by Fay Weldon
Trouble
A Novel
Fay Weldon
Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
A Biography of Fay Weldon
PROLOGUE
‘WHO WAS THAT KNOCKING at your front door?’ asked Annette, as Spicer got back into bed and entwined his legs through hers.
‘Only a gypsy woman,’ he said. ‘Dirty and fat and old.’
This was in London ten years ago.
‘What did she want?’ asked Annette, who was clean, slim and young.
‘She wanted to tell my fortune,’ said Spicer. ‘For a fee.’
‘Did you let her?’ asked Annette.
Spicer looked down at her from above. His eyes were brown and intense; his hair was thick and blonde.
‘Of course I didn’t,’ Spicer said. ‘Superstitious nonsense! I told her to go away at once.’
‘She can’t have liked that,’ observed Annette.
‘She didn’t,’ said Spicer, ‘but I wanted to get back to you. She said as she went, “I’ll go but the bad luck will stay.” She had an angry heart in the first place. Nothing to do with me.’
His mouth descended upon Annette’s, his hand parted her legs and she forgot all about the gypsy woman.
‘I shall give you half the house for your birthday,’ said Spicer, eight days later. ‘I will give it to you out of my natural love and affection, as it says in legal documents. We will share this house as we share our lives. I will see my lawyer as soon as I can.’
‘Spicer,’ warned Annette, ‘aren’t you being precipitate? We’ve known each other for only seven weeks, and most of that has been spent in bed.’
Spicer laughed.
‘I’m a precipitate person,’ he said. ‘An all-or-nothing guy.’
Annette was leaning against an oak tree and Spicer was leaning into her, holding her fast, at the end of the overgrown garden. A little distance away Spicer’s son Jason by his first wife Aileen, and Annette’s daughter Susan by her husband Paddy, played together quietly in the long grasses. Jason had been in the world for two years and Susan for three.
‘You know as well as I do, Annette,’ said Spicer, ‘that we’re going to be married and live happily ever after.’
He kissed her on the lips and then drew away from her, but only because he could hear the children approaching. Both felt the loss of touch as pain, and moaned. Up above, the green oak leaves shivered in witness.
‘But, Annette,’ said Annette’s mother Judy on the phone, three months later, ‘this all comes so soon after your break with Paddy. I’m glad for you, because you’ve had such a wretched time, but please tell me more about this Spicer.’
Annette lay on the bed and Spicer lay beside her.
‘He’s so beautiful,’ said Annette, ‘you’ve no idea. And he lives in a lovely big house.’
‘Don’t be silly, Annette,’ said Judy. ‘And don’t say I’m being patronising and put the phone down. Where and how did you meet him?’
‘I met him at a party,’ said Annette, ‘and we’ve hardly been apart since.’
‘He must go to work,’ observed Judy.
‘It’s his own work, his own business; So I go with him. Spicer is heir to Horrocks and Sons Wine Imports, established 1793, though there’s very little left to inherit.’
‘Wine’s not a good business to be in, in a time of recession,’ said Judy. ‘But I expect he had a good education.’
‘Better than mine,’ said Annette. ‘Do you want references for the man I love; is that it?’
‘It might be a good idea,’ said Judy, ‘and from his first wife too, since you say he’s been married before.’
‘She made him unhappy,’ said Annette. ‘Okay? She’s depressive, manipulative and greedy, and tried to turn his little boy against him.’
‘So now you can look after her little boy and he can give you and little Susan a home,’ observed Judy.
‘Well, yes,’ said Annette, after a pause. ‘Isn’t that wonderful! Not just that we’ve found true love but we each answer the other’s problems. Please be happy for me, Mother.’
‘I’ll try,’ said Judy. ‘I expect I’ll manage.’
Annette brought the call to an end and with one hand lifted the phone from the bed and half-dropped it onto the floor. The receiver fell off its hook and lay neglected and buzzing at Spicer and Annette while they made love. This was before the advent of the new technology which cuts out the buzz after thirty seconds and instructs the user to re-dial.
