Wicked Women

by Fay Weldon

  Mrs. Ooster, in spite of the wild and aggressive mien of her very large sons, was an agreeable person indeed. Angus cuts gratefully away from Rupert Oates’ light verse musings—which Angus feels are somehow happy Paul’s fault, and totally out of order, considering the overall style of the piece—to Aunt Annie’s new home and the arrival of Mrs. Ooster with a daintily pale pink TV set with a built-in aerial like a leaping dolphin. “So kind of you, Maisie,” Aunt Annie is saying. “The only people who ever came up to Amanda were those bearing writs and solicitors’ letters. No one ever seemed to like us, for all Jim was forever throwing parties. Why did you say the TV didn’t have a back, Maisie? It seems to me to have a back. I imagine one could get quite a shock if it didn’t. All those nasty wires.”

  “Things which fall off lorries,” said Mrs. Ooster enigmatically, “don’t have backs. Never mind. You’ll learn, now you live in Audrey Tower. Would you care to come to Bingo with me tonight?”

  “I’ve never gambled in my life,” said Auntie Annie. “It’s not a gamble,” said Mrs. Ooster. “The Caller is a very good friend of mine.”

  And Aunt Annie was glad that Mrs. Ooster had a very good friend, because she’d had a glimpse of Mr. Ooster and thought him a surly and miserable fellow indeed.

  Angus prefers to look through his viewfinder at Audrey, who, although into her forties, is blonde, well-bosomed and high-heeled, rather than at staid (so far) Auntie Annie and vast Mrs. Ooster—agreeableness is a quality that can get you lost on the cutting room floor, but sexiness keeps anyone in shot. So visiting hours at the open prison are here and Audrey’s sitting opposite Jim, who doesn’t seem one bit pleased to see her. The Rupert Oateses of this world, in spite of the harmonies inside their heads, can be naive, believing that others are as they are: that is to say, really nice if a trifle power-hungry.

  “I’ve come all this way,” says Audrey, “and you aren’t one bit pleased to see me.”

  “Because I know what you want,” says Jim. “And it’s the same as everyone else wants.”

  “What’s that?” asks Audrey.

  “Money,” says Jim. “The only thing I’ve ever had to offer. So now you come running to me for the fees, so your boy can go to boarding school and be a little gent.”

  “Such a thing never crossed my heart, Jim,” says Audrey. “Then it should have,” says Jim. “What sort of mother are you? Running out on your own child. That boy’s going to spend the rest of his life searching for an absent mother figure.”

  “What’s got into you, Jim?” asks Audrey. “Psychology classes,” says Jim. “There’s nothing else to do round here. I wasn’t much of a father myself. He’ll be searching for an absent father figure too. Not much of a husband either. A workaholic like me leaves a trail of personal disasters behind.”

  “You go on saying things like that, Jim,” says Audrey, “and I’ll be on the step waiting when you come out.”

  “As to the fees,” says Jim, “I’ll see what I can do. I haven’t been fair to him. Bringing him up posh, then pushing him in the deep end.”

  Audrey expresses admiration that a man in prison could still get his hands on money; Jim expresses his anxiety about the swimming pool at Bagshott School—chlorine might eat away at the new-style insulation of the underwater electrics—and suggests Timothy be warned not to take a dip. And so love, affection and trust is re-established between the two. Angus makes a note to establish a heart-shape frame around the pair in post-production.

  Aunt Annie has packed a very special lunch for Timothy today. He eats it in the safety of the Art Room. Twitcher is there, together with a small group of boys in need of quiet and protection. The Art Room door affords some protection against the clanging and banging, the shouting and screaming, the pushing and shoving in the corridors outside.

  “Anyone care for a chicken leg?” enquires Timothy. “Seasoned with salt, and lemon, roasted in butter and basil. Only 40p the piece, and a bargain at the price.”

  “Sounds foreign to me,” says Twitcher. “Then how about a cigarette?” asks Timothy. “Twenty-five pence each or three for a pound.”

  “Why are three more expensive than one?” asks Twitcher. “Because I have my father’s blood in me,” says Timothy. “He’s inside, isn’t he?” says Boy 1.

  “He is indeed,” says Timothy. “Left to rot by a corrupt authority, a society indifferent to the Tightness of his case.”

