by Weldon, Fay
SUSAN:
Why, Nora.
NORA:
Was Ed with you last night?
SUSAN:
Of course he wasn’t.
She’s lying.
MR. COLLIER:
I did ask you not to make personal calls from this office, Nora.
Do I have to put up with this man? Yes, I can see I do. If I am suddenly deprived of Ed’s income, I cannot afford to walk out of jobs, especially not ones which give me enough free time to sit and write, as I do now, what publishers’ readers will assume to be a novel, and may pay quite a large sum for. Richard and Benjamin are not yet wholly independent. Ed believes children past the age of twenty-three should be independent of their parents; he has not helped Richard and Benjamin. I have. Which would benefit them most? My public silence about myself, or financial help while they establish themselves in the world?
“Mr. Collier,” I say, “I am truly sorry. The fact of the matter is that I am upset. Do you think I could take the afternoon off?”
“I think that would be a very good idea,” he says. “And I’m sorry if I nagged. It’s just I’m expecting a call on that line from my lawyer. Rosalie and I are hoping to speed up the legal process and have Wallace officially declared dead. Naturally, I’m anxious. We do so want to get married as soon as possible.”
Brides in the bath! And Mr. Collier rubs his hands together, as I imagine once did Mr. Crippen, the famous mass murderer, whose wives never emerged from the bath to consummate the marriage; but I can’t properly concentrate on Rosalie’s troubles.
“I hope I can be a bridesmaid,” I say.
I make my way to Kew Gardens Square, parting crowds as a breaststroke swimmer might part muddy and dangerous waters. Ed’s car, missing from outside our house, is outside Susan’s. It is a strange feeling, when the black anger of paranoia, of jealousy in the head, is suddenly proved justified. The emotion is lessened, not heightened. The sensation is of relief.
Susan opens the door to me. She is wearing black silk pajamas, probably described in a catalogue as a “lounging set”; her hair falls over one eye; she looks absurd. She is too old for romantic dishabille. I cannot believe Ed is taken in. She is wearing her glasses and has Wilson’s Sociobiology, a very large volume, weighing down one hand. No doubt she saw me coming. No doubt she was prepared for it.
The energy of my entry drives her back into her own hall. She leans against the wall mirror, half amused, half alarmed. It is her amusement that gets to me.
“Why, Nora,” she says, “are you okay?”
“Where’s Ed?” I ask.
“Shouldn’t he be in his office?”
“Why is his car outside your door?”
“Is it? He must have decided to go by train. It’s easier from here than from Richmond. Terrible to be a daily commuter from Richmond. I don’t know how I stood it for so long.”
“Was he here last night?”
“Yes.”
“Where’s Vinnie?”
“Still away. Why, do you want a replacement for Ed?”
She doesn’t like me at all.
I ask her how long it has been going on and she says nothing is going on and I am paranoid, and I accuse her of breaking up my marriage and she says my own unreasonable jealousy has done that, forced Ed out of his home. That and my constant infidelity. I am baffled. I am wronged, and Susan claims some kind of moral victory? How can this be?
“He has started divorce proceedings against you,” says Susan, and I remember Jocelyn and Leslie Beck and stay calm. Once you start throwing things, you have had it.
She takes me into the living room and starts sharing with me.
She shares with me how unhappy Ed has always been with me, how he has had nobody intelligent to talk to for years, how if it had not been for me and my noisy insistence on having children, he would now be head of his own publishing house and not merely a senior editor.
She shares with me how Ed has stayed with me for the sake of the children, and tried to keep things on an even keel, treated Colin as his own, though everyone knew he was Leslie Beck’s.
“That’s not true,” I say. “Colin is Ed’s son.”
Susan raises an eyebrow. She shares with me how, though Amanda is Leslie Beck’s, Vinnie has always known all about it, and how she offered to have a termination but Vinnie begged her not to. By implication, I should have done the same with Colin. What can I say? I fall silent. She shares on.
She shares with me how I am so noisy and Ed is so quiet. She shares this very softly. She is being very soft and still.
