was a quarrel and all that, like you say, I still don’t see why he couldn’t have told me about it! I can see why he mightn’t want Mummy to know, but he could still have told me! Or left me a note, or something! He must have known how worried I’d be, coming here like this and finding him just not there!”

  “Yes, well, love, I know, it’s a shame, and it’s hard that you should be the one to suffer, in your innocence. But that’s life for you; and the truth is that when a man and a woman start quarrelling like those two did that Thursday night—well, I’m afraid that that’s where commonsense flies out of the window, and consideration for anyone else, too—and they might do anything, either one of them. And you do have to remember that your Pa—I’m sure you won’t mind my saying this, dear—your Pa does have a temper, and there’s no sense denying it. If that woman up there was to have provoked him that little bit too far—and she’s just the type, let me tell you—well, if something like that was to have happened, then I wouldn’t be surprised if your Pa mightn’t have walked right out on her, then and there, slamming the door behind him. And I wouldn’t blame him either, it’d be no more than she deserves, the two-faced, stuck-up little…!

  “But don’t you worry, love, he’ll be back. Any minute now, I wouldn’t be surprised. He’d never be letting you down over this Sunday afternoon business, that’s for sure. He thinks the world of you, dear, you know that, and he’d have to be dead and in his grave before he’d …

  “There! What was that? I do believe that’s your Dad now, just coming in the front door!”

  *

  But it wasn’t. A race up the basement stairs revealed to Amelia’s disappointed eyes nothing more exciting than Kathy and the baby, the latter wrapped up in layer after layer of wool and blanketing against the soft spring sunshine, and screwing up its face in small displeasure at each of the bumpety-bumpings that marked the progress of the push-chair down the front steps. Amelia hurried to Kathy’s help, less from any very highly developed urge to be obliging than as an excuse for getting into conversation and at the same time having a good look right to the end of the road for signs of her father’s car.

  There were none; and turning to her companion, who was at that moment wrapping yet another blanket round her muffled-up charge, ventured to ask if she’d seen anything of Adrian this weekend?

  Kathy looked up, with the glazed half-comprehension of one whose mind is far, far away.

  “Adrian…? Oh, Mr Summers. Your father. I’m afraid I never noticed, Amelia, I’ve been in such a—well, you know! And while we’re on the subject, well, not exactly, but you know what I mean—I suppose you haven’t seen anything of my Brian, have you? On your way here from the bus-stop, I mean? He popped out for some ciggies just after breakfast, and he was going to come straight back … and it’s gone two now. I just wondered if, when you were passing the Shipton Arms, perhaps….?

  Amelia shook her head. The two girls stood for a moment, staring into each other’s eyes with a sort of mutual recognition. At this moment, they were both members of the dreariest club in the world, anxiety its badge, and insecurity its membership card.

  “Oh, well—thanks,” they both said, and with weak, despondent smiles they parted, Kathy to trundle her baby round the local pubs and hot-spots in search of Brian, and Amelia to mount guard at the foot of the steps.

  There were still no signs of her father’s car; and after twenty minutes or so, cold, bored and disappointed, she wandered back indoors again. As she neared the top of the stairs, she quickened her pace, in the vague and implausible hope that her father might have reappeared in her absence, despite the watch she’d been keeping at the street door.

  He hadn’t, of course; but Rita, rather to Amelia’s surprise, seemed to have quite recovered her good humour, so much so that she even suggested another hair-washing session like last week, blow-drier and all. Though slightly taken aback, Amelia acquiesced readily enough; it was at least a way of passing the time until Daddy turned up. And afterwards, brushing out the silky, gleaming locks, Rita was struck by a further brilliant idea.

  “Amelia! Listen, I’ve just thought of something! Why don’t you let me do your nails for you? Properly, I mean, with pink nail-varnish like I do mine? Or maybe something a bit paler would look better at your age … let me see what colours I’ve got….”

  She began rootling in her big, untidy box of make-up, which stood, as usual, spilling its contents on to Adrian’s polished walnut chess-table. Amelia watched open-mouthed, half aghast and half thrilled at the revolutionary proposition. What would they say at school? What would Mr Owen think when he glanced over her shoulder to see how she was getting on with her work, and suddenly noticed …

  “But aren’t I too young?” she suggested shyly; and then listened, agog with willing credulity, while Rita assured her that no, of course she wasn’t too young. Lots of girls of thirteen—even twelve—paint their nails nowadays. Naturally, Rita wouldn’t recommend anything too sophisticated, like crimson or orange; but she’d got here a lovely pale rose-colour which would be just exactly right. It wouldn’t be too noticeable, and yet it was amazing the difference it could make to the whole look of your hands….

