by Fay Weldon
‘“I think,” I said, “I’m the one in a hundred,” and he asked me to fasten my hands together above my head and told me I couldn’t separate them, but I could and did, and he laughed and said I was indeed the one in a hundred, but he’d enjoyed our chat. The blood-pressure machine began to put out warning bleeps; Nurse McKenzie, who has red hair and freckles, and reminds me of Wendy, asked him to leave. Nurse McKenzie sat beside me for a while and told me of a newly-married friend of hers who went to a hypnotherapist to be cured of over-eating and ended up having sex on the sofa with him and being charged double, which post-hypnotic suggestion made her pay without argument. On the other hand, her friend had lost weight and didn’t regret any of it. Whatever knock-out drops they’ve added to my drip are beginning to take effect. I’m drifting off again.’
‘Well, hypnotherapy didn’t work,’ said Dr McGregor, visiting Annette in the Special Care Unit to which she had been moved. ‘I had a quick listen to the tape. I don’t think Peter will stay on the team for long. Obviously the sleazy end of alternative medicine.’
‘How can you have a quick listen to a tape?’ asked Annette. ‘You either listen or you don’t. I have another one here for you to ignore.’ Dr McGregor took it away.
‘I try not to think about Dr Rhea or Dr Herman Marks because my blood-pressure goes sky-high if I do. Thieves, murderers, perverts, devourers of babies! Destroyers of true love. Lilith and Saturn. In mythology Rhea is Saturn’s wife. In Spicer’s book on Theotherapy—Spicer sent it to me here in hospital, unasked: what can this mean? The title page with Rhea’s dedication written in was missing, but a few more passages had been marked. These were the ones relating to the goddess Rhea. If I keep an eye on the blood-pressure monitor I can sometimes direct my will and organise my mind—I can’t describe it in any other way—to keep the level steady. But I can’t, alas, focus in this way and read at the same time. Perhaps that’s the reason I read so little? I risk glances at the pages from time to time.’
‘“Over-eagerness to promulgate divine mysteries”, I read, “of the goddess Rhea. Shamanism, the grandmotherly guardian of much secret love: the woman who smothers those around her with an excess of love. The less love she gets the more she gives. Her problems are severest around mid-winter.” Good. We’re moving into the cold, dark months. “Before Hellenic masculinisation—by which we mean the imposition of the Greek Gods upon the earlier pagan ones—Rhea was the Universal Great Mother Goddess and ruled supreme, needing no protective consort.” She can manage well enough without Saturn, in other words. Just my luck to fall foul of the Great Mother Goddess Cow. Other people’s husbands end up with ordinary therapists. Perhaps what Spicer was doing to me with the tree and the cleft hill business was nothing other than Hellenic masculinisation? The rendering male of the female. Eleanor Watts wouldn’t want to move into Bella Crescent if she understood how the archetypes roared up and down it, sucking us all in, whirling us around with their almighty backdraught.’
‘Still my blood-pressure won’t go down. It’s been worse since Peter’s visit. I might die of a stroke, they carefully don’t say. I’ve been moved into a SC Unit, Special Care, but not yet IC, Intensive Care.’
‘Gilda has had her baby, in the maternity ward below this one. A healthy baby boy, both are doing fine. Gilda came to stand in the ward doorway this morning and wave at me. She was wearing a bright blue wrap which, together with her red hair, by virtue of some reflected halo effect made her shimmer within a mauve aura. Blue and red make mauve, or is it purple? Gilda didn’t have her baby with her. I was sorry not to have a glimpse of him. Gilda was being tactful. But really she didn’t need to be. Her baby was a little bit mine, as mine had been a little bit hers, and I was proud for her. So it’s okay. Really. There was never a friend as good as Gilda in the whole history of the world, and if anyone’s to have a baby when I don’t, it had better be her.’
‘I think Mrs Horrocks can be moved to Light Care,’ said Dr McGregor. ‘She seems to be much improved. Now how do we account for that?’
‘I’ll leave you a tape to explain it,’ said Annette, ‘though you won’t believe it.’