I understand that I am being manipulated, that Susan occupies the moral ground and will repel all interlopers, that she has dragged Ed up there with her, that in her mind, and therefore Ed’s mind from now on, I am dirt. She shares with me how difficult Ed has found my smoking, and the dangers of passive smoking for children.
I see that the photograph of Vinnie on the table has gone, and that there is one of Ed in its place.
She shares with me that if the Golden Friar incident had not happened, something else would shortly have come along, and that Ed had been waiting for it, his opportunity to leave me and join her. That I was now the worthless one, the despised, the moral leper.
And that, if you ask her, Anita Beck was having her revenge, that all misfortune emanated from the loft at 12 Rothwell Gardens, by way of Leslie Beck. And that I had better not say so, or I would be locked up and declared insane as well.
I rose to go.
“I’m glad I could share so much with you,” said Susan. “I think you’ll find this sorting-out is in all our interests. A year from now you’ll be really glad it happened.”
I called Marion from a phone booth.
“Oh, Nora,” she said, “I was feeling really mean the other day. Was I rude? I’m sorry if I was. Rosalie told me about Ed. She could kick herself for not being more tactful. I hope you’re not angry with her. She’s got involved with this man, and she’s scared stiff of him.”
And she told me Rosalie was going round to the Tudor manse to dine with Mr. Collier, á deux, and would not be able to keep out of his bed without being impolite, and she told me Leslie Beck was coming through the door and wanted to marry her, and she did not know what to say to him, she was so depressed. She had not been so depressed since she was eighteen. She thought all her life had been a flight from depression.
So I hung up, because I could see there was no one to talk to, no one to help me. I was on my own.
I bought a ticket to Earl’s Court. I left the station, found a general store, and bought some bananas, some bread, some firelighters, some milk, and some wax polish. I bought a ticket to Chalk Farm station. I changed trains at Piccadilly and left the bag of shopping for the homeless, keeping only the firelighters. I checked I had my cigarette lighter and that it was working.
I walked up the hill from Chalk Farm to Rothwell Gardens. I knocked on the door of No. 12 and, getting no reply, let myself in with the key I had on my key ring, which I kept in the same spirit as I kept the belt of the brown dress with orange flowers. I am an affectionate and romantic person, and I believe that if you join the body, you join the soul. I was surprised, but relieved, that in all these years the lock had not been changed. My plan depended upon it.
I went upstairs to the loft. I thought I heard a feeble meowing from the linen cupboard on the first floor and opened the door. A thin, thin cat crept out from a jumble of soiled sheets and blankets. I would see to the poor creature on the way down. It did not seem to have much life left in it.
I opened the loft door and the blaze of color and energy leapt out at me and swept through me, and I felt weak. I took the box of firelighters from my bag, broke it in half, packet and all, for it seemed to me this had to be done very quickly, and lit both pieces. The box was stale, as so often happens, and the fumes weak, so it took a little time for the flames to catch. But when they were properly alight, and my hands were in danger, I tossed both pieces into
the far corner of the studio, one toward the left and one toward the right, where the brushes still stuck in jars of turpentine, only half evaporated, and watched a little puff of flame and the fringe of some Victorian shawl begin to curl and flare, and, leaving the door open for the air to funnel up the stairs, took myself down them, scooping up the little cat on the way. She would have to take her chances with the kind people of Rothwell Gardens. A woman with a cat attracts more attention than one without one.
It took me a few minutes to catch her. The original scooping up took her by surprise and she was quiet, but then she found such strength as she could and wriggled free, tearing my hand with her claws. I had to coax her out from under the kitchen dresser, though there was no time, no time. Then I had to give her some water.
The front doorbell rang. I had failed. Someone had seen smoke, someone had come to warn and help. Well, it was fate. I had the cat safe and quiet in my arms—she was gingery, old and tough, though skinny. No kitten, she. I opened the front door.
There stood Leslie Beck, except it wasn’t. It was Leslie Beck as he’d once been: vigorous and bright-eyed; the hair not so curly, glossy rather than wiry; the eyes, though brown, not blue, wide and startled. Kitten’s eyes. Marion’s eyes. They looked strange in so young a man, as if life were a perpetual affront to his innocence and he couldn’t get used to it.
