by Weldon, Fay
‘I don’t want this thing between us to get too personal,’ he said. ‘You know that. I love Oriole very much. If she won’t have sex with me it’s because she’s too tired, poor thing. Two children under five are a handful for anyone. We bring them up in the modern way, trying to develop their personalities, so they don’t sleep much. I’m in charge by night. Elsie has nightmares, Annie gets colic. I get back into bed with Oriole: I may be cold but I’m loving, yet even in her sleep my wife rolls away from me. I seem to disgust her. She says my feet smell, and she doesn’t like the texture of my skin. She claims it’s clammy. But I do love her. I expect she’s right about me. I’m just a hopeless sort of person.’
‘Feel my skin where I’ve shaved it,’ was all his secretary said. ‘You’ll find it interesting. Smooth, but with a kind of prickle just beneath the surface; a very white skin there because, when you come to think of it, between the legs very seldom meets the light of day.’
But Brian Moss was not to be tempted: not by words, descriptions, nor open invitation as she led his hand upward, rubbed his finger against the shaven skin, tried to guide it inward into the soft damp warmth of the split. ‘I don’t know what’s got into you,’ said Brian Moss. ‘You never used to be like this. Oh God, is it all my fault?’
And he lit a cigarette, finding a packet in an open drawer. ‘You see!’ he said. ‘You’ve started me smoking again. Oriole made me give it up when she was pregnant. Passive smoking can do untold damage to unborn babies.’
‘And to you, too,’ said Angel. ‘But I don’t suppose your wife mentions that.’
‘You don’t seem to think well of wives,’ said Brian Moss nervously. It seemed to him his secretary was behaving oddly. He would have to get rid of her; he had let himself get involved with a seriously disturbed young woman. He would miss her but that could not be helped.
‘I certainly don’t,’ said Angel. She was sitting on the edge of the desk, removing her little lace-up boots Jelly had bought at Marks & Spencer’s. She let them fall. First the right, then the left. She kept her eyes on Brian Moss. ‘And your sort is the worst. She’s a cat wife, from the sound of it.’
‘What’s a cat wife?’ he asked, though who knew where the conversation might lead.
‘A cat wife wants a home and a man to pay for it, and someone to father her children and when she’s got it, she snarls and drives him away. And if she can make him feel bad, she will.’
She was unbuttoning her sweater, undoing her bra, wriggling out of her skirt.
‘Don’t do this,’ he begged. ‘Someone might come in.’
She ran over to the door, neat bosom bouncing, locked it, took the key and threw it from the open window. He heard the faint dry sound of its landing two floors below. ‘I know your wife’s kind well,’ said Angel, undoing his belt, unfastening buttons, unzipping his zip. ‘And thank God for her. One man’s misfortune is any whore’s good fortune.’
‘Don’t do this,’ he begged. ‘You’re not well. You’ve been working too hard. Get dressed. Get Lois to go down and get the key and let us out of here.’
‘Not till I’ve had my fun,’ said Angel. ‘I deserve some too. It’s my lunch hour. You’ll have to do as I say, or I’ll tell Oriole about you and me.’
‘There is nothing to say about you and me,’ said Brian Moss, ‘that I won’t deny at once. I’m not afraid of blackmail.’
‘I’ll tell her about the mole on your thing,’ said Angel, giggling. ‘Sometimes it seems little and sometimes it seems big. It’s a matter of proportion.’
‘I’ll say you saw it by accident,’ said Brian Moss but, since he was by now naked to the waist and leaning against the wall, his statement lacked conviction. His belt fastened one hand to the handle of a drawer above his head; his tie fastened the other to its fellow; his penis was slowly and powerfully rising.
‘What have you done to me?’ he demanded. ‘I’m completely helpless.’
He saw the expression on his secretary’s face alter. The mild look disappeared: she was prim and herself again.
‘Good Lord,’ said Jelly, backing off aghast, ‘I’m so sorry, Mr Moss. I don’t know what came over me.’
The door handle was rattling. It was Lois.
‘I can’t open the door, Mr Moss,’ called Lois through the keyhole. ‘It seems to be locked. Lady Musgrave’s here to see you. What shall I say to her?’
Tears now started to Jelly’s eyes. When she spoke, it was with a clipped and rather painful gentility.
