by Weldon, Fay
Rosamund had an abortion and made no attempt to hide the fact. The village was censorious. Sympathy returned to Susan, and Lambert. Poor Lambert, everyone said; what a dreadful wife. Killing her own baby as an act of revenge! And Susan so charming, so lively, so bright; so much in love. Rosamund had never loved Lambert. Career women made bad wives, everyone knew that.
Susan gave birth to a little girl, Serena, with the same prominent eyes as her brother. Lambert’s eyes: people nodded and smiled and wished them well. A family reunited at last! Roland was a quiet child, and Lambert, installed in Railway Cottage, had at first been able to write in more peace than he had ever enjoyed in the rooms above the Health Centre. He had almost finished a commissioned stage play. But after Serena’s birth, alas, that was out of the question. Serena cried, wept, stormed, shivered: her health demanded constant medical attention: the running of sudden high fevers, the swelling of infant eyelids, the clenching of scarlet baby hands made this unavoidable.
Susan would march into Lambert’s study (once Humphrey’s), and thrust Serena into his paternal arms. ‘Your baby,’ she’d say. ‘You’re the father, you look after it; you call the doctor; don’t leave everything to me.’ Lambert would do his best, but there was a certain problem getting doctors to call: Rosamund’s colleagues proved more loyal than expected. Nothing for it but for Lambert to abandon his stage play mid-sentence and take little Serena to the Emergency hospital twenty miles away. She was always well enough when she got there: symptoms of concussion – Roland suffered from sibling rivalry and tended to lash out at his little sister – disappeared, fevers fell and breathing difficulties evaporated at the first smell and sight of a regular medical establishment, a green or white coat, a kindly and enquiring stethoscope. You would almost have thought doctoring ran in the child’s blood, she and the medical profession had some special relationship – yet how could that be? Word got round that Rosamund’s spirit hovered like an unsatisfied ghost in Railway Cottage, for all her physical self remained in the Health Centre, head high, defying the world’s strictures.
One day Natalie called to see Lady Rice, who was often now at home alone in the evenings. Rice Estate business kept Edwin away: he had been to visit his brothers on tropical islands and had not taken his wife with him. ‘We are too much in each other’s pockets,’ Edwin said, and Lady Rice believed him. Besides, how would the Rice Court visitors get on without her constant attention? The cream for the cream teas – now a favourite line – might sour; the floors stay unpolished, the accounts not get done; and the visitors liked to get a glimpse of anyone titled, albeit an upstart: just the whirl of a headscarf behind a pillar, the flick of a sensible skirt. No, Lady Rice would not evade her responsibilities.
‘No such thing,’ Edwin would laugh, his favourite joke. ‘No such thing as a free title!’
Natalie said that day to Lady Rice, ‘I used to be a really nice person. Now I’m not. That’s what betrayal does to you. Let us hope you never learn. My lawyer has access to all Clive’s bills: part of my ongoing argument that I should receive more alimony; Clive being perfectly well able to manage on less. It’s not over between Clive and Susan. He calls her every weekday at twenty past nine. That’s when Lambert’s taking Roland to school. They talk until a minute before a quarter to ten, which is when Lambert gets back. My belief is that Susan only wanted Lambert as a babysitter, and thought because he had a stage play commissioned by the National Theatre it was a good bet he’d amount to something. Clive makes a good adulterous lover, but as a live in partner he’d be hopeless; Susan could see that. Me, I liked Clive. I loved him even. He was my husband. I have no objection to boring and practical men. But you show Susan a happy marriage and she’ll be in there, breaking it up, which meant ours had to go. Should I tell Lambert Susan’s getting bored with him? What do you think?’
‘Yes,’ said Jelly White, back again. ‘Tell her. A good idea.’
‘Yes, a good idea,’ said Lady Rice.
‘Mind you,’ said Natalie, ‘I can see anyone might need Clive as an antidote to Lambert. Lambert’s got big feet, damp and smelly: he’s fleshy: you’d have this great white belly bumping up and down on you every night. He’s not one, they say, to let an opportunity go by. He quite exhausted Rosamund. Whereas Clive – he’s so neat and contained, and he never smells, and he hardly breathes, and he has this little piston thing, deadly accurate. I loved him: now there’s no one.’
