by Weldon, Fay
‘She’ll think we’re like anyone else, which we are, but we’re not ashamed of it. Proud of what we have, and not afraid to show it. Remember those Yugoslav roads, Marion’s mum?’
‘Call those roads, Marion’s dad?’
The talk rose and fell between them; rising on one side and the flicker-fire, falling on the other. A baffled Marion, in the middle, supported the net. Back and forth.
‘More like ditches,’ said Audrey. ‘Bump, bump, bump. And what with the goat’s meat churning away inside and the yoghurt too, I was heaving half the time. No, I didn’t fancy Yugoslavia.’
‘It’s Capri for us this year,’ said Arthur to Gemma. ‘Valerie, that’s Marion’s mum’s sister’s eldest, our niece, as you might say, was meant to be coming too, but she went and got herself married to this fellow.’
‘And now they can’t go away at all because of the mortgage,’ lamented Marion’s mum. ‘Makes you think twice about marriage, doesn’t it. And then the kids come along and you know what they’re like, in foreign hotels. Especially if there’s bidets. Well, you just can’t do it. We never had more than just the one, for that very reason. Well, we didn’t know, when we had her. Feeling all right Marion? You’re looking queasy.’
‘I suppose so,’ Marion was sulking.
‘Poor Marion,’ said Audrey. ‘She’s been that depressed lately. Never mind, a nice holiday will bring back the roses.’
‘It doesn’t bring back the roses,’ cried Marion, with unexpected defiance. ‘It just makes me peel. Why do we always have to go south? I want to go to Scandinavia. And it’s not the holiday doing me good, so much as working for it in that office does me bad. Especially overtime. On top of that great empty building with the birds banging against the glass, and those bloody parrots staring at you with their nasty eyes.’
‘You shouldn’t speak like that of God’s creatures,’ said Arthur, shaking his head at his wayward daughter.
How, wondered Gemma, could the world hold both the Ramsbottle family and Mr Fox as well? If one was real, how could the other be too? Each so defiant, so certain as to its own way of life. The notion came to Gemma that she was at the parting of the ways. She was being required to choose.
Mr Fox, or Marion and Marion’s family.
Mr Fox and danger. Marion’s family and safety.
Mr Fox, I love you.
Mr Fox, save me from a fate worse than death: save me from the boy next door; because this is what next door is like. Save me from all the things my great-aunt wanted for me, and poor Mrs Hemsley achieved, and the dentist’s wife as well.
Audrey’s voice had become somewhat stringent.
‘I don’t like to hear you talking like that, Marion. It smacks of ingratitude. It’s a good job and lovely people you meet up there, so no more of your stories, if you please, Marion.’
‘What stories?’ enquired Gemma.
But Marion leapt to her feet.
‘Shut up all of you,’ cried Marion, spilling her glass of slivovitz on both the Indian design and the tartan cover, as if determined to make the most of every spilled drop.
‘Shut up! I want some peace! There’s no peace at work and there’s no peace at home.’
They were all three on their feet now. Gemma rose too, out of politeness.
‘Behaving like this in front of your friend,’ said Audrey. ‘What’s she going to think of us?’
‘It’s you who’ll shut up, my girl, speaking like that!’ added Arthur. ‘And you won’t have a holiday at all if you go round saying the things you do.’
‘Put me in a home, will you?’ Marion shouted. ‘Like the cat and my poor old gran?’
‘You were the one who wanted gran to go, our Marion, and don’t you forget it. It was you who complained about the state of Slumberland, and don’t you forget that either, and left it to me to scrub it up.’
‘Aye aye,’ said Arthur, steadying the nerves of the group, as clearly he was accustomed to doing. ‘Tempers all round! No use grieving over spilt milk. Mr First’s poor sister: poor old Tom cat: poor old gran. Life is not without its tragedies. But you’ve got a good job there, Marion: good pay and good workmates you can bring home, and a chance to meet the stars.’
‘You could do that in other places.’ Marion remained stubborn.
‘You can’t pick and choose,’ said Arthur. ‘You didn’t do too well in your O-levels, remember that.’
