by Weldon, Fay
‘Those girls,’ said Mavis, ‘those friends of Annie’s. The airs and graces they put on. They never thought Annie would be the one to get out into the big time, but I always knew her day would come. That job up at Bellamy House − she was only marking time.’
I felt the familiar tingle; on this occasion it was in my forehead. I hoped she was doing no harm. I busied myself envisaging Tim and Annie: they were on horseback again; they were surrounded by the tens of thousands of sheep; they rose out of a floor of moving, matted, whitish wool.
‘But you promised me you liked sheep,’ Tim was complaining.
‘I do, I do,’ protested Annie. ‘But so many of them! I can take them two at a time, even a dozen at a time, but by the thousand, Tim? And everyone of them alive with God knows what kind of ticks and maggots and worms, judging from the conversation over dinner.’
‘It’s so they don’t get eaten alive,’ said Tim rather crossly, ‘we have the conversations. I expect along with not liking sheep you like rabbits.’
‘Well, yes, I do,’ said Annie apologetically. There should be nothing but truth, after all, between an affianced couple. He pointed out that the rabbits were letting the lifeblood of New Zealand; that ever since Watership Down the public had gone soft on rabbits: these days you had to put down the myxomatosis bug almost in secret.
‘I should think so,’ said Annie. ‘It’s disgusting. They sit by the side of the road oozing pus, half paralysed, half blind.’
‘That’s because they haven’t had a big enough dose,’ said Tim, and laughed, and she thought he was winding her up, but she couldn’t be sure. She knew, because she’d been told so often, that the rabbit and the Labour Government were his family’s historical enemies. The Labour Government had taken away farming subsidies, just at the time the European market had squeezed out its customary antipodean imports, so New Zealand had to sell to Iran and become even more unpopular with the US than ever (the nation had declared itself a non-nuclear zone and backed out of the ANZUS pact) until, fortunately, the Gulf War had rendered Iran a friendly power, it being Iraq’s enemy – my enemy’s enemy being my friend – and now New Zealand was okay again in the family of nations, that is to say, the US, and Anchor butter and Canterbury lamb became the staple diet once again of the British. All this Annie now knew and understood, but still she did not like sheep.
She understood, too, that she’d better keep quiet about Tim having met her laying stair carpet. No one said anything, but she knew if she gave an impression of having come from a County vicarage with bicycles in the hall and dogs sleeping on the smooth lawn, it would go down better with the families thereabouts. There was going to be a helipad built for the wedding, which was to be a big, formal, marquee affair. Annie, it had been decided, was to wear the McLean wedding dress. This had been made in England in 1851, at great expense, for a certain Annie Hardcaster, who was to marry the first Tim McLean in Otago, and shipped out for the wedding. The cost of its making and its shipping had been borne by the McLeans. But the ship carrying the dress had foundered in the South Seas with the loss of many lives. The cargo, however, had been washed up on the islands, some of it still undamaged, and amongst the goods salvaged was the wedding dress. It had reached its destination two years late, by which time the first Annie had died in childbirth, but the dress was in remarkably good condition. It had been worn thereafter by all the McLean brides, or such of them as could get into it. Unfortunately the first Annie McLean, during her short life, though apparently a big strapping girl for her times, came out these days as a size 8–10. The dress was in cream silk, crinoline style and very fancy. They thought it would do just fine for Annie, who had got quite thin.
‘Isn’t it rather yellow by now?’ Annie had asked, but Mrs McLean said no problem: she’d soak it in lemon juice and water and hang it in the sun a little and she’d be apples. And she’d weave Annie a little yellow lace wool jacket − the wool dyed with the yellow liquid that came from boiling up the brown flat pancake lichen that grew on the rocks thereabouts, and then home spun into yarn. The yellow jacket would make the dress seem white by contrast. Annie said she didn’t mind buying her own wedding dress, but Mrs McLean said it was a pity not to get the value of the family heirloom.
