by Weldon, Fay
The narrow road between Fenedge and Bellamy House, down which the girls had so often walked, between the fields and the poplar rows, under the arches made by the old trees, past Mr Bliss’s stables, was now deemed inadequate for the flow of traffic and was to be widened. To this end, the stables had been compulsorily requisitioned. Mr Bliss had set himself up in Fenedge as a hypnotherapist, using a room in the former library, which had been closed down as the result of Authority spending cuts. I could see the entrance to his consulting room from my window. He was short of clients, which pleased Mavis, if no one else.
‘I can heal obesity and smoking perfectly well by the laying on of hands,’ she said, ‘and there he is, interfering with people’s minds. It’s unethical!’
However, Mrs Baker, who had put on two stone since her retirement, and was bulky enough to begin with, managed to lose three stone under Mr Bliss’s mind control (it was quite exciting to watch her diminishing week by week) and his business gradually began to build. The Pedestrian Precinct was opened to through traffic, for no apparent reason, and construction lorries began to thunder through the very centre of the town. Those who had felt persecuted by its quietness, and groaned about how boring life in Fenedge was, how isolated from the real world, now felt equally persecuted by what they called aural pollution, that is to say, noise, and the way the ground trembled as the juggernauts rumbled by. The metal arms of my wheelchair sometimes trembled so much as they passed I could have sworn they were alive, and a life form not particularly friendly to me, one with which I was in symbiotic connection. (We’d had a delivery of sci-fi paperbacks.) Alison, one of the bravest people I know, it must be admitted, continued to park as if the lorries did not exist, and since their alternative was to stop or to kill her, they stopped, but only just. Then she’d make them climb down from their cabs to assist me out of the car – tough, tattooed, sweaty, infuriated men, who could be surprisingly gentle, but not always. Alison said she’d rather trust a macho man than a new man any day. It was of course embarrassing for me, but still better than watching the way the black dust drifted over Landsfield Crescent.
And still Sir Bernard Bellamy did not appear: his minions worked in his name. Boards announcing ‘Bellamy Construction At Work’ appeared everywhere. Only Bellamy House stood unaffected by the mayhem all around: its approach was now from the coast road: the Rolls and the Bentleys swept in through a conservation area, and through the colder months special bird-watching parties could be arranged on request through the Porter’s desk, complete with hampers, champagne and folding chairs, and cassettes and headphones to give you bird descriptions so vividly you could almost imagine you had seen them: in the early spring the purple sandpiper, the occasional goosander or garganey, and plentiful pink-feet; in March, velvet scoter by the hundred; but the best time of all, the cassette could tell you, would be in October, when the winds have been blowing strongly for days: then the teal, the mallard, the pintail, the shelduck and the eider are out in force, rejoicing in the wildness of the weather. Sometimes even the Mediterranean gull will put in an appearance, though one suspects unwillingly, having been gusted in from warmer parts. And you may catch a glimpse then of the lapwings, still doggedly beating westward (as my Where to Watch Birds in East Anglia tells me), their wings barely lifting above the pounding surf. But these ornithological outings aren’t too popular with Bellamy House guests, although they’re on offer. Most prefer a trip to Newmarket and the horse racing: especially when the Summer Race Course is open. The turf seems a more attractive alternative to sitting along the Wash coast or somewhere in the salt marshes, hoping for a glimpse of a Cory’s shearwater, or the rare storm petrel. A pity. I don’t get to bird-watch. Alison has a fear of the neuralgia which cold sea winds can bring. I don’t suffer from it myself.
