Fay Weldon Omnibus: Collected Works of Fay Weldon

by Weldon, Fay

  Praxis was coldly received: dogs barked and leapt up at her, and were barely restrained. She was not offered refreshment but taken around to where Irma lay stretched out in a deckchair, wearing dark glasses. The baby slept in a cot beside her.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Praxis. ‘I think I’ve been mad. I’ll move out at once.’

  ‘Don’t bother,’ said Irma, ‘I’ve got cancer. I really don’t want Phillip filming my death-throes.’

  (‘Of course she hasn’t got cancer,’ said Phillip, savagely. ‘She’s been threatening me with cancer for as long as I can remember. She’ll use anything. Nothing’s sacred.’)

  ‘No,’ said Irma to Praxis, ‘you stay and be Nanny, and wipe Phillip’s nose for him while he plays make-believe. That house is really terribly hard work. And nothing changes except you have another child, or the ones you’ve got grow older, or some different boring people come to a dinner party you’ve got to wash up after.’

  ‘I tell you,’ said Irma, ‘unless you wake up in the morning wanting to be alive, there’s no point in any of it. And waking up next to Phillip, I just want to be dead.’

  (‘The trouble with Irma,’ said Phillip, ‘is that she’s an acute depressive. Can you imagine what it’s been like, living with a depressive all these years? What it’s been like for the children? What it’s going to be like for the wretched Pulitzer baby? She ought to have been sterilised.’)

  ‘All the same,’ said Irma, ‘one would always rather leave than be left. He’ll do the same to you, one day. Just watch out for his sense of timing, that’s all. It’s murderous. He nearly killed me. You nearly killed me, Praxis. I didn’t trust him, but I trusted you. Didn’t you have any sense of me, at all?’

  ‘No,’ said Praxis. ‘Not when it came to it.’

  ‘When we were girls,’ said Irma, ‘it was all fair in love, I seem to remember. A date with a man always took priority over a date with a girl. But now there’s property and children and whole lives at stake, Praxis. Are people speaking to you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Good,’ said Irma. She didn’t seem to have much strength. She began to cry.

  ‘I thought you were my friend,’ said Irma. ‘I really did.’

  ‘I love him,’ said Praxis, ‘and you don’t. I could make him happy.’

  Irma looked quite astounded, an expression Praxis had never before seen on her face. Irma took Praxis’ hand and laid it against her own cheek.

  ‘Well,’ she said. ‘Love!’

  Praxis cleaned Irma’s home, looked after Irma’s children, slept with Irma’s husband. She was overwhelmed by the notion that someone as malicious as Irma could bear so little malice: and surprised by the knowledge that Irma’s feeling for her ran so much deeper than her own, for Irma.

  Presently Irma regained her health and strength, and ceased to be so forgiving.

  Writs flew: from Irma, and from Ivor. Damages were claimed. Phillip was away making a film about poverty in the Third World, and came back, to his indignation, with some obscure and debilitating tropical virus. Praxis dealt with the solicitors.

  Eventually Phillip was divorced by Irma; Praxis was divorced by Ivor. Phillip had custody of Victoria and Jason, a state of affairs which Irma did not contest. Ivor had custody of Robert and Claire: a state of affairs which Praxis wanted to contest, but did not, under threat from Ivor that he would bring up the subject of the Raffles Esplanade Dive and her moral fitness to bring up children. She was however, granted liberal access to them.

  Phillip was required to buy Irma a flat and provide her with maintenance, and was thus further weighted down by practical obligations. He began to count the notes in the wads he handed over for housekeeping. Praxis would have to go out to work.

  ‘I suppose it’s all been worth it,’ said Praxis, on their wedding night.

  ‘Of course it has been,’ said Phillip. ‘I’d love to get some hand-held cameras into the registrar’s office. Those faces!’

  He always kept his eyes open when they made love. Praxis, in these days of love and modesty, rather wished he would not. When the very soul left the body and flew to join in a cosmic ecstasy, the details of the flesh seemed irrelevant. But not apparently to Phillip. He had her enclosed by the square made by his two hands.

