by Weldon, Fay
She trusted us, and it made our responsibility the greater.
Leslie’s chauffeur strode up the path, “crushing ants with every step,” as Rosalie later complained. She was forty-five-ish; she wore what looked like combat fatigues. She was over six feet tall. She did not seem the kind to linger over Vinnie’s five-course lunch, to properly savor the peasant harshness of the local wine. We sighed in our hearts; our meal was ruined, the serenity of the day gone.
Leslie Beck introduced her as Lady Angela Pettifer. The Rolls was hers: she was driving down through Cahors to Bordeaux; she was giving Leslie a lift. We had wronged her. Leslie Beck tried to bring in champagne; she dismissed it and him. “You can’t drink champagne with pork and beans,” she said. One of us! She was interested in the story of Marion’s life; she had it out of her almost before the fresh, crusty bread was broken, certainly before the tomato-and-basil salad was finished.
“You need to run your own gallery,” she said. “You need a backer.”
We all turned hopeful faces toward her. A title, a Rolls...
“Not me,” she said. “I’m always broke. But I have friends.”
We were nicer to her than ever.
“I’m not Leslie’s mistress,” she said, out of nowhere, “in case you think so.” And I was glad, and so was Rosalie. Wives one can endure; other concubines can lead to a state of agitation.
Reader, can I remind you of a few things? At this stage, Leslie has had carnal relations with myself and Rosalie; his daughter Catharine, aged eight or so, drinks Orangina with the other children down the far end of the trestle table, politely ignoring these new visitors as they politely ignore the great proportion of the adult world which does not directly impinge upon them. So long as their parents look happy, children are well able to forget them. Did Leslie’s eyes drift over toward Catharine, searching through the children to locate his own? Rosalie said she thought so. I doubted it.
Susan was not in a good mood. Of all of us, Susan was the one who was best able to show her displeasure. Wallace would darkly brood, but there seemed nothing personal about it; Vinnie could suddenly lose his temper and be violent, and then be full of remorse; Ed would go white and icy, then pull himself together; Rosalie and I were placators; Marion could look offended and often did; but Susan’s displeasure could make a warm sun seem cold. This year she had cut her straight brown hair short and sharp: she was trying to make the transition from young motherhood back into the outside world, and finding it difficult.
This summer she was impatient with our ways; she found Vinnie’s preoccupation with food and the relics of the past irritating. She talked to Rosalie and me as if we were idiots; we were always on the verge of believing it, as it was, as if it were our husbands who functioned in the world and we just trotted along behind, clucking and tutting, more like our mothers than we had ever believed possible. It was Ed whom Susan really liked: they would lose themselves in talk of Herodotus and sociology, while Rosalie and I muttered who? what? and Wallace dreamed of mountains and Vinnie poured more wine. It’s Ed and Susan who ought to be married, I would think. And that didn’t make me right for Vinnie, either. I was too finicky, too precise. Right for no one, not even Leslie Beck—or only for a summer.
During that lunchtime I remember Susan saying:
TO VINNIE:
Let Leslie open his champagne. It can’t be worse than this awful peasant plonk you keep getting. Do people lose their palate as they grow older, like their hearing?
TO MARION:
So, how do you like Antony, Marion? We asked him down especially for you. Now don’t disappoint us.
TO ANTONY:
How do you like Marion, Antony? She’s got British citizenship....
TO ME:
I’m asking Ed to the opening of the new gallery at the Museum of Mankind. I hope you don’t mind.
TO LESLIE:
So, how many good buildings have you torn down this year?
Culminating with:
TO LADY ANGELA PETTIFER:
Is there room in your Rolls for me? I can’t hang around here any longer. If I can get back to Bordeaux, I can fly back to London and do some research. Then Vinnie can keep the car and look after the children. Do them all good....
And that is exactly what she did. Susan packed her bag and left with Leslie and Lady Angela, leaving Vinnie openmouthed and humiliated, and the thought of Vinnie humiliated shook all of us, not just me.
