by Weldon, Fay
‘Rachel,’ said Carmen, ‘you’re old enough to feed Sara. Help your mother, for God’s sake.’
Rachel took the spoon and started delivering mouthfuls into Sara’s mouth. Sara, enchanted, stopped wheezing and swallowed obligingly.
‘Thank you, Carmen,’ said Laura humbly.
‘I just can’t bear inefficiency,’ said Carmen.
‘God knows what the fare to Newmarket will be,’ said Laura. ‘But enough to keep us in disposable nappies for a month.’
– At which point there was a bang on the door. It wasn’t the taxi driver but Mavis and Alan, and they were waving a wedding invitation on embossed white paper with silver edging. It named the day, three months hence, of Annie’s wedding.
‘We won’t come in,’ said Mavis. ‘We know how busy you are. Though time for guests, I see. How nice! The postman delivered yours to us by mistake, but now I’ve forgotten to bring it over. This one’s ours. But what’s the odds? You won’t be able to go, Laura, all that way − far too expensive. Or you either, I suppose, Carmen. You’ll be far too busy. She’s sent us return tickets. Club Class, of course. Well, she’s in the money now. There’s to be a marquee, two hundred and fifty guests.’
‘She didn’t write?’ asked Laura. ‘Just the invitation?’
‘I don’t think she’ll be writing to you much from now on,’ said Mavis. ‘People’s ways in life separate. Some reach up to the clouds (she meant Annie), others just drudge along (did she mean Laura?) and some coil down to the pit (she most certainly meant Carmen). But this we must accept – paths divide.’
Carmen had no time to retort, perhaps fortunately, for at this moment the taxi turned up, hooting his horn, smoking his fag out of the open window, and she had to leave.
Laura, Mavis and Alan watched her go in silence. Mavis said, ‘I never thought she was a proper friend for our Annie. She was bound to end up in trouble. What did they expect when they named her? Some people have no imagination.’
Alan said, ‘That girl is spoiled goods, there’s no mistaking it.’
Mavis said, ‘Speak no evil, hear no evil, see no evil, Alan.’
Alan said, ‘All I meant was, being spoiled goods, she might not find a husband so easily.’
Laura said, ‘Perhaps she doesn’t want a husband.’
Mavis said, quite startled, ‘Every woman wants a husband, that goes without saying. My surgery’s full to overflowing with widows wanting theirs back.’
‘Well,’ said Laura, ‘anyway, if Alan can just find the time, I’d love to have Annie’s wedding invitation. It can go on the mantelpiece and I can look at it and dream.’
The date of the wedding, Mavis told me, had finally been settled while Tim and Annie were enjoying a ski-plane ride up the Tasman Glacier in the Mount Cook district. I could imagine.
‘Don’t you just love this?’ asked Tim. The plane had flown up a wide desolate river valley between icy crags; it seemed to Annie an unnatural place; she had expected the glacier to provide some glittering spectacle of ice facets and frosted spears, the kind of landscape into which Superman in the film threw his learning module to make his crystal palace spring to life, but here was just a creeping valley – creeping backwards, she was told, as the glacier receded – made of blackish ice, a hundred and twenty metres thick, coated with gravel, everything so dead that to be alive seemed the offence. It made you feel too noisy yourself, and the sound of the plane was like the buzz of an insect which pesters you at night.
‘I just love this,’ she said, and beneath them, as if in response, the great river of ice turned white as they advanced, narrowed, became frosted, cut by crevasses which were the same blue as the wings of the teal on the estuaries back home, and the crags on the further side came closer, and ahead, towering above, was the Matte Brun peak (3,176 metres).
I know the depth of the ice and the height of the mountains because in the leaflet ‘Adventures for the Disabled’ ski-plane rides in the Mount Cook (3,764 metres) area are recommended. The invigorating effect of the mountain air and the thrill of the ride will do us good. So they say. Mount Cook’s Maori name is Aorangi or Cloud Piercer. Rangi the Sky Father and Papa the Earth Mother brought forth four Children of the Sky, all sons. Aorangi was the eldest; then came Rangiroa (Mount Dampier), Rangirua (Mount Teichelmann) and Rarangi-rua (Mount Silberhorn). The people of the earth live around the feet of what the white man called in his patronising way ‘The Southern Alps’, and the children of the clouds dwell around their heads or, as Annie discovered, rush straight into their rock walls in aircraft and then, this being the fun of it, bank steeply away with an inch or so to spare so there is nothing to be seen through their camera lens but jagged rock, should they still have their eyes open.
