Letters From an Unknown Woman

by Gerard Woodward

  The rabbit was a marvellous thing, the biggest jelly Tory had ever made, lime-flavoured, with blades of grass visible around its feet, even noticeable stippling on its body to represent fur. And the whole thing swayed and bobbed, undulated and quivered. When the children arrived they gasped and tittered, jiggling and jogging the table to make it wobble even more, laughing more loudly as the wobbling grew. They bent down and looked through its transparent body at their distorted friends on the other side.

  Nothing wobbles quite as well as Farraway’s gelatine, thought Tory, wondering if she had just coined a lucrative advertising slogan. But it was true: it seemed of a lighter, looser structure. Other jellies might simply shiver and shake, but the Farraway’s jelly did a sort of belly-dance and fandango, an exotic, chaotic, squirming, writhing rumba. As she watched the jelly-rabbit leaping and jumping, surrounded by the excited children, she couldn’t help laughing at the idea that it was there as a sort of jelly-proxy for George, Branson’s real father.

  She was having lots of odd thoughts. She wondered whether she could write a little story about a woman who, spurned by her lover, renders him in fruity gelatine, then consumes him, spoonful by spoonful, from the top down.

  The rabbit had lost his head and most of the front half of his body by the time Donald appeared. His presence could not have produced a silence more instantly had he been a headless spectre. The children, even those who had seen him before, were frightened. His now very pronounced limp, his smooth, hairless head (apart from those devil-like tufts), caused some to think that he was a particularly macabre clown. They edged closer together, as if for protection.

  ‘I hear it’s some little boy’s birthday today!’ he said, in a growly but friendly voice, which made the children laugh. They had by now noticed that he was holding a present. ‘Who’s the birthday boy?’ he said.

  Branson was too shy to give any acknowledgement, and a slightly dopey schoolfriend, not aware that Donald was joking, said seriously, ‘It’s Branson’s birthday today.’

  ‘Branson’s birthday,’ said Donald, breathlessly, as if it was a truly astonishing fact. ‘Branson’s birthday.’ And he held out the present for Branson to take.

  The thing contained in the gaudy wrapping was not a piece of rubbish but something new, pretty and delightful. It was a little brass telescope.

  ‘Isn’t that a darling little thing?’ said Tory to Branson, who was glowing with appreciation of the present. ‘What do you say to your father?’

  ‘Thank you, Father,’ said Branson, without a moment’s hesitation, the words falling easily from his tongue, as though they had always been there, waiting.

  Tory, under a pretence of clearing the table, went to the kitchen and wept.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  George no longer swooped. Now that Branson was out of his infancy and approaching adolescence, the surprise visits and benevolent ambushes had stopped. It seemed that George couldn’t resist the charms of a baby or toddler (picking him up from his pram, exclaiming at how he wobbled) but was indifferent to the older child. Oh, if we only treated each other with the care and devotion we give to little children, the world would be a wonderful place, Tory thought. She missed the trickle of George’s cash, the pound note discreetly tucked into the bedding of the pram, the fivers. Once Mrs Head had found one when she changed the blankets in the pram while it was parked in the passage. ‘What’s this?’ she exclaimed, as the note fell like a leaf to the floor. ‘Tory, you’re becoming careless with your cash. Good heavens,’ unfolding the five-pound note, ‘where on earth did you get this?’

  She not only missed the money. She missed George and was worried that he would forget about his son altogether.

  It had been more than ten years since her last visit to the factory, and the whole place seemed to have become more disgusting. Perhaps it was simply that she had, in the post-war years, become less accustomed to horror, but the piles of bones and stacks of hides now seemed to give off an overwhelming stench of rottenness. They looked less like raw materials for something new, more like the remains of some corrupt, perverted activity. In general the factory seemed less productive, less busy. There was no sound of machinery. There were just the boxers, pounding each other in the gym, Mr Farraway in his vest, a cigar in his mouth, urging them on. He looked significantly older now, frighteningly old. How could she ever have fallen for such an old man? But he was still strong. When he saw her enter the gym he sprang down from the ring like a cat, prowled the floor towards her, sparring jokingly with a trainee on the way, then came up to her.

