by Weldon, Fay
‘Get involved with a chauffeur?’ demanded Angelica. ‘You must be joking.’
‘Impossible. I must keep my mind on my work,’ said Jelly. ‘I can’t afford diversion.’
‘Never, never, never,’ cried Lady Rice. ‘Edwin might find out.’
But they discounted her. She was the one who loved Edwin. The others had long given up. Love, they could see, was a luxury they could ill afford. The humiliation of love spurned was what made women on the edge of a divorce give up their rights so easily.
‘Take it all,’ they cry. ‘I don’t want a thing.’
Later, when love’s over, they can see their mistake. He has no such qualms. Winner takes all.
‘We’ll do it again tomorrow,’ said Angel, and, as she had use of the mouth and the whole body felt good and at ease, it was Angel Ram heard.
‘Unless you’re free this evening. But shall we concentrate on now?’
‘Slut, whore, bitch! Anybody’s! Stone her to death,’ came Angelica’s response.
She was in a temper. Angel bit her own lip and let out a yelp. Ram licked the sore place better.
‘And what time of the month is it?’ Jelly asked.
‘Forget AIDS, what about pregnancy? Christ, you’re irresponsible.’
Lady Rice just gave up and thought about other things. Let Angelica, Jelly and Angel emote; it left her free to reflect in tranquillity. She had wanted a fuck and got one but, when it came to it, this was no kind of answer. She supposed she was in the power of the statistic, yet again. She was one of the thirty-four per cent of women who engage in untoward sexual activity when first apart from their husbands and suffering, as a consequence, from low self-esteem. Her own behaviour, she could see, was nothing to do with her, not her responsibility at all.
Interesting, she noted, that Angel’s stretched arms fell apart from around Ram’s neck at the moment of orgasm. Jelly would have clasped hers the tighter, in surprise. Angel, on orgasm, felt gratification, not surprise. Angel’s body fell automatically loose and languid at such a moment. Angelica would have tautly stretched and sidestepped: first the stretch to better experience, but then the last minute sidestep to avoid the fluid to jelly, jelly to fluid of orgasmic takeover. Fidgeting, defensive Angelica; self-interested, manipulative Jelly; serve them both right to be overwhelmed by the desires of lustful, conscienceless Angel!
What pleasure then, and what rejoicing should there not be, as out of the sepulchral gloom which surrounds the death of marriage, this brilliance dawned, this angel, sweeping away humiliation, self-interest, discrimination, with such powerful wings. This new source of lustful energy now streamed out waves of stormy, light-dappled dark; and in the flickering blackness that still was light, Ram McDonald gained his power; hairy male arms and legs entwined with her own smooth white limbs. Or, look at it this way, a king crab crawled out from under a rock, perfectly at home in his watery parking lot; monstrous yet everyday; the handsome, healthiest crab you ever saw; king of the rock pool, all-important till you got a glimpse of the ocean. A chauffeur today, but whom tomorrow?
If Angel fluttered through clouds of sexual glory, it was to rejoice in their turbulence. Good Bad Angel, thought Lady Rice; her little sister Angel, who loved to feel the stickiness of hot leather on naked thighs, who rejoiced in the rush of non-identity to the head, the feel of long skinny legs opened, the satisfaction of the thrust of strange hard flesh felt between; and the familiar flurry and panting begin, the search for the soul of the other, buried so obtusely in flesh. Leave it all to Angel.
Then Angel cried out in the sheer delight of her coming to birth.
‘Be quiet,’ begged Jelly. ‘Don’t make that dreadful noise.’
‘Don’t overdo it,’ said Angelica. ‘He’ll think you’re faking.’
Good Bad Angel, little sister! Lady Rice denied maternal status. She would be Angel’s sister; that much she could allow, but she could never see herself as mother in charge. She had had enough of all that, in marriage. In charge of Rice Court, in charge of her husband’s happiness, in charge of everyone’s morals, as good wives are: inexorably, little by little, simply by virtue of knowing best, being turned into mother. What even halfway decent man could allow himself to stay married to his mother, once that status had become unequivocal?