“Can I help you?” I asked. “I’m afraid I’m on my way out.”
“Does a Mr. Pecker live here?” he asked. It was a strange accent. Of course, South African.
“No,” I said firmly. I had to get away, get him away. “Sorry, wrong address.” I could hear a crackle from upstairs. I closed the front door behind me and joined him on the step.
He followed me down the street. I put the cat down outside No. 6. I remembered pleasant people living there. They had probably moved on long ago, but pleasant people sell to pleasant people, or try to.
“Are you just leaving that cat?” he asked.
“Yes,” I said. He looked puzzled. “It lives there,” I said.
He followed me, talking. He said that Rothwell Gardens had been his last chance. He was flying back to Cape Town the next day. He was trying to trace his natural parents. All he knew was the name: Pecker, Becker, something like that. His adoptive father had died; his adoptive mother couldn’t remember much about any of it—she had a drinking problem. He’d looked them all up in the phone book, rang around; now he was trying Becks as a last resort. It had been a silly idea. They wouldn’t want to see him, anyway. But he felt at home here in this country.
“Come with me,” I said, “but give me a moment first.”
Docile, he followed.
At Chalk Farm station I phoned the fire department. Three phone boxes were out of order; the fourth worked. In Richmond, Accord Realtors is proud to assert, public services work to a high degree of efficiency. There is little vandalism. We may murder our wives in the bath, and their lovers, too, but the public telephones work.
I told them I had seen flames coming from No. 12 Rothwell Gardens. The sooner they came, the better. I wanted the loft to burn and the paintings; I had nothing against the rest of the house. Anita should not have been there, anyway. The house was Jocelyn’s by rights. Anita was not entitled to the vengeance she had been exacting.
I sat with the young man, Jamie Streiser, until I heard the fire sirens coming up the hill from King’s Cross. Then we bought tickets to Green Park.
“You’re a very strange lady,” he said, on the way.
“None stranger,” I agreed, “except probably your parents.”
He was a good-looking boy, and companionable; an excellent return on an investment, I thought. Half a million, and your capital back! I told him about it. I put Marion’s case well, Leslie’s less so. I felt a great deal hinged on his response. He thought for a time.
“I paint pictures,” he said. “That’s what drove my adoptive mother to drink.” I thought being called an adoptive mother by the child you rear might be the more likely cause, but children twist the world to suit themselves. “This woman runs an art gallery, right?”
“Yes.”
He smiled. “That’s a relief,” he said. “I thought she might be some old hag. Is she married?”
I told him no. He said she probably thought she wasn’t entitled to happiness. He was sorry about that.
“Other children?”
“No.”
“I can have her all to myself,” he said. “I might change my ticket home. It means losing a couple of hundred quid, but it’s not every day you find your mother. What a coincidence, you on the doorstep like that. A minute either way—”
I asked him to forget about the step. I could see I might end up in prison. It didn’t seem too bad a place to be. I had joined the ranks of the hysterically wicked: the destroyers of art. Cassandra Austen, who tore up so many of her sister Jane’s letters. Ruskin’s maid, who burned his manuscript, nine years into the writing. Burton’s wife, who threw her husband’s erotic diary in the fire. Nora, who burned Anita Beck’s studio and everything in it. Only no one now would hear about Anita Beck; she would not take her place in the annals of art history, and I did not mind one bit. No, I was on the side of the destroyers. Art is a cause of much suffering to innocent bystanders, so they fight back from time to time. Good for them.
Jamie Streiser walked into the Marion Loos Gallery.
“Where is my mother?” he asked. He had a flair for the dramatic.
Marion came out of the stockroom, followed by Leslie Beck. She was flushed. He looked pleased with himself. Barbara and Aphra, embarrassed, tried to look at nothing in particular. Aphra straightened the Anita Beck painting. It fell to the ground, stayed upright, juddering, then toppled back against the wall.
Marion took no notice. Marion and Jamie looked at each other. Marion sighed. Leslie rushed to the painting, fearing damage.