Rosalie came into Accord Realtors; she was lunching with Mr. Collier. She had bought a new coat. Lately she had been buying from thrift shops, but this one had a crisp and cheerful air. It looked suspiciously like one I’d seen recently in a store window, its tag saying five hundred twenty-three pounds. I’d wondered who there’d be around these days with enough money to buy it, except I supposed there was always a woman ready to spend her last penny on clothes. It just hadn’t occurred to me it would be Rosalie.
“What’s the matter?” asked Rosalie. “You’re brooding.”
Mr. Collier was in his office, waiting for a fax to come through.
“I was thinking about the past,” I said, “and the way it catches up with the present. Susan’s Amanda and my Colin are dancing about naked in my kitchen.”
“Then it’s just as well,” said Rosalie, “your Colin isn’t Leslie Beck’s son. If he’s not.”
“Of course he’s not,” I said.
“Some people,” said Rosalie, “say that once a woman’s been with a man, she never breeds true again. Her children take their features from all her lovers.”
“That is just not scientifically possible,” I said, and refrained from adding, “And some people say you’re going out with a murderer.”
“When Susan went off with Leslie Beck to Bordeaux, that time,” I said, “they had an affair, didn’t they?”
“An affair, an affair,” Rosalie jeered. She was in an uppity mood. “How romantic you are. I expect they spent a night or two together. If you and I did, why wouldn’t she?”
Nor did I point out that Rosalie had spent only a couple of intimate and ridiculous hours with Leslie Beck and had a baby by him only by accident, and he and I had loved each other for a whole summer.
Instead I said, “I love your coat,” and Rosalie said, “I know what you’re wondering, Nora, poor Nora—are you going to get in touch with Leslie Beck again? And can you bear it if he isn’t interested? If you’re too old and he’s forgotten?”
“You’re talking about yourself,” I said.
And Rosalie said, “I know. But I’m protected by Mr. Collier, and you only have Ed. I got this coat fifty pounds off because it had been in the window, on display.”
“Good for you,” I said.
“Anyway,” said Rosalie, “I think Marion should have first option on Leslie Beck the widower. I think we owe her that.”
“Why?”
“Because if it hadn’t been for us, she might be married to some nice bank manager and living happily in the suburbs with four kids and some pretty pictures on the wall.”
“Now you’re talking like me,” I said, “as if marriage were an end in itself. You’re slipping. Marion would have got where she is without our help.”
“She wouldn’t,” said Rosalie.
“She’s not the marrying kind,” I said.
“She would have been,” said Rosalie. “She’d have had to have been.”
Mr. Collier put his head out the door and said, “Half a mo, Rossie.”
“Rossie?” I said. “That sounds very kind of domestic. Supposing Wallace comes home?”
“You just don’t want me to be happy, Nora,” said Rosalie. “You never have,” and I felt again the ground shifting beneath my feet, just as I’d felt when Susan suddenly up and went off with Leslie Beck, leaving me disturbed, angry, and jealous.
Mr. Collier and Rosalie went off arm in arm. I wondered why she had felt obliged to be disagreeable to me. Perhaps it was instinctive: the need to warn others off your territory,
when first it’s won. Or perhaps women friends are just for when there’s no new male upon the horizon? I didn’t want it to be true, but at least it meant I didn’t have to take it personally. All the same, I wanted to cry. I told Mr. Render I wasn’t well, left the office, and took the train to Green Park station.
I walked down Bond Street, past the expensive stores, which had never been part of my life, and now, I supposed, never would be, up Maddox Street, past the furtive fly-by-night carpet and fabric shops, and round the corner to where the streets opened out and became wider and less busy, where the commerce of fashion gave way to the commerce of investment art. I went past Browse D’Arby, past a window containing an old master or so, another with a discreet ship-at-sea-in-storm on an easel, a display of astrolabes, to make a change from the gold frames, and on to the Marion Loos Gallery and the nervier, chancier realm of contemporary art.
I went through the swing doors, and there facing me was Anita and Leslie Beck’s bedroom. The tawny curtains, the dun scratchy wallpaper, the orangey chair, the best white linen, the silver-backed comb on the bur-oak dressing table; and somehow the shadow of Leslie Beck was there upon the bed, humping away, defacing and yet enlivening, as if one film were superimposed upon another, and the stronger image showing through. But of course that was only in my mind, and I hoped not ever in Anita’s. I thought it was probably not a very good painting, anyway, but what did I know?