‘By the way,’ said Angel into the quiet of spirit which follows orgasm. ‘My name’s Angel Lamb.’ (Lamb was Angelica’s mother’s maiden name.) ‘I am the Angel and the Id together,’ she introduced herself. ‘I am the internalised sibling of Lady Rice, Angelica Barley (a passing stage name) and Jelly White, our father’s daughter. Now just shut up and let me get on with this. There’s no stopping me now I’m here. The time you’ve wasted; the journeys you’ve taken with this gorgeous hunk of manhood and done nothing about it! Too bad!’
Angelica winced at the phraseology, and Jelly lamented the folly of what had been done, and Lady Rice drowsed and sniffed her unhappiness, and they all adjusted their dress and Ram took his place in the front seat and took them to the very door of the office.
7
History
Back in the Sixties, Prue Lamb, aged seventeen, married Stephen White, aged fifty-two, and gave birth soon thereafter to a little girl they named Angelica, who was both dutiful and ambitious, cute and swift. Sometimes they called her Jelly, for short – in affection and dismissal, ‘Oh, Jelly, you are being a pain; what husband will put up with you?’ – and occasionally they called her Angel, as in ‘Angel, dearest, fetch me this; Angel, dearest, fetch me that. Angel, dearest, put pennies on your poor dead father’s eyes. He, too, is an angel now. If only you hadn’t chosen to sing that rock and roll stuff, if only you’d stuck to Handel’s Messiah, you could have risen to soprano lead and your father might not have got so upset and died. Not that I’m blaming you, my Angel, both our Angel, indeed you were your father’s Angel, with a voice that carolled like a lark, in whatever mode you chose, and at least he didn’t live to have to listen to “Kinky Virgin”. At least you preserved your virginity, for his sake, until he’d croaked, pegged it, passed over, fell off the perch. It was only to be expected, he being thirty-five years older than me, but I can tell you expecting makes no difference. It’s still an outrage to be left without a husband.’
Larks and lambs, and pure white rice: add a soupçon of barley; all good things. Why do they go wrong? Nothing’s ever over, that’s the answer, not even the giving of names. They should have called her Jane: it is a name scarcely open to division, perforating, or outright splitting. Angelica was just asking for trouble.
8
Anthea In The Linen Room
As Ram leaned over Angel, shuffling off his blue serge trousers in the back of the Volvo, and she inclined further backwards on the real leather seats – with their added spray of real leather scent – pulling her narrow skirt further up around her hips to demonstrate her assent, to quieten her howling, Edwin did indeed enter Anthea, not in the marital bed but in the second floor linen room of Rice Court. Here the shelves were neatly stacked with bedding of the old and tasteful kind, linens and cottons well-washed to a delicate flimsiness, folded neatly and flatly: woollen blankets likewise: not an acrylic duvet or a man-made fibre in sight.
Edwin, massively built, broad-shouldered, a softness of flesh covering muscle and nerve, smooth-chested, warm-skinned in spite of his blue blood, a chin naturally commanding but with a nature perpetually retreating, appearing to the outside world as a man extremely fortunate in his heredity, both physical and financial, supremely rational, calmly confident, pleasant, cooperative and intelligent, with untold shares invested in mysterious companies abroad, leaned back against the slatted laundry shelves, parted Anthea’s knees with his, pushed up between her thighs and with no ceremony entered her. Anthea barely blenched. She wore her headscarf of heavy cream silk, with a splatter of anchor chains and horses upon it. Edwin liked Anthea to wear the headscarf in the house and out of it, and Anthea, conscious always that her hair probably needed wash
ing, usually made no objection. She wore only the headscarf. She was narrow-hipped to the point of skinniness. An observer would have found the woman wholly eclipsed by the man, by so many inches did his width surpass hers. Mrs MacArthur too often surprised them: bringing their breakfast on a tray. Here they were safe, for at least an hour or so.
Anthea was the natural Lady Rice, everyone agreed, well-suited to be mistress of this splendid house: she was plain, horsey, straightforward, blunt, boring, practical, with the wealth of generations behind her: she would tell him what to do while appearing to be told.
