by Weldon, Fay
Angelica hurt her teeth on a rock cake that had stayed in the oven for too long.
‘Shit!’ she said, and her mother raised her eyebrows and said, ‘If you don’t like them, don’t eat them. A good rock cake’s always hard.’
‘Mum,’ asked Angelica,’ did I talk to myself a lot when I was a child?’
‘All the time,’ said Mrs White. ‘Used to drive your father mad. We’d be woken in the morning by the sound of children playing. Different voices and all. But there’d only ever be you in there.’
‘Boys’ voices too?’
‘Oh yes,’ said Mrs Haverley. ‘Boys and girls. All in there together!’
She served as good a scone and as bad a jelly as ever. She was an uneven cook. But with her change of name, as it happened, she no longer seemed to Angelica to be her mother at all: Angelica saw herself as orphaned. Mrs White had transmuted into Mrs Haverley, and in the sea-change lost maternal status. She had become just another of the older generation of Barley housewives. Plump and stocky legged, with happily sagging faces and breasts; their eccentricities and individuality, though no doubt there, secrets too well kept for even their owners to perceive them. The women slumped happily into the common mass; doing themselves up for their children’s weddings, for Christmas, for funerals. Only occasionally, when sexual longings, pleasures and disgusts were concerned, when there was a swapping of partners, or a divorce, or tales of incest, did they bother to separate themselves out from others, take up separate attitudes, present their opposing views.
‘Yes, boys as well,’ said Mrs Haverley. ‘Boys and girls all in that little body together. What a marvel!’
‘You didn’t say anything to anybody?’
‘No. It kept you quiet while we lay in of a morning. You all seemed to get on well enough. Your Dad and I would joke about it. “No only-child problems for Jelly,” he’d say. And I’d say, “but when she gets to teenage, will it be decent? Supposing they get off with one another?” But by the time teenage came the voices had stopped. There was just the one of you, and not a particularly nice one either, I’m sorry to say.’
‘Bitch,’ said Angel. ‘God, how I hated the fat, complacent cow. I could have killed her. Can’t we go home now? I can’t stand even to see her.’
‘Not yet,’ said Angelica.
‘Mum,’ said Jelly, though the word came with difficulty to her lips, ‘put your mind back to when Dad died. How did it happen? What was I like when it did? Because I seem to have forgotten.’
‘I’d rather not say,’ said Mrs Haverley, and at that moment Mr Haverley let himself cheerfully into the hall and presently joined them for tea. He ate cheese sandwiches with his right hand, while his left encompassed one of his wife’s sturdy legs. Mary, his daughter, came in and out of the room, feeding dogs, tropical fish and guinea pigs, all already more than fat enough. Mary wore a diamond engagement ring. Jelly had vague memories of standing next to her at Choral Society concerts. She’d always sung off key.
‘Do let me get on, dear,’ said Mrs Haverley, trapped by the leg, but her new husband felt disinclined so to do, so she stayed where she was.
‘Are you engaged, Mary?’ asked Jelly, to distract attention from the sight of her mother and her stepfather in erotic communication, but Mary said no, it was just a ring her father had given her on her thirtieth birthday.
‘Why don’t you tell your girl the truth, dear,’ said Gerald Haverley. Now he had finished his sandwich, his right arm shot out and he trapped his daughter’s legs as well as his wife’s. They all squealed happily.
‘Might as well,’ said Mrs Haverley. ‘Once you stopped being little, Jelly, you seemed to take no notice of your father: whether he was there or not was of little or no mind to you. You were sixteen and you’d just made your name with that dreadful record. He could just about get used to the music but someone sent him the lyrics, and he died in minutes, sitting in his chair. I used to think it was your first wife, dear,’ she said to her husband, ‘who sent him the lyrics. She could be spiteful, and she never liked Jelly. Jelly used to tell Mary about sex at choir practice. She thought she was a bad influence on Mary. But I knew she was wrong. I knew Jelly was a good girl at heart.’
‘I remember now,’ said Jelly. ‘I remember you telling me my father was dead and me saying to you “but how could you tell the difference?” and I laughed and you hit me. I can see you were right to. It was no moment to be a smartarse.’
