by Weldon, Fay
Now we must remember Mavis had once or twice been to Open Evenings at the school and had encountered most of Annie’s teachers at one time or another, so these revelations, this speaking in the living voice of others, may have been the real thing, a genuine exercise of clairvoyance, or it may have been a mixture of hysteria, exhaustion and mimicry. I will not say malice, for Mavis was not malicious, or only unconsciously so. I cannot answer for the Count. But incarceration in Eastern Europe in the fourteenth century can’t have done much for his temperament.
After some twenty minutes the Count’s voice seemed to run down; like a tape on a sticky spool, it became slower and slower and deeper and deeper and finally stopped, and Mavis slumped over the table. The girls filed out.
‘I wish she were someone else’s mother, not mine,’ said Annie, but Laura and Carmen said they envied anyone whose mother could tell the future: Annie must not look a gift horse in the mouth. They were all elated. It seemed to them they had their ticket to leave, their escape route clean out of Dullsville, Tennessee.
So elated were they, so word-perfect by the end of the week in the questions suggested by their favourite man, the Count, but not so perfect as not to build in sufficient difference of phrase to avoid the charge of cheating, that the night before their first exam – in English Literature – they felt they could well afford to go to the disco.
I know that three girls going to a disco when they shouldn’t is not the stuff of drama in Chicago, USA, but here in Fenedge it is of significance. And perhaps Fenedge is in some way pivotal to the great cosmic conflicts of good and evil — not for nothing did Driver patrol the flatlands in his big black silky car; for all he described himself as Sir Bernard Bellamy’s chauffeur, I reckon that was just a front. A kind of idle occupation, to snaffle a soul or so, while thinking of other things. It is tempting to believe one is always at the heart of things, even in Fenedge, East Anglia, central to the drama – even creating it – when actually one is in all likelihood just some bit part player, at the very edges of the stage. I will be humble.
Be that as it may, Laura, Carmen and Annie went to the disco that night. Carmen and Annie’s parents couldn’t care what they did, or when and how, but Laura’s mother did, for once.
‘Don’t go out,’ begged Audrey of Laura, ‘I feel really lonely; I think something terrible is going to happen. I have such a pain. And, besides, don’t you have an exam tomorrow?’
It was the first mention in weeks Laura’s mother had made of her exams. As for Kim, there’d been neither sight nor sound of him since the evening he left Kubrick in his daughter’s care, and had packed and gone. Kubrick was flourishing: Laura dosed the tank from time to time and every white-spotted scale was now velvety black again, and pure.
‘I’m going to the disco,’ said Laura, ‘and you can’t stop me.’
But when she got there Woodie was waiting for her on his new, more powerful motor scooter, and all his zits had gone, and she drove off with him to the fenland, above which the yellow moon hung long and low, to a bed of mosses and red campion (Silene dioica) underneath a canopy of birch, sallow and willow, intertwined with reed mace (Typha latifolia) and hawthorn, and here he and she made love. A willow warbler, misled by moonlight into believing it was day, began to sing.
Woodie said, ‘I suppose you are on the pill or something?’ and Laura said, ‘Of course I’m not,’ and they both fell silent, except that Laura, half hoping, half fearing, spoke to her mother and father in her head and said to them, ‘Now look what you’ve done. You’ll be sorry.’ Laura wasn’t at all. It hadn’t even hurt. Her future in the natural world of love, delight and procreation was that night assured.
I stayed by my window till the early hours, watching the arc of the moon. I saw Carmen and Annie come home on the last bus, and hoped they’d get at least some sleep that night. And I waited and waited for Laura to come back, but she didn’t, not until dawn was in the sky and the yellow moon turned little and uninteresting. And then I heard the putter-putter of Woodie’s bike, and Carmen and Annie’s doors opened and out they both came into the Crescent, Carmen in a T-shirt down to her knees, Annie in a nightgown buttoned at the wrists. And Woodie left Laura at her front door and waved at her friends and put-putted off into the dawn.
‘Where have you been?’ demanded Carmen.
‘I couldn’t sleep a wink,’ complained Annie.
