by Weldon, Fay
Easter approached, and six weeks’ vacation.
‘Praxis,’ said Willy, ‘you have a perfectly good house at Brighton.’
‘It’s not perfectly good. It’s horrid. I hate it. The nearer I get to it the lower my spirits sink.’
‘Nevertheless, you can live in it rent free. So can I. We could let this place and accumulate a little money. We’re going to need every penny we can get.’
‘What about rail fares?’ She was struggling against common sense. The victory was his already. He had known it would be.
‘We’ll hitch-hike.’
‘Who’d ever rent this place except you?’
‘You can clean it up a little, if that’s what you want.’
Praxis did so.
Two American exchange students paid thirty-seven shillings and sixpence a week for six weeks, for the privilege of living in the two rooms. Willy and Phillip continued to pay twenty-five shillings a week to the landlord. The transaction had already been arranged and Willy and Praxis had their conversation.
‘You’ll have to clean it up a bit,’ they’d said.
‘The dirt’s its charm,’ Willy had said.
‘Not to us.’
‘Very well,’ Willy had conceded.
‘I’d love to do an exchange to the States,’ said Praxis. ‘Shall I apply?’
‘You wouldn’t get to first base,’ said Willy. ‘They’re not interested in housewives.’ She had rubber gloves on at the time, and was scraping out mouse dirt from under the cooker. She saw his point.
They hitch-hiked down to Holden Road. Willy found a nice pair of high-heeled shoes for Praxis at a church bazaar, for two and six, and she wore them for hitch-hiking, instead of her usual sensible lace-ups. She sat on a rucksack by the side of the road with her legs showing to above the knee. Willy hid behind a tree. When a car stopped he would step out and there they would be, the pair of them, and the car driver left with little option but to take them both.
Praxis felt uneasy about such tactics, but could not quite find the words to express what she felt. Willy’s eyes were bright with pleasure and victory when it worked, and she did not wish to dampen his animation. He showed it seldom enough.
Hilda was home for the holidays, wild-eyed, high-coloured, beautiful and talkative. She was very thin. She put her arms round Willy and kissed him: she took to him at once.
‘What a good rat-catcher he’ll be,’ she said. ‘You’re just like a ferret. I love ferrets. I shall call you manikin, and you shall be our pet.’
Willy kissed her back, not seeming to object to this nonsense. Praxis felt jealous: and dull, plodding and dreary. It seemed to her that, for these particular holidays, Hilda had cast herself as Mary, and Praxis as Martha.
‘Don’t you mind?’ she asked, later, safer, in the damp double bed with its broken springs, beneath the heavy weight of rancid blankets.
‘Mind what?’
‘Hilda being mad?’
But Willy didn’t, it seemed.
‘It’s a different view of reality,’ he said. ‘You must learn not to be frightened by it. Go along with it.’
‘If I go along with it,’ said Praxis, ‘I’ll be like her. You don’t understand.’
He laughed at her. He enjoyed the dirt and decay of the house. ‘Don’t bother,’ he’d say to Praxis as she fought her way into caked corners with scrubbing brush and soapy water. ‘Just don’t bother. The more immune we get to germs the better.’
Hilda took off her clothes one night and danced naked in the garden under the stars. Willy took off his and danced too, prancing about, all white and sinewy, in full view of any passer-by who chose to peer through the broken palings. He beckoned and begged Praxis to join them, but she wouldn’t. She was horrified.
Hilda changed her mind in the middle of a pas de deux about whatever it was she intended, and stomped off to bed, locking the back door against Willy and Praxis so that they had to break in through a skylight window.
Willy wasn’t angry. Willy had looked, Praxis thought, rather regretfully after Hilda.
‘She’s got a lovely body,’ he said. ‘Longer in the waist than you and longer legs. Your face is prettier, mind you. She doesn’t have enough chin. And unpredictability could be difficult to live with.’
Praxis had the same feeling of nightmare as had so often afflicted her in youth. She visited her mother in the new State Institution for the Mentally Afflicted. Lucy sat in a day-room, one of a row of still, staring women sitting in armchairs six inches apart. Most of the other women were over seventy, and there by virtue of physical rather than mental infirmity. The curtains were bright, however, and the good sea-air blew briskly in. The staff smiled. Sister was particularly nice, and did not make Praxis feel, as she felt so easily, that it was all her fault her mother was incarcerated.
