by Weldon, Fay
‘I’m working on it,’ said Driver grimly.
‘There’s someone in this world for everyone,’ said Sir Bernard. ‘My problem is not in being loved; it’s in finding someone worth my loving. It’s just a question of finding her. And for this, I grant you, a man needs luck.’
‘Thanks a million,’ said Driver. His lips were quite thin and bloodless, but Sir Bernard was thinking only of the muscles of his upper arms, the stretch in his spine.
‘Whatever happened to the girl back home?’ asked Sir Bernard, dropping to the floor, lithe and light, his one hundred and seventy-five seconds up. It seemed that Carmen’s rejection of him had been erased from his mind. But this often happens: who needs Mephistopheles to misremember the past? Ask any girl who’s just met up with an old flame: or man, ditto.
‘The one with the tits?’ asked Driver.
‘That is not how I think of her,’ said Sir Bernard. ‘It was her soul I responded to.’
‘Well,’ said Driver, ‘as I say, I’ve been working on it, but she’s not easy.’
‘I should hope not,’ said Sir Bernard, and then, forgetting to whom he was talking, if he was ever quite sure, because of the changing shape of Driver, sometimes evanescent, sometimes in the head, sometimes real and cold and eternal as rock, ‘I’m disappointed in you, Driver. All promises and no delivery. If that was how Bellamys carried on, we certainly wouldn’t be top of the tree today. Hurry it up, if you please. I’ve been patient long enough. Now the Eastern Scheme’s underway, it’s time to think about romance. I need a life partner – a mother for my children. See to it.’
At which the phone rang and it was Jed Foster reporting to the very top the presence of skeletons and artefacts in the Eastern Scheme and asking for guidance.
Sir Bernard ascertained that the site was well enough concealed for the time being and said he’d be down with his driver the following morning to make a decision.
‘A lesser man,’ observed Sir Bernard to Driver, ‘would have said, “Bury the lot and be done with it,” but the world needs its visionaries.’
‘You mean there might be more profit in an archaeological theme park than a marina?’ asked Driver.
Sir Bernard’s eyes brightened. He hadn’t thought of that.
‘We’ve got to get out of here,’ said Laura. ‘It’s the pits.’
‘Dullsville, Arizona,’ said Carmen. ‘We’ve got the small-town blues again.’
‘At least it’s home,’ said Annie, and burst into tears. They were in the Welcome-In, opposite what is now the Otherly Abled Centre: catching up, as they said, with one another.
‘He was such a pig when it came to it,’ said Annie. ‘He was taking advantage of me, that was all. I thought he was one man and he turned out to be another. I feel such a fool.’
‘You’re sure you’re not just being paranoid?’ asked Carmen.
‘Everyone does housework,’ said Laura. ‘It’s part of the bargain.’
‘What bargain?’
‘Marriage.’
‘I wasn’t even married,’ wailed Annie. There was no reasoning with her. She took her coffee black and refused fudge cake.
I’d watched Annie’s return to Landsfield Crescent. Alan and Mavis had been grudging in their welcome.
‘We’d have come to meet you,’ said Alan, ‘but we had to sell the car. Your mother needed clothes for the wedding. All those smart people. And now there isn’t even going to be one. Couldn’t you have given us more notice? It was inconsiderate of you, Annie. But then consideration was never your strong point.’
‘We can put you up on the sofa, Annie,’ said Mavis, ‘but I can tell you I’ve just about had enough of lugging your suitcases around.’
Alan said, ‘I hope you won’t be unpacking them, Annie. There’s no spare cupboard space.’
‘What happened to my room?’
‘Count Capinski’s using it for psychic therapy,’ said Mavis.
Alan said, ‘Annie, you are our daughter. Nothing can change that. But you have to live your own life. You’re a big girl now and able to make your own decisions. Laura’s only your age and she’s got four children. We gave you a good start, but you can’t be in our pockets all the time. I have a lot on my plate at the moment. I am changing gauges.’
Annie had a little rest on the sofa to get the feeling of being back home – she was very tired. No one asked her what had gone wrong, or why. Mavis seemed to relent and brought her a cup of tea and a slice of shop cake on a plate. Annie took the tea black and puked at the sight of the cake.
