by Fay Weldon
“Is she really going?” asked Weena, watching Elaine and Daphne leave the room, leaning into one another for strength and comfort. “Just like that? She’s not exactly Boadicea. Do you know about Boadicea? I was reading up on her the other day.”
“My wife has her dignity,” said Defoe. “Let her live by it. And constancy, endurance, honesty and all the rest. Me, I have you.”
“And the house to ourselves,” rejoiced Weena. “What an innocent Elaine is. It never pays to leave the matrimonial home: doesn’t she know that? Possession is nine-tenths of the law. Once she’s out, it’ll take her a year and ten thousand pounds at a minimum to get back in. If she ever does. Not so much an innocent, more of a fool.”
Defoe’s hand travelled up Weena’s thigh and under the edge of one of the frayed denim hems, but she pushed his hand away. “Not while Daphne’s in the house,” said Weena. “A daughter’s a daughter and they suffer. My mother and father never closed the door. They never cared what noise they made. That counts as abuse, doesn’t it?”
“Poor little Weena,” said Defoe. “I’ll make it up to you.” And he took his hand away and gazed in admiration at the angel who had now taken Weena’s form, though she floated a little before his eyes. Down in the reeds by the river she’d given him a tablet or two to take, and he’d swallowed them because she’d said so, and took a step backwards away from him for every second he dithered, her naked body translucent, greeny-white and firm like some plump serpent, miraculous in its existence, threatening to disappear. Once he’d swallowed, she came nearer: her turn to swallow him up.
Hattie tried to lull her niece Amy to sleep. She sang every lullaby she knew: that is to say “Rock-a-bye Baby” and “Hush, My Darling.”
“Boring, boring,” said the child, and used the remote control to get to Sky and the Pop Channel. Then she put the volume up really loud and fell asleep contentedly. The telephone rang. It was Bob.
“You’ll have to forgive me, Hattie,” he said. “Let me get this over. It’s Bob. I’m not worthy of you. Last week I asked Weena round. She stayed the night. It won’t happen again. It’s taken me three days to get up the courage to tell you. I don’t want it to spoil things between you and me. Please God it won’t.”
“Are you at home?” asked Hattie.
“I got fired,” said Bob. “There was a letter on my desk Friday morning. Now I’m so far down I guess there’s no way left but up, and I’m almost glad.”
“But why?”
“I guess it was Wednesday’s management meeting. First of all I was late—that was Weena’s fault, the little bitch. I know she did it on purpose—”
“Don’t tell me; just don’t tell me,” begged Hattie.
“Then I said how about Defoe Desmond’s biography, and there was a kind of silence. Well, it was a crazy idea, I know, but Weena wanted me to put it to them, so I did. In the letter it said my editorial suggestions weren’t in tune with managerial and financial goals, so I guess that was it. Suggest a has-been to the powers that be, get to be a has-been too.”
“I see,” said Hattie. “So now you’re fired you’ll go on the dole and there’ll be no maintenance for your wife.”
“I hadn’t thought of that,” said Bob.
“I bet Weena had,” said Hattie.
“You used to be her friend,” said Bob.
“Not any more,” said Hattie. “And I’m glad she suffered from our crumbs. If you promise to change the sheets, I’ll come round.”
“When?” asked Bob.
“I’m looking after my sister’s little girl Amy,” said Hattie. “I’ll wait till she wakes and then take her home and come on to you.”
“Wake her up now,” said Bob.
“Certainly not,” said Hattie. “That would be immoral. She has to wake naturally.”
Elaine moved stiffly round the bedroom, frowning and inefficient. Daphne stuffed the more obvious items of clothing and personal necessities into a suitcase.
“Dad’s been taking something, Mum,” she said. “He’s not himself. Let’s just get away, shall we?”
“Perhaps it would be better if I stayed,” said Elaine. “It doesn’t feel right just to go.”
“I can’t leave you here on your own,” said Daphne. “And I can’t stay, so you’ll have to come.”
“Why can’t you stay?”
“Because Alison is taking Jumper to the vet at 7:45, and the vet’s a woman and just her type. I’ve been away for three days and I want to get to the appointment too.”
“Do you mean the vet is Jumper’s type, or Alison’s type?”
