by Weldon, Fay
‘This is what my dad wanted for me,’ she said. ‘If my friends could see me now!’
‘You only have to say the word,’ said Driver, ‘and they will.’
‘I’ll pay for it myself,’ said Carmen. ‘Though it’s madness. Wherever will I wear something like this to?’
‘Ah,’ said Driver. ‘That’s always the problem. Not the dress, the occasion. But I’m the King of Occasion. Just watch how I step out!’
Carmen paid for the dress herself with her credit card. The assistant had made a mistake. It wasn’t in the sale after all. It must have set Carmen back, said Witness, four weeks’ wages.
There wasn’t a breath of air that night, I remember. The moon had lost its perfect roundness. It was waning. The high tides of yesterday had been very high, but somehow languid. A smooth silky sea had lapped over groins and breakwaters, slipped quietly over the coast road so that the flood signs went up, but no one seemed unduly agitated. The terns bobbed about in the water, unconcerned, looking down at grass instead of sand; and the tide went out as gently as it had come up, leaving a thin coating of silt behind it. Just on occasion the tides of the East Anglian coast behave like this, taking advantage but without rancour, affectionately, as a husband might roll over on to a sleeping wife; the land is possessed by a boredom so profound it can infect even the elements. I couldn’t sleep. I sat at my window. Angela had in another uncle for Effie; I could see his shape and hers embracing the other side of the blind. But even that seemed slow and stately, not passionate. I think he was the greengrocer, whom high rents had driven out of Fenedge, but could not be sure. Perhaps I just imagined it.
Then the sky was lit up by more than the moon. Blasts of coloured light crisscrossed the sky: lasers, I presumed − the same, I daresay, as the kind directed into the neural fibres of my backbone, only these weren’t a neutral, hygienic, glimmering white, but purples, reds, yellows, mauve – and out of control they raced a whole series of crisscrosses from horizon to horizon. White balloons began to drift overhead; a wind came out of nowhere to flurry them along – I recognised the Bellamy logo – one bobbed down almost to my window. And a burst of music far away, the bass notes throbbing, the higher ones hardly heard, echoed over the fields to Landsfield Crescent. Sir Bernard Bellamy was back in residence at Bellamy House. Party time!
And the very next evening, it was said, Carmen and Driver were seen at Bellamy House, dining together. I could envisage the scene. Carmen, in the red satin dress, still believing she can somehow cheat the Devil, that no transaction is valid that depends entirely on bribes and threats. She has, as we know, a sense of natural justice.
Now the red dress, naturally, attracted many stares. The Bellamy House restaurant (four-star) had seen many a stare-worthy dress − the clientele included Australian ice-hockey stars and the wives of Texan ranchers, as well as those espoused to the more boring and conventionally wealthy, whose husbands liked them to display a diamond or two, or a tiara, not to mention their secretaries, or their Other Women, whom they liked to dress down so as not to attract too much attention − but this particular dress, Carmen feared, took the biscuit. She could see it in the face of Mrs Haverill, who flitted in and out of the restaurant, maîtresse d’hôtel, a point of bleak and disapproving reference. And every second she sat there it seemed to get tighter.
No one, mind you, dined more often than they could help in this particular room, no matter how good the chef, or how smooth the service, or how the central chandelier (a million pounds’ worth) revolved and played a sparkly tune on the hour every hour, so there was something for everyone to talk about. Those who dined herein felt scratchy and difficult through their meal, and often had indigestion afterwards. The point being that it was in this room that the First Sealord had held his disagreeable orgies, or so Mavis, who had once been here to visit Annie’s workplace, claimed. Mavis had shivered and shaken when she’d entered the room, and said a child had died here long ago and was still around, a particularly powerful and angry personality.
‘Don’t talk such rot, Mum!’ said Annie. She’d been on her hands and knees, scouring the floor. There’d been an outbreak of food poisoning, and official fingers had at first pointed to the Bellamy House hollandaise; and though the fingers had very quickly pointed elsewhere, away from the heart of the Bellamy Empire and not into it, Mrs Haverill was taking no chances. The special operations squad was sent into action to scrub.
‘There’s more tummy trouble comes from haunting,’ said Mavis, ‘than ever did from botulism,’ and Annie, though scoffing, had scrubbed her way out of the gloomy room as fast as possible. The turning mechanism of the chandelier was switched off out of peak periods: there was not even its wistful tinkling to look forward to.