Marion wasn’t there. She was out at the Tate.
“There’s been a nibble for the MacIntyre,” said Barbara helpfully. “Of course, it would be now they’re all packed up and on their way back to Scotland.”
It was a world I didn’t understand and said as much. I said I wanted to buy the Anita Beck painting.
Barbara said she wasn’t sure it was for sale. Aphra said she was pretty sure it wasn’t. I said, since it didn’t say anywhere it wasn’t for sale, why wouldn’t it be? If I was prepared to spend my life savings on a painting in the middle of a recession, why shouldn’t I?
Barbara said, “Oh, dear,” and asked if I was all right. I said I was, and why shouldn’t I be? She took me into the small back room and made me some chamomile tea, and suggested we wait until Marion came back. I have always thought chamomile to be rather nasty slimy stuff, but I drank it, and presently my heart stopped beating so fast. The phone on the desk rang.
“Aphra,” called Barbara, “it might be Ben. Can you take it?”
“No, I can’t,” called Aphra from the far side of the gallery, causing a possible customer, a woman in a turban, to look up, startled. We didn’t behave like that at Accord Realtors. “I’m not going to interfere between husband and wife. All that happens is that everyone hates you.”
So Barbara took the call perforce, and it was indeed her husband, and he was obviously not happy. She had to hold the phone some way from her ear. “Yes,” she said, and “yes, but,” “but I can’t possibly,” “but we agreed,” “you’re not being reasonable,” “I was only looking at paintings,” and, growing bolder and angrier, “What difference does it make if you’re asleep and I come home at one o’clock, or two o’clock, or three,” and then she wept a little.
“Shall I leave the room?” I asked, but she nodded at me to stay, and then put the receiver down hard and fast.
“He’s impossible,” she said, “impossible.” And then to Aphra, “I’m going to have to go home. Ben says he’s not going to be my babysitter. He just doesn’t seem to understand. This is his baby, too. Why does he act as if it were just mine?”
“Because you stayed out late with Leslie Beck the creep,” said Aphra, “when you were meant to be on parole. So your warder is angry. Why ever did you do it?”
“I was drunk,” said Barbara, surprisingly. “All that sake.”
“I didn’t mean staying out late,” said Aphra. “I meant getting married and having a baby.”
Barbara apologized to me, and to Marion in advance, and hurried home.
“Marriage is a prison,” said Aphra. “The husband is the warder, and the children are chains round the ankles. I’m going to be like Marion; I’m going to stay out of the way of the Life Force, as defined by Leslie Beck.”
“You’d lose a lot,” I said. But I was quite cured of my own surfeit of jealousy; Leslie Beck was simply not a fit subject for it, and I even began to wonder whether I couldn’t do very well without putting Anita Beck’s painting on my wall. Why, at this stage of my life, did I begin to want souvenirs, mementos? It was absurd.
“Have you ever met this Leslie Beck?” asked Aphra.
“I have,” I said.
“And that’s why you want the painting?” She had clear, direct eyes.
“Yes.”
“What is it about this Leslie Beck?” asked Aphra.
“The size of his dong,” I said, getting annoyed with the way her generation patronized mine, and I was gratified when she looked quite shocked.
“Barbara didn’t say anything about that,” said Aphra, and left me alone. It was like a tennis match, played with someone much better than you. You managed to bat back one terrifying shot, only to receive another.
Marion came back from the Tate.
“Why, Nora,” she said, loftily. “How lovely to see you!”
She was looking elegant. She wore a kind of taupe silk suit and a little spotted scarf. Her nails were long and red. If anyone told her now not to wear rubber gloves to peel cucumbers, he’d receive short shrift. I was wearing my comfortable shoes. I thought, “I could publish the story of your life, if I wanted,” but not even that power gave me consolation.