“Alison’s type,” said Daphne patiently.
“Oh,” said Elaine. “And then you could have an operation to get to be an animal and then you could be Jumper’s type. Just a thought.”
“Not a very good joke, Mum,” said Daphne. “Probably not,” said Elaine gloomily, and waved at the furniture. “What are you doing, Mum?”
“Waving goodbye to the matrimonial fourposter,” said Elaine. “I was born in that bed. I had you in hospital. Peter too. Perhaps that’s what went wrong. Lack of faith.”
“You’re talking strangely even for you, Mum,” said Daphne. “Let’s just get out of here.”
“No, wait a moment,” said Elaine, clinging to one of the four posts of the bed. “I could compose a curse. I could curse your father and all his line.”
“He doesn’t have a line. Just Peter and me.”
“My mother cursed my father and all his line before she went,” said Elaine. “Before she jumped in the river. They found her down near the reeds. Why shouldn’t I do it too? It obviously works.”
Daphne tried to prise her mother’s arms from the post, but failed. “Jesus, what a nightmare!” she said. “Compared to home, International Relations is a piece of cake.”
The phone rang. Elaine let loose the bedpost and answered it.
“Hello,” she said. “Yes, as it happens, someone called Weena is in the house. An Eloi. We’re just Morlocks.”
“Is that Mrs. Desmond?” asked Hattie.
“Lady Drewlove to you,” said Elaine. “Who ever wanted to be married to a mere commoner?”
“Lady Drewlove! Wow!” said Hattie. “I thought you were just a Mrs. It was you I wanted anyway, not Weena. I need to warn you. Weena’s no well-wisher. I know: I’m her friend. She’s after your husband. She’ll drive you out, suck him dry, spit him out as a husk. I can’t go on, because you’re out of town and this is my friend Bob’s phone. One of the husks I’m talking about. There are hulks and there are husks.”
“She’s writing my husband’s biography,” said Elaine. “She seems to be plumping him up well enough, making him rich and famous again: I see no sign of any husk—”
Downstairs, Weena said to Defoe, as she helped herself to raspberry mousse with a meringue topping, done to a turn overnight in the Aga’s plate-warming oven, “As soon as she’s gone, call the locksmith, change the locks. Then she can’t get in without breaking in, and you can call the police if she tries. Communicate only through lawyers. Accuse her of violent behaviour. She’ll’ soon give up and go away and leave you in peace, to be yourself at last. I’ll be here to help you; it’s all going to be just fine!”
Defoe’s head was clearing. The fronds of Weena’s shorts were beginning to separate out, lie still; had ceased writhing and weaving round her leg.
“Wasn’t that the phone?” he asked. “Not any more,” said Weena. Defoe picked up the silent instrument to hear Hattie’s voice.
“Weena’s got no commission to do Defoe Desmond’s biography. She tried but she failed. There’s no Sunday newspaper serialisation. All that’s for your husband’s benefit. A commission just acts as a pregnancy used to, when a girl wants a man and a home. When she’s got what she wants, the baby, the commission just somehow fades away. She has a miscarriage: the editor changes his mind. She’s installed, though. She’s okay. Too late for the guy to go back. It happens to the good guys, not the bad. Don�
��t give up on your husband just because Weena’s around.”
Defoe put the receiver down. The words might have been real, or they might have come from heaven. He did not recognise the voice, but the statements made were the more convincing for that. His hand tightened round Weena’s thigh.
“You’re hurting me,” she protested. “I bruise so easily. I’m Weena the Eloi. My mother named me after the girl in The Time Machine, did I ever tell you that? She wanted to diminish me from the moment I was born.”
“I’m the King of the Morlocks,” he said, picking up the bread knife, “and I’m going to eat half of you for lunch, and the Queen shall have the other half for tea.”
The knife was at her throat and she was on her feet in an instant.
“Get out of here now,” Defoe said. “Just out.”
“I’ll tell everyone,” Weena said. “I’ll tell the press. I’ll tell them you raped me. I’ll tell them everything.”
“Tell away,” he said, “because who’s interested? No one. It’s the end of the line, Weena, for you and for me, and you’re lost and I’m saved.”