  “Open prison?” asks Boy 2.

  “Of course,” says Timothy.

  “Then it doesn’t count,” says Boy 3. “My dad’s doing thirty years in high security, and not even a political.” Boys 1, 2 and 3 will have to double as prison attendants (trainees, of course; they will have to age down for the one, age up for the other). This is not a lavish production, and extras are expensive. The producer can see no merit in having Boys 1, 2 and 3: the dialogue could have been accomplished with just the one bit part player. But Angus says the way to look lavish is to be lavish. “Besides,” says Boy 2, “it’s not fathers that count in here, it’s mothers. How’s yours?”

  “Run off,” says Timothy. “That’s nothing,” says Boy 2. “It was to me,” says Timothy sadly.

  All contemplate the truth of this. Angus studies each face at some length to get the value of their hiring and keep the producers in their place. The Ooster boys at this point lean on the Art Room door so it collapses inward, being made none too solidly, and deprive the already dismal group of their dinner: chicken legs, ham rolls, crisps, Ryvita and cheese slices, and a bottle of Montrachet Cadet which Timothy has been keeping to himself. Well, the Ooster boys have to live too, and Mrs. Ooster is too busy keeping Mr. Ooster happy in the mornings to do much in the way of providing lunch, nor does their father see why he should provide men younger, bigger and more energetic than he with funds simply because they are his sons. Rupert Oates’ voice shivers over the scene: “Children remember this, that childhood ends. When you grow up, at least you’ll choose your friends.”

  Mr. Oates then appears in conversation with Aunt Annie, offering her a change of residence: he has organised it so that she and Timothy can exchange dwellings with a family living on the outskirts of town, almost in the country; Timothy can be taken out of Bagshott School and go to Parrot High, a smaller and altogether milder institution in a better area, so much so that it is soon to become a Direct Grant School. But Aunt Annie, to Rupert Oates’ surprise, will have none of it. She is happy, she says, as Mrs. Ooster’s neighbour: she’s on her way to Bingo and, besides, she’s come to fancy the view from the twelfth floor and Timothy no longer suffers from vertigo.

  “But I’m offering you a thatched cottage,” says Rupert Oates, and all Aunt Annie says, pushing past, is, “Nasty, germy things, thatches.” Mr. Oates inhales the fetid air of the Ooster level, as it’s known at the Council offices, and marvels. The Ooster boys are active and healthy eaters and drinkers and seldom make it inside their home before being overtaken by the call of nature. The lift is so often out of order, their own door so seldom opened promptly to them (Mr. Ooster has the lock changed frequently) they can hardly be blamed for this lack of control. So far one can get, no farther. Requests to the Council by Mr. Oates that common lavatory provision should be made at the entrance to Audrey Tower convulsed the Supplies and Facilities Department with mirth. How many hours would such constructs survive the vandals? Let the corridors stink; there was nothing to be done about it.

  Angus decided against attempting to dramatise this sorry state of affairs. Producers, viewers and indeed Les would resist anything too graphic, so Mr. Oates was merely left sniffing the air and wincing; Angus then cut away to a scene at Bagshott School, where the French class was in process, cheerful enough, if punctuated by cheers, jeers, Kung Fu kicks and the sound of breaking windows. A student teacher, pretty and eighteen, and in her first year at college, stood weeping in front of the class, who thought it best to tactfully ignore her distress. The lads were not unkind but no doubt thought the sooner she toughened up t
he happier everyone would be. That, or get out of teaching. Timothy sat at the back of the class, reading.

  “Tim,” muttered the boy next to him, “what are you reading?”

  “A book called Teach Yourself French,” said Timothy. At which point Mr. Hobbs erupted into the room, shouting, swearing, thwacking everyone in sight. “Dregs and rabble!” he shouted. “Form 13, the dross of the streets: what’s the point of teaching them French; they can’t even speak their native tongue. The sooner they’re out on the streets and on crack the better. Their mothers are, et tes grand’meres.” The class fell silent, shocked and stunned, and the student teacher ran from the room and out of the profession altogether. Had it not been for Mr. Hobbs, she would have toughened up perfectly well in her own good time.