‘Everything moves faster now,’ said Annette, some six months after her phone-call to her mother. ‘Do you think it’s because there are more and more people in the world, and time has to be shared out amongst them?’
‘I am not as fanciful as you,’ said Spicer. ‘I’m just a wine merchant.’
They sat on the living room floor watching television. The room had been redecorated; the carpet was thick and clean; all trace of the miserable Aileen removed. Jason and Susan sprawled beside them.
‘Shall we have a baby between us?’ Spicer asked. ‘That’s one for you, one for me, one for us. That makes a real family.’
‘I must think about that,’ said Annette.
‘Make me a bacon sandwich while you think about it,’ said Spicer. ‘No better food in all the world than the bacon sandwiches you make for me. White, soft bread, thinly spread butter, crisp brown bacon.’
‘Too much cholesterol, too much salt,’ warned Annette, but she rose to do Spicer’s bidding.
‘I shall live for ever in perfect health,’ said Spicer, ‘because I love you.’
When Annette came back from the kitchen, she said, ‘We must have a baby between us, Spicer; there has to be something to sop up this abundance.’
But it was another ten years before she conceived.
‘Annette,’ said Spicer to his wife ten years and five months later, ‘I won’t be able to come with you to the Clinic this evening.’
‘But, Spicer darling,’ said Annette, ‘why not?’
‘Because I have matters to attend to that are more important.’
‘What could be more important than the baby?’
‘I could,’ said Spicer, and he left the rest of his breakfast and went to work straight away without even calling goodbye to Susan or Jason. Nor did Spicer kiss Annette goodbye, as was his custom.
The habit of years had been broken: the gears of the relationship shifted and changed.
Annette set about her household duties and after an hour called Spicer at his office.
‘Mr Horrocks,’ said Spicer’s secretary Wendy. ‘I have your wife on the phone.’
Wendy was kind and efficient. She was in her thirties, plain and a hockey-player. She lived with her mother.
‘Spicer,’ said Annette. ‘How could you speak to me like that? If you knew how it upset me, you wouldn’t do it. You being bad-tempered isn’t good for the baby.’
‘Annette,’ said Spicer, ‘I am in a meeting,’ and he put the receiver down his end so that the one in Annette’s hand buzzed. Annette and Spicer were the first in their road to own a mobile phone: their neighbours possessed newer, lighter, cheaper models. There can be a penalty for being first; especially in technological matters.
Annette called Spicer’s office again.
‘Wendy,’ asked Annette, ‘is Spicer really in a meeting or is he just saying that?’
‘Mr Horrocks is just saying it,’ said Wendy, ‘but in fact he’s very busy. The auditors are due.’
‘Wendy,’ said Annette, ‘has Spicer been a little, well, on edge lately?’
‘No,’ said Wendy. ‘He’s been just fine. Happy as a sandboy, in fact, as usual. Very chatty. We’re all so looking forward to the bab
y. If she’s born on Christmas Day she’ll be a little Capricorn.’
‘I don’t know about things like that,’ said Annette.
‘Nor do I,’ said Wendy. ‘It’s Mr Horrocks who tells me she’ll be a little Capricorn, A little goat.’
‘Oh,’ said Annette. ‘Well, I’ll try and get used to the idea.’
Wendy said, ‘When he’s got a moment I’ll say you called, shall I?’ And Annette said, ‘No, don’t worry. It can wait till this evening,’ and put the phone down, but not before she heard, or thought she heard, Wendy say, ‘Sometimes I’m really glad I’m not married.’
Annette called her friend Gilda; they went to the same antenatal class. Gilda was seven months pregnant to Annette’s five and lived four doors along from Annette, at No 17 Bella Crescent. People likened Gilda to Ginger Rogers, and indeed Gilda had red hair and had once been a dancer. But then people likened Annette to Meryl Streep for no better reason than she had a fair skin and small, straight nose, and a vulnerable air. Gilda and Annette worked as freelance researchers for a TV production company. Gilda’s current task was an investigation into the history of heraldic beasts, and Annette’s into the myth of Europa, ravished by Jupiter in the form of a bull.
