The Fat Woman's Joke

by Fay Weldon Weldon

  “I don’t understand.”

  “I will try and explain tomorrow. Don’t worry about me and Gerry, it was all of no significance. You tempt me into being unpleasant to you, that’s all. I am very tired. I want to go to sleep. You must go home, Phyllis, or to walk the streets if you are still determined to punish Gerry by staying out. Perhaps, who is to say, he does in fact have to work late in the office? The money you live on must come from somewhere.”

  “I will see you tomorrow evening,” said Phyllis forlornly. “You need me. You are going through a great crisis in your life.”

  And she left the flat, found her way up the dark, broken steps, hailed a taxi and went home. Gerry was not there. She took four sleeping pills and lost consciousness.

  The others slept badly. Esther was very sick at about four in the morning. A great mass of undigested food poured back out of her mouth into the lavatory basin: she could taste the different flavors as it passed. The soup, the toast, the curry, the cake, the nuts, the eggs, the fish sticks, the butter, the jam, the beans, the cake—the whole evening’s intake reappeared in a spasmic flow. She had not realized that her stomach could contain so much. On the way back to bed, exhausted from retching to recover the last troublesome chunk of nut, she caught sight of her naked body in the mirror and stopped to stare at the rolls of fat which swathed her body like a sari. She pulled the blankets over her—she had no sheets—and before going to sleep wondered if perhaps she had not gone too far. She had not really meant any of this to happen—as a child may feel who, setting light to a wastepaper basket to draw attention to himself, then has to watch his entire home go up in flames.

  Susan woke at about two, afraid. She thought there was someone in the room. Then she was incensed because there wasn’t. Somebody had obviously abandoned her. But who? She couldn’t remember. She was lying on her back and found it difficult to breathe. She began to think she was immensely pregnant, and even when she moved her hands over her belly and found it flat as ever, she was not reassured. The feeling that there was a mountain beneath her breasts remained. The mountain, moreover, stirred and moved and heaved. William had thus once described his wife’s pregnancy in a poem which he read aloud to Susan as they lay communicative after making love, and the image of the moving mountain still pursued her. Now, in the dark, Susan rolled up her eyes in anxiety; they peered into her brain and made her dizzy. She was pregnant. Something had gone wrong. She did not attribute her condition to a man—it had just happened. Or she had caught pregnancy like a disease from some other woman. Probably, through contact with William, from William’s wife. She switched on the light, sat up, and felt more reasonable. “I am Susan Pierce,” she told herself. “Nothing is controllable. Everything is controllable. There is nothing for me to be frightened of. I am not pregnant.” Now her reason was working again she felt quite lively. She wondered if perhaps women had a primitive group soul that linked them together. The pregnancy had been real enough; it had just turned out to be someone else’s, that was all. Sympathy with her sex, she thought, could go too far. She must struggle against it.

  In the next room Brenda slept voluptuously on the sofa dreaming of picnics in the grass, of elegant ruffled ladies and handsome peruked men; water tinkled from a fountain. A fish with her mother’s face swam in the pool below. She lay on the grass and the earth moved to accommodate her limbs. She woke; she could not quite remember where she was or who she was. Presently she turned on the light and got out of bed and stood blinking, barefooted, and dressed in a pale-blue checked nightgown with a frill around the neck. The light woke the man on the floor, and he scrambled to his feet. Brenda’s body, quite of its own volition, for her mind had not yet caught up with the events of the evening, made a kind of melting move toward him. But he took two pound notes from his pocket, handed them to her, bowed politely, and left. Brenda went and had a bath. She felt too humiliated to so much as cry.

  In the morning they were all themselves again. Phyllis cooked Gerry’s breakfast, with her face carefully made up and composed into careful non-accusing lines. He ate heartily and kissed her goodbye, for which she was grateful. Esther made herself a breakfast of porridge, from a tin, and evaporated milk, kipper from a plastic bag, already buttered, three Heinz tins called “Junior Bacon and Egg Breakfast,” toast, butter, marmalade, and coffee, to strengthen her after her illness. Then she began to feel sick again. Susan ate an apple and some milk, took up her brush and painted. Brenda slept until eleven, and then blamed Susan for not waking her in time for her work as a receptionist in a public relations firm.

