by Weldon, Fay
‘I wonder if they’ve discovered food,’ said the captain.
‘I shouldn’t think so, sir,’ said Jim, who’d once been on a school trip to Leningrad, and been made sick by soused herring.
‘Then what do they do all day?’
They couldn’t remember themselves what they had done, in the days before they’d discovered the soothing art, and had dined on hamburgers like anyone else. But now the weeks were filled with a sense of purpose; and, indeed, accomplishment.
Two weeks passed. Thompson and Meg settled down to a state of truce. She tried to keep him out of the bedroom entirely, while he tried to get into the bed, and they compromised with under the bed. Now that Timmy was away Meg noticed the landscape. She watched the winter closing in, suddenly and crossly, like a shopkeeper closing up before a football match. Slam, slam! Down came the shutters, out went the sun, up sprang the wind, and life retreated, muttering, underground, leaving the hills lean and sinewy and blank. Even the slugs went from the kitchen cupboard. She missed them. How was it possible to miss such disgusting slimy things, which clung to damp walls in dark and unexpected places? She was obliged to conclude that it was because they were, simply, alive and of the animal not the plant kingdom, and had some kind of blind purpose and vague will which carried them into the rockiest and most inhospitable places, where even plants could not survive. They were life, carrying their message into the world of non-life.
Sometimes she was glad Timmy wasn’t there. She would have muttered something about missing the slugs and he would have looked quizzical and she would have turned pink and felt silly. Some knowledge simply had to be borne alone: that was one of the penalties of being human. The suggestion was, inasmuch as one had the power of speech, that there was a sharing; but of course there wasn’t. It was a pain that the slugs were spared. Thompson, on the other hand, was spared nothing. His suffering was the worse because, observing that humans talked to each other, he believed they would exchange notes on the wonders of the universe. He was wrong in this, but didn’t know it. Meg and Timmy’s real conversation, real agreement, was wordless and in bed. No wonder Thompson liked to be under it.
The bus was taken off for the winter months. Too few people used it. Meg cycled down to the Base – a half-hour journey going in, two hours back, uphill – to the library, and asked the librarian to find her a book on the life-cycle of slugs. The library had in stock many reference books on crocheting and knitting and jam-making and upholstery and Teach-Yourself-French and First Steps to Philosophy, but there was nothing on slugs.
‘You can always try slug pellets,’ said the librarian. ‘The slugs eat them and simply deliquesce.’
‘But that’s horrible!’ said Meg.
‘I expect it is, when you think about it. The thing is, don’t think about it. Simply do it.’
Meg met Zelda outside the library. Zelda swooped on her and embraced her and said she must come in for coffee. Wasn’t she going mad up there on her own? Meg was looking rather odd, said Zelda. Meg was wearing jeans and an old navy jersey of Timmy’s. She felt protected in it. Zelda was wearing pink jeans and a pinker sweater, and a fashionable grey wool scarf tied as a shawl, and many gold bangles and rings.
‘In what way odd?’
‘You have a funny look in your eye,’ said Zelda, ‘as if you were pregnant.’
Meg thought.
‘When I went to take my pill this morning,’ she said, ‘I found I had four left and yet I was at the end of the course.’
They went to Zelda’s warm, pretty bungalow, with its picture windows and squared-off walls. Thompson had to stay outside. He wailed, but Zelda was ruthless.
‘So you’ve missed four pills,’ she said. ‘That means you want a baby. It’s your unconscious.’
‘I don’t want a baby,’ said Meg. ‘I want Timmy.’
‘I don’t want a baby either,’ said Zelda, ‘but I’m having one. I only found out this morning. Think of it, Jim won’t know for another two months and two weeks. Give or take a day or two, for Security.’
‘But you can tell him through the Family Telegram system,’ said Meg.
‘They only pass on good news, not bad,’ said Zelda. ‘Bad news waits until the men are back on shore.’
‘I suppose your good news and Jim’s good news aren’t necessarily the same thing,’ said Meg.
‘Exactly,’ said Zelda. ‘But that’s marriage, isn’t it?’
Meg thought in her heart, not mine and Timmy’s, it isn’t.
It was eleven-forty-five and Meg had forgotten to think of Timmy. His thoughts had been flashing all around her but she hadn’t noticed. She’d been thinking about the deliquescing of slugs.