“Leslie,” Marion said, “I’m sorry. It was a sweet offer, but I really can’t marry you. I don’t think it would work. My life is so full as it is, I really can’t fit anything more into it. You know how it is with businesswomen. Busy, busy, busy! I would drive you mad.”
There seemed to me a kind of applause in the air. I looked at everyone’s hands, but they were quite still. I took out a cigarette.
“Nora,” said Marion, “please don’t smoke. It’s so bad for the canvases.”
I put my cigarette away.
Leslie said bitterly to Marion, “I suppose this is another of your young men. You’ll be sorry. Don’t think this offer will come again. You’re an old hag and getting older by the day. Men last, women don’t,” and went back home to Rothwell Gardens.
Nothing happens, and nothing happens, and then everything happens. It’s so uncomfortable being Nora, I shall give Rosalie a go.
Rosalie is dressing for her date with Mr. Collier. She has been on a diet since first she met him, when it seemed that the nothing happening, and the nothing happening, after Wallace disappeared into the mountains, might turn into something happening.
There are two dresses in her wardrobe which might by now just about do, and between which she must choose. One is black with sequins; one is white with lace around the bodice. You can dress up a little white dress or dress it down, just as you can, mythically, a little black frock. Rosalie is indecisive. But the little black dress has sequins, and are not sequins perhaps metal, and does not metal carry electricity?
ROSALIE:
(Calling) Catharine, Catharine?
CATHARINE:
What is it, Mum? I’m looking for my hockey shoes. If I could only get onto the college team, Dad would be proud of me.
Catharine believes that if only she can be good at sports, by some sympathetic magic her father will reappear in her life.
ROSALIE:
Is it metal that carries electricity, or nonmetal?
CATHARINE:
Why, Mum?
ROSALIE:
Never mind.
Rosa
lie takes down the black dress, the quicker to die. She wants to get it over with. Death has been hovering, in the form of Mr. Collier’s phone calls, in the form of her dreams: last night she was visited by a skeleton, with Wallace’s moist living eyes clear in their sockets, dangling Mr. Collier’s trousered legs and black shoes. If Mr. Collier is a murderer, she might as well die. If he is not, then life might be worth living. Tonight she knows she will find out. Something has to happen; nothing has happened for too long.
She takes down the white dress. It is the one she often wore when she went with Wallace to mountaineering club dinners. A sacrifice then; a sacrifice now. Brides in the bath. Murder, murder, all the way.
She combs her hair. She tugs. A tangle comes right away. Her hair is not rooted so firmly in her head as once it was. She seems to remember combing her hair halfway up a cliff with Leslie Beck, when they were on their way back to Jocelyn. He had handed her a comb. Why? She did her best, but the wind undid her efforts. Perhaps later he slipped that particular comb into the silver casing of the relevant part of Jocelyn’s brush, comb, and mirror set. Perhaps later still suggested that Anita paint it. A linking object, as some objects are even without this kind of human intervention, joining past to present. A stupid thing like a comb. All women have them, use them with shared emotion, staring in mirrors.
A phone rings.
CATHARINE:
Will you take it, Mum?
ROSALIE:
Okay.
She puts on the white dress, since it’s nearest, but it’s tight. By the time she gets to the phone it has stopped ringing. Rosalie bustles off to the Tudor manse in her little car, in a too-tight white dress.
Mr. Collier comes to meet her, beaming pleasure, as she hurtles down the drive. The division between lawn and drive is lined with white stones; there are carriage lamps on either side of a brass-knockered door. He’s been picking roses. He opens the car door. He is not very tall; his face is round and benign; he does not have much hair. He is as unlike Wallace as anyone can be: Wallace is tall, hairy, and cavernous. Mr. Collier can rig up a cable from the electricity meter; Wallace is hopeless at that kind of thing. Wallace takes his own life because his wife was once unfaithful; Mr. Collier takes his wife’s life for the same reason. Rosalie thinks Mr. Collier deserves respect; she is prepared to sleep with him. She looks forward to it.