‘Hello, Gilda,’ said Annette.
‘What’s the matter?’ asked Gilda. ‘I can tell from your voice something’s wrong. Is the baby all right?’
‘The baby’s just fine,’ said Annette, ‘but Spicer won’t come to Father’s Night at the Clinic and he seems angry with me and I don’t know why.’
‘He was all right when we saw you at dinner on Tuesday,’ said Gilda. ‘In fact he was being very attentive and kind. Perhaps he has troubles at work?’
‘His secretary said something about having the auditors in, but so far as I know everything’s okay. Profits are down but aren’t everyone’s?’
‘It depends how far down,’ said Gilda, whose journalist husband Steve was short, thin and pop-eyed, but kind and intelligent.
‘Spicer’s very protective of you, Annette, especially now you’re pregnant. Perhaps he’s trying to save you from bad financial news but taking it out on you at the same time. Men do that kind of thing.’
‘It doesn’t feel like that,’ said Annette. ‘It feels worse.’
‘Spicer doesn’t have a new secretary? He’s still got Wendy?’
‘Yes,’ said Annette. ‘And I don’t think it’s anything like that. The sex is still fine between us. It’s just that we used always to speak a lot when we made love: each offer the other a running commentary, but for the last few weeks he hasn’t liked me to speak. In fact if I say anything at all he covers my mouth with his hand. This isn’t being recorded by the answerphone, I hope?’
‘No,’ said Gilda.
‘Because,’ said Annette, ‘I don’t like talking about things as personal as this in the first place: it feels disloyal: supposing your Steve ran the answerphone tape and heard me talking about my sex life with Spicer.’
‘I’m your best friend,’ said Gilda. ‘You’re allowed to talk to me. Think of the things I’ve told you!’
‘In fact,’ said Annette, ‘it’s rather as if Spicer were plunging about in the dark, in the silence, and it was nothing at all to do with me. I can’t explain it exactly. I don’t mind, I quite like it, it’s just different. It’s mindless. So long as it doesn’t go on like this too long.’
‘Perhaps the baby is the problem,’ said Gilda.
‘But Spicer was the one who always wanted me to be pregnant,’ said Annette. ‘“One of yours,” he said, “one of mine, one of ours.” And I don’t think time has changed that.’
‘Perhaps Spicer wanted a boy? Men tend to.’
‘I don’t think so. I was the one who so wanted to be told whether it was a girl or boy: Spicer preferred to leave it as a surprise. But to me it always seems peculiar if the hospital know the gender and don’t tell the parents, as if everyone were playing some kind of cute game.’
‘It seems to me,’ said Gilda, ‘you’re just paying the foetus more attention than you are Spicer, and he doesn’t like it. I’ll have to go, Annette. My other phone’s going.’
Annette prepared a special supper for Spicer that evening and put scent behind her ears. Spicer liked Annette to wear scent. Of recent months, Annette realised, she had neglected so to do.
Spicer returned at seven-fifty-one instead of six o’clock, his customary time. Annette took care not to reproach Spicer or ask him where he had been. Nor did he offer any apologies for, let alone any information about, his lateness.
‘I’m sorry I called you at the office, Spicer,’ said Annette. ‘I know you like to ring me but not me to ring you. I just sometimes get a little upset if you go off in a mood in the morning.’
‘Um,’ Spicer said. ‘I see you have opened the 1985 Saint Estephe.’
‘I made a rather special dinner,’ she said. ‘Beef olives. I know you like those. So I thought we’d treat ourselves and open our best wine.’
They were in the drawing room. Annette had found some candles and polished the candlesticks. Their light made the heavy grey curtains shimmer agreeably. She had arranged roses in the vases: red and white. The room seemed delightful.
‘I thought pregnant women weren’t supposed to drink alcohol,’ said Spicer.
‘Just a glass or so doesn’t hurt,’ she said.
‘I thought you’d be at the Clinic,’ he said. ‘Weren’t you supposed to go?’
‘It was Father’s Night,’ she said, ‘so if you couldn’t be there, there wasn’t much point in my going. Steve went with Gilda, though. So I had time to cook us something special. And since Susan and Jason have gone to the cinema, we can have some time to ourselves. Shall we eat now?’