Natalie started to cry. Doing without familiar sex, when you’ve been married for years and never thought you’d lose it, can be hard.
Lady Rice obligingly told Edwin, who naturally told Lambert, who then left Susan and went back to Rosamund, leaving a vacancy in Railway Cottage. This vacancy was filled by Clive, which Natalie had not anticipated.
‘If only I had a rewind button for my life,’ she mourned to Lady Rice, ‘I’d wind it back to when I came across Clive weeping in the rose garden. I’d have made him a cup of tea and resisted the drama of throwing him out. Now I have to put up with the kids spending Sundays at Railway Cottage. I think I’ll die.’
‘See what you did?’ said Lady Rice to Jelly White.
‘Sorry,’ said Jelly. ‘Poor Natalie!’
‘Better poor Natalie than poor us,’ said another voice. ‘You ought to rejoice. If it hadn’t been Clive, it might have been Edwin.’
‘That is just absurd,’ said Lady Rice. ‘And who are you, anyway? How dare you even think things like that!’
‘Just call me Angelique,’ said the new entity. ‘I’m what you might have been.’
‘Then get the fuck out of here,’ said Lady Rice, with unaccustomed vigour. ‘You’ll only depress me.’
Angelique said, ‘Okay, okay, but don’t say I didn’t warn you,’ and went.
‘It wasn’t working out between Lambert and me,’ Susan explained to Lady Rice at the chemist’s. ‘It was becoming a destructive relationship. It’s difficult for two creative artists to live under the same roof; and once his play was turned down by the National, Lambert was impossible. Jealous, possessive, even violent! If Rosamund can cope, she’s welcome. Clive’s taken his old study as an office. He’s the lodger. I’m glad to have someone sharing, especially at night. Sometimes I get the feeling the place is haunted. But I guess I’m just being the over-imaginative artist!’
‘I guess,’ said Lady Rice.
‘Is that Natalie over there?’ asked Susan, her bony arm on Lady Rice’s, and Lady Rice looked and said, ‘No. Just someone who looks rather like her.’
‘I keep thinking I see Natalie,’ said Susan. ‘Not that I want to. She hasn’t been much of a friend. What a dance she led poor Clive. People see sex in everything. Clive moving into Railway Cottage isn’t a sex thing. I hope people realise that. You will tell them?’
‘Of course,’ said Lady Rice.
In and out, in and out, like a piston through the night, blotting out ghosts, blotting out Natalie.
9
Dinner Party
Lady Rice was busy. Ventura Lady Cowarth had a bad back – she’d had a fall from her horse and, though to be hopelessly drunk is meant to protect a rider from injury, had disabled herself badly. She could barely wash, though she got herself hoisted on to horseback to follow the Hunt and managed that. ‘I can’t fuck,’ she told Lady Rice, ‘but I can still hunt.’
Lord Cowarth was upset and knocking away again at his teeth, such few as were left, and they were mostly at the back so he had to open his mouth wide to do it.
Lady Rice was up at Cowarth Castle four or five times a week, nursing, shopping, answering the phone, parrying Milord’s insults and oddities, preparing for the visit of the twins, back from the Caribbean for business reasons but unaccountably laggardly in visiting their ancestral home. If only I had a baby thought Lady Rice, I’d be allowed to focus my family responsibilities in my own home. I wouldn’t be so tired. But too late for that now. These days Edwin said he didn’t want children. He didn’t want the family insanity passed on.
/> Rosamund Plaidy was no help: she declined, these days, or so it was said, to give anyone Prozac. In fact she was giving up medicine altogether, the better to look after her children.
Rosamund, Lambert told anyone who would listen, was on a masochistic binge; she was doing it on purpose to mortify him, but he declined to be mortified. He was living at home again, but Rosamund refused to speak to him, other than when entirely necessary. She encouraged the children in the same behaviour. He was, she said, only a temporary kind of husband and father, there today, gone tomorrow, best not to get too close to him, if only because closeness was what drove him away. He was emotionally immature, she said, as if definition somehow improved matters. Lambert claimed to like the surrounding silence: it allowed him to get on with his work. Oddly, they all seemed to enjoy their lives together and when a social researcher, enquiring into the domestic lives of doctors, asked them to rate their ‘happiness’, all replied ‘good’.