  It was this particular scene which causes the TV critic of The Times, who later became editor of Punch—a humorous magazine, now deceased—to become almost incoherent in his outrage: the film, he complained, was a vicious attack against the educational system of the nation. Schools such as Bagshott Comprehensive did not exist. A foul fabrication! Everyone knew schools were places where calm and kindly teachers, in an organised fashion, set about the business of teaching and socialising the docile and grateful young. Else what were the taxpayers paying their taxes for? But that is by the by. Just why The Tale of Timothy Bagshott, a play for TV, was never repeated and wiped from the BBC archives. Just as Les could not bring himself to turn his camera on what we had better call defecatory matter, nor could the critic of The Times face truth. Why should he be expected to do better than Les?

  The cookery class at the Open Prison was doing rather better: Clive and Jim were baking £50 notes into a cake tin. Clive extracted them from between the pages of a cookery book called Easy Steps to Home Baking and handed them to Jim, who dipped them one by one into a rather over-vanillaed mix before laying them in the tin. He sang as he dipped. He was in love, and for a man to fall in love with his own wife is a happy experience. Can electrified fences a prison make, or cookery classes a cage?

  And because new love flies through the universe, turning all things rosy, tipping the spires of the Bagshott Development—and even the poor, unfinished, stunted growth of Audrey Tower itself—with gold, Aunt Annie looking out over what to many was the debris of a ruined city and a languid slime of murky river and seeing only charm, progress and infinite possibility, said to Timothy, “Oh, by the way, a postcard came for you. It’s from your mother.” She’d meant just to forget its arrival. She’d never liked Audrey, even before she ran off with the chauffeur and so upset Jim.

  The postcard was what’s known as a Sixteenth Century Dutch interior, a woman sweeping clean a yard, forget the yard’s outside, not inside. See ya soon, kid, the message on the back said in its enchantingly quivery red-biroed writing. The hand of his mother. Timothy rejoiced in his heart, felt his father’s blood surge more strongly in his veins, and his mother’s too, and the very next day took Mr. Hobbs aside and offered him and his wife a free holiday for two in the Bahamas, through certain travel agencies known personally to the Bagshott family, in return for Mr. Hobbs desisting from libelling Form 13.

  “Schedule flight or charter?” asked Mr. Hobbs.

  “Schedule,” replied Timothy.

  “Club Class or Economy?” asked Mr. Hobbs.

  “Club,” said Timothy, and so the deal was done. That Mr. Hobbs knew his time was up in teaching, that Mr. Korn—following a doctor’s report relating to the traumas suffered by the pretty student teacher (I’m not saying her prettiness had anything to do with the advent of natural justice: merely that it helps) which she had the courage to attribute to Mr. Hobbs and not the pupils—finally had sufficient evidence to apply to the Council for Mr. Hobbs’ dismissal, was neither here nor there. One thing to be said for Mr. Hobbs was that he was not proud, and another was that he knew which side his bread was buttered. It is important to keep looking for good in people, otherwise one might succumb to despair.

  We next see Rupert Oates visiting Audrey Tower with a cake, a gift for Annie, baked by her brother Jim in prison. A nice scene this: Annie’s surprise and gratification at her brother’s thoughtfulness: her mixed pleasure (once Mr. Oates was gone—no Bagshott was born yesterday) and disappointment at finding her mouth more full of money than cake: the internal struggle as to whether or not to just swallow the note that said the money was to take Timothy out of Bagshott School and pay for his private education, or just keep the money herself, and the eventual triumph of good. Aunt Annie decided to act unselfishly and do as her brother wished. People make this kind of decision all the time, though cynics think they don’t. The assumption that the great men of the people act only in their own interest is a plague of our time.

  Meanwhile, it’s packed lunch time in the Art Room, and Timothy stands on a chair and exhorts fans and doubters both to direct action. The power of the union, the will of the workers, so fast fading in the adult world, will find its revival in our schools: it is a prophecy: not a difficult one, if you consider the state of our schools. Rather like a Western scientist impressing a native tribe by predicting an eclipse.

