The Edible Woman (27 page)

“It’s sort of pre-pyramid,” Duncan said. “Preserved by the sands of the desert. When I get really fed up with this place I’m going to go and dig myself in. Maybe the library would serve the purpose just as well; except this city is kind of damp. Things would rot.”

Marian leaned further over the glass case. She found the stunted figure pathetic: with its jutting ribs and frail legs and starved shoulder blades it looked like the photographs of people from underprivileged countries or concentration camps. She didn’t exactly want to gather it up in her arms, but she felt helplessly sorry for it.

When she moved away and glanced up at Duncan, she realized with an infinitesimal shiver of horror that he was reaching out for her. Under the circumstances, his thinness was not reassuring, and she drew back slightly.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “I’m not going to return from the tomb.” He passed his hand over the curve of her cheek, smiling down at her sadly. “The trouble is, especially with people and when I’m touching them and so on, I can’t concentrate on the surface. As long as you only think about the surface I suppose it’s all right, and real enough; but once you start thinking about what’s inside …”

He bent to kiss her. She swerved, rested her head against his winter-coated shoulder, and closed her eyes. He felt more fragile than usual against her: she was afraid of holding him too tightly.

She heard a creaking of the parquet floor, opened her eyes, and found herself confronted by a pair of austere grey scrutinizing eyes. They belonged to a blue-uniformed guard, who had come up behind them. He tapped Duncan on the shoulder.

“Pardon me, sir,” he said, politely though firmly, “but – ah – kissing in the Mummy Room is not permitted.”

“Oh,” said Duncan. “Sorry.”

They wound their way back through the maze of rooms and reached the main staircase. A stream of schoolchildren carrying folding stools was coming out of the gallery opposite, and they were caught up by the current of small moving feet and swept down the marble stairs in a waterfall of strident laughter.

Duncan had suggested that they go for coffee, so they were sitting at a square grubby-surfaced table in the Museum Coffee Shop, surrounded by groups of self-consciously disconsolate students. Marian had for so long associated having coffee in a restaurant with the office and morning coffee breaks that she kept expecting the three office virgins to materialize across the table from her, beside Duncan.

Duncan stirred his coffee. “Cream?” he asked.

“No thanks,” she said, but changed her mind and took some after she had reflected that it was nourishing.

“You know, I think it might be a good idea if we went to bed,” Duncan said conversationally, putting his spoon down on the table.

Marian blenched inwardly. She had been justifying whatever had been happening with Duncan (whatever
had
been happening?) on the grounds that it was, according to her standards, perfectly innocent. It had seemed to her lately that innocence had some imperfectly defined connection with clothing: the lines were drawn by collars and long sleeves. Her justifications always took the form of an imagined conversation with Peter. Peter would say, jealously, “What’s this I hear about you seeing a lot of some scrawny academic type?” And she would reply, “Don’t be silly Peter, it’s perfectly innocent. After all, we’re getting married in two months.” Or a month and a half. Or a month.

“Don’t be silly Duncan,” she said, “that’s impossible. After all, I’m getting married in a month.”

“That’s your problem,” he said, “it has nothing to do with me. And it’s me I thought it would be a good idea for.”

“Why?” she asked, smiling in spite of herself. The extent to which he could ignore her point of view was amazing.

“Well of course it’s not you. It’s just it. I mean you personally don’t arouse exactly a raging lust in me or anything. But I thought you would know how, and you’d be competent and sensible about it, sort of calm. Unlike some. I think it would be a good thing if I could get over this thing I have about sex.” He poured some of the sugar out onto the table and started tracing designs in it with his index finger.

“What thing?”