‘I never need to sleep again,’ said Laura, and went on into her house, and found Audrey waiting up for her, if you can call spending all night leaning over the kitchen table clutching your stomach waiting up.
‘Make me some tea,’ said Audrey to Laura.
‘I ought to get some sleep,’ said Laura. ‘It’s A level English today. I’ve been out all night, Mum.’
‘You’re old enough to look after yourself,’ was all her mother said. ‘The pain’s getting worse. Ring the doctor.’
‘It’s too early in the morning,’ said Laura, but her mother insisted, so she called Dr Grafton, and woke him from his sleep. He was quite kind to Laura, saying he understood what a hard time she had with her mother, and explained that the pain was not functional but neurotic, and had in itself been a contributory cause for Kim leaving home, and could he now go back to sleep? So Laura put the phone down and Audrey, so drained of colour that even the dawn light couldn’t drain it any more, fell off her chair and under the table. Laura rang Dr Grafton back to describe what had happened and asked what she could do, and this time he was really angry and said Audrey no doubt had an alcohol problem too, so Laura called the ambulance service — who should only ever be called by a doctor – herself, and they came within five minutes since it was a call from Landsfield Crescent and Alan Horner was one of the duty crew that night. His uniform suited him. He looked, and was, kind and helpful. It was only Annie, and sometimes Count Capinski, he ever had problems with.
‘Stomach cancer, most like,’ he said to Laura. ‘Takes a long time to get going, but when it does, pow! Collapse of thin party, if not stout.’ And he laughed. ‘Well,’ said Alan apologetically, ‘if you don’t laugh you cry.’ Laura laughed too. She assumed she was in a dream. The crew persuaded themselves that Audrey was still breathing. They rolled her onto a stretcher, and carried her out to the ambulance. Laura went along too. The siren sounded all the way, not just at traffic junctions, but Laura was so tired she fell asleep, propped in a corner as she was, which at least made the dream stop. I watched the ambulance arrive, and go, and listened to its sound fading into the Fenedge distance. Dramas happen everywhere, if only you hang around for long enough.
As for the questions in that year’s exams, nothing the Count had predicted came true, not a single thing, almost as if the error was not accidental, but intended. No mention of Madame Bovary’s death, not a breath of Lady Macbeth, or a hint of the Poll Tax riots. Laura turned up from the hospital halfway through the exam and, for all the sense they wrote, Annie and Carmen could have stayed home altogether.
Carmen left the examination hall early and decided to walk home to Landsfield Crescent, although ‘home’ seemed to her a place she had long ago grown out of. But where else could she go? The day was hot. The road was dusty. She was angry. She thought she would hitchhike but no cars came along the long ribbon of road she walked. Even the trees which lined its sides seemed indeterminate and without name, and the only birds around were the crows, which circled, and cawed, and yelled defiance and could only cooperate in anger, when they dive-bombed and forced out of their sky a little tremulous passing creature, some wretched peewit or blackcap that had strayed into their airspace by mistake.
Carmen began to feel nervous, as if the power of her anger had moved her out of one reality into another, dumped her and a flood of crows into an empty world.
So when she heard a car behind her she was relieved. When she turned and saw it was Driver coming up fast in the big BMW, she was pleased. He was someone she knew, if only vaguely, and she was still not old enough to understand that the d
anger to a woman comes mostly from someone vaguely known. Driver slowed down and stopped beside her and the window slid down without any effort from him at all.
‘It isn’t safe,’ said Driver, ‘for a young lady to hitch rides; it’s asking for trouble.’
‘I’ll do what I want,’ said Carmen. ‘I’m not scared.’
‘Who are you angry with?’ asked Driver, and Carmen replied, ‘God.’
Driver looked at her with interest, as well he might.
‘Why are you staring at me?’ Carmen asked.
‘I’m wondering if you’d shriek and cry rape if I offered to give you a lift. A driver can’t be too careful these days.’
So Carmen got in, of course she did, and he drove her to Landsfield Crescent.