It was understood, but seldom said, that Edwin had succumbed to a passing infatuation when he married Angelica, married someone hopelessly unsuitable; a young woman with no background, who not only wouldn’t ride to hounds but spoke up for the hunt saboteurs; who, or so it was said, would refuse her husband his marital rights on one pretext or another, while still claiming his title. But Anthea understood that the way to keep a man happy was to give him as much sex as possible and give him no intellectual challenges. Men liked to rest, once adolescence was over. See Anthea now, leaning back into pieces of soap-scented linen, arms outstretched as if crucified against the shelves, hands clenching and un-clenching; eyes rolling, gasping: more, more! Oh darling! They seldom kiss – it seems too personal. That’s how Edwin likes sex; so does Anthea. Lots of sex, and all of it impersonal. The original Lady Rice, Angelica, ex-Kinky Virgin, turned out to be over-fussy. She required wooing; she had a notion of romance: she liked kissing, endearment, sweet words, tired easily, and in the end would rather plainly not fuck at all if she could help it. A man can grow weary of that kind of thing. Seduction and persuasion, foreplaying and tantalising, are all very well for a year or two, but ten years into a childless marriage can begin to seem to be onerous.
Trauma had rendered Lady Rice uncomfortably telepathic. And even as in the second floor linen cupboard of the ancestral home her rightful husband shuddered within her rival, Angel let out the bellow which was her birth-cry. The umbilical cord that tied Angel to Lady Rice was cut. Angel understood, as Angelica had not, or Jelly either, that life could be good. You just had to accept what it offered, and if the offering was male, you’d take it.
9
Jelly At Work
‘I’m sorry to be so late,’ said Jelly to Brian Moss of the velvety smooth voice, cunning eye and beautifully cut suit. ‘I had to go to the doctor. I hope you haven’t opened the post,’ she added. ‘You always get everything in such a muddle.’
‘I leave detail to you, my dear,’ he said. ‘I look after the major issues, the wider sweep, as befits the male. Shall we have coffee now?’
‘You mean will I make it?’ she asked, and did.
These days a good legal secretary is hard to find and, if they are found, are usually elderly women – the young ones decline to take work both so responsible yet so poorly paid. Legal secretaries often start out with crabby natures – those with an eye to detail often have these –and impatience with human folly gets the better of them, and feeds into the original disposition. It is not easy or pleasant to get correct, day after day, the detail by which human beings try to wrest justice from a world determined not to deliver it. People, it soon becomes clear to the legal secretary, veer either to the delinquent or to the boring. At the delinquent end of the scale – criminal or family law – there is too much distress; at the boring end – contractual or constitutional law – there is just yawning boredom. And even that boredom exists as a fragile, if opaque, lid on a bubbling cauldron of iniquity and roguery; scams so great, from the stealing of pension funds to the selling of junk bonds to the hijacking of nations, it is hard to believe it is happening. The detail of fraud is not so much interesting as incomprehensible to the non-criminal mind. Spelling mistakes creep in. Negatives where negatives should not be. The computer operator, the legal secretary, to whom the shameless effrontery of others so often is initially apparent, tends to stay silent. A bad dream induced by boredom, they tell themselves. It can’t be happening. Shut up, stay quiet, don’t rock the boat, look after yourself, keep the job. The world can’t be as bad as this, nor the people in it so villainous, so confident in their grey-suited villainy: the stories unfolding before my eyes upon the screen must surely be fiction.
And, after all, then the legal secretary, the computer operator, has, by virtue of training and inclination, no need for desperate action, seldom any personal craving for wealth or power, and finding so little villainy in themselves, even on close self-inspection, is not looking out for it in others. This may be a pleasant characteristic, but it is also dangerous. ‘I didn’t believe it; I didn’t want to rock the boat,’ are the initial pleas. ‘I thought they must know what they were doing; I was only obeying orders,’ the final ones. Good legal secretaries come too expensive to have their time wasted on coffee-making, but Brian Moss, a New Man in the home, was a Former Man in the office and liked Jelly to do it. Nor, when it came to it, did Jelly much mind. Brian Moss was too impatient to let the water boil and the coffee he made was lacklustre.
‘Excuse me,’ said Jelly later in the morning, when she was taking dictation.
‘Well, what is it? Grammar? Correct it as you go along. We have a lot of post to get through.’ Brian Moss was impatient. She liked the way his fingers tapped upon the table: imperative and irritable. It seemed to her the proper way for a man to be. He had just concluded a letter to a would-be father suing a Health Authority for causing his wife’s infertility. ‘My best regards to your wife. I hope the poodles are keeping bright and bushy-tailed.’