13
Peckhams’ annual outing to Newmarket fell that year on a particularly fine August day. Only heads of department went, of course, and a few major local customers; other guests were transported in limousines which picked up in Central London, or found their own way to the Race Course. A big marquee had been hired especially for Peckhams; a buffet lunch was to be served: a special in-marquee tote was set up, and the races could be watched on Anglia TV if the spirit or the legs failed. Shanty Cotton had urged everyone to dress up, and the group which gathered in Peckhams’ forecourt was, as Carmen described it to me, on the gaudy side. The women wore large hats and bright floral prints, as if for Ascot, and Shanty’s tie was more brilliant than his face: scarlet and purple. Only Henrietta Cotton, his gentle, peaceable wife, was dressed in modest grey, and wore a simple straw hat. She looked as if she’d prefer to be working in her garden back home. As for Carmen, she’d woken up that morning with long legs and a small waist, though with her bosom still its ordinary self, so she knew something was up. Perhaps it was just that her suffering for the loss of Ronnie Cartwright was to be stepped up – she had almost forgotten about him, so busy was she at work, making doubly sure she was not demoted, sent back to the factory floor, for Shanty liked to keep everyone on their toes, and at home, arguing with the mortgage company as to whether or not subsidence of the ground beneath her house was her responsibility, the Council’s or the mortgage company’s insurers. The ownership of property, she began to see, could be an anxious and onerous business. The lorries which passed under her bedroom night and day disturbed her sleep, as well as shaking her house to its foundations. But these things, she understood well enough, had been sent to try her: she would not give way to despair or complaint. And she was looking forward to the trip to Newmarket. Her father Andy had once taken her to the races before being barred the track, for some reason or another never made clear to her but bitter enough at the time. He’d promised to take her every birthday, but she only went the once, when she was nine. After the arrival of the cheque her parents had fallen silent, apart from a postcard from Monte Carlo, which said nothing about their returning home. Andy’s run of gambling good luck still held, apparently.
So here was Shanty, trying to get sixteen people into five Rolls-Royces, all parked in Peckhams’ forecourt and holding up a string of Peckhams vans with deliveries or collections to do, and changing his mind faster than he could make it up, in spite of the list in his hand, carefully thought out by his office administrator Janice and approved only the day before yesterday by Shanty himself. But he and Janice had quarrelled yesterday, it seems; she has been demoted to the office administration pool and he no longer trusts her judgement. Office rumour has it that she revealed a boyfriend he didn’t know about. And he is probably flustered by the presence of his wife Hen, who always manages to make him feel like a naughty little boy and behave like a bully.
‘Pay attention,’ says Shanty. ‘Let’s have a little organisation here, shall we! Four to each car: ladies, take your hats off once you’re in place. Nothing worse than a poke in the eye. Henrietta, I want you in the second car with Tony, and Mr and Mrs Snape. Everyone’s hat in the boot of car number one, please.’ But the ladies decline to be so far removed from their hats, and the chauffeurs have already got out to open the boots when it turns out the hats won’t fit in without crushing anyway, so the seating has to be arranged according to size of hat.
‘Carmen, not in car number two, after all; you’d better be in car number one with me and Henry and when Ronnie Cartwright has the courtesy to turn up he can be in car number one too.’ Carmen’s heart lurches. She hasn’t known Ronnie is coming. She is wearing a pink confection of a dress she happened to find in Oxfam − it says on the label Zandra Rhodes, but she can hardly believe that − and a white cartwheel hat, and looks, as Mr Snape says when Mrs Snape isn’t in earshot, a million dollars. She’s glad about the length of her legs, and her feet are comfortable once more in her best shoes, seventy-two pounds’ worth, which she hasn’t worn since her escape from Bellamy House. And not a zit anywhere in sight! She looks wonderful; a little flouncy and wispy for her own taste, but it seems to suit everyone else okay. Even Shanty, who
seems to have gone off her lately, and shuts her up rather cruelly at Board meetings whenever she ventures an opinion on staff morale or the profit-sharing scheme which never materialises, is attentive, and Hen bites her lip a little, so Carmen distances herself from Hen’s husband as much as she can. Shanty is feeling the loss of Janice and is looking for a replacement. So much is clear.
Carmen murmurs in defence of Ronnie, ‘I suppose major clients are allowed to be late. That’s the whole point of being a major client,’ and Shanty just smiles and says, ‘Discourtesy is discourtesy, no matter what you say, Carmen. And profit is the point, the whole point, and the only point, and don’t you forget it, my dear. Remember that and you’ll go far. Mr and Mrs Snape, I need you in car two, not three. Philip, what are you doing in car four? This list is hopeless.’