‘Well, dear,’ said Mrs Haverley, ‘it wasn’t very nice of you,’ and she squealed and laughed as Mr Haverley started tickling up and down the leg and Mary squealed ‘Me, me!’
‘But then again,’ said Jelly’s mother, ‘he wasn’t your real father anyway, was he?’
The cottage window opened directly on to the street. Ram drew up the limousine just outside, so he could look directly through to where Jelly stood, and at the family scene within.
‘But then you knew that, didn’t you?’ said Mr Haverley.
‘Well, no, I didn’t,’ said Jelly.
Mrs Haverley, once Mrs White, said, ‘It seemed to matter a lot once, but it doesn’t any more, does it, dear? If you don’t mind, why should I?’
Jelly White felt illegitimised, as if someone with no existence at all worked for Brian Moss, wrapped a wraithful tongue around his member: no, not even that kept her in this world: not even mouthfuls of his seed could keep her nourished; she was going, she was gone. Goodbye, goodbye, she called to her sisters, but it was too late, they did not hear; she was gone and no trace left behind.
‘Who was my father, then?’ asked Angelica.
‘I had to marry Stephen, dear. I wasn’t the sort to claim Welfare. It wasn’t that Stephen and I weren’t happy together, we were; he was just a lot older than me. That’s what we’d end up doing, unmarried mothers like us. We’d marry someone older, for the house, and the comfort. Forget the sex. All that sex had ever done, so far as we could see, was get us into trouble. Or so we thought. Of course the world’s a different place now.’
‘You never told me.’
‘I thought you would have guessed. Leave it at that, Jelly dear. You don’t want to know anything more.’
‘I do. Tell me about my real father.’
‘Well, Jelly, at least it wasn’t someone from a sperm bank. That I would be ashamed of. I was gangbanged by a football team behind the stands, after a match. I should never have gone. I never liked sport anyway, but I thought Georgie Best was going to be playing. It wasn’t a nice experience, but not as bad as they make out, and that’s all I can tell you, Jelly.’
‘Don’t call me Jelly.’
‘It was your father’s idea to call you Angelica. What did he think would happen? It would split into a dozen different nicknames. I told him but he wouldn’t listen.’
‘Don’t call him my father.’
‘He was a good man, and a good father to you. I’ll call him what I want. Don’t insult him.’
‘What was the match?’ asked Mary. ‘Bet it was something dreary like Norwich v. Tottenham. And second eleven, not first eleven. My God, Jelly might be anyone’s! Why has she always given herself such airs?’
‘Don’t be spiteful, Mary: sometimes you’re so like your mother,’ said Mrs Haverley. ‘You can tell Jelly’s upset. I was right not to tell her, wasn’t I? Some things are better left in the closet, surely.’
‘Whatever you do is right by me, sweetheart,’ said Gerald Haverley, once prime mover at the PTA, now a man enjoying his prime, his hand moving so far up his wife’s skirt that she squealed and Mary said mildly, ‘Oh Dad, you’ll shock Jelly.’
But Jelly was gone. They were talking to no one. Only Angelica and Angel remained.
8
Dilapidation
The stairs of Lodestar House were broken; the floorboards in the turret room were rotten; the whole place stank of ammonia and damp. Windows were so dirty they scarcely let in the light. Creepers had found their way between glass and frame. Plaster flaked from walls
; paper shredded by tiny rodent teeth eddied in draughts from broken doors. The roof leaked: the rooms once occupied by Wendy and Congo were cold, forlorn and wretched: dejection added up to more than its filthy parts.
Brian Moss showed Una around the property. That is to say, he ventured as far as the foot of the staircase and said, ‘A tragedy, a tragedy. The place is too far gone. I’ll have it condemned. If I pull a few strings, I can get a demolition order, in spite of its Grade I listing.’
But Una said, looking back from halfway up the stairs, that the solicitor was unnecessarily gloomy. She would do the place up: it was the house where she’d been born. It had to be ‘made good’, in the builders’ terminology. She’d hire someone competent to do it: she had very little time herself. She needed the place for an in-house residence for her Agency team. It was good for the team’s morale to bring them all together under one roof from time to time. It fostered togetherness and she found it reduced the turnover rate. Good staff were hard to find, particularly in her line of work.
