by Weldon, Fay
Gemma’s bosom, over those three years, grew whiter, plumper and more munificient; her waist more slender and her skin more translucent. Her large eyes, purple-lidded, grew dreamier. She lived without sexual activity, or overt sexual interest, or as the dentist’s wife said of her to the doctor’s wife, ‘What you don’t know you don’t miss, I suppose.’ It was, more or less, true. If Gemma dreamed, it was of pale knights upon pale horses in dark forests: her excitements were romantic, not erotic. Other girls of her age fumbled and sweated and kissed: Gemma dreamed, and sighed.
Gemma’s menstrual periods were regular, though painful: she suffered at night from vague aches and pains which kept her sleepless. The doctor, visited on this account, asked a few searching questions about the absence of boy-friends, and Gemma left, embarrassed, though not before the doctor had given her an internal examination, which, since she was a virgin, turned out to be both painful and surprising, but was presumably necessary. The doctor prescribed aspirin, and the pains went away. Later that year the dentist dropped amalgam down inside her summer dress (a shirt-waister, picked up for two shillings at a jumble sale) and had to retrieve it: again an embarrassing experience. The dentist’s wife, who acted as his assistant, had been asked to leave the room for more pink mouthwash. It seemed to Gemma that his fingers lingered and tweaked where they had no business. How, lying awake at night, Gemma scorned the doctor and the dentist, and her body’s response to them. How she pitied Mrs Hemsley, and resolved not to end up like her, as drudge to her own descendants. The purpose of life could not merely be to hand it on? She scorned her own generation, too: the sweaty village girls, the mumbling boys who stood about in jeering groups, remarking on the size of her breasts. She was grateful to be spared any more subtle attention from them – hurrying round the shops each morning as she did, obtaining as best she could food for seven on money sufficient for three – lentils, oat flakes, stewing lamb, turnips, swede – the sound of lewd catcalls in her ears. She was accustomed to frugality – life with Great-Aunt May had been austere – but could never become used to vulgarity.
Gemma was not like anyone else: she knew it. She had been told so often enough at school – she was a love child, and so was her mother before her. And this Gemma saw – at any rate on good days – as a matter of pride, not shame. Her father had been a visiting repertory actor, and wasn’t that better than being fathered in wedlock by some black-nailed farm worker? Her mother’s father was never known. Better an unknown possible prince in disguise, than a known toad or a station porter. Surely!
Gemma, though grateful to the many people who showed kindness to her, was not content. Gemma, cleaning, sweeping, mending, chiding, was merely biding her time. She was ambitious, though for what she did not know. Gemma took a correspondence course in shorthand typing.
And so one Monday morning in a hot, hot June, Gemma was able to present herself at the Gallant Girls Employment Agency in Regent Street, London. She had with her a suitcase, five pounds fifteen shillings in her purse, and a certificate of competence in shorthand typing from the Courtley Correspondence School. To acquire the latter document she had spent many late nights hard at work, burning up Mrs Hemsley’s precious electricity, wearing out Mrs Hemsley’s deceased husband’s ancient typewriter – all that poor lady had left to remember him by, apart from Helen, Hannah, Hermione, Hortense and Alice, that is. With Mrs Hemsley’s somewhat relieved blessing, Gemma had come south to London, to make good.
‘Gemma has her head screwed on the right way,’ Mrs Hemsley confided to the dentist’s wife, ‘she’ll be all right. Secretarial jobs are two a penny in London, and I’ve given her the address of the YWCA. I only wish it was me who was going.’
‘I think our Gemma will be better suited to office life than child care,’ remarked the dentist’s wife, thus putting in words what Mrs Hemsley felt, but scarcely liked to say.
Gemma, Mrs Hemsley feared, had lately been showing signs of irresponsibility. As her shorthand improved, so her sense of domestic vocation deteriorated. Even though faced, as could only be normal in the day-to-day care of five children, with emergencies such as broken limbs and cries such as high fevers, she showed a marked reluctance to call in the doctor. She had, moreover, developed an astringent style of talk which smacked, or so Mrs Hemsley feared, of cynicism. She hardly set a good example to five growing girls.
Hannah, Hermione, Helen, Hortense and Alice. Alice was born the day before her father had his first and last heart attack, leaving his wife to seek in vain for a tolerable name beginning with H.