Hen says mildly, ‘Couldn’t I sit next to you, Shanty? I was so looking forward to today,’ and Shanty replies, ‘Mr Snape will think you’re being rude to him, dear, and please remember this isn’t a party, it’s a window of opportunity. Mrs Abhill, if you can’t manage your hat on your lap there is no point in you getting in next to Philip –’ and so on and so forth, until they are all packed in, and still Ronnie Cartwright has not arrived, though there is just the one place vacant next to Carmen in car number one.
Then the BMW nosed in front of the line of waiting vans. Driver was at the wheel. In the back were Ronnie Cartwright and Poppy. Poppy was wearing a smooth green silk suit and a little black pillbox hat with a veil, and looked soignée and well defined: almost as if a black line had been drawn around her to make sure she got proper attention. Driver opened the door for Poppy with a flourish. Out she stepped, with Ronnie close behind her.
‘Are we late?’ asked Poppy. ‘I hope we haven’t held people up? Ronnie had a puncture. I told him he would but he wouldn’t listen. This nice gentleman passed and gave us a lift. Which car are we in?’
‘Oh dear, one extra,’ said Shanty.
‘Ronnie never goes anywhere without me,’ said Poppy. ‘Do you, Ronnie? He can’t cope. He’s hopeless. I even have to do his Head Office reports. Come on, Ronnie, everyone’s waiting.’
Shanty said to Carmen, ‘Sorry about this, Carmen, we’ll have to leave you behind.’
And Carmen had to get out and let Ronnie and Poppy in, and off the procession of cars went, leaving her standing in her Zandra Rhodes dress and the cartwheel hat in the middle of Peckhams Poultry’s forecourt.
‘Well?’ said Driver.
‘Well what?’ enquired Carmen.
‘Would you like a lift to Newmarket?’
‘No thanks,’ she said.
‘If you’re still set against Sir Bernard,’ said Driver, ‘I have one or two others to offer.’
‘You mean others you’ve made promises to you can’t keep, for shortage of virgins.’
‘Virgins schmirgins,’ he said.
Now this conversation comes out of my head, not Carmen’s. I can tell you she was pretty stunned, standing there in her gauzy dress, the hot August sun beginning to mount in the sky, and the lines of van and truck drivers hooting and hooting, wanting to offload and load – for their cargoes, living and dead, were beginning to suffer from creeping warmth – but unable to do so until Driver moved his BMW.
‘Since you’ve taken away from me the only man I ever wanted,’ said Carmen, stamping her pretty foot, as heroines are meant to do – she found herself doing it in spite of herself: thus rejection, outrage and anger were turned to a mere charming petulance – ‘I’ll stay single for the rest of my days.’
‘We’ll see about that,’ he said. ‘That is a nice dress you’re wearing.’
‘Oxfam,’ she said. ‘My own money, my own choice!’
‘Oh yes,’ he said. ‘Just happened to be on the rail, never worn, fitting perfectly, twenty-five pence, just the thing for Newmarket. Happens all the time, doesn’t it, or is it the Devil’s own luck?’
She had to agree it was the Devil’s own luck, and got in beside him, if only to stop the van drivers hooting, and to keep Peckhams’ production line going, in spite of the absence of managers.
Inside the car everything was dark green, and cool, and quiet, as if she were in the middle of a very, very old wood.
‘Where are we going?’ she asked.
‘Wherever you like,’ he said.
‘Then take me to Laura’s,’ she said.
‘How boring,’ he said, but he changed direction: Traffic lights − as roadworks continued in the area, red lights abounded − always turned green at his approach.
‘How about royalty?’ asked Driver, and a male hand with a massive gold Gothic ring on its middle finger crept up from behind and laid itself on Carmen’s knee. She looked behind her and saw a suave and smiling face, and written on it all the petulance of those born to power. ‘Red carpets wherever you go?’