‘He’s gone mad,’ she cried to Tim. ‘Stop him!’ as the pilot, the plane still juddering from this first manoeuvre, dived headlong into a huge tonnage of snow which seemed to hang by a thread from a vertiginous wall and dislodged it so that it crashed a thousand feet below – she could hear its rumble above the sound of the engine and snow plastered the windscreen so the pilot was blind, but he didn’t care: now he was aiming upwards for the sky: he must be, for she was pressed far back in her seat, her mouth folded in against her teeth – but not open sky, oh no, for she could see crags on either side of them as the window cleared, jagged and seamed, so close she could touch them if she could move her arms, which gravity or fear kept pinioned to her sides. Not that she wanted to do either. She thought she passed out for a second or so.
‘Don’t be a scaredy-cat,’ Tim was saying. ‘This is a ski-plane ride. The pilot knows what he’s doing.’
‘Why?’ she thought. ‘But why is he doing it?’
‘The mountain of the Gods,’ said Tim. ‘These are the thrills of the Gods.’ He held her hand. His eyes were very bright; his nostrils were flared. He looked like this sometimes when they made love.
‘You okay?’ he asked.
‘I’m just fine,’ she said. Better to die with Tim than live without Tim, and the pilot banked and dived so the wing tips all but caught the jagged ice facets of the glacier and she found herself staring down into the blue-black depths of a crevasse, and she thought, well no, actually I want to live. If I have to live without Tim, still I want to live. An updraft of air caught the plane and tossed it up, out of control, and she screamed before she could say so.
‘Lucky that wasn’t a downdraft,’ said Tim to the pilot, and the pilot laughed.
‘You’re not nearly so close as you think,’ said Tim to Annie. ‘No worries. It’s a matter of perspective. The mountains are so vast up here metres always look like inches.’
‘Oh yes,’ she thought. ‘Oh yes,’ but aloud she said, ‘This is a million times better than a rollercoaster!’
Oh yes, thought I, reading my ‘Adventures for the Disabled’, what’s a thrill for some is a nightmare for others. No thanks.
The plane landed on its skis on the névé of the Franz Joseph Glacier: that is to say, the snowy flatlands from whence the glacier is sent creeping to the sea, a frozen river, or drawn back as the supply of snow diminishes. Tim and Annie had their photograph taken by the pilot. She was still trembling but was careful not to touch him so that he didn’t notice. Tim kissed her: her lips were steady enough.
‘Let’s set a date for the wedding,’ he said. She felt she had passed the last of the initiation tests. Her credentials for becoming a McLean wife had finally been established. The pilot offered them scones and tea from a hamper. She refused the scones. She was worrying that she might not fit into the McLean wedding dress. ‘Tell you what,’ said Tim, ‘for our honeymoon we’ll do a proper transalpine tramp. Up the Fox Glacier, across the Franz Joseph névé, over the Graham Saddle to Mount Cook village. It’s eight or nine days. Sometimes ten if the weather’s grungy. Mind you, you’ve got to be fit.’
‘How fit?’
‘The usual. Jog five kilometres without stopping, humping a fifteen-kilogram pack for an eight-hour day o
ver rough terrain.’
‘I expect I could do that,’ she said.
‘Well, go into training,’ said Tim, ‘and make sure. If Mum and Dad can spare us as long as that. Otherwise we could just go up to Glencoe for a couple of days. You meet a lot of outdoor types up there. A real kiwi holiday, that would be. Or we could do the MacKenzie High Country Walk. Three days of easy walking; not much to that. Five or six hours a day, with only personal gear to hump. Or we could do the Arthuis Pass Scramble. You’re surefooted enough for that by now, I guess.’
On the way back he said, ‘You’ve finally learnt not to whinge, Annie. I’m really proud of you.’