Brian Moss thought that even this strong woman was nervous of going further up the stairs. She was talking too much.
‘I don’t believe in ghosts,’ said Brian Moss, ‘but this place is spooky.’
‘All the better,’ said Una. ‘The dead can be energising. My team will soon have them exorcised, in any case. Fancy mother letting the place get into a state like this.’ And, thus restored by her own words, she went on boldly up the stairs, calling, ‘Mother, mother Wendy? Are you there?’ At which Brian Moss shivered and went outside and stood on the step; but even there the air seemed brackish, and a drop of water fell upon his nose from the vaulted stone archway above, and startled him. He longed to be back in his office; he wished old Catterwall had never taken the Musgrave family on as clients. They were all hopeless. He waited.
Una came out smiling.
‘Mother’s happy for me to do up the house,’ said Una. ‘She always meant to get round to it some time,’ and, when Brian Moss looked askance, she said, ‘Only joking!’ He felt she was humouring him, and was not consoled. He looked at his watch: it had stopped.
A taxi drew up and a young woman stepped out. She was a stocky little thing, with a wide, low forehead from which dark curly hair sprang profusely. She had large eyes and a little mouth. Her bosom was high and plump. Brian Moss felt cheered at once.
‘This is Maria,’ said Una, ‘my administrative assistant.’
‘And you’ll be the solicitor with the shoulder for crying on,’ said Maria, little hand already on his arm. ‘I used to be on the team but Una moved me sideways. I’m getting used to it now, but it did upset me. I’m a psychic, and the dead just don’t seem able to stay away. And Una was right: it could interfere with my work.’ She put her nose inside the door of Lodestar House. ‘Oh my!’ said Maria.
‘A lot of creaks and groans,’ said Una, ‘even for an old house.’
‘Sounds more like cris de joie to me,’ said Maria, ‘trying to get through from the other side. This place will do wonderfully. You were really born here?’
‘I lived here on and off in my youth,’ said Una. ‘Till my mother threw me out. But I’ve made my peace with her.’
‘What is this team you’re talking about,’ asked Brian Moss, more in nervous conversation than in interest. He had gone right off Maria. He moved out of her reach.
‘Una’s Happy Boys and Girls,’ said Maria. ‘And I really miss the work, but what Una says goes. That’s how she is. We all adore her.’
And Una and Maria, the older and the younger woman, went back in to Lodestar House and Brian, the man, went back to his office, where Lois, whom he had persuaded to stay, waited for him.
9
Renovation
Angelica and Angel were left in partnership, if jobless, feeling lonely but proud; addenda to the self had been stripped away, adjuncts that had mistakenly been seen to be somehow central. Lady Rice, though a person of some ten years’ standing, turned out to have been a mere offshoot of Rice Court, as if the building itself and not Edwin had created her, and then discarded her; had stirred in its derelict slumber one day (woken, perhaps by the sound of its own chimney falling through its own roof), decided to pull itself out of the mire, get its damp-courses mended, its kitchens refurbished, and so on; cast its eye upon Angelica on her grassy mound and decided, well, she’ll do until something better comes along, and made a quasi Lady Rice of her. She had been a bit-part player in Rice Court’s drama – a stand-in. And something better had indeed come along: Anthea; a slave to breed a new line of willing slaves, and Lady Rice, unneeded, had simply melted out of existence, dissolved into her own tears.
And as for Jelly, she’d seen herself as her father’s daughter; she had sprung into existence with the qualities most likely to gratify that most boring man, and, once free of his genesis, and discovering the multiplicity of her fathers, understanding the impossibility of meeting all their requirements, of ever getting it right, had faded away; a little lone voice getting squeakier and smaller until all that was left was a heap of Marks & Spencer clothes and silence.
All this Angelica and Angel agreed upon, marvelling. They had never expected to be left in joint control.
At first the happenstance exhilarated them. Then it made them anxious. Trauma, which created them, might also take them away. Angelica would complain of an empty black hole whirling away inside her: everything had been too sudden for her.
‘I don’t miss the others one bit,’ Angel would say, to comfort her. ‘Nag, nag, nag, night and day. Party poopers. Forget them.’
