by Weldon, Fay
‘Angelica,’ said Lady Rice, ‘do be quiet. There is no escape from this.’
‘He’s even better looking than I remember,’ said Jelly, sadly. ‘And I went and lost him. He wasn’t stolen, he was lost. And I don’t blame Anthea. I lost him by neglect and inattention.’
‘Fine clutch of masochists you lot are,’ said Angel. ‘If we’re going to mumble, does it have to be so pitiable? Couldn’t we just kill Anthea altogether? Just fall upon her and tear her to bits, gouge out her baby and gnaw its disgusting foetal heart from its body?’
‘Angelica!’ said Edwin. ‘My God, is that you?’
Anthea peered closer at Edwin’s unwanted wife, and looked quite startled.
‘Don’t be alarmed, my dear,’ said Edwin to Anthea. ‘When I first met Angelica, she looked like this a lot of the time; she’d go into mad-woman mode at the drop of a hat or a sniff of cocaine. She was ten years younger then and could get away with it, just about. Angelica always has modes – there was this one; then we went through the housewife and hostess, and then the wronged wife mode, the best of all. The getting to the real her was a long, dry path and in the end not worth the journey. And then, thank God, you came along.’
‘I do exist,’ said Angelica. ‘I do, I do. Why do you speak about me, not to me?’
‘Because you’re in my past,’ said Edwin, ‘not my present.’
His voice, like his looks, was both familiar and strange, being now pitched in intimacy to another.
‘See, he hates me,’ said Jelly.
‘People change according to whom they are with,’ said Angelica dreamily, ‘and very quickly. The way the head is held, the brusqueness or other wise of speech; all mixes and melds between couples. To share a bed is to share a soul.’
‘Only if you fuck a lot,’ said Angel. ‘Can we get back to business?’
‘You’re crazy,’ said Edwin. ‘A crazy woman. I’m well rid of you.’
‘I am not mad,’ said Angelica to her husband, ‘just unhappy. You’ve made me unhappy, destroyed me.’ But she could no longer be quite sure whether she was speaking aloud or talking to her sisters.
‘Don’t be unkind to her for my sake,’ said Anthea to Lady Rice’s husband. ‘See how upset she is. She’s no threat to me.’
‘She is to me,’ said Edwin. ‘She’s after my money. Do you know how I met her? An unlucky accident. A friend took me backstage after a show. Angelica Barley, she called herself, after the village. Barley. Our village. My village. She never even asked permission. She was quite someone on the pop scene, but only for a very short time. A seven-day wonder: a release called “Kinky Virgin”. That’s what she was, technically. A virgin. That was her stock in trade. All comers could, if you’ll forgive the crudity, sodomise her senseless, suck her off rigid, do everything to her any way but straight. I joined the line for Kinky’s backstage favours. In those days I was innocent and so longed for experience. I was the first one to get in there, properly, in the manner a missionary would recommend but I had to get married in order to do it.’
‘I don’t believe I’m hearing this,’ said Jelly.
‘We may not be,’ said Angel. ‘We may be remembering it. In fact I remember that time very well. I’m not ashamed. I loved every minute of it. I was getting my way, so I could afford to keep in the background. You lot didn’t know about me, until celibacy made me surface, but I was always there.’
‘You’re having me on,’ said Lady Rice. ‘You’re making this up. I was a virgin when I married, not just in fact but in thought. I was innocent and pure. Everyone knew. It was all there in my PR handouts. A virgin! Amazing in that day and age.’
‘Kinky Virgin’, hummed Angel. ‘Was the band called after you, or after the song? Kinky Virgin. Call me Violet. Violate your Violet.’
‘Shut up,’ cried Angelica. ‘Shut up, fucking shut up!’
‘Language!’ That was Jelly, sharpish.
‘Kinky Virgin’, sung Angel. ‘Inviolate. Push me this way, push me that way; call me Violet. Shrinking Violet. Slaver me and slobber me, turn me over, cover me. Kinky Virgin Violet. Inviolate.’
‘I remember nothing of any of that,’ said Lady Rice. ‘I’m sure those weren’t the words. Just get that tune right out of my head!’
Angelica was already letting out a piercing inner howl to blot the tune, to drown this inconvenient, embarrassing and traumatic rumour, posing as actual information.
