by Weldon, Fay
‘And Daddy went to a hotel for the night, and I went home, but couldn’t get into the house because the front door was locked.’
‘I was inside by then,’ says Freddo, ‘with your sweet lady mother, and sure and all we didn’t want any intruders. Nobody bursting in, you understand.’
‘It was my home, too,’ says Hermes, reproachfully.
‘And sure wasn’t it a special occasion! To find true love in the space of a few minutes! Sent out by the Head Office to right a power failure at No. 19! I knocked at the door, and called out, so as not to alarm those within, “This is the Electricity Board, Sir Lancelot himself, come to bring light into the lives of the helpless!” and who should come to the door but your dear lady mother, all swollen up with tears. A damsel in distress! It’s often like that when the power fails. Someone’s thrown something. We found a torch, we found a ladder, we found the fuse, and she told me I meant Sir Galahad, and not Sir Lancelot; Sir Lancelot merely ran off with King Arthur’s wife, and I shone a torch down from the top of the ladder on to her upturned face, and she smiled up at me through her tears, and sure my heart went out to her, and I knew I must dedicate my life to this poor woman’s happiness and up we went to the big soft bed.’
‘My father’s bed!’
‘Sure, and hadn’t he failed in his duty to it?’
Alan sighs, and Pony adjusts his bandages.
‘It won’t be long now,’ she says. ‘Your bandages will come off: you’ll be back in the world again.’
‘The world!’ he complains. ‘The world conspires against me. Step out of line and wham! bam! it gets you. No sooner did I have to face the fact that Val had been playing with my affections, than I was summoned to the Director’s office and there, instead of receiving the promotion I expected, was handed a redundancy notice. Certain branches of the business were being closed down: they no longer needed me. The recession, my dear, is like age: it closes in gently – one can’t believe it! That it should apply to oneself – impossible! There was quite a substantial redundancy payment but that was not the point. Being suddenly pointless, useless, was the point: waking up in the morning and having nothing but the mood one woke up in! I didn’t tell Esther what had happened. I let her think my aura of quiet despair was because I had given up Val on her account. And therefore that she, Esther, was to blame. But she didn’t take it as she usually did – trying to assuage the guilt I laid upon her with nervous coughings of apology, and little placatory offerings – a new shirt here, a pair of socks there, acquired by virtue of economies she had made in the housekeeping. No, not at all! I kept looking up and finding her smiling to herself, and when I moved back into her bed it was as if she’d scarcely noticed my absence. It didn’t occur to me she had a lover. I pretended to go off to work every day, but really went to the public library instead, and in the company of a dozen or so others similarly engaged, studied and responded to the advertisement columns of the newspapers. As the recession bit harder, the vacancies grew fewer, and still I had not found a job. Grief over the loss of Val – and that went deep – and the sense that I had made a fool of myself, and in front of my own daughter too – had aged me. My hair was noticeably grey. I went to many interviews – but no one offered me a job. I was depressed, miserable, and angry, and I drank too much, and it showed.
‘One day I decided to tell Esther all, and face her mirth and wrath – she, whom to the employed man had seemed an object to disregard and all but despise, to the unemployed seemed formidable. And I went home mid-morning.’
‘That’s never wise!’ says Pony.
‘To be sure,’ says Freddo to Hermes, ‘your mother is a frightening woman when she’s roused. I was happily in the dear soul’s bed one morning, as was my wont—’
‘How you have the nerve,’ exclaims Hermes, ‘to criticize me—’
‘My darling,’ says Freddo, ‘what I do is natural, what you do isn’t, and sure and isn’t there AIDS to prove it? God’s punishment on the sinful!’
She opens her mouth to protest, but he’ll have none of it, ‘– as was my wont,’ he repeats, ‘when there’s the sound of a key in the lock, and she jumps out of bed mother naked and goes to the top of the stairs.
“Esther, Esther,” hubby says, “where are you?”
“In bed,” she says. “Why aren’t you at work?”
“Didn’t you get up at all this morning?” he asks, looking at her naked shame.
