by Weldon, Fay
‘And Hermes said, “And where is my father now? This man you love?” and I said he was working late at the office, which I knew was a cliché, but like all clichés was no doubt true, and even if he did stop by at the pub now and then – and he did sometimes come home smelling of whisky – I could hardly grudge the poor man a drink. “I think he rather smells of musk,” my daughter said.
“Musk?”
“Val wears musk,” said Hermes. “It’s disgusting.”
“I thought Val could do nothing wrong!” I said.
“Val can do a lot wrong,” said Hermes darkly.
“Dear me!” I answered brightly. “And you used to be so fond of her. What happened? Did she steal one of your boyfriends? Well, I’m afraid girls do! It’s a mistake ever to put too much trust in a girlfriend!”
Hermes shrieked that she couldn’t live in this madhouse a moment longer, and I said then don’t, darling, don’t, and she became pale and grave and begged me not to turn her out before her Results – Results had been looming large in our lives lately – and I said she could always go and stay with Val, couldn’t she, all of the time and not just some of the time. Hermes still stayed over with Val a couple of nights a week.
“Val keeps turning me out of her bedroom because she’s entertaining her middle-aged executive lover.”
“Oh dear,” I said, “I do think girls should stick to their own age-group. There’s always trouble if you mix the generations.”
And she said, wonderfully darkly, “Quite so! He’s old enough to be her father, not to mention mine,” and I nodded and went on darning socks – I only really ever darn socks to aggravate Hermes – and she said, “Mother, I am trying to tell you something,” and I looked her in the eye and said, “That’s very thoughtful of you, darling, but your father has been particularly loving of late and I don’t think there is anything in the world I want to know. Now be quiet.”’
Alan lies in bed and recovers from the sudden uprush of remembered desire; it is Pony’s turn to offer confidences, as Sister Tutor always said she should.
‘All I have to offer him is love,’ says Pony, dewy-eyed, ‘and the baby, of course. Isn’t it strange, how I keep forgetting about the baby! The first time I set eyes on Mrs Professor Khan was when I’d just started working in the department. We were having a case conference, Bobby and I, and she walked in and sent me to fetch coffee, as if I were the maid. I thought then, I’ll get my own back on you, and when Bobby made the first pass, I didn’t slap him down or anything, and before I knew where we were, we were in bed and in love. So it’s all her fault. She brought it on herself, and now she can be a divorced brain surgeon and as for me, I shall be married to a specialist. I am, after all, daughter of an ex-Minister of Health!’
But Alan isn’t listening.
‘I blame Hermes,’ he repeats. ‘If only she’d kept her silly, malicious little mouth shut, Esther would never have known, and the whole thing would have blown over.’
And downstairs in the canteen, Hermes pours her heart out to Freddo, since he’s there.
‘Of course, my father never liked me,’ complains Hermes. ‘He wanted me to be a son, if anything. It was always him and her together, Alan and Esther, keeping me out. They were lovers, really, in spite of Val and all the ones that went before, and that’s what Val didn’t like, that’s why she had to get between them. Being with my father was her way of getting close to my mother. She never had a family of her own: she envied mine, I think, more fool her! I’ve always felt orphaned. The children of lovers are orphans, they say. Isn’t that sad!’
Freddo remarks that Alan and Esther didn’t look too like lovers to him, the pair of them screeching and carrying on, and Hermes observes that that’s the only model of love she has, and why she never means to get married, and he strokes her cheek in an understanding way, and she actually feels comparatively understood.
‘But of course,’ says Esther to Mr Khan, ‘not being jealous didn’t last for long: not for more than an hour or two. I had my rights as a wife, although Alan had been explaining to me for long enough how minimal these were. And so, as Hermes had gone weeping and complaining to bed, I too went tapping at Val’s green and silver chequered door and saw for the first time the exotic creature who was Hermes’ best friend.
