Free The Girl Who Passed for Normal by Hugh Fleetwood Page B

not, there really is an air of tension when mother and daughter are together — I must say I find it quite exciting. The only trouble is, on their own they’re both quite normal — in their strange ways. It’s a shame. You think you’ve found a real case of Southern gothic, and then the closer you look, it’s just another domestic nondrama. Pazienza. I’ll be glad when Catherine changes back from mental to physical movement; I’m sure it’s better for her, and I know it is for me.
    Look after yourself.
    Love, David.
    Barbara said to Catherine, “I’ve been thinking about what you said yesterday, about David going back to America. It’s impossible. He couldn’t have been going to bed with your mother, either. He wrote me a letter.” She paused, knowing she was speaking too quickly. “He wrote me that he didn’t like your mother. He liked you, but not your mother.”
    Catherine looked sulky, and then appeared to be thinking. Finally she came out with, “Well, even if they didn’t go to bed together, mother wanted to. I know she did.” She stopped, and thought some more. “Then — if David —” she paused, and smiled. “Then she’s killed him,” she said quickly. “Don’t you see? She killed my father, and now she’s killed David.”

4
    It was Wednesday night, and rain was pouring. Barbara had sat at home alone, listening to the rain and wondering where David was, until she felt that if she didn’t go out she would dissolve and become part of the wet darkness.
    She considered going to the cinema, but she didn’t like to go alone; she wondered if there was a concert, but knew that even if there was, she wouldn’t go. She wanted to be with someone, to be somewhere warm, and to talk; she wanted to talk about David. She sat alone and thought about Marcello, with his red-and-peach-painted rooms, his unbrushed hair, his expensive clothes, and his ridiculous opinions; and about his relationship with David, which she had never dared ask about, and in which she had always pretended she was not interested.
    She telephoned Marcello and asked if he was alone; then she asked if she could come over. “I’d like to see you,” she said, though she knew he must think she was lying. She wanted to see him because he had been closer to David than anyone else — closer, possibly, than her, though she didn’twant to know this for sure — but more than this, she wanted to see him because, though everything about him irritated her, she found him exciting. She had never admitted this to anyone, above all not to David, but now that she was alone she admitted it to herself.
    She found Marcello exciting for the same reason that she hated him. She felt insulted by him. The professor of philosophy was all there — he was solid, he belonged. Oh, he could let dust gather on the floor and on the books, and he could ignore it if someone dropped a bit of burning ash on one of his chairs; but in spite of his amateur wall-painting and political posters, he gave her the impression of something safe and strong. Marcello could insult the world as much as he liked without getting thrown out. He could hold whatever political opinions he liked; he could be as hypocritical, false, stupid, biased, and boring as he liked; but he would still always belong.
    She knew she had affected his life and his relationship with David; yet he never seemed to notice it or care about it. She felt she had triumphed over him, but he gave no sign of being aware there had been a battle. He knew she hated him; he was polite to her. She felt that he should resent her; instead, she resented him. He was kind to her, he was attentive , he was intolerable; and he excited her.
    She thought, as she put her coat on and turned out the lights in the apartment, that in a way Catherine and Marcello were rather similar. They stood, respectively, at the back and front doors, as it were, of the real world, from which she felt, since the death of Howard, she had been