by Weldon, Fay
‘But where can I live? And how? I can’t stay on Colleen’s sofa for ever.’
‘I should think not. I’m sure it’s damp and lumpy, like its owner.’
‘And there’s Mary.’
‘There doesn’t have to be Mary, Praxis. You only choose Mary. We all think you’re slightly dotty. Leave Mary behind with Wee-Willie-Winkie, or send her back to the clergyman’s wife.’
‘She’s like my own child. And she hardly knows the Allbrights anymore.’
‘Well,’ said Irma, buffing her red nails, straightening a picture here, blowing a speck of dust there, ‘I suppose we must all have something to love. Except me, of course. I can do without.’
‘Surely you love your baby.’
‘I leave all that kind of thing to Phillip.’
Irma tripped about her glossy home, on high stiletto heels which marked the parquet floor at every step, head high, middle lightly corseted so that her new pregnancy didn’t show, scarlet lipped, doe-eyed, heavily scented, infinitely angry, infinitely bored.
She turned to Praxis suddenly, tears in her eyes, smudging the mascara on her lower lashes.
‘It can’t go on,’ she said to Praxis.
‘You’d be surprised,’ said Praxis, ‘how it can. Or what it takes to make it stop.’
Irma did not offer Praxis, even temporarily, the shelter of her spare room. Praxis, it was mutely understood by both of them, was neither grand enough, interesting enough, or beautiful enough to occupy it. She had, besides, a bad cold in the nose, and Irma feared lest she catch it.
Praxis was receiving the world through slightly watery eyes and dimmed ears. The rims of her nostrils smarted.
‘You should be in bed,’ said Irma.
‘I haven’t got a bed to be in,’ said Praxis.
‘Well, tucked up on Colleen’s sofa then,’ said Irma. ‘I’m sure she’s glad of company; and the snufflier the better. It’s clearly what she likes. Her car salesman wheezed all through the wedding ceremony. Or do you think she’s just desperate?’
‘I think she loves him,’ said Praxis, and Irma eyed her pityingly, and then took a broom and banged the kitchen floor to startle the old lady in the basement and then ran up the stairs – the price tags, Praxis could see, were still on the soles of her shoes – to the bedroom, to bang the ceiling there and annoy the twins.
‘I don’t think you’ve got enough to do,’ remarked Praxis. ‘Why don’t you go to work?’
‘Because of the mother-baby bond,’ said Irma, calmly enough. ‘Phillip says it is detrimental to the child’s emotional and mental development if the mother goes out to work: and I want no comments from you, please.’
Praxis closed her mouth.
‘Phillip will be back soon,’ said Irma, dismissing her friend, and closing the conversation at the same time.
‘I’m afraid you caught me on a bad day,’ Irma said on the doorstep. ‘It’s been lovely seeing you again and as soon as you’re settled do come round again. It’s no use me trying to help you, I’m hopeless at that kind of thing. I’m only good for entertainment value. Now what you must do, Praxis, is get married to some exciting man with a future, and bring him round to dinner. You’ll have to do something about your clothes, mind you. So long as I’ve known you you seem to have been wearing the same dusty black sweater. Why?’
Because there’s a never ending supply of them at church sales, Praxis could have said, and because if I wore the tight black satin blouse and flounced red Spanish skirt which was my Raffles outfit, you’d know altogether too much about me.
You might even tell Phillip. Praxis reserved Phillip in her mind, as it were, for another occasion.
Praxis met Hilda out of her office. Her sister came down the steps at a quarter to six, brisk and efficient, in earnest conversation with a grey-faced colleague. She motioned to Praxis to wait quietly, finished the conversation and then came over. She was wearing a fur coat in spite of the warmth of the day, but she seemed palely cool, and her brown eyes cold.
‘You should have rung to make an appointment,’ said Hilda. ‘I am going to the opera tonight, and I haven’t much time.’ But she consented to have a cup of coffee with Praxis, in a sandwich bar.
‘I had a phone call from Willy about you,’ said Hilda. ‘I think you’re being very irresponsible. Who’s going to look after the house and who’s going to visit mother if you just walk out like that?’