Tonight the restaurant was three-quarters full, and from Mrs Haverill’s looks there would be two diners less if she had her way.
‘What’s the matter with her?’ asked Carmen.
‘She’s jealous,’ said Driver, ‘silly old bitch,’ but of whom and what she was jealous he did not say.
‘Can’t you make this dress less tight?’ asked Carmen. ‘I can hardly breathe.’
‘Looks okay to me,’ said Driver, ‘and since I’m the one paying that’s all that matters.’
‘You are not so paying,’ said Carmen. ‘I’m only here because I’m hungry, and I’ve eaten nothing but fish and chips for years, and I’ll pay for myself. I have a credit card. I’m not going to be obligated to you, Mr Driver; don’t think I am.’
‘Of course you shall pay for yourself,’ said Driver soothingly. ‘I have nothing up my sleeve.’
He lifted one arm at a time and showed her his sleeves, and she thought for a moment he was right, there was indeed nothing in them. Just black space. But how could that be?
‘You’ve got to learn to trust,’ said Driver next. ‘There is such a thing as a free lunch, just you wait and see.’
‘Yes, but this is dinner,’ said Carmen cunningly, though her eyes were so large and bright it was hard to detect cunning in them, or indeed anything but romantic compliance. It is difficult, as she complained to Laura later, to maintain your disagreeable feelings when your facial expressions seem to respond only to cerebral commands of a specifically agreeable nature. ‘You’re sure Sir Bernard isn’t here?’
‘Of course he’s not,’ said Driver, and his eyes were so crinkly and friendly you could hardly tell that he was lying. ‘He’s abroad. I should know. I’m his driver, his factotum, his éminence grise, the whisperer in his ear, his astrologer, his batman, his exercise coach, his nutritionist, his financial advisor, his personal manager. In fact, I am all things a perfect chauffeur is meant to be.’
‘His pimp as well,’ said Carmen, but she said it so charmingly – she couldn’t help it – he didn’t take offence. Besides, it was true.
The waiter, Henry, brought a large silver dish of oysters, as ordered by Driver. Carmen made do with melon and Parma ham. The Parma ham was hard and stringy, as it must be meant to be or it wouldn’t be served in this state in so many good restaurants. There was a time when I dined in them.
‘Do have an oyster,’ said Driver to Carmen.
‘I’d rather not,’ said Carmen, suspecting a trick. If you share an oyster with the Devil, all hell breaks loose.
‘I don’t know why you’re so stroppy with me,’ he complained. ‘I did so much for you and still you’re ungrateful. Didn’t I send your parents on an interminable world cruise? Didn’t I make your brother a genius? Didn’t I try and provide you with a rich and famous husband? What can you possibly hold against me?’
‘Three years in a chicken factory,’ said Carmen.
‘But you told me you liked it,’ he replied. Carmen thought perhaps this was what it was like to be married: wouldn’t there be perpetual conversations similar to this one, as each tried to persuade the other that they were right and the other was unreasonable? It must be dreadful. Driver quickly ate seven of his ten oysters, tipping the shell between his lips, sucking, swa
llowing, smacking. She really wanted to try one. She’d never eaten an oyster. If he went on eating at this rate it looked as if she never would. She took one from his plate and squeezed a little lemon on it. It looked disgusting, both flabby and chewy, and amazingly raw, but others seemed to admire them.
‘That’s the way!’ he said. ‘Now dislodge its little towbar, and one, two, three, swallow!’
‘That felt good,’ said Carmen, surprised. ‘Even the sea water with it.’
‘Nearest thing to sex that isn’t,’ said Driver, and Carmen was not in a position to argue. What did she know? The oldest virgin in all East Anglia, so far as she could see (which wasn’t far: quite a number of us in the Handicapped Centre are without sexual experience, as it happens), but who would think it, in the light of the red dress? She was guilty of the sin of hypocrisy; she could be prosecuted under the Trades Description Act. She was aware of male eyes upon her from all quarters of the room, and not only male, female too.
‘More wine?’ asked Driver, and poured it without waiting for a reply. She did not drink it. Instead she pushed away the glass, and asked the waiter for the bill. She had to leave in a hurry, she said; yes, they would pay separately. She handed him her credit card. Mrs Haverill came over to ask, quite unpleasantly, if everything was all right, and to observe that Bellamy House did not accept credit cards.