“I’m Alan’s wife,” I said, and she raises her eyes to heaven and said, “Why do women always define themselves in relation to men?” But she let me through and I went into this vulgar brothel-like room, all crimson wallpaper and cushions, and there was Alan sitting on a low sofa, looking completely out of place with his pink tie askew but thank God clothed, and I went into the kind of shock one does go into when the evidence of one’s eyes and the conclusions of one’s reason simply don’t co-ordinate.
Alan was as casual and relaxed as could be.
“Esther,” he said, “how did you know I was here? Val’s been doing some typing for me.”
“I used to type for you,” I said, “until recently.”
“Yes,” said Alan, “but you made so many mistakes it really wasted more time than it saved. Which is why I’m using Val, and didn’t tell you, because I didn’t want you to be hurt.”
“I see,” I said, and then, playing for psychic time, “I only came to see if Hermes was here, actually. Her results are through.”
“What are they?”
“A lower second,” I told him. “Still – better than a third.”
“Christ,” said Alan, “that’s dreadful. You should have made her study, Esther. But no, you had to just let her run wild from a child. She simply never got the hang of academic work.” Need I mention that Alan only ever got as far as business college, and flunked that?
“Now,” he said, “I suppose I’m going to have to see her through some expensive secretarial college. She might have made some kind of effort. But no, you’ve brought her up to regard me as money-bags, Esther, which is hardly surprising, since that’s how you see me.”
Now through this quite irrational but familiar tirade, Val had been gliding up and down on her jewelled bare feet – I think it was some kind of eastern sandal she was wearing – staring first at me, and then at my husband, who was clearly her paramour. He may have got his tie back on but his feet were bare – and the skin crumbly and papery and veiny too. I don’t know why she, who could have had anyone, chose Alan, though Hermes did tell me later that she was neurotically obsessed with married men: she just couldn’t resist splitting marriages, and that once it was done, she lost interest, but I think it was simpler than that. I think she just welcomed experience, and anyone who knocked upon her door, she would let in, and in, and in – it was admirable in its way.
“If I ever have children,” Val observed, “I’ll do it on my own.”
And I said to her, “You’ve been sleeping with my husband.”
“Not sleeping,” said Val. “There’s not been too much sleeping. There are simpler words, but your husband doesn’t use them. Men are such romantics!”
I thought she should offer some apology, or show some shame, and said so, but Val said no, why should there be, so far as she could see the less time I had to spend with such a person as Alan the better. Was he always so rude and insulting? It occurred to me, with a shock, that that’s what Alan was. Not right, and honest, as I had assumed, merely rude and insulting.
“Why do you put up with it?” my rival now asked. “No, don’t answer that. It would go on for pages! In brief, what choice does a wife have? Only now you’ve caught him in flagrante delicto—”
“Val!” Alan was alarmed. “All you’ve been doing is my typing. I must apologise for my wife’s insane insinuations. This is all most embarrassing. Nothing has happened here tonight!”
“Well, actually I agree with you,” said Val. “A lot of plungings and shakings and terriers catching rats, but when it comes down to it, nothing. My soul is quite untouched. He’s a terrible lover, Esther. May I call you Esther?”
“You may call me Mrs L
ear,” I replied, I hope with dignity, and admitted that I didn’t know what sort of lover he was since I’d married him so young, and was a virgin at the time, and had no standard of comparison at all. And Val cried out, “One man in a whole lifetime! How perfectly dreadful!” and Alan hustled me out of her house, unable, I later concluded, to stand two women talking together and himself no longer the central part of the action.’
Down in the canteen Freddo suffers a spasm of rage with Alan, Esther’s tormentor, and allows himself to hope that something will go wrong with the face-lift. How could any man treat a good woman so, Freddo expostulates, and Hermes asks him about his wife, left at home in Ireland, and he says ‘That’s different. I was just her meal-ticket. Ireland, anyway! All they want over there is a man to give them a baby, and a wedding so the priest doesn’t send them to hell for it, and then they’re through with men for ever. Sure, and isn’t all that the way God intended?’
