by Weldon, Fay
‘Tell her she’s going to be okay,’ said Carmen; she had hoped to hear of a miraculous recovery; she was disappointed not to.
‘We don’t take messages,’ said Staff Nurse. ‘This isn’t any old ward, this is Intensive Care. We’re too busy.’
‘Just tell her,’ said Carmen.
‘But it mightn’t be true,’ said Staff Nurse, and Carmen recognised the voice. It was Antoinette Ridley, of course, who had been at school with Carmen, passed all her exams and clearly been passing them ever since. ‘Anyway,’ said Staff Nurse, ‘we have a lot of people in here who really do need attention.’
‘So does Annie,’ protested Carmen.
‘Anorexia!’ jeered Staff Nurse. ‘A self-inflicted disease. I’ve no patience with it,’ and put down the phone, and it was clear to Carmen that no-one was really out of the woods yet. Driver was holding Annie as a hostage to good fortune. Antoinette Ridley was famous for drowning her sister’s pet guinea pig because it had chewed a hole in her best jumper. Antoinette had not been popular: she was too clever and seldom smiled.
Carmen went into the bathroom and tried on what had once been Mrs Baker’s best dress. She hoped Driver would turn up soon.
‘Moulds itself to your figure!’ said Raelene, coming in to find some aspirin, though in truth Carmen’s figure seemed to be moulding itself to the dress. ‘I’ve never seen you wear white. Mind you don’t drop anything down it. And whatever have you done to your hair?’
Carmen felt quite comforted. There were advantages to having her parents home again. It is better to be nagged than forgotten. She put her arms round Raelene, who was surprised but pleased. They seldom touched.
‘You’ve changed,’ said Raelene. ‘You used to be so prickly. We should go away more often, your dad and me. That chauffeur fellow was round again this afternoon asking for you. He said he’d call back at seven. I’m sure I’ve seen him somewhere before.’
And she puzzled about it a little and then seemed to come to a worrying conclusion. Since her leg had been in plaster, and she’d had nothing to do but eat, she’d put on at least a stone. Her flowered blouse strained over her bosom.
‘Carmen,’ she said, ‘I don’t want you to have anything to do with that man. For all you know he’s a close relation.’
‘You mean he’s my father?’
‘Of course I don’t mean he’s your father. He’s much too young. Your father’s my age or older. He has to be. I was only sixteen when it happened.’
‘You mean he’s my half-brother?’
‘I’m saying no more,’ said Raelene. ‘Just there is a resemblance.’ It occurred to Carmen that if her unknown father had been in the habit of fathering children, any number of young men in Fenedge might be her close relation, her half-brother, but she supposed that was the same for any young woman, any place, any time. You just had to take your genetic chances.
‘Right little cuckoo in the nest,’ said Raelene. ‘You never fitted and it was no one’s fault but my own.’
She wept a little into Carmen’s shoulder, so Carmen took off the dress, put her jeans and bomber jacket back on and went downstairs to make her mother a cup of tea. It is never nice to discover you are not who you thought you were, but it has its compensations. She felt more charitably towards her father and towards Stephen, knowing they were only half the responsibility they had been, and fetched them cans of lager quite happily when they shouted through to the kitchen for them. Let them go to hell their own way: she was three quarters there already; who was she to protest? ‘Sugar?’ she asked Raelene, preparing to spoon it in, but Raelene said no, she’d have a sweetener, she was going on a diet.
On her way home from the hospital, Carmen had put her hand in her jeans pocket and found a ten-pound note there. On impulse she’d gone into Boots and spent it on cosmetics; the expensive kind, not tested on animals. Her face would have to live up to Mrs Baker’s dress. But Boots must have given her someone else’s bag because now when she opened it up in the kitchen she found it to be full of even more expensive creams, and essences and perfumes, as well as a far fancier brand of make-up than she’d dream of using; and a little black beaded bag − a free offer, but not too bad − inside which was what could only be a packet of condoms.
She thought she’d call the whole thing off it was so vulgar and just go to the cinema instead and not be there at all when Driver turned up, but on her way to the door she heard Raelene telling Andy to shut up, Mavis was on the phone, and Mavis had been to the hospital and Staff Nurse had said Annie was back on the critical list, and this was the worst day of Mavis’s life.