14
Shall we get back to Carmen’s wonderful day at Newmarket? Sun shone, flags waved, crowds thronged, horses paraded, sweated, rolled their eyes and tossed their manes; punters thrilled to victory or were cast down by defeat: millions of pounds changed hands: cheques bounced, bookies yelled, villains slunk, men drank themselves silly in the bar, and women, though there were fewer of them, drank themselves even sillier, and no doubt a lot of sex went on behind bushes or underneath the grandstands; a day at the races is like that − as smooth, sexy and brilliant as the satin of the jockeys’ colours. Too drastic for some tastes; excess and risk in the air, and underneath it all the heady suspicion of corruption. Who’s paying whom to pull this horse, dope that one? People whisper in each other’s ears; talk behind their hands; and small, hunted, thin-faced, weathered, elderly men – stable lads that is, thus dismissively referred to, those with actual working contact with the horses – dodge or doff their caps to everyone in sight. (Servility’s bred into them. They are offended by pay rises, so their masters aver. But they would, wouldn’t they?) Not poison in the golden goblet of the Borgias any more: just a little nasty something in the bran mash, as friend betrays friend, wife stabs husband, for the sake of the smooth-skinned beasts with the eyelashes and unsafe-looking legs, creatures who can’t even speak, can’t ever answer back. A horse-owning sheik, they say, has just built a palace for his steed a couple of miles outside Newmarket. The horse lives in marble rooms carpeted with the finest silk rugs: there are gold taps on his bath; he has full air conditioning. He lives better than any human around. But he doesn’t have his freedom, does he, folks? That’s meant to add up to something. He can’t leave his palace without help any more than I can leave my wheelchair. And he can’t even complain about it the way I can; all he can do is roll his large reproachful eyes.
Down Newmarket way, the fact that the Emperor Caligula declared his horse his successor makes perfect sense to everyone.
An outing to the races has become a favourite PR exercise for many a contemporary firm which wishes to give its client a memorable treat, and stengthen the bonds of trust and gratitude which from time immemorial, etc. have linked vendor to emptor. No doubt the Emperor Nero took the captains of his slave ships to his box at the Arena to watch the gladiators die, and next week beat down their asking price. No doubt the wily Emperor Diocletian, organising his triumph through Rome on the twenty-fifth anniversary of his reign, invited along the suppliers of Roman Purple, with which he was soon to subvert the Senate. (Someone’s dropped off twelve copies of Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire at the Centre. The print is tiny but the contents are absorbing, which is just as well. I have nothing else to do but read. No one takes me to Newmarket for the day. I have to imagine what’s going on: but perhaps it makes a better day out because it’s all in the head − who’s to say? I’m not.)
The marquee which was Peckhams’ for the day took its place in an encampment of others just like it – white canvas elegantly lined with enough tucked and pleated filmy fabric to put one in mind of the princely tents of the Bedouin. There were little gold tables and chairs, and a big TV perched up high to show the races in better detail and at greater length than the human eye could manage – for what do horses do as you press up against the rail but just thunder past; though the approaching and increasing roar of the crowd, reaching its praxis just where you stand, and then passing and fading thereafter, is no doubt excitement enough for some. A temporary tote had been set up in the corner, a booth staffed by two dutifully polite but bored women who had seen better days and better jobs, and a bar where champagne was served free for the first hour. After that you paid for yourself. How everyone drank!
Carmen’s taxi driver lost his way several times, so she arrived too late for the free drink, but was not short of offers of champagne from Peckhams’ management over lunch. Henrietta Cotton was courteous enough to say how pleased she was that Carmen had turned up: how bad she’d felt when Carmen had been left behind.
‘It’s usually me,’ she remarked, ‘it happens to.’
Shanty just said, ‘Glad you could make it, Carmen. Quite an initiative test, what?’
Poppy managed to keep an eye on Ronnie, dragging him away should he drift too near Carmen, while also, on and off, gazing into Shanty Cotton’s eyes. Shanty, who was becoming dangerously red in the face, kept chucking her under the chin and saying to Ronnie, ‘Wonderful taste you’ve got, Ronnie,’ or ‘I’d keep an eye on this one if I were you, Ronnie,’ or ‘How about coming aboard the Peckhams’ ship, Poppy?’ while she dimpled and clung. Carmen wondered how anyone could take Poppy seriously, but it seemed men did. While Carmen wore her cartwheel hat and Zandra Rhodes dress she could move only slowly and with dignity. Poppy’s pillbox hat was no trouble to Poppy at all. Henrietta sat in a corner under her straw brim and looked sad, but Shanty took no notice.