  “I’m sorry,” said Susan, “but I thought that now you’d started a career as a call-girl you would wish to give up your job.”

  Brenda slammed the door and left, breakfastless.

  All the same, they all went visiting that morning.

  Esther went to visit a doctor; Phyllis went to visit Alan; Susan went to visit Peter; and Brenda rang up her mother and had lunch with her.

  The doctor sat behind a bill-strewn desk in a pleasantly furnished room in Wimpole Street, which might have been the living room of a well-bred home had it not been for a smell of anaesthetic and the signed show-biz pictures on the wall.

  “I was sick in the night,” said Esther. “I’m ill.”

  “You don’t say.” He was a tough, thin young man, and handsome.

  “Really,” she said, “I’m ill.”

  “I can see that,” he said.

  “You mean my overweight?”

  “Fat,” he said.

  “Fat,” she agreed.

  “Do you like it?”

  “I prefer it to other things, like being hungry. But I did not come here to discuss my size. I came because I feel sick all the time.”

  “You make me feel quite sick, too. I sympathize with you. Why don’t you do something about it?”

  He was also a rude and impertinent young man. She understood why Phyllis had recommended him. He would play the domineering father to Phyllis’s little girl.

  “If you don’t lose weight,” he said, “I don’t give twopence for your life. A woman of your age.”

  “I’ll tell you something,” she said. “I don’t give twopence for my life, either.” She gathered up her handbag. “All the same, I don’t wish to spend what remains of it in a state of nausea. Do you suggest that I take my problems elsewhere, since they appear to bore you?”

  “Who recommended you?” he asked.

  “Phyllis Frazer.”

  “Oh yes. Plastic surgery on both right and left breasts. Why did you come?”

  “Because I feel sick.”

  “You came because I am a cosmetic doctor and you are fat and you don’t want to be fat, otherwise you would have chosen another doctor. You don’t have to be fat.”

  “I have always been fat. It hasn’t troubled me.”

  “A fat girl growing up? Untroubled?”

  “Well, it’s too late now. You live your sex life once. I lived mine fat. And I’ll tell you another thing, young man. Recognizing problems doesn’t solve them. Some people would have been better never born. I am one of them.”

  “That is a silly thing to say.”

  “It is what I believe. I should never have been born. I should have lived forever in my mother’s womb, where everything was dark and beautiful and timeless, and I had no dimensions, and no one could see me, or judge me, and all there was was existence. My mother put an end to it. She forced me out into the world, and I find it as hard to forgive her for this as she does me for fighting back on the way. Things better should come after things good—this is the whole of my discontent. Since the moment I first found myself in this nasty chilly world, things have gone from bad to worse. Time goes more quickly minute by minute. When I say I should never have been born, don’t contradict me. You are too young to perceive how the days quicken.”

  “If you are worrying about wrinkles, I can remove those, you know. I can tighten the eyelids. That makes a lot of difference. There is n
othing to be ashamed of in a woman wanting to go on looking young and attractive, after all. Why not?”

  “How much do I owe you for this consultation?”

  “Three guineas.”

  “It is not reasonable.”

  “What is, on this earth?”

  “But you haven’t cured my nausea, much less attempted to do so, much less even been interested in it.”

  “My time is valuable. And I have told you what to do. Stop sickening yourself. If you won’t do anything about it, it is hardly my fault. You are a very self-destructive person. I am sorry for your family.”

  “I have no family.” She took out her checkbook and wrote out a check for £3, hoping to shame him. “Fortunately for you, I have some money left.”

  “Left?”

  “People took what they could.”

  “Greed, aggression and obesity. They go together.”