“Sure and I did,” she says, “but I got back into bed,” and I hear her calling me, “Freddo!” and hubby says, “Who’s that?” and I go and stand beside her in my birthday suit, and she says,
“His name is Freddo, and he is the man I love. I am only half alive in your company, I am all alive in his. I’m sure you don’t mind. If you do, I’ll move in with him during the week and spend the weekends with you.”
And doesn’t the poor devil look as if he’s going to burst into tears, and I tell her to stop it, and it comes to me that she only wants me to get back at him, and I say so, but she says no, she wants me and to get back at him.
‘And then she asks poor hubby to go and fetch her some whisky, and, speaking personally, she says, she doesn’t like it on the rocks, and then he does begin to cry, and I go and get dressed, and when I get back she’s standing on the top stair, and he’s on his knees, blubbering and trying to kiss her feet.’
‘Don’t, don’t!’ cries Hermes, appalled.
‘Sure and it shows he’s a man of proper feeling. Many’s the time I’ve kissed your sainted mother’s toes. Hubby straightens up, seeing me, and says, “I won’t have that man in the house,” but all she does is laugh and says, “what I say, goes” and tells him she’s landed a job writing cookery captions in a magazine and can live as she chooses now.’
‘And perfectly dreadful it was,’ says Hermes. ‘To have a mother working! She never cooked food and she never washed clothes and if Dad said where are the cornflakes she’d say in the corner shop, and if I said where’s my white blouse, she’d say under the bed, where you left it, and if he said “let’s start all over again, my dear” she’d say, “I haven’t time to talk now. I have a meeting at nine. Make sure you take the cat to the vet and hire a carpet-cleaner for the stairs, and cook something for supper that won’t spoil, because I’m working late at the office tonight. I’m working and you’re not.”’
‘That’s just like her real sweet darling self,’ says Freddo. ‘A woman of spirit!’
‘She drove my father out,’ says Hermes, ‘whether she meant to or not. One day she found she’d set one too many empty plates before him; he walked out and hired a bedsitting room and started divorce proceedings, and she defended them. And what the solicitors didn’t take of the redundancy money, you did. My mother is a monster. My father made her so. No wonder I’m a mess. But I’ll never leave home. I’ll get everything I can from the pair of them, for ever and ever and ever!’
‘You’re your mother’s daughter and I love you for it,’ says Freddo and leans across the table and kisses her on the lips. ‘It was you I was after, all the time. And sure, now I’ve a little business set up of my own, couldn’t we get together? Only where will we live?’
Alan falls asleep in his bed. Pony creeps out of the room. Mr Khan says to Esther, ‘You are a very, very attractive woman, my dear,’ and his slender, talented hand creeps towards her ageing but more than sensuous knee, and Esther rises quickly and says she must just look in to see how her husband is, glad for once to claim him as such, and at this moment Mrs Professor Khan steps over the divide where the lino turns to carpet and the free wards stop and the paying wards begin, in search of her husband. And of course she encounters Pony, who is about the same business.
Of course they encounter each other. You will know from your own experience, that when caught up in one of these wildly interacting groups – and most of us are from time to time; particles of dust flung into the air and jiggled about in some overwhelming magnetic sexual field, when tears flow and h
ysteria mounts – that there is just no getting away, until it has worked itself out. Flee to the Sahara and who will you see on the first camel but your lover’s husband’s secret boyfriend! Surprise, surprise! The Force is with you. The Force is strong. The Force is all the fun and horror in the world: it is an overflow of energy from the making of babies.
So that is why I say that naturally Pony encounters Mrs Professor Khan.
‘Good morning, Mrs Khan,’ she says demurely, hating and despising this woman who shares her lover’s bed, by right. Of course we, unlike Pony, admire her. She is what all women should be. Competent, assured, working nobly in the community, realising her potential, fulfilling her aspirations, organising her children, seeing her husband as decoration – she is so superior to him she can scarcely admire him. And he admires her, but he does not love her. How can he? He loves Pony. He loves what he can look after. Dear God, what is to become of us all?
‘Professor Khan,’ the older woman corrects her.