‘Silly old cow, you are,’ said Angel. ‘I remember every detail, every word. And that is how Edwin met me; bent backwards over a soiled velvet couch which travelled everywhere with the band. Astonishing we lasted so long.’
‘And you killed our father,’ added Lady Rice in passing, ‘from the sheer shock of it all. His little Angel.’
‘Shall I call a doctor?’ asked the woman from Information. ‘She’s acting so strangely.’
And indeed a kind of ethnic sing-song chant was now coming from Lady Rice’s lips: some prayer to a strange God which had to be repeated and repeated, an appeal for divine intervention – Dear God, whoever and whatever you are, save me, save me! – with undertones of the strangled sound the lips actually manage to make when a dreamer wakes screaming, or so it seems to the sleeper, from a nightmare. All that passion, all that effort, to end in a little mewling sound.
‘I’ll speak to her,’ said Edwin. ‘She’ll be okay. She’d get like this.’
‘What a nightmare for you, darling,’ said Anthea. ‘What a nightmare!’
Edwin led Angelica outside to the grassy slope where in better days they’d watched the chimney fall, and thereby alter their future and fortunes: destroying one, creating the other. Edwin took out his handkerchief – a cotton handkerchief, newly washed and ironed, where once a stretch of toilet roll had done – and dabbed his wife’s eyes. She could see he would make a good father, and understood it had been wrong of her to deprive him of the opportunity, over the years.
‘Angelica,’ said Edwin, ‘stop all this. You shouldn’t be here. It’s bound to upset you.’
Lady Rice could see Anthea standing on the front steps, pretending not to notice, not to keep an eye on what was going on; casually calling the dogs.
‘I can’t help it,’ said Lady Rice. ‘I’m your wife and I love you.’
‘Angelica,’ said Edwin, ‘you are divorcing me and for very good reason. Anthea is pregnant. You and I have very little in common. I’m sorry if I hurt you just now. But we have to face the facts. It was an utterly unsuitable marriage. We were far too young. We tried and it failed. Let’s just part and leave it at that. It’s not as if we had children to complicate matters. We can be friends, can’t we?’
Lady Rice was silent. Edwin re-adjusted the buttons on her blouse and waistcoat so that she appeared more decent. His touch was more like a nursemaid’s than a lover’s.
‘Friends! I would so like us to be friends,’ said Lady Rice to her sisters. ‘Wouldn’t that be nice!’
‘Hang on a minute,’ said Angelica.
‘He’s cheating us,’ said Jelly.
‘Don’t trust him,’ said Angel. ‘Don’t fall for it. He’s trying to wriggle out of his financial responsibilities. Friendship today means no alimony tomorrow.’
‘Perhaps we should think about friendship less,’ said Lady Rice to her husband, ‘and money more? I had a whole lot of the stuff when I started with you; now I have none.’
‘You have become so mercenary,’ Edwin lamented. ‘You never used to worry about money.’
‘That was when I had some,’ she replied.
‘I have none to spare, Angelica,’ said Edwin. ‘You know what this place costs to keep up. Why are you holding up the divorce?’
‘Is that what I’m doing?’ asked Lady Rice.
‘Actually, it is,’ said Jelly. ‘You’re between the Nisi and the Absolute, and you won’t let the Absolute go through until there’s a property settlement, and quite right too. I saw to that.’
‘And Edwin wants to get married be
cause Anthea’s pregnant, so you’re able to hold a pistol to his head,’ said Angelica.
‘Why do you do this behind my back?’ cried Lady Rice.
‘Because you stayed home crying,’ said Angelica.
‘I don’t believe it was behind your back,’ said Angel.
‘You deceitful bitch! No wonder you don’t have any friends. Edwin’s quite right: you’re a mercenary cow who married him for his title. You deserve what you get. I’m glad you’re unhappy.’
‘I’m splitting, I’m splitting!’ cried Lady Rice. ‘I can’t keep the shreds together: the perforations are tearing. I’m sorry, everyone...’
‘The trouble with you,’ said Edwin, ‘was your right hand never knew what your left hand was doing.’
‘Please don’t put me in the past tense,’ begged Lady Rice, ‘or I’ll vanish altogether.’
