Wicked Women

by Fay Weldon

  “Timothy dear,” says Auntie Annie. “Try to be sensible. Cooperate. Don’t put on airs. Be like the others. If you ever want to escape from Bagshott Estate you must work hard and pass exams, and I must be here to help you. There is some talk of a cut in our subsistence allowance, of my going out to work; but my work is here with you, helping you get an education. You look on me as a mother, don’t you, Timothy dear?”

  “Of course I do, dear Aunt,” says Timothy. “Never let it be said that a Bagshott worked from nine to five.”

  “Or seven to midnight,” said Auntie Annie, “now the Shop Act is cancelled and a crust is so very hard to earn.”

  “I will do what I can for you, Aunt,” says Timothy. “I will aim for suspension rather than expulsion. Needs must and all that. But I will not willingly keep the company of the Oosters of this world.” Even as he spoke, a great convulsion shook the corridor; indeed the very structure of the dwelling block, the elevator, quivered between its rusty girders and fell an inch or so: Maisie Ooster was rounding up her boys. Maisie Ooster was twenty-four stone and perfect with it, if loud. Annie stuck her head out of her splintered front door.

  “Take no notice of me,” cried Maisie Ooster. “I washed these lads last night and I can’t do a thing with them today,” and she laughed so loud and heartily that Annie joined in, but not Timothy, and so night fell, and the full moon arose over Bagshott Towers, and made all things so boldly brilliant and beautiful even the rats and the cockroaches paused in their rustling, and the human scavengers lifted up their hearts, and even the muggers paused to consider the nature of creation, and the wild creatures of the night slept, thinking it was day: and those who normally slept by night awoke, including Rupert Oates; in the morning Paul had his thoughts on tape ready for playback to Angus. Paul’s tapes are like some film, really sensitive, and just as film will pick up scenes that never were, so Paul’s tapes pick up sound. He is always in employment. Perhaps that’s why he’s so happy. “Night falls on Bagshott Towers,” mused Rupert Oates that moonlit night, “on good and bad and in between, as most of us are seen to be. And who’s to blame? Your poor old mum? No. She had a mum herself, you know, and is what she was made, as are we all. Moon on Bagshott Towers! And there’s a fox, and there the night owl flies. Listen; the wild life of the city cries—and morning breaks, and unreality breaks in, on this strange world we’re living in.”

  The moon set. The sun arose. Cameraman Les, up bright and early, uninstructed by Angus, who has a hangover, is filming the kids of Bagshott Comprehensive arriving—some on crack and some still clutching teddy bears, some pregnant and some virtuous still, and all shockable one way or another, either at the innocence of some, or the knowingness of others. “Children of Bagshott Towers,” says Rupert in his heart, “school’s not so bad. It’s warm and there is dinner to be had. Your teachers want to help you, honestly they do. I’ve asked them and they say it’s true.”

  Angus arrives, apologetic, and the film crew sets up in the corridor outside Mr. Korn’s office, where Timothy stands disdainful and alone. The headmaster appears—“Please, sir,” says Timothy—but Mr. Korn is already inside and the door is shut. Even the best of teachers develop deafness to the pleas of the pupils: it is not the teachers’ fault. Children are no different from adults, other than in scale and lack of experience; their clamour, their tugging at the conscience and coatstrings of those they see as powerful, render dazed, punch drunk and rude those who are paid to suffer it.

  And coming down the corridor, framed by Les, observed by Timothy, a smallish, pimply, owlish child called Twitcher, son of an optician.

  “I’ve had enough,” says Twitcher, “of this day.”

  “Already?” enquires Timothy, quite alarmed. “Ten minutes in this place is always enough. Already my eye is twitching. My mother said if it happened I was to go home.”

  “Well!” say Jon-Jon, Joe-Joe and Ripper, fast approaching, “Well, well; well. If it isn’t little Twitcher: off home are we, darlint, nice back home with Mummy? Twitcher wears an undershirt,” they say, and so on, and then, “Tell you what, Twitcher, give us a dance and show us how happy you are!”

  “I don’t know how to dance,” says Twitcher.

  “Then we’ll jump on your toes,” says Jon-Jon, “and teach you, unless by any chance you have dinner money to spare. Just a borrow, of course, until tomorrow.”