‘I’m afraid Mr Khan is rather busy,’ says Pony, boldly, laying down rights of ownership. Mrs Professor Khan pauses, examining her with curiosity, as a very large cat will a very small bird.
‘So am I, my dear,’ says Mrs Professor Khan, kindly. ‘Very busy.’
‘He’s with the wife of one of the face-lift patients,’ Pony says. ‘She’s rather upset. You know how important Mr Khan thinks the family gestalt is, when it comes to healing.’
‘I am sure he will comfort her,’ says Mr Khan’s wife, ‘as one human being will another. He is very good at that. Sometimes I feel he takes it to extremes. But then, he has all the time in the world.’
And she smiles sweetly, and Pony realises her loved one is under attack.
‘There is,’ Pony blurts out, ‘such a thing as love!’ and her eyes brim with sudden tears.
‘Only for weak minds, little girl,’ purrs Mrs Professor Khan. ‘Do you fancy yourself in love with him? I suspect you do. Try not to get hurt. My husband falls in love twice a year, once at Christmas and once at Easter. You must be last Christmas’s event, and Easter’s coming up – and you not over it yet. Oh dear! But at least you don’t have a brain tumour! We must try and keep things in proportion.’
And she sweeps on and Pony wails her distress and indignation, just as Esther passes by.
‘Oh dear,’ says Esther, recognising the nurse who earlier restrained her with a neck-hold from the martial arts, ‘what can be the matter?’
‘What am I going to do?’ the younger woman sobs. ‘I’m pregnant!’
‘But that’s wonderful!’ says Esther. ‘The one justification for love. It produces babies. You should be very proud and happy.’
‘But she’ll never let him marry me.’
‘Oh, marriage!’ says Esther. ‘That’s different. That is difficult. Never mind. Social welfare will always keep you, and give you a one-bedroom flat, and I’m sure the father will do what he can to help you – though then of course your benefit will be cut, so you might be better off saying you don’t know who the father is – and you will have the baby for ever, living evidence of the power of passion. What more do you want?’
‘But I got pregnant on purpose,’ says Pony, ‘so he’d marry me.’
Esther stares at her, quite stopped in her tracks. ‘Well,’ says Esther, ‘nothing changes,’ and she goes on in to wake her husband from his fitful, barely achieved slumber.
Mrs Professor Khan faces her husband. He is smaller than she.
‘I have been wanting to speak to you for two days,’ she says.
‘You were asleep when I came in last night, and gone before I woke up,’ he says. ‘Such is the fate of many busy and accomplished couples, of course.’
‘I think you should know,’ his wife says, ‘that I have been asked to join a peripatetic life-support team, centred in Moscow, to attend various Heads of State in the East. It is a two-year appointment. I mean to take it.’
‘But what about me?’ he asks.
‘There is already a cosmetic surgeon on the team. I’m sorry.’
‘What about the children?’
‘They have their father,’ she responds calmly. ‘And they already regard you as the primary parent.’
Indignation boils over. He jumps to his feet, blood suffusing his smooth, sensuous, olive skin, to the great danger of his capillary nerves.
‘You mean to leave me behind,’ he cries, ‘as nanny!’
Down in the canteen the waitress coughs. Freddo and Hermes are so closely entwined as to be a threat to common decency. They suit each other. Both are of an age, both are strongly sexed, and both highly opportunistic. Thank God they have found each other. They ignore the waitress’s cough. Now the manager will have to be sent for.
‘I won’t have you seeing this Val,’ he says, ‘that’s all.’
‘She’s locked up house and gone to the Harvard Business School,’ says Hermes.
‘Leaving her pad empty?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then we can squat!’ he cries, in triumph.
‘All I ever wanted from my parents,’ observes Hermes, acquiescing to his plan, ‘is that they should be happy. It’s all any of us want. Not good, not rich, not perfect – just happy. And they failed me.’
Thus, accepting her fate, she attains her maturity, albeit in Freddo’s company.
But of course what to the children appears to be abject misery, appears to the parents to be merely richly textured life – the intricate and fascinating games that couples play in the struggle for fairness and permanence within the home.