‘This afternoon I got really tired of the drips and tubes and being wired up and couldn’t stand the business of screens and bedpans for a single minute longer, and when the nurses were elsewhere I plucked off terminals, cuffs, leads and unhooked drips and got out of bed and went to the ward bathroom: I was very weak, and almost sorry for my poor little feet—they were quite translucent against the white tiled floor. I remembered my feet as having been firm, strong and solid. Well, everything changes. I stood beneath the shower and let the water run over my hair, my face, my shoulders, breasts, and too-flat stomach, the thin loins. There wasn’t a towel so I had to go back to my bed still dripping. Nurses McKenzie and Smiley dried me down—their instructions not to excite me warring with their natural desire to kick my ankles hard—and got me back into bed and re-wired me. The blood-pressure cuff round my forearm went into its automatic tightening phase: the diagnostic readouts settled at pulse-rate 70, and BP 120 over 80. Perfect. Nurse McKenzie dealt the screen a sharp blow with a ruler: the numbers quivered but stayed steady. Nurse Smiley switched off the whole machine and switched it on again, which sometimes did the trick. The cuff took another reading. Pulse 75, BP 125 over 85. The extra fives were no doubt the product of my reaction to what I could only describe as McKenzie’s and Smiley’s condition of doubt. Staff Nurse came to admire; then Sister: it was twelve hours before the Registrar turned up, but hospitals are so full of bad news there’s not much time for the good. In a couple of days I can go home.’
‘Thus it became apparent to me that running water—described in Spicer’s book on Theotherapy as being the best cure for Hera’s problems, along with moonlight, bracelets and bangles—had done its bit, though the bracelets and bangles, being false gifts, poisoned offerings, had almost killed me. All it took was a shower. Why I had so resisted being Hera—typified by slyness, softness, gullibility, shame, embarrassment, jealousy, use of sex as weapon and so forth—I couldn’t imagine. If we’re all just a mixture of adjectives, one representative goddess is as good as another, so long as Saturn’s ravenous wife Rhea doesn’t have her hand in it. Which of course she had.’
‘I’m now downgraded from Special Care to Light Care, where all they do is feed me up, and I’m allowed to make phone calls except the phone is out of order. “What’s the name of this ward?” I ask a nurse, reporting the fault. “Olympus”, she says. “We’re part-funded in here by the sports’ firm. We have to rely in this hospital on business sponsors.”
‘I can all but see Pegasus, trapped in Medusa’s sick body for so long, bursting through from the end of my bed, breaking free, spreading his white wings in the sky above Mount Olympus, dissolving into nothingness, bearing my soul away for safe-keeping. Now Spicer can be real again.’
‘Two visitors to see you,’ said Nurse McKenzie, who is also being allowed a rest in Light Care. ‘If you’re okay with these two, we’ll let the others in.’
‘Hi, Mum,’ said Susan.
‘Hi, Annette,’ said Jason.
‘We’re sorry about the baby,’ said Susan. ‘When are you coming out?’
‘Probably about a week,’ said Annette. ‘How’ve you been?’
‘It’s been okay,’ said Susan. ‘But Gran won’t let us have our meals in our rooms.’
‘And Grandad takes us out to find fossils in cliffs,’ said Jason, ‘which is boring.’
‘And we have to get a taxi to school,’ said Susan; ‘and people see.’
‘Though we get him to drop us on the corner so they don’t,’ said Jason.
‘And I haven’t had a pizza for five weeks since you came in here,’ said Susan.
‘And the games disc on my computer’s corrupted and Gran says she can’t afford a new one,’ said Jason. ‘So I’ve nothing to do.’
‘Do you mean to say,’ said Annette, ‘you haven’t been at home? Spicer hasn’t
been looking after you? You’ve been at my mum’s?’
‘Spicer hasn’t been very well either,’ said Susan. ‘There’s some kind of trouble at the office. He says he may have to go bankrupt. Something to do with British Rail.’
‘I’ve set the bleeper warning at 160 over 110,’ said Nurse McKenzie. ‘If you get to that the kids will have to leave. Try not to upset your mother more than you have to.’
‘I’m not upsetting her,’ said Susan. ‘She’s our mother. We’re bringing her up to date. And Jason can’t upset her because he’s concentrating on his Game Boy.’
‘I’m up to level six,’ said Jason.
‘Did Spicer say when he’d be in to see me?’ asked Annette.