‘Poodles get their tails docked at birth,’ said Jelly. ‘Perhaps “bushy-tailed” is inappropriate.’
‘Replace it with some similar jocularity,’ said Brian Moss. ‘I leave it all to you.’
He stood behind Jelly’s chair and his hands slid round beneath her breasts, feeling the weight of each one. She felt her identity scatter as her pearls had scattered earlier in the day in the back of the Volvo. Sexual desire was inimical, it seemed, to single-mindedness.
‘You’re not wearing your pearls today,’ he said. ‘I like your pearls.’
‘They broke on the way to work this morning,’ said Angel, speaking through Jelly’s lips.
‘Please,’ begged Angelica, ‘not this too! Don’t mess this job up, as you did my marriage.’
‘Who, me?’ enquired Angel, all innocence. ‘I wasn’t even born when you were married.’
Angelica managed to manoeuvre the wavering Jelly out of the room and back to her desk. Brian Moss followed them both, believing them to be one.
The secretarial quarters at Catterwall & Moss were small, high-ceilinged squares of rooms looking out onto a soot-blackened wall, requiring always artificial light. Jelly’s was the partitioned end of the former Georgian library which served as Brian Moss’s office, which was grand, formal, old-fashioned, panelled in oak, but disproportioned as a result of that very partitioning. Brian Moss seldom entered the small room. He found it gloomy, not surprisingly. He spoke through the intercom and summoned whoever it was sat there: they changed with the years. Now he followed Jelly.
‘We’ve nowhere near finished the post,’ Brian Moss complained. ‘Some of these letters really have to go off today. You will just have to excuse the inexcusable, Miss White, if so it was, come back into my office and get on.’
Brian Moss looked at his secretary pleadingly, little-boy like. He had blue eyes and a face reckoned handsome, in the English manner: clean cut and under apparent control; his expression imbued with a gentle melancholy. At first Jelly did not reply: she was busy collecting personal belongings from her desk drawer; saving what was on the computer; evidently preparing the place for her successor.
‘Please,’ said Brian Moss. ‘I really am sorry. I shan’t lay hands on you again. Promise.’
It was in Brian Moss’s favour, Jelly told Angelica, that he was prepared to talk about his infringement of her body space. Many a man would maul you and then s
ay nothing; would prefer to pretend, if the advances were rejected, that the advance had never occurred. Many a man, come to that, put in Angel, would spend a night with you and never refer to that event again either, and the woman, feeling rejected and diminished, would all too often collude and fall silent too. As if the very past were male, defined by the man’s memory of it, forget the female’s.
‘Do stop looking at me like that,’ he said. ‘Say something. Or, if you won’t, couldn’t we just get back to work?’
‘I doubt it,’ said Jelly. ‘According to the small print of my agency contract with you, I am free, in the event of sexual harassment, to terminate my employment without penalty.’
‘You’d have to prove sexual harassment,’ said Brian Moss, ‘and that would be difficult, even impossible. Your word against mine. Why do you think we agreed to that clause being there in the first place? Because it is meaningless, and because women like to see it there. It makes them believe they’re being taken seriously. But all that is by the by. I am actually a perfectly decent guy and don’t want to take advantage of you. You had your blouse unbuttoned so far down that I could see your nipples. And you’re not wearing a bra. So I didn’t think you’d mind. I’m sorry. It won’t happen again.’
Jelly quickly buttoned her blouse, which was indeed undone, but not to the extent Brian Moss suggested. Angel had no doubt managed to slip a button or so through a hole or so when she, Jelly, was thinking of something else. And how did she come to be bra-less? What Angel did was only vaguely recalled by Jelly, Angelica or Lady Rice, but the marks left upon the body – their nipples were sore and there were bite marks on their neck – stood between them and total forgetfulness. Jelly conceded that she might, albeit unknowingly, have provoked him, and consented to go back to work.
Brian Moss told Jelly a little about his wife, Oriole, whom he loved but who was so forgetful she would never even remember to comb her hair in the mornings, and would collect his children from school in a car into which she’d forgotten to put petrol. She was a danger to them. Once she’d left the iron on so it burned right through a ceiling; it was a regular occurrence for Oriole to let the bath overflow.