‘There’s no reason,’ said Praxis, bravely, ‘why it should be me and not you.’
‘I’m the eldest and I’m earning,’ said Hilda. ‘You have nothing better to do. How can I possibly get down to Brighton? He told me to tell you he wants Mary back. He’ll go to the Children’s Department if she’s not back by the end of the week.’
‘How can he look after her?’ protested Praxis. ‘He’s out at work all day.’
‘I expect he’ll move Carla in,’ said Hilda.
‘Who’s Carla?’
‘Willy’s girlfriend,’ said Hilda, blandly.
Praxis found her coffee cup trembling in her hand.
‘Willy wants to marry Carla. She’s only a shop-girl but Willy doesn’t mind. He doesn’t come from a particularly good background himself, I suppose. Not like us.’
Praxis studied her sister’s cool, unimpassioned face. Her expression was not malevolent: that she could have understood. Rather it was cautious, interested, without empathy. She wanted to embrace her and say this is me, me, Pattie, your sister, help me, but Hilda would merely have been puzzled and embarrassed.
‘Don’t you know about Carla?’ enquired Hilda. ‘He told me about Carla; why didn’t he tell you? She works in the canteen at his office. She’s very practical and very clean, I believe. She’d look after the house well. I daresay we could ask her to visit mother: we could even club together, Pattie, and pay her to go. Then she’d be sure to. Though when I think of how little mother did for us, I’m sure I don’t know why we should bother.’
‘She did what she could,’ mumbled Pattie, through shock and tears. It was one thing to leave Willy: another for him to be gratified by her leaving. One thing for her to leave her home: quite another to see herself so instantly supplanted.
‘She should never have deprived us of a father,’ said Hilda, looking at her little diamond watch.
‘It’s our house,’ said Praxis. ‘Willy can’t just move someone else in.’
‘Someone has to look after it,’ said Hilda. ‘And as I said, he wants Mary back.’
‘He can’t have her.’
‘Do be practical,’ said Hilda. ‘After all, you’re a known prostitute. All Willy has to do is lift his little finger and say she’s in moral danger, and you’ll never see her again.’
‘Is that what Willy said about me? A known prostitute?’
‘It’s not surprising that’s what you turned out to be,’ said Hilda calmly. ‘You caught it from Miss Leonard, and of course Mary has made things worse for you. She is the Anti-Christ. I warned Willy but he laughed. Well, he’ll find out.’
She rose to go.
‘Do you like my coat? It’s anti-static. If you had one, you might find it some protection.’
She looked almost sad for a moment, as if some inkling of her sister’s plight had pierced her carapace; but then she shook her head briskly, as if to shake off doubt and gloomy thoughts, and walked away. Praxis paid the bill and took the train back to Brighton. Mary was safe with Colleen.
Praxis reached 109 Holden Road just before six o’clock in the evening. It was Willy’s habit, these days, to be home by six-thirty.
But it isn’t his home, Praxis told herself, it’s my home; Willy is some small painful parasite who has wormed his way in to the flesh of my being. I must dig him out.
The sense of nightmare which had descended upon her in London did not disperse as she neared Brighton. Rather it intensified. She dreaded the place; the past it contained; the present it had; and the future it might still have waiting for her.
Praxis stopped outside her gate. It was a gloomy evening. The sea sky was heavy and tumultuous. Black clouds formed themselves into monstrous bat wings, which hovered, it seemed, just over her house. The sound of the sea, so familiar to her as to go mostly unheard, was tonight loud in her ears: a restless spiteful background to her life.
She opened the front door and heard the sound of singing. For a moment she thought it must be Lucy, back home again, and young again, singing in the absent kind of way she had, as if to cover up the blackness of her thoughts: the better to raise a smokescreen between the world and herself. Praxis had hated to hear her mother sing: others had thought, there! Lucy’s happy. She sings. The child knew better.