‘I’m paying for us both,’ said Driver kindly. ‘When I’ve finished my meal. One melon and Parma ham, three glasses of Chablis and one oyster, Mrs Haverill. Not much, but enough! Such a pity she has to go, but she’ll keep.’
And off into the night went Carmen, without paying, for she had no cash and Driver would not lend her any, and the waiter Henry offered to, but was sent scurrying back to the kitchens by Mrs Haverill.
These days the grounds of Bellamy House were formal and restrained, their flowers and shrubs flown in from London and arranged in neat rows, lit by orange globes on concrete posts. She was frightened by a voice which seemed to come from all around, not any one point in particular; it was Driver’s voice saying something like ‘Gotcha!’ and laughing, but perhaps it was some night bird she’d never heard about that had taken refuge in these parts – because of the changes in the world temperature all kinds of unheard-of birds now turned up in East Anglia. She could feel the gravel path crunching and tearing at her slim high heels; they’d cost seventy-two pounds – madness in the first place. She thought it was worse than being Snow White in the Night Forest, who had gnarled trees leaning in to leer and tear at her: the trees here in Bellamy Park had been so efficiently lopped and truncated that a far nastier energy was now free to sweep through unhindered. The lights of a car came towards her. She stepped into shadow. It was an old Mercedes 450SL, and at the wheel, driving, was Sir Bernard Bellamy. He was looking good: slimmer, younger, happier, bolder. He was in a hurry. He passed without seeing her.
‘Missed me!’ said Carmen aloud, in answer to Driver’s Gotcha, but no trick of the universe took it up and magnified the sound: it fell helplessly into silence.
In the morning she woke up as usual in the pile of bedding which did for her repose, but when she looked at herself in the greasy mirror propped up on the kitchen table she found her face had remained in its excellent night-out-on-the-town mode, and stretching a leg to observe it, turning her ankle this way and that, she saw that the leg was still long and slim. Her bosom, thank heaven, had shrunk a couple of cup sizes.
A friend of Paul’s slept in a drug-induced stupor under the table. She kicked him awake. The new slim feet were tough and serviceable. He shambled out into the morning. She called Peckhams’ Personnel and said she was ill and wouldn’t be in that day. Personnel said she didn’t sound ill to them. Carmen said ‘Too bad,’ and put the phone down. She went into the room where Paul slept. It was a really smelly room. She threw the windows open so savagely the sash cord broke. She had more strength than she knew. He stirred.
‘What’s the matter with you?’
‘You are,’ she said, and started throwing his belongings out of the window – pipe of peace, rusty tins of dope and allied substances, little grinning images and skulls, old greasy jeans, cheap silver earrings, incense, ragged embroidered jackets, condoms, comics…
Alison, driving me into the Centre, her licence restored, seeing this scattering of objects out of the greengrocer’s window, braked so savagely I hit my head on the windscreen, but never mind that. (The disabled are excused the wearing of seat belts if it’s difficult. It’s not as it happens in the least difficult for me, but Alison gets offended if I put mine on. She complains I don’t trust her.)
Paul stood up. He wore torn jeans and a T-shirt: he seldom took off his day clothes to go to bed, merely his shoes.
‘What are you doing?’ he asked, hurt and bewildered.
‘And you can go too,’ said Carmen. ‘This is my house.’
‘It’s our squat,’ he protested, ‘and I was here first.’
‘I’m stronger than you,’ she said, and it seemed to be true, for she propelled him easily down the hall, out of the door and into the street, resisting the temptation to lift him with one hand and throw him out of the window, for she thought she might have the strength to do that too. He hobbled for shelter to the Handicapped Centre, where he knew he would find people who understood just how difficult it was to be alive.
A letter came through the door as Carmen stood in the corridor – whose grime and despondency she hadn’t noticed till now – wondering what task to undertake next. Perhaps she could make a bonfire in the small backyard and burn all the bedding in the house? Dig a hole and bury the torn plastic bags, the junked takeaway packs, the discarded empties? The envelope was addressed in her mother’s handwriting. Carmen thought perhaps she should burn or bury that too, unopened. She had no reason to be grateful to her mother: on the contrary. But she relented and opened it. The envelope contained a cheque for twenty-two thousand pounds; it was made out to Carmen and signed Raelene Wedmore. The letter which came with the cheque asked Carmen to buy her parents a property in Fenedge. She and Andy had won a major tango competition on Blue Line Cruises. She was sending the prize money to Carmen before Andy could book them on yet another cruise to Monte Carlo. ‘Your father,’ she lamented, ‘has developed quite a taste for roulette. I can’t stand it. The horses were one thing, but casinos are another. I never know what to wear or where to stand.’