‘You’ll have to forgive me,’ said Lady Rice to Brian Moss. ‘I’m afraid I’m having a hard day. I’m not really a secretary at all, though I have excellent office skills, gained during my marriage. Sometimes I feel I’ve been sleepwalking for years. You know?’
The expression changed again: hardened; became determined. The voice was brisk and cold.
‘Personally, Mr Moss, I think this serves you right,’ said Angelica, and then she called to Lois. ‘Come on in. You’ll find a spare key in my right-hand drawer.’
‘Miss White,’ said Brian Moss, struggling with his bonds, ‘you’re fired.’
‘Thank God for that,’ said all of them at once, in the attractive timbred voice they had lately developed. Brian Moss had taken credit for that too.
5
Official Business
Una walked in through the door as Lois opened it and Jelly walked out. Una looked after Jelly, not without admiration, and moved to undo Brian Moss’s bonds.
‘I can’t thank you enough,’ said Brian Moss, reestablishing his circulation, re-arranging his clothing. ‘My secretary has had some kind of fugue. A crise. Perhaps we should postpone this meeting?’
‘On no account,’ said Una. She still had Brian Moss’s tie in her hand. She smoothed it out and tied it for him, pulling up the knot just a little savagely around his neck. The tie was yellow, with a pink and red pattern but did little to give the impression he hoped to achieve – that of a wild man falsely imprisoned in a grey suit.
‘I think it would be better if we did,’ said Brian Moss. ‘This has been a most upsetting incident,’ but Una was persistent.
She had been thinking the matter over, she said. She would take over Lodestar House for eighteen months, and use it at her discretion. After which she would give it to her daughter Sara, before the leasehold expired. Sara and Tully would have ample time to make the fortune they felt they deserved.
‘That’s very generous of you,’ said Brian Moss. Lois had brought him a cup of tea.
‘Poor little bitch Sara,’ said Una. ‘She always worried that it was her fault I left home. She was right to worry; I couldn’t stand her – nobody could. She shouldn’t have been born, and it showed. No charm; my stepfather’s child. Wendy’s second husband. These family relationships get too complicated to bear. I was only sixteen when she was born. I got her into a nursery as soon as I could, but the holidays never seemed to end, so I left her to my mother.’
Brian Moss could see Jelly packing up her desk in the outer office. She was slamming and stamping about. He tried to concentrate on what Una Musgrave was saying. ‘Do feel free to confide in me,’ he said, falsely. ‘Solicitors have good shoulders to cry upon. So – you were a victim of child abuse? A dreadful but these days, alas, an all too familiar tale.’
Una snorted. ‘I was an abusing child,’ she said. ‘He didn’t stand a chance. I’d gone right off my mother at the time, I seem to remember. I didn’t want Sara growing up to do to me what I’d done to her. A customer who was a shrink told me I was right to leave the child. If I’d stayed, she’d only have repeated my pattern.’
Brian Moss could see Lois as she bent over to help Jelly with the lower drawers. Perhaps he could persuade her to stay. It was only by comparison to Jelly that Lois appeared plain. Plain girls, in any case, were more stable, less neurotic, than the pretty ones.
‘No one’s drama,’ said Una Musgrave, ‘I can see, is of any real consequence to anyone else. You’re not even listening.
As it happens, Lodestar House turning up in my life again is a fine example of the synchronicity which has accompanied my path through life. Ever read Jung?’
‘No,’ said Brian Moss.
‘If you don’t think a little more about me and a little less about your dick,’ said Una Musgrave, ‘I won’t pay you for this session.’
Brian Moss paid attention.
‘A house with many rooms is a wonderful thing,’ said Una. ‘In the house of our dreams each room represents a different aspect of the self. Did you know that?’
‘I don’t dream much,’ said Brian Moss, ‘nowadays. I’m far too tired. I have two children under five.’
On her way out of Brian Moss’s office, Una stopped in her booted stride at Jelly White’s desk.
‘If ever you want a job,’ she said, ‘get in touch with me. You’re just the type I like.’
‘What type is that?’ asked Jelly.
‘Demure and devious,’ said Una, ‘and not what you seem. Mind you, what woman is? I see you as someone with a past that you roll up as you go, so you hardly remember what happened yesterday, let alone last night.’