‘Might be the worst day of Annie’s life,’ said Stephen, who had a keen ear for parental insensibility if nothing else.
‘Not to mention the last,’ said Andy, and they both laughed.
There was nothing for it. She went back upstairs to fill the grimy bath − except someone seemed to have cleaned it lately − with appropriate essences, which were so oily that when she was in the bath drops of water slipped and slid off her skin as she lifted her arm to look at it: a long slim arm to match the legs. Her muscle tone was good, she noticed. Sell your soul to the Devil and never have to do aerobics again! The Devil was all short cuts: he did a good editing job on your life. In fact what he was really good at, Carmen decided, was turning people into the video of their life. He left out all the boring bits. When your soul was sold you would no longer have to live in real time; you would not have to cut your nails unless it was of dramatic import, or ever go to the toilet again (unless there was someone lurking there, to make it a good scene). You could open a teach yourself book and close it in the next frame, having learnt everything in it. She could tell Laura was good, so very far from losing her soul, because of all the slow, boring things she had to do, and do without any capacity to fast-forward, just plodding daily through nappies and baby food. She wondered if she, Carmen, would soon be able to rewind − replay lovemaking, pause at orgasm for ever; or would it be the newest technology, so it could switch itself to Play again after so many minutes on Pause, for fear of damaging the tape, just wobble and sparkle and begin again? But you could slow-rewind from time to time, if you were careful never to get to the end of the tape and so let yourself in for automatic fast rewind, which was presumably what happened when you were drowning and your life flashed before your eyes. You could stay young for ever, presumably by playing only the first section of the tape: and you wouldn’t end up bored, because you could constantly reedit events to make them more satisfactory. The thing was not to press the Eject tab inadvertently. Then Driver would step forward and retrieve the cassette of your life: claiming not just world rights in it but universal rights, rights throughout the universe, for all infinity (terms used in the contract I, Harriet, had to sign for Paramount when they were making the film of the life of the famous surgeon whose hand slipped when he was operating near my spine. They were buying me out of the film, not into it, not unreasonably. I used the three thousand dollars they paid me to buy my wheelchair). Then Driver would just stack the cassette in his video tidy along with all the others. All the world a screenplay, and all the men and women in it bit part players, and free will just a minimal chance of rewriting your own lines if the Director didn’t notice. Driver as Director: Mephistopheles become Videostopheles.
Carmen stepped out of her bath. She was used to Radox Herbal Salts in the water. She suspected that whatever was in the expensive green globs of liquid from the gold bottle discovered in her shopping bag was making her mind work faster than usual. It was not altogether pleasant: as if a million little sparks were making connections. She thought perhaps it was a side effect, something inadvertent: she didn’t think Driver had planned it: if you thought too much, what use would you be to a man like Sir Bernard? He wanted presumably what she could see now in the bathroom mirror, toothpaste-spattered as it was: a person, a female, settled down into a Madonna body, only with a stupid, pretty face − wide-set eyes, high forehead and bruised mouth,
and a Michael Jackson look about the eyebrow, and a Dallas hairstyle, and nails which even as she looked were turning from crimson-painted to palest pink. She did not think she could respect or admire a man who could only love a girl like her, but that was not the point. If she did not do what was expected of her, if she did not agree to take her proper place, lie down in front of him, be the missing jigsaw piece that made sense of the puzzle, the wind would blow so thick with sand through Fenedge that it would blot out the sun altogether. She had been called to the Devil’s safe house and had to go. The towel on the back of the door was clean and dry. Oh yes, her lucky day: everyone’s lucky day, even Annie’s. That it might be Annie’s good luck to die, her bad luck to live, was too hard to contemplate.
She put on lipstick and eye colour since it was there. She put on the dress, which made more sense of her face; or perhaps it was the cosmetics which did that. She took up the black bead bag, which would never have been her choice, and looked really stupid with the white dress, and went downstairs. It was five to seven. She had not been watching the clock. She suspected time had adjusted itself to her. As she went downstairs she heard Stephen say to Andy, ‘But we’ve just had this programme. Those cops were singing that song half an hour ago, I’ll swear it.’ They did not see Carmen pass. She had lost her visibility: perhaps it went with her singularity, and now she was to be like everyone else. She opened the door. There was no BMW.