‘Then don’t you spite Anthea and the baby by holding me to ransom,’ said her husband, father of another’s child.
‘I’ll think about it,’ said Lady Rice. ‘I feel I’m writing life as it goes along, and someone’s editing out all the good bits, and leaving in the bad.’
Ram’s car edged round the drive and distracted Lady Rice. He’d said he’d give her half an hour: after that he’d come and find her.
‘It’s humiliating,’ said Angelica savagely, ‘that we should now regard a chauffeur as a friend, just because he fucked us.’
‘Keep your mind on what Edwin is saying,’ said Jelly, ‘for God’s sake. Don’t get distracted now, and don’t start using language, or we’ll be right back where we were before we married him.’
‘You never were a lady,’ said Angel, ‘you were only ever a kinky virgin.’
‘I’m astonished,’ said Edwin, thus focusing his wife’s mind again, ‘that you can afford a chauffeur if you’re as impecunious as your lawyer claims. You’ve probably been putting funds away in some Swiss bank account for years. Robert Jellico thinks you have. And you could always set up business as a Kinky Divorcee.’
‘It just doesn’t somehow have the same ring,’ said Angel, drily, ‘as Kinky Virgin.’
‘That’s more like my Angelica,’ Edwin said, gratified. ‘Sometimes I’d wonder where you’d gone. You walked and talked and fucked but you’d stopped being you. You were just another role-player: Lady Rice. Cheer up. Let me have my divorce. Rice Court needs its heir. All your future lies before you. You’ll meet someone, the way I did. Have kids, settle down in some suburb. You’ll live to bless the day I found you and Lambert on our bed.’
‘Angelica,’ said Jelly, ‘you were really miserable married to Edwin. Listen to him now! Spiteful? He was always spiteful.’
‘In and out, in and out,’ said Angel, ‘missionary position, and that was it. I had more fun as a virgin. I feel quite sorry for Anthea, what with the kid and all. We’ve lost nothing.’
‘Except marriage, love and justice,’ said Angelica. ‘Don’t forget that. Don’t take these things lightly or you devalue everything that went before.’
‘But if he doesn’t see the connection,’ said Jelly, ‘what’s the point of it? Takes two to keep an ideal alive, and bouncing in the air.’
‘One mark up for Evil,’ said Ajax, out of nowhere, ‘two marks down for Good. We plead Not Guilty to a crime against human aspiration. Edwin is guilty, you are not, Lady Rice. The Court of the Mind votes, decides.’
‘Angel,’ said Angelica, ‘was that you talking just now?’
‘No,’ said Angel.
‘I heard a man’s voice,’ said Jelly.
‘It’s just a friend of mine,’ said Angel.
‘You’re having a relationship with him,’ said Angelica. ‘When we go to sleep – how dare you, who is he?’
‘He’s a brother to me, to us,’ said Angel, frightened by their vehemence. ‘Honestly.’
‘It’s really disgusting, Angel,’ said Angelica, ‘having a he in here with us. How long has he been about? It’s spooky. It’s rude. I hate it.’
‘Then forget it,’ said Angel, and Angelica did. ‘Forget he even spoke.’ And Jelly did. ‘He’s mine to dispose of. He’s the one who tells our narrative; he has to, or else it’s anarchy in here. He sorts us out and splits us up: to stop her taking an overdose. It’s desperate in here.’
‘I don’t love Edwin any more,’ said Lady Rice. ‘I feel so much better all of a sudden. I searched inside me just now and found no love.’
‘Thank God for that,’ said the others in chorus.
Angel alone heard Ajax speak: the others did not. She knew better than to mention him.
‘I am the narrator. I move through the centuries,’ Ajax said. ‘I am the original idea; you are growing too strong, you are wearing me thin. A couple of you will have to go. Without a narrator we could vanish altogether. Desperate measures, desperate times,’
‘So, what do you say?’ asked Edwin. ‘Five-hundred pounds a month alimony is more than generous. It’s not as if there was a matrimonial home to sell! Just a stately home in hock to the Government.’
‘I’ll think about it,’ said Lady Rice.
‘It’s more than you’d get on the dole. Do be reasonable. I’ll put it up to seven-hundred-and-fifty, to show my goodwill.’
