The Girl Who Passed for Normal

by Hugh Fleetwood

  She knew she had affected his life and his relationship with David; yet he never seemed to notice it or care about it. She felt she had triumphed over him, but he gave no sign of being aware there had been a battle. He knew she hated him; he was polite to her. She felt that he should resent her; instead, she resented him. He was kind to her, he was attentive, he was intolerable; and he excited her.

  She thought, as she put her coat on and turned out the lights in the apartment, that in a way Catherine and Marcello were rather similar. They stood, respectively, at the back and front doors, as it were, of the real world, from which she felt, since the death of Howard, she had been excluded. She would have liked to enter by the front door, via Marcello, but knew it was impossible, so she was trying the back door, via Catherine. She couldn’t, as she walked down her stairs, make out where David had come into it — or came into it. His secret was, she guessed, that he could go in and out any door, front, back, or side, just as he pleased.

  Catherine and Marcello … yes. She would like them to meet. She wondered if they would recognize in each other a similarity; a mutual inability to fall from grace, as she put it to herself. They were both rich, too; she wondered if that had anything to do with it.

  The wind blew her hair back, and she felt the rain, cold on her face.

  *

  She was sitting in the peach-painted room. It was very hot, and she was drinking red wine. “But I believed her when she said it,” she remarked. “Everything’s so inexplicable, I believe everything. I believe David’s gone back to America when Catherine says so, to wait for Mary Emerson. Then I believe that Mary Emerson killed him. I believe that he just got fed up with everything. I’m sure he’s going to come back and I’m sure he’s not.”

  Marcello ran his hand through his hair; his fingers were dirty. “Don’t you know anyone from his work?”

  Barbara shrugged. “Don’t you?”

  Marcello shook his head, and Barbara felt annoyed. “Oh, yes, you don’t approve, do you.” She felt her lips tightening, then bowed her head. There was no point in getting angry. “I don’t know anything,” she said softly. “It’s ridiculous, isn’t it? David never ever spoke about it. Sometimes I thought he was making the whole thing up.”

  “Where did he have his meetings?”

  “I don’t even know that.”

  “Hasn’t David got any letters?”

  “No, I’ve looked. And the only papers he did have that might have been relevant were in his briefcase, which isn’t there.” She stopped, then added, “His passport was in his briefcase, too. He always kept it there.”

  “He was paid when he went to his meetings, wasn’t he?”

  “Yes. I suppose if he doesn’t go to his next meeting they’ll try and find him. But if he does —” she shrugged. “You don’t think it’s possible that all that computer stuff was a sort of front? Maybe he was really doing secret work for the American Air Force, or has defected or been abducted —”

  Marcello shook his head and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “No, I’m afraid not. Didn’t you ever see those things he wrote for those magazines? They were quite genuine.”

  “Yes.” Barbara nodded. “It was only an idea. The thing is, as David never told me about anything — his family, upbringing — not even why he wanted me to live with him. Half the time I had the feeling that he wasn’t very firmly here. So now that he’s not, any explanation of his disappearance, however ridiculous, seems reasonable. That was why, when Catherine Emerson talked about her mother killing David, it seemed almost possible. And then David had said something in one of his letters —”

  “What did you say when she told you that?”

  “I told her she shouldn’t say things like that.”

  Marcello, who was sitting on the floor by her chair, took one of her hands for a second and looked at it. It was white against his darker skin, and the red varnish on the nails was chipped. He put it down again. “Barbara, I think that the most obvious explanation is the most likely.”

  “Which is?”

  “David was an intelligent person doing a job that he was good at — he must have been, otherwise they wouldn’t have gone on using him. And I’m sure — I know — that he thought that he was being misused, or he thought his work might be misused. He was teaching a machine to learn something that perhaps he didn’t really believe should be learned.”

  Barbara shook her head. “David didn’t share your political opinions.”

  “It isn’t a matter of political opinions.” He sounded as if he were explaining something very simple to her. “It was a matter of aesthetics for David. He was doing something creative that, if used right, could make life grow — and he was afraid it would be used to the opposite effect.”

  “Did he tell you this?”

  “No. But I know David very well.”

  Barbara made no comment.

  “And so —” Barbara could tell from his voice that he was dreaming. “— David had been here for three years. He enjoyed himself. He thought he was a foreigner living outside society, being free. But he was doing something that was very much a part of society. He was doing something that could be used to control society. And if David wanted to be free himself, he must have seen the contradiction. With you, and his life here, he saw that he was fooling himself. And so he got up one morning and left. I’m sure he’s gone back to America and will try to do something he believes is on the side of life and freedom.”