  He was working for the BBC now: not on the staff, but freelance. His hair was thinning. He played startlingly rough games with Victoria and Jason in the little garden: hurling garden stakes like javelins: narrowly missing neighbours’ cats and children. Victoria and Jason were surprised at, and slightly superior to these outbursts of boisterousness, but joined in, obligingly. Robert and Claire, when they came for the weekends, were nervous and frightened, and would not join in. Robert played with Lego and Claire stroked Irma’s white cat. Praxis felt her children did not really enjoy their time with her, in a house where meals came at irregular hours, no one washed their hands before eating, or particularly said please and thank you. They stared at her wonderingly, with Ivor’s brown eyes, and she felt that she had little to offer them. But they slept soundly at night and did not cry. She would listen at their doors to make sure. Victoria and Jason put up with their presence, but found them boring. Phillip was happy to have his empire spread.

  Praxis’ roots grew out. Phillip found her a job in an advertising agency.

  ‘I thought you despised advertising,’ said Praxis.

  ‘I don’t see what else a bright and totally untrained person can do,’ said Phillip, ‘except be a school dinner lady.’

  ‘You didn’t exactly get me the job,’ Praxis murmured, later. ‘I had to do any number of tests.’ She worked in the copy department, writing pamphlets for the Electricity Board.

  ‘They would never have given you the tests,’ said Phillip, ‘if it hadn’t been for me.’

  Whether he was demanding credit or blame, Praxis could not be sure.

  ‘Women are so fundamentally immoral,’ Phillip would complain, admiringly enough, at dinner parties. ‘They go after what they want, red in tooth and claw. Whether it’s babies, or a man, or sex, or promotion, they let nothing stand in their way. They’re barbarians.’

  That was in the days when men were prepared to generalise about women, and women would not argue, but would simper, and be flattered by the attention paid.

  It was difficult for Praxis to get to see her mother. There were four children at the weekends – ever since Irma seldom took her pair – the house to run, her job to do, the food to buy, the meals to serve, the clothes to keep washed, ironed and put away and so on. Phillip did not want her to engage a cleaner, let alone house an au pair.

  ‘It’s nicer without outsiders,’ he said with truth. ‘Don’t worry about standards. Let’s just live.’

  Just living, all the same, was exhausting. And he had become accustomed to three-course meals in the evening, complete with cream and brandy.

  ‘Why don’t you have your mother here,’ asked Phillip, ‘if you worry about her?’

  ‘Because I’d have to give up my job,’ said Praxis, shortly. She had begun to speak shortly, she felt, rather too often; with such breath as she had left while passing from one task to the next. ‘And your income is so erratic we have to depend on mine.’

  If she left the bills to be paid by Phillip, the services would be cut off, and debt collectors would ring the bell, so she paid them herself. It didn’t matter.

  ‘Don’t worry about money,’ said Phillip. ‘That would be very boring and rather lower middle class.’

  She was happier than she ever had been. Or if not happy – it now seemed to her that actual, overflowing happiness was a function of extreme youth, and since she had missed it then, she was not likely to encounter it now: and love was a good deal, but not everything: if not happy, she was at least living an appropriate life, amongst people who did not look at her curiously but understood what she was saying, and responded to it.

  She was promoted: she wrote headlines now, and not just body copy, and the small print. She f
ound the work easy. She had an assistant, and a little room with a carpet and pot-plants on the windowsill. She honed and fined sentences down to fill the brief and fit the space available. A daily, day-long crossword puzzle, with people clapping as she fitted the last clue.

  ‘God made her a woman,’ she wrote blissfully, ‘love made her a mother – with a little help from electricity!’

  She found decisions about what to have for dinner more difficult that decisions regarding campaigns, typefaces, art work and so on. Wrangles with the children upset her more than differences with art directors. She would sit at her desk reading recipe books, planning the evening’s menu. Meals at home became more and more elaborate: Phillip came to expect them. He would bring home friends from the film world, and they expected them too. She did not invite home anyone she met and liked in the advertising world. Phillip found them shallow and meretricious.

  She remembered what Irma had said, departing, monstrous.

  ‘Don’t start serving him proper meals; he’ll only come to expect them.’

  Too late.

  She went to meetings. People listened seriously to what she had to say. Colleagues struggled to avoid blame: Praxis acknowledged her shortcomings impatiently, in order to get on with the work in hand, and home in good time to clean the stairs and get the dustbins out for the next morning. She gained a reputation for efficiency.

