by Weldon, Fay
I walked down the garden towards the low back fence: on the other side of which was a width of wild, nettled ground before the steep gravelled slope of the railway track began. I hopped over the fence – these days I wear jeans and trainers: I have given up little suits and pumps, much to Sophie’s disapproval; my daughter likes to keep the differential going. I looked for, but found no wires, no bits of metal, no gauze for ectoplasm, just a kind of – how can I put it? – absence. A negativity. Wet nettles brushed the back of my hand. The leaves were rusty: there was not much sting left in them. I got back over the fence. The garden, naturally enough, was unworked and untidy, but still retained its trampled, overused, flattened air, as if even a year’s rest from small children had not been enough to get the processes of growth properly underway. Nothing, it seemed, had quite recovered from the withdrawal of whatever it was that had been there. What had Eleanor once said? What a fine fellow the Devil is, all fire and sparks and energy, but temporary? You only knew what you’d encountered by the permanent wasteland left behind, all that was left after, in such a rush, he’d sucked up that amazing burst of life. I wished I had not remembered that.
I went next door and knocked. I asked the woman who answered if she had a forwarding address for her erstwhile neighbours. She was stocky, forthright, and middle-aged: her leg was grossly swollen and wrapped in loose bandages. She wore slippers.
‘Thank God they’ve gone,’ she said, as if she spent her days waiting for the enquiry. ‘At last a little peace and quiet! All those people forever knocking at her door, all thinking they were going to be healed, that nothing would hurt any more. That woman was no healer. I took my leg to her and I’ll swear it made it worse. But try telling that to them. They believe what they want to believe.’
‘You don’t know where she went?’
‘She ran off with a BMW salesman, so they say. Just up and left one day. The nice one, the one with the children, left soon after. I did hear she’d moved around the corner into Mafeking Street. I can’t think why. It’s much the same as here. I don’t know what number; I don’t go out much. I’m sorry I can’t help you more.’ She lied. She was not at all sorry, but she was obviously in pain and Eleanor Darcy had failed her, so I forgave her.
I found my way to Mafeking Street, some half a mile distant. I was conscious that had I done my research for Lover at the Gate with any integrity I would know the street intimately. But I had not done so. I have relied on my intuition: that is to say I was not going to waste time on facts while Hugo was in my bed and Eleanor Darcy in my imagination. I was relieved to see that the street was exactly as I had imagined it. I came into it halfway along its length, where it was bisected by Union Street. It was a long road of semidetached houses, two up, two down, most in desultory repair, many lace-curtained, some, although small to begin with, converted into flats. Few of the cars which lined both sides of the street were new: most were clean and better kept than the houses; quite a few the kind that young men like to tinker with, to keep on the road in the face of all odds. I could see a couple of motorbikes; a clutch of bicycles leaning against a fence: a group of children, a couple of black faces amongst them, playing ball in the road, able to do so because this was a street which was a throughway to nowhere: on the corner where I stood was an Asian newsagent – it was empty of customers; closed until evening, no doubt, when the employed would begin to drift home from work. People of no aspiration could live here all their lives, and women married to men without aspiration, and I supposed vice versa, and forget easily enough that there was anything to aspire to.
I stood unsure of what I was looking for. Perhaps I hoped to find Brenda out walking with the children, or to run into Eleanor Darcy herself. Perhaps, I thought, if I knocked on another door someone would help. I had come a long way to go home with no reward. I wondered which way to walk, but both ways seemed equal. I started to go west, but the same sun which shone on deserts and mountains, baked the wide steps of city halls, glazed the air in gracious parks, shone into my eyes in Mafeking Street and dazzled me. So I turned my back on it and went east, and in the shadowed end of the street saw movement, people clustering in groups, and I was both disconcerted and pleased, because there seemed more of them than the houses around could possibly disgorge, and because here at last was a sense of event, of gathering together, of something about to happen. A minibus passed me by, and a coach. I walked towards the source of activity: there were men, women and children here. Why were they not at work, not at school? What was so important that kept them away? They were of all races, all classes: the kempt and the unkempt, the rich and the poor, but mostly those in between. They were devout, I could tell that – something mysterious and important was going on here – but not the black-shawled devout who all over the world mourn and murmur at shrines and pray for forgiveness: a sous-surrous of grief and reproach to rise to heaven: no, they were the kind who have library tickets in their wallets and cinema stubs in their pockets, and they are a multitude, stronger than they know.