Count Capinski observed out of Mavis’s mouth, ‘Your daughter has another self inside her, dear lady, not a very nice one. She is trying to starve it out. She is to be congratulated,’ so Mavis made no attempt to encourage Annie to eat, and Alan was preoccupied with his trains, and besides she had let them both down in the eyes of the neighbours: this pale thin cuckoo of a girl who they’d somehow given birth to, sent home in disgrace from far across the world. Who would marry her now?
Now Annie, Carmen and Laura sat in the Welcome-In Café beneath the awful paintings of local artists, and bemoaned their fate; how every path they took led them back home again and how strange this destiny was. (It is of course not so strange a fate at all: most people die in more or less the same place as they were born, while struggling to get out of it.) But Annie’s return had come like a shower of rain on the desert of their discontent and how it now leapt into life and bloomed; stretching up to heaven like the beanstalk in Jack’s morning garden (if you’ll forgive the mixing of metaphor) blocking out enough light to bring Driver right to their door, without any of the usual preamble. There he was, his face pressed against the steamy glass of the Welcome-In Café, his sharp nose flattened, his tongue out, his grimace lecherous, a little trail of saliva beneath his chin, and how they jumped!
I jumped too because I noticed that Driver’s BMW was parked outside what was soon to be the Otherly Abled Centre, under my window, and the double yellow lines along the kerb had mysteriously disappeared beneath its wheels. Though I thought that might be Alison’s doing – it is her trick to go out at night with a pot of grey paint and a paintbrush the better to facilitate the morning’s parking. How the rain pelted down! And today the BMW looked particularly sinister – not at all the kind of vehicle driven by a rich man in a hurry, but the kind that carries you off to hell: water streamed off its bonnet, glistening in the fluorescent glow of the neon lights that were attached in far too great a number for safety to the crumbling plaster ceiling of the Centre’s Day Room. The building dated, I suppose, from the seventeenth century, and was badly in need of major refurbishment. Rocky on its pins. Better rocky, of course, than not on them at all.
‘It’s him,’ said Laura in panic. ‘It’s Driver.’
‘We were wishing ourselves away again,’ said Annie in terror.
Carmen went to the door and tried to throw it open, but it stuck and quivered, being swollen by the rain, so that the limp bleached gingham of the blue and white café curtains shook down dust and dead flies: the gesture was not nearly so dramatic as she would have wished. She tugged again and it opened and there stood Driver steaming beneath his umbrella. Carmen had shrunk an inch or two, or he had grown.
‘Voyeur!’ she accused him all the same, courage personified, although she trembled. ‘Staring through windows! I’ll report you to the police.’ She had the sense that as she defied him she lengthened and he shrank. He changed his mind and decided to be nice and not strike her dead; at any rate he smiled and his yellow eyes even faded to a quite reasonable blue.
‘That’s my girl, Carmen,’ he said. ‘It’s only me, Sir Bernard’s chauffeur, not some stranger. And a man can look at pretty girls, can’t he, without the world coming to an end?’ He strolled in and shook himself like a dog, and the raindrops that spattered all around the room burnt little black holes where they fell, as if they were sparks. Not that Eddie, the fat man with glasses who served the coffee, noticed, or not till a we
ek later when he got round to sweeping up. The Welcome-In Café may not be as bad as I describe. I can only guess. Others go in and enjoy themselves; not me: no one’s going to take me over there.
‘So howdie, Laura,’ he said. ‘Where are the kids? Got a baby-sitter again? All this gadding about: it’ll come to a bad end. Why have kids if you’re not going to look after them?’
Laura opened her mouth to protest, but Annie nudged her quiet.
‘And how are you, Annie?’ he said. ‘Back from abroad, I hear. Bit of a comedown, isn’t it? Bride sent home on the eve of her wedding? Everyone’s talking.’
Tears of humiliation and resentment sprang to Annie’s eyes.
‘As to little virgin Carmen,’ said Driver, ‘for virgin read spinster. The one who no one wants. The one left on the shelf. The one with a real problem.’
‘My mother said,’ observed Carmen primly, ‘if you can’t say anything nice don’t say anything at all,’ at which he snarled and rumbled a little and then said, ‘Your mother never said anything like that, Carmen. I know your mother well, and if you’re like a daughter to me now you know why,’ and while Carmen gaped he pressed home his advantage, saying, ‘Sir Bernard asked me to ask you, Carmen, if you’d have the goodness to dine with him in the next week or so.’
‘No,’ said Carmen.
