Fay Weldon Omnibus: Collected Works of Fay Weldon

by Weldon, Fay

  Anyway Tom said, ‘Why, they’re twin cities. The Mississippi divides them. They’re rivals. Minneapolis is the modern, go-getting, thrusting city. St Paul is the older, ramshackle one. It kind of limps along behind, but always feels superior.’

  ‘But that means,’ I said, ‘they’re only half a city each.’ He pretended not to hear. Anything he didn’t understand he pretended not to hear. It was his one big fault. I could have lived with it.

  St Paul, limping along behind. Minnie’s first child, Andrew, was born with a dislocated hip and her husband Horace didn’t believe in doctors so he grew up dragging a leg behind him. And Lois, Minnie’s little girl, wasn’t the greatest beauty ever born, and Minnie made it worse by calling her Uglymug and saying, ‘Just my luck!’ As if it was her misfortune, not poor little Lois’s. And of course Minnie’s kids didn’t get to good schools, because Horace was a socialist; and Andrew has personality problems and Lois is just hopeless: and I got all Peter’s insurance money, and my two got a proper education, and now they’re on their way to college. They were both born bright and beautiful. I couldn’t help it. And I am a widow. Minnie sees that as more of my good luck. I think she hates Horace, really. I loved Peter. That’s why I could love Tom. I had a good experience.

  To those that hath shall be given; difficult to hand it back, saying I don’t deserve this. But that’s what I did, Miss Jacobs. That’s why I lie here: a corpse in mourning for itself.

  Minnie and Horace live in this horrible little house and don’t drink, and Tillie’s had a stroke and Frank has cancer, and Minnie looks after everyone – and me, I flew First Class out of it all, with Tom. But you can’t escape, can you? God stretches out his skinny hand. Minneapolis, the twin city. Minneapolis and St Paul, divided by the river Mississippi, overlapping, interlinked. Tillie and Frank need me to slip them a drink when Minnie’s not looking. Lois needs me to keep her on a diet. Andrew needs me to take him to target practice when Horace isn’t looking. The only people who don’t need me are my kids. They do just fine without me.

  I don’t know what you think, Miss Jacobs. I don’t know which way you want me to be. Where does moral and mental health lie? In looking after yourself, casting off the past, saying I’m well and truly grown-up now; I have a mature, adult, un-neurotic relationship with a totally suitable person: goodbye, family: Minneapolis here I come! Or in saying, well, I’m a person who likes to be liked, who hungers for approval, I’m that kind of person. I accept it, and it’s mature and grown-up to say, ‘Minnie, count on me. Goodbye, Minneapolis.’ Minnie being part of me, however much I rage and scream.

  Was what I did an advance into health, or a retreat into unhealthy habit? I have no idea.

  I met Tom’s family. I played tennis with his brother, bridge with his mother, met the friends, chose the marquee, made out wedding lists. I was the bride from Europe, a little more mature than expected, but okay. I tried not to think of Minnie. They asked me if I had brothers and sisters. I denied her. I said I was an only child. It was my new view of myself. Sooner or later the lie would catch up with me. I didn’t care. It was worth it: a holiday, however short, from being twinned, divided, cheated, chained. Rosamund, I said, only daughter of Frank and Tillie, retired general medical practitioners, a couple now living in perfect health and harmony, buoyed up by the respect of the community. They couldn’t come over: air travel made Tillie’s legs swell up, I said, and Frank wouldn’t be separated from his wife. Well, that was true enough. Eternal lovers. The children of lovers are orphans. What did I owe Frank and Tillie? The truth? Why? Who wants women around bringing tales of dissidence and trouble?

  You don’t approve of this, do you, Miss Jacobs? You don’t think people should live by lies. You believe in truth, dignity, self-knowledge, pride. Well, you won. Minnie won. Here I am. The night before the wedding Tom and I walked down by the Mississippi. To the left rose the elegant new towers of Minneapolis outlined in blocks and spires of light: symbols of wealth, aspiration and progress. To the right, across the river, huddled the brooding clutter of St Paul. Unequal twins, growing more unequal day by day. St Paul has the problems: race riots, poverty, squalor. Minneapolis makes sure of that – just heaves them all across the water. If there’s a block where the addicts hang out, it bulldozes it flat and builds a shopping mall or a parking lot. A half-moon hung over the river, oddly unsatisfactory as half-moons are. You can’t tell if they’re waxing or waning. I said as much. Tom pretended not to hear. He liked me to be fanciful, but not too fanciful.

