by Weldon, Fay
‘Couldn’t we try something from a recipe?’ asked Praxis.
‘Why?’ asked Willy. ‘We have a perfectly balanced diet.’ He developed ulcers on his shins, however, and thereafter, on the doctor’s advice, supplemented the diet with kippers.
‘You see!’ he said, triumphantly, to Praxis.
Praxis saw.
They shopped on Saturdays: or rather Willy did. Praxis seldom held actual cash in her hand. The little illicit family, all the same, were well fed, and well clothed, for remarkably little money.
Praxis imagined, rightly, that Willy’s savings would soon be into the thousands. He was keeping them for a rainy day. Praxis might be drenched in cloud bursts, but Willy kept warm and dry, feeling not a spot.
Baby Mary proved with time to have a highly moral nature. She would do nothing, put on a sock or take off a shoe, without first discussing the significance and rightness of the act. Sometimes it would take an hour to dress her. Sometimes Praxis wondered what she had done, and why, but not often.
She felt sure it all couldn’t go on like this. But it did.
There were few visitors. It seemed a house doomed to have few visitors. Elaine came, once, but did not return. She talked about the price and quality of ham, and clearly found the house eccentric and not to her taste and pitied Praxis. Nor was she accustomed to such as Willy, who had grown a beard and wore his shirt unbuttoned to the waist, so that his hairy ribs showed. Elaine, Praxis felt, had never seen an unbuttoned shirt, except possibly on the beach on a hot day, in her life. And who of the inhabitants of Brighton went down to the pebbly beach on a sunny day? That was visitors, who had nothing better to do.
‘At least,’ said Elaine, as she left, ‘you’ve got a man.’ And it seemed to Praxis that whole wide leafy avenue of communication opened up, but she had left it too late. Elaine’s broad energetic back was already disappearing into the mist that blew in from the sea that day.
Praxis comforted herself with the thought that she did not like being pitied by a grocer’s daughter. She wrapped eccentricity around herself like a protective cocoon.
Every time she visited Lucy, Lucy was fatter.
‘It’s the drugs,’ said sister. ‘But it saves locks and bars and keys, and you can see she’s happy, the dear!’
Hilda was having a good time in London. She seemed to be in a good frame of mind: or perhaps no one bothered, any longer, to let Praxis know she was writing letters.
Mary grew talkative and pondered, in infant prattle, about the nature of the universe and the existence of God. She demanded concentrated attention.
‘Oo hear wat I say?’ she would demand, in the manner of a child in a Victorian novelette, if Praxis’ attention wandered.
What have I done with my life, Praxis wondered. It can’t go on like this. Willy thought it could.
‘Nothing happens,’ complained Praxis.
‘Thank God for that,’ said Willy.
‘But are we going to go on like this for ever?’
‘I don’t see why not. You’ve got what you wanted. It’s what you wanted. Have you changed your mind?’
‘No. Perhaps we could go on holiday?’
‘Your life is one long holiday,’ commented Willy, and Praxis had to concede that it was more or less true. Was housework, work? Childcare? No. That was simply what one did, all day.
‘You could always do good works,’ he added, laughing, impaling her up against the old gas cooker. It was no longer greasy, but somewhat corroded, and afterwards she seemed for days to be brushing flakes of rusted metal from her buttocks. Willy, these days, reserved more of his energies for his work, now that he had found a mental discipline which absorbed him, and rather less for sexual activity. She thought she would have been glad, but found she was sorry. She had become all but addicted to their sudden, if temporary, escapes from reality. They broke up the day. He was warmer, too, than he had been. She no longer found his body cold – or had she merely become as used to it as she was to her own? Or worse, had she grown cold herself?
‘Good works?’ she laughed. ‘You don’t understand, Willy, I am the good work.’
He didn’t like her to become too discontented. They started going to the pictures, for the first showing, every Sunday evening. Mary would sit between them. They went in the first six rows, where the cost was ninepence a seat, and the town’s children banged their seats up and down, and you had to crane your neck to see the screen. Praxis rather liked sitting here –watching their great distorted black and white shapes of someone else’s truth – and in later life never quite became accustomed to sitting far back from a wide curved screen. But the pictures had lost their magic by then, in any case.