‘Why not?’ He stamped his foot, or pawed with his hoof, or was it just that a very large grey truck rumbled by? In any case the ground shook.
‘I don’t like his messenger,’ said Carmen. ‘Coming in here steaming –’
‘Carmen,’ said Laura, ‘just a dinner − please!’
And Annie said plaintively, ‘We’ve been so unlucky, Carmen.’ Carmen turned to look quite savagely at Laura, and at Annie. Driver laughed and said, ‘Only a fool has friends. You’ll change your mind, you’ll see. I’ll be back for you a fortnight today.’
Carmen said, ‘I’d rather die,’ and someone came in to ask if Driver could move the BMW because it was blocking the road. He left the Welcome-In obligingly, as if he were just an ordinary chauffeur in a rather military-style uniform. He moved his BMW from outside my window: the truck driver, who had been manoeuvring to get by, inch by inch, and failed, moved into reverse gear instead of into first and backed through the window at which I sat, bending metal, shattering glass. I had just time to get out of my wheelchair and away, before the truck driver, in his panic, engaged the tipping mechanism and delivered an entire load of what turned out to be balsawood blocks into the room. The wood was so light that no one was hurt. That was fortunate, as everyone said, but I felt it was a matter of degree. Far more fortunate for it not to have happened in the first place. What surprised everyone most, however – the handicapped (as we used to call ourselves, as if human beings were engaged in some kind of race) are more accustomed than most to putting up with circumstances suddenly beyond their control – was that as the lorry crashed through I had got out of my wheelchair and run across the room. I couldn’t repeat the action, though of course I tried. But it had happened, and been witnessed. Dr Grafton denied its possibility and said it was a group hallucination: in fact my chair had been at the back of the room, away from the window, but then he would say that, wouldn’t he? Or Grafton was convinced that I had earned my disability by having undergone an abortion in my youth. (Well, that is to say, the baby underwent it, not me.) I rashly mentioned the event to him as part of my medical history on first coming to Landsfield Crescent and joining his panel of patients.
‘Well, there you are,’ he’d said. ‘That’s what it’s all about, then.’ Dr Grafton didn’t approve of abortion, and felt that the Otherly Abled should just sit or lie quiet and put up with whatever card fate had dealt them. Dr Grafton, in other words, was what used to be called a fatalist; not a good thing, if you ask me, for a doctor to be. But he was the only one around who could write prescriptions which released drugs from the chemist, if he could be so persuaded, and he did at least take an interest.
18
It was a month before the Centre was reopened under its new title, the The Otherly Abled Resource Centre. There was much dispute between the insurance companies and the Council as to who was to pay for what in the general refurbishment of the Centre, and even some suggestion that the disabled should be left to fend for themselves and the building reopened as a tourist information centre to service Sir Bernard’s new Eastern Coastline Development, but in the end reasonable funds were made available. The Centre was reopened, its exterior unchanged but renovated to suit the conservationists, its interior intelligently converted to provide proper ramps for wheelchairs, a kitchen fitted out to suit our needs and a physiotherapy room. There was a heated pool in the garden and easy access to the back door for dropping off and even parking. The Mobile Library came twice a week and we now had an ever-changing supply of recently published books, and read what we wanted to, not what we were obliged to, and were bored as a result. And I knew all these things to be a blessing, but nevertheless many of us lamented the gritty energies of the haphazard past, when we had so much to complain about: it is very boring to have bureaucracy as an ally; it is more fun to have it as an enemy. But this is not my story. I will go back to Laura, Annie and Carmen, and what transpired in my absence from the Centre. The tale goes as follows:
‘You’ll see,’ the Devil had said to Carmen, ‘you’ll soon change your mind,’ and it was certainly true that domestic matters, bad enough already, took a turn for the worse.
Carmen went home to find her parents in residence and herself, like Annie, relegated to the sofa in the living room.
‘Dark, pokey little place, this,’ said Raelene. ‘From what you wrote, I thought it was going to be something special. And filthy! Couldn’t you have got something better with the money? Well, we’ll just have to make the best of it. Your dad and I have had enough of travels. We’re home for good, you’ll be glad to hear. How about a cup of tea, Carmen? We’re parched.’