‘I don’t know why you cooked beef,’ he said. ‘I don’t eat red meat. It goes against the grain.’
‘Since when?’ she asked. ‘And what grain?’ but he didn’t reply.
He was not in a jokey mood.
‘I’m afraid that without the meat,’ Annette apologised, serving her husband’s food, ‘the mangetout and the new potatoes look a little bleak.’
‘It takes very little food to keep me going,’ Spicer said. ‘Fruit and vegetables; pulses occasionally. In fact, Annette, if you would keep the fruit bowl full, I could help myself when my appetite dictated and then we could do without the formality of the family meals which nobody wants; let alone the dinners à deux. They must be as trying for you as they are for me.’
And Spicer smiled at Annette politely and rose and went to the living room and, instead of opening the newspaper as was his custom in the evening after dinner, opened a book entitled The Search for the Father, which had a whooshy pattern of oranges and reds upon the cover, and began to read intently.
Annette cleared the table. The baby kicked. Annette hurled a plate across the room. It broke. Annette went into the living room and snatched the book from Spicer’s hand and flung it in the fire.
‘For fuck’s sake, Spicer,’ Annette shrieked, ‘what is the matter?’
Spicer regarded his wife calmly, only occasionally looking away from her into the fireplace to watch the book burn. He could have saved it had he wished, but he did not so wish.
‘Look at you!’ said Spicer. ‘Take a look at yourself in the mirror, ask yourself what the matter is, and try to calm down. You are quite insane.’
‘But what have I done?’
‘It isn’t your fault,’ said Spicer. ‘You can’t help yourself, I realise that. But shall we go through today’s performance? First you call me at my office and try to disturb my peace there; you cannot bear me to escape from you, even for an hour or two; you then call my secretary and try to turn her against me. You spend the morning talking to Gilda on the phone about our sex life—I had lunch with Stephen—it looks as if he’s being made redundant, by the way. You’re totally self-centred and without loyalty. I do not take kindly to you discussing our intimate life with your lesbian friend. I wonder what hold
she has over you? When I come home late you’re not even interested enough to ask me where I’ve been. You’re wearing scent so I know that in your calculating way you have sex with me planned for tonight. You do apologise for calling me at the office, which is something, but then you follow it up with a remark designed to make me feel bad, about how much I upset you. You open a bottle of 1985 Saint Estephe without consulting me—you are so competitive it extends even into the world of wine!—and worse, do so without the slightest concern for the health of our baby. You have so much ambivalence about poor little Gillian, I’ll be surprised if you manage to bring her to term. You don’t go to the Clinic—cutting off your nose to spite my face because making me responsible for your actions is another way of controlling me, and you can’t resist a little extra dig, mentioning that Steve went with Gilda. Poor Steve: he seems to have no will of his own. You must have me all to yourself so you send the poor kids off to the cinema, regardless of what they want, let alone the fact that I might want to see them. You cook beef although you know perfectly well the only protein I can eat these days is white meat—chicken or a little fish—and you overcook the mangetout in a way that can only be deliberate. Then you break some plates, follow me in here where I am peacefully reading, snatch the book from my hand, and fling it in the fire. Is that enough about what the matter is? Now for God’s sake don’t start crying or you’ll upset the children. They’re upset enough already. Okay?’
‘Gilda,’ said Annette on the phone early next morning, ‘I am so miserable.’
‘What’s the matter now?’ asked Gilda. ‘What’s the time?’
‘It’s well past nine,’ said Annette. ‘I’m sorry. But I have to speak to someone.’
‘The baby kept me awake kicking all night,’ said Gilda. ‘I’ve only just got to sleep.’
‘Well, I didn’t sleep at all,’ said Annette. ‘I was suffering from terror. That’s the only way I can describe it.’
‘Tell me more,’ said Gilda. ‘Here’s Steve with my cup of tea. Thank you, Steve. You are so good to me. Okay, Annette, go on. Forgive me if I slurp.’