‘Then why don’t you go back where you came from?’ asks Hermes, triumphantly.
‘Or why don’t you come back over there with me?’ he asks, not noticing the intended insult.
‘Of course,’ Esther says now to Mr Khan, ‘the first thing Alan saw when we got home, after I had interrupted his evening with Val, was the socks I had been darning for Hermes’ benefit. He picked them up and looked from them to me, and back again, and it is true the socks were cream and had been darned with rather yellowy wool, and I said something like, “Look, I’ve been darning your socks.” And he said, “But Esther, I can’t possibly wear these! They’re bodged, cobbled, lumpy and uncomfortable. You haven’t even matched the colours properly!”
‘I sat and considered the day I’d had, and the day he’d had. Eventually, I said, “I suppose Val darns beautifully.” I hadn’t mentioned Val since he’d dragged me out of her flat, and he hadn’t brought the subject up, and he replied, “Of course Val doesn’t darn beautifully. She wouldn’t dream of doing anything so menial. She is independent and proud.”
“But I heard her say you were a bad lover; she insults you,” I observed.
“We understand each other,” Alan said. “We deal in truths, not lies. Those were not insults, those were compliments. But how could you understand? You’re thirty years out of date! Val embroiders, actually. She does all her own cushions. She is remarkably talented. There’s almost nothing Val can’t turn her hand to. She befriended poor Hermes out of kindness: I can’t think what they have in common. Poor little Hermes! What a mess she is.”
“I suppose,” I said, as brightly as I could manage, “Val’s better in bed than I am, too.”
“She certainly turns me on, Esther,” he said. “To use a modern expression.”
“So what do you mean to do about it all?” I asked.
“Do?” he enquired. “Why, nothing! What should I do?”
“You’re not going to give her up? You know, how husbands are supposed to when the wife finds out?”
‘But he wasn’t. Why should he? That was an old-fashioned notion. He wouldn’t desert me. He wouldn’t sleep with me either. He’d spend weekends with Val and weekdays with me.
“I am only truly alive in Val’s company,” he said. “I am sorry if it hurts you, but we must speak the truth. Val has taught me that.”
“Yes,” I observed. “For someone so young she has taught you a lot.” At which he said she was an old soul. He took it I didn’t want a divorce. He said most women of my age thought half a husband was better than none, and I said I supposed that was true, and he said now that was settled we could be friends, even if we couldn’t be lovers, and asked me to fetch him a scotch. He didn’t mind if it was cold; in fact Val had taught him to appreciate iced scotch, and I said – oh, Mr Khan, do you know what I said? – I said “get it yourself.” And that was the first step to freedom. “Get it yourself.” One small step for a woman, Mr Khan. But a great step forward for women.’
Well, well! Press on: look forward, not back! You must hear these people out. What do we have friends for, but to lend an ear to their preoccupations and complaints? In time they will do it for us, when the white nights come, when the detail of what he said or what she did or what I felt keep sleep away, and a dreadful sense of injustice consumes our hearts with fire – not fair, not fair, what did I ever do to deserve this! – and the panicky feeling that something must be done, something, but what? weakens the bones. Then we will need our friends, as they once needed us. So hear friends out: answer the phone when they ring and do it in person – don’t leave it to the machine. They may seem mad to love such a one, or such another, but of such stuff are we all made. It isn’t really madness, you see; rather it is the concentrated sanity of hope.
So, now, what’s Hermes saying in the canteen over a third cup of yarrow tea? (Yarrow loosens the tongue and soothes the nerves. Freddo’s now on borage, that pretty blue flower which the Greeks used, to assuage the grief of those bereaved. And remember that Freddo’s lady love is closeted with Mr Khan, a suave and foreign charmer, and Freddo doesn’t care for that, although increasingly impressed by Hermes, who – now her silly sulks have gone – can be seen to be pretty, and merry, and charming, with very silky, very white, very young skin. While her mother’s, to be honest, is not what it was.)