‘Willy,’ said Praxis, ‘make something happen.’
‘In another couple of years,’ said Willy, ‘Mary will be at school and you could get a job.’
‘What doing?’
‘There must be lots of things.’
‘Being a bus conductor, I suppose, like Judith?’
‘Why not? It’s useful work.’
‘A pity you didn’t stay on and get your degree,’ said Willy to Praxis. ‘You could have got something more interesting, and better paid, like Hilda.’
He had misjudged his investment. Gone for short-term profit rather than long-term gain.
Hilda was earning a thousand pounds a year. It was an unheard of sum for a woman to make. Few at the Ministry cared to stand in her way. She dealt fearlessly and efficiently with problems as they arose, provided they were conveyed to her on paper, and not verbally, when she would tend to dismiss them too quickly as insignificant. She made decisions without anxiety or effort. On the rare occasions she was proved wrong, and her judgment in error, she merely sighed, and shrugged, and accepted blame. Others found her attitude reassuring. As if all one was supposed to do in life was one’s best.
Praxis bit her nails with impatience. Willy disapproved of that.
‘It’s the evenings, Willy,’ she said. ‘If you’d only work at home instead of the Institute!’
‘When I’ve passed my next lot of exams,’ said Willy, ‘I’ll be earning more money.’
‘But you know you won’t spend it.’
‘Why should I spend it when we have everything we want? What else do you want from life, Praxis, apart from what you’ve got?’
What, indeed. A man, a house, a child. It was what most women wanted.
She developed bronchitis. The doctor said the house could do with heating. Willy bought an oil-stove.
‘Willy,’ screamed Praxis, ‘I want some new clothes. I want to go shopping for myself.’
He eyed her, thoughtfully.
‘Perhaps you really want me to marry you,’ said Willy. ‘I will if you like.’
‘I’ll think about it,’ said Praxis, thus rather hurting and certainly surprising Willy.
‘Don’t you marry him,’ said Judith. ‘All he’s after is a legal right to that great house. It must be worth a fortune.’
Praxis knew that it was not: that 109 Holden Road was a millstone rather than an asset. Willy would spend nothing on repairs: the neighbours complained about the dilapidation and the weeds in the garden: rain leaked through loose tiles into the attic rooms: Hilda never came down to see what was happening. No one, not even Willy, could plot to gain possession of such a property. The look of surprise and horror on Elaine’s face as she had looked round Praxis’ home, remained with Praxis; the mere memory of it had shamed and embarrassed her.
‘If you marry Willy,’ wrote Irma from London, ‘don’t think I’ll come to the wedding because I won’t. He’d water the sherry. You must be mad to even think of it.’ She was officially engaged to Phillip, she wrote. There had been a big party, out of funds provided by her guardian, in South Kensington. Young people in sports cars turned up, and there was a good deal of hooting, calling, slamming of doors and angry neighbours in the night. She had a diamond as big as the Ritz.
‘Don’t marry Willy,’ wrote Colleen
from Manchester. ‘It’s a mistake to marry too young, before your character’s settled down. I find mine changes all the time. I used to think I was the athletic type, but my boyfriend Harry, who’s doing abnormal psychology up here, explains it’s just a retreat from sex, and in the meantime I’ve developed the most dreadful leg muscles.’
‘I don’t think I’ll marry you,’ said Praxis.
‘Praxis,’ said Willy, ‘just on practical grounds, I think you ought to marry me.’
‘But what about the cost of the licence?’
‘I am perfectly happy to pay it. I will pay for anything necessary, and gladly. You know that. Don’t try and be unpleasant. It’s just that someday, sometime, Baby Mary’s papers are going to rise to the top of a file somewhere, and if we’re not married, they may say she’s in moral danger and take her away.’
‘I’ll take the risk,’ said Praxis.