Carmen came over later in the day to ask me if I knew of any houses for sale in Fenedge. I had, it appeared, the reputation of knowing practically everything that went on in the town. I did not enjoy having such a reputation. I do not have a particularly prying or inquisitive nature: I am merely obliged to sit at a window all day. If I don’t, people say, ‘Wouldn’t you like to sit near the window?’ and move my chair nearer it without even asking my permission. Sometimes I would be glad just to sit and stare into a dark corner, but that upsets people, so I don’t.
I suggested to Carmen that she try asking the greengrocer whether she could buy the premises in which she and her friends had been squatting – ‘No friends of mine!’ she said − inasmuch as I thought he and his wife would soon be divorcing, and he might be glad of the money. Her eyes quite lit up at the thought – which was remarkable because they were so large and luminous already — and she went off in pursuit of her erstwhile non-landlord. I had no doubt but that the world would fall in with Carmen’s plans. A sigh of regret went through the Centre as she left. There was some talk of her likeness to Princess Di over tea and biscuits (donated by the local supermarket − after the sell-by date but not too limp) and it is true that Princess Di looks good and kind as well as beautiful, but there the resemblance ends. To me, Princess Di looks as if some inner grief might presently snap her in two if a whole lot of people aren’t careful: that there are tears only an inch or two away from her eyes. Carmen, in the brilliant light of Driver’s countenance, had the air that day of someone who would never snap, but bend for ever; who could see no reason w
hy the world should not be as good tomorrow as it was today. Good heavens, how the girl had cheered up!
Laura came to me during the course of the afternoon, having dropped Caroline off for a couple of hours at nursery school. Now, this being the burden of the full-time mother, she had two and a quarter hours to fill in before collecting both Caroline and Rachel from separate educational institutions. To drive all the way home to Landsfield Crescent and back would have been, she said, a waste of petrol money. Barely there, and she’d have to return. She still, of course, had Baby Sara with her, not yet ripe for public education, and Baby Sara was feeling tetchy. Sara had been in a really bad mood, said Laura, sighing, ever since her, Laura’s, last spat with Driver. Well, I wasn’t in such a good mood either and I told her she was being absurd; no doubt Sara was just teething or bored at being at home all day when her sisters were off in the big world, and Laura unexpectedly said what did I think she felt, at home all day while the world went on without her, and then felt obliged to apologise because of course my plight was so much worse than hers, etc… And Sara cried louder and the other disabled persons in the room were disturbed and I felt responsible. Fretting babies are, I imagine, even more annoying to the childless than they are to those who are accustomed to them, but I have no doubt Laura felt she was doing us all a favour by thus exposing us to a taste of real family life: Sara’s crying seemed the least of her worries and the greatest of ours.
Laura, I am bound to admit, is one of the sweetest people in the world, and this morning I was just not. All my nerves were twitching. My left foot jerked. My mind seemed to lurch in one direction or another, out of control. Laura had had a letter from Annie, which she’d come to report, and I took refuge in the vision of her life in Southland, New Zealand. Other people’s lives, if you’re me, are often easier to contemplate than your own.
So let’s take a look at Annie as she arrives back at the Glen Trekker Station, Tim and the men having abandoned her on the hills overlooking Saunders Creek. Fortunately her horse seems to know the way home, for she’s sure she does not. It ambles comfortably, snatching at a rare blade of juicy grass here, a leaf there. Once it even stops to stare at a lizard. Annie is happy to stare at it too. She and the horse, whose name is Tigger, but whose nature seems to be rather more like that of Pooh Bear, develop an easy, almost friendly relationship. Tigger stops outside the back verandah, and silently suggests that she dismount, so she does, and slips the reins on to a ring clearly there for that purpose. Tigger snuffles his contentment. She begins to feel she can cope with this new land. She is quite proud of herself, though her limbs are beginning to stiffen fast.
