by Weldon, Fay
There is very nearly a nasty accident. Jocelyn’s life is full of them.
Philip tells the story for years, of how the cat fell off the bookcase and saved his life.
Next Saturday he plays Rugby with more than normal violence, and cracks Butch on the side of his head with his heavy boots. Butch is concussed, and when he is out of hospital, Sylvia has to move into his flat to nurse him.
This suits both Butch and Sylvia. They lie wrapped in each other’s arms, afraid to move for fear of aggravating Butch’s injuries. Their passion, thus repressed, becomes transmuted into a golden glow of love, which stands them in good stead if not for years, at least for months.
Jocelyn, forgiving, and Philip, forgiven, resume their married life. They are polite to each other, and kind, and perhaps a little embarrassed by the intimacies of married life. Jocelyn finds she is more bashful of her body than she had ever believed possible, and undresses in the bathroom. He, so happy, soapy and naked, amongst men, presently does the same. He is a considerate and loyal husband. He and Butch are never to play Rugby together again. By the time Butch is fit and back in the field, Philip has given up. He takes up tennis instead, so that he and Jocelyn can take their Saturday sport together. They take it in unspoken turns to win.
Presently Philip is made Group Executive at the fast expanding Watson and Belcher, and presently, when the bedroom is redesigned, sleeps in one of the twin beds. There was almost an embarrassing moment when the change from the double bed was made, and almost a spoken protest from Jocelyn, but the moment passed. Philip takes care to join Jocelyn in the other bed at least once a month, and more often, sometimes, if he has taken a client to a blue film or a strip club, and the memory still looms in his mind.
Jocelyn, out of kindness to her husband, trains herself in sexual disinterest, even distaste. Presently she is apologizing to the world for her frigidity.
She strips the Festival papers from the walls, distempers them pure white, and begins to buy antiques. She is proud of her home. She gives coffee mornings; has some nice lady friends, all with accounts at Harrods. Still she does not write to Miss Bonny, although she hears that Miss Bonny now lives in a little cottage in Westmorland, which she shares with Miss Tippin, Jocelyn’s Classics teacher.
Stalin dies. Jocelyn thinks of the office, and wonders what horrors they will live off now their demon has gone. She considers going back to work, but Philip is not enthusiastic.
Monthly, Philip and Jocelyn drive to visit one or the other sets of in-laws. The young couple stay overnight in twin-bedded spare rooms which, in both houses, are remarkably similar. They have pink bedside lamps, twin beds, and chintzy curtains, and look out over well-kept flower gardens. Philip’s father nudges him in the ribs and asks about the strip clubs; Philip’s mother offers Jocelyn pot-plants and noticeably refrains from asking why Jocelyn is not pregnant.
Jocelyn’s parents say practically nothing.
Jocelyn writes to Miss Bonny, and tears it up. She never liked Miss Tippin. Hockey one, hockey two, hockey three and away! Sunny winter afternoons, the ground still crisp and crackly with frost, the edges of the park misty. Is it all then to come to nothing more than this?
She becomes rather thin. ‘She will ruin her life if she goes on like this,’ writes Audrey to Sylvia, signing herself Emma, ‘she can talk of nothing but hairdressers and hats.’ They should move to the country, Audrey-Emma maintains. Philip should give up advertising before his soul rots completely away. How can people hope to be happy while they live such unnatural anti-social lives? Audrey-Emma is sure, moreover, that Jocelyn and Philip drink too much coffee, which everyone knows is bad for the liver.
Sylvia won’t be drawn. ‘I don’t see much of Jocelyn and Philip these days,’ she writes. ‘We live rather far out.’ In fact Butch has finally quarrelled with Philip – having no patience with a man who opts out of Rugby in order to play tennis with his wife – and makes it difficult for Sylvia to maintain the friendship. Sylvia feels tired and ill. She is pregnant, and Butch is not happy with what he sees as her bloated and perverted shape. He calls her ‘fatty’ in public, and marvels to friends and pub acquaintances at her increasing size. Butch’s divorce is going to be long, costly and complicated. He and Sylvia now have a tiny little rented house in Dulwich; it is hard to keep going financially because Butch’s wife’s solicitors have insisted on interim alimony of a third of his salary at the vacuum cleaning firm.