‘He’s coming this evening,’ said Susan. ‘He said to send his love. They’ll only let in two visitors at a time, so he said we should come first.’
‘How does he seem?’ asked Annette.
‘Just the same,’ said Susan. ‘Are you two getting divorced?’
‘Of course not,’ said Annette. ‘Why should we?’
‘Perhaps you ought to,’ said Susan. ‘You look quite different in here. Much younger. Your face had got a funny sort of fixed expression on it, as if you were expecting someone to hit you all the time.’
‘Don’t be silly,’ said Annette.
‘Gran’s got it in for Spicer too,’ said Susan. ‘She says he owes her a lot of money. She goes on and on about it. I wish they’d let you out of here so you could get home and sort things out.’
‘It isn’t very nice at Gran’s,’ said Jason.
‘I thought you were too busy with your Game Boy to listen,’ said Susan. ‘If I say anything to you, you tell me you can’t hear. So why is it different now all of a sudden?’
‘I hear all kinds of things you don’t know about,’ said Jason. ‘Life at Bella Crescent is just one long primal scene. Shit, now I’ve blown it. Back to level five.’
‘You’d better go now, kids,’ said Nurse McKenzie. ‘Your mother’s bleeper’s going. If this is what the children do, what’s going to happen when the husband arrives?’
‘Hello, darling,’ said Spicer.
‘Oh, Spicer,’ said Annette. ‘It’s been so long! I’ve missed you so. Our poor baby—I’m so sorry.’
‘It wasn’t your fault,’ said Spicer. ‘The sooner you’re out of here the better.’
‘They say I should stay another couple of days.’
‘It’s probably the hospital itself that’s making you ill,’ said Spicer.
‘If the taxi driver hadn’t brought you in, but taken you home, none of this might have happened.’
‘I don’t think it was quite like that, Spicer,’ said Annette.
‘What do any of us know?’ asked Spicer. ‘Only what the doctors see fit to tell us. But what’s done is done. Now we pick up the pieces.’
‘Susan said there was trouble at work,’ said Annette.
‘Don’t worry your head,’ said Spicer. ‘Just a hiccup. You look really pretty, Annette. Perfectly healthy. Glowing, in fact.’
‘It’s because I’m so happy to see you,’ said Annette.
‘Why don’t you discharge yourself?’ asked Spicer. ‘Come home now?’
‘They’ve been so good to me here, I don’t like to do that,’ said Annette.
‘You don’t want to come home to me?’
‘Of course I do, Spicer.’
‘Dr Herman said you would probably quickly develop a dependency on the hospital, the authority figure: the substitute father. It seems to be in danger of happening,’ observed Spicer.
‘I just don’t want to get ill again, Spicer,’ said Annette.
‘All the more reason to get out of here and into therapy as quickly as possible,’ Spicer said.
‘Therapy follows you to hospital, Spicer; you’ve no idea,’ said Annette. ‘It sweeps over you: a great tidal wave of it.’
‘Not much has changed, Annette,’ said Spicer. ‘You can’t avoid the smart retort. Your book has had a few early reviews. Everyone says how smart it is, you’ll be glad to hear.’
‘I think the doctor was hoping to discuss things with you, Spicer, before I went home.’
‘We have our own doctor,’ said Spicer.
‘Dr Rhea? Still Dr Rhea?’ asked Annette.
‘Of course,’ said Spicer. ‘She’s a great support. You and I need to talk about your reaction to her. It’s of course projection. It’s to do with your affair with Ernie Gromback. I understand, Annette. There’s no need to deny it. I was upset at the time but I’m over that. Enforced monogamy is absurd. And you’re a child, so far as your sexuality is concerned. Dr Herman says this is the problem with the sexually abused child: maturity is seldom reached.’
‘And he told Dr Rhea and she told you,’ said Annette. ‘So much for them. They’re rubbish.’
‘Shall we avoid the gossip,’ said Spicer, ‘and get back to important matters? Who cares who fucked who one dark night? I certainly don’t. Your anger with your mother is finally explicable. She failed to protect you from your father—’
‘My father did not abuse me,’ said Annette. ‘I am not angry with my mother.’
‘While you continue to block out the truth you will continue to make my life a misery,’ Spicer said.
