by Weldon, Fay
‘What happened to your eye?’ asks Victor again to Janice, covering his confusion.
‘Nothing to do with you,’ says Janice, cool as cool.
‘There’s nothing to be ashamed of,’ says Wendy. ‘Nothing in our own nature should disgrace us. That’s what you always used to say, father, though I know how ashamed you always used to be of me. But I don’t mind now. Mother has a black eye because one of her lovers’ wives beat her up. One of her many lovers, I mean: not one of that particular lover’s many wives. One must be precise. This one was a carpenter. He came to mend your bedroom cupboard.’
There is an edge of complaint in Wendy’s voice. There are now tears in both her mother’s and her father’s eyes. She is not unpleased to see them.
‘That’s a very fine cupboard,’ says Victor presently. ‘An excellent piece of mahogany. There was nothing the matter with it when I left.’
‘The door kept swinging open.’
‘So what did you do? Find some bodger in the Yellow Pages who shaved down the frame instead of re-hanging the door?’
‘Yes.’
Janice is unafraid, where once he was fearful.
Victor’s tears brim over: he sobs and clutches Janice’s hand.
This time she does not draw it away.
‘I’m sorry,’ says Victor. ‘I’ll go to my room for a moment. I’m not up to this.’
He leaves. Janice follows. He is tall and she is short, but they move alike, and clearly one is an extension of the other. Elsa’s mouth falls open.
‘Happy birthday,’ says Gemma, triumphant. ‘We must sing Happy Birthday.’
14
‘I’ve been so lonely,’ says Janice, from beneath Victor. ‘I’ve enjoyed it in a way but it’s been so unnatural.’
‘I can’t stand being an antique dealer,’ says Victor. ‘It’s all right as a hobby but as a way of life it’s too frightening.’
‘The house is in a dreadful mess.’
‘I don’t mind. What about this young man of Wendy’s?’
‘I don’t know. She only met him yesterday. What about that young girl of yours?’
‘She’ll be all right. She’s not particular as to who, or why, or where.’
‘Then she’ll get what she deserves,’ says Janice, looking up at Victor with one clear eye and one puffy one.
Victor slept. So did Janice.
Victor, waking, was restored to himself. He woke with a sense of relief, as one does from a bad dream, to find the real world again, and with Janice beside him. He shook her awake, and walked with her down the mock-marble stairs and along dim corridors to the kitchens, and through them to the courtyard, where he found the library ladder still leaning against the wall beside the dustbins. He sighed over its freshly broken rung, closed it, and tucked it under his arm.
‘Are you stealing it?’ asked the newly delinquent Janice.
‘Yes,’ said Victor, and they walked round through the back and into the garages, where his car was trapped behind closed doors. He folded down the back seat and laid the ladder tenderly in a blanket he kept for just such purposes. He started the engine, let it run for a few seconds, reversed as far as he could, and then drove the car at the garage doors. They were made, as he had surmised, of the same flimsy wood-simulating plastic which Hamish used to manufacture window-boxes. They splintered easily. Janice got in beside him, and Victor drove round to the front of the house and parked outside the french windows of the tea room.
He beckoned Wendy, who rose obediently and came to the car and got inside. Kim followed. Gemma came after them, but her chair could not traverse the step down from the french windows.
‘You can’t go,’ called Gemma. ‘I shan’t open the gates till I’m ready.’
But Victor, his family safely inside, and the library ladder saved from further dilapidation, aimed the car at the gates, and they gave before him, as had the garage doors, like a block of Greek halva before a determined spoon.
Elsa remains sitting with her head in her hands.
Presently Gemma rejoins her.
‘Never mind, Elsa,’ says Gemma. ‘I’ll look after you. You have nothing left, really. No family, no home, no job. No clothes, I suppose?’
‘Not to speak of.’
‘Of course not. You travel light. Nothing left: all gone with Victor. Nothing but remembered love. Well, it’s all any of us have, in the end,’ says Gemma, her worldly domain stretching high and wide around her. ‘Have another piece of cake. Didn’t it turn out well! I’m glad Alice didn’t make it sink: she might well have. And weren’t the Ramsbottles terrible! How dreadful the past is, and all its inhabitants. I’m sure I don’t know why I go on tormenting myself with it. One will never understand it; much less oneself.’