‘Only because you took me on holiday the fortnight before I sat my maths, and my stomach was churning from the channel crossing –’
Gemma sat and stared at the flicker-fire, and was consumed by longing. She longed for the touch of Mr Fox’s hand: for the feel of his lips on hers. In her mind his white and tender body stirred, beneath the floating water lilies.
Oh, Mr Fox, Mr Fox, think of me as I think of you.
I love you.
See, I send my longing out to you, across unknown distances, across uncharted wastes of feeling. I can feel my spirit reach you, encircle you, gain strength from you, and return to me enriched.
Mr Fox, you are thinking of me –
Mr Fox, I love you.
Mr Fox, I want you.
I know what that is, now.
Love.
‘I know what,’ says Arthur, ‘let’s put aside the slivovitz; it always did make for an acid tongue, and let’s all have a drop of Italian vino, and hey presto, we’re on the Isle of Capri already, with our troubles behind us, soaking up the sun and the wine and the friendly faces, and listening to our Marion telling us tales of who came into Fox and First, and what’s going on in the world – our own personal gossip column, that’s our Marion...’
A morning in May, in 1966.
In Gemma’s office the fountain splashed and the birds sang. Outside, the sun shone, and the Minis darted, and flower-children begged alms and distributed nature’s largesse, with confidence. The world was clearly going their way. The enemy was in retreat, forced back by peace, and love, and a little help from hallucinogens. In New York a millionaire’s son scattered his inheritance in banknotes from the top of the Empire State Building; and he wasn’t even mad.
What price honest toil now?
Upstairs in the penthouse Mr Fox slept in his jungle bed. Down one flight of iron stairs Marion typed and Gemma filed to make his rest comfortable and his waking prosperous. Gemma was properly clothed in a black lace dress and a cream shawl, scarlet embroidered. She was happy, and beautiful, and excited. She had slept soundly in the room she shared with Marion. Air-Wick had, for the most part, hygienised the smell from the Slumberland mattress. It had been well scrubbed, in any case, by Marion’s mother with old-fashioned Lifebuoy soap. Breakfast had been Continental-style.
‘We go Dutch on Tuesdays,’ as Marion’s dad explained, jovial even with shaving cream all over his chin. Coffee, boiled egg, cheese and cake were placed in front of Gemma by Marion’s mother with the best will in the world. Not once during the meal did Gemma have to get to her feet. Gemma, who for years had breakfast standing up, the better to get Hermione, Hannah, Hortense, Helen and little Alice off to school!
Business, it seemed, was booming. Gemma had to stop filing when a film-actress with a known name, wide eyes, a limp look, a slender body and tufts of hair missing from the top of her head came in to inspect a navel stone dangling in one of the showcases. She asked Gemma to model the stone, but fortunately, since Marion’s gran’s dress did not easily open, let alone come off, the actress changed her mind, and wandered out to see if she could buy a meat pie. She fancied a meat pie, she said.
She wore a shaggy fur coat with the buttons missing and nothing on beneath it.
Marion said it was just as well she had gone, since it was well known that she was broke, and they would have had to have woken Mr Fox. Nevertheless, it had been an encounter with the great, and Gemma’s heart beat faster.
‘Famous people have a kind of aura,’ Marion assured Gemma. ‘Mick Jagger was in once. He had a blazing white light around his head.
I’ve never seen anything like it.’
Gemma nodded politely. Marion, who yesterday seemed so solid and sensible, was showing signs, Gemma thought, of eccentricity, or of what Mrs Hemsley referred to as ‘the neurotics’. Marion had woken screaming and gabbling in the night: Gemma had registered the noise through her own dreams, but had been too tired to arouse herself properly. In the morning Marion claimed to have slept better for Gemma’s presence, so Gemma did not like to mention the disturbance.
Now Marion typed and made mild statements, and Gemma filed. Happy Gemma, on the brink, the very brink of life.
The sun shone: the fountains splashed: birds sang. Life was hers, and youth, and every possible, wonderful future.
A shadow fell across her desk.
A skinny hand, claw-like, rested on her shoulder.
‘Did I make you jump?’ Mr First’s voice.
‘No.’