Now it was the first time I’d actually seen the BMW, though I’d heard tell of it. The sight of the big black car, as it nosed round the bend that lunchtime, made my toes tingle, which was strange because I normally had no feeling in them at all – the state of my spine forbade it. I was eating my lunch – bread and cheese, pickle and apple, brought to me on a tray by my carer Alison. Alison is eighty-six, and a keen ornithologist, though her vision is not as acute as once it was. Whose is? The BMW stopped outside Mavis Horner’s house and I watched while Carmen got out; and Driver got out too and bent his head and seemed to kiss her neck, though perhaps he bit it, because she jumped and squealed a little.
What really happened between the time Driver picked Carmen up and the time he dropped her off, who is to say? I know what Carmen told Laura and Annie, which was that she’d met the Devil on the way home from school, and he offered to buy her soul in return for wealth, success and soul-searing beauty, but she’d refused. And I know Laura and Annie had trouble accepting (a) that Sir Bernard Bellamy’s chauffeur was Mephistopheles and (b), if he was, that she could have resisted him, but I was prepared to go along with Carmen’s version. I heard with my own ears, I’m sure I did, what Driver called after Carmen as she marched up Mavis’s front path to give Count Capinski what for. Nip, he went, with his sharp, even, handsome teeth, and then he said, ‘All the joys that flesh is heir to, yours all yours, and all for such a small, small price. Something you don’t even believe in.’ And I’ll swear I heard her reply, ‘Oh go away and tempt someone else. I like to do things my own way.’
And Driver drove off in a silken fury – I could almost swear the BMW’s wheels were an inch above the ground – and Carmen rubbed her shoulder where he had nipped it and continued unabashed in her mission. She knocked upon Mavis’s door − bang, bang, bang — and Mavis answered it, and would have reprimanded Carmen for her noisy impertinence but Carmen got in first.
‘Why did you let your friend the Count mislead us? It was spiteful and malicious.’
Carmen came into the little dismal hall, which always seemed smaller than those of the other houses in the road, though if you measured you’d find them all exactly the same size. Perhaps it was the row of chairs that did it, or the unframed New Age posters depicting mystic light sources, unicorns and so forth, all rather badly executed, stuck up on the walls with Blu-Tack. Mavis backed away from Carmen and the stamp of Count Capinski firmed and formed on her face.
‘Is something wrong, dear lady?’ Capinski asked Mavis. ‘I feel your alarm.’
‘She’s brought in something nasty with her, Count,’ complained Mavis, ‘something really dreadful. Can’t you feel it?’
‘I do, I do,’ and Mavis/the Count’s teeth began to chatter. ‘It’s cold, so cold. Make your eyes clear for me, dear lady. There is black, there is wet. Oh, the stench! I am slipping back –’ and he began to moan most terribly and roll his eyes and his hands clawed and shrivelled. ‘You’re just trying to get out of it,’ said Carmen, though she was quite alarmed. ‘You did a dreadful, spiteful tiling.’
At which the Count/Mavis fell squirming and shrieking on the mat, waving his claws about, and Alan came running from the kitchen. He’d been back to the hospital to check on Laura’s mother. They were operating immediately. She had stomach cancer, advanced but not, they thought, quite terminal: it’s always good to have an instant diagnosis confirmed when, even though the news is not good, it’s not as bad as it could be. It’s pleasant to be right, even about tragedy.
The Count wailed from the floor, ‘I’m going, I’m going, oh my darling, your soft sweet bed –’
‘That’s enough of that now,’ said Alan, kneeling on the floor beside his wife. ‘We won’t have talk like that –’ and he slapped her face, at which Mavis sat up, quite herself again.
‘I really think he’s gone,’ said Mavis brightly. ‘What a relief. It’s been a nightmare. In bed, on the bog – and not even a spirit of the departed; someone still alive, if only just. My nails kept getting dirty, all by themselves. I must write it up for Psychic News.’ Her face darkened as she turned to Carmen. ‘As for you, miss, the sooner you’re out of here the better. You bring trouble with you, always did. If Annie fails her exams, it will be all your fault. I told her so but she wouldn’t listen.’