Praxis went through to the kitchen. The light was on. There was a young girl on her knees on the floor, scrubbing: she was wearing rubber gloves: she sang as she worked. The kitchen was tidy, bright and cheerful. Flowers had been put in a vase: the mantelpiece cleared of bits and pieces: the Aga stove blacked. Once long ago, Praxis remembered, the kitchen had looked like this. That was in the days when the grey-haired gentleman with the philosophical turn of mind and the admiring nature, and the wooing, caressing, dreadful penis, had been young, and had even – had he? – sat by the Aga and bounced Praxis on his knee, and chucked her under the chin with his smooth well-manicured finger.
Oh, I am old, thought Praxis. I am so old. I am too old to go on living.
The girl straightened up. She seemed embarrassed. She had what Hilda would have described as a common little figure, and a common little face. Her hair was fair and permed, and her eyes blue and watery. Her voice was nasal.
‘I suppose you’re Praxis,’ she said. ‘I told Willy you’d come back, but he wouldn’t believe me. He said you wouldn’t dare. I’m Carla.’
She took off her apron and her gloves, and offered her red and wrinkled hand to Praxis. Praxis did not shake it: not from any sense of animosity, but from a sudden vision of the hand in intimate contact with Willy’s flesh.
She ought not to mind: she could not mind: but mind she did. ‘I used to feel bad about it at first,’ said Carla, ‘but when he told me what you were doing, I didn’t see how it made any difference. He was ever so upset. He only came to me because he was upset. Well, I knew that. It was just afterwards things became different. You can get very fond of Willy, can’t you.’
‘What I was doing?’
‘Well,’ said Carla, blushing. ‘Down at the Raffles with that girl from the grocer’s shop. My dad has a garage. He had to tow away her dad’s car after the accident. Blood everywhere. It was terrible.’
Men, reflected Praxis, are commonly expected to marry someone poorer, less educated and of lower status than themselves. Women, likewise, are expected to marry above them. Thus every wife in the world will automatically feel in her domestic life and status, inferior to her husband. Because in fact she will be: and perhaps this way happiness and acceptance lies. The husband looking down. The wife looking up. If only I could have looked up to Willy.
Perhaps, thought Praxis, that was the whole trouble. I was too nearly Willy’s equal. He did his best: stopping my education, forbidding me to earn, reducing me to whoredom: yes, he certainly did his best. Except, alas, that to blame Willy for these things is ridiculous. He didn’t do them. He pointed a finger, and I ran, willingly, in the direction he pointed.
She was silent. She sat down, without asking permission. It was, as she had reminded herself, her kitchen, her chair. Carla was wearing a pale pink fluffy angora jumper.
‘I like your jumper,’ said Praxis.
‘Willy bought it for me,’ said Carla. ‘Well, we thought we’d get married. I could hardly marry him in white, could I – not after all that. Well, you know what he’s like. Always at it. And you wouldn’t marry him. He did ask. I said he should. You turned your back on him. What did you expect? He was bound to find someone else. He wants a wife. A man has a right to a wife.’ Her nasal voice rose high in indignation, in defence of Willy.
‘The last time I saw Willy,’ Praxis could have said, but didn’t, ‘only a couple of days ago,’ – can it have been so little? – ‘he had me on the stairs in the two minutes between Mary leaving for school and his own leaving for work. I waved goodbye to him, still sitting on the landing. He has been telling you lies, shop-girl, of a kind only a shop-girl would believe.’
A canary sang in a cage which hung from the window.
‘I brought my bird along,’ said Carla. ‘I’m ever so fond of my bird. It sings its little heart out. Willy said, bring it. I said you’d be back, he said you wouldn’t dare.’
I have been telling you lies, Willy, of the kind a whoring mistress tells. No, perhaps I don’t dare. Perhaps I’m going to leave.
‘You can’t get married in a jersey you’ve been scrubbing floors in,’ observed Praxis.
‘I wore my apron,’ said Carla, anxiously. ‘It’s just the angora’s so soft and lovely. I couldn’t resist it. I meant to take it off before Willy got back.’
Praxis, recognising something of herself in Carla, felt more kindly towards her.