‘It can be a problem,’ said Jelly, ‘and getting worse.’
‘It’s always darkest before dawn. Your lipstick’s smudged,’ said Una, taking out a little frilled cotton handkerchief from her pocket and dabbing at the corner of Jelly’s mouth. ‘But it’s a useful little mouth, I can tell.’
6
Angel Goes Home
‘I want to see Rice Court,’ said Angel to Lady Rice, erstwhile mistress of what was now described in guide books as a stately home. ‘Let’s ask Rameses to take us down one Saturday: I can meet Edwin face to face at last. Why not?’
‘I’ll tell you why not,’ said Lady Rice. ‘Because it would break my heart. Because I would be humiliated and ashamed. Because I am like the generality of women who, knowing they are discarded, prefer to limp away, making no claim, hoping the earth will just swallow them up.’ And she had another fit of weeping, from which Jelly had to extract her, with eye-masks and a pot of tea from Room Service.
‘Anyway,’ said Lady Rice, ‘Rameses is unreliable. Sometimes he turns up, sometimes he doesn’t. I think he is two-timing us.’
‘Or perhaps he sees through us,’ said Jelly.
‘Or is disturbed by our complexities,’ said Angelica.
‘Or perhaps we just plain exhaust him,’ said Angel.
But Angelica and Jelly sided with Angel, feeling she needed a reward for weeks of good behaviour, over-ruling Lady Rice’s reluctance, and the very next Saturday there was Angel, lounging on a street corner, waiting for Ram, wearing grunge: that is to say layers of darkish fabric alternating with snatches of lace: men’s socks and heavy boots, the latter bought second-hand on a market stall. A tight satin vest beneath a torn leather jacket compressed and raised her breasts.
Ram’s sleek Volvo turned into Davies Street: there was his client, leaning into a lamp-post, blowing smoke into the air, like Marlene Dietrich. The car slowed, drew in on a double-yellow line.
‘Is that fashion?’ he asked her. ‘Or disguise?’
‘Neither,’ said Angel. ‘I am my true self again.’ He held the door open for her. He was not wearing his uniform. Passers-by stared.
‘I like a woman of many moods,’ he said, as they set off for the North. ‘Anyone else and I wouldn’t have done it. I like to play football on Saturdays.’
‘Women tend to be more than one person,’ said Angel, ‘at the best of times. Men get just to be the one.’
‘I like all of yours,’ he ventured, but she did not encourage such intimacies. It was his body she cared for, nothing else. He contented himself with saying that if he were her he wouldn’t go and see an ex-husband dressed like that and she said it was fortunate then he wasn’t her, and they fell silent. And when, at a service station, Angel invited him to join her in the back of the car, he refused, politely. She was clearly under considerable stress. Lately he’d caught sight of her from time to time, reflected in his mirror, gesticulating, mouthing, and murmuring to herself, sometimes slapping her own wrist.
She would speak to him in different voices, offering contradictory instructions. He had worked out that there were four of them. Angel had started things off: now he preferred Angelica: she was more of a challenge. Though Angel’s instant enthusiasm, instant response, was certainly useful when time was at a premium, and privacy doubtful. He didn’t like leaving his women unsatisfied: Angelica frequently was. Jelly induced a kind of guilty, heady excitement which could keep him awake at night thinking about her. Lady Rice required words of love, and he’d oblige, falsely, but then she was being false too. Offer a quarter of the self and you could hardly expect a whole self offered in return. His client could have his body and that was that, and not even that if she looked like freaking out.
Lady Rice hoped to see desolation and to hear lamentation as the Volvo approached the house, but she could see that the grounds were in good order, dreaming in the summer sun, that horses grazed tranquilly in the fields; that nature conspired against her, to say ‘See how well we get on without you!’. Signposts – well-painted and placed – now pointed to Rice Stables, Kennels and Cattery, as well as to The Manor House, The Restoration Gardens, The Maze, Gift Shop, Pottery, Theme Park, Exhibition and Toilets. Oh yes, there had been progress.