  Phillip, when he wasn’t working, sat at home and played records, prepared camera scripts, and worked towards a feature film.

  ‘A house must be a background to one’s life,’ he’d say, ‘not a source of work and effort.’ But he’d complain when it was untidy. He didn’t like to see Praxis busy about the house either.

  ‘Sit down,’ he’d say. ‘Slow down. What does it matter? I’ve asked people for supper tomorrow. Shall we have Osso Bucco?’

  To get Osso Bucco meant a journey into Soho in her lunch-hour. She would accomplish it. Now she had a reputation as a cook, she would not easily let it go.

  ‘Women’s highest calling,’ she wrote, ‘keeps a woman busy! Here’s how electricity helps a working mother keep calm, keep cool, and the children kissing her goodnight.’ And so on. She was a real discovery, in the agency world. Other agencies tried to poach her. She stayed loyal and got another rise. She was agreeably thin. Clothes looked good on her.

  News came from the estate. Diana’s husband had been killed in a car crash, on his way back from a nightclub. His secretary was killed with him. His way back where, people asked. Diana was left with two children. Ivor married her within the month. Love or commonsense? Did it matter? Robert and Claire came less often: when they did Robert was dressed like a little man, in suit, collar and tie: Claire wore a blouse, pleated skirt, white ankle socks and red button shoes. Victoria and Jason, in dirty jeans and sweaters, declined to play with them. Robert played with Lego and yawned: Claire stroked Irma’s cat and missed Diana’s middle daughter, her best friend. Irma left her Justin now just walking, with Praxis, and went off to America for three months.

  ‘But I’m working,’ said Praxis.

  ‘According to your advertisements,’ observed Irma, ‘mothers shouldn’t go out to work.’

  She had changed her style. She wore sneakers, jeans and no make-up. Her hair was short and fell naturally. She looked more intelligent and less petulant. She had been sterilised. ‘Now I can’t have a baby,’ she said, ‘I feel like a person, not a cipher.’

  Praxis was shocked. Praxis was on the pill – as yet unrefined, massive doses of oestrogen and progestin mixed, causing acute depression, blood-clots, oedoema, infertility and in extreme cases, death. Doctors, for the most part, denied these side-effects vigorously, while refraining from prescribing it for their wives. Apart from severe mid-cycle pains, Praxis showed few ill effects. But her daily pill still seemed a daily denial of her femininity, and her femininity her most valuable attribute.

  ‘Here’s how electricity helps you keep feminine, and well and truly loved!’ she wrote.

  ‘The electric way to start the day!’ That was one for men. Sweaty and muscly under the hot shower: soapy under open arm-pits.

  Men had public arm-pits: women’s, though more troublesome, were considered private.

  ‘I can’t take Justin,’ pleaded Praxis, ‘I really can’t. He’s lovely; but he’s not even at school, and I can get temporary help in if ever Victoria and Jason are ill, and they don’t seem to mind, but I do; I feel guilty, and that I’m neglecting them; so far I’ve been lucky because when they’re ill Phillip hasn’t been working, and at least he’s at home, but I don’t like to ask him –’

  ‘You must be mad,’ said Irma, enigmatically. And then – ‘Well, you wanted them. You got them. You wanted Phillip. You’ve got him too.’

  ‘I don’t think Phillip will want Justin.’

  ‘Why not? He’s his child, after all.’

  ‘I thought he wasn’t his child. He was some poet’s child. That was the whole point.’

  For the second time Praxis saw Irma look astounded.

  ‘Good God,’ said Irma, and left Justin with Praxis.

  Justin was accustomed to being left here and there. Phillip took him on his knee calmly enough, said ‘the more the merrier’ and handed him to Praxis when his nappies needed changing. Justin was not, as they said in the nursery world, ‘potty-trained’ and she had difficulty finding him a nursery which would take him all day. When she did, it was some three miles and a bus-ride away: Phillip needed the car: he was working with one of the BBC’s major documentary units now, and large sums and many people’s jobs were usually dependent upon his prompt arrival here and his even temper there.

  People said how happy he looked. They had many friends. The husbands greatly admired Praxis. She seemed to have all the qualities needed in a wife. An excellent cook, a good earner, a lively conversationalist, and a loving mother; a scarlet past and a virtuous present; she was a somewhat messy housekeeper, however, all agreed. She washed the dishes, but seldom actually put them away. She paid the bills but never filed the receipts.

