‘Hello,’ said Martin, when I entered the room. He was sitting in his chair reading a book.
‘Hello,’ I replied, seating myself in the leather armchair. It was almost dark now, and in the twilight Martin’s face wore an indistinct beauty of suggestion. ‘You shouldn’t read in the dark.’
‘I wasn’t reading.’
‘How was Aunt Lilian?’
‘Old. Aunt-like.’
‘When did you get back?’
‘Hour ago. Bit more.’
‘Sorry. There didn’t seem much point in coming over.’
There was a pause.
‘What happened, Stel-la?’ said Martin gravely, turning his face towards me.
I had admittedly made my apology on the assumption that news of my afternoon’s activities had reached him, but nonetheless I experienced a form of grief at hearing this assumption confirmed. I have always, ever since I was a child, disliked being in trouble, and would find the machinations of whatever authority it was I had crossed — the deadly conveyance of information, the steely privacy of consultation, the resultant efficiency of the reprimand — strangely sinister. It aroused in me a primitive fear, and even though I was not strictly afraid of the Maddens, and could indeed if pressed make a good case for not caring what they thought of me in the slightest, I felt it now.
‘I could explain it,’ I said, ‘but you wouldn’t believe me.’
‘Try.’
I remembered my investigation of the Maddens’ fridge that morning, the early and innocent misdemeanour which had subsequently cost me so much. What else had I been supposed to do, abandoned without food and with no means of procuring any?
‘I was hungry!’ I cried. My still unrelieved inanition flooded forth at the words and I sank weakly back into my chair. ‘I haven’t eaten anything all day,’ I continued, my mouth dry.
‘Why ever not?’ said Martin. ‘You don’t need to diet. You’re thin.’
‘I don’t want to be thin!’ I wailed. ‘I just don’t have any money!’
‘Well, I know it’s not much,’ said Martin doubtfully. ‘But it certainly should be enough to—’
‘No,’ I said, closing my eyes. ‘I mean I really don’t have any. They — your parents haven’t paid me yet.’ Summoning my last reserves of energy, I explained the chain of consequence which had led from this simple omission to my discovery, drunk and unconscious, in the swimming pool.
‘Oh, I don’t think it was just that,’ said Martin, with that hint of ‘authority’ which instilled in me such terror. ‘I think they thought you weren’t — happy.’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ I demanded, rallying slightly.
‘Never mind,’ said Martin. ‘Look, I’ll talk to them. See if I can sort this business out. There’s obviously been a misunderstanding. ’
‘You won’t be able to. They’ve made up their minds.’
‘How do you know?’
‘I just do.’
There was a long pause.
‘If that’s the case,’ concluded Martin with a sigh, ‘it’s probably because they think it’s for your own good, Stel-la. And they’ve got a point. They’re used to having a different sort of girl here — you know, someone from abroad who wants to learn English for a year, waifs and strays. You’ve got a life, for Heaven’s sake.’
‘But I don’t want it!’
A voice could be heard issuing faintly from downstairs.
‘Mum’s on the warpath,’ said Martin. ‘We’d better go down. It’s supposed to be Dad’s birthday dinner, after all. Come on.’
‘I can’t!’
‘Why not?’
‘I can’t face them all! Mark, and your sister, and your parents—’
‘Everyone has to face things. It’s the only way. Come on.’
We went out into the corridor, whose unilluminated gloom ushered us along, a reprimand for our lingering upstairs. I paused at the top of the stairs, while waves of conversation drifted up through the empty hall from the open door of the room below. Martin began hurriedly to shuffle down at the sound, evidently recognizing in it the call of his tribe; and for a moment I too longed to be part of this human noise, to feel the ache of singularity eased by other bodies, the strange spikes and curlicues of solitude which protruded from me like invisible horns sanded down by the gladsome, warming rub of society.
‘Hurry up,’ called Martin over his shoulder. ‘They’ve already gone in to dinner.’
I followed Martin down the stairs, as sombrely as if to the beat of an executioner’s drum. I could not believe that I was to be made to face those whose only thought when they saw me could be that I had failed to justify my presence here and was to be sent away. He mounted his chair and span swiftly off to the right, from where the voices were coming. I stood in a void of dread and disbelief outside the door; and then reeled after Martin into the room.
What a lovely sight would have greeted me, if only I had been looking at it through different eyes! We had entered the dining room, a room I had never been in before, its novelty ornamented with the magic of a special occasion. It was lit entirely by candles, whose pale, guttering columns rose from a vast table in the centre, and whose glow in the velvety dark gave every surface the appearance of being heaped with treasure. The light glittered off glasses and cutlery, sparkled on the china rims of plates, flashed over rings and necklaces, and pooled warmly over the circle of faces gathered around the table; faces which to me were but half-familiar and at this point probably hostile, but which to Martin formed the landscape of everything that he loved.
‘Finally!’
‘Where have you been?’
‘We’ve been calling you for hours, darling!’
The volley of exclamation caused me to shrink momentarily back into the shadows; but Martin looked over his shoulder as if to bring me to heel, and I reluctantly followed him towards the table. Now that the fog of our arrival had lifted slightly, I could begin to distinguish one face from another. There was Caroline, resplendent in some floral garment with elaborately puffed sleeves, from which the slabs of her arms protruded and rested powerfully on the table. Next to her was a man I did not recognize, with a babyish face and a very pale, oval head, the fringe of whose fair, fuzzy hair clung in a sort of tide mark around the level of his ears. Beside him sat Mark, and beside him Millie. Even in that rushed first assessment of the table, I could not prevent myself from being struck anew by her loveliness. She was wearing the same red dress in which I had seen her earlier, but her mouth glistened darkly with lipstick. Next to her sat Toby, groomed and buffed to perfection in a crisp white shirt and dark jacket; and next to him Pamela, whose impossibly girlish form was encased in a tight black dress. Around her neck was a rope of pearls. Mr Madden beamed combustibly beside her. A double gap remained between him and Caroline, which it took me some time to appreciate constituted my own invitation to dinner. Dimly I was struck by the operation of manners in this foreign, fortunate, sparkling world. It was, I understood then, their law, their discipline, their religion. I may have been scorned, reviled, found wanting; but it had been deemed correct, for reasons which were unclear to me and which I sensed had not even been exhumed for reexamination on this occasion, that I should attend dinner.
‘Stella, why don’t you sit next to Piers?’ said Pamela. ‘And Martin can slot in there beside Caroline.’