  ‘I’m not going to marry you,’ I said.

  ‘Why not?’ he asked, when he could find the words.

  ‘Because the moon’s not full,’ I said. ‘If this were a film the moon would be full; not that stupid thing hung up there neither one thing nor the other. I expect it’s always like this round here – just plain halved. Minneapolis gets one half, St Paul the other. It will never be right!’

  He tried very hard not to hear, but finally he had to. I was not going to marry him. He wept. His parents kept a stiffer upper lip than Frank and Tillie ever managed. He flew me back Club Class. He did not kiss me goodbye. That was the end of it.

  Minnie just said, ‘Oh, you’re back. Made a mess of it for once, did you!’ but this I registered as a kind of acknowledgement. And I do the hospital run with Frank and Andrew, and Lois has moved in with me, and we both go round to Minnie’s and try to make Horace laugh, and – Miss Jacobs, am I just a fool? Or was this what you wanted for me?

  I believe you are asleep: the clicking has stopped. I can hear you snoring; little snores or little sniffs. You might even be crying, for all I know. In pity, or pleasure, or just because there was a half-moon over Minneapolis, catching its skyscrapers in miraculous light, while St Paul lay low, dark and brooding. And it wasn’t fair. God makes nothing fair. It is up to us to render it fair.

  My fifty-minute hour is up. Your fifty pounds is earned. Thank you for giving me this cancellation. I wonder whom I replaced. And why? Do they have flu? Did they die, or take themselves off unexpectedly to someone more talkative? I have suggested to Minnie that she come along to see you: serve as my replacement on this couch. She says she’ll think about it. No. I’m not going out the back door as if you were ashamed of me. I’m going out the front. I don’t care whom I meet. I am fed up with etiquette I do not understand. I came in dead, I go out living. As I say, thank you.

  Un Crime Maternel

  What did they call you? Miss Jacobs? I find that very strange. Only a mother, surely, can understand a mother. What is their purpose in having me see you? If anyone is crazy, it’s the law, not me. If it asks for psychiatric reports, which frankly I see as both demeaning to me and damaging to my children, it might at least find someone competent to do the reporting. Or do they have to scrape the barrel for people such as yourself? I don’t suppose it’s a barrel of laughs, coming here to Holloway and sitting in this horrid little airless green room smelling of cabbage with a locked door and not even a window. In fact the room is rather like the inside of my head used to be before I battered my way out of it, made a hole to let in the air and the light.

  Fortunately I can wear my own clothes, being on remand; I don’t have to wear their nasty dingy dresses. There isn’t an iron available but I keep my skirt beneath my mattress overnight, so the pleats stay in. I like to be smart. I am in the habit of being smart. It’s so important to set an example to the children, don’t you think? But I suppose you wouldn’t know.

  Now listen, Miss Jacobs, I will have to make do with you since you’re all I have to work with. It is absolutely imperative, do you understand, that you declare me of sound mind. It would do Janet and Harvey no good at all to believe that their mother was insane. It would be too big a burden for them to bear. They are already having to cope with the loss of their father, and Janet’s birthday is tomorrow – she will be eight – and she will be disturbed enough that for the first birthday ever I’m not there by her bed when she wakes to say ‘Happy birthday, da
rling.’ She may begin to worry, or doubt what she’s been told; which is, very sensibly, that I’m on holiday in Greece getting over Peter’s death and will be back soon. When I’m out of here I’ll be able to talk the whole thing through with the pair of them. It’s so important to tell children the truth: if you do, their trust in you is never diminished. Time passes so slowly for children: it is vital that I get back to them as soon as possible: that all this silly and unnecessary fuss comes to an immediate end. They’re with Peter’s parents, and though Graham and Jenny are not quite as child-centred as I’d like them to be, for people of that generation they’re not bad. I can be confident they’ll have the sense not to let Janet see the newspapers and of course Harvey isn’t reading yet. I used to worry about Harvey’s slowness at letters – Janet read at four, and he’s already six – but I admit it has its advantages, however unexpected. Crime maternel must be recognized in this country, as crime passionnel is in France. To kill for one’s children is no crime: rather, it is something for which a mother should be honoured. I want a medal, Miss Jacobs, not to be had up on a murder charge and remanded without bail for psychiatric reports. I did what it was my duty to do. I chose my children’s interests over my husband’s interests. Their lives, after all, were just beginning. We do give children this precedence as a matter of course.