Gemma lost her address book in the train on the way to London; in it were the names of the YWCA and the various charitable organisations she was to contact if in any trouble. But Gemma had the courage of the very young: she left the train at Euston as dawn broke, undaunted and unafraid. She sat on the steps outside the station until breakfast-time had come and gone, and then started to walk to Piccadilly, which she had heard was London’s epicentre, and which she could at least locate on the station’s street map. London seemed larger than she had imagined; but that it was dangerous she did not then know. Danger, in any case, is only relative. The alley where Gemma’s mother encountered Gemma’s father might be considered more dangerous yet.
As Gemma pushed her way through the crowds where Regent Street meets Piccadilly, and the flower-children of the world meet up, her attention was caught by a shriek of noisy laughter issuing from a first-floor window. Lettered on the glass were the words ‘Gallant Girls Employment Agency’.
Well, thought Gemma, at least they’re happy: and in she went and up the stairs, there to meet Miss Hilary, senior interviewer, from whose very lips the laugh had burst.
The laugh had not, in fact, been particularly happy, being Miss Hilary’s normal Monday morning response to any request for staff from an employer or for work from an employee. Miss Hilary knew from long experience that anyone not suited on a Friday evening – or married by the age of thirty, for that matter – was either hard to please or born unlucky.
Miss Hilary was fifty-six: her hair was neatly coiled in blonde plaits, black rooted, at the top of her head. Her voice was loud, her laughter raucous and despairing, her eyelids blue as a summer sky, and her heart as deep and sad as sin. Miss Hilary sat glinting behind upswept glasses like a spider at the centre of its web.
Miss Hilary regarded Gemma with the harsh derisive pity of one who knows the world for the one who doesn’t. She helped herself to a jam-centred cookie from the plate of biscuits brought to her with her morning coffee, and offered Gemma one made of decent wholewheat, which Gemma accepted gratefully. It was her breakfast.
‘Hungry, I see,’ said Miss Hilary.
‘Yes.’
‘And I daresay you’ve just arrived in London, have lost your purse and have nowhere to live.’
‘How did you know?’ asked Gemma, startled.
‘In London,’ observed Miss Hilary, ‘no one is unique. Girls take this route from Euston every Monday morning, and there are pickpockets on the trains. What did you say your name was?’
‘Gemma Joseph.’
‘Pretty. I go a lot by names. If the mother has imagination, sometimes the child has as well. I suppose you learned your shorthand typing by correspondence course? No, don’t show me the certificate. It will be from Courtley and means nothing.’
‘Then give me a test. I can do forty typing and eighty shorthand. Really.’
‘Take off your cardy, dear.’
‘What for?’ asked Gemma, startled.
Miss Hilary pushed Gemma another biscuit: this time a chocolate finger. Gemma took off her cardigan, and then ate the biscuit. Her bust, in its 36c St Michael’s bra (white) showed to advantage beneath the size 34 jumper. The matching cardigan was in a size 38 – the twin-set having been sold cheap on account of this discrepancy.
‘That will do,’ said Miss Hilary. ‘You’ll have to wake up your ideas on clothes, of course.’
‘Do for what?’
‘Le
t’s face it, dear. You need a job starting this morning. I’ve got a nice one going at Fox and First.’
‘Who are they?’
‘Never heard of Fox and First? Don’t you read your Sunday Supplements? How ever do you think you’re going to get on in the world? On forty typing and eighty shorthand? Self-taught, at that? Leon Fox is London’s most eligible bachelor. He’s a society jeweller and man about town. Most artistic! Rings for the toes and pendants for the nose: circlets for the bosom and studs for the navel; gold manacles for dainty wrists, male and female, and goodness knows what else for goodness knows where, but nothing under a thousand pounds. They’re asking for a nicely-spoken girl of good appearance for light reception and modelling work.’
‘Modelling? I’d rather be employed for my skills than my looks.’
‘Beggars can’t be choosers,’ said Miss Hilary, sharply. ‘Start today and in here Saturday ten sharp for your wages. Twenty pounds! Lucky girl! Get your card from my assistant. Next, please –’
‘Excuse me,’ said Gemma, ‘but how much do they pay you for me?’
‘It is not customary for my girls to ask that question. It is confidential information.’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Gemma, abashed.