‘It was all so dreadful,’ Hermes is saying, ‘but I couldn’t make Val see that it was. Even my tears didn’t move her. She maintained that she was sleeping with my father for my mother’s sake, in particular, and women’s in general, and with me because it was every woman’s right to be homosexual, and so far as she was concerned, nothing need change.’
Freddo looks at her, appalled.
‘You didn’t actually—’
‘Yes, we did, actually. Why not?’
He can’t answer. He breathes heavily.
‘Val said that people have to be confronted with the consequences of their actions,’ observes Hermes. ‘She said my father was at fault for trying to cheat my mother, and my mother was at fault in always seeking the easy way out, and that those who live by wife and children deserve to die by them, and I was at fault in still living under their roof, and so knowing past my time what was going on. She didn’t seem to think she was at fault at all. And I said yes, she was, it was her fault I’d only got a lower second! She couldn’t answer that.’
‘You mean you and her actually—’
‘Oh shut up, Freddo. And she said why didn’t I just come to bed and forget about it: she said we had three lives, waking, sleeping and sex, and each is a refuge and rest from the other two. And I said I wouldn’t. I thought she was disgusting, and she said have it my own way, and at that moment there was a ring on the bell, and she asked me to answer it, but I wouldn’t, because I knew it would only be one of her lovers, and it was. It was my father. Do stop looking at me like that, Freddo, I’m sure you had homosexual relations with other boys when you were in your Catholic seminary.’
‘Only ever against my will,’ says Freddo.
‘And Daddy burst in and said, “darling” in a disgusting, throaty voice, and Val said, “I thought you’d gone home.” She didn’t sound welcoming in the least, but Daddy took no notice. He’s wonderfully thick-skinned. He told her he was moving in with her. He couldn’t live without her. She was his education, his life, his future, his everything. “Oh dear,” said Val. She was trying to stop him coming into the bedroom, where I was, but he didn’t notice. He had a suitcase with him; he wanted to unpack. He told her he was expecting promotion, and then he’d leave home and the two of them would live together in a split-level bungalow, just built, he’d found on the outskirts of town. He knew the builder: he’d get it at a good price. It wasn’t too far from where the family lived so he could keep an eye on them. And I said, “Oh, thank you, Daddy,” and watched him jump a mile. I liked that. But he pulled himself together very quickly and said how about me running home to look after my mother? It’s time I did something to earn my keep, he said, and I said I had as much right to be in Val’s pad as he
did. That shook him but he went on about Mum needing me, on account of how she was in the dark, really in the dark, because they’d had a row, him and Mum, and Mum had tried to murder him, throwing an electric heater at him while he was in the shower, but all she’d managed to do was fuse all the electricity in the house, so he’d packed a suitcase in the dark and come straight round to Val’s – he’d made up his mind. He’d chosen Val and a new life. How could anyone be expected to live with a murderous, violent woman like my mother? People had to take the consequences of their actions, he said – he’d got that from Val – so I got dressed and went home to look after poor Mum.’
‘Dressed?’ asked Freddo.
‘Put on my coat,’ she amends. She is beginning to want Freddo’s good opinion. Yarrow makes its drinkers soft and nice. ‘And as I left I heard them arguing. Val was saying but she liked to live alone, and Alan was saying but she’d said she loved him, and Val said but that was in the heat of the moment, and he said all our moments are heated, my darling, wait till you see the new house: picture windows and a magic eye garage. He and Val could jet-set all over the world: he’d go to the conferences by day while she lay by the pool, and in the evenings they’d see the town – and all Val did was look at my father as if he was mad, which I really think he was. Poor Daddy! Then Val asked Daddy what he meant to do about Mum, and he said she would be entitled to half the marital home, and she’d always wanted to work and be independent: now was her chance.
‘And that was when Val, to her credit, told him to go away. “I think,” she said, “that in my scheme of things, in my plan for Utopia, I underrated people’s capacity for just sheer simple appalling depravity.”