  “I don’t take school dinners,” says Twitcher, “because someone always takes the money. I bring packed lunch instead, with egg and curry filling that nobody likes, not even me. But at least I don’t starve.”

  “Better than what our mum gives us,” says Ripper.

  “A biff on the communal ear hole. If you got no money, you gotta dance. If you can’t dance, then we gotta stamp.”

  “Now look here, you fellows,” says Timothy Bagshott, “bullying a little fellow like this. It simply isn’t on.” Six cold eyes focus in upon Timothy Bagshott; Twitcher dodges away and who can blame him.

  “If it isn’t my neighbour Timothy Bagshott,” says Jon-Jon. “Fairdos. You let Twitcher go so it’s up to you to see us right.”

  “You’ll get nothing from me,” says Timothy Bagshott.

  “We will,” says Jon-Jon, “cos we’ll smash your face in or else. All you’ve got and more; your dad dines on champagne and chips, you’ve got a lot to spare.”

  “But he’s in clink,” says Timothy boldly. “We know his sort,” say the Ooster boys. “Some men are born to champagne and chips as the sparks fly upwards,” says Jon-Jon, who’d been in Mr. Korn’s high-flyers special English class until his thirteenth birthday, the day he went on mental and moral strike and they let him into the cinema without his parents. The porn he takes home for the video and the subtleties of the PAUSE button on the VCR.

  “Hand over what you’ve got and we’ll have your trainers too, unless you want to dance.”

  “I wish you boys wouldn’t dance in the corridor,” says Mr. Korn, emerging from his room. “Just stand quiet, boy, until I’ve time for you.”

  In post-production, we are allowed merciful release from scenes of teenage torture; Angus tactfully intercuts a scene between Maisie and Annie which, according to Paul’s sound tape, carried above even the sound of Bagshott plumbing. The two women had got together with a book called Plumbing Made Easy to solve the bath/loo problem.

  “A wire like this, Miss Bagshott,” Maisie said, “must have a dozen uses. Say you had a dress shop with a fair size letterbox, you could pull it through and hook your winter outfit out in no time at all.”

  “You have a lively mind, Mrs. Ooster,” said Miss Bagshott. “If you were married to my Barley,” said Mrs. Ooster kindly, “no doubt you’d have the same. A wife contrives as best she must.” And with a gurgle and a splodge the blockage was cleared; that the water supply and the sewage now intermingled on the floor below was no concern of theirs.

  Annie thanked Maisie and Maisie remarked, “My Gawd, you could do with a thing or two in here. Telly, video, three-piece, cocktail cabinet. My Barley can get things cheap.”

  “Thank you,” said Annie primly, “but we Bagshotts don’t like to be indebted. We’re cosy as we are.”

  “Don’t put on airs,” said Maisie. “Your brother’s doing time, like anyone else.”

  “That’s rather different,” said Annie. “My brother is no criminal.”

  “I call it criminal,” said Maisie Ooster outright, “when other people’s drains come up my sink, and who’s doing that but your brother?”

  “I accept your censure, Mrs. Ooster,” said Annie, “or may I call you Maisie? The fact of the matter is, I used to live a lonely life up at Amanda; my brother always away on business, and Timothy learning to be a little gent at boarding school. But here! Why, even the dole queue is quite jolly. And I packed little Timothy his favourite lunch: egg and curry sandwiches.”

  “My boys never bother with lunch,” said Maisie. “They pick something up on the way, they say. They’re such good boys. We
believe in discipline, Barley and me. Take the stick to them often and hard, they grow up good as gold.”

  “Sir,” says Timothy the while, entering Mr. Korn’s office unasked and unabashed, “I will not continue to wait outside; it was you who wished to see me, not I you. In the circumstances, I’d be glad if you said what you had to, and let me begin the education the State so kindly provides, and not waste the taxpayers’ money, nor my valuable time, keeping me waiting.”

  “You’ll be Timothy Bagshott,” murmured Mr. Korn.

  “And you’ll be Mr. Korn,” replied Timothy. “I was only going to welcome you to the school, Timothy,” said Mr. Korn.

  “I’d rather you called me Bagshott,” said Timothy. “We are not friends.”

  “Boy,” said Mr. Korn, “is it your intention that I suspend you?”

  “It is, sir.”

