Free The Pumpkin Eater by Penelope Mortimer Page B

ask your mother, couldn’t you?”
    She looked up in the middle of a sob. “Will
He
be there?”
    â€œOh yes,” I said recklessly. “He’s always there. He’s working very hard, you see. For his Higher.”
    â€œHas He got a friend, do you think?”
    â€œI don’t know. I don’t actually know his friends. But I mean he must
have
some friends. Well, we could ask.”
    â€œI’d love to come,” she said. “I really would. I
do
think you’re sweet.” She added brightly, and without conviction, “You must come and stay with us one holidays too. I think you’d get on awfully well with Roger. You’re just his type.”
    â€œThank you,” I said.
    â€œI should think this stupid war or whatever it is will be over jolly soon. Then you could come to Spain.”
    â€œOh yes,” I said. “That would be lovely.”
    But the war went on and Littlehampton was inescapable for Ireen. She wrote me many anguished letters in which she said that the only thing that prevented her from suicide was the prospect of coming to stay with me “and meeting
Him
.” I told the clergyman’s son, “My friend, the one who’s coming to stay, is terribly unhappy. She was going to Spain, you know. Then she couldn’t, because of this war.”
    â€œGosh,” he groaned, “Gosh, I wish I would go to Spain.”
    â€œWell, you’ll have to wait till after the war, won’t you?”
    â€œThere won’t be any point after the war,” he said. “You idiot!”
    I grew increasingly nervous as the time for Ireen’s visit came nearer. I hoped he wouldn’t call me an idiot in front of her. He was so unpredictable. My mother, sensing what she felt to be a lack of confidence, arranged for me to have a permanent wave. I refused, and she began to worry about me, dabbing at me all the time to tuck me in or straighten me up or smooth me down. I heard her say to my father, “She doesn’t seem to be like other girls,” and he said, “Count your blessings, Mame, she’s a beauty.” This hardly comforted me. I was not worrying about myself.
    Ireen’s train arrived in the early evening, so luckily I did not have to make any plans for that day. Tomorrow I would take her round the factory and meet the clergyman’s son at the Copper Kettle for what my parents called “elevenses” and perhaps play tennis in the afternoon. I knew she didn’t like reading, and rather doubted whether she would have the patience for mahjong. What would I do with her if rained? Worrying, I did not notice her as she came up the platform. In any case, I was looking for someone else.
    Ireen was wearing what I later heard her describe as a powder blue costume. Her hair was rolled in a perfect sausage at the nape of her neck, and another bobbing over her rather low forehead. She wore high heels, a necklace and lipstick. She was carrying a handbag as well as a suitcase. I thought she looked perfectly frightful. I was horrified. I hardly heard a word she said as we went out of the station and I didn’t dare look at the ticket collector, whom I had known all my life. All the way home in the taxi — my father had gone in the car to a meeting of the Cricket Club — I answered her in terrified monosyllables, keeping my bare toes clenched inside my sensible sandals, feeling the sweat of embarrassment behind my knees and in the barely perceptible folds of my breasts. Oh God, I prayed, make her have a bath, make her put on some proper clothes — oh God,
please
don’t let her be like this. She had gone to the fair, she said, with a boy from the chemist’s and her mother had been simply livid. “Gosh,” I said dully, hoping we would have a crash in which our corpses would be mutilated beyond recognition. Her lipstick, newly applied, had come off on her front teeth. I felt sick with shame