‘I’m a republican,’ she said, and the hand seemed to melt away.
‘I could offer you a diplomat,’ said Driver. ‘Speaks eight languages.’ Carmen turned to see who was sitting behind her and there sat Sergei Moscowitch, whom she had seen many a time on TV, speaking to his tormented nation, though she couldn’t remember which one, with his pale intelligent face and dark eyes set in deep sockets, and bags under the eyes the like of which she had never seen. On TV make-up had made little of them. ‘And the gift of tongues for you thrown in,’ said Driver.
‘Everyone speaks English anyway,’ said Carmen. ‘Why should I bother?’ And Sergei vanished, to be replaced by Rollo Hopper from Hollywood, laid back, bronzed, amazingly handsome in a white-toothed, gold-embossed kind of way. And he too she had seen many a time on TV and at the cinema.
‘How about Hollywood?’ asked Driver. ‘You could be a star.’
‘It all ends up with drink and drugs,’ said Carmen, and she thought she heard Rollo snarl, except there were all three of them now in the back seat, smiling: royalty, the diplomat and the star.
‘Forget the judgement of Paris,’ said Driver, ‘this is the judgement of Carmen. The woman’s turn.’
‘In that case,’ said Carmen, ‘I choose none of them.’
There was a flash of light to end all flashes of light and the car door flew open.
‘You and your flashes of light!’ said Carmen.
‘You haven’t seen trouble yet,’ he said. ‘You and your precious friends.’
‘Look into my eyes,’ she sang, in her newly melodious voice. ‘Look into my heart. When I look inside you all I see is the freezer a week after the power’s gone off. Everything soggy and rotten and putrid!’
The door slammed behind her, and off Driver roared. Oddly, he was driving a sports coupé – one of those anti-children vehicles in which the back-seat passengers (two’s company, three’s a crowd) can only sit with their knees to their chin — and how Royalty, Diplomacy and Hollywood could have sat so comfortably there was no explaining.
Carmen marched up the path – there’d been a particularly nasty fall of dust that day as some gentle hill, a rarity in those parts, to windward, had been exploded the quicker to level the ground – and banged on Laura’s front door. A cacophony arose inside – the noise of startled and excited children. Laura opened the door. Carmen kicked off her dusty shoes and made for the telephone. Laura tried on the shoes, but her feet were far too wide. She wore a flowered smock, and the baby had been sick down her back. ‘I say, Carmen,’ Laura said. ‘Just look at you! All dressed up and nowhere to go!’
‘I want a taxi,’ said Carmen to the phone. ‘I want it now. Newmarket − yes, Newmarket. Is that a problem? I know it’s a long drive. No, I can’t go by train. What kind of taxi outfit are you, suggesting people go by train? God,’ she said to Laura, ‘this place is the pits and getting worse.’
‘It’s Dullsville,’ said Laura sadly. ‘Let’s-get-out-of-here-ville. Always was. What about me?’
‘You just get on changing the nappies, Laura,’ said Carmen. ‘You wanted kids, you got them. I wanted true love and I
see no sign of it arriving… Oh, and I don’t want a driver who smokes… Okay, you win, if he’s the only one, so what the hell!’
She gave Laura’s address and put the phone down.
‘Newmarket!’ said Laura, awed.
‘It isn’t what it was,’ said Carmen. ‘Anyone can go these days, even Peckhams. It’s all PR. Except I want to go and I mean to go and I’d be on my way now if it wasn’t for Poison Poppy.’
‘At least she’s in your life now,’ said Laura, ‘not in mine, and just you make sure you keep her there. She ruined my father. She killed my mother.’
‘Don’t exaggerate. And stop blaming other people.’
But Laura was peering inside Carmen’s dress for the label.
‘Zandra Rhodes!’ she marvelled.
‘Oxfam,’ disclaimed Carmen.
‘You’re winding me up,’ said Laura. ‘So, who paid for it?’
‘I did.’
Laura was trying to feed Baby Sara with cereal with one hand and keep Alexandra on the breast with the other, and making a bad job of both.
