Something in Disguise by Elizabeth Jane Howard Read Free Book Online Page A

died and before May married Herbert – this had been her room. Now the basement and ground floor were let and they
only had the first and top floors. It was wonderful to be here – with Oliver. She wondered what sort of sharp practice he had in mind . . .
    Alice lay very still on her back in the dark. The twin bed beside her was empty. Leslie had passed out (there was no other word for it) in the sitting-room. After a time, she
had lifted his legs – unbelievably heavy – on to the other end of the sofa from his head: it hadn’t seemed to make any difference to him. He was clearly alive because his
breathing was so noisy. She had stood looking down on him for a bit without thinking or feeling anything very much. Any fear or excitement that had lurked in wait for the end of this day had long
since gone. By the time he had finished telling her how many women he had known, he had drunk nearly all the brandy. She had left the pink silk lamp lit in case he woke up and wondered where he
was, and retired for the night. No problem about undressing, she had thought with bitter exhaustion. She wished one could stop being a virgin without noticing it . . .

 
3. Marking Time
    By the end of a week in Lincoln Street, Elizabeth was thankful that she had found some sort of job. Living with Oliver, though tremendously exciting, disconcerted her: it was
like having a very exhausting holiday, or the last week in someone’s life, or before they were going to be caught by the police, or one’s birthday every day; really she didn’t
know how to describe it. To begin with nothing ever happened when she expected it to; meals, getting up, parties, conversations, all occurred with consistent irregularity. The first day had
been lovely. They had got up very late and had boiled eggs and warm croissants that Oliver had fetched from a shop, and strong coffee and then a kipper each because she had found them in the fridge
and they found that eating was making them hungrier; and Oliver had had two very intelligent conversations with friends on the telephone – one about Mozart and one about the Liberal Party.
Then Oliver had said, ‘How much money have you got?’ and they had looked at her cheque book and it didn’t say because she was bad about her counterfoils, so she had rung up and
the bank said eleven pounds thirteen and fourpence. ‘Oh well,’ Oliver had said, ‘we’ve no need to worry.’ And he had stretched out his legs – he was wearing
black espadrilles over purple socks. She had suggested that she should clean up the house, it was pretty awful, really, but he had said no, no; he was going to cut her hair and then they’d go
to the cinema. He’d tied a tablecloth round her neck and cut her the most expert fringe. ‘Now you look much more as though you’re lying in wait. For something or other,’ he
added. They’d cashed a cheque for five pounds and gone to Mondo Cane in Tottenham Court Road – a simply extraordinary film, but Oliver laughed at it quite a lot. Then they had
walked to Soho, and Oliver had made her buy fresh ravioli and a pair of black fishnet tights.
    ‘Why?’ she had said both times. ‘We might have a party in which case it would come in handy,’ he said about the ravioli; and, ‘I haven’t been through your
clothes yet, but what ever you’ve got will look better with tights.’ Then it had begun to rain, and Oliver bundled her into a taxi. Awful extravagance. She mentioned then that she
thought she ought to think about getting a job, and he stopped the cab and bought an Evening Standard . ‘I’ll look through it in the bath for you,’ he had said.
    While he was doing this, she set about the living-room. There was so much dust in it that everything was actually dust-coloured. The room had been painted entirely white, but the walls
and woodwork were now, as Oliver had remarked, the colours of old cricket trousers. ‘I take refuge in calling it warm white,’ he had said: ‘but