  Tory realized she hadn’t thought where to start and, in trying to find the words, became overwhelmed and so let out her emotions in one long stream of sobbing. Boxers in the distance dropped their fists and turned in her direction. George put a consoling arm around her to steer her towards the door and the privacy of the yard beyond.

  ‘This reminds me of the very first time you came to my gym, all those years ago. You were so nervous, do you remember? Like a little mouse creeping into a den of cats. But now you breeze in as though you’ve been visiting boxing gyms all your life.’

  Yes, he was an old man but, gosh, those muscled limbs of his, the strength in them. She remembered how vast he had seemed, nude in the little cottage bedroom, like a giant folded up and tucked into a shoebox.

  ‘I have become stronger,’ said Tory, abstractedly, almost to herself.

  ‘Well, that’s what gyms are for. I must say, your prettiness hasn’t diminished one bit. It has increased, if anything.’

  ‘I prefer to be called beautiful.’

  This stumped George for a moment. He seemed unsure if Tory was being serious or not. It was apparent he saw no difference between the words. ‘Pretty, beautiful. I’ll use any words you like. They are sincerely meant.’

  ‘Tom has died.’

  She didn’t know why she had said this. George could scarcely have known who Tom was. This was not what she had come to tell him at all. ‘He killed himself,’ she went on, when George made no reply.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. He was leaning with one arm against the factory wall, as if sheltering Tory, who was resting with her back to the brickwork. Bluebottles were going crazy somewhere nearby.

  ‘I was so proud of him, but he was never happy after he was taken out of school. That was Donald’s doing, sending him out to earn money before he was ready. He’d wanted to go to university, you know.’

  ‘I remember you saying he was a bright boy.’

  ‘I need your help, George. I really do. We have no money coming in, apart from my job, which doesn’t amount to much. Mother’s taking in washing, and that’s all we’ve got to live on.’ She left out details of Mrs Head’s generous widow’s pension, and the money from her various investments.

  ‘I thought Mr Attlee had provided for everyone in need.’

  Tory sobbed again, even though she didn’t feel like it. George was a big man and only responded to big emotions. So she didn’t exactly feel she was exaggerating when she said, ‘I can hardly afford to feed the family. The girls are nearly women now and take a lot of feeding. Branson is ten – think of that. I can sometimes see a frightening thinness in him, and I think – the boy is actually undernourished – what with polio about, I’m terrified he won’t even live to be an adult.’

  The thought of his own flesh and blood being denied nourishment and going lean seemed to stir George. ‘I’ll tell you what I’ll do,’ he said, after a moment’s thought. ‘Wait here.’

  He disappeared inside the gym and returned a few moments later with a small brown glass bottle. ‘These will help.’

  ‘What are they?’

  ‘I want you to give one to Branson every day.’

  She unscrewed the top and peered into the neck of the bottle. Brown, torpedo-shaped tablets nestled within.

  ‘Protein tablets,’ said George. ‘This is what I’m feeding my young boxing champions on.’

  ‘Is that the best you can do?’ T
ory was furious and felt like throwing the bottle of pills right back at him. In fact, she raised her hand as if about to do so, but in a flash George had caught her hand in his own. He examined her fingernails.

  ‘It’s the same with everything,’ he said. ‘If you don’t persist with it, it won’t have any effect. Protein pills, Christianity, I daresay even socialism. They’d all work if we devoted ourselves to them. Well, unlike the latter two, my pills take very little by way of commitment. Just three a day. And a pint of water. You might live for ever like that.’

  Tory couldn’t help letting out a half-giggle of incredulity. He seemed to really mean it. Eternal life in pill form.

  ‘Try them,’ George said. ‘I guarantee you, if you feed these to Branson you won’t need to feed him anything else. They’re not just proteins, they contain everything you need for a nutritious diet. I’ll supply you with enough to feed your whole family, for ever. Think of the saving, Tory. You will never have to buy food again. These pills and some water, that’s all you’ll need.’

  ‘Well, I don’t want to appear ungrateful, but I was hoping you could give me some money to help raise Branson.’