See now how Esther holds Alan’s hand, pulling him and her from the brink of separation – and the Final Decree only days away!
‘I’m sorry,’ she says, now. Listen to her!
‘So am I,’ he says. Good God!
‘You know I got pregnant on purpose,’ she says, ‘so you’d marry me. It wasn’t an accident.’
‘I had no idea,’ he says. ‘Poor little Hermes!’
‘I haven’t much pity for Hermes,’ says Esther. ‘We gave her life, that should be enough for her. We put up with her for years.’
‘Then if only she’d go,’ says Alan, ‘we could actually start our married life.’
‘Are you proposing,’ she says, ‘that we should get back together?’
‘I am,’ he says. ‘Now that I look ten years younger I’ll get a job soon enough. Employment’s all in the mind, you know.’
‘Tell that,’ she says, ‘to the three and a half million!’ But she kisses him through the bandages.
‘You must get these ridiculous wrappings removed,’ says Esther, ‘and come home at once to me.’
Mrs Professor Khan is taking a little time to placate her husband.
‘We can’t put our personal happiness before the affairs of the world, Bobby. Our leaders must be sound in wind and limb and brain, if the people of the globe are to sleep soundly in bed at night.’
‘You’ll be unfaithful to me,’ he laments.
‘Not for the sake of pleasure,’ she assures him, ‘or from any particular inclination. Only to steady my hand.’
He suffers, or appears to.
‘You know how it is,’ she says, ‘before a big operation. For the likes of us sex can only be therapeutic. Don’t pretend otherwise, to me. We are neither of us stupid people.’
‘I can’t bear it,’ he says, defeated.
‘What?’ she enquires. ‘My being unfaithful, or my not being stupid?’
He does not reply, and since she does not like time to be wasted, for lives truly hang upon her minutes, she leaves.
Pony is lurking outside the door. Mr Khan calls her in.
‘And what are we going to do about Freddo?’ asks Alan of Esther. ‘You can’t just ditch him.’
‘I can,’ she says.
‘Women are heartless.’
‘He was only ever entertainment at best, revenge at worst.’
‘You mean,’ says Alan, ‘you think he’s cooling off a
nd you want to get in first.’
‘Probably,’ she admits.
And at that moment Hermes and Freddo come in, having been ejected from the canteen, hand in hand, and flushed with the discovery of the real, the true, the inevitable, the inimitable LOVE. And their elders and betters look at them, and quell such envy, jealousy, rage and resentment as rise in both their breasts, because the sun is no longer in mid-heaven, but beginning to sink, and they have each other, and tranquillity, and the golden glow of the evening, or else they have nothing.
‘Hi,’ says Esther, calmly, ‘you two.’
And after Freddo and Hermes have left, the sooner to consummate their passion, Pony bounces in, all smiles.
‘Mr Khan’s coming to take off your bandages,’ she says. ‘Your tests are through and all is well. And what’s more he’s going to give all this up and retire early and divorce his wife, and marry me, and look after his children himself; and all for love of me. So put that in your pipe and smoke it!’
‘Happy endings,’ says Alan.
‘Happy beginnings,’ says Pony, ‘and just as well. I almost thought I’d have to have a termination, but since I run the “Nurses Against Abortion” here in the hospital, wasn’t I half in a fix!’
And presently Mr Khan enters, with extra trolleys and nurses, and ceremoniously unmasks Alan, and returns him his face. He is a little irritable with Pony, who keeps dropping the scissors and losing the swabs, but she seems to like his irritation.
‘What an inefficient little thing you are!’ Mr Khan says, and she simpers and giggles and the other nurses envy her. Betrothed to a specialist!
‘Behold,’ says Mr Khan, as Alan’s face emerges, ‘the new man! Match for the new woman!’
Alan examines himself in the mirror. He sees with a new clarity. He sees the truth.
‘I look older,’ he says, ‘if anything.’
But that, of course, is the great penalty. The more we know, the older we get. The body quite withers away, in the harsh light of wisdom.
We hope you enjoyed this book.
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