“Aphra tells me you want to buy the Anita Beck,” she said. She was distant and formal. Rosalie was more her friend than I. She had something against me. What was it? What I had and she had not? Husband, home, kids, domesticity? The sense that I patronized her, as Aphra patronized me? I wished I hadn’t come. I wished I’d plodded back to Ed.
“I’m not sure about buying,” I said. “Rosalie told me it was here.”
“I don’t want you to have it,” said Marion Loos. “When I think what Anita went through because of you, I’d rather you didn’t.”
It was one of the more unfortunate days of my life. I should have stayed at work. I should not have told Mr. Render lies. I was being punished. I rose to go. Marion put out an elegant hand to restrain me.
“And where would you put it? On a wall that’s shared by you and Ed? Think about it, Nora. You were shameless, the lot of you. No rigor, no self-discipline, in and out of each other’s beds.”
I opened my mouth to protest and shut it again.
“And what is more,” said Marion, “you were all so self-satisfied. You thought you were doing me a good turn, you thought you were being so generous, deigning to educate me.”
What is more, what is more!
“What is more,” said Marion, “you thought a damp basement was good enough for me, so I have asthma to this very day. I had to use my inhaler in the Tate today. It was embarrassing. Something they spray in the air.
“You know what you lot did,” said Marion. “You used me as a servant, wiping your babies’ bottoms, picking up your dirty panties. You didn’t see it like that, oh no. I stood it for years,” said Marion Loos, “and it was all appalling. But what did I know? You took advantage of me.”
“I think I’d better go,” I said. I was cold to my heart. I hate rows, voices raised, people telling home truths. It was what she was born to, no doubt. What we’d never saved her from. The fishwife lay beneath a thin, thin veneer of poise and self-control. I thought I disliked her. I thought of Ed bringing her home. If she hadn’t been so pretty, would he have done it? Of course not. A plain and spotty girl talking about forged Van Goghs could be left to her own fate; a pretty one, not so.
“I don’t mean to make you angry,” said Marion.
“You have a bit,” I said. “Anyway, you’ve saved me throwing away thousands of pounds. Your Barbara asked me to say she was sorry, she had to go h
ome; her husband’s angry because she spent the night with Leslie Beck.”
It was Marion Loos’s turn to have the color drain from her cheeks. She sat down abruptly. She didn’t bother to smooth her short skirt or keep her legs together. She seemed ungainly and young.
“Oh, Christ,” said Marion Loos.
“We’re all upset,” I said. “He’s stirred everything up. But Barbara didn’t mention the size of his dong to Aphra, so I expect it’s shriveled rather with age. I believe they do.”
Marion began to laugh. She stretched out her arms toward me. “I’m sorry,” she said, “really sorry. Of course you can buy the painting. No one else is going to. I can’t afford to turn away trade, just for the sake of principle. I’m not like Vinnie and the rest of you. I have to live in the real world. And as for Anita, I’m just being hypocritical.”
Cautiously, I let myself be embraced, and felt my resentment drain away. I am not very good at the new habit of touching and embracing; I was brought up without it. I associate it too clearly with sex. Little Miss Virgo, Vinnie would say. Little Miss Butter Wouldn’t Melt.
Marion outstripped her teachers in so many ways; I was proud of her. I didn’t say so. I thought she might hit me.
I’ve had enough of all these true confessions. I’ve changed my mind. I’m not going into detail about my affair with Vinnie, which has nothing to do with Leslie Beck’s Life Force. Vinnie beckons gently, and women follow sometimes. Leslie Beck brandishes his giant phallus, and women lie wounded all around. Besides which, since Rosalie jeered at my use of the word “affair,” I feel quite nervous of it. I suppose it has got a kind of old-fashioned ring. What am I supposed to say? The furtive intimate relations I enjoyed for a while with Vinnie? I suppose Rosalie would like me to say “fucking,” but I won’t. She can do what she likes with Mr. Power-Cable Collier plus Pekingese; but as for me, I don’t fuck, I have affairs. I have a husband, a home, children, and many obligations, and I have affairs the better to sustain them. Husbands may have affairs for all kinds of reasons—what do I know? Wives have them not just to assuage the desires of the flesh, but to quell the raging spirit.