‘Liar,’ said Mr First. ‘Now don’t look so cross. And don’t mind when I say unpleasant things to you. If you know what you’re like, if you have your own vision of yourself fixed firmly in your mind, it can hardly matter what I say. Can it?’
‘Well, yes,’ said Gemma. ‘Because you pay the wages.’
Mr First, she noticed, held a paperknife in his hand. The edge was so fine, so sharp, as to be almost transparent.
‘Sharp!’ said Mr First, approvingly. ‘Brilliant as well as beautiful. Cutting through the cackle with a mind sharp as a razor. Do you mind me stroking your hair?’
‘Yes,’ said Gemma, ‘I do.’ Although the paperknife was oddly near her throat.
‘Is there something so terrible about my hand?’
‘No.’ But there is, there is. It is old, and mine is young. And it is not Mr Fox’s hand. That surely is enough to be getting on with.
‘You have such soft hair, Gemma. Will you have lunch with me?’
Au secours! Au secours! Gemma needs help. Lost mother, vanished father, where are you now? Mr Fox, how can you sleep? And where is Marion, come to that?
Slipped from the room, deceiver that she is, at the first sign of Mr First. False friend! Like the doctor’s wife, the dentist’s wife, Mrs Hemsley, Great-Aunt May, all false, false; her own mother, dead and gone – the ultimate – original, worst betrayer of all. Mother, how dare you die!
Silence. The parrots are quiet. There is a lull in the office.
Not a footstep on the stair; not the rattle of a tea cup. Silence. No one. Nothing.
Nothing between life and Mr Fox, and death and lunch with Mr First, but a knife and her throat, sharp-edged; and not so jokey as the twisted smile on Mr First’s face pretended. Again, it seemed to Gemma that she was at the parting of the ways. Courage, and death. Cowardice, and life.
Gemma chose death.
‘No,’ she said. ‘I won’t have lunch with you, Mr First.’
Silence. The knife blade trembled at her throat.
Mr First sighed and put the knife down.
A joke, after all.
Of course. Employers always joke with typists.
‘Not even on pain of death,’ lamented Mr First, ‘will a pretty typist have so much as a meal with me! What a worthless, elderly fellow I must be! Would you like me to cut my own throat with the paperknife? Would that entertain you?’
‘No.’
‘At least we would find out whether the knife is as sharp as it looks. It is very valuable, very delicate. Designed by Mr Fox for the excitement of us all, and clearly fashioned for the slitting of throats rather than the opening of envelopes. Are you willing to try? Would you do it for me? It would prove its worth, and what is human life, as my partner Leon Fox would say, compared to art? Life is short, but art is long.’
Leon! His name was Leon. Thus, his mother christened him. Well, perhaps she did. In any case Mr Fox has a past, has a Christian name, has a lily pond beneath which his tender body stirs.
Mr Fox!
Love Gemma, Mr Fox.
Gemma loves you.
‘No,’ said Gemma. ‘Art isn’t very long, not these days. It’s a flicker on the telly screen, or a splash of paint on canvas.’
‘I shan’t cut my throat,’ said Mr First. ‘I shall stay alive if only in order to hear your words of wisdom. Would you have gone to lunch with Mr Fox, had he asked you?’
‘Yes.’
Mr First licked his lips.
‘If I might give you a word of advice –’
‘Please stop touching me –’
‘I touch you as one human being touches another, from concern and friendship: not I assure you, as an employer touching up the typist. I tried that – well, one does have to – and it didn’t work. I touch you, Gemma, as a father might touch a daughter. I have no children of my own. I suppose you want children?’
His voice is harsh and grating, the opposite of fatherly. The voice of the forever disgruntled child, taken on male powers.
‘Of course.’
‘Of course. It is the natural answer. May I give you a warning. The natural world is a dangerous place. You are staying with Marion, I hear. I can’t stop you doing so, but remember that Marion is a disturbed girl and has been having psychiatric treatment – the firm has been obliged to pay for it. Well, girls prepared to stay are hard to find: we do our best to help them.’
And Mr First returned to his office.
7
‘Sheraton,’ says Hamish proudly. ‘An inlaid, cross-banded, mahogany, bow-fronted Sheraton sideboard. I got it for a song. Eight hundred.’