Gemma fingers her mother’s pendant.
‘I would like a change, Elsa,’ she confides, ‘but I don’t know how.’
And Gemma continues her story.
1966.
And Gemma’s ring finger is swollen and sore, and the two rings still upon it. Nevertheless Marion and Gemma set off for work with their bits and pieces in one of the new psychedelic plastic carrier bags. Gemma wore Marion’s gran’s gloves to make the rings on her fingers less conspicuous. The gloves were of special stretch open-weave, the better to enclose swollen arthritic joints. Mr Ramsbottle gave the girls a lift to the station in the Ford Cortina.
‘I’ve been thinking,’ he said. ‘After all that to-do last night. Perhaps you shouldn’t go off with Mr Fox just like that, Gemma. Call me old-fashioned if you like, but you should work up to grand holidays; otherwise you’ll spoil things for the rest of your life. Succession, that’s the secret of holidays. Who wants to go to Dieppe when you’ve had a good time in Monte Carlo? But Dieppe, if it’s only been Bournemouth before, appears as a seaside paradise. You’re welcome to come with us, Gemma, to the Isle of Capri. We could even see our way to advancing the fare.’
‘That’s very kind,’ said Gemma, in her most refined voice, ‘but no, thank you. I wouldn’t want to presume.’
What, Gemma go on holiday, on a package tour, with ordinary chip eating, tea-drinking people? Leon Fox’s true love? Someone wearing Queen Katharine’s ring on her finger, not to mention another she’d really rather not think about, but which a jeweller would surely, surely, manage to get off. Without cutting, of course. Mr Fox’s erotic circle could not be rudely broken. Stretched, perhaps. But not broken.
‘I think,’ said Marion, while they were strap-hanging on the underground, ‘you’d be wiser to have your finger cut off, than go to the office wearing those rings.’
‘It will only be till lunch-time, when I can get to a jeweller. Mr Fox will sleep all morning, and I’ll hide my hand if Mr First is about.’
And so he did, and so she did, and panic subsided.
But at lunch-time the jeweller was leaving for the pub just as Gemma arrived, and though she pleaded and cried, he would not deign to open up his workroom for her. He’d do it at five thirty-five, he said: stay in especially for her. And he looked briefly at the rings, and then with rather more interest at Gemma, and said, ‘Where did you get these from? Never mind, tell me all about it at half-past five. I can do it without filing, if I put my mind to it.’
‘I hope you can,’ said Gemma.
‘Depends on the degree of co-operation,’ he said, and off he went, beer-and-sandwich first, sex afterwards. Easy enough to deal with when the time came, thought Gemma, safe in the spiritual arms of Mr Fox.
During the morning Mr Fox had come bouncing down the stairs, nodded briefly to her – how her heart pounded – and went out. Shortly after lunch-time he returned. This time he appeared preoccupied and not to see her.
Marion remained closetted with Mr First. Presently Marion came out and went off to buy fresh coffee beans, and soon Mr First emerged from his office. Gemma smiled brightly and falsely and sat on both her hands.
‘Gemma smiled at me,’ croaked Mr First. ‘She smiled! I wonder if she thou
ght I was someone else! You did, didn’t you! Yes. Do you hate me, Gemma Joseph?’
‘No.’
I fear you, but I don’t hate you. I wish I did. Hate is the easiest, most invigorating emotion of all: next, of course, to despising.
‘That’s something,’ said Mr First. ‘Not hate. But what do you think of when you think of me? When someone says Mr First what vision comes into your head?’
‘Your hands.’
Mr First was pleased.
‘Yes, I have nice hands. They’re very nimble. I’m quite a good typist, you know. Very good, in fact; better than you, and you’re not bad.’
‘A man! A typist!’ sneered Gemma, quite openly and for the first time Mr First appeared alarmed.
‘You don’t think that’s a manly thing to do?’
‘I don’t. It’s just silly. Anyway I was thinking about the skin on your hands.’
‘What about it?’
‘It’s old.’
‘And you are young, you mean.’
‘Yes.’
‘May and November can live together. I’ve known it happen. One gives wisdom, and the other gives strength. Would you marry me, Miss Joseph.’