“Well, maybe I’m a latent homosexual.” He considered that for a moment. “Or maybe I’m a latent heterosexual. Anyway I’m pretty latent. I don’t know why, really. Of course I’ve taken a number of stabs at it, but then I start thinking about the futility of it all and I give up. Maybe it’s because you’re expected to do something and after a certain point all I want to do is lie there and stare at the ceiling. When I’m supposed to be writing term papers I think about sex, but when I’ve finally got some willing lovely backed into a corner or we’re thrashing about under hedges and so on and everybody is supposed to be all set for the
coup de grâce
, I start thinking about term papers. I know it’s an alternation of distractions, both of those things are basically distractions you know, but what am I really being distracted from? Anyway, they’re all too literary, it’s because they haven’t read enough books. If they’d read more they’d realize that all those scenes have been done already. I mean
ad nauseam
. How can they be so trite? They sort of get limp and sinuous and passionate, they try so hard, and I start thinking oh god it’s yet another bad imitation of whoever it happens to be a bad imitation of, and I lose interest. Or worse, I start to laugh. Then they get hysterical.” He licked the sugar from his fingers, thoughtfully.

“What makes you think it would be any different with me?” She was beginning to feel very experienced and professional: almost matronly. The situation, she thought, called for stout shoes and starched cuffs and a leather bag full of hypodermic needles.

“Well,” he said, “it probably wouldn’t be. But now that I’ve told you at least you wouldn’t get hysterical.”

They sat in silence. Marian was thinking about what he had said. She supposed that the impersonality of his request was quite insulting. Why didn’t she feel insulted then? Instead she felt she ought to do something helpful and clinical, like taking his pulse.

“Well …” she said, deliberating. Then she wondered whether anyone had been listening. She glanced around the coffee shop, and her eyes met those of a large man with a beard who was sitting at a table near the door, looking in her direction. She thought he might be an anthropology professor. It was a moment before she recognized him as one of Duncan’s roommates. The blond man with him, sitting with his back to her, must be the other one.

“That’s one of your parents over there,” she said.

Duncan swivelled round. “Oh,” he said. “I’d better go say hello.” He got up, walked over to their table, and sat down. There was a huddled conversation and he got up and came back. “Trevor wants to know if you’d like to come to dinner,” he said in the tone of a small child delivering a memorized message.

“Do you want me to?” she asked.

“Me? Oh, sure. I guess so. Why not?”

“Tell him then,” she said, “that I’d be delighted.” Peter was working on a case and it was Ainsley’s night at the clinic.

He went to convey her acceptance. After a minute the two roommates got up and went out, and Duncan slouched back and sat down. “Trevor said that’s thrilling,” he reported, “and he’ll just rush off and pop a few things in the oven. Nothing fancy, he says. We’re expected in an hour.”

Marian started to smile, then put her hand over her mouth: she had suddenly remembered all the things she couldn’t eat. “What do you think he’ll have?” she asked faintly.

Duncan shrugged. “Oh, I don’t know. He likes skewering things and setting fire to them. Why?”

“Well,” she said, “there are a lot of things I can’t eat; I mean, I haven’t been eating them lately. Meat, for instance, and eggs and certain vegetables.”

Duncan did not seem in the least surprised. “Well, okay,” he said, “but Trevor’s very proud of his cooking. I mean I don’t care, I’d just as soon eat hamburger any day, but he’ll be insulted if you don’t eat at least some of what’s on your plate.”

“He’ll be even more insulted if I throw it all up,” she said grimly. “Maybe I’d better not come.”

“Oh, come along, we’ll work something out.” His voice had a hint of malicious curiosity.

“I’m sorry, I don’t know why I do it, but I can’t seem to help it.” She was thinking, maybe I can say I’m on a diet.

“Oh,” said Duncan, “you’re probably representative of modern youth, rebelling against the system; though it isn’t considered orthodox to begin with the digestive system. But why not?” he mused. “I’ve always thought eating was a ridiculous activity anyway. I’d get out of it myself if I could, though you’ve got to do it to stay alive, they tell me.”

They stood up and put on their coats.

“Personally,” he said as they went out the door, “I’d prefer to be fed through the main artery. If I only knew the right people I’m sure it could be arranged.…”

A
s they entered the vestibule of the apartment building Marian, who had taken off her gloves, slipped her hand into her coat pocket and turned her engagement ring halfway around on her finger. She did not think it would be courteous to the roommates, who had misunderstood with such touching concern, to flaunt the enlightening diamond too ostentatiously. Then she took the ring off altogether. Then she thought, “What am I doing? I’m getting married in a month. Why shouldn’t they find out?” and put it back on. Then she thought, “But I’ll never see them again. Why complicate things at this point?” and took it off for the second time and deposited it for safe-keeping in her change purse.