And Angelica missed Brian Moss and was hurt that he had been able to let her go so easily. She had never exactly enjoyed the intimacies they shared, but had seen them as some common point of reference; a bond between them. She had felt protected. Brian Moss was the kind of man she should have married.
This made Angel whistle with derisive glee. She didn’t miss Brian Moss.
‘It’s your own fault about Brian Moss. You should never have opened the door to Lois. That wasn’t my doing, that was yours. I want you to promise never to do anything like that again. You just don’t know how to handle delicate situations.’
‘I don’t get us into them in the first place,’ said Angelica. ‘It’s a real worry. With four of us we could move to a majority decision. And now it’s just you and me, God knows what will happen next. I wish I could meet some nice man.’
‘Are you crazy?’ said Angel. “‘Some nice man”, in my experience, is just some boring little creep who hangs around to stop you doing what you want. If they go away, what’s the problem with them not being nice? Not-nice men are better in bed. Everyone knows.’
There were practical worries, too; how were they to survive?
‘We can’t go on living off Edwin’s charge accounts,’ said Angelica. ‘Lady Rice could, fairly enough. But what’s Edwin got to do with us any more? So far as I’m concerned, the marriage was entirely accidental; nothing more than an interruption. We’re back to where we began.’
‘But you can pick up such a good class of man at The Claremont,’ protested Angel. ‘And the beds are so soft and comfortable.’
‘We are not going to be a whore,’ said Angelica. ‘And that’s that. We’ve ended up in the wrong level of society. I’m the kind of person who lives modestly and comfortably in a leafy suburb somewhere. I’m sure I am. I have excellent secretarial and management skills; I might even get married again, and stay home and have babies.’
‘What’s marriage but legalised prostitution?’ enquired Angel. ‘What are wives but domestic slaves who work in the house and in the bed for their keep and no money? If I’d been around at the time, I’d never have allowed the marriage to Edwin. All work and no wages. Madness.’
‘At least in marriage you get to choose your master,’ said Angelica. ‘Whoring makes me feel out of control, and really depressed the next morning. You feel yourself getting addicted to chance. Whoever walks through the door, that’s
it.’
‘But that’s what I like,’ said Angel. ‘That’s what’s exciting. The absence of choice.’
Angelica preferred to call it masochism. Personally she prided herself on a delicacy of feeling. She saw the desire to pick and choose as entirely healthy, properly female: nature’s way, in fact, of leaving a woman sexually responsive only to a man whose baby she could just about bear to conceive, even though a baby was the last thing on her mind.
‘Crap,’ said Angel. ‘Sex is nothing to do with babies any more.’
But Angelica persisted: she would not consent to a life in which what she saw as a perfectly natural fastidiousness had daily to be defied, overruled. The effort would exhaust her, she said. She would get the debased, dead-eyed look of the whore, and her mother would notice.
‘Crap again,’ said Angel. ‘Research proves there’s no telling who is and who isn’t. And, as for mother, I thought you wanted never to see her again.’
Arguments, differences of opinion, gave them headaches. They were getting through too much paracetamol, too many sleeping pills. Angel was a heavier and longer sleeper than Angelica: guilt and anxiety, emotions felt only dimly by Angel, made Angelica wake first. She used the time to get her own way. One morning she wrote to Barney Evans saying she would put up with Edwin’s modest pensioning off: she would no longer fight her husband. Let him have his divorce. She had lost her appetite for justice. She posted the letter in the foyer box.
10
Perforation
One door shuts: another opens. The harder the slam, the greater the gust of air and the more dramatic the new opening.
‘There’s a phone call for you, Lady Rice,’ said the bellboy, even as the letter went in the box. ‘Would you care to take it in the booth? We couldn’t find you in your room.’
The call was from Una. She had seen Lady Rice in The Claremont bar the night before, when drinking with friends. Una had recognised Lady Rice as Brian Moss’s departing secretary, had learned that she was a guest at The Claremont and had taken the liberty of contacting her this morning. It was nothing to do with Una what was going on, but if Lady Rice, or whoever, was in need of a job, she might have one to offer her.