‘Let’s ask Susan and Clive to dinner one night,’ said Edwin. ‘We never get to see them these days. Let’s try and get the social scene round here going again. It’s up to us. Noblesse oblige.’
He’d been reclusive lately, and had put on weight. He stayed in bed till late in the morning, and went to bed later than Angelica. He snapped at her and found fault. But now suddenly he had his arms round her, and seemed full of resolution and she was happy. She remembered what times past had been like, and saw they could be good again. Skies could cloud so gradually you hardly noticed as bright turned to overcast, until suddenly there was the sun again.
‘We’ll upset quite a lot of people if we do,’ said Angelica, and they counted them up between them: those to whom the social acceptance or otherwise of disturbed and disturbing, shifting and changing couples mattered.
Humphrey.
Rosamund, Lambert and their two children Matty and Pierre.
Natalie, and little Jane and little Jonathan.
Roland, who missed Humphrey, and little Serena, into whom the spirit of Rosamund’s aborted baby had entered, or so some said.
X, the name given by Angelica to Susan’s miscarried baby.
‘You can’t really lay all the responsibility at Susan’s door,’ said Edwin.
‘I do,’ said Angelica.
‘Then what a woman she is,’ said Edwin. ‘The femme fatale of Barley: the Great Adulteress.’
Clive and Susan were asked to dinner, at Edwin’s request. Another mistake, to believe a social circle could be revived.
‘Darling Angelica,’ said Susan. ‘I thought you’d never ask. Everyone’s been so unsociable lately. Shall we just all start over? Ask Rosamund, Natalie, Lambert, everyone? Shall I bring a chocolate mousse? Why don’t you ask that new man at the church, the Rev Hossle? We could have a civilised dinner and a service of reconciliation over coffee. People do it all the time back home. Everyone’s got so horrid to everyone, and we all used to be such friends!’
Lady Rice rang round and did indeed invite other guests; neutrals, semi-strangers, but not Rosamund, Lambert or Natalie. Not yet.
Lady Rice was serving the lobster bisque when there came a ring at the great front door, not the humble side one. Unusual. Mrs MacArthur let Natalie into the house, into the dining hall. Natalie was dressed in black: hollow eyes stared from a gaunt face. Once she’d been plump, lively and smiling. It was generally felt that she liked to make the most of her misfortunes: it was even suspected that she used eye makeup to enhance the hollow-eyed look.
‘Wives don’t own husbands,’ Barley society said. ‘These days men and women stay together because they want to. If one of the couple no longer wants to stay, that’s it. Goodbye. No obligation! And the children settle down soon enough.’
But those who spoke thus were on the whole people who hadn’t married, had never joined names or property, had never been spun around in some great resultant whirlwind of sexual jealousy until their wits were gone; wholly disintegrated.
And here Natalie now was, bent apparently on justifying the suspicions of her critics, advancing upon Edwin’s and Angelica’s dinner table. Now she swept the very spoon out of Susan’s hand. A splodge of hot lobster soup landed on Susan’s brow. Edwin was on his feet at once, restraining a struggling Natalie.
‘Bitch, bitch!’ yelled Natalie.
Now Clive tried to rescue Natalie from Edwin’s clasp.
‘Leave her alone, you philandering bastard,’ shouted Clive at Edwin.
Susan’s eyes were wild with outrage, white gleamed on either side of the pupils, her cheeks grew pink, her chin thrust forward.
‘You have burnt my skin,’ she snarled at Natalie, and slapped Edwin, whereupon Clive slapped Susan back, Edwin let Natalie go and Natalie sat down in Susan’s chair.
‘Itemised telephone bills,’ said Natalie calmly to Clive, ‘continue to be a boon to domestic understanding. When you take Roland and Serena, Lambert’s children – though who is to be sure about Roland? – to school and nursery, Susan’s on the phone to guess who? Her first husband, Alan Adliss. She meets him once a week, on Tuesday afternoons at Roystead Station car park. Intimacy then takes place in the back of the car. Alan Adliss has a major retrospective coming at the Tate Gallery. You just do, Clive, while the Great Adulteress waits for Mr Next. I am sorry for the current Mrs Alan Adliss. What misery do you have planned for her? Perhaps she’s pregnant, and you’d rather she wasn’t.’