By now they had gone up the stairs and were at the door of the apartment, which was opened before Duncan had touched the handle by Trevor. He was wearing an apron and was surrounded by a delicate aroma of spices.

“I thought I heard you two out there,” he said. “Do come in. Dinner’ll be a few more minutes, I’m afraid. I’m so glad you could come, ah …” He fixed his pale-blue eyes enquiringly on Marian.

“Marian,” Duncan said.

“Oh yes,” said Trevor, “I don’t think we’ve really met – formally.” He smiled, and a dimple appeared in each cheek. “You’re just getting pot-luck tonight – nothing fancy.” He frowned, sniffed the air, gave a shriek of alarm, and scuttled sideways into the kitchenette.

Marian left her boots on the newspapers outside the door and Duncan took her coat into the bedroom. She walked into the living room, searching for a place to sit down. She didn’t want to sit in Trevor’s purple chair, nor in Duncan’s green one – that would create a problem for Duncan when he came out of the bedroom – nor on the floor among the papers: she might be disarranging someone’s thesis; and Fish was barricaded into the red chair with the slab of board across its arms in front of him, writing with great concentration on yet another piece of paper. There was an almost-empty glass by his elbow. Finally she balanced herself on one of the arms of Duncan’s chair, folding her hands in her lap.

Trevor warbled out of the kitchenette, bearing a tray with crystal sherry glasses. “Thank you, this is very nice,” Marian said politely as he dispensed hers. “What a beautiful glass!”

“Yes, isn’t it elegant? It’s been in the family for years. There’s so little elegance left,” he said, gazing at her right ear as though he could see inside it a vista of an immemorially ancient but fast-vanishing history. “Especially in this country. I think we all ought to do our bit to preserve some of it, don’t you?”

With the arrival of the sherry Fish had put down his pen. He was now staring fixedly at Marian, not at her face but at her abdomen, somewhere in the vicinity of the navel. She found it disconcerting, and said, to distract him, “Duncan tells me you’ve been doing some work on Beatrix Potter. That sounds exciting.”

“Huh? Oh yeah. I was contemplating it, but I’ve got into Lewis Carroll, that’s really more profound. The nineteenth century is very hot property these days, you know.” He threw his head back
against the chair and closed his eyes; his words rose in a monotonously intoned chant through the black thicket of his beard. “Of course everybody knows
Alice
is a sexual-identity-crisis book, that’s old stuff, it’s been around for a long time, I’d like to go into it a little deeper though. What we have here, if you only look at it closely, this is the little girl descending into the very suggestive rabbit burrow, becoming as it were pre-natal, trying to find her role,” he licked his lips, “her role as a Woman. Yes, well that’s clear enough. These patterns emerge. Patterns emerge. One sexual role after another is presented to her but she seems unable to accept any of them, I mean she’s really blocked. She rejects Maternity when the baby she’s been nursing turns into a pig, nor does she respond positively to the dominating-female role of the Queen and her castration cries of ‘Off with his head!’ And when the Duchess makes a cleverly concealed lesbian pass at her, sometimes you wonder how
conscious
old Lewis was, anyway she’s neither aware nor interested; and right after that you’ll recall she goes to talk with the Mock Turtle, enclosed in his shell and his self-pity, a definitely pre-adolescent character; then there are those most suggestive scenes, most suggestive, the one where her neck becomes elongated and she is accused of being a serpent, hostile to eggs, you’ll remember, a rather destructively phallic identity she indignantly rejects; and her negative reaction to the dictatorial Caterpillar, just six inches high, importantly perched on the all-too-female mushroom which is perfectly round but which has the power to make you either smaller or larger than normal, I find that particularly interesting. And of course there’s the obsession with time, clearly a cyclical rather than a linear obsession. So anyway she makes a lot of attempts but she refuses to commit herself, you can’t say that by the end of the book she has reached anything that can be definitely called maturity. She does much better though in
Through the Looking Glass
, where, as you’ll remember …”

There was a smothered but audible snicker. Marian jumped. Duncan must have been standing in the doorway: she hadn’t noticed him come in.