Willy waited until Praxis was home from visiting her mother, on Sunday, and they were setting off for the pictures.
‘I begin to think,’ said Willy, ‘that you don’t really want your mother home at all. You know why they don’t let her out? It’s because you’re living with me.’
‘It’s no use, Willy,’ said Praxis, sadly. She could almost feel his body temperature dropping: the flesh stripping away again from his by now quite plump limbs: the anxious, desperate trembling of the muscles return. She thought his mother had a lot to answer for.
But she was sustained by a vision, and there is no one so strong as she who is so sustained. She would not marry Willy for a reason she could hardly communicate to anyone – except, oddly, this time, Hilda might understand. How could she say that the Red Dwarf Betelgeuse had bent down out of the night sky over Brighton beach and told her not to marry Willy. But it had happened.
She had walked out late one night on the pebbly beach. She seldom did so, for gangs of youths now roamed the water’s edge mostly with the intention of fighting each other, but occasionally they were reputed to attack, or rape, or knife some harmless passer-by. Willy said the rumours were exaggerated: people loved to be frightened and feel they could not sleep safe in their beds any more – or at any rate go down to Brighton Beach any more.
Praxis went walking; the night was moonlit and bright; she felt she would at least see danger approaching, if approach it did.
The pebbles gleamed beneath her feet; the sea lapped and glittered: in the distance Brighton Pier flung its dark man-made shape out into deep waters. The arch of the sky was vast and deep. Praxis felt elation rising: and with it the desire to worship, to bow down before the maker, along with the seas, the skies, the valley and the mountains. She felt a sense of destiny, as if someone had turned and touched her on the shoulder.
‘What shall I do?’ she asked the universe.
Betelgeuse replied, leaning down out of the sky, all spears and pale fire.
‘Wait. Be patient. Do nothing. Your time will come.’
She did not doubt but that there was some force guiding the affairs of the universe, working its way peacefully through the chaos of human societies towards an end of its own devising: and that she had some part to play in it, however humble.
I must be mad, she thought, as the star retreated, and the heavens grew less brilliant and more ordinary, and the sea turned back into sea, and the pebbles did not exist to reflect the glory of the Creator, but merely crunched beneath her feet, and made it difficult to walk.
But she knew she wasn’t, and that she wouldn’t marry Willy.
Praxis settled down.
She bought some washed out pre-war woollies for herself, from Mrs Allbright’s summer sale. She gave up looking in a mirror altogether. She cut and stitched her old clothes into passable garments for Mary, who was happy with what she was given. Praxis was becoming quite good at sewing.
She did not read much, although as Willy pointed out the free library was only round the corner, and it was a pity not to make use of it. Words blurred on the page: notions failed to penetrate her mind. She seemed to have thrown away her brain.
Hilda said as much. Hilda eventually came to visit, looking serene and well dressed. She had a little car. There was no talk of rats, art or stars; nor did she take off her clothes. Mary was frightened of Hilda, however, for no apparent reason, and Praxis found herself glad to observe it.
‘She’s a GI child, isn’t she,’ said Hilda.
‘What makes you think that?’ asked Praxis, surprised. Hilda shrugged, and did not pursue it.
In truth, Mary had a serene and hopeful turn of mind, which seemed to belong to another continent; to the future, not the past. She had a long face, a pale skin, thick pale hair, long legs and slightly buck teeth. Praxis liked to think she was very clever. She could read when she was three.
‘So could I,’ said Willy, jealous.
Hilda left.
It can’t go on, thought Praxis. It could. It did. On Sundays she would visit her mother and stare companionably, if wretchedly, into space. At Christmas they would visit Willy’s mother and eat the ritual chicken and Mary would catch cold. Willy passed one set of exams and started on another. His savings were immense. He spent forty-three pounds on new tiles for the roof. He would at least eat fish fingers now, but had gone off sausages, complaining they were mostly bread and bad value. She served them at her peril. Sometimes they would have herrings as a change from kippers. Mary swung on the gate as once had Praxis, and watched the children from the council school, and longed to go. Willy became more sexually experimental. Judith fell off the platform of her bus and broke her ankle: it was badly set and afterwards she limped and lost her job. There was a whispered scandal relating to Mr Allbright: he had exposed himself to a young lady member of the choir, but the case never came to court. Mrs Allbright had twin girls. Sometimes she left them with Praxis to look after. She did not care for them much, Praxis thought. She loved her son. She asked after Mary, but never closely.