‘Praxis!’ cried Lucy, getting to her feet, clutching her daughter’s arm. ‘It’s Praxis. This is my little girl, Praxis,’ she said in pride to the others, but nobody stirred, or answered.
Only Praxis, who cried; whereupon Lucy looked offended, displeased at the sight of the great blubbering lump she had mistaken for a pretty little girl, and withdrew back into inner blankness.
‘She’s getting better,’ said sister. ‘We have so many new drugs. I wouldn’t be surprised if you couldn’t take her home, one of these days.’
The sense of nightmare deepened. Praxis went to visit Mrs Allbright, and discovered Baby Mary crying in the sandpit at the end of the garden, hungry and dirty, while Mr and Mrs Allbright cooed over their own, new, warm, clean baby inside. They none of them had much to say to each other.
When Praxis went home Willy was playing Strip-Jack Naked with Hilda. Whenever she or he turned up the same card she’d cry ‘rats’ and take off an article of clothing. Her breasts were full against bony ribs, and brown nippled. A dozen birds’ nests hung by string from the clothes dryer on the kitchen ceiling. ‘He’s doing me a world of good,’ she assured Praxis. ‘It’s so wonderful to be able to laugh.’
And indeed, her cheeks were pink and she ate heartily of the sausages and mash Praxis prepared for supper, stark naked she was.
‘Won’t you get cold?’ Praxis murmured, nervously.
‘Oh Pattie,’ groaned Hilda, ‘you are so insensitive. I am an artform, don’t you see?’
It was in the days before girls took their clothes off, easily, or anyone talked about living art-forms. Was she mad, or merely prophetic?
‘Let her be,’ said Willy. ‘Let the poor girl be. It does her no harm. She’ll get better soon, if we just all go along with it.’
‘But shouldn’t she have treatment?’
‘Your mother has treatment,’ observed Willy, ‘and look where she is. So long as things remain undefined, Hilda can yet escape.’ Praxis found his reason reassuring. She absolved him, rightly, of erotic intent towards Hilda. He relieved her of an enormous burden of guilt, anxiety and fear. She felt she loved him. Manikin!
The next day Hilda was sallow, suspicious and more than adequately clothed. She watched Willy with narrow eyes all morning, and took to her room all afternoon.
‘Perhaps we should go back to Reading,’ said Praxis, hopefully.
‘You can’t run away,’ said Willy.
‘I want to run away,’ said Praxis.
‘What about Baby Mary?’ enquired Willy. ‘Supposing your mother does get better? You need to be here, in Brighton.’
‘You have to face your obligations,’ said Willy.
‘A branch of the Institute of Statistical Studies has opened in Brighton,’ said Willy. ‘They’re prepared to take me on.’
‘I’ll give up my further degree for your sake, Praxis,’ said Willy. ‘We can both live at 109 Holden Road. It’s rent-free after all.’
‘You can get a job, Praxis,’ said Willy, ‘look after your mother, keep an eye on Baby Mary, if necessary, and on Hilda, as is certainly necessary.’
‘Praxis,’ said Willy, ‘where will a degree get you? T
o some kind of secretarial job?’
‘Not necessarily,’ murmured Praxis. ‘I might do better than that. There are openings now for women graduates in the Civil Service and in Marks & Spencer.’
‘For girls with first class degrees,’ said Willy. ‘Look at you!’ She was washing the windows again.
If only, thought Praxis, we had gone to stay with his mother, instead of coming to Brighton.
‘Willy,’ said Praxis, lightly, ‘did you know before we came that they were opening this new branch of the Institute of Statistical Studies down here? Or afterwards?’
‘Afterwards,’ he replied, vigorously. The sharpness of his response surprised her, but she had not the will, not the interest, to ponder the matter further. He was clearly going to win. He had lapped her once, twice, thrice, and she had hardly noticed, though they were both running neck and neck. But he still gave her a sporting chance: manikin, white hairy legs twinkling before her on their way to the winning post.
‘Unless of course,’ Willy remarked, ‘I get a double first, when it would be worth my while staying on at Reading. Then you might as well finish your degree.’