Miss Hilary looked full at Gemma once again.
‘If I die poor,’ she said, ‘it will be the fault of girls like you, making me feel sorry for them.’
And no doubt Miss Hilary thought herself generous to a fault, considering she had her own way to make in the world and only her own efforts to sustain her.
‘I’m ever so sorry,’ said Gemma, meaning it. ‘I really am grateful.’
‘Yes, my dear,’ replied Miss Hilary, astounded. ‘I believe you are.’
And Gemma set off for Fox and First, and there on the steps, as he leapt pale and lithe from a yellow Rolls-Royce, she caught her first glimpse of the man she was to love for ever; Leon Fox.
Mr Fox, Mr Fox, Gemma loves you. Love struck like a shaft of sudden light from heaven, striking down into the narrow alley of Carnaby Street, and into Gemma’s heart, and shifted and changed and reassembled the very particles of her being, so that forever after part of him was contained in her.
‘Love’s one thing,’ says Gemma to Elsa in the library, years later, ‘and once love has struck no wonder the body craves to have even this crude physical manifestation of its new constituent lodged within it – during the act of sex, that is – making its presence felt even if only for short intervals; but gratitude, that’s another matter! Beware of gratitude, Elsa. Young girls so easily feel grateful, and it always leads them into trouble. Remember always that your good fortune is yours by right; you do not have to feel obliged to those who are the mere catalysts of your fate. Do you love Victor or are you grateful to him?’
‘Both,’ says Elsa firmly.
If Gemma had the use of her feet, no doubt she would have stamped one of them.
‘Do you think your meeting with Victor was destined?’ she asks, presently. ‘Or was it mere chance? Or was it perhaps merely your nature, and if you’d been working in a different office, you’d have fallen in love with the first married fatherly knee you sat upon?’
Elsa is indignant. She stares full at Gemma, the light of true love beaming from her blue eyes, illuminating her life.
‘Don’t be angry,’ says Gemma sadly. ‘I only ask the questions I ask myself. And I am so sorry for Janice, because she loves Victor too.’
Elsa wishes Gemma would not talk about Janice. But, as Victor later explained to Elsa, the rich lack the inhibitions of the poor when it comes to the discussion of delicate problems. The poor know there are no solutions. The rich have the experience that there generally is.
‘Janice only loves her carpets and her bourgeois comforts,’ says Elsa, ‘she’s so hung up about possessions it’s not true.’
‘Perhaps when you meet her on Sunday you’ll be able to help her to a better understanding of life,’ suggests Gemma kindly. ‘You’re not afraid Victor will decide to go back to her? No?’
No.
The ladies are joined by the men. The matter of the library ladder has not, it seems, been resolved. Conversation concerns itself with inflation, the tides of commerce, the possible profit in marketing ecologically conscious organic potting compost, and the necessity of tax evasion under a Labour Government. Elsa’s eyes close. It has been a long and tiring day. She was up cleaning the antique shop at seven in the morning: the first customers were expected at eight-thirty and all traces of her and Victor’s occupancy of the back room had to be removed: her nightie and his pyjamas tucked as usual into the case of a grandfather clock waiting for its works to come back from the menders; all their clothes, that particular morning, transferred from a linen press awaiting collection by the shippers to one marked up at £1,750 and unlikely to find a quick buyer. The shop was perhaps overstocked – Victor had raised a large second mortgage on the matrimonial home, as well as selling out his accountancy partnership, to set himself up in the business – and free movement a little difficult. Though, as Victor remarked, Elsa was perhaps more accustomed than most to cramped quarters, and one of the things he loved most about her was the way she seldom complained.
Janice always complained.
Although Elsa did not, could not, with the best will in the world, on account of her lack of knowledge and experience, actually transact sales, she was kept busy at the telephone, running messages, shifting furniture, placating disappointed customers, confirming credit card liability, and so on. For lunch she had cooked Victor buttered brown rice, served with sardines drained of oil: a perfectly balanced meal of eighty per cent carbohydrate, ten per cent fat and ten per cent protein, and rich in nucleic acids for longevity and prolonged youth. On this particular day there had also been the strain of the car ride, sex before dinner, the dinner itself, sudden acquaintance with the rich and eccentric, and the worry of Janice’s arrival on Sunday.