The phone rang in the hall. Carmen went back inside. It was Laura. She said she’d taken matters into her own hands. She’d rung Tim in Southland, New Zealand. Mrs McLean had answered the phone: Laura reported the conversation to me the next day. I had to wait: since Annie’s return, I was further down her list of confidantes.
‘Mrs McLean,’ said Laura, ‘I don’t know what your son is playing at, but my friend Annie is dying for love of him. Can I speak to Tim?’
‘Men have died and worms have eaten them,’ said Mrs McLean surprisingly, ‘but not for love. And in the meantime our sheep are being eaten alive by a new kind of worm too and Tim’s seeing to them. So you can’t speak to him: he’s drenching.’
‘Tell him to stop drenching and get over here to Annie at once,’ said Laura.
‘I might at that,’ said Mrs McLean, even more surprisingly. ‘He’s miserable without her. Come to think of it, we all are. She made a lovely scone, when she put her mind to it. Whatever got into her? Was she ill?’
‘Yes, she was,’ said Laura. ‘She was anorexic’
There was a short silence, into which the waves of distance squeaked as the breathing of the two women bounced up to satellites and back again and the oceans that divided them washed over an earth somersaulting through space.
‘You can get like that,’ said Mrs McLean, ‘if you do too much baking. It happened to my sister. Now she’s fit for nothing but to play bridge. Is Annie bad?’
‘Yes,’ said Laura. ‘She might die,’ and she began to cry.
‘Whinge, whinge,’ said Mrs McLean, not unkindly. ‘All you pommy girls, always crying. I’ll see what I can do. No worries.’
Woodie had come in as she put the phone down and said it was a good thing they only knew people in Fenedge: if Laura wasn’t gadding about she was on the phone. The bill was atrocious.
‘I actually gave him a piece of my mind,’ said Laura to Carmen on the phone. ‘I don’t know what got into me.’
Laura said she’d been calling the other side of the world and would do the same thing again if Woodie went on whingeing, and keep the phone off the hook all night, what was more. What was Woodie playing at? All Woodie did these days was moan and groan and find fault. Why was he trying to put her, Laura, into the wrong? What was he doing so wrong that she, Laura, had to be worse than him, Woodie, in Woodie’s mind? Well? Woodie looked quite shocked. Was it Angela? And Woodie needn’t open his mouth to say she, Laura, was (a) jealous, (b) insane, because she, Laura, knew what was going on, and she, Laura, was fed up. If Woodie didn’t stop it at once she was walking out and leaving the children for him to look after, and Angela too. See how Angela’s sandwich business went if she was up to her armpits in kids.
‘You wouldn’t, would you?’ asked Woodie, impressed, and he was the old Woodie, marvelling at her, looking at her as if he were part of her, but that she was the best part. She hadn’t noticed that Woodie had of late stopped doing that; only now, when it began again, did she feel the lack of it.
‘I would,’ she said. ‘Well, I might.’
‘It wasn’t really anything,’ said Woodie. ‘Angela’s just like that. She has a good heart, and if you’re alone in the room with her it just seems so natural.’
‘Then don’t be alone with her ever again,’ said Laura, ‘or I’ll cut off what matters with the carving knife.’
‘I wouldn’t want to lose that,’ he said. ‘Or you. You were so busy with the kids I didn’t think you’d notice. I’m sorry. It’s stopped anyway. She likes older men, really. Whenever she was with me she talked about Kim.’
Laura said she didn’t want to know. She would take time to get over it but she supposed she would. She’d have to: what choice did she have?
All this Laura said into the phone while Carmen stood on first one high white satin heel, then the other. Raelene had lent her the shoes in which she had won the tango competition with Andy. Lucky shoes, she said.
‘So that’s my news,’ said Laura. ‘I just had to tell you. It’s better and worse. Better because it’s in the open, worse because now I have to get over it. How’s Sir Bernard?’
‘I’m seeing him tonight,’ said Carmen.
‘About time too,’ said Laura, without even asking what Carmen was wearing, so preoccupied was she with herself. ‘Woodie wants to take me out to dinner, but I’ve been so upset and my eyes are too puffy. But I feel kind of washed out and purified.’