Praxis spent the term organising Willy’s life so as to leave him as much time and energy possible for study. To everyone’s surprise, he got an average second but luckily it would not affect his employment at the Institute. Praxis didn’t do too well in her end of term exams. There had not been much time for revision.
‘You don’t want to study too near an exam,’ Willy had said. ‘It addles the brain.’
‘You girls,’ said her tutor sadly. ‘You will put your personal lives before your academic future.’ He had seen her fall asleep many times in his lectures, and put it down simply to sexual excess. An element of malnutrition, mixed with anxiety, were in fact contributory factors, but he was not to know that. Willy found he studied better when Praxis was sitting quietly in the room, and the hostel meal times had suited neither of them, so she more and more frequently had gone without.
‘So,’ said Willy, when he had recovered from his chagrin at his foolish and ignorant professors, ‘it’s off to Brighton, is it?’
‘Yes,’ said Praxis.
‘It’s been a deliberate campaign,’ said Irma, ‘to get you where he wanted you. You realise that, don’t you?’
Praxis realised nothing of the kind, and was right not to. Self-interest lay so deep, was so firmly rooted in the very sub-soil of Willy’s nature, that his behaviour could hardly be said to be calculating. It was simply what Willy was; he did not need to think: he simply did: and it turned out right for Willy. Praxis was to meet many, many others like him, and to grow more wary.
‘At any rate,’ said Colleen, ‘you won’t go short of sex.’ Irma had broken off with Peter: Peter had broken off with Colleen. ‘He only went with me in the first place,’ wept Colleen, ‘in order to talk about Irma.’
Irma had taken up with Phillip: she could see him as a world famous film producer, and herself as a film star. She slept with him, too: delectable. Phillip ran his tongue round his soft, lovely lips. Praxis could not bear to see it. It was the final straw which broke the back of her resistance to Willy.
She was depressed.
In the hostel the smell of cabbage swirled around the corridors: at Holden Road the smell of dry rot, mingled with soapy water, surged out of rarely opened windows.
Mother, what kind of world did you bring me into? Father, why did you leave me here?
Hilda, have you no idea what it is to be me?
Willy, have mercy!
They moved to Holden Road, and lived openly together, bold as brass.
‘Like mother, like daughter,’ said Judith, cheerfully. She had a job on the buses, as a conductress. The uniform suited her: she seemed vigorous and healthy: her dark moustache was pronounced beneath her peaked cap. The children stayed with neighbours while she worked. Scarlet geraniums tumbled from her window boxes: the house was bright and cheerful. She had a bus-driver boyfriend. ‘But I don’t suppose he’ll walk out on you, like your Dad did on your Mum. He’s on to too good a thing.’
People kept telling her so but Praxis found it hard to believe. Lucy was getting better, but Praxis found that hard to believe too.
‘If you have a suitable home,’ said the sister at Lucy’s State nursing home, startling Praxis, ‘then I see no reason why your mother shouldn’t be with you; the medication must be scrupulously maintained, of course.’
Lucy weighed fourteen stone: little piggy eyes beamed out at the world, placidly enough. Was this getting better?
‘You’re a good girl,’ the sister added, surprisingly enough.
Hilda took a good degree, and went to London to sit her entrance exams for the Administrative Grade of the Civil Service. Part of the examination consisted of a weekend at a country house, where trained assessors could judge personality and manners.
‘So long as she doesn’t take off her clothes, or talk about rats, art or the stars,’ said Willy, ‘she’ll be all right.’
Hilda didn’t and was. She went into the Ministry of Works – an odd thing, people thought, for a woman to choose, but it was the least favourite Ministry and there were vacancies available. She coped easily with the job, lived quietly in a little flat, and contented herself, when under stress, with writing lurid letters to Lucy’s Institution, and to Mrs Allbright, telling on Praxis, and describing Willy’s sexual activities in some lurid and accurate detail. Praxis put from herself any notion that Hilda might have actual personal knowledge of them. Willy never closed doors, let alone locked them: that was all.
‘I threw the letter away,’ said the ward sister, kindly. ‘Has your sister ever received treatment?’
‘No.’
‘Don’t you think she should?’
‘Not really,’ said Praxis, eyeing her moony mother.