“Take me now,” Weena pleaded, thrusting out her chest at him, but the T-shirt seemed unerotic, the breasts pointless. “This is so exciting! I’ve never wanted a man so much—”
“It won’t work,” Defoe said, brandishing his knife, pursuing her.
“It worked once, it worked twice; three times and you’d have me. Serpent! Slimy, cold creature. I’ll cut your head off!”
And Weena turned and ran out of the house. He followed her to the door and flung her green leather bag after her, and the bread knife after that, so it glinted in the air and almost got her: she stared up at it, mouth open and paralysed, as it arced towards her, over and over, and down, Elaine’s best bread knife with the serrated edge. But the knife missed her, and buried itself haft-deep in the lawn. Weena grabbed her bag and ran. Defoe slammed the door after her and turned the locks just as his wife and daughter came down the stairs.
“I reckon I was just in time,” said Hattie to Bob. “If I’d come straight round, if I hadn’t waited for Amy to wake, I wouldn’t have bothered to get through to Defoe Desmond’s wife.”
Bob had found no clean sheets, but had straightened those already on the bed and brushed away the crumbs, ready for next morning’s breakfast. She could forgive him.
Weena went to her office and found her name off the door and her desk gone. She had no job: she was one of many similarly made redundant. Nor was Dervish there to cajole and persuade, blackmail and charm. He had left a message to say if she attempted to stay, she’d be thrown out. She could collect her wages the following week.
Weena went to her apartment and found the lock changed and her suitcases out, and the white satin blouse, now the same grey as Elaine’s wood ash, hanging on the doorknob by way of explanation.
“She can’t prove it,” said Weena aloud, “she’s got no proof!” but no one was listening. She thought she heard the sound of Dervish’s voice, Dervish laughing in his particular pleasure, and knew that she had lost. She had gone too far.
Weena went to Hattie’s apartment but there was no one there. So she went round to Bob’s to cadge a bed for the night but Hattie was there and Bob wouldn’t let her in. It was no good going to Bob’s wife, who once had been Weena’s best friend, because she wasn’t speaking either.
Weena used the last of her money taking a taxi to the crematorium where her father was buried, but it was so vast, so many crosses, so many plaques, it seemed there were more people dead in the world than alive. She lay face down on the grass and tried to commune with her father, but failed. She reckoned he had gone and she was on her own. She had driven everyone away.
A man with a good profile in a good suit stood alone by a grave: the sky was rosy pink, the moon rising. She thought everything was beautiful. She would begin again. She felt reborn in goodness: her spirits rose: she was elated.
“I spent the last of my money on flowers for my mother’s grave,” she said softly to the man with the profile. He was perhaps in his mid-forties. “I didn’t stop to think how I’d get home.”
He turned his face to hers. He looked quite like her father, as she expected: intelligent, personable, interesting. It was the pattern fate made in front of you, laying out its crazy paving slabs. You got to anticipate what the next one would be. First you stepped on one, then on another: there was scarcely any choice. You tried not to fall between the cracks, and the attempt was the only free will there was. Lately they’d taken to shifting beneath her feet: she’d got things wrong. But you lost some and won some: you couldn’t blame yourself.
“Otherwise it’s the end of the line for me too,” said Weena. “I might as well join those here gathered.”
“They wouldn’t have you,” he said, having studied her for a little.
“You’re far too alive for that. Let me give you a lift in my Rolls. In the presence of the dead the truly living must stick together. And so few of us are truly alive.”
They walked off together into the sunset, if not hand in hand, at least hip to hip; defiant, in anticipation of things to come.
RUN AND ASK DADDY IF HE HAS ANY MORE MONEY
An Exercise in Italics
WELL NOW! IT WAS Easter and my friend David was helping his wife Milly Frood in the shop when he heard a voice he recognised crying loud and clear across the crowded room, “Run and ask Daddy if he has any more money,” and his blood ran cold.
Easter is upon us now. It is a season when we should reflect upon our sins and consider the pain we cause others, especially those who have no choice but to put up with us; this trauma of self-knowledge, self-revelation, culminating on Easter Friday, leaving us Saturday to shop and recover, so that on Sunday we can wake exhilarated to our new selves—and then have Monday to calm down a bit and prepare to get back to work. Should, should! Mostly we just give each other cards and Easter eggs and are grateful for the holiday.
