“Caves are nasty damp places. You would have TB in no time. And I don’t see Alan as a caveman. Now Gerry, I could see Gerry in a cave.”
“Oh, you are an inveterate little woman, aren’t you? You love having a bully for a husband.”
“Gerry’s not a bully. He is very strong-willed and not very good at controlling his emotions, and he speaks his mind, and he is very highly sexed, but he’s not a bully. And he needs me. And I like having the house nice when he comes home, and the smell of food cooking to welcome him and everything looking neat and tidy.”
“I bet you put on lipstick for the great homecoming, too. And a fresh dress and comb your hair, and put on a welcome-home-darling smile, just like in the women’s magazines. God, what an almighty bore.”
“That’s silly. He looks forward all day to coming home.”
“That’s what he says, you really make him say it; but what does he feel? What does he really think? What do any of them think? When I looked at Alan during that week I saw a stranger, and a hostile stranger at that. Someone who conned me and betrayed me and laughed at me behind my back. All these years of marriage, I could see, he had been laughing at me, playing with me, using me and my money, and caring nothing for me at all. When he smiled at me it was to hide the sneer of derision on his lips; when he touched me and embraced me it was the worst insult of all, because he had to steel himself to do it. I knew he did. Because he touched me to keep me quiet. He lusted after someone half my age, and half my size.”
“Those are terrible feelings to have about anyone, let alone a husband. And Alan’s not like that. Alan’s not a sly kind of person.”
“I’m not saying he is. I’m just saying that’s what it felt like to me, that particular week. Juliet did what she could to make matters worse, too.”
On the seventh day of diet Juliet sat at the living-room table polishing the silver with impudent inefficiency and singing. Esther, in the adjoining kitchen, clattered pots and pans to indicate disapproval of her cleaner’s merriment. The more she banged and crashed, the sweeter Juliet sang. Then Esther appeared in the doorway, staring at her, but Juliet sang on and refrained from speeding up the rate of her polishing, or of pressing harder upon the metal.
“Juliet, if you rubbed a little harder it would come up better.”
“Bad for the surface, Mrs. Wells, rubbing too hard. Gently does it, with the good stuff.”
“You just say that, Juliet. It’s not true.”
Juliet put her cloth down. “Are you saying I don’t know how to polish silver?”
“Yes,” said Esther with desperation.
“Then perhaps you should find someone else to do it. To speak frankly, since you and Mr. Wells started not eating, this house has not been a pleasure to come into.”
“I would rather you didn’t leave, Juliet.”
“You are quite right not to want me to go. You wouldn’t get anyone else to work in a place like this. Things everywhere. Nothing new. Everything old-fashioned and dingy.”
“It’s very fashionable, as it happens.”
“And the atmosphere! You wouldn’t get anyone else to work in this kind of atmosphere.”
Esther was terrified. “What do you mean?”
“Well,” said Juliet, in a more kindly fashion, “I daresay it does take all sorts, and to be frank, your home is nothing to some I’ve seen.”
“You’ll stay, you mean? Please do. Don’t be upset.”
“I’ll see you through a bit longer, because obviously you are not yourself. I think it is very foolish of you to ruin your health and your temper in this way, if you don’t mind my saying so. Some of us are made fat and some of us are made thin, and that’s all there is to it. You’ll lose your husband if you carry on like this. He can’t much fancy this glimpse of the Real You.”
“But it’s he who makes me do it.”
“Not satisfied with what he’s got? Is that it? That’s husbands all over. Ungrateful pigs. You do everything for them, you bring up their kids, you cook their food, you wash their clothes, you warm their beds, you fuss over your face day after day so they’ll fancy you, you wear yourself out to keep them happy and at the end of it all, what happens? They find someone else they fancy more. Someone young some man hasn’t had the chance to wear out yet. Marriage is a con trick. A girl should marry a rich man, then at least she’d have a fur coat to keep her warm in her old age.”