‘So when is the wedding to be?’ I asked Mavis. I thought I was feeling better, though I quite wanted to lay my head flat. Mavis said it was only an engagement announcement: Annie had said on the phone, laughing, the wedding itself was going to be a big do somewhere between dagging and docking, drenching and dipping, and as soon as she knew she’d send their tickets. And she’d love to send their air fares to Carmen and Laura, but she didn’t like to ask Tim. It was true the McLeans were building a helipad, but there was no money to waste. And I could hear Tim’s voice, the voice of the farmer everywhere, for ever at the mercy of the weather, of the seasons, of the Government, facing the ingratitude of the people (those who grow the food are always disliked by those who eat the food: no one likes to be dependent, and everyone feels the necessities of life should come free), saying to Annie exactly that as the sheep milled around them, their little black eyes gleaming and mutinous –
‘I can’t be expected to ship everyone halfway across the world, Annie. Your parents are one thing, but your friends? Come off it, Annie.’ For what new husband in the world wants to encourage the girlfriends, any more than a new wife likes the friends of the old bachelor days? It’s the same from Anchorage to Antarctica.
Sister came in and shouted at Mavis because I was sitting up, and my headache came back.
Next to visit me, before Sister banned all visitors, was, of course, Poppy. She had such a pretty, vicious, sulky, sexy, endearing little face, I could see why Kim fancied her and women disliked her. (Being in a wheelchair renders one genderless: I hoped I could be neutral in this matter.) She brought black grapes and ate them nearly all every one, and I was glad when she did, because at least when she opened her mouth to pop one in, with her slightly dirty fingers, it stopped her talking. How she talked! She wanted something from me, of course she did. Amazingly, she wanted my approval: me, lying there betwixt concussion and tumour.
First she complained about Kim. He never made any decisions. It was all left to her. He had seduced her when he was in a position of trust and she was only sixteen, which surely proved he was bad through and through; he’d made her pregnant and broken her relationship with her parents, and stolen her childhood from her. If anyone was guilty of child abuse, said Poppy, it was Kim. Then, what’s more, he had lost his job and couldn’t support her properly, and kept moaning on about having had to leave his stupid wife and boring daughter, as if it were her fault. She had turned out to be undergoing a phantom pregnancy, which was hardly surprising, considering the time she was having, and he blamed her more than ever. There was no satisfying him. By that time it was too late for her to go back to school or him to his wife, so here she was, tied to an old man, an ageing hippy, with grey beard and toes so horny they hurt her in bed, and he didn’t wash enough.
I asked her why in this case she was still with Kim and she looked surprised and said after what he’d done to her it was the least he could do to look after her and support her, no matter what. I’ve met many women, especially those from working-class backgrounds, who complain bitterly about their husbands from the day they meet them, forget the day they marry them, as a matter of form, and it has nothing at all to do with whether or not they love them, and I supposed Poppy to be one of these. A young doctor came by, looking for a thermometer, and Poppy kind of curled and unfolded towards him in her yellow dress and smiled in a totally welcoming way and when he’d gone said, ‘Did you see the way he looked at me? The randy pig!’ and went on talking, and I thought perhaps she was something more malevolent after all than the mere product of an environment. And the girls were right to call her Poison Poppy. She’d have lost him his job too if she could have.
She complained that Kim had ruined her life by talking of true love and desti
ny and that all she’d ended up with was a shabby old car and a little hovel in Kings Lynn, with a man with bad breath who edited guidebooks for a pittance and who had no friends because he was a first-class shit and didn’t deserve any. And now – here seemed to be the crux – Kim didn’t even have the nerve to face his own daughter and reclaim the house which was rightfully hers, Poppy’s, because wasn’t she having his baby, and had I any idea what those houses were going to be worth, because of the new bypass and commercial centre Bellamys were about to build, now they had planning permission from the regional board? She happened to know, being a good friend of one of the planners, but I wasn’t to mention that to a soul. Three curses on my soul if I mentioned it.
Her eyes flashed when she said that. I felt quite endangered: as if I belonged to a species which would be extinct if Poppy had her way.
‘He’s still not going to marry me,’ said Poison Poppy. ‘Even though his wife’s dead. He says it’s because he doesn’t want to upset his precious daughter; now how can that be true? If he loved her so much why did he leave home? He says her problems are his fault. What problems? She’s got a husband, her kids, and she’s living in my house. I’m the one with the problems.’