At that moment Thompson discovered Zelda’s lavatory window ajar and squeezed himself in, bending a hinge or so, and bounced into the living room. He threw himself on Zelda.
‘Why does he go to you?’ asked Meg, puzzled.
‘Because I’m the owner of the house,’ said Zelda crossly. ‘And he’s trying to get into my good books. Couldn’t you have left him at home?’
She aimed a kick at Thompson with her little gold boot and he howled. Meg felt protective of him at once and said she must be getting back.
‘I don’t know much about dogs,’ said Meg, as she got on her bicycle, ‘but is Thompson extra-specially intelligent?’
‘He’s extra-specially mad,’ said Zelda.
The next day Zelda rang Meg and asked her to dinner that very evening to meet Tony.
‘You can’t say no,’ said Zelda, ‘because your engagement book is empty.’
‘I don’t even have one,’ said Meg.
‘That figures.’
‘Who’s Tony?’
‘He’s the spare man, dear. There’s always one about. He’s a PR man: he deals with the press round here. His wife’s away in New Zealand – she always is – and if she isn’t she doesn’t understand him. He mends fuses and walks dogs and all the husbands trust him. Some sensible woman put the word about that he’s queer, which is why his wife’s always away, but of course he isn’t. He’s very nice and funny and he might cheer you up.’
‘It’s very kind of you, Zelda, but I don’t think I’ll come.’
‘Why not?’
‘I don’t think Timmy would like it.’
‘I don’t actually think submariners are very possessive men, or they wouldn’t be away so much, would they?’ It was an argument hard to refute. Meg tried to think her way round it, but failed.
‘I suppose not,’ she said. ‘Thank you very much, Zelda, I’d love to come.’
Down on the bottom of the Indian Ocean Polaris kept the meal-times of the ships on the surface. Dinner that night was multinational – home-made ravioli done by Jim, who was so good at fiddly dishes; Persian chicken – the kind stuffed with ground mixed nuts and simmered – produced by the captain; and a French tarte aux poires, prepared by Timmy, who could produce a more delicate confectioners’ cream than anyone aboard. Timmy kept his watch on home time, in order to keep his eleven-thirty appointments with Meg.
When Meg got down to the Base that night she had to push her way through an angry Peace Movement crowd, milling about in the mud with banners and effigies of broken nuclear missiles, like broken phalluses, held aloft. They let Meg through easily enough. She was wearing jeans and an anorak and was riding a bicycle: she seemed near enough one of their own.
‘Take the toys from the boys,’ they chanted, and Meg thought of the two faces of Timmy, the bouncy, grinning little boy, and the cool, grave features she sometimes glimpsed, that of the man within, and wondered which of them it was she loved, and knew it was the man, who half-frightened her. She had fun with the little boy, and played sexy games with him, but love was reserved for the man, and the man, indeed, was dangerous.
She disliked the women for not understanding this: she thought they weren’t adult women at all – just angry little girls in grown-up bodies, which they hated. She was glad that she’d brought a dress
and some heeled sandals with her. She’d stuffed them crossly into a carrier bag before she’d left, cursing Zelda’s social pretensions, but now she felt pleased with herself. The dress was of fine wool, navy, with white flowers embroidered around the neckline. She’d been married in it.
‘What’s making you so angry?’ asked Zelda, once Meg was inside and changing.
‘What do these women want?’ demanded Meg.
‘Peace,’ observed Zelda. ‘I always thought you were rather their sort.’
‘Then you thought wrong,’ said Meg shortly. ‘I don’t want anything to do with it. Timmy and I just want to be left alone. He’s a navigator: all he does is steer ships about by the stars.’
‘There are no stars under the sea,’ said Zelda. ‘It’s more complicated than that. Timmy is cleverer than you think.’
‘If the Navy chooses to put him on Polaris, that’s their responsibility. He’s still just a navigator,’ Meg persisted. ‘A kind of timeless person.’ And indeed, she saw Timmy as one of the heroes on Odysseus’s boat, underneath a starry Grecian sky, steering between Scylla and Charybdis. She’d met him at a party. ‘And what do you do?’ she’d said. ‘I’m a navigator,’ he’d replied, and she had hardly heard. Her heart had gone; she had given it away, and that was that. She was like a child: she would not ask more, for fear of finding out more than she cared to know: of having to do what she ought, not what she wanted. A little girl who would not look down at her shoes before school, in case they needed cleaning.