Visiting families wandered around the outside of the house; well-behaved children finished their ice creams before entering, and there were enough bins everywhere to take their debris. The glaziers had been: cracked panes of fine, crisp glass, saved in Angelica’s day because of their rarity – some being over two hundred years old – had been brutally replaced with young, thick, tough, even glass, but otherwise Lady Rice could find no fault with what had been done to the place. It was bitter.
Lady Rice introduced herself to the unknown woman at the ticket desk – there had been staff changes, too – and noticed that entry prices had doubled. She was a friend of the family: could she see Sir Edwin? The receptionist looked doubtful, but lifted the telephone and got through to the private wing and said to whoever answered, ‘Sir Edwin has a visitor, Lady Anthea,’ and Angel thought that is not fair: anyone who didn’t know better would assume that Anthea was Edwin’s wife, and took the title from him. She felt even that singularity had been taken from her.
Lady Rice waited. Visitors looked at her curiously. Lady Rice noticed that the price asked for cream teas had risen, too. The oak floorboards which she had hand-waxed to a deep sheen were now covered with a practical polymer sealant: a little notice even said, ‘Floors at Rice Court sealed by the Polyserve Company’ – no doubt the price for the job had been reduced on account of it. Anthea, she had to admit, saved money where she could, spent it where she should.
Lady Rice at that moment had an out-of-body experience. She looked down at herself from a high corner of the hall, and saw that she was at that moment wholly Angelica; she wondered, from a place of safety, at the source of Angelica’s deep distress. Why did she stand here, dressed ridiculously as herself a dozen years ago, on the threshold of a house which had never been really home, in which she had gone to such great lengths not to have children by a man to whom she could so easily and quickly have become a stranger? What did she miss?
The respect of others? She had scarcely had that in the first place, she could now accept. Friends? Only the ones who had betrayed her: whose whole instinct seemed to be to use her as a scapegoat. Lady Rice perceived that Angelica suffered as a soldier defeated in a just war suffers – not merely on account of pain, loss and personal humiliation, but because the hordes of destruction seem to have won over the few valiant champions of what everyone recognised to be honourable and good.
Lady Rice was joined by Jelly and Angel, and watched from the safety of distance as Angelica faced Anthea; who now came through the green baize door that divided the house into two parts: the public and the private.
Anthea was pregnant. Angelica c
ould not say how many months, but it was evident that she was; though it seemed not to be a matter which concerned Anthea much. She moved without the self-conscious languor which many a pregnant wife assumes: rather she was brisk and purposeful.
‘Can I help you?’ asked Anthea.
‘Did you hear that? She doesn’t even recognise me,’ mourned Lady Rice. ‘I am altogether diminished, dismissed. I am something from the past, the barren wife, the one who doesn’t even count.’
‘All that work in the house for nothing,’ said Jelly. ‘The waters just close over you and it’s as if you’d never been.’
‘Pregnant!’ said Angel. ‘That’s a real facer, a real bummer. Angelica’s going to cry.’
‘I won’t have that,’ said Lady Rice. ‘Not in front of Anthea.’
Angelica’s face worked as the others joined her. The woman at the ticket desk was looking sympathetic, concerned and frightened all at once. Anthea merely looked irritated. Angelica could see herself in the mirror: a mad woman, wearing peculiar clothes, hair in a mess, face all over the place, mumbling aloud, not able to reply to a simple, formal question.
Edwin came through the green baize door, to Anthea’s apparent relief. He seemed cheerful, if fresh out of bed, though it was past midday: his white linen shirt was still unbuttoned: his black chest hairs showed. He had lost weight. He began to fasten his shirt buttons even as Angelica watched. Anthea drew aside her lover, the father of her child, the better to discuss what to do with the mad-woman.
‘He’s so familiar yet so strange,’ said Angelica to the others. ‘I know everything and nothing about this man. That small part of him a woman could ever have, another woman has. For the rest, he’s his own man. His habits will have changed: for all I know he no longer snores when he lies on his back; he eats margarine, not butter; has changed his newspaper, reads the sports’ section first, the art pages last. It’s as if together once we made a plum tree, but the plum tree put out suckers from the roots, and from one of them a sapling grew, and all the strength of the tree followed: so now the old tree is weak and old, and the young one flourishes. To stop that happening, gardeners ring-prune the roots of good plum trees: to forestall the plans of saplings to take over –’
