Edible Woman - Margaret Atwood [60]
The soundtrack exploded, spattering the air with yelps and whoops, as a band of Indians swept from their hiding place for the attack. After they had been demolished and listening was possible again she could no longer hear the small clock-like sound he had been making. She jerked her head round to the side: nobody. Well, he had gone then, or perhaps he had never been there in the first place; or maybe it had been somebody else.
On the screen a gargantuan cowboy was pressing his lips chastely to those of the blonde woman. “Hank, does this mean …?” she was whispering. Shortly there would be a sunset.
Then, so close to her ear that she could feel the breath stirring her hair, a voice spoke. “Pumpkin seeds,” it said.
Her mind accepted the information calmly. “Pumpkin seeds,” it replied in silence, “of course, why not?” But her body was startled, and froze momentarily. When she had overcome its purely muscular surprise enough to turn around, there wasn’t anybody behind her.
She sat through the closing scene of the movie, beginning to be convinced that she was the victim of a complicated hallucination. “So I’m finally going mad,” she thought, “like everybody else. What a nuisance. Though I suppose it will be a change.” But when the lights went on after a brief shot of a waving flag and some tinny music, she took the trouble to examine the floor beneath the seat where he had (possibly) been sitting. She found a little pile of white shells. They were like some primitive signal, a heap of rocks or a sign made with sticks or notches cut in trees, marking a path or indicating something ahead, but though she stared down at them for several minutes while the handful of moviegoers straggled past her up the aisle, she could not interpret them. At any rate, she thought as she left the theatre, this time he left a visible trail.
She took as much time as she could getting home; she did not wish to walk in on the middle of anything. The house, as far as she could tell from the outside, was in darkness, but when she stepped through the door and switched on the hall light, an intercepting form glided out from the dining room. It was the lady down below, still managing to look dignified even in pincurls and a purple Viyella-flannel dressing gown.
“Miss MacAlpin,” she said, her eyebrows severe, “I have been so upset. I’m sure I heard a – some man went upstairs earlier this evening with Miss Tewce, and I’m positive I haven’t heard him come down yet. Of course, I don’t mean to imply that – I know that you are both very nice girls, but still, the child …”
Marian looked at her watch. “Well, I don’t know,” she said doubtfully, “I don’t think anything like that would happen. Perhaps you were mistaken. After all it’s past one, and when she isn’t out somewhere Ainsley usually goes to bed before that.”
“Well, that’s what I thought, I mean I haven’t heard any conversation from up there … not that I mean to say …”
The mangy old eavesdropper, she’s perfectly avid, Marian thought. “Then she must have gone to bed,” she said cheerfully. “And whoever it was probably came downstairs very quietly so as not to disturb you. But I’ll speak to her about it in the morning for you.” She smiled with what she intended to be a reassuring efficiency, and escaped up the stairs.
Ainsley is a whited sepulchre, she thought as she climbed, and I’ve just applied another coat of whitewash. But remember the mote in thy neighbour’s eye and the beam in thine own, etcetera. How on earth are we going to convey him, whatever is left of him, down past that old vulture in the morning?
On the kitchen table she found the scotch bottle, three-quarters empty. A tie with green and blue stripes was dangling victoriously on the closed door of her own room.
That meant she’d have to clear some place that could be slept in, more or less, from the tangled crow’s-nest