‘If you truly think that about my father,’ said Annette, ‘why have you sent my daughter and your own son to live with him?’
‘Shall we get back to Ernie Gromback etcetera, Annette?’ asked Spicer. ‘Your casual infidelities? I think you should have told me, but perhaps you were too ashamed? At least my relationship with Marion was not an act of degradation, but based on common interest and a shared spirituality. I wish you could have chosen someone less physically unattractive than Gromback. But I suppose that’s part of the syndrome.’
‘I think perhaps you’d better leave,’ said Nurse McKenzie. ‘I’ve seen Mrs Horrocks in all kinds of states, but not hyperventilating and in tears. She’s lost her baby: she needs comforting, not whatever it is you’re doing, Mr Horrocks.’
‘She didn’t lose her baby, she lost our baby,’ said Spicer. ‘She didn’t even lose it: she threw it away. You don’t understand how disturbed my wife is. Or indeed how powerful. She didn’t have to take an instrument to herself, as she’s done many a time in the past: she simply had to will the poor creature’s destruction. Dr Rhea predicted it, Annette. She told me your ambivalence towards Gillian, a girlchild, would affect the foetus, and in all probability lead to stillbirth. It’s been the source of so much distress: the Lilith in you so strong. Lilith-Annette, destroyer of man’s virility, sapper of male strength, strangler of babies.’
‘I’ll fetch Security,’ said Nurse McKenzie. ‘The man’s mad. And truly nasty.’
‘No,’ said Annette. ‘I’m discharging myself. Stop the bleepers, set me free of all these wires.’
‘Gilda?’
‘Annette? Where are you speaking from? The hospital?’
‘No,’ said Annette. ‘I discharged myself.’
‘Where are you?’
‘I’m at home, locked in my bedroom,’ said Annette.
‘Is the key on the inside,’ asked Gilda, ‘or the outside?’
‘The inside,’ said Annette. ‘Spicer drove me home. I came straight in, ran upstairs into this room and locked the door. He banged a bit and then went away.’
‘That’s all right,’ said Gilda. ‘Well, it’s better. Not exactly good, though. How do you feel?’
‘Okay,’ Annette said. ‘In fact I’m fine.’
‘What happened?’ asked Gilda.
‘Spicer wanted me to discharge myself, so I did,’ said Annette.
‘He’s irresponsible,’ said Gilda. ‘He’s a monster, but what’s new?’
‘I know that now,’ said Annette. ‘I called his bluff, that’s all. Spicer knows about Ernie Gromback.’
‘Oh God,’ said Gilda. ‘Well, it was bound to happen. So much for confidentiality. Marion has left Ernie Gromback.
She said he was too worldly for her. Where’s Spicer now?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Annette. ‘It’s terribly quiet out there. What do I do now?’
‘Wait for the enemy powers to gather,’ said Gilda. ‘I’m sure they will.’
‘How’s the baby?’ asked Annette.
‘Divine,’ said Gilda, ‘but I won’t say so if it upsets you.’
‘It doesn’t upset me,’ said Annette. ‘It cheers me up no end.’
‘How long do you think he’s known about Ernie Gromback?’
‘Probably from the day I told Herman Marks,’ said Annette.
‘God, I was naive.’
‘Steve says Spicer is what the Americans call a mind-fucker,’ said Gilda. ‘Hang on, I have to fetch the baby … you still there, Annette?’
‘Yes,’ said Annette. ‘Of course I am. You are my only contact with the real world. What’s that gurgling noise?’
‘It’s the baby feeding,’ said Gilda. ‘I’m lying on the bed. Do you mind?’
‘No,’ said Annette. ‘I’ve just found something under Spicer’s pillow that’s really interesting.’
‘What?’ asked Gilda.
‘I’ll tell you when I understand it better,’ said Annette. ‘I’m glad you’re feeding the baby yourself. I thought perhaps you wouldn’t. They added something yet more to my drip to dry up my milk. I should have gone to the Clinic, though. I do blame myself for that, terribly.’
‘There were lots of people around you,’ said Gilda, ‘certainly me, who should have got you there. While everyone was thinking about the state of other people’s heads, the body was in trouble. I blame the therapists.’