And those were the circumstances in which Annie, Carmen and Laura all failed their English exam, and most of their other papers thereafter – sufficient to make them ineligible for further education grants – and in which Mrs Baker was moved sideways to make room for a male head of department, and Laura became pregnant, or thought she was. But at least thereafter Annie slept more peacefully by night. For a time.
5
Alison, my voluntary carer, had been learning how to drive. She had been told she would need one lesson for every year of her life, but managed to pass her test after exactly half that number, that is to say, after forty-three. Since she could afford only one lesson every three weeks, the process of learning had taken just under three years. Her ambition – and I took it most kindly — was, in a car specially converted for that purpose, to be able to drive me in and out of Fenedge’s pedestrian shopping precinct, where there was a centre for the handicapped. The Centre was shockingly underused, since public funds had not been made available for transport, and the disabled are seldom rich. It was, Alison maintained, each individual’s responsibility to do their bit to help their neighbour. I only mention this because, although my problems are not part of this story, Alison’s endeavour and determination so outstripped the problems of her own increasing infirmity as to deserve applause. I think she thought that if she could keep me going, she’d keep herself going.
So I now had two windows: one to look out upon the suburban serenity of Landsfield Crescent (serenity, that is to say, with a dollop of ambulances and body bags thrown in, not to mention clairvoyant phenomena, infidelity, loss of virginity, eruptions of Dark Forces, white-spot in the fish tank, and so on; but at least serenity was the avowed aspiration of the place) and a window in Fenedge Pedestrian Precinct, where from time to time, when Alison could get her car going, I could do much as I did in Landsfield Crescent – that is to say, sit and stare. I didn’t wish to look Alison’s gift horse in the mouth; I didn’t like to say, ‘Well really, Alison, more goes on in Landsfield Crescent than in Fenedge Centre and the journey is perhaps more effort than it’s worth.’ No. I just fell in with her plans, and watched the War Memorial instead of the Crescent, and the steps around it on which the youngsters sat when there was nothing to do – that is to say most of the time – and presently things began to happen.
Let me draw you Fenedge’s former market square, at that time a pedestrian-zone shopping centre, although most of the shops had already given up, since a hypermarket had opened five miles out of town, and everyone with cars – that is to say, everyone with any money – preferred the fresher, cheaper goods it offered, and hated the personal contact small shopkeepers, suffering from competition, like to say is so important. Only Boots the Chemist, the Welcome-In Cafe, the Post Office, a bank or so, the Handicapped Centre, a perfectly pointless florist and what was then called the Employment Exchange remained open, to create the markedly unbustling heart of Fenedge.
<
br /> A. the Employment Exchange
B. the Chemist
C. the Welcome-In Café
D. the War Memorial
E. the florist
F. Alison’s dropping-off point. Passers-by are asked by Alison to assist me over to H, since she doesn’t like to stop her engine in case it doesn’t start again.
G. the Post Office
H. the Handicapped Centre, now known as the Otherly Abled Centre
The dotted line marks a one-way traffic system with sleeping policemen every few yards, so it was seldom used by vehicles. Though Alison managed. Bump, bump, bump. Her driving instructor hadn’t explained you’re meant to slow down.
Alison liked to drive me into Fenedge before the traffic rush began. (Alison’s idea of a rush is two vans and a stalled Citroën 2CV.) So it was remarkably early on a Monday morning in late August, at that time of year when you suddenly become conscious that the sun is beginning to rise later and set earlier, and there is a hint of autumnal mist in the air, when I saw Carmen, Annie and Laura stroll into the Centre, in their best one-for-all and all-for-one mode, and settle themselves on the steps of the War Memorial.
This is how I imagine the conversation went:
Carmen said: So how do we get out of here?
Annie said: Not by education anyhow, we buggered that one up.
Laura said: Wherever I bring my baby into the world is paradise to me. I won’t have a word said against Fenedge.
And Carmen and Annie said between them: ‘You don’t know if you’re pregnant or not. Anyone can miss a period, or even two. Why don’t you do a test? The chemist’s opening up.’