Sylvia does editorial work at home for an accountancy journal. She has to struggle to understand its contents, and is pale from strain and boredom. But they do have a television set – the BBC broadcasts live shows in the evenings. It has an eight-inch screen. Sylvia does not like television much, but Butch waits anxiously for the programmes to begin. They do not have much conversation these days, and something has to sop up the silence.
8
Scarlet Goes to Market
Down here among the women.
I have company on my park bench. Two young girls collapse, all giggles, next to me. They plonk down the parcels and ease their feet out of their boots. They are friends, and look alike. They have the same slight bodies, long straight hair, round fleshy faces, docile eyes and unhealthy skin. They are animated and happy. They look at me out of the corners of their slidy eyes, as if they expect me to slap them down. Why should I? I like them.
One is getting married. She has the bridesmaids’ dresses in a carrier bag. They are yellow see-through.
‘That’ll give the priest something to think about,’ she says, with satisfaction.
They chatter. They gasp and squeak. The bride is pregnant and glad to be. Her only worry is lest her wedding dress doesn’t fit on the day. They talk of the ceremony, the reception, the clothes, the presents. They talk of everything and everyone except the groom. Oh, blessed pair.
In ten years’ time – no, don’t think of it. The tower block where I live is full of women who were once girls like this, now off to Bingo, desperate, with their children left locked up; pale, worried and ageing badly; without the spirit any more even to tuck a free-gift plastic daffodil behind the ear.
At least the priest accords them a soul. At least like Mayflies they have their brief dance in the sun before they go down into the darkness.
They gather up their parcels, wriggle back into their boots, eye me with a certain curious friendliness – they don’t understand why I sit by myself, quiet and respectable, without a friend – and pass on into their future.
I sit on my park bench and cry for all the women in the world.
I think perhaps we are in the throes of an evolutionary struggle which we must all endure, while we turn, willy-nilly, into something strange and marvellous. We gasp and struggle for breath, with painful lungs, like the creatures who first crawled out of the sea and lived on land.
The sun comes out. An old woman, a felt hat on top, and black Wellingtons below, passes by and laughs into the wind, and proves me wrong. Her face is ruddy, lean and cheerful. She seems to be what nature intended. But I do not think Byzantia will look like that when she is seventy-five.
I cry for my own malice, cruelty, self-deception and stupidity.
The children come up. ‘What’s the matter?’ they ask. ‘The wind in my eyes,’ I say. ‘Shall we go home?’ I ask. ‘No,’ they say. ‘Not yet.’
Where did we leave Wanda and Scarlet? Back in the early days and on bad terms, aggravated by Byzantia’s wakefulness.
Wanda is antagonistic to the world. Scarlet is fat and spotty. Byzantia is teething.
But rescue is at hand.
Wanda has a boyfriend.
There has been trouble with the Education Office. Wanda’s job is in jeopardy. Not, as she had predicted, because of her political past, but because she explained to a class of nine-year-olds how babies are born. She has drawn a diagram on the board. Parents have complained. The press has become involved. The fact that Scarlet is an unmarried mother is cited in anonymous letters to the local Education Autho
rity as proof of Wanda’s unfitness for teacherhood.
‘They are quite right,’ says Scarlet. ‘You aren’t fit. Anyway, why should children know the truth when it’s all so revolting? I would far rather believe I came out of a doctor’s black bag than out of you.’
‘Go and live with your father,’ says Wanda. ‘I don’t want you.’ It is her normal retort when Scarlet goes too far, and can be relied upon to silence her daughter.
Wanda’s boyfriend is a Schools Inspector who has been delegated to investigate the incident. He is a tall, pleasant-faced, rabbit-mouthed, stooping man, with flabby scarecrow trousers and pockets full, Scarlet feels, of string and white mice. He is a stamp collector, and plays the spinet. His wife has left him recently. She has run off with another man.
He shows Wanda photographs of his wife. She is not unlike Scarlet to look at, only the spots. Wanda remarks on this, and Edwin Barker, who is fifty-five, looks at Scarlet with increased interest. He has a semi-detached house in Lee Green, which is an outer London suburb.