‘I’m glad,’ said Carmen. The BMW was outside: Driver sounded the horn.
Alison was detaching me from my chair and into her car as the BMW drew up: always a difficult task − made by Alison to look so very difficult that passers-by would stop and help. Today Alison all but dropped me. I squeaked in alarm and Driver came over to help. His arms were strong. He looked at me as men seldom looked at me; as if anything were possible. He said nothing. He smiled: did what he had to, and returned to his car, leaving me quite breathless with desire, a sensation I have tried to train myself out of: better to be deaf to the speech of the space between the legs than to hear it, if the brain is in no position to relieve the body’s residual clamouring, stop its nagging.
‘I hate the way men patronise women,’ said Alison. ‘Who asked him for help anyway?’
Carmen came out of the house, radiant in white, and I mean that: it was a trick of the light, of course.
‘That girl’s got an aura,’ said Alison. ‘Eighty-seven years in the world and I’ve never seen an aura. Now I have. A white one too, very special. But isn’t that Carmen?’
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘Every town has its bad girl,’ said Alison, ‘but they don’t usually have auras. Fenedge is looking up.’
Her mother saw auras, said Alison to me on the way home. She’d sometimes pretended to do so herself, as a child, just to keep up, but it had never been true. An aura was a kind of light like a halo which shimmered around people, if only you had eyes to see. Sensitive people, as her mother was, could see them; the problem had clearly been that Alison just wasn’t sensitive. Auras came in different shades, depending upon the mood of the person wearing them and the beauty and feeling tone of that person’s soul, and white was the most spiritual and the most transcendent of the lot. Alison was glad she had finally seen one, and a white one too. Her mother had never seen a white aura; she’d complained about it: now her eyesight was so bad she never would. The incident had upset Alison. When she stopped talking about auras, she was silent all the way home. I think she was crying. It is upsetting when the old cry: there seems to be so little time for things ever to come righ
t for them. I cried too. I had, through Carmen, cast Driver as Mephistopheles, or Videostopheles, Satan of the new fictional world so many people lived in, or tried to, but only because I fancied him, this swaggering young man in uniform and breeches, and could never have him; never have anyone. I might as well be dead. I had gone to Chicago hoping never to come back, except in a coffin. A bad night for Alison, a bad night for me. The crone and the cripple, weeping into pillows for things that might have been and never would be now.
19
We will cheer ourselves up with Carmen’s sacrificial, soul-searing night out with Sir Bernard. The BMW took the old Fenedge-Winterton road, now widened and kerbstoned: the former beet fields were home to a new mixed housing and light industrial estate, prettily enough done in Disney style. The old trees had been bulldozed away to make room for filling stations and builders’ yards: and square office blocks, housing insurance agencies and banks, dry-cleaners and launderettes; there were TV aerials and satellite bowls everywhere.
‘It’s horrible what they’ve done round here,’ said Carmen.
‘You’ll come to like it,’ said Driver. ‘You’ll enjoy seeing people well housed and well serviced; you’ll know they’re happy and not likely to start revolutions. You won’t have to look at it anyway. You’ll be up there in Bellamy House. The rich have the best views.’
And he turned left and up the new private road to Bellamy House; here the developments stopped abruptly, and they were going through the old forest; branches meeting overhead, as if everything was as it always had been, and there was enough room in the world for everyone; and only the glitter of metal on the occasional treetop suggested a security system and alarms to keep out those not entitled to admire the serenity of nature. They reached the steel gates of Bellamy House itself: the BMW activated a response; they were admitted. The gardens were formal and tranquil: the moon was full, though Carmen could have sworn it had been new only yesterday. She did not suppose Driver could actually control the phases of the moon, but it was clear that he could control her perception of them. If he wanted her to see full, she would see full, and that was that. No wonder the First Sealord had had an observatory built, and installed a telescope, the better to define, measure, record and catalogue and by scientific method achieve a world not totally vulnerable to the vagaries of human perception. And now the telescope had gone, and the observatory been turned into guest bedrooms, it should have surprised no one that the moon could wax and wane out of turn, and what was seen or felt, sniffed or heard be taken as true enough.