“I don’t know who you’re talking about, Juliet, but it’s certainly not my husband. If you do want to go on working for me, and I pay you 8 shillings an hour, which is 3 shillings above market rates, I suggest you get on with it.”
“Oh, go on, Mrs. Wells, just as we were getting on so nicely. Have a nice hot piece of toast with jam on it. And some nice milky coffee.”
“No, that would be cheating. Alan will kill me if I cheat.”
“You don’t think he’s cheating away at his office, wherever he is? What do you think he does when you’re not looking?”
“Just get on with the polishing, Juliet.”
Juliet started singing. Esther went back to the kitchen, and tiny tears ran down her wide cheeks.
When Susan went back to her flat she found Brenda pacing the room in a dressing-gown. She seemed surprised: her large gray eyes were opened very wide. The man from overseas lay, fully clothed even to his carefully knotted tie, asleep on the hearth-rug.
“What an extraordinary thing,” said Brenda. “How strange life is. They are right, love knows no boundaries of creed or color. It strikes out of a clear sky. I am glad I left home. Things like this only happen in London.”
“I should be careful if I were you. Perhaps he has a strange disease.”
“Oh, no, he’s not like that at all. He is a very gentle, sensitive, discreet kind of person.”
“How do you know? He doesn’t speak.”
“You can tell,” she said. “You can tell from the way he breathes.”
“I think your behavior is quite extraordinary. It might almost be called promiscuous. Please ask him to leave at once.”
“He’s asleep. We’ll have to wait until he wakes up, or it will be bad for his health. It is most unjust of you to call me names. You are always advocating free spontaneous behavior, yet the slightest sign of life from me and you try to make me feel I have behaved badly. But I haven’t, I really haven’t. I have done nothing at all to be ashamed of. Everything I did, I did from love. It flowed out of me. It was a wonderful feeling, like being part of the earth.”
“What did happen exactly? I mean physically, not spiritually.”
“I can’t remember, I really can’t remember. Susan, have we any drink?”
She wandered out of the pool of light in the center of the room into the darker perimeter, where Susan’s paints and jars and brushes and clothing made black patches on the black floor.
“I feel awful all of a sudden,” she said, “really I do. It is all your fault. I felt lovely until you came home. Free and happy and beautiful and taken by surprise. Now it’s all nasty.”
“I am not your mother and you are not a little girl. I do think, however, that this kind of behavior is not in your nature. It doesn’t become you. You should go back home and marry a nice bank clerk, and only fornicate, if absolutely necessary, with someone harmless like the milkman.”
“Supposing I’m pregnant?”
“Then you would be very foolish. Do you have his name and address?”
“No.”
“Then get it.”
“When he wakes. Will you go on telling me about Alan, and we can pretend he’s not there.”
“You can’t shut your eyes to realities. There is turps in that bottle, not wine.”
“Perhaps I should drink it. Perhaps death is what I deserve.”
“Death is a major and beautiful thing. What you have done was merely trivial and sordid. You should not speak about the two in the same sentence. Put the bottle down. You don’t even deserve to die.”
�
�Don’t talk to me like that. At least I don’t go around trying to break up marriages.”
“I don’t try to break up marriages. If marriages break up because of me that is scarcely my fault—it is the wife’s fault for being my inferior. It may not appear fair on the surface, but it was what Christ was talking about when he said, to them that hath shall be given, and to them that hath not shall be taken away.”
“But that’s awful. I’m sure men value other things in their wives. I read in the paper how Germans rate thrift in a wife as the most important thing, and then cleanliness, and then fidelity, and good looks came way down at the bottom of the list and intelligence last of all.”
“Do you want to marry a German?”
“No.”
“Well, then.”
“But I don’t want to get married and have my husband go off. I think it’s wrong for girls to go with married men.”
“What about him?” The man on the hearth-rug stirred.
“I don’t know if he’s married. He hasn’t said he’s married.”