‘No.’
‘I only enquired to hear the tone of your voice, which quite lived up to expectation. Horror and disgust. I am a lonely man, Gemma, and don’t know how to behave. You should have some pity on me. You could even marry me for my money. I have quite a future: even if this business fails, which I quite expect it to do. Money lies in the mass market, not the élite. Too many bad debts. I’m going into pot plants. Yes, marry me for my money, Gemma. I’ve known girls do that. Not many, in actual fact, not as many as you’d expect, but a few do manage.’
‘I have some pride,’ said Gemma, hoity-toity.
‘Pride! Remember the girl with the new red shoes! She flung her mother’s loaf of bread into the mud and used it as a stepping stone. And it sunk with her upon it, down, down, to the Halls of the Bog King, and she was compelled to dance before him for ever in her new red shoes, in the mud and the slime. Why are you sitting on your hands?’
‘It’s a habit of mine.’
‘Ask me a favour, Gemma. Anything. At least be grateful to me.’
‘Never.’
‘Show me your left hand, Gemma.’
‘No.’
Her heart beat strongly. She had never been so frightened, and yet she was brave.
Mr First put out his grey hand to hold her arm. Her flesh shuddered at its touch: it seemed to do so of its own volition, quite disregarding the normal circuit of sensations to the brain and back again.
He withdrew his hand, and smiled.
‘We could have lovely children, Gemma, you and me.’
So men have spoken to women from the beginning of language, against reason, against hope, driven by the steady wind of instinct on to the rocks of humiliation and disaster.
‘I see you as mother of my children. Marry me, Gemma.’
The rocks were sharp indeed. Spite and malice showed in Gemma’s face.
‘You’re mad. You’re disgusting. Pay someone to have your horrid children. All you’ll ever have is money. I’m never having children anyway. I hate children.’
Oh, Gemma! How could you! Great-Aunt May withdrew her protective strength, turned away in sorrow, bitterness. So, follow your mother. She never really wanted you, Gemma. You kept her there with me, an old woman even then, trapped in a miserable hovel, to catch her death of cold.
Mr First was angry, full of a hate which echoed Gemma’s own.
He caught her left hand and exerted his full strength to turn it, open it: yet it was not his strength but her nature which caused her flesh to capitulate, surrender.
‘Two rings!’ observed Mr First, mildly. Now he had her in his power his anger evaporated. ‘Greedy Gemma.’
‘I can’t get them off.’
‘I can see that. Your poor little finger!’
His dry hand caressed hers.
‘Marion put them there.’
‘Don’t tell tales,’ said Mr First. ‘It isn’t sporting. I was brought up in an orphanage. I got the cane for telling tales, and the cane for not telling tales. Life can be very difficult. What you have there, Gemma, is Queen Katharine’s ring, which should be in the bank as part of our security. And the one and only Diamond Dance. I offered it to Woolworths as a prototype for mass production.’
‘One of Mr Fox’s rings! For Woolworths?’ Gemma was horrified.
‘That was rather Mr Fox’s reaction,’ observed Mr First. ‘And the ring promptly disappeared. But now it’s rediscovered and we must waste no more time. I need it. Now.’
And Mr First caught up the paperknife and brandished it, in a friendly suggestive way, and she thought her end had come. Her throat first, her finger next.
‘How pale you look,’ said Mr First. ‘And so you should, you naughty, silly little girl. These are dangerous games you’re playing.’
But when she had well and truly shrunk into her chair with fear, he put down the knife, turned on his heel and went up the circular staircase to Mr Fox’s penthouse.
‘Stay there,’ he said. ‘Don’t move, on peril of your life. I’ll be back soon.’
And Gemma just sat. Nothing kept her there, at her desk, waiting for mutilation and death, except her own nature. There was the door, just there. All she had to do was get up and run out of it, to freedom and life.
Gemma stayed where she was, as requested. Likewise she had lain on the doctor’s examination couch, as requested, although the door was half open, and the doctor’s wife and decency only a few short yards away.
Don’t despise her. Thus we have all stayed to endure, when we need not. While teachers caned us, parents scolded us, meals upset our digestions. Sat at dinner and been abused: lain in beds, likewise. The door is there, and partly open. We seldom go out of it.