  “I am not aggressive. I am a very amiable, generous and easy-going person,” she said, wondering whether or not to strike him with his marble lamp.

  He took the check, unashamed.

  “Should you decide to get thin, please come and see me again.” With her money in his hand he appeared more friendly.

  She wandered around the show-biz pictures—the cropped noses, the lifted faces, the enlarged or diminished breasts.

  “Why do they do it?” she asked.

  “To please men,” he said. “All men, if they’re in show-biz. One man, if they’re not, like your friend Mrs. Frazer.”

  “And you take money for doing it? You make your living like this? Don’t you feel it is degrading?”

  “The thing is,” he said, “her husband does appear to fancy her more big-breasted. So I have added to the sum of human happiness.”

  “Of human sensation, perhaps. Of human happiness, no.”

  “Don’t delude yourself. They are the same thing.”

  “It is true that Gerry Frazer likes large women,” said Esther. “Or says so. I wonder why he married a person so skinny as Phyllis?”

  “Because, at a guess, he was thin then and he’s fat now. He does not wish to court criticism.”

  “You are really quite acute,” she said, “in a dismal kind of way.”

  “I make a study of the obese,” he said, and she wished she had never left her basement.

  Phyllis rang Alan’s office and was told he was in bed with flu. She called to see him, and sat by his bed.

  “Poor darling Alan,” she said, “I had to come. All alone with no one to look after you. Now tell me, what can I do?”

  “You can leave me alone,” he said, but he was grateful to see her.

  “You and Esther, you’re as grumpy as a pair of pigs. You just can’t get on without each other.”

  “You’ve seen Esther?”

  “Yes. Yesterday. No thanks to you, hiding her address like that. What are you trying to do to her? She’s in trouble, and she needs all the help she can get. Don’t you care what happens to her?”

  “No.”

  “You only say that. When you’ve been married as long as you two have, of course you care.”

  “Caring may be a habit, but it is not necessarily a good habit.”

  “You’ve behaved very badly, Alan; she’s very hurt and upset. I know how terribly bad I’d feel if Gerry got involved with his secretary.”

  He raised his eyebrows at her.

  “Marriage is a very hurtful business, I know,” she said in a small voice. “At least it is for me, but there’s no reason for you and Esther to fight. And I know you think I’ve got a nerve, interfering, but I do honestly want to see you both happy again. I admire Esther so much. She’s everything I’m not. She’s clever, and she’s grown up. And it breaks my heart to see her like this.”

  “I give you credit for your good intentions. I am afraid I am somewhat rude. Times have been troublesome lately. Quite apart from anything else, the office bores me to hell, and Peter irritates me beyond belief. He has no idea of the seriousness of life: he is basically and deeply frivolous. It is Esther’s fault. She bred cynicism in him. Wherever I look, I see nothing whatever to brighten my life.”

  “There’s your writing. That’s a wonderful hobby to have. I wish Gerry was as clever as you.”

  “Oh, yes,” he said with profound gloom, “the novel.” He sank back into his pillows, as if struck by sudden feebleness. “A hobby. Yes, I suppose that is what it was. How strange that I should have thought it to be the shaft of light which would illumine my whole life and give it meaning, and that in truth it is on a par with stamp-collecting and pigeon-fancying. There was a certain amount of confusion about the novel, to be frank. The agent attributed the wrong manuscript to me—the one he liked so much was written by a lady in Eccles. Mine, it turned out, he didn’t like. It frightened him. He said it was cold and cruel and improper. Pornographic, even. I thought myself it was warm and friendly. How little one knows of oneself. Oh, Phyllis, there must be something else in life than this?” She was alarmed at such a question.

  “Well, I don’t know what you’re complaining about. You’ve got this divine home, and a clever wife who’s a good cook, and a handsome clever son, and a good job and enough money, and why you suddenly want to spoil it all by taking up with a silly young girl who’s just kinky for authors—”

  “Who said so?”

  “Esther.”

  “Esther knows nothing about it.” He was cross.

