Free Listening in the Dusk by Celia Fremlin Page B

ill-lit, however, as to obscure the cool thumbs-down glance which seemed to take in Alice from top to toe — from her no-bother hairstyle, that is, to her discreditably comfortable shoes.
    But now, seated directly under the glare of one of Hetty’s hundred-and-fifty-watt bulbs, Miss Dorinda seemed both smaller and less imposing. Lines of tiredness, clearly visible now under the make-up, softened the rigid pink-and-white perfection of her enamelled cheeks. Her eye-shadow was reassuringly smudged after its long day’s service in the salon, and even her slimness was somehow modified by the eager glint in her eyes as she watched the steaming slices of bacon sliding one after another from under Hetty’s expertly wielded knife. You felt, watching her, that here was somebody who should have been comfortably plump. “Inside every fat woman there is a thin one struggling to get out,” they say. Well, this one had got out, and here she was. Alas for the plump, comfortable one that had been left behind!
    “Good God! Dorrie !” exclaimed Brian, taking his place opposite her. “Whatever on earth are you doing among the carnivores? I thought you were supposed to be vegetarian?”
    “Well, yes, I am …” Miss Dorinda looked both confused and affronted, marshalling her arguments. “But … Well, this isn’t meat, exactly, is it? This is bacon …” and she reached out hungrily for the lavishly-filled plate that Hetty was passing her.
    “Of course it’s meat!” Brian insisted, ignoring Hetty’s protesting glances and shake of the head. “Whatever do you mean, it’s not meat? It’s meat from a pi g . A pig is just as much an animal as a cow or a sheep is — and a lot more intelligent, actually. Do you know, a pig can work out how to lift a latch and open a gate? I remember, when I was a kid, the pig they had just up the lane from us, it used to —”
    “Hush, Brian, do hush!” Hetty could contain herself no longer. “You’re spoiling Miss Dorinda’s meal for her! I don’t think it’s nice, it’s not nice at all, to talk about pigs while we are eating bacon. Just get on with your food, Brian, and let us get on with ours.”
    “OK, OK,” Brian shrugged. “I don’t want to spoil Dorrie’s meal, I just want her to be logical. If she would only be logical, she would enjoy it more, not less, because she’d realise it was no more cruel to eat a pig than to eat a slice of bread. How many mice, and squirrels, and rabbits does she think have had to be killed in order to preserve for humans the grain which goes into bread? And muesli, too, and All-Bran — all those Health Foods she’s so —”
    “ Brian ! If you aren’t careful, I won’t invite you down any more. You know what I was planning for Sunday lunch? A nice roast chicken, with bread sauce, and roast potatoes, and sprouts. But of course I won’t be doing it now, not if it’s going to start all this argy bargy —”
    “Argy bargy about whether a chicken is a vegetable?” Brian was beginning; and it seemed to Alice that it was time someone changed the subject.
    “What a pity Mary couldn’t be here,” she said, rather at random. “I don’t know how she could resist all these delicious smells. I suppose she has a date this evening …”
    She was aware, as she spoke, of a slight tension to her left. Brian had paused in his eating, and with fork poised half-way to his mouth, was listening with painful intentness. She realised that she had tactlessly blundered from one awkward topic right into another.
    “A date? Not on your life!” declared Hetty, beginning to apply herself to the carving of second helpings. “That girl never has dates. I wish she did. It really worries me, you know, the way shestays up there evening after evening. Sometimes she doesn’t even have the light on. What does she do I wonder?”
    “Perhaps she has to go to bed early,” suggested Alice, trying to render innocuous this topic she had so inadvertently raised.