  “Then you will have to do better than that, Timothy. My threshold of natural indignation is high. Are you perhaps having trouble with the Ooster boys, Joe-Joe, Jon-Jon and Ripper? The family is not easy, but they are all our responsibility, and yours perhaps more than anyone, your name being Bagshott.”

  “Guilt by association, sir?”

  “A matter of cultural, family and communal guilt. Your father and his like are responsible for many social ills round here: bad housing for a start; the breakdown of family life in general; the squalor of our streets and schools.”

  “So the sins of the father are to be visited on the children?”

  “I think you’ll find they are, my boy, whenever you enter the toilet block. The sewers leak: the plastic pipes are all too permeable. There you are, Mr. Hobbs!”

  Enter Mr. Hobbs, the PE teacher: a karate expert, shaven-headed with an evil mien, as are too many of his ilk.

  “Mr. Hobbs,” said Mr. Korn, “we have a problem or two to deal with today. When the indoor swimming pool overflowed because of the stuck ball cock, electrical damage was clearly done. The fire alarms have rung six times already—”

  “I thought that was your little joke, sir,” said Mr. Hobbs, “to keep us on our toes.”

  “My sense of humour is quite, quite gone,” said Mr. Korn. “And the automatic doors to the assembly hall are working in reverse. They close when anyone approaches.” Timothy laughed.

  “I’m glad you find that funny, Timothy,” said Mr. Korn. “Trust a Bagshott! Let me introduce you to your head of year, our Mr. Hobbs. Mr. Hobbs doubles as caretaker at this, your father’s school, in order to pay his mortgage. Timothy, if I might give you a word of advice: a slight note of diffidence, even of apology, might help you get along with pupils and with staff.”

  “I have nothing of which I need be ashamed,” said Timothy. “I am proud of my father, as any son might be.”

  “He’s a lucky lad,” said Mr. Hobbs. “I’ll let him be first on the wall-bars since he’s new. They carry quite an electric charge; the wiring in the gym being what it is, after the flooding, and even before.”

  “Perhaps I am just a little ashamed,” said Timothy. “Sir.”

  Now what of Timothy’s mother? Doesn’t she care? Surely she’s read of Jim Bagshott’s disgrace, arrest and imprisonment in the press; surely she’ll care, do something to rescue the flesh of her flesh, love of her love?

  “Meanwhile the Welfare, ever tender-hearted,” observes Rupert Oates, “seeks to trace our Timothy’s mum, long departed, and finds her—what surprise!—not so far away though feeling unmaternal, sad to say.”

  Audrey, for such is her name, works as the barmaid at the local pub, the Bagshott Arms—the landlord is in trouble with Equal Opportunities for describing her as barmaid, when it should be barperson. No one has yet got round to insisting that he be called the landnoble, which presumably is the non-gender specific of landlord. But who cares about that? On with the story. Are you happy, Les? Paul? Angus? Happy, happy, happy, in the execution of our craft. What other happiness can there be?

  “Rhubarb, rhubarb, rhubarb,” says Rupert now, for although Paul swore he was happy, his boom proved faulty. Let it just be said Rupert Oates put the child’s plight to the mother and the mother denied all knowledge of the child. Some mothers are like that and a lot of fathers too. Children are plentiful, since parents must opt out of parenthood, not opt in: the former is a boring, expensive, time-consuming thing to do. But Rupert Oates persevered, and finally Audrey grudgingly acknowledged she had borne a child to a property developer of note and criminality, Jim Bagshott of Bagshott Towers and Bagshott School.

  Where Mr. Hobbs now addressed his class in language vile, insulting and persuasive, as was his custom. “First one to talk gets a detention,” said Mr. Hobbs, “and the one sitting next to him. Both sides. Anyone who thinks my bark is worse than my bite is mistaken. My little darlings, my sensitive children, welcome back. How many walls did you deface in the holidays? How many old ladies did you mug, cars did you joy-ride, reefers did you inhale and raves attend? I’ve brought an extra little playmate for you today: young Timothy Bagshott. He’s son of Jim, perpetrator of your fate. Once you lived in squalor in slums upon the ground, now you live up on high, in half-completed tower blocks. The rest of Europe gave up the habit years ago, of housing its riff-raff in the sky, but Jim Bagshott told your elected representatives the old ways were the best, that is to say the cheapest, and your elected representatives, mesmerised like the snakes they are—”

  “Sir,” said Timothy, “isn’t it the snakes who do the mesmerising, and the rabbits who get mesmerised?”