“I expect his wife is crying at home this very minute with the children sobbing at her knee. I expect that’s why he hasn’t bothered to learn English, in case anyone rebukes him with his wife and makes him feel bad.”
“Don’t say such things. He’s a gay young student, carefree and vital.”
“You reckon?”
“I just don’t know. To tell you the truth, I don’t know much more about him now than I did before. I wish he’d get up and go away and then I wouldn’t have to worry.”
“Perhaps you take a very masculine attitude to sex. Perhaps that’s what’s wrong. The loving-and-leaving syndrome is not natural in a girl.”
“Alan was old enough to be your father. Perhaps you have a daughter-father syndrome.”
“Exactly, I don’t deny it. He was so gray and middle-aged and clever and superior and in control, and his flies were so tightly buttoned, and the excitement of dissolving him and stripping away the veneer and turning him into a naked little boy again—and not even knowing whether I could do it—it was wonderfully exhilarating. And to be so frighteningly dependent, all of a sudden, quite against one’s better judgment, upon someone else’s good opinion; to want to impress; to want to attract; to want above all just to be noticed; to feel so nervous and insecure; to worry in case one’s breath stank; these were all symptoms I had never known before. These were the symptoms of unrequited love, and they were both horrible and glorious. I felt truly alive at last. I don’t recommend it, Brenda, for you. You are not tough enough to withstand pain; that is why you make sure your relationships are always so shallow. Well, yours is one way of living. But I prefer myself to enter wholeheartedly into whatever it is I’m doing, even if it entails suffering. That is some of William’s home-made elderflower wine you are sniffing. It is not supposed to be drunk for another six months, but I think we could open a jar, and drink to him and his baby, and to Alan. And don’t say I am breaking up William’s marriage either, because I’m not, or he wouldn’t be back with his wife now, would he, and you wouldn’t be using my flat as a whorehouse, and none of any of this upsetting business would have happened. We would all be as happy as once we were.”
8
ON THE EIGHTH DAY of the diet Alan sang, sitting in his chair in his empty office with his feet on the desk. He was happy. There was an almost empty bottle of champagne at his elbow. Susan came into his office after lunch. She had been transferred, at Alan’s request, to the research department. It put her at a disadvantage.
“Why are you singing?”
“Because I’m happy.”
“You’ve been drinking.”
“I have been drinking, but I do not have to drink in order to be happy. Just occasionally I am happy, and then nothing can stop me, neither flesh nor fowl nor drink nor wife nor even you, my dear.”
“Why should you think I want to stop you being happy? I want you to be happy.”
“Oh no. You want to be happy.”
“What are we going to do, Alan?”
“Do?” Alan took his feet off the desk abruptly, dropped the champagne bottle into the wastepaper basket, and straightened his tie. “Do? About what?”
“About us. Sometimes you make me feel like some vulgar office girl. I think you do it on purpose.”
“But you know you are not, don’t you. You are a very fine and sensitive person, with great talent and worthy of better than me. Yes?”
“You are mocking me.”
“You have no sense of humor, Susan, that is your whole problem. It is quite remarkable.”
“And you are incapable of being serious about anything. That’s much worse.”
“I am sorry. Am I being very disagreeable?”
“Yes.”
“I am hungry. I haven’t really had much to drink. It is just that it’s gone straight to my head, because my stomach is empty.”
“I don’t know any longer what sort of person you want me to be.”
“I don’t know what I want. I don’t know anything except that I was happy before you came in, thinking about you. It is odd that when the reality of you appears, all happiness should evaporate, to be replaced by feelings so resentful and defensive that I am now quite agitated. You are looking marvelous.”
“Are you coming round this evening? I need to know, so I can buy food.”
“I don’t come to visit you to eat, do I? Remember I am a married man, and on a diet.”
“I wish you would eat more. You are nicer when you’ve eaten.”
“Come and sit on my knee.”
“I’m too heavy, and someone might come in.”
“True. Also, it is a vulgar habit between boss and secretary.”