‘You probably have a lot to put up with,’ said sister, surprisingly. ‘I really think we should keep her here a little longer.’ Praxis was relieved. But why hadn’t she said that before the end of term?
Mrs Allbright held Hilda’s letters in her hand.
‘Of course I take them with a pinch of salt,’ said Mrs Allbright. ‘Hilda’s so wonderfully imaginative. All the same –’
‘If you are living in sin with a man,’ said Mrs Allbright, ‘I can’t accept you in my house. You understand that? I have to take a moral lead in the community.’
Was Willy a man? Well, of course. It sounded odd to Praxis, all the same, that sharing bed and board with Willy, should be construed as living in sin with a man. He was a manikin, forever twinkling in front of her, white hairy legs vanishing the other side of a winning post. Could this be sin?
‘You could join my Friday nights for bad girls, I daresay,’ said Mrs Allbright. ‘We’ve got a lovely sewing bee going. But I don’t somehow think it would suit you.’ She held her plump young son to her plump young bosom. He smiled and gurgled.
Baby Mary cried and cried in the next room.
‘Shall I pick her up?’ asked Praxis.
‘Crying exercises the lungs,’ said Mrs Allbright. ‘She’s such a difficult, dirty child. The longer I live the more I believe that the sins of one generation are visited upon the next. And now look at you, Pattie! Thrown everything away. It’s very bitter. My husband and I used to pray for you, before we went to bed at night. Please, for our sakes, ask this man to go. I’m sure God will forgive you.’
‘It’s not as simple as that,’ said Praxis.
‘Doing God’s will is always simple,’ said Mrs Allbright, firmly. Mr Allbright no longer sucked her of sweetness, as a bee sucks nectar from the honeysuckle: he respected her too much, alas. She was the mother of his child: his holy Madonna. Only sometimes, at night, in the dark, she would hear him groaning with torment in the other twin bed; and then he would succumb and fall upon her, and there was very little pleasure in it for either of them. She was confused: she caught the infection, or perhaps came to the realisation of sexual guilt. The memory
of the early days of their marriage horrified her, as it did him.
Pattie was linked with them, and Baby Mary, too, conceived in sin, born in violence.
Baby Mary lay neglected in her cot: thin and snivelly.
‘I could take her off your hands during the day,’ offered Pattie, cautiously. ‘You must be so busy.’
‘Unless,’ Praxis added, ‘you think I might corrupt her.’
‘She was born in corruption,’ said Mrs Allbright, clearly and unmistakably. Praxis had been joking, but Mrs Allbright was not.
Pattie wheeled Baby Mary home. Baby Mary smiled and laughed, as if recognising her good fortune. Pattie did not take her back to the Allbrights, and the Allbrights did not ask for her. Her birth-certificate, identity card and ration book arrived eventually, by post, without a covering note.
‘I’d like to buy a book on babycare,’ said Praxis tentatively.
‘What for?’ asked Willy. ‘You have your instincts, surely.’
‘They might be wrong.’
‘The point about instincts,’ said Willy, ‘is that they’re never wrong. Wrong simply doesn’t apply. However, if you’re worried I’ll see if I can pick one up somewhere.’
‘I want a new one, Willy. Up-to-date.’
‘What for? Babies have been the same since the beginning of time, surely.’
‘Yes, but –’ Praxis gave up more and more easily. It was Willy’s money, after all. He was earning eleven pounds a week at the Institute, working by day, and in the evenings and at weekends, using their facilities to study for further examinations. Light, heat, and so on, being free.
He posted a time-table on the kitchen wall, and they kept to it, rigorously.
Willy had his breakfast at eight, and left the house for the Institute at eight-thirty. He cycled, and in wet weather wore a rain-cape. The bicycle was Policeman’s Issue, 1928, and massive. She did not know how he managed it, but his calf muscles, as she well knew, were very strong. He returned for dinner at twelve-thirty, went back to the Institute at one-fifteen. At five forty-five he came home, played with Mary and had supper at seven. At eight he would cycle back to the Institute for three hours’ study. By eleven-thirty they were in bed. It was a quiet life but a busy one for Praxis. Willy liked to have his meals set promptly upon the table. Sausages, baked beans, mashed potatoes and oranges remained his staple diet.