  That Amelia’s hands could do with something amazing happening to them could hardly be doubted. Inky, stubby, and w
ith unevenly bitten nails … Rita set to work on this unpromising material with both skill and patience, gently pushing back the cuticles, filing down the rough edges, and even achieving some sort of rounded shapeliness in the case of those nails which weren’t too severely bitten.

  “It’s a pity we’re having to make them so short,” murmured Rita, bending over her work. “We could have shaped them into really pretty ovals if only you didn’t bite them so much. Still, it has made a difference, hasn’t it? Now, then….” and a minute or two later she was embarked on the final and most exciting stage of the whole operation: painting on the colour.

  *

  Amelia watched, fascinated. It was obvious that Rita had a real talent for this sort of thing, and it was enthralling to see how the delicate little pink-tipped brush followed with its feather-touch the exact curve of each nail, shaping the paler half-moons with expert care.

  Little finger … fourth finger … middle finger—and then, suddenly, the whole room rocked to a violent slam of the door, which sent the little brush skittering in pink zig-zag streaks right across Amelia’s hand.

  “Leave that child alone!” Adrian was shouting, from right across the room. “Leave her alone! Let go of her hand instantly! Don’t touch her! I won’t have you touch her!”—and a moment later he was across the room and gathering his shocked and bewildered young daughter into his arms.

  CHAPTER XII

  “WHAT I SHALL never understand, Adrian, is how you could be such a fool,” Rita was expostulating later that evening, when they were at last on their own. “Fancy you, a grown man, letting poor Derek stuff you up with all those fantasies and lies! Don’t you realise he’s mad? Not properly, mental-hospital mad, I don’t mean—just mad where I’m concerned. It’s ever since he found out about you, actually, Adrian, it really seemed to send him round the bend for a while, and since then, every so often he gets fits of being downright paranoic about me. When he’s like that he’ll accuse me of just any crazy thing that comes into his head. This weed-killer nonsense, for example; it’s typical.”

  “You mean you didn’t do it, then?” By now, Adrian was beginning to feel quite at sea, and did not know what to believe. Derek’s quiet, bitter revelations had been painfully convincing at the time; but now here was Rita being equally convincing to the contrary. What she said was perfectly plausible; a man as hurt and humiliated as Derek appeared to have been might well over-react to minor disagreements and mishaps, building them up in his mind into something quite out of proportion to the original facts.

  On the other hand, he, Adrian, had seen the black, devastated garden with his own eyes. He would never forget the shock, the sense of nightmare, that had overwhelmed him in those first seconds. If Rita hadn’t done it, then who had?

  “You mean—” he started again carefully “—you mean, Rita, that it wasn’t you who put weed-killer on the things at all? Not at any time?”

  “Oh. Well….” Rita pouted, and made a little face. “Well, naturally, I used weed-killer now and again, everyone does, you have to, to keep the weeds under. And poppies are weeds. They’re wild flowers, and wild flowers are weeds. Anyone knows that!”

  “I see. And so—now, let’s get this straight, Rita—you admit now that you did put weed-killer on them, just as Derek said …?”

  Rita made an angry little movement.

  “Oh, well, Adrian, if you’re going to start taking Derek’s side against me …! I tell you I used the wretched stuff for weeds—damn it all, that’s what it’s for! That’s why it’s called ‘weed-killer’! Is it my fault that the whole damn garden was weeds …? It was a disgrace to the neighbourhood, I was ashamed to take anyone out there! I wanted a proper garden, Adrian—with geraniums and things!”

  The little-girl pathos of this modest aspiration might have won over Adrian totally and brought the quarrel to an end then and there, if Rita hadn’t at that same moment recalled her other, and far more substantial, grievance. She turned on him agrily.

  “Where the hell have you been, anyway? And why, in the name of common decency, didn’t you tell me you were going to Derek’s in the first place? Then I could have come with you, and none of this would have happened. Here I’ve been, going mad with worry the whole weekend, and you never even bothered to phone me! It’s worse than being married to Henry VIII—he did at least take the trouble to let his wives know before he cut their heads off!”

  In vain did Adrian point out that he wasn’t planning to cut Rita’s head off, and that actually she wasn’t his wife either; this well-meant attempt to put the argument on a more logical basis simply seemed to make matters worse. So he apologised yet again for his thoughtlessness in not phoning; and explained once more that his mind had been in such a turmoil after the evening with Derek that he’d “just kept driving around”.