  “Rubbish.” Barbara looked down at the long unbrushed brown hair and wanted to touch it. “I suppose you’re trying to explain it in simple terms to me, but it’s rubbish, anyway. Honestly, Marcello. I did know David a little bit myself.” Then she lay back in the chair and shook her head. “Oh, you’re probably right though. I suppose you and David were always sitting down and talking about ‘life’ and ‘freedom.’ But that’s only talk. I want David back, and I hope he hasn’t gone for your silly abstract reasons, because if he has I honestly don’t think I would want him back. I prefer to think he’s gone to America for Mary Emerson. I even prefer to think that she’s killed him. At least that would be human.” But there was no point in talking to Marcello. She knew he would win, if they kept talking, even though he was wrong. He would win, because he was strong.

  They sat in silence for five minutes and she drank her wine. Then, “I suppose you think what I’m doing with Catherine Emerson is wrong. I suppose I shouldn’t try to help her. I should let her shamble about with her mouth open, crying behind doors and being persecuted by her mother.”

  Marcello shook his head. “No. Only you shouldn’t kid yourself that if you cured that girl the world would instantly become beautiful. You’d merely have given her the possibility of seeing that it isn’t, and that something should be done about it.”

  Barbara was tired. She couldn’t fight. “Marcello, would you mind very much if I slept here tonight?” she said. “I don’t want to be alone. I’m so depressed.”

  He nodded pleasantly. “Of course. You can sleep over there — there’s a bed under all those covers. It’s probably been slept in a couple of times, but I think it’s clean.” He stood up, and Barbara looked at his dark skin and his droopy moustaches; he was so solid, he was so much there. “That’ll be fine. It really doesn’t matter. I’m so tired.”

  The next morning Marcello made coffee. As they were drinking it, Barbara said, “Did you mind, when I went to live with David?”

  Marcello looked her in the eyes. “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I thought he was doing the wrong thing.”

  “Oh,” Barbara said. Then, after a while, she said, “Did you tell him?”

  “Yes.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He laughed, and said he knew it.”

  Barbara wondered whether he was telling the truth. She could hear David saying it, but it still hurt to think he’d said it.

  “Why did David want me to stay with him?”
/>   “He said he didn’t. You wanted to stay with him.”

  She hated Marcello. “He wouldn’t have put up with me if he didn’t want me.”

  “He didn’t really care.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “Why did you want to live with him?”

  “Because I love him.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Of course you do. You love him for the very reasons that he’s left you. Because he’s brilliant, and free. He’s also rather childish. That’s why he let you stay.”

  Barbara shook her head. “I don’t believe you. David liked having me there. He likes me. I know he does.”

  “David likes most people.”

  “He pretends to.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Did you love him?”

  “Yes.”

  “So he’s left you, too, hasn’t he?”

  “I don’t look at it like that. David was ready to leave. And he’s left. That’s good. It’s nothing to do with me.”

  “That’s just talk. You must mind.”

  “I’m glad,” Marcello said.

  *

  She had never been able to forget Marcello. He moved out of David’s apartment and she moved in, but every day David would speak to him on the telephone, talking and laughing about things he never talked or laughed about with her. They all ate together three or four times a week, and she sometimes felt like a secretary at a business dinner, as if she was there just to take notes. She thought, one evening, watching them at a table in a trattoria, that Marcello had always been in a position to choose the facts of life, whereas she, like most people, had had them forced on her. He could choose to live on bread because he had, and had always had, the possibility of eating cake; but she denied his right to claim that bread was the best of all possible diets. And that is what he did.

  She had said to David that evening, when they were finally alone, “Marcello makes his choice from a position of power, and he doesn’t see that even if his choice is right his position isn’t.”

  David had laughed and said, “Marcello would say that one must reject the individual. He thinks he has rejected his position of power, and then made his choice.”

  “But he’s wrong, isn’t he?”

  “It doesn’t really make any difference.”

  *

  But it did; Barbara was sure. She sat with her coffee cup in her hand and said, “Did you see David all the time I was away? I mean — as much as usual.”

  “No. In fact I saw him very little.”

  “Why?”

  “The woman he worked for — Emerson — her son was here for most of September and October. David was showing him round, looking after him.”

  “How strange.” She stared at Marcello. “He never mentioned it in his letters, at all. Mary Emerson told me her son was here. But she didn’t say anything about their being friendly either.”

  “David came around a couple of times with the boy. And then once on his own about ten days ago, I think I told you. He was quite — normal. He said the Emerson boy had gone back to college in California.”

  Barbara frowned. “You only saw David three times while I was gone?”

  Marcello nodded.

  “But you used to see David almost every day. Didn’t you think it was odd?”

  “I never asked David questions. If he wanted to come round he came.”

  “You don’t think it’s possible he’s gone to California?”

  “No. David wouldn’t do that.”

  Barbara felt like she was going to cry. “What am I going to do, Marcello?”

  “Do you have to do something?”

  “Yes — I mean, the apartment, for example. It’s David’s. There’s rent to be paid — I must get in touch with the landlord and — there are hundreds of things. What do I do with letters that arrive?”

  “Have any arrived?”

  “Not yet.”

  Marcello smiled. “You’re quite certain David’s not coming back?”

  Barbara said, “I’m not certain. But I feel it. I feel that it’s all over.”

