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By Root 618 0

whims, had coaxed it and tempted it, but it was adamant; and if she used force it rebelled. One incident like that in a restaurant had been enough. Peter had been terribly nice about it, of course; he’d driven her straight home and helped her up the stairs as though she was an invalid and insisted she must have the stomach flu; but also he had been embarrassed and (understandably) annoyed. From then on she had resolved to humour it. She had done everything it wanted, and had even bought it some vitamin pills to keep its proteins and minerals balanced. There was no sense in getting malnutrition. “The thing to do,” she had told herself, “is to keep calm.” At times when she had meditated on the question she had concluded that the stand it had taken was an ethical one: it simply refused to eat anything that had once been, or (like oysters on the half-shell) might still be living. But she faced each day with the forlorn hope that her body might change its mind.

She rubbed the wooden bowl with a half-clove of garlic and threw in the onion rings and the sliced radishes and the tomatoes, and tore up the lettuce. At the last minute she thought of adding a grated carrot to give it more colour. She took one from the refrigerator, located the peeler finally in the bread-box, and began to peel off the skin, holding the carrot by its leafy top.

She was watching her own hands and the peeler and the curl of crisp orange skin. She became aware of the carrot. It’s a root, she thought, it grows in the ground and sends up leaves. Then they come along and dig it up, maybe it even makes a sound, a scream too low for us to hear, but it doesn’t die right away, it keeps on living, right now it’s still alive.…

She thought she felt it twist in her hands. She dropped it on the table. “Oh no,” she said, almost crying. “Not this too!”

When they had finally gone, even Peter, who had kissed her on the cheek and said jokingly, “Darling, we’re never going to be like that,” Marian went out to the kitchen and scraped the plates into the garbage pail and stacked them in the sink. The dinner had not been a good idea. Clara and Joe hadn’t been able to get a babysitter so they had brought the children, lugging them up the stairs and putting them to bed, two in Marian’s room and one in Ainsley’s. The children had wept and excreted, and the fact that the bathroom was down a flight of stairs didn’t help. Clara carted them out to the living room to reassure them and change them; she had no qualms. Conversation had ceased. Marian hovered about, handing diaper pins and pretending to be helpful, but secretly wondering whether it would be bad taste to go down and get one of the many odour-killing devices from the lady down below’s bathroom. Joe bustled about, whistling and bringing fresh supplies; Clara made apologetic remarks in Peter’s direction. “Small children are like this, it’s only shit. Perfectly natural, we all do it. Only,” she said, joggling the youngest on her knee, “some of us have a sense of timing. Don’t we, you little turd?”

Peter had pointedly opened a window; the room became ice cold. Marian served the sherry, despairingly. Peter was not getting the right impression, but she didn’t know what could be done. She found herself wishing that Clara had a few more inhibitions. Clara didn’t deny that her children stank, but neither did she take any pains to conceal it. She admitted it, she almost affirmed it; it was as though she wanted it to be appreciated.

When the children had been swathed and pacified and arranged, two on the chesterfield and one in its carrier on the floor, they sat down to dinner. Now, Marian hoped, they will all have a conversation. She was concentrating on how to conceal her meatballs and didn’t want the position of referee: she just couldn’t think up any bright topical remarks. “Clara tells me you’re a philatelist,” she had ventured, but for some reason Joe didn’t hear her; at least he didn’t answer. Peter gave her a quick inquisitive look. She sat fidgeting with a piece of roll, feeling as though she had made an indecent joke