The Mandelbaum Gate by Muriel Spark Read Free Book Online

her cousin. She
prolonged her stay. She went down to the dig as a volunteer. Miles said one
day, ‘You’re causing a scandal, Barbara — you and Harry Clegg.’ He said it in
an entirely jocular way, as one might say to a small boy, ‘My, you’re a big man!’
and Barbara was shaken by this. Miles had not for a moment realized how near
the truth he had struck. Neither he nor his wife, Kathy, apparently, had
noticed how dose her friendship with the archaeologist Harry Clegg had grown in
the past three weeks. They had simply ignored the evidence. ‘You’re causing a
scandal, Barbara — you and Harry Clegg.’ Barbara was stabbed by his tone of
voice. It affected her with a shock of self-recognition. She felt as if she had
caught sight of a strange face in the mirror, and presently realized that the
face was her own. Barbara understood then, that her self-image was at variance
with the image she presented to the world. She understood that, to them, she
was a settled spinster of thirty-seven, by definition a woman, but sexually
differentiated only by a narrow margin, sharp, clever, set in her ways, a
definite spinster, one who had embraced the Catholic Church instead of a
husband, one who had taken up religion instead of cats. It was this concept
that entitled Miles to tease her. ‘You’re causing a scandal, Barbara …’ But
Miles, a grown man … he was too innocent for words. She had looked at him.
Yes, he was joking. He gave her a little pat on the shoulder and went out to
the car.
    Barbara
went and looked at herself in the mirror, full-length, in her room. Her hair
was drawn back tight, her face was thin and smooth, her blouse and skirt were
neat. Everything was quite neat, prim and unnoticeable. She had not guessed she
looked quite like that, but now that she saw herself almost through the eyes of
others, she was amazed. She wondered if she was a hypocrite; but that
appearance in the glass, she thought, comes of long habit. Having restrained
the expression of my feelings over the years I look as if I had none. It comes from
a long habit of approaching the world with caution, this appearance of being
too cautious to live a life of normal danger.
    The
figure in the looking-glass fascinated her. No wonder Miles did not really know
her.
    She had
thought then, but who am I?
    I am
who I am.
    Yes,
but who am I?
    Because,
in fact, she was already deeply involved in a love-affair with Harry Clegg,
the archaeologist. The local country people had taken note of them during the
first week of their meeting. But her cousins would never do so. They would
simply ignore the evidence. She looked in the mirror and understood why. And
understood why she attracted the man. It was the very quality that deceived her
friends. It was this deceptive, ascetic, virginal look that Harry found
intriguing. It was not her mind alone, she told herself as she sized up her
appearance.
    All the
summer weeks of their first meeting she had felt in a state of complete
liberation from guilt. Moral or social censure were meaningless. The hours and
days were barricaded with enchantment. She prolonged her stay on the simple
excuse to Miles and Kathy that she was enjoying it. They accepted this, they
were delighted. She did not mind baby-sitting in the evenings with Harry Clegg
to keep her company. Harry Clegg was a scholar, of course, but not their type
socially; he was a mild joke to them, a small, dark, scowling creature with too
much untidy hair. A scowling creature except when he smiled. He was brilliant,
the Vaughans admitted, a dedicated scholar. That he was regarded in every
informed society but theirs as a distinguished man, the Vaughans did not know.
They conveyed, with innocent remarks, in their diffident way, their amusement
at the points where his lower-class origins were evident. Harry would never
have entered Kathy’s drawing-room or Miles’s consciousness, nor would have
wanted to do so, had he not been dabbling in the local excavations