Irma married Phillip, who had a job with J. Arthur Rank, King of Starlets. So much for film as a force for social change, said Willy. Willy and Praxis went to the wedding. Irma was dressed in white sharkskin; Praxis actually wore a new dress. Praxis found she loved Phillip as much as ever, but he, of course, was marrying Irma.
Colleen was in London studying archaeology. Her chin was hairy, but her eyes were bright. She had no boyfriend. She played tennis and hockey in the evening: her calves were certainly large and her hands were blistered, but she seemed happy. Praxis refrained from asking her why she didn’t just take a pair of tweezers and pluck out the offending hairs. Some people, she had gathered, waved such hairs as an act of defiance to the expectations of the world.
‘Why do you put up with it?’ asked Colleen.
‘Put up with what?’
‘Willy. Living down there.’
‘Because of Mary. What else can I do? How else can I live?’
Colleen had no reply to that. Who had?
‘There’s only one way to get out of the fix you’re in,’ said Irma. ‘And that’s to sleep your way out of it. Sorry, and all that.’
Betelgeuse glimmered low in the sky as Willy and Praxis went home by coach. To go by coach cost half what it did to go by train. It took twice as long, and was twice as uncomfortable, but Willy could work anywhere, so long as Praxis was beside him. He had his papers on his knee, and could apparently make sense of them, even in the dusk light, and on the jogging vehicle. To Praxis the figures seemed a blur. Perhaps he just stared at them, to save himself the energy of talking? Perhaps he feared his voice would wear out if he used it, as he feared that records would wear out if played too much.
‘It can’t go on,’ said Praxis, aloud. Willy did not hear, or pretended not to hear.
And still it went on.
Praxis wrote to Hilda suggesting that the house could be sold and the proceeds divided between Lucy, Hilda and herself. Hilda wrote back to Willy saying it was out of the question: what was he thinking of? Praxis, fearful, told Willy it was
just another of Hilda’s mad letters: Willy seemed to believe the lie. Praxis’ panic, or determination, call it what you will, subsided.
Elaine’s father died. He had a heart attack at the wheel of the delivery van and drove it into a wall. Praxis plucked up her courage, called on Elaine, to extend condolences, and found her behind the counter, slicing ham.
‘No matter where you go,’ said that young woman, pink with distress and determination, ‘or however hard you try, you end up where you began.’
‘It isn’t over yet,’ said Praxis. ‘It’s only just beginning.’ She spoke bravely, but found it hard to believe.
‘I suppose sooner or later I’ll get married and have children and apart from the marriage ceremony, that will be me more over than ever. Come to think of it, we only have until we’re twenty. After that it’s all downhill.’
She had given up her job in the Social Security Office and come home permanently to be near her mother and help run the shop.
Why does it have to be me?’ she complained. ‘Why couldn’t it be my brother who came home?’
‘Because he gets paid twice what you do,’ said Praxis.
‘It’s good of you to talk to me at all,’ said Elaine. ‘My Dad always used to have hysterics about you. First because your mother was in the loony bin and then because you were a scarlet woman. I wonder what he wanted for me? To stand here and slice ham, I suppose. Anyway he’s dead now, and I’m free to do what I like. My Mum’s nearly blind, not to mention stone deaf. I’m sure it’s hereditary.’
She had grown into a sturdy young woman with the same mixture of placidity and vigour which had characterised Judith in the old days: but blessed – or cursed, considering her circumstances – with intelligence.
‘The only way out,’ Irma had said, ‘is to sleep your way out.’
So they did.