‘Darling!’ said Zelda, pouring them both rather large gin-and-tonics. Dinner was ham salad and baked potatoes, and already on the table – except for the potatoes, which were keeping warm on the heated Hostess trolley. ‘Darling, your husband is one of the Attack Team. There are three of them on Polaris. The captain, the first officer and the navigator. With a little help from the captain, your husband and mine could finish off the world. Didn’t he ever tell you?’
‘They wouldn’t want to finish off the world,’ said Meg, presently, taken aback. Timmy had never told her this.
‘You know what men are,’ said Zelda. ‘They just love to obey orders. And if the Routine comes through from Base, “blow up Moscow, or Hanoi, or Peking”, that’s what they’ll do. They’ll sit down and push their buttons at the same time and whee! Off go the missiles as programmed. Men have no imagination, you see. One million, two million dead. It’s only numbers. And women and children have to be sacrificed to the greater good. Well, we all know that. My father was a doctor; I know better than anyone. He looked after his patients, never us.’
‘But the order won’t come through,’ said Meg.
‘It hasn’t so far,’ said Zelda, glad to see Meg shaken out of what Zelda saw as a virtuous complacency, and pleased to shake a little more. ‘But I suppose it must one day. If one owns a pair of nut-crackers one tends to crack nuts. But you knew all this when you married him; you can’t complain now. When I meet those Peace Women I just push my way through them, shouting, “The Ruskies are coming, the Ruskies are coming.” That makes them crosser still. Well, you have to laugh, don’t you?’
‘Not really,’ said Meg.
‘I do,’ said Zelda. ‘And at least when we’re all nuked out of existence by the Ruskies – this whole country is just an unsinkable aircraft carrier for the USA: their forward line – our husbands will be safe enough. They can stay below for ever. We must take comfort from that.’
‘Zelda,’ said Meg, ‘why don’t you go and join them outside?’
‘I don’t have the right shoes,’ said Zelda. The doorbell rang: it was Tony, the PR man.
‘Tony will make you feel better,’ said Zelda. ‘He’ll explain that we’re all perfectly safe and our men are doing a grand job saving the world from itself, and protecting British women and children, and that those women out there are well-intentioned but misguided dupes of the Russians.’
Tony was as lean as Timmy was broad, and his nose hooked and aquiline and his charm very great. He looked into Meg’s eyes as if he were looking into her soul, and valued it deeply. He looked past her body and into her mind, and liked it, and made her feel comfortable. She realised that she had never felt quite comfortable with Timmy, and wondered why.
‘I can see Zelda’s in a naughty mood,’ said Tony. ‘I hope she hasn’t been upsetting you. One has every sympathy with the women outside: and yes, they are misguided, because nuclear weapons are a deterrent – they prevent wars, they don’t cause them – but I wouldn’t go so far as to say the women are dupes of the Russians. I am no “Reds under the Beds” man. Those women out there are brave and intelligent and have their point of view. We have a different point of view because we know more. We have more facts at our disposal.’
‘You are employed by the Admiralty,’ said Zelda, ‘to say exactly that kind of thing. To pour any sort of oil on any sort of troubled water you happen to come across. Have some ham salad. Don’t you think Meg is pretty?’
‘Yes I do,’ said Tony, ‘and Zelda, couldn’t I go into the kitchen and whip us up some spaghetti bolognaise? You know I hate salads.’
‘I was hoping you’d say that,’ said Zelda. ‘You know where everything is.’
Thompson growled when Tony rose: that was unusual, thought Meg. Thompson’s sins were usually those of over-enthusiasm rather than ill-temper.
After supper Tony insisted on driving Meg home, with her bicycle on his roof-rack.
‘I’ll be perfectly safe,’ she said.
‘Good heavens, no,’ he said. ‘You might get raped by a Peace Woman. I’d never forgive myself. I’m perfectly respectable, aren’t I, Zelda? Tell her I’m perfectly respectable.’