‘I feel bad about all this,’ said Carla, ‘but the thing is, we haven’t anywhere but here to live, Willy and I, and your sister Hilda – I do admire her, she’s so clever and smart, I’d no idea about anti-static and how it eats into the brain, do you think it’s true? – says it’s all right if we stay here till we find somewhere, and I can keep the house nice, and look after Mary – you can’t take her away from her school and everything she knows; I mean, if you really love her, you can’t – and I’ve heard so much about her from Willy I feel I know her already: and Hilda asked if I could pop in sometimes and see how your mother was getting on’ – she broke off.
There were tears of entreaty in her blue eyes.
‘You know what Willy is –’ she said. ‘It’s so difficult sometimes. He has his savings. We could put them down on a little house, near the sea-front. I could take in boarders, – but you know what Willy is.’
‘Yes,’ said Praxis. ‘I know what Willy is.’ But if you got a pink angora jumper from him, you might get a house of your own yet. In the meantime, she said, ‘By all means stay. And do visit mother. I’d be grateful. She might even think you were me, if you told her so. These days she believes what she’s told. It’s the new drugs she’s on.’
‘What about Mary?’
‘I don’t know about Mary,’ said Praxis. ‘I’ll have to think about Mary. Could I just ask, is it a new pink angora jumper or is it second-hand?’
‘New,’ said Carla, not without indignation. ‘Of course.’
The wind had risen; it buffeted Praxis about the ears as she went back to the station. The black bat shape of the high clouds held its form, however, and seemed to follow her as she went, as if Praxis was the object of its particular attention. She walked close to hedges and fences; she was frightened. Her mind held oddly little: she was conscious of some relief as the train pulled out, and Brighton was left behind, and the clouds changed into something more normal and less personal. The shock of having encountered her father, in the manner she had, loomed over all the other minor assaults her dignity and feelings had lately suffered; it incorporated them all, as a major devil might sweep a whole host of lesser demons beneath its bat wings and take them into itself, biding its time before disgorging them again.
Truth and the devil, thought Praxis, being the same.
19
I can scarcely remember, on a hot summer’s day what it is like to be cold. When I am replete, I cannot remember hunger. I can, mind you, when rich, remember what it is like to be poor. Though I may tend to look scornfully at the poor and wonder why they stay that way, I try to remember, and not to despise.
I remember wandering through London streets, crying for grief because I had lost Willy and was about to lose Mary; not seeing that my own actions and my own obtuseness had brought these losses about. Or that in any case neither Mary nor Willy were mine to lose.
Had Mary been
my own child, had Willy been my legal spouse, I still would not have had the right to call them mine. We shelter children for a time; we live side by side with men; and that is all. We owe them nothing, and are owed nothing. I think we owe our friends more, especially our female friends. I might have been justified in feeling angry with Irma for not helping me when I needed help: and with Colleen because the help she offered was limited by her desire not to inconvenience her husband. But I was not angry: I assumed, along with everyone else, that a man’s convenience rated more in the great scheme of things than a woman’s pain.
In retrospect I see as quite ridiculous my agitation because Willy chose to buy another woman a new pink sweater, when I had had to make do for so long with second-hand dusty black. Why didn’t I buy my own sweater? Why did I expect to be provided for, and resent it when I was not?
And why, when being a part-time whore at the Raffles seemed neither particularly disreputable, or disgraceful, at the time I was doing it, did I allow it to turn into a disgraceful and shameful secret? I was earning, after all; offering one of the few services the world allowed me to offer – apart, I suppose, from my dubious skills as a cleaner, or washerwoman, and I was doing that at home, anyway, unpaid. I was gaining some agreeable physical sensations, and stretching my vision of humanity; I was free to pick and choose my clients, and had time left over to look after home and child. Why was I so easily made to feel it was distasteful, when my own experience indicated that it was not?
Certainly it is true that many, even most, whores are debased and wretched-looking creatures, but I suspect the debasement and wretchedness came before the streets (or the bar stool) and that whoring, for male or female, is a way out, not a path down. It certainly was for me.
And is it really any better at the other end of the spectrum? Is the ordinary domestic woman, lumbering about in a hospital maternity ward, less debased, less wretched? She seems to me to be neither spiritually exalted, nor greatly loved; fulfilling no higher purpose than a mindless biological destiny.