  ‘Money? Are you off your trolley? I haven’t made any money for years. The factory’s being run down. We’ll be closing for good before the year’s out.’

  ‘I thought things had been going well for you since the end of the war. I saw you’ve got your own brand of gelatine in the shops now. Farraway’s gelatine – I bought some the other day. For Branson’s tenth birthday, in fact. I made a three-pint rabbit.’

  Tory noticed a bluebottle land on George’s bare shoulder and start to suck the sweat there, as if through a straw. She thought that the insect looked as though it was wearing boxing gloves.

  ‘Ten years,’ said George, thoughtfully.

  ‘So you can’t tell me things are going downhill when you have Farraway’s gelatine on every birthday-party table in the land.’

  ‘Yes, stronger and bolder.’ He smiled. ‘Packet jelly was the last roll of the die, Tory, and a way of using up our stocks once the price of gelatine fell through the floor. It hasn’t been a great success, I’m sorry to say. The market has been saturated with cheap imported gelatine for some years now. We’ve put everything into these protein pills. I call them the food of the future. It’s very sad. We aren’t even using our own gelatine, but are buying it from abroad. Much cheaper than making it ourselves. I’m converting this factory, slowly, for protein and vitamin production. It’s costing us dearly, investing in new machinery and processes. Have you any idea how much scientific research costs? Boffins are dearer than lawyers. And with all the testing that has to be done, thanks to your darling Mr Attlee, who has completely scuppered the market for medicines, I’m wondering how I’m ever going to make any money out of it. What we need, you see, is firm evidence that these pills can replace food. My boxers are part of that proof but they’re not very scientific. They tell me they eat nothing but my pills, but how am I to know they don’t go home in the evening and scoff heaps of pies?’

  ‘You’re using your young boxers as laboratory mice?’

  ‘Hardly mice, my darling, hardly mice. More like laboratory bulls, or steers, or bucking broncos. Come on, take a look, take a look.’

  He steered her back through the doorway into the cavernous gym, where the trainee boxers had resumed their sparring. The young men fighting looked pale and thin, but were clearly very strong, and could jab with their arms as fast as cats.

  ‘I’m afraid I seem to be running a gym that specializes in lightweights. I’d give anything for a good, meaty welterweight, not to speak of a heavyweight or two. But that’s the war and rationing for you, I suppose. A starved nation can produce nothing but these waifs. Still, good muscle there, and all on nothing but Farraway’s pills and water – well, near enough. Listen, I’d like you to feed Branson these pills, three times a day, breakfast, lunch and supper.’

  ‘Are you quite serious?’

  ‘Absolutely.’

  ‘You think one of these pills will do for a plate of bacon and eggs?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And roast beef with Yorkshire pudding?’

  ‘Yes, and no washing-up afterwards.’

  ‘And no proper food?’

  George shook his head, then gestured towards the distant fighters.

  ‘But you yourself just said you don’t know what they eat when they go home. I don’t believe a growing boy could survive on three of these little pellets.’

  ‘If you think the bulk of the body is related to the bulk of the food we eat, then you’re deluded, my dear. How much mass do you think a growing boy gains in a single day? If he puts on a stone in a year, that amounts to less than half an ounce a day. Three of my pills weigh more than half an ounce. Moreover, it’s the density of the goodness contained in the pills that matters. Each pill contains the equivalent amount of protein that you’d get in a small fillet steak, It also contains the same amount of vitamin C that you’d get in a bag of oranges, the same amount of calcium as a quart of milk, the same amount of iron as in a bowl of spinach – and much more – all in a single pill. To put it bluntly, if you weigh the food and drink we take in, then weigh what comes out of the other end, the difference will amount to the weight of one of my pills.’

  It seemed that George had become a visionary. He spoke of an end to hunger and an end to poverty. Food production for the entire population could be provided by a few farms. The population of the entire world could be fed from an acreage not much greater than England’s existing dairy farmland. Class barriers and racial divides could be bridged because we could all be eating fundamentally the same thing, and the opportunities for social conflict are so often based around what we eat, he said.