  It is imperative that I stand trial as a sane person and am properly acquitted, Miss Jacobs, because then the children can deal with it. It may mean moving house and changing schools and names afterwards, of course, but that is nothing compared to the avoidance of trauma. You must see, Miss Jacobs, that I did the only thing I could, in the circumstances I was in.

  I had a troubled childhood myself. A father who molested me, a mother who let it happen. I was fostered when I was twelve by a very kind and pleasant family. I know there is good as well as bad in the world. I always wanted to have children, and to give them a perfect life. What is there more important in the world than this? I became a nurse and did well in my profession, but always with my future role as a mother in mind. I am not bad looking, and could, and indeed would, have married on several occasions, but each time I felt the man involved would not make a good enough father. He would have to be loving, kind, genial, patient, intelligent, sensitive to children’s needs, and able to provide the proper male authority role within the family group. I began to think I’d never meet the perfect father. I could settle, even happily, for less than perfection for myself, but not for my unborn children!

  And finally I met him! Peter! He fulfilled all my requirements, as I did his. He looked for the perfect mother, as I looked for the perfect father. We married, and agreed we would wait a year before starting a family so the children would be born into a settled and secure domestic framework. And that year, I may say, was exceedingly happy. I had always felt, because of my early experience, that sex was not for me. That year with Peter proved me wrong! Then, according to plan, I became pregnant with Janet, and of course after she was born sex became impossible. She could only sleep if she was in the bed with us, and then only if she was at the breast, and I got an ulcer, and you know how it is with small babies. Well, you don’t, do you. Let me just say Janet was a sensitive baby, and cried a lot, and then when Harvey came along he turned out to be hyperactive, and I’m sorry to say Peter’s views on child-rearing began to change: they simply did not coincide any more with mine.

  Does this sound like the tale of a mad woman? I promise you I am not mad.

  Peter was teaching at the time, and spent far too much time away from home. I know he had obligations to pupils and college, but he had obligations to his children as well. I insisted that he always be home by bath time. It is imperative that children have the reassurance that a rock-solid routine provides. But sometimes, on some spurious ground or other, he would be absent. I would have to watch their little faces fall. Splashing about in the water, so important to the development of their tactile responses, their creative drive, just wasn’t the same without Daddy. And so he and I began to quarrel. The atmosphere in the home became tense, and that’s so very bad for children. They pick up really quickly on vibes.

  Peter could, and would, sometimes even in front of them, say terrible things to me. ‘Why do you always ask those children questions?’ he’d yell. ‘Why do you say, “Are you sleepy? Would you like to go in your cot?” Why don’t you say, “You do feel sleepy, darling. Now I’m putting you in your cot”?’ And of course the answer was so obvious! For one thing, children are not there for the parents’ convenience, to be shut up; for another, even with the smallest child it is important to develop consciousness of self. The child knows what it feels; it is up to the parent to decipher those feelings and act upon them. I don’t tell my child it is hungry: I require it to give me an accurate account of what’s going on in its head. That way it learns self-expression. How else? Peter would accuse me of unforgivable things – of over-stimulating the children, of depriving them of pleasure – by which he only meant he’d shut them up if he could by shoving ice lollies in their mouths which would rot their teeth and give them a liking for sweet things which might stay with them all their lives, for all he knew. Or, I’m sorry to say, cared. Please don’t think he was a bad father, he wasn’t. He loved Janet and Harvey immoderately, and they loved him, which was of course the trouble. I’d feel like tucking them under my arm and running off with them, but how could I? Within two minutes they’d be grizzling and pining for their father.