“I just don’t know what you think or feel about me. You talk as if you hated me and you act as if you loved me.”
“Be careful.”
“What of?”
“That word. It leads to more trouble than any other single word in the English language. Shouldn’t you be working?”
“Tony White never comes back until half-past three. He’s always drunk. He smells. He leans over me and breathes into my ear. It’s horrible.”
“Poor Susan.”
“Since you are being so disagreeable and strange I’m going back to my office. If you don’t mind Tony White putting his hand up my skirt, why should I?”
“He’s a dirty old man then, isn’t he?”
“He’s no older than you.”
“That’s quite different. Oh Susan, I am a hungry man. The champagne has filled me with bubbles, but bubbles are not food. Food is the supremest of pleasures.”
“Spoken to a mistress, that is not a compliment.”
“I am out of my mind. Am I thinner, Susan? Do I begin to lack the substance you want me to have? I dream all night, as I haven’t dreamed since I was twenty. I dream of strange and marvelous things. I dream of fish and chips and bread and butter and cups of sweet tea. I dream of shiploads of boiling jam cleaving their way through the polar icecaps. I dream of—oh Susan, I have such dreams as life itself is made of.”
“You’re laughing at me again!”
“Why not? I am allowed to have poetic fancies as well as you. I take you very seriously. When you sit and wave your legs at me, they are the most beautiful legs I have ever seen. You make me young again. There is a gap between stocking top and panties which excites me beyond belief. I want to eat it. I shall visit you this evening.”
“You are crude. You are only interested in my body.”
“And when you first waved your stocking tops at me, you did so more crudely than any other secretary I have ever had, and that is saying something. You had your way with me. But I must remind you that I am an old man. You are a child and you are playing with dangerous things. When children take their games seriously, it ends in tears. With grown-ups, it ends in suicides, divorce, and delinquent children. Be careful what you do.”
“There is only twenty years b
etween us. You are not old at all, just experienced.”
“Compared to you, yes, I suspect that I am young in actual experience. Yet I have my aims, my fancies. And I am older than you, much older, in years. Youth to me is a magic thing, although to you it may seem a burden. For I am a balding old man, and I don’t want to be. I dream that you might rescue me, and infect me with youth and hope again and all the things I have lost through the years, along with ties and pocket handkerchiefs. But age wins in the end. It must. Age turns even lust to ashes. I am an honest man, and even though it goes against my interests, I warn you here and now that in a week or so I shall have a fit of coughing and take to my own warm familiar bed and forget all about yours. Yet perhaps I delude myself that this might hurt you? I know so little about your generation. All I can tell you is that my intentions toward you are entirely dishonorable. If you are likely to take me seriously, stop now. Stop waving your legs at me. I am not strong enough to withstand you. This diet weakens me. You are taking monstrous advantage of a poor weak hungry man. I never thought to be an adulterer.”
“You credit me with no feelings at all. You see me as some kind of sexual vulture preying upon your flesh. You are very old-fashioned. You think that if a woman takes any kind of initiative she is cheap and worthless. In fact I have given up a great deal on your account, because I have faith in my own feelings and I am prepared to suffer for them—even your rejection of everything about me that isn’t just my body. I offer you a great deal and you turn your back on it.”
“I hadn’t noticed myself doing any such thing.”
“Please try and understand me.”
“Very well. What have you offered me?”
“My difference. Whatever it is that makes me different from every other woman in the world. You scorn it. You see me not as a person, just as a woman. I want to be a person.”
“Girls given to adulterous affairs must learn not to expect too much.”
“You try and hurt me in order to spare yourself. I have great faith in you, all the same. I think you are capable of more than sitting behind an office desk thinking about dandruff, and practicing your silly defenses on me. I am trying to rescue you. I am offering you a chance of escaping into a better, richer, honester life. It will hurt, but it will be better than what you have now, which is nothing, nothing, except boredom and dullness and sterility for the rest of your life.”
The Fat Woman's Joke Page 6