  What, for two days on end?

  Adrian sighed and realised that there was no other option than to tell her the truth: how, on a sudden, desperate impulse he had turned the car southwards and gone to visit Rita’s mother in Kent.

  “Mummy! But you couldn’t have!” shrieked Rita. “She doesn’t even know you exist!”

  “Well, she does now,” said Adrian complacently. “In fact, she appears to have known about me all along, despite your efforts. She seemed very pleased, actually. She says she’s been wanting to meet me and have a talk for years. She says …”

  “But Adrian! She can’t have! She thinks I’m still happily married to Derek…. That’s why we had to go through with that awful birthday party. So she wouldn’t suspect anything …”

  “Yes, she told me,” agreed Adrian. “She says she thought you carried it off very well, all things considered. And the way you kept the guests from finding out about the garden—she thought that was masterly. Though of course it did make it easier it being such a wet day, and dusk before they arrived. The closely-drawn curtains at every window made it look very cosy, your mother said, though of course she knew what you were hiding. We talked quite a bit about that garden, actually; that was what I went down for originally, to get her angle on it; sort of check on Derek’s story, you know. And she told me that yes, you were like that, always had been; and she’d come to the conclusion that you couldn’t help it. She told me that once, when you were about eleven, your grandmother came to stay, bringing her beloved budgerigar with her. And …”

  Rita burst into loud and furious sobbing, beating her fists on the table.

  “I might have known it! You hate me! You want to stir up my enemies against me! You’ve spent the whole weekend listening to filthy lies about me, and enjoying it all so much you couldn’t even drag yourself away for a moment to telephone and say where you were! I haven’t slept for two nights, I’ve almost worried myself into a nervous breakdown about you! My god, I wish you had been with another woman, or dead, or all the things I’ve been thinking! I wish you’d crashed the car …!”

  “So do I,” said Adrian with sudden, uncharacteristic bitterness. “Then my poor little Amelia would at least have been spared …”

  “‘Your poor little Amelia’! That’s all you think about, isn’t it? Not ‘poor little Rita’, is it? What she suffers doesn’t count! But I’m glad to hear that you’re ashamed anyway. So you should be! Making an exhibition of yourself like that in front of your own daughter, and all because you couldn’t bear to see the two of us having a good time together, without you! It’s jealousy, that’s what it is, Adrian; plain, spiteful jealousy. You can’t bear to see your precious Amelia showing any affection for anyone but yourself! You were hoping she’d despise me, weren’t you? That she’d look down on me for not being so bloody clever as you two are, for not having read all those bloody books and not being able to quote all that bloody poetry! It didn’t occur to you, did it, that we might find ways of getting on together which had nothing to do with being clever …? Interests which you can’t share, and which shut you out in the cold? That’s come as a shock to you, hasn’t it? You were hoping for the good old
stepmother thing, weren’t you—both of us fighting over you, wounding one another, while your ego grew fat on our blood! I know you, Adrian, I’ve known you for years; just one great bloated ego with a cheque-book …!”

  *

  Adrian made no attempt to refute these charges. Instead, he passed his hand across his eyes in a gesture of utter weariness. Couldn’t she shut up about it all? Hadn’t they had enough for one evening? He was indeed ashamed of his uncontrolled outburst this afternoon, and the look of incredulous shock it had brought to his daughter’s face. It was awful. Still, no one could say that he hadn’t done what he could to make amends. He had apologised, he’d hugged and kissed the child, explaining to her that he’d been tired —worried—up all night; that he’d always had this peculiar aversion to nail-varnish, especially on very young girls … that he didn’t want her to grow up too soon … to miss what can be the best part of childhood…. He told her everything, in fact, which his quick and fertile intelligence could assemble at short notice, except the plain truth, for this was something that he could not tell to anyone: how the sudden sight of Rita, curved like a crow over the body of his precious daughter, peck-peck-pecking at it with little dabs of movement, had filled him with a blind, primitive terror and revulsion which even now he could not understand, and would certainly never divulge, not to anyone in the wide world.

  *

  Amelia had listened, quiet and non-committal, to his hastily assembled barrage of explanations. How much of it she had actually believed, he had no idea, but she had made no attempt to call his bluff, either then or later. On the drive home she asked no questions, indeed she spoke hardly at all; but then they often didn’t speak much, he and she, both of them being given to spells of profound and concentrated thinking. It didn’t mean there was anything amiss between them. By next Sunday, the whole thing would have blown over. These things do.