Gemma stayed, and waited for her destiny. Marion clumped up the stairs, red faced and breathless, holding not coffee beans but sharp pottery fragments in her hand, and a long, trailing, withered plant.
‘I was nearly killed just now,’ complained Marion. ‘Someone dropped a flowerpot on me from the penthouse.’
‘An accident –’ but Gemma knew it wasn’t, even as she spoke.
‘We’re going to die,’ said Gemma, calmly. ‘We’re both going to die. Mr First’s up there. He’s going to kill us both. He found out from Mr Fox about your dream, and what you saw. He tried to kill you with that Transylvanian vine.’
‘Not Mr First,’ shrieked Marion, ‘Mr Fox.’
‘You only say that because you’re in love with Mr First,’ shouted Gemma.
Their raised voices set off some kind of alarm amongst the parrots, who surged squawking out of their cage to flounder about the room. The seagulls outside, incensed, fluttered and banged against the window panes: one broke and the gull which caused the damage blundered blindly inside, to be mobbed and pecked by the parrots.
Marion stamped and shrieked and cried.
‘Yes I do love Mr First. It’s my secret. You’re not to tell my mum and dad. I respect him and he respects me: and he’s terribly, terribly kind. He’s protecting Mr Fox because Mr Fox is an artist, only quite quite mad. Murderous. Only now he wants me to have his baby, without being married to him; and I’ve no one to confide in. No one. And he makes love to me on the floor where it’s hard, because that’s what he likes: he’s a bit funny, but it’s not his fault, he had this dreadful childhood –’
The parrots flew up, united at last by some common instinct, and were off through the window: up and away. Some two thousand pounds’ worth of birds. The solitary seagull sat peacefully nodding, eyes glazing.
‘Mr First is the murderer,’ whispered Gemma into the sudden silence. ‘He tried to kill me. It’s he who’s mad. Not Mr Fox. And if you want to know, Mr First wants me to have his baby too. He asked me just now.’
Marion was silent. Great tears of real sorrow swelled in her puffy li
ttle eyes.
‘Oh no,’ she said. ‘Oh no.’
And for once she wept real quiet peaceful tears, as a girl does, when what she has always known can no longer be hidden. And Gemma crossed to her and stroked her slightly greasy hair (Marion had to wash it three times a week) with real affection and concern, and the jewels on her heavy left hand glinted with some kind of promise, some reassertion of happiness and good times to come; if the sorrow of the moment could only be lived through, survived.
Well, they were both young.
Gemma murmured something to this effect, and Marion sighed, and sighed again, and the sobs slowed.
‘A pretty sight,’ said a voice from above. ‘Whatever can be the matter?’
Mr Fox, smiling with all his teeth, dressed in pearlised navy-blue, descended the circular staircase. How light upon his feet he moved. How bright and sharp his eyes!
Gemma put her left hand behind her. Had she been betrayed? Did he know? Had he seen?
No. Still Mr Fox smiled. There was no anger in his eyes. Only kindness, and sympathy.
‘Someone dropped a Transylvanian vine on my head,’ complained Marion.
‘But it was terribly ugly,’ said Mr Fox, ‘it had to leave the office. It was a disgrace. Rampant at the best of times: and then it started to die for no reason at all.’
‘You might have killed an innocent passer-by.’
‘Passers-by are not necessarily innocent. They may well deserve to be killed. From this height, in any case, they are all insects, and hard to believe in. I’m sorry if I upset you, Marion, but I was upset myself. Mr First has a passion for mass production and was threatening to proliferate the Transylvanian vine. Can you imagine it? The lounges of the vulgar choking with the dreadful weed? I had to get it out of his hands. And I see the parrots have left! Well, they were noisy, messy birds, ungrateful, though I always did my best for them. Perhaps we should try fish, next. Porpoises, or sharks – the fish of the future, I feel. Gemma, will you come upstairs with me? Now?’
Gemma said nothing, did nothing. Love and fear struggled for supremacy.
‘What’s the matter? Mr First? Horrid Hamish? He’s left by the backstairs,’ Mr Fox assured Gemma. ‘There is nothing to be afraid of. You are far too good a typist to lose. And I shall always look after you, you know that.’
