Edible Woman - Margaret Atwood [66]
Duncan’s room too was much the same as she remembered it. The ironing board was nearer the centre of the room and the chessmen had been set up in their two opposing rows; the black-and-white chequered board was resting now on top of a stack of books. On the bed were several freshly ironed white shirts on coathangers. Duncan hung them up in the closet before going over to plug in the iron. Marian took off her coat and sat down on the bed.
He threw his cigarette into one of the crowded ashtrays on the floor, waited for the iron to heat, testing it at intervals on the board, and then began to iron one of the blouses, with slow concentration and systematic attention to collar corners. Marian watched him silently; he obviously didn’t want to be interrupted. She found it strange to see someone else ironing her clothes.
Ainsley had given her a peculiar look when she had come out of her bedroom with her coat on and the bundle under her arm. “Where are you going with those?” she had asked. It was too small a lot for the laundromat.
“Oh, just out.”
“What’ll I say if Peter calls?”
“He won’t call. But just say I’m out.” She had plunged down the stairs then, not wishing to explain anything at all about Duncan or even to reveal his existence. She felt it might upset the balance of power. But Ainsley had no time at the moment for anything more than a tepid curiosity: she was too elated by the probable success of her own campaign, and also by what she had called “a stroke of luck.”
Marian had asked, when she had reached the apartment and had found Ainsley in the living room with a paperback on baby and child care, “Well, how did you get the poor thing out of here this morning?”
Ainsley laughed. “Great stroke of luck,” she said. “I was sure the old fossil down there would be lying in wait for us at the bottom of the stairs. I really didn’t know what I’d do. I was trying to think of some bluff, like saying he was the telephone man.…”
“She tried to pin me down about it last night,” Marian interjected. “She knew perfectly well he was up there.”
“Well for some reason she actually went out. I saw her go from the living-room window; just by chance really. Can you imagine? I didn’t think she ever went out, not in the mornings. I skipped work today of course and I was just wandering around having a cigarette. But when I saw her go I got Len up and stuck his clothes on him and hustled him down the stairs and out of there before he was quite awake. He had a terrible hangover too, he just about killed that bottle. All by himself. I don’t think he’s too sure yet exactly what happened.” She smiled with her small pink mouth.
“Ainsley, you’re immoral.”
“Why? He seemed to enjoy it. Though he was terribly apologetic and anxious this morning when we were out having breakfast, and then sort of soothing, as though he was trying to console me or something. Really it was embarrassing. And then, you know, as he got wider and wider awake and soberer and soberer, he couldn’t wait to get away from me. But now,” she said, hugging herself with both arms, “we’ll have to wait and see. Whether it was all worth it.”
“Yes, well,” Marian said, “would you mind fixing the bed?”
Thinking back on it, she found something ominous about the fact that the lady down below had gone out. It wasn’t like her at all. She’d be much more likely to lurk behind the piano or the velvet curtains while they were creeping down the stairs and spring out upon them just as they had reached the threshold of safety.
He was starting on the second blouse. He seemed to be unaware of everything but the wrinkled white material spread on the board in front of him, poring over it as though it was an ancient and very fragile manuscript that he couldn’t quite translate. Before, she had thought of him as being short, perhaps because of the shrunken child’s face, or because she had mostly seen him sitting down; but now she thought, actually he would be quite tall if he didn’t slouch like that.
As she sat watching