Free The Spider-Orchid by Celia Fremlin

asked Adrian, just as Amelia had predicted; and Rita, equally predictably, burst into tears.
    It was a difficult quarrel to launch, because Adrian, just sitting down to his work after driving Amelia home, really didn’t know what in the world Rita was talking about, had no recollection of the subject at all. And by the time she had explained it to him all over again, including the comparative prices of chocolate-coated Swiss rolls at Tesco’s and at Marks and Spencer, he once more had on his face the glazed expression which had so incensed her in the first place.
    “You never listen to me,” she sobbed, “you never listen to a word I say!” and Adrian, knowing that he didn’t, said, “Nonsense, darling,” rather helplessly.
    He was dismayed, and also puzzled by her outburst. It had seemed to him that the afternoon had gone off quite reasonably well, with Amelia down with Dorothy half the time, Rita chattering away, and he, Adrian, managing to get quite a fair amount of work done in spite of it all.
    What had gone wrong? Whatever was she on about?
    “Look, dear,” he said, trying to be placatory, “if Amelia has upset you some way about a Swiss roll, then I’m sorry. She can be rather a little pig sometimes, I suppose. Though actually I thought she was behaving very well most of the time. I mean, she could hardly have been less bother, could she? First down at Dorothy’s, and then just lying on the floor reading and getting on with her homework … she hardly spoke a word the entire afternoon.”
    “And that’s what you call “behaving well?’ Is that the way you think a kid of thirteen ought to be? Let me tell you something, Adrian, if that child was my daughter, which thank heaven she’s not, I’d be very, very worried about her. I would, Adrian. All that reading, and writing, and so quiet all the time, it’s not natural. And so secretive, too, so sly—you’ve only got to stir out of your chairand she covers up what she’s doing as if you were a spy, or something! What’s she trying to hide? What is it she’s so ashamed of? Morbid, I call it. At her age, she should be full of fun and chatter, she should be active, outgoing, communicative. I don’t want to scare you, Adrian, but as her father, I think you should be doing something about it. Get some advice about her. There are clinics….”
    Adrian closed his eyes, crossed his legs, and leaned back in his chair.
    “What you mean is, you’re bored,” he said to Rita. “Amelia and I both have work to do on Sundays, and you haven’t. And so you feel left out. Of course you do. But I did tell you. I warned you right from the start that our Sundays are like this. I knew you wouldn’t enjoy it, I knew it wasn’t your thing, but you would come….”
    “‘ Came ’ ? I like that!” Rita was outraged. “Adrian, I live here! Hadn’t you noticed? Or are you telling me I’m to be chucked out of my own home every Sunday of my life for the sake of that little zombie? Why don’t you think about chucking her out for a change? It’d do her good, she needs a bit of fresh air. She ought to be out and about with her friends at weekends, not humped over her books in a bad light, and breathing through her mouth half the time! She’ll end up with short sight, adenoids, curvature of the spine….”
    Adrian once again closed his eyes, and laid down his pen with an air of exaggerated weariness.
    “You can’t ‘end up’ with short sight,” he explained patiently. “It’s a thing you’re born with. It’s genetic.”
    The word was a trigger word. Rita’s brain was instantly ablaze with all the popular medical articles she’d skimmed through in magazines recently, and at once she plunged, with crusaders’ zeal, into a passionate account of this survey or something that some Doctor Somebody had been conducting in America or somewhere, which showed that more children who wore glasses had learned to read early, or was it that they stopped wearing