‘In the style of Sheraton,’ corrects Victor. ‘And four hundred would be too much. The legs are wrong, too.’
Hamish flinches, as if from a physical blow. Thus, so far, in his boastful peregrination of the house and its contents, he has flinched already some eight or nine times. The two men stand in what Gemma grandly refers to as the morning room, an elegant room of Georgian proportions, painted in modest white, picked out with gold and green, where the flicker-fire is lit every morning and where Gemma – if only such were her temperament – would go after breakfast to deal with her correspondence on the mahogany writing table with the U stretchers, circa 1800.
‘At least,’ remarks Victor kindly, ‘you’ve managed two pieces of approximately the same date and style in the same room.’
‘It’s Gemma’s fault,’ grits Hamish through his teeth with unaccustomed passion. ‘If I like something, she doesn’t like it and if I want it in a certain place she doesn’t rest until she’s got it somewhere else.’
‘That’s marriage,’ says Victor, insouciant.
The two men move up the wide, shallow staircase to stand under the tall windows, with their panels of coloured Art Nouveau glass.
‘The panes are moulded, not cut, I’m afraid,’ says Victor. ‘I hope you got them cheap.’
But, of course, Hamish hadn’t.
‘People take me for a fool,’ says Hamish mournfully. ‘Money isn’t what it was. No one respects you for making it, not any more. If anything, they despise you for it.’
Victor raises his eyebrows. Only the rich talk thus, his look indicates. He is discovering in himself a certain animosity towards Hamish.
‘Even your lass Elsa is unimpressed,’ complains Hamish. ‘She doesn’t want me for my money. She pities me.’
‘Um,’ says Victor, who would rather not consider the detail of Elsa’s forthcoming intimacy with this forlorn buyer of dud antiques. Victor has a facility for ignoring matters which might cause him mental distress. His parents were of an altogether different temperament, and thought long and hard about disagreeable matters, and on many occasions the small Victor would be turned out of his bedroom to make way for some distraught refugee, fresh from an SS inquisition or a concentration camp. Victor, as if to right the balance, to supply the family with a quality which it otherwise might lack, developed a degree of frivolity, a capacity for looking the other way whenever trouble loomed, which finally altogether estranged his parents from him. ‘Victor is not serious,’ they each
separately concluded, and presently confided in one another, earnestly grieving their son. ‘Where did we go wrong?’
That was on the occasion when Victor, offered a gramophone record for his nineteenth birthday present, had specified ‘Bach for Swingers’. They could not bring themselves to buy such a travesty of a decent aesthetic experience, and bought him a record token instead, and were pained by the look of disappointment that passed across his face. He was a hefty, hearty boy by then, making two of his father. A changeling. Both parents had died since: his father, painfully of lung cancer: his mother, shortly afterwards, of sorrow – in the form of a heart attack. Their loss, and their distress, washed over Victor lightly, and drained quickly away. Janice had cried enough for both of them, sobbing and sniffing at the funeral. It wasn’t that Victor lacked feeling; he merely did not like to waste it where it would do no good: on the dead, the dying, or the destroyed. His parents had taught him that, however inadvertently, and would have to put up with the consequences. They had, in any case, or so it seemed to Victor, used up in their lives their full quota of mourning: there was none left over to shroud their departing. He walked briefly about the graveyard, organising.
When the good die they are regretted, but not much grieved. It is the imperfect we miss so badly, once they are gone. Apart from Janice, most of the mourners were dry-eyed.
Once Victor’s good parents were dead, Victor lived. Ah, how he lived! What Elsa most loved about him was his cheerfulness, his positiveness. He woke in the morning so full of energy, joy and life; while she, poor thing, had to ease herself, moaning, groaning and yawning, into the waking world.
‘She’s not going to change her mind at the last minute?’ Hamish persists. ‘I would find that very undignified, like being outbid at an auction.’
‘Hamish,’ says Victor unkindly, ‘auctions are no places to exercise the ego. Buying in a sale room is the surest way to acquire rubbish at ten times the price you meant to pay. Leave a sensible bid with the porter the day before and don’t go near the place until it’s all over. Then you won’t be tempted. I take it you bought the stuff in the billiard room at an auction?’