Sometimes Elsa wonders if she might not have been better off in the typing pool.
Except, of course, for Victor.
Wonderful Victor, so much at ease in every company!
Listen to him now. Prince amongst men.
Elsa sleeps.
When Elsa opens her eyes there is silence. All three of them regard her with a kind of sad speculation.
Elsa blushes.
‘Time for bed,’ says Gemma, kindly.
3
‘It’s out of the question,’ says Victor. ‘It’s quite impossible. I couldn’t bear it. I’m as sexually liberated as the next man but there are limits.’
Victor is striding the length of Elsa’s room. He wears the bottom half of his pyjamas as a concession to his age. His naked shoulders are broad and well muscled. His midriff is flat. He is handsome: he is troubled.
It is two-thirty in the morning. Elsa keeps drifting off to sleep.
‘Do wake up,’ he implores her.
‘Let’s talk about it in the morning.’
‘You take your virtue very lightly,’ he protests. ‘Though of course that’s a concept unknown to girls of your generation.’
‘It’s not that. I just need more sleep than you do. I’m younger.’
Victor sits down gloomily on the end of the bed, on Elsa’s feet.
‘So now you’re holding that against me. I knew that would happen, sooner or later.’
Elsa wriggles her feet out from under him. She has difficulty manoeuvring under the tightly-tucked grey blankets. Somebody had remade the tousled bed while they were at dinner; and even, she fears, had to change the sheets.
‘On the other hand, if it’s all equal to you, all that extra stock would really get the business going. You should have seen Hamish’s billiard room, Elsa! He’s like a magpie. A lot of good Jacobean oak, and I’ll swear the clothes press was Elizabethan. Spode, Wedgwood, early ironstone.’
According to Victor, Hamish has offered him the contents of the billiard room for two thousand five hundred pounds, and will e
ven throw in the library ladder if he can have Elsa for the night.
‘Perhaps he was joking,’ ventures Elsa now.
‘How am I to know?’ asks Victor, distracted.
‘Or it might be some kind of test,’ she suggests, ‘to find out the sort of man you really are.’
‘That occurred to me too, but would passing the test be saying yes or saying no?’
‘Anyway,’ says Elsa, ‘it doesn’t really matter because I won’t do it.’
‘Doesn’t he attract you? I thought girls were always attracted to millionaires?’
‘You’re so old-fashioned,’ she complains. ‘Anyway I love you so you oughtn’t even to think of it.’
‘Ought?’ he enquires, pouncing on it like a dog on a rabbit, ‘what do you mean by ought?’
Elsa sleeps. When she wakes at four-thirty she has pins and needles in her foot. Victor sleeps, kneeling, with his head upon her knees. She shakes him awake and makes room for him beneath the blankets.
‘It’s not as if we’re married,’ he says, cold beside her. ‘You owe no kind of duty to me. You must do what you want. I take advantage of you too much, anyway.’
‘No you don’t, Victor.’
‘Yes I do.’
Victor sleeps. He warms up quickly. Soon Elsa is too hot and cramped to sleep. His large limbs are flung happily over hers. At five-thirty Victor wakes and says ‘Did you do Gemma’s typing?’
‘I forgot.’
‘Then mind you do it before breakfast. She’s expecting it. I don’t want this deal mucked up for something stupid like that.’
Victor sleeps again. At six a.m., when the dawn lights show up the angles of the room, the door creaks open. Elsa lies motionless, wide-eyed, pressed up against the wall.
And here, first peering, then ducking, then scuttling across the room to the desk comes Hamish, Rumplestiltskin, in a silk dressing gown, colourless in the early light. And here until dawn is well established in the sky, and his dressing gown is revealed as crimson silk, Hamish sits and types the reams of work that Gemma’s left for Elsa; or does Elsa dream? Does she see, or does she dream, that Hamish, as he takes his departure, pauses beside the bed and looks down upon her, in a manner both indulgent and lascivious? And whether she dreams it or whether she doesn’t, for it really makes no difference, she is certainly conscious of a wave of erotic excitement as he stands and stares, the like of which she has never known before: it is the desire of the helpless for the powerful, the poor for the rich, the weak for the strong, and it has its roots there in her womb, and from it, one might well believe, grows the whole structure of human society.