She had a leg in plaster – it seemed she’d had a very nasty break, tumbling down one of those steep flights of steps used to disembark passengers from aircraft if there isn’t space in the bays. She’d just been unlucky, they said: nothing inherently dangerous in the steps: millions used them daily without disaster. No, it hadn’t hurt much: she’d had a drink or two on the flight. It did mean she’d have to be waited on. And what was a daughter for but to help her old mother in the hour of her need?
‘Mum,’ said Carmen, ‘I suppose Andy is my father?’
Raelene turned pink, then white, and said of course he was; who’d been talking out of turn? She refused to say any more, on the grounds that it wasn’t fair to Andy, who’d always been a good father to her, so that Carmen felt she’d somehow pulled a carpet out from under her own, Carmen’s, feet. Her whole existence, she now understood, rested on so shaky and shifting a foundation it was hardly surprising her body kept changing shape in its attempt to keep its balance. She might be anyone’s, she could see, from the Devil’s child to the milkman’s, and had always known it in her heart. If she pressed Raelene, she would just be told that Raelene had no idea at all who her father was; she’d been conceived in an alley at the back of a pub somewhere, by-product of fun with a stranger, and she didn’t want confirmation of it. So she dropped the subject.
Andy and Stephen sat drinking beer in front of the telly and working out betting systems. At least Andy had got rid of Paul. He wanted no punks in his house, he said. Idle layabouts, the lot of them.
And not only was home invaded: the trouble spread to work as well. Carmen went to Mr Snape, the Personnel Manager, as she did from time to time to ask for the morning off to go to the dentist, though what she intended to do was to go round to Laura’s to cheer her up. Mr Snape looked embarrassed and said that dental and medical appointments must henceforth be made outside working hours; otherwise proper confirmation in the form of a letter would be required, and adequate notice of intent would have to be given.
‘Since when?’ aske
d Carmen, and who but Poppy should step out of the shadows to say, ‘Since I went on the management team, Miss Wedmore. You will, I imagine, already have noticed some changes. Peckhams is now a slim, efficient, cost-effective organisation. We are about to announce staff cuts at ten per cent of total levels; we will achieve this wherever possible by natural wastage, but there will inevitably be some compulsory redundancies as Peckhams moves to face the recession and falling markets. Times are hard. We may even go on to short-time.’
‘But we’ve just announced a twelve-million pound profit,’ said Carmen. ‘I thought we were doing so well!’
‘I’m glad you have the concept of “we”,’ said Poppy. ‘Peckhams expects loyalty from its staff, and does its best to deserve it. The profit-share principle has proved unworkable, alas; that is to be withdrawn in favour of achievement-related bonus incentives, and the presence of staff members on the Board is no longer deemed necessary: the numbers were proving cumbersome. The smaller the management team, the more efficient.’
‘You mean no more outings to Newmarket for me,’ said Carmen, and Poppy smiled, but her eyes were remarkably cold and hard. ‘I think when you say that,’ said Poppy, ‘you go straight to the heart of Peckhams’ problems, don’t you think so, Mr Snape? Too many employees out for themselves, grabbing what they can get, not working for the greater good.’
Poppy was having an affair with Shanty Cotton. Everyone knew. She had been seen advancing on him, little frilly skirt up to her waist, wearing no knickers, in his office after hours: while he backed away, crimson in the face, terrified but helpless. A cleaner had barged in on them and reported the incident to the whole works canteen, and might not have been believed had she not been fired that very week for negligently performing her duties and putting product hygiene at risk. Everyone knew she was the best and most responsible of all the cleaners. Carmen tried to persuade her to sue for unjustifiable dismissal but she refused. ‘I know when I’m beaten,’ she said. ‘That young woman is the Devil’s spawn, and if I were you,’ she added, ‘I’d get out too. She’s got it in for you. I’ve overheard a thing or two.’ Which only made Carmen the more determined to stay; the more determined to face and surmount whatever further problems Driver had in store for her. For the more she thought about Sir Bernard – and she did think about him, studying his face in the newspaper or on the TV screen, for the Eastern Scheme was attracting a great deal of media attention – the less willing she felt to oblige Sir Bernard, enemy of her native heath, let alone Driver. If it was her fate to remain loveless all her life – she had no doubt but that Driver kept suitors at bay – so be it. She had rashly kept company with Driver, shared an oyster and a conversation or so with him, accepted car rides here and there and he had eaten a little way into her soul; she could only hope that given time it would repair itself.