  Praxis’ blood pressure rose. She had to take a month off work, which was fortunate, since it coincided with first Justin, then Jason, then Victoria, and then Robert catching measles. Diana wrote crossly to say she should have been warned about the measles: she would not have let Robert come over had she known. As it was, half the estate were now down with the disease and it was, by implication, Praxis’ fault. No, Claire wouldn’t be coming over that weekend. She missed her friends when she came, and she loved to potter about the kitchen with Diana, in any case, icing chocolate cup cakes, and doing all the other things which Praxis somehow failed to do.

  Praxis wept all night. She was tired.

  ‘Perhaps we should have a baby,’ said Phillip.

  ‘I’m just tired,’ said Praxis. Phillip, all concern, managed to take a holiday. They all went camping, to the Continent. Phillip sat under a Mediterranean palm and read books on film technique.

  Praxis saw to the family.

  Praxis, after a spell in hospital on her return for mysterious stomach pains, developed a kind of second wind. Irma returned from the states, took Justin back, and things went better.

  Irma paraded outside the Miss World contest with a banner saying such contests were humiliating to women. She threw a smoke bomb and was arrested. Nobody could understand her attitude, except Phillip.

  ‘She’s got so ugly lately,’ he said. ‘I expect she’s jealous.’

  Years passed: flew past: where did they go? Jason wore the same size shoes as his father: Victoria borrowed Praxis’ clothes, and Praxis was jealous.

  ‘Growing up clean with electricity!’ wrote Praxis.

  Willy and Carla took Lucy to live with them. She was now a quiet elderly woman, with few memories. Praxis sent money every month to pay for her support. She assumed that Willy must by now have tens of thousands of pounds saved, and consulted with Hilda as to the possibility of charging him rent, but Hilda would have none o
f it. Hilda did not contribute to Lucy’s keep: nor to the upkeep of the fabric of Holden Road. Praxis did all that, and was happy to do so. It seemed to her that the roots of much of her misery had lain in lack of memory. To provide money was so much simpler in the end, than providing love, companionship or understanding. To earn it, so much easier than asking for it.

  Praxis grew bolder: she hired a cleaner, and had a girl, Elspeth, to come in by day to help with the washing, shopping and so on. Phillip did not seem to mind. She had been foolish, she could see in retrospect, to regard his lightest word as law. If you pushed, Phillip gave. She did not enjoy the discovery. Her love for him did not exactly lessen, but it changed its form.

  Colleen wrote from Sydney. She had divorced Michael – the family doctor remarking that he was so clinically depressed he would scarcely notice whether he was divorced or not – and now had a job with the Life Saving Department on Bondi Beach. Praxis had a vision of her, hand in hand with some muscled Australian giant, bronzed and curly-headed, free at last, striding the sandy beaches, while the sharks snapped out to sea, and hoped that it was true. Sleeping such a healthy sleep at night, there would be no time left for crying.

  ‘A woman’s satisfactions,’ wrote Praxis, ‘are husband, child, and home. And a new electric stove is one of her rewards.’

  Phillip went off to Vietnam to film the fighting and the dreadfulness. He came back in a state of shock and indignation because one of the camera crew had been shot by a stray bullet, and was paralysed.

  ‘I don’t understand you,’ said Praxis. ‘Did you think it was just a game? Didn’t you know the bullets were real?’ She shouldn’t have said it. It seemed to her that afterwards his love diminished. He began to complain about the standard of her housekeeping.

  Jason fell off a ladder and Phillip was angry because the children were so badly supervised. Jason was concussed and grew worse instead of better. There was internal bleeding. Praxis waited at the hospital all night.

  In the early hours Phillip turned up with a hand-held camera and filmed the casualties coming in. He took shots of Praxis’ stunned face, too: and even of his son, still lying in the reception bay, wired up with drips, too acutely ill even to be moved. Irma, summoned from some women’s meeting (or, as Phillip described it, ‘she’s gone all dykey, you know’) physically attacked Phillip. There was a scene in Out Patients: Irma screamed, Phillip shouted, Praxis wept, the camera was smashed. Jason, by some miracle, recovered. Afterwards Phillip was obliging and kind for some time. He even tried to explain himself to Praxis, when they were in bed.