I saw that they were waiting to go into a house, rather larger than the other ones in the road, and detached, which had been turned into a meeting hall. Outside was a wooden boarding, and on it was painted the words ‘The Darcian Chapel (16), Mafeking Street Branch’, and underneath that a poster, on which, handwritten, was the inscription ‘Today’s meeting: 4 p.m. Pastor: Hugo Vansitart. Subject: The Fiscal and the Self.’ I stood and stared at it, trying to take this remarkable sight in, and while I stared a Rolls-Royce pulled up, chauffeur driven. The door opened and Hugo stepped out: he wore a grey suit and a crimson cravat. Many in the crowd, I had noticed, wore just such crimson scarves. Hugo did not see me. I was one of many, and glad, at least for the moment, to remain so. He went into the chapel: the crowd followed, jostling, joking, their faces eager with expectation. No sombre religion this.
I stood at the back of the chapel and listened. I wondered if I should make myself known to Hugo, after the service, but thought I would not. I could not afford to have so much life force stirred up in me again. I would not survive it. And perhaps nothing at all would be stirred up in him. I could not face that.
Around me people chanted. They sang some kind of hymn to Utopia: there were no word sheets, but no hesitation in the singing either. It was a variation, from the sound of it, of the old Fabian hymn ‘Earth Shall be Fair, and All Men Glad and Wise’. The Darcian Movement had, I supposed, been going for some time, Hugo its founder member, this branch the sixteenth of how many? A religion for the new world, already thriving, unnoticed by those who ought to do the noticing – myself, and my agitated, agitating colleagues.
Age after age our tragic empires rise,
Built while we sleep
And in that sleeping dream...
And where was Eleanor Darcy? Was she here in the spirit? Did Hugo truly believe? I thought yes, he probably did. The Rolls-Royce was not necessarily a symbol of ostentation, merely that he needed to travel comfortably in order to preach the better.
Would man but wake from out his haunted sleep
Earth might be fair and all men glad and wise.
Men to incorporate women, of course. The greater to include the lesser. How could you ever tell when Eleanor Darcy was joking, or when she was serious? Babies aborted compulsorily in the womb! If she heard a voice on that one, it came from either the Devil or a God so rational as to be one and the same. I struggled with my scepticism. How wonderful, how easy, to believe. If only I could.
The hymn was finished. Hugo spoke.
‘Sisters and brothers,’ he said, ‘in the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and was made flesh and dwelt among us, and of her fullness we have all received, and of her grace. And we asked her, what art thou? Prophet? And she replied I am the daughter of music, and the spouse of the wise, and I bring a new light into the world, of the world and for the world, that there shall be no heaven but here on earth – and that if you keep my commandments this heaven, this Utopia, shall be
yours.’
No, I thought. I can’t. I want to but I can’t. I know too much. Eleanor didn’t issue commandments. Hugo has put them in. I have done my bit. She can’t ask any more of me. I slipped out. I closed the door behind me. I turned to walk to the corner where I had left my car. A movement in the back of the Rolls-Royce caught my eye. The window was open. I looked inside. Leaning back in the far corner was an attractive woman: she was buffing her fingernails. She moved forward, but I could not recognize who it was, though I saw her face clearly, if briefly. I didn’t want to appear inquisitive, so I walked on, found the car, and drove home. Afterwards I thought, but that was Eleanor Darcy; or at any rate, I couldn’t say it wasn’t Eleanor Darcy. I puzzled about it, but not very hard, or for very long. I thought she would approve of that. I could not become uncritical; I could not ever come to worship and adore Eleanor Darcy as Hugo did, but I could sure as hell admire her spirit.
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An invitation from the publisher
First published in Great Britain in 1990 by Collins
This eBook published in the UK in 2014 by Head of Zeus Ltd
Copyright © Fay Weldon, 1990
Cover image © Sniegirova Mariia
The moral right of Fay Weldon to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
This is a work of fiction. All characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
9 7 5 3 1 2 4 6 8
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN (E) 9781781858714
Head of Zeus Ltd
Clerkenwell House
45-47 Clerkenwell Green
London EC1R 0HT
www.headofzeus.com
Contents
Cover
Welcome Page
Eleanor Darcy is interviewed by Hugo Vansitart
Valerie Jones is surprised by Joy
From Valerie Jones’ first interview with Eleanor Darcy
Valerie gets one or two things wrong
Eleanor Darcy’s birth
Valerie stops work to listen to Hugo’s tape
Apricot loses one mother and gains another
Valerie leaps to conclusions
Valerie Jones returns to ask further questions of Eleanor Darcy
Valerie and Lou manage a conversation
Apricot Smith marries Bernard Parkin
Eleanor Darcy speaks to Hugo, and Valerie listens
Valerie suffers from emotion
Bernard and Ellen’s Catholic months
Valerie’s garden interview with Eleanor Darcy
Valerie ventures out of the Holiday Inn
Ellen’s Marxist years with Bernard
Valerie receives a letter from Eleanor Darcy
Ellen’s Marxist life with Bernard comes to an end
Hugo’s restaurant interview with Eleanor Darcy
Valerie meets her lover’s wife
Bernard’s encounters with Nerina
Hugo’s further interview with Eleanor Darcy
Valerie is shocked
Brenda finds Ellen in a state of enchantment
A taped telephone interview between Valerie and Eleanor
Valerie misses home
Bernard and Ellen part
Transcript of a Hugo/Eleanor tape
Eleanor entertains
Valerie sits up in bed and listens to tape
Brenda’s letter to Hugo
Julian overdoes it
Valerie speaks to Belinda
Eleanor goes to visit Jed and Prune
Valerie laughs thrice
A disturbance in the economy
Lou comes to the Holiday Inn
Hugo and Eleanor walk down to the end of the garden
Valerie observes the birth of a new religion
Copyright
1950s London, where Wanda, a former radical who has left her husband, has raised her daughter Scarlet to be as tough and independent as she is. But twenty-year-old Scarlet has already had one abortion, and is about to become a single mother to the child she’ll call Byzantia...