Edwin takes Wanda out three Sunday afternoons running. He forgives her for being a divorced woman, for teaching children the facts of life, and for having an unmarried mother for a daughter, but Wanda is not interested in his forgiveness. He takes her to amateur theatrical productions and for rides into the country in his little car, but she is not interested in amateur drama, and can see no merit in countryside for its own sake. He saves her job, and this she does appreciate. On the third Sunday he parks the car and tries to kiss her, but Wanda finds the prospect distasteful and refuses. He is hurt, and bewildered. All the way home he talks about how he was cheated out of £3 10s. 0d. by a stamp dealer.
The next day, Monday, Edwin telephones Scarlet while Wanda is at school and asks her and Byzantia over for the day on the following Sunday. Scarlet accepts, but is frightened to confess to Wanda that she has done so.
Six days of thinking about Skinny Winny – as Wanda refers to him – and fearing Wanda, and she is practically in love with Edwin. Well, there is no one else to attach her feelings to.
On Saturday she is particularly nice to her mother, makes her breakfast in bed, tells her how good she is with Byzantia, offers to sew on her buttons, until Wanda asks her what the matter is. They are very fond of each other, these two; they resist their attachment, circle each other at as great a distance as unkind words can put them, but still must orbit round each other.
‘Skinny Winny has asked me and Byzantia over tomorrow,’ Scarlet admits. ‘Well, he likes Byzantia, and he doesn’t want to lose her, and he knows you can’t stand him. So he has to ask me.’
Wanda just laughs.
‘He wants a wife,’ says Wanda. ‘He wants promotion and married men stand a better chance in the rat race than single men do. He resents paying income tax, too, at single rates. He could claim a child allowance on Byzantia. On the salary he’s getting now, it would work about the same whether he had my wages coming in, or you and Byzantia to claim as dependants. He worries about things like that. You’re a very good bet to a man like him, and he will enjoy forgiving you.’
‘You mean you don’t mind me going?’ Scarlet sounds disappointed.
‘Of course not, my dear,’ croons Wanda, ‘off you go, have a good time. Fuck yourself silly if it’s what you want.’
Scarlet is most put out. But she goes. She and Edwin get on well. She makes tea and butters scones. They hold hands. Scarlet likes the comfortable mediocrity of Edwin’s home. She likes the thought of the toaster. She likes being forgiven. She likes the way he takes Byzantia upon his knee and plans her future. She likes the fact that he is respectable. She longs for respectability.
Later, she discovers that she likes being seen out with him. People stare. He is so old and thin, and she is so young and fleshy. They are mistaken for father and daughter, until he takes her hand, or puts his sinewy arm round her, and proves otherwise. That amuses her.
She even likes it when he parks the car and kisses her. He is so old. She is conscious of his past, stretching back and back, of the whole great mysterious sum of his existence, now being offered to her through the pressure of his lips.
It is not desire that is stirred, it is her imagination; but how can she know this? She feels she loves him. When she thinks of him kissing her, she is simply enchanted.
No one can understand her.
Edwin calls at the flat every day, nods in a slightly, but only slightly, embarrassed way to Wanda, and continues his wooing of Scarlet. He won’t let her go out cleaning any more. Silently, every week he hands her £2 5s. 0d.
Byzantia laughs and chuckles as he bends over her, his faded blue eyes crinkling. He is a kind man. He is an old man. His back is weak – he has mysterious pains in his spine, for which he consults doctor after doctor. Byzantia doesn’t know this. She holds out her arms to him. He picks her up and tries not to wince. They love each other: old flappy legs and plump, curly, brilliant Byzantia.
Byzantia will not stay in her cot. She will not go to sleep. She is an exhausting child. Wanda is tired. Wanda is tired of Edwin, tired of Scarlet, tired of life, tired of lifting Byzantia back into her cot while Scarlet and Edwin drive down leafy lanes and kiss in their mis-matched way.
Wanda snaps and snarls. Wanda keeps her children in after school.
Edwin proposes.
Scarlet accepts.
People talk. Kim makes a phone-call to Wanda. ‘Don’t interfere,’ says Wanda. ‘Either support her, or keep out of it. Look, he’s a man, he can give her a home. God almighty, I think she loves him.’
Kim keeps out of it.