David is in his early forties. He has not very much reddish hair and an abundant, very red beard. He wears a tweed jacket. He is now a professor. He used to be a mere lecturer but his Polytechnic turned into a University and voilà! there he was, Professor Frood, a pillar of society: looked up to and trusted: a family man. A really nice guy, too: the trustful kind, prone to loving not wisely but too well, as the best people are. But that is all in the past, of course. Professors can’t muck about. There’s too much at stake. All that a man can do is hope that the past, burrowing away like some mole through the pleasant green fields of his present, doesn’t surface and spoil everything in an explosion of mud and dirt.
This particular Thursday before Easter, at two minutes past four in the afternoon, it seemed as if it very well might.
Milly Frood is sometimes spoken of by friends as Frilly Mood. They’re being ironic. She’s a really un-frilly, serious, nice, good woman. She has straight hair and a fringe and a plump, rather expressionless, round face and a body well draped in unnoticeable clothes. The Frood children, Sherry and Baf, now in their teenage years, have never wittingly eaten sugar or meat under their own roof: Frilly Mood has seen to that. The kids are healthy if a little thin, and very polite. Frilly Mood’s done well by them. It is no crime to be serious.
The shop is between the Delicatessen and the Estate Agents, down the High Street. It’s an upmarket gift shop, selling the kind of decorative things nobody needs but everyone likes to have, from papier-mâché bowls (French) in deep, rich colours, at £65; black elephant pill boxes (Malaysian) at £2.75; fluffy rabbits (Korean) at £12.35; little woolly lambs (New Zealand) at £8.50 and decorated Easter eggs (English) at £4.87, and so on. Pre-Easter is these days almost as busy a time as pre-Christmas. Everyone feels the need for a little unnecessary something extra, or what is life all about? Where are the rewards?
David was helping Milly out in the shop over the pre-Easter rush. And why should he not? The Poly (sorry, University) was closed for the holidays (sorry, vacation) and in Mill
y’s words, David had “nothing better to do.” His wage remained that of a lecturer no matter that he was called a professor. You can re-name everything you like, but harsh facts don’t alter just because you’ve done so. In other words, money was tight and if Milly could do without extra staff so much the better. Nevertheless, David felt that helping out was a humiliation, and blamed Milly for it. In Milly’s view a man was only working if you could see him working, and who can see a man thinking?
The voice he recognised was that of Bettina Shepherd; the voice had a most attractive actressy double timbre (that’s in italics because it’s French, not because it has significance for this story) and it was familiar because there’d been a time when it had spoken many words of true love, murmured many a sinful suggestion into his ear. But all that had been some seven years back, a long time ago: longer, surely, than was needed to make that man now feel responsible for the man then. Do we not all grow an entirely new skin every seven years? Should a man not be allowed to start anew; as with a driving licence, should the passage of time not wipe out past misdeeds?
Daddy was the man Bettina referred to: he was at the back of the shop where the inexpensive trinkets were. Bettina was looking peculiarly attractive in a cashmere dress, in seasonal yellow, belted by a linked chain which for all anyone could tell was made of pure gold; the whole setting off her bosomy figure, little waist and black hair to advantage. Daddy was grey-suited, good-looking, gentlemanly and wore a solid gold tie-pin. David thought he looked extremely boring and rather stupid, but David would, wouldn’t he?
“David, this has to stop,” Bettina had said to him in the History Tutorial Room one day, seven years ago. “You are a married man and I’m going to be married too. The ceremony is next week. I wanted to tell you earlier but didn’t like to, because I didn’t want to upset you. You are the only man I’ll ever really love but I have to think of my future. We have to be realistic. You could never support two homes in any comfort and I’m just not cut out for employment. I’m not that kind of person.” He’d thought his heart would break. He was surprised it went on beating. Later he’d told himself he was lucky to be out of a trivial, passing affair with such an unfeeling, whimsical person, but he’d never really believed himself. The truth was that he’d taken no real pleasure since in Milly’s straight hair and earnest face; He could see Milly was good, but what a man wanted was something more than honest worth. Sometimes he felt guilty because others called his wife Frilly Mood, ironically, but then he’d tell himself she’d always been like that. Not his doing.