  ‘Quite a potential market for your pills.’

  ‘And I’d like you to weigh Branson at regular intervals, measure his height and note them down in a book. Would you do that for me?’

  ‘So you want Branson to be another of your little laboratory mice.’

  ‘You can call it that, if it pleases you. I need as much scientific evidence as I can if I want these pills to be a success. The fact that they work is not enough. They have to be seen to work.’

  *

  Tory knew from the moment she examined the pills that they would not offer an alternative to food. When she came home that evening, Branson was at the dining-room table, drawing circles freehand on a sheet of brown parcel paper. They were surprisingly good circles, which, seen from a distance, seemed perfect. Branson did seem to enjoy pointlessly intense activities. She was late and Mrs Head had been out all afternoon attending the funeral of one of her friends. Everyone was hungry. She thought, for a moment, that she might simply sprinkle some of George Farraway’s protein pills on the table and say, ‘There, that’s your dinner,’ and imagined the baffled look she would receive in response. As for secretly feeding her youngest son concentrated protein and nothing else, the idea was quite insulting.

  He’s always trying to make me eat or drink something, Tory thought. She had tried his nail drink, remembering the vile peppermint concoction that clung to the sides of the lavatory when she’d vomited it once. It was nothing more than liquefied jelly. She didn’t think that the protein pills would be much better. He wants to make us all into jelly. He wants to turn us all into things that are soft, indifferent, transparent. That’s what he’s after. For a moment a vision filled her mind, of the human race converted to jelly: rows of jelly people standing at bus stops, wobbling slightly, jelly people sitting in seats at the picture palace, jelly armies going to war with each other, not moving, apart from a slight wobbling, fixed as if from a mould, holding a jelly rifle, strawberry flavoured. A sweet world, all glisten and sheen, but a dead one.

  She heard later about George’s ventures with the protein pills, when they reached the pages of the national press.

  He had persuaded one of his protégés to adhere rigidly to a regime of nothing but flavour
ed fortified gelatine. Alec Stott, his name was, destined for great things. George had visions of him holding aloft the Lonsdale Belt while proclaiming that in the last six months nothing but Farraway’s Protein Pills had passed his lips. What? No food at all? He imagined the astonished reporters exclaiming. No, no food at all. Just pills and water. Gentlemen, the new world lightweight champion is the product of the Farraway Food-free Diet.

  Alec Stott himself was keen for glory in any form, and so was quite willing to forgo the grey stews his mother set before him every evening in favour of a torpedo of compressed sustenance. He gulped down twelve pills a day as part of his training regime, and swore that he was feeling stronger than ever. And it was true – he was on magnificent form, punishing his sparring partners, the punchbags, the skipping rope, the mats. In the gym he gave off energy like a two-bar fire – the equipment and people were considerably warmer after his visit. He flattened a string of opponents to work his way up to a South of England Championship title, the furthest anyone had progressed from the malodorous environs of Farraway’s gym. He fought at York Hall, Bethnal Green, before a capacity crowd of more than a thousand. Stepping into the ring to a roar of applause, he looked every inch a champion. Then, before he’d even received a blow, he took a swing at his opponent, missed, spun round, fell on the floor and died.

  The post-mortem came to a conclusion about the cause of death that had the coroner looking with puzzled eyes at all about him for weeks. This apparently healthy, ambitious young athlete had all the symptoms (the blackened lips, the shrunken stomach, the fungi in the oesophagus) of one rarely seen cause of death: starvation.

  There was an inquiry. George Farraway’s little experiment came to light. Yes, he had fed Alec Stott on nothing but these so-called protein pills for the last six months. Alec Stott’s mother had trusted Mr Farraway completely, and believed with him that the pills were a perfect food substitute – better than food. The chemical composition of the pills was analysed. A conclusion was reached that cartilaginous protein was virtually useless in the human diet, and could not be used as a substitute for meat-based protein. The boffins that George had paid so highly were now turning against him. Alec Stott, they said, had survived on nothing but willpower and self-belief for the last six months of his life, along with a meagre trickle of vitamins and minerals.