He spoke as a driver might to another after a collision which was none of his doing, courteous but disdainful, sighing inwardly about waste of time and money, but not too inwardly, to make sure the other was aware of the extent of the forbearance. Lady Rice was satisfied. She kissed him on the cheek to seal the contract. Anthea moved towards them.
‘I hear what you say,’ said Lady Rice. ‘I’m glad we talked.’
‘Let’s just get out of here before I murder someone,’ said Angel.
‘Let’s get out of here,’ said Jelly, ‘and into some proper clothes. We look a sight.’
‘Let’s just get out of here,’ said Angelica.
Edwin said as Lady Rice left, as he courteously closed the limousine door, ‘Do give my regards to your mother when you see her.’
Edwin had never much liked Mrs White, a woman without style or substance, who had so singularly failed to prevent her daughter making a disc called ‘Kinky Virgin’ when she was just sixteen. Edwin spoke, as these days he so often did, with a double tongue. Why had she never noticed?
‘Fucking hypocrite,’ said Lady Rice, surprising herself.
‘You told me he was good looking,’ said Ram, on the way to Mrs White’s new cottage. ‘He’s not much of a rival. Nice place, though.’
With every mile she travelled further from Rice Court, Lady Rice suffered more. She felt light-headed; she felt faint; as if the reason for her existence had gone; as if she’d been cut out of cardboard, as if in allaying her demons, her sorrowing sea-myths, she had allayed herself away altogether as well. She became one with her sea of sorrow: a mere flurry of spume and foam, catching the light for a minute, then breaking and bursting and gone. ‘I’m going,’ she said. ‘The sea-myths are taking me with them.’ But her sisters didn’t hear, didn’t even remember her: never found out what a sea-myth was.
Angel changed in the back of the car, out of the layers into skirt and T-shirt. She failed to stop Rameses watching in the mirror, but otherwise allowed him no further liberties: the other two prevented her, kept her tied to the mast of her majority respectability, her majority lack of desire, other than in the pursuit of her own financial interests.
‘We need a little space to ourselves for once, a little time as well,’ Angelica pleaded with Angel, and Angel shrugged and let her sisters, who appeared to be united on this point, have their way. They granted they needed a little psychic space: after the encounter with Edwin, time to recover. So Ram stayed for once in the front of the car.
7
A Short Visit To Mrs White
‘Mum,’ said Jelly to Mrs Haverley, once Mrs White, ‘I can’t remember much about myself as a girl.’
‘I’m not surprised,’ said Mrs White. ‘All those drugs, all that drink, and a
ll that sex. I wouldn’t want to remember it if I were you. Until the day you got married and became your husband’s responsibility, you were a nightmare.’
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ asked Jelly.
Mrs White looked startled.
‘I didn’t know I was meant to,’ said Mrs Haverley, puzzled. ‘You seemed happy enough, up there in the Big House, looking down on the rest of us, employing your own school friends as servants. Nose in the air. Never even came to visit me. You were ashamed. Everyone knew it. Shouldn’t you bring that young man in? The one who’s driving the big car?’
‘He can wait,’ said her daughter, grandly. ‘He’s only the chauffeur. He can circle the village if he’s bored.’
Mrs Haverley now lived in the house where the previous Mrs Haverley had lived with her husband Gerald throughout their marriage. The first Mrs Haverley had died of a stroke after the divorce, but before the property settlement had been made final. The house had therefore passed into her ex-husband’s name. Gerald’s daughter Mary, still unmarried and proud of it, now lived with her father and stepmother. She had given up protest and now just enjoyed the ex-Mrs White’s cooking, and the habit she had of ironing and folding clothes before putting them into drawers, which her real mother had never done. The first Mrs Haverley would wash and dry clothes but left them for the family to pick out of the laundry basket. Sometimes they would need washing again before this happened.
‘Don’t you feel peculiar living here?’ Jelly asked her mother. ‘Using her teapot? In her bed? Doesn’t she haunt you?’
But apparently not.
‘It’s really nice living in another woman’s home,’ said the new Mrs Haverley. ‘Other people manage to have the light switches in all the right places, and enough sockets to go round. She didn’t stint herself, I must say. Nearly drove poor Gerald to bankruptcy, but what did she care?’