Table of Contents
1
Wanda, Scarlet and Byzantia
Down among the women. What a place to be! Yet here we all are by accident of birth, sprouted breasts and bellies, as cyclical of nature as our timekeeper the moon – and down here among the women we have no option but to stay. So says Scarlet’s mother Wanda, aged sixty-four, gritting her teeth.
On good afternoons I take the children to the park. I sit on a wooden bench while they play on the swings, or roll over and over down the hill, or mob their yet more infant victims – disporting in dog mess and inhaling the swirling vapours that compose our city air.
The children look healthy enough, says Scarlet, Wanda’s brutal daughter, my friend, when I complain.
The park is a woman’s place, that’s Scarlet’s complaint. Only when the weather gets better do the men come out. They lie semi-nude in the grass, and add the flavour of unknown possibilities to the blandness of our lives. Then sometimes Scarlet joins me on my bench.
Today the vapours are swirling pretty chill. It’s just us women today. I have nothing to read. I fold the edges of my cloak around my body and consider my friends.
One can’t take a step without treading on an ant, says Audrey, who abandoned her children on moral grounds, and now lives with a married man in more comfort and happiness than she has ever known before. She, once imprisoned on a poultry farm, now runs a women’s magazine, bullies her lover and teases her chauffeur. How’s that for the wages of sin? With her children, his children, her husband, his wife, that makes eight. Eight down and two to play, as Audrey boasts. With the chauffeur’s wife creeping up on the outside to make nine.
Sylvia, of course, got into the habit of being the ant; she kept running into pathways and waiting for the boot to fall. Sylvia too ran off with a married man. The day his divorce came through he left with her best friend, and her typewriter, leaving Sylvia pregnant, penniless, and stone deaf because he’d clouted her.
How’s that for a best friend? You’ve got to be careful, down here among the women. So says Jocelyn, respectable Jocelyn, who not so long ago pitched her middle-class voice to its maternal coo and lowered her baby into a bath of scalding water. Seven years later the scars still show; not that Jocelyn seems to notice. In any case, the boy’s away at prep school most of the time.
‘Better not to be here at all,’ says Helen to me from the grave, poor wandering wicked Helen, rootless and uprooted, who decided in the end that death was a more natural state than life; that anything was better than ending up like the rest of us, down here among the women.
It is true that others of my women friends live quiet and happy married lives, or would claim to do so. I watch them curl up and wither gently, and without drama, like cabbages in early March which have managed to survive the rigours of winter only to succumb to the passage of time. ‘We are perfectly happy,’ they say. Then why do they look so sad? Is it a temporary depression scurrying in from the North Sea, a passing desolation drifting over from Russia? No, I think not. There is no escape even for them. There is nothing more glorious than to be a young girl, and there is nothing worse than to have been one.
Down here among the women: it’s what we all come to.
Or, as I heard a cl
ergyman say on television the other night, bravely facing the challenge of the times; ‘There’s more to life,’ he said, ‘more to life than a good poke.’
Wanda’s flat, at the present time, is two rooms and a kitchen in Belsize Park. It won’t be for long. Wanda has moved twenty-five times in the last forty years. She is sixty-four now. Rents go up and up. Not for Wanda the cheap security of a long-standing tenancy. Wanda turns her naked soul to the face of every chilly blast that’s going: competes in the accommodation market with every long-haired arse-licking mother-fucking (quoting Wanda) lout that ever wanted a cheap pad.
Wanda’s flat then, twenty years ago, when we begin Byzantia’s story, was two rooms and a kitchen in another part of Belsize Park. Some women have music wherever they go, Wanda has green and yellow lino. Scarlet, who at this time is twenty, has been sleepwalking on this lino since she was five and last felt the tickle of wall-to-wall Axminster between her toes. That was before Wanda left her husband Kim in search of a nobler truth than comfort.