‘She’s made her bed,’ says Susan, unforgivably. ‘Now she’ll have to lie on it.’ And Susan repairs to her own with a migraine, taking Simeon in beside her, clutching him and moaning in pain. He smiles, thinking she’s playing, because it is his time for playing. She hates him, slaps him, and wants her mother. When she remembers that these days it is she who looks after her mother – for Mrs Watson has discovered the existence of Mr Watson’s lady friend – Susan cries. She is having a terrible time, and is sorry for herself.
Audrey writes from the country, to give her blessing. She signs herself as Emma, and mentions that the pottery is giving way to a free-range whole-food chicken farm, says marriage is bliss. She is making a patch-work quilt. She will send it to Scarlet for her marriage bed. She is glad everything has turned out well at last. Children need fathers. (Audrey is six months pregnant, and appears to be rejoicing in her state. Though Jocelyn, visiting her, complains of an atmosphere of chicken feathers, wholemeal bread, and despondency.)
Jocelyn tries to dissuade Scarlet. ‘If you marry him,’ she says, ‘you will become a Lee Green housewife.’
‘I will remain myself,’ says Scarlet, ‘only more comfortable, and without my mother trying to ruin my life.’
‘But you don’t remain yourself when you marry,’ says Jocelyn. ‘You take on your husband’s level in the world. You take on his status, his income, his friends and his way of life. His class, if you like. You become an aspect of him. It’s all right for girls to marry above them, but they should never ever marry below.’
‘You are a terrible snob,’ says Scarlet.
‘Don’t be cross,’ begs Jocelyn. ‘I don’t want to see you ruin your life, that’s all.’
‘It’s pretty ruined already,’ states Scarlet. ‘Anyway, how do you know it’s like that? Perhaps I won’t take on his way of life. Perhaps he’ll take on mine.’
‘He’s twenty-five years older than you,’ says Jocelyn. ‘It’s not likely, is it?’
‘Thirty-two,’ says Scarlet smugly, and Jocelyn is shocked. ‘Anyway, Byzantia needs a father.’
‘But not this one, Scarlet. I’m sure he believes in early potty training and discipline, and shutting children in dark cupboards.’
‘Look,’ says Scarlet, ‘I’m sorry you don’t like him –’
‘It’s not that I don’t like him,’ pleads Jocelyn. ‘It’s just he’s so unsui
table.’
‘He may not be – well, widely cultured, and he’s not really interested in abstract matters, but he’s kind. And by God, he wears trousers and he wants to marry me.’ Scarlet’s voice rises to a shriek. Jocelyn keeps a parrot, which begins to squawk in sympathy. The cat’s lungs were weakened after the incident of the gas fire, and it died a few months later. Philip bought her the parrot to cheer her up.
‘I can always leave him,’ adds Scarlet presently, and Jocelyn is even more shocked. Jocelyn believes marriage is forever.
‘I can’t go on the way I am,’ Scarlet tries to explain. ‘Sleeping around. I don’t really like it. I’ve got to settle down. And I am so tired of worrying about money, and the rent, and Wanda, and everything.’
It is a plea for support and understanding but Jocelyn becomes even more remote, icy and disapproving.
‘It’s all so messy,’ is all she’ll say. ‘You’re not going to be happy.’
‘Byzantia is,’ says Scarlet, pleading mother love. Jocelyn is unmoved. She raises her eyebrows, crooks her little finger and sips tea. She doesn’t take sugar. Scarlet does. Jocelyn has put salt in the sugar bowl and forgotten she has done so.
‘What would you know about being a mother, anyway?’ says Scarlet, when her tea has been emptied down the sink, and a fresh cup poured, and the explanation and apologies are over. Jocelyn sees this remark as an unprovoked attack, and they part on cool terms.
Scarlet asks Jocelyn and Philip to the wedding, but they don’t come. Jocelyn gets the date wrong. When they discover the error, they are relieved rather than distressed. Jocelyn does describe Edwin to Philip, and he takes a prurient interest in the union of these two such disparate bodies, but he is really not concerned in Scarlet’s fate. In his view, she long ago turned into a slut and opted out of the world of serious people. He hopes her marriage will keep her more out of Jocelyn’s way. He does not like to associate with unfortunate people. He fears the ailment may be catching, like measles.