  “What’ll you do?”

  “I’ll either go back to England or I’ll go and live with Catherine Emerson. Her mother’s going to America for good. She wants me to go and live there.”

  “The mother really is going to America? When you mentioned that the girl said —”

  “Yes, she’s really going. And she’s not coming back, I’m sure.”

  Marcello nodded. “I guess it’s just a strange coincidence — and convenient.”

  “What, Mary Emerson and David?”

  “No. Convenient for the Emersons, I mean. David goes off, and you’re free to come to them.”

  “That’s what Catherine said, in a way. That months ago her mother had planned to go to America and leave me here. Only she hadn’t counted on David and me so she had to get rid of David in order to keep me here.”

  “And what did she do? Write to your mother and ask her to have a heart attack and call you home?”

  Barbara smiled briefly. “No, that was just a lucky break for her. It gave her plenty of time and opportunity for getting rid of David. But she’d have done it somehow, even if I’d been there. That’s what made me think, too, that possibly Catherine is right.”

  Marcello smiled. “People don’t kill each other just so their travel plans won’t be fouled up. No, I’m sure she’s just opportunistic. She hadn’t made any definite plans until you came and told her that David had vanished. Then she thought that since you and her daughter get along so well, and David’s gone, why don’t you go and take her daughter off her hands completely. And with daughter off her hands she can go where she pleases.”

  “Then why didn’t she go years ago?”

  “She’ll have her reasons.”

  “Stupid moral ones, I suppose.” She paused. “And you still think David has gone off for stupid moral reasons, too?”

  Marcello nodded.

  “I suppose you would, wouldn’t you? It would be sort of damning for you if he’d gone off for any other reason.” She stood up. “I must go. And thank you for the bed.” She looked down at the man, and wondered. “Marcello, you are quite quite sure, aren’t you? You’re absolutely convinced that the fact of David’s not coming to see you for two months and being with Mrs. Emerson’s son, and the fact that as soon as David goes, Mrs. Emerson gets ready to go too — you’re sure that they’re all just coincidences? You are positive David’s gone for your reasons?”

  Marcello looked up at her and nodded.

  “Because if he hasn’t —” Barbara shrugged. “I mean, it’s silly, but — if he hasn’t, you should mind, shouldn’t you? You can’t be glad, not if you were very close.”

  Marcello looked up at her. “I’m convinced.”

  “So if I asked you to come out with me and see them — just casually, just to see what you think —” she shrugged. “Would you do me a favor and drive me there this afternoon? Just say you are a friend of David’s and — oh, I don’t know. Chat with Mrs. Emerson while I’m with Catherine. Please?”

  Marcello stood up. “Yes, if you like. I guess I’ve heard so much about them I should meet them anyway. What time shall I pick you up?”

  “About three-thirty.” Barbara smiled and said, “Thank you,” and wondered if the professor of philosophy really was convinced.

  *

  She went home to her empty apartment and wrote a letter to her mother.

  Dear Mother,

  I hope you are well and have had no more attacks. I have some news that will make you very happy. David has disappeared. I don’t know where he’s gone, and no one seems to know. Apparently he disappeared a week before I came back, and hasn’t been in touch with anyone. I don’t know where his family lives or even if they are alive, so I can’t write to them and ask if they’ve heard from him. I don’t know what to do. I suppose I should go to the police, but it seems futile beca
use if David has disappeared he must have wanted to, and if he wanted to he won’t reappear unless he wants to. And even if the police find out where he’s gone it’s not going to bring him back, so what’s the point?

  So, you see, your three months in bed weren’t wasted, and as you presumably hoped this would happen, I can only say you were right and I’m glad if it does make you happy. I’m so depressed I don’t know what to do. It’s just over a year since Howard died. I can’t stand it. Please write to me.

  Love, Barbara.

  She addressed the envelope, stamped it, and took it down to the mailbox. She knew that if she didn’t go right away the letter would never be sent. She didn’t know why she had written it, and as she dropped the envelope into the box she whispered to it, “I hate you.”

  She walked home again, and noticed that, for the first time since her return, the sky was blue and the sun was shining; it was a fine November morning. She wished it were raining and gray. She cursed her mother and felt that she was going to faint. She was alone. She didn’t know what to do. She was alone, and the only way out of her loneliness was Catherine, and Catherine was the daughter of the woman who was in some way responsible for David’s disappearance. She was absolutely sure of it.

  *

  Marcello picked her up at three-thirty.

  As they were driving out to the villa, Barbara said, “I’ll take you in and say you’re a friend of mine who possibly knows where David is and — and then I don’t know.”

  “She might not be there. Is she always there?”

  “No, not always. I hadn’t thought of that. In fact, quite often she’s not there.”

  *

  But she was. She opened the green gate to them and smiled at Marcello. “Any news?” she asked Barbara.

  “No. Nothing.” Barbara indicated Marcello and said, “This is a friend of mine, Marcello —”