It was time for my water. I was allowed water but no food, which was why Poppy was welcome to my grapes, and when Sister came in with my measured six ounces, she moved my visitor on. So Poppy left, still complaining, and looking devastatingly pretty. The marble in my brain, under the impact of her curse − because I most certainly intended to let everyone know Landsfield Crescent was to be central to a major land development scheme − or because Mavis had sat me up, shifted a little that night and I was in and out of consciousness and moved very quickly to Chicago.
11
My first visitor when I was back in my post-operative chair in the window of the Fenedge Handicapped Centre was Laura. She was many months pregnant, and waddled. With every pregnancy her shape became less defined and just somehow bulkier. From the neck down she just spread out in all directions. I was happy to tell her that, though I had suffered, apart from an occasional twitch in one eye and still being in a wheelchair, I had no further ill effects from either concussion, tumour or surgical intervention.
Laura had been distressed for a time, she said, after the funeral, though she was okay now. She hadn’t known whom to turn to. I was away; she missed her mother, Woodie was in a bad mood because of the new baby coming; she felt she couldn’t see Mrs Baker and confess to yet another child, though Mr Bliss, whom she had seen, had offered her a mixture of rue, fennel and borage to cheer her up – it worked wonders on horses suffering from depression – but she hadn’t taken any. She’d finally gone to Carmen to offload her sorrows.
It was evening. Angela from across the way was baby-sitting for the first part of the evening: then Woodie was taking over. Laura did worry a bit about the way Angela kept chatting Woodie up, but she reckoned Angela couldn’t help it and no one took her seriously anyway, and she, Laura, just had to talk to someone. It was worth the risk.
She was surprised to find that almost overnight the greengrocer’s had been turned from a squat to a desirable residential property in the middle of town: window frames white-painted and a flower basket hanging by a blue front door. Carmen opened the door to her: slate floors gleamed; pot plants flowered; everywhere was tidiness and order. How had so much been achieved in so short a space of time? Did Carmen have some special relationship with the local builders too? She had been promoted at Peckhams, it was said, and rumour had it that that was because of a special relationship with Shanty Cotton, but as Carmen later remarked, ‘Any woman who ever gets promotion is supposed to be having it off with the boss. It doesn’t mean it’s true. Or only if it’s Poppy.’
Carmen was in New York business girl mode on the evening Laura visited: her shoulders were padded, her suit of natural linen, her trainers white and sportif, her eyes wide and clear, her hair long, reddish and silky, and her features wonderfully regular. It was extraordinary, as Laura remarked to me, how different Carmen could look and still remain the same person – an actress’s facility, of course. The look didn’t quite fit the house – something artier would have been appropriate, Laura thought. But she had not on that evening been paying much attention to Carmen: she was too preoccupied with her own troubles. Everything but her own self came over blurred, as if she had been wearing glasses which had misted over.
‘I went in moaning,’ said Laura to me, ‘years and years’ worth of moan which I had bottled up, and that was the truth of it. Just moaning and complaints. I moaned about my father, who had abandoned me just at the wrong time of my life, and embarrassed me for always by going off with a girl my own age, so I was somehow shy of ever going further than my own front door. I moaned about my mother, who had betrayed me by letting me get married far too young, and couldn’t find the energy to stop me, and now had died on me, just when I needed her most. I told Carmen I didn’t love my parents, I just hated them. I moaned about Woodie, who made me pregnant and then somehow implied it was nothing to do with him that I was, and how he was a hopeless provider. I moaned about the kids, and how I was expected to give up my own life for them: what about me?’ Laura asked Carmen, ‘What about me?’ She was tired of understanding, forgiving and putting herself in other people’s shoes: fed up to the back teeth with it, and talking about that she was now having trouble with her wisdom teeth. She didn’t want them extracted with anaesthetic because she was pregnant, and certainly didn’t want them extracted without — what sort of life was this, anyway?
‘Don’t shake your finger at me,’ said Carmen, backing as Laura advanced. ‘Don’t rant at me. It’s not my fault.’