  “Take a detention, lad,” said Mr. Hobbs. “Have it your own way. Your father is a snake and the Council are rabbits. And it is thanks to your snake of a father that the PE wing is flooded and I am teaching History to Form 13, a class well known throughout the school to be composed of spastics and pygmies.”

  “Sir,” said Timothy, “I really must protest. You shouldn’t call people pygmies. Say rather people of restricted growth, or the vertically challenged.”

  “Another detention, boy,” said Mr. Hobbs. “I call you lot what I like and so long as it’s not racist and I don’t lay a finger on you, no one can say me nay. Spastics and pygmies, the lot of you!” Mr. Hobbs left the class to check the basement’s pumps in case the central heating blew.

  “If you tear Timothy Bagshott limb from limb, class,” said Mr. Hobbs, “you’ll only get probation. Why don’t you have a go?”

  Form 13, so familiarly called because it was understood to be unlucky in that its members had Mr. Hobbs as year tutor, personal counsellor and careers officer, turned to stare at Timothy, undecided as to its group response. The toilets in both school and home were so often out of order that even the young ones had noticed—it is one thing to defecate in lifts and corridors out of choice, in a spirit of defiance, quite another to have nowhere else to go. And there always has to be someone to blame, and how seldom is that person not just in the room with you, but on the same scale? Mr. Hobbs had given permission to hate, and to not a few in the class Mr. Hobbs was a hero. The oppressed soon learn to lick the oppressor’s boot. It was, in other words, a tense moment.

  “I expect,” said Timothy, “you get quite a few days off because of the structural difficulties inherent in the rehabilitation of any educational institution.”

  Jaws dropped.

  “That is to say,” said Timothy, “if you ask me, my dad cocked up this sodding school on purpose. My dad hates schools.”

  The moment passed. Ordinary mayhem broke out, and Twitcher was its target, not our Timothy. Twitcher got his glasses broken but that was nothing unusual. All knew Twitcher’s father was an optician, the only dad not in prison, and could easily acquire more. Form 13, the other side of their culture and conditioning, were quite reasonable and thoughtful lads, whose habit it was to take justice into their own hands, since society afforded so little evidence of it. And pleasure likewise, since so much of what they did was frowned upon.

  Up at the Bagshott Arms the while, Rupert Oates wrestled with the soul of Audr
ey Bagshott.

  “So what if I ran off with the chauffeur?” cried Audrey. “I chose love, not money, didn’t I? Isn’t that what a girl is supposed to do? And don’t tell me Jim turned criminal when I left; he was born like that: devious, greedy and grungy. And he always did the plumbing himself, liked to turn his hand to a real man’s job, so Amanda was always awash with water. My built-in cupboards filled up with the stuff. Drip, drip, drip, off my shoes and my furs. And I couldn’t take Timothy with me: the chauffeur didn’t like kids. You know what kids are like in cars, never at their best.”

  “He’s thirteen now,” said Mr. Oates. “I had him in my own car. He made no trouble.”

  “But I’m with the landlord now,” said Audrey, “and you have to be eighteen to get in for a drink. And I know those boys from Bagshott Comprehensive. Nasty, thieving little hooligans, lacing their Cokes with rum if you so much as look the other way.” It is always hard to reason with the not altogether reasonable, but on the other hand the least reasonable make the warmest mothers, so Mr. Oates persisted, and on hearing that the lad lived in a block of flats named in her memory, and perceiving that Jim Bagshott’s heart was still tender towards her, she consented to visit both her child and her husband.

  And Mr. Oates was relieved, because he knew only too well for any child to be in Mr. Hobbs’ class was a strain upon that child’s source of cheerfulness, and cheerfulness in Bagshott Towers was the rarest and most precious of all commodities. “Sticks and stones,” said Rupert Oates in his heart, “may break my bones, and words can always hurt me. And who it is who says they don’t can only mean to bruise me. Flesh and bones will heal at last, but insults past stay with me.”

  Mr. Oates did not like Mr. Hobbs. Neither did Mr. Korn, but Mr. Hobbs was on a fixed contract, and could not be fired other than for gross professional negligence, which he took care not to show. And, besides, Mr. Hobbs was a dab hand at keeping the boilers going. Disgraceful people often develop very rare and precise skills, so that others will be obliged to put up with them.