  The upshot of our disagreements over child-care, together with the actuality of those two small lively children, meant I was easily riled and distressed, and spent quite a lot of time in tears which I could not control. Try as I would to be brave and bright for the children’s sake, I failed. They would see me red-eyed and depressed, and hear Peter shouting. It couldn’t go on. It is the most traumatic and damaging thing for children to hear their parents rowing. Unforgivable to let it happen but it was not my doing. It began to look as if we had to part. Between us we had to provide two loving and caring environments between which Harvey and Janet would travel, since we could not make one. Now I knew I would do my part in this. But I was not convinced he would do his. Already Peter was seeing another woman, a junk-food addict whose idea of an afternoon out with the children was to go to McDonald’s on the way to the zoo – can you imagine, a zoo? – the torment of those poor wild caged creatures – and Janet and Harvey actively encouraged to gawp and throw peanuts. Now I’m well aware that it’s best for children to see their parents happy, and Peter’s sex drive was such that he could only be happy if it was more or less satisfied. I had no grudge whatsoever against his girlfriends, one or all of them, so don’t be misled by anyone who says mine was a crime passionnel. It was most definitely – if crime it was – a crime maternel. An act committed for the sake of the children which involves the death and/or disenabling of an incompetent and/or damaging parent. It wasn’t Peter’s fault that this was what he was. Blame God, if you must blame anyone, for creating parents and children whose emotional interests overlap but do not coincide. But there it was. I could see no other way out of an impossible bind.

  Divorce, when it comes to it, is so crippling to the child’s psyche, is it not? The children suffer appallingly when a family breaks up. Statistics show that a paternal death has a less damaging effect on the children than divorce, so long as the family home is maintained and family income does not fall. So what else could I do, Miss Jacobs? In my children’s interests?

  I insured Peter’s life and he and I, his girlfriend and the children went for a country walk and we picked mushrooms, including a death cap, and I made a beef casserole that evening, and he and she ate it – I am a vegetarian and I never let the children eat beef because of the possibility of mad cow disease but Peter of course would never renounce beef: what he liked he had to have – and it proved as fatal as the books said. Don’t worry – I got the pair of them into hospital promptly so the children witnessed nothing nasty. I hadn’t realized ho
w suspicious coroners and police can be – I suppose I do tend to think everyone is as child-centred as I am. But this is not insanity, Miss Jacobs, is it? I was doing my best for my children, as the statistics in our society suggest the best to be: and I must get back to them as soon as is humanly possible, for their sake. I presume the court won’t be so stupid as not to understand that? What do you think?

  A Pattern of Cats

  Miss Jacobs, I think our cat Holly is going to die. She has changed the habits of years. Instead of sitting on top of the kitchen dresser, or in the corner between the bookcase and the desk in the living room, she sits in a little patch of grass the other side of the path that runs past our back door. She sits there day and night; she has worn a little dirt nest for herself where no grass grows, fitting her just right: she comes in for meals, but then back she goes. If you try to stop her she squeals and moans. The weather has been so hot and dry for so long, and the nights so warm and full of movement, I thought it was just that – a change in the climate had changed her habits. But last night it rained and there she still sat, in her little muddy nest, pathetic and bedraggled. She complained loudly about it all when she came in for food, but back she went nevertheless, to curl and sit and be dripped upon by delphiniums. What does it mean? I should take her to the vet, but what would I say? This very ordinary tabby cat has changed her habits but otherwise, apart from being a little thin, shows no symptoms of illness? Besides, I’m frightened. Suppose the vet says she has cancer, kidney failure, a tumour? That I must make the decision for Holly as to when she must die? Who am I to make this decision: How did I ever come to be in charge of this small life? It’s not the gravity of responsibility you envisage when the little fur-ball of energy first comes bouncing through your door and scrabbles up your velvet curtains, right to the top, leaping and clawing and ruining the surface, and sits on the curtain rail reproaching you, imploring rescue.