  “Fellow pupils,” cries Timothy. “Comrades! Have you no courage, no common sense? Are you sheep or are you men? Packed lunchers all, have you no pride? Daily we are subjected to these Ooster raids: it is too much. We must unite against these bullies: singly we are powerless; united and organised, who can stand against us? The formation of the Bagshott Protection Agency is under way—membership 50p, payable to me. Twitcher here will make a note of it. An offence against one is from now on an offence against all. The Teamsters Union was better than none. Ask any U.S. baggage handler.”

  “We’ll get found out,” said Boy 1.

  “We’ll get into trouble,” said Boy 2.

  “We’ll get sent to Mr. Korn,” said Boy 3.

  “But you’ll get to eat your dinner,” said Timothy Bagshott, and as the faces of Boys 1, 2 and 3 broke into smiles, Les lingered long upon them, at Angus’ request.

  Happy Paul took care to record the conversation of the Ooster boys as they approached the Art Room, the dinner of others on their minds. It went like this:

  Ripper: “Jon-Jon, big brother, there’s something I want to know.”

  “What’s that?” asked Jon-Jon.

  Ripper: “If our mum ever won at Bingo, instead of always losing, would we get chicken legs for dinner, like Timothy Bagshott?”

  “Spastic,” said Jon-Jon, “you are a spastic. Our mum always wins at Bingo. She just tells us she doesn’t.”

  Tears came into Ripper’s eyes. Boys depend dreadfully upon their mother’s love, no matter how much taller than their mothers they become. Joe-Joe said nothing. He was a silent lad, and had spoken very little since the day his pet rabbit produced a litter of twelve and Barley Ooster flushed the lot down the toilet. It had been a miracle birth: how can a single pet rabbit produce a litter without divine intervention? And indeed, the problems with Audrey Tower plumbing dated from that traumatic day, though the tenants preferred to blame Jim Bagshott.

  As the Ooster boys leaned heavily through the Art Room door and splintered it for the third time that term, they were set upon by the Bagshott Protection Society, in united and organised protest, and forcibly thrown out again into the corridor, bruised, surprised, and without their trainers. “It’s a madhouse, this school,” said Jon-Jon. “You can’t even get dinner when you’re hungry,” said Ripper. But Joe-Joe said, he who had been silent for so long, “If we asked Mr. Oates, he’d get us free cooked dinners every day.”

  Money, time and patience ran out for Angus at this stage. There was trouble with the crew. Paul had another job to go to; Les lost interest once he had perceived there was nowhere for the story to go but to a happy ending, and began to frame his shots sloppily and forgot to renew the batteries before they ran out, thus holding everybody up intolerably, and to the detriment of the shooting schedule.

  Angus was obliged to forgo the dramatic�
�well, fairly dramatic—scenes in which Timothy Bagshott gave the cake money back to his Aunt Annie, and told Mr. Korn he wanted to stay on at Bagshott School, which, now he had organised a little, he had come to love. He was certainly finding it profitable. Viewers never got to see how Jim confessed to the Parent Governors that the school swimming pool was potentially dangerous and how in return, and for health reasons, he was let out on parole. How Audrey and Jim (reformed by love) and Timothy returned to Amanda, to run a centre for the homeless. How Aunt Annie ran off with Barley Ooster—why do you think she wouldn’t move to a thatched cottage?—to Mrs. Ooster’s great relief. Mrs. Ooster had come to dislike sex and Annie had all her years of celibacy to make up for, which suited everyone. Mrs. Ooster was now able to give all her love and affection to her boys, who became model members of society. How Twitcher’s father paid for him to have his short-sightedness cured by the new Soviet method of paring away the cornea, so the lad was no longer obliged to wear glasses. How Joe-Joe’s rabbit gave birth to another set of miraculous young, which Joe-Joe, now his father was happy with Aunt Annie, was allowed to raise: how a vandal-proof toilet was installed at the entrance to Audrey Tower and its remaining seven floors constructed without undue torment to those already living there, and so forth. All these happy occurrences were left drifting in the hopeful air—too expensive to be nailed on film and, besides, as everyone knows, good news is no news. So forget it. Who cares about dramatic form?

  “Paul, are you happy?” enquired Angus for the last time, and Paul replied, “Yes” with some sincerity, for with the end of filming he was at least free to return to the arms of his girlfriend, and as his parting shot gave Angus a few more lines from Rupert Oates’ head.

  “Though socialism’s dead and gone, they say,