‘Hell hath no fury, Natalie,’ said Susan, but her words lacked gravitas, since she had nowhere to sit down. ‘And everyone scorns you and laughs at you. The lies you tell! Roystead car park!’
Natalie put photographs on the table. There, in a car park setting, a car. There on the front seat Susan’s head of blonde hair, buried in the famous artist’s lap: he with an expression of mesmerised distraction on his face.
‘Clive,’ said Natalie to her ex-husband, ‘please will you take me home?’
Without a further look at Susan, Clive took Natalie away. Tears came to Susan’s eyes, but whether of grief, shock or outrage, who was to say? Edwin put his arm round Susan: he at any rate assumed she needed comforting. Lady Rice caught just a glimpse of a look from Susan before she buried her head in Edwin’s shoulder, as Susan made sure that Lady Rice understood she was defeated, in a way she’d never known existed.
‘Take me home now,’ said Susan to Edwin, and Edwin excused himself to his wife, and guests, and did so.
‘This is a divorcing matter,’ said Jelly.
‘It isn’t,’ said Lady Rice. ‘Edwin is behaving as any host would.’
And she served roast lamb and rosemary purée to her depleted table. Still Edwin did not return.
All left in due course with cries of ‘lovely evening, darling: nothing like a little real life drama! Give our love to Edwin when (by inference “if”) he gets back’, and so on, and Lady Rice became aware almost for the first time that envy and resentment interwove others’ liking for her. Lady Rice was too pretty, too young, too favoured by fortune, too (once upon a time) successful and rich, too happy with Edwin – or was that in the past, she could hardly remember: how did the present become the past: at what juncture? – to enjoy the unadulterated support of others. They were happy when she was cast down.
Lady Rice wept and Mrs MacArthur helped her to bed. For once, Lady Rice was grateful for her presence. ‘I told you she was trouble,’ said Mrs MacArthur. ‘You young women are such fools. Some women are born marriage-breakers. They ought to be stoned to death.’
‘But everyone likes Susan,’ moaned Lady Rice. ‘Everyone likes to be in Susan’s company. Why is Edwin taking so long?’
‘Because I expect he likes to be in her company, too,’ said Mrs MacArthur tartly. ‘She comes round here too often for my liking. Especially when you’re out.’
Edwin returned home just after three in the morning. ‘I had to calm her down,’ he said. ‘But she’s very angry with you, Angelica.’
‘Angry with me?’ Angelica was astonished.
&nbs
p; ‘Presumably you told Natalie Susan was coming to Rice Court. You set the whole thing up.’
‘I did no such thing,’ said Angelica. ‘Have you gone mad? I didn’t set anything up. Susan asked me to invite Natalie. I was doing what you wanted.’
‘Don’t hide behind me,’ said Edwin. ‘Someone certainly told Natalie. You’ve had it in for Susan for a long time. You’ve even suspected me of sleeping with her. That hurts her very much. It certainly insults me. You’ve done untold damage to Susan and her children. What are we going to do with you, Angelica?’
Edwin undressed and slipped into bed beside his wife. His body, which should have been cold from the journey home, was warm. He lay still for a moment and then pulled her out of bed roughly, and stood her against a wall, and possessed her as if she was some girl he’d met in a pub and the master bedroom of Rice Court was an alleyway. She was too surprised to protest.
‘You give yourself freely enough to other men,’ he said. ‘Why be so standoffish with me?’
She was too surprised to say anything: too hurt, too proud, and too alarmed to discover she had enjoyed it to the point of orgasm. She got back into bed; he lay at the far side of it without touching.
‘God, you’re a bitch,’ he said, and then he fell asleep. To her own surprise, so did she.
Lady Rice called Susan the next day. Jelly White told her to.
‘Susan, what’s the matter?’ she said. ‘We’re friends. It’s ridiculous to suggest I set you up. I trust you; why can’t you trust me? I don’t even object if Edwin takes you home mid-dinner party and doesn’t come home till three. What have I ever done to you, except be supportive, speak up for you, take your side – surely, after everything –’
‘I don’t know what “everything” you’re talking about,’ Susan said, apparently both bored and puzzled. ‘I’ve never needed your support. But we have both changed. We all have to pick and choose in life, don’t we? And some friends suit for a time, and then don’t. So we have to discard them. I hope you don’t think I’m being brutal. But that was no favour you did me last night.’