  “—because it’s bound to upset everyone, isn’t it? You should value what you’ve got and not go looking for something else all of a sudden. It’s very immature of you. It’s the way Gerry goes on, only he’s like that all of the time, not just all of a sudden. And I can see you’re upset about your novel, but people never do appreciate what’s good, do they? The first thing you should do is go and ask Esther to come back. Then you can settle down again.”

  “Why should I ask her back? She doesn’t want to be here, or she wouldn’t have gone.”

  “She’s your wife.”

  “You have this mystic faith in titles, Phyllis. It does you credit. No, the home’s broken up. Peter’s gone. He lives during the week with crop-haired Stephanie. He’s totally irresponsible, and he expects me to pay his rent. He comes home at weekends and sits doing his homework, and when he takes out his fountain pen, packets of contraceptives fall out. He buys them with his pocket money. From a slot machine.”

  “That’s not irresponsible. That’s responsible. He’s a big boy now. He’s a grown man. He’s eighteen. It’s not his fault if he’s still at school. I expect he only does it to annoy you, anyway.”

  “Perhaps he’s not my son at all. How am I to know? I wasn’t like that when I was his age. Only in my fantasies, not in real life.”

  “Now you’re being ridiculous.”

  “Oh no, I’m not. You don’t know the half of it. There was a time in her life when Esther went mad. She cropped her hair, ate nothing but apples and went on the streets.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “Well, not quite the streets, but the number of men visitors coming and going in her flat, it might as well have been the common pavement, and she lying in the gutter having it off with all and sundry.”

  “Don’t talk like that.”

  “I’m sorry. Anyway, she calmed down and I accepted her back. But nothing she does surprises me any more. And why she should get in such a state because I like talking to my secretary and should so bitterly resent my feeble attempts to have a rewarding and pleasant relationship with another woman—it’s not reasonable of her.”

  “It didn’t sound very platonic, the way Esther described it.”

  “I never said it was platonic. But that was beside the point. Esther needed her freedom. When she got tired of it, I had her back. I would have thought she could have afforded me the same courtesy and not left me here to die of influenza. I’ll tell you another thing. Susan admired me. Esther never, in all her life, admired me. Esther is incapable of admirin
g a man.”

  “She is so unhappy down there in her basement she would be ready to admire anyone.” Phyllis took off her little flowered hat and shook her curly hair free. “And I’m sure she does admire you, Alan. How could anyone not? You’re so clever and so good-looking. You have this kind of fine-boned sensitive face, and such deep eyes I think a woman could lose herself in them utterly. And you are so good at taking control of things. I do admire that in a man.”

  “I suspect you,” said Alan. “Why do you want Esther back here? Because of Gerry?”

  She looked startled, and was too confused to reply.

  “I know nothing about her and Gerry, mind you,” he went on, “except I think Gerry must be out of his mind. Why can’t he be happy with you? You’re a proper feminine woman. I think the only one left in the entire world. You must excuse me. I feel weak. I have felt weak for a long time now. First it was lack of food, then it was lust, then it was literature, then it was Esther’s hysteria, then Susan’s neurotics, now it’s flu. If it’s not one thing it’s another and it’s a bit much. Everything suddenly boils over all at once. Phyllis, I am very weak and you are taking advantage of me.”

  “Alan, what happened between Gerry and Esther?”

  “So that’s why you came to see me. Not because I was ill and not because you liked me but to get something out of me. I might have known. What difference does it make, Gerry and Esther, or Gerry and a dozen other women? None of it means a thing to me. One body or another, it’s all the same.”

  “Because Esther’s my friend.”

  “A fine friend. She’d sell you down the river a hundred times, the way she sold me. Why do you put up with Gerry? It’s cold outside, Phyllis. Come into bed.”

  Phyllis took off her flowered little-girl smock, and stood in her lacy stockings, her red brassiere and red suspender belt by the bed. She had put on her best underwear for the visit. Alan, his eyes bright and his brow fevered, lay back on the pillows and watched.