‘I’m not so sure,’ said Laura. ‘My theory is as your luck improves mine gets worse, and vice versa,’ at which she thought Carmen turned pale under the smooth golden tan which looked as if she were just back from the French Mediterranean coast, whose tan is more flattering to the female skin than the tan of most any other place in the world, though no doubt just as bad in terms of ultra-violet rays.
‘The only good thing that’s happened lately,’ Laura said she said to Carmen that day (and this was the first I’d heard of it) ‘is that Poppy’s baby simply disappeared one day. She went in to have a second scan and the baby which was on the first scan simply wasn’t there any more. It happens apparently. The whole lot gets reabsorbed. Cows and sheep and rabbits do it all the time, and just occasionally humans. So at least that took the heat off my own father trying to make his own grandchildren homeless in favour of a misbegotten little sister.’
‘Or brother,’ said Carmen, and Laura said sadly she’d forgotten people could give birth to boys. And then Laura told me, though it embarrassed her to recall it, she actually fell on her knees and prayed to God for forgiveness for saying such terrible things about Poppy, and having wished a baby out of existence, she was sure she had, and for moaning on about Woodie when she really loved him, and how she wouldn’t really be without her children, not for a minute − she was the luckiest person in the world – and she was sorry to burden Carmen in this way, only sometimes she felt there was no one to talk to –
At which point there was a flash of light and smoke from the kitchen and Carmen cried out, ‘It’s the chip pan’ and they ran to the kitchen as one person, and Carmen seemed as surprised as Laura to see Driver standing there over the pan, and the kitchen full of a strange blue light. There was smoking but not burning. ‘It’s rape seed oil,’ said Driver. ‘It does this sometimes. A kind of flash fire. Such a pretty colour, rape, isn’t it? It brightens up the landscape no end. All that brilliant yellow everywhere.’
‘What are you doing here?’ Carmen asked Driver. She seemed put out at his presence.
‘Cooking our supper,’ he said, and he dropped chips into the hot, hot oil. How they sizzled and spat! ‘How are you, Laura? How’s the new baby?’ And the baby gave Laura a great kick in the ribs, and though Carmen begged her to stay, Laura left.<
br />
But I had an idea why Driver was back. He had come to collect his dues. You don’t get from a squat to a mortgage in three short bounds, from the despatch floor to Staff Rep. on the Board; you don’t get your best friend Annie engaged to a romantic hero and a wedding date set; you don’t get your legs lengthened an inch from ankle to knee, and two inches from ankle to thigh, without someone coming to claim something, for there is indeed no such thing as a free lunch, or a free dinner either, and Sir Bernard Bellamy was back in town. You could almost hear the earth movers rumbling in the distance, creeping nearer, as he prepared to turn the landscape upside down. And the brave deserve the fair, as the brave will always tell you. The fair, on the whole, just shut up and get deserved. But not Carmen.
12
‘All my doing,’ said Driver. ‘All down to me. Be grateful for your lunch. Give thanks.’
‘Not on your nelly,’ said Carmen, indicating her pretty house, her worked-upon self. ‘All this I got by my own energies, my own efforts, my own skill. Don’t tell me I was lucky and try and take the credit, because luck has nothing to do with it.’
‘Everything’s luck,’ no doubt Driver replied, or I would have if I were him. ‘Luck who you were born to, luck what country it was in, luck if you’re born with cross-eyes or not, luck to be able to make an effort in the first place. Whatever’s in the genes is luck, and you’d better face it. Life’s all luck, no justice. Luck has everything to do with it, so I have everything to do with it — because the Prince of Darkness is the Prince of Luck. Too bad!’ Driver said. ‘Just take the money and run! Forget about the ethics. Your fault,’ Driver said, ‘for wishing me here in the first place; for wanting to get out of Fenedge instead of being content. It’s discontent brings Driver to your side, quick as anything! Your fault, Carmen, don’t blame me!’ Even the Devil, you notice, doesn’t want to be blamed. ‘And now you have to see it through. If Sir Bernard Bellamy wants you, noblesse oblige, and all that. Manners, if nothing else. Lie down before him and open your legs. Take the money and run.’