Zelda duly told her. Meg gave in, glad to be spared the long ride uphill, glad of the comfort of his smooth white car; uneasily conscious of the benefits money could buy.
They passed through the encampment of makeshift tents where the women had settled for the night.
‘Everyone has to make a living,’ said Meg sadly. ‘And almost no one’s occupation is guiltless, I suppose. Just think, Timmy might be an Arms Salesman. Now they’re really wicked.’
‘These women live off the State,’ said Tony. ‘The wretched tax-payer supports them.’
Tony had another face, too, thought Meg, just as Timmy did. When Tony was off-guard, the all-embracing, all-forgiving urbanity deserted him: she could see the impatient dislike shimmering beneath; a dislike of long-haired lefties, strident feminists, anti-blood-sport nuts, and so forth. She disliked them too, but somehow in a different way. She wanted to change their minds, not root them out. Were all men like this? Pretending to be civilised, but wanting in their hearts nice clean sudden final solutions? The drama of destruction?
She had a vision of After-Armageddon: the missiles flying through crevices in clouds over crowded seas; the hills black and poisoned; the stuff of nightmares. She’d had such nightmares before she’d met Timmy. She’d assumed they were some kind of symbolic reflection of her own inner state, her own fear of sudden, awful events. Her father dying. Sudden, awful, the end of the world. But if everyone had a vision of the end of the world, wasn’t that dangerous? Mightn’t it then come true? Wasn’t it better to keep the mind on what was kind and pure and hopeful? If one acknowledged the devil one gave birth to the devil. She believed that. She thought that was why she so resented the Peace Women. They were bringing Armageddon nearer, not keeping it away. Perhaps she was pregnant? How could she bring a baby into this world? But then again, how could she not? One had to affirm one’s faith in the future, and affirm it, and affirm it, and affirm it.
Tony had his hand on her knee. How long had it been there? It was a pleasant hand, warm, sensible, and full of expectation.
She moved it gently away.
‘No, thank you, Tony,’ she said. ‘I love Timmy.’
‘Of course you do,’ he said, cheerfully. ‘And so you should, a nice girl like you.’
She wasn’t sure she wanted to be a nice girl. He sugge
sted she admire the landscape. It occurred to her that Timmy never suggested she admire anyone or anything other than himself, or his handiwork.
Tony asked to come in, but she said no, and he acquiesced, again pleasantly.
He offered his services in any way she liked.
‘Anything un-innocent,’ he said. ‘Just say the word. But if I have to put up with the innocent for the pleasure of your company then I will. Mend fuses, fix shelves, lay lino: I’m the original Mr Fix-it. I’ll even take the foul hound for walks.’
They lingered on the doorstep. He said he was a woman’s man. He said he couldn’t get on with Navy men, because they had no conversation. They could exchange information and tell jokes and swap prejudices, but they didn’t deal in ideas. And now he had met Meg he wouldn’t easily let her go. He had to talk to someone.
‘There’s Zelda,’ said Meg.
She called Thompson and went in and shut the door, and looked at the bare rough decent walls and the plain deal table and was glad to be alone.
‘I hope Zelda and Meg get together,’ said Jim, the first officer. ‘They ought to be friends. I’m afraid your Meg’s going to be rather lonely up there on the hills.’
They themselves were under the polar ice-cap: it was a fairly edgy place to be. The radar man never liked it, and Rating Hoskins lay awake in his bunk at night (local night) worrying about what would happen if they set off a missile when they happened to be under some ice mountain. Would the initial thrust be enough to force it through, or would it turn, as in some children’s cartoon, and destroy the destroyers?
‘She has Thompson to keep her company,’ said Timmy.
He felt the touch of Meg’s thoughts. She was laughing. He looked at his watch. It was eleven-thirty, Greenwich Mean Time. That night he dreamt that Meg was taking Thompson for a walk in the woods of his childhood.
Meg, indeed, was taking Thompson for a walk, but out on the hills. Thompson had recovered from his fear of sheep since Timmy had gone, and now showed a desire to chase them – only strong words and a stern face prevented him. If she tried to put him on the lead he pulled her along over the rough ground, so she would stumble and fear for her ankles. She had to contain him by force of will alone. She thought that Tony was a good deal more controllable than Thompson.