Driver was not there, but his emissaries were. None other than Prince Leopold stumbled into her as she clung to the rail, cheering, wondering quite what was going on, or which horse was which. He tipped her hat right off, falling to his knees before her the quicker to pick it up, his spaniel eyes adoring, slightly bloodshot, as the eyes of spaniels often are. Royalty on its knees before little Carmen Wedmore of Fenedge, East Anglia!
‘A thousand pardons,’ begged Prince Leopold, from his knees. ‘Kick me, whip me, beat me for my error. I deserve it. I shan’t complain. The charm, the grace of your dress: the beauty of your legs!’ Carmen moved them closer together: he was staring up them. ‘The elegance! Have you escaped perhaps from some royal party somewhere? It is where you rightly belong. Let me introduce myself. Prince Leopold of Croatia, nephew of the rightful monarch, soon to regain his throne. I am the only heir. Open your heart to me and the whole world will open up to you!’
Carmen took her hat and turned her back on him. When she looked over her shoulder he was gone. She went into the Ladies in order to leave her hat there, but someone ran after her with it, so she put it back on and watched a race or so, then returned to the marquee, where all Peckhams and its associates were singing the Whipperpool Song, still moaning on out of a dreadful Sinatra-ridden past:
‘We’re three little lambs who have lost our way,
Baa-baa-baa –
Gentlemen songsters out on a spree,
Doomed from here to eternity –’
‘God have mercy on such as we,’ said Carmen to Henrietta, who was joining in the singing, in a pitiful attempt not to be a wet blanket. Everyone who was anyone in the Poultry World sang and swayed that day, and swayed and sang, carried away by emotion, regret for time wasted and opportunities lost, and the need to drink to forget. A terrible, wistful, feathery melancholy seized them all.
Someone bumped Carmen’s elbow; none other than Rollo Hopper the film star: staring and smiling out of whisky fumes and cigar smoke, and the smell of fried onions from the catering van just outside the marquee: ‘Upper Crust Catering’.
‘Well, whaddya know,’ said Rollo Hopper, ‘the girl the whole world’s looking for, a star for the remake of Touch of Evil. Come with me to Hollywood and perhaps it will be you!’
‘And perhaps if I do I’ll get every social disease under the sun,’ she said, which could hardly be more impolite, and walked away, but he grabbed her arm, with considerable force for a phantom − for
such she assumed him to be.
‘Leave me alone,’ she said.
But he didn’t leave her alone. He had his hands down the front of her Zandra Rhodes dress: but not for long, because none other than Ronnie seized him and dragged him away, while Poppy said, ‘Don’t be so tactless, Ronnie. Can’t you see she’s enjoying it.’
‘God, these Europeans,’ said Rollo Hopper, ‘so primitive!’ and he hit Ronnie backwards into a trestle table carrying petits fours and individual strawberry mousses: Ronnie rallied and punched Rollo, but Rollo got Ronnie’s head somehow tucked under his arm and hit him in the eye and then shoved poor stunned Ronnie right into the bar table, so that glasses and bottles broke and women screamed and the bartender swore and the girl at the tote shut up shop in a hurry, though there were two races yet to go.
‘Sorry, darling,’ said Rollo Hopper to Carmen, ‘no big time on the screen for you. You blew that one!’ and loped off, flexing his muscles. Carmen helped Ronnie to his feet but Poppy intervened and led him away to the washroom, saying, ‘Darling, you’re not very strong, are you!’, but not before Ronnie had managed to say to Carmen, ‘Look, give me a call at my office some time –’
The party broke up. Carmen’s décolletage was considered by all to be the cause of the trouble, and perhaps indeed it was. The bodice was ripped in a way that she could not understand, for Rollo Hopper had really hardly got a hold on it. The management limousines departed without her, as they had arrived. She was left standing in the littered desolation, like Ruth amongst the alien corn – alone except for the barman, and the barman when he turned to face her had Driver’s eyes and spoke with Driver’s voice. ‘Come on,’ said Driver, ‘I don’t believe this. Give me a reason. I’ve offered you two men currently on Vogue’s Most Eligible Bachelor list. The third, the diplomat, I did not pursue because I could understand your reluctance: women are vain and whimsical so I can alter their looks at the drop of a hat, but men have their dignity.’
