by Weldon, Fay
Time was against Julie, as it is against all women, in such gynaecological matters. In the meantime, she loved her animals, who gave her work in the way that babies do: removing dog hairs from a sofa, replacing chewed seat belts, nursing aged cats, cleaning up after kittens, discouraging algae in the fishbowl – these things gave her pleasure, a sense of achievement…
‘You love those animals more than me,’ said Alec, closing his leather briefcase, off again, mini-computer in hand.
‘I expect I do,’ was all she said. She only told lies on forms.
She called up the vet to ask him what to do with the animals in view of the radioactive cloud and he said he doubted they would come to much harm, no one seemed to know how much radiation was about, or indeed what radiation actually was, but it would also do no damage to keep them in, and even perhaps to bath the dogs.
‘But supposing the water’s radioactive?’
He thought she was the most beautiful woman he’d ever met, but over-anxious. He thought her husband neglected her. He had the sense that she waited for her life to take its proper direction, and that also, if she was not careful, she would wait for ever. She was lost: in the wrong place: with the wrong fate: making herself neutral.
‘Shall I come over?’ he asked.
‘No,’ she said sadly.
‘It’s a pity your husband’s away at such a time,’ he said. ‘Chernobyl has made everyone nervous, probably more nervous than they need to be.’
‘You can’t see it but it’s always there,’ she said, ‘like my husband. I’ll just call the animals in, shall I?’
‘Good idea,’ he said, and went to deliver a calf which had two heads. These things happen, with or without radiation. The farmer was inclined to blame Chernobyl, all the same, and however irrationally.
Gently, Julie Rainer, aged thirty, 5 foot 7 inches, 36-24-36, wiped the paws of Hilda her grey cat with a damp cloth, but Hilda took offence and scratched her. Julie watched a line of blood ooze along her white inner arm and threw the poor creature – the one she loved – across the room.
‘Bloody animal,’ she shrieked, ‘bloody animal! It’s all Alec’s fault.’ Later of course she stroked and cosseted the cat, who fortunately had not seemed to take deep offence, and then she went out into the night and breathed deeply, to punish herself.
Cliff came home on time and Gina did not realize he’d been drinking until too late.
‘Isn’t it terrible about this thing at Chernobyl?’ she said, when he came in. She was 5 foot 4 inches, 38 around the chest, 28 around the waist and 40 around the hips. Well, she had been seven weeks premature and reared in a less fortunate environment than Joanna May, her original.
‘Don’t give me any of that fancy stuff,’ he said. ‘Where’s dinner?’
‘Not quite ready,’ said Gina. ‘I had to get the kids back home from the park. It was raining; supposing what they say is right: the rain’s radioactive?’
‘I want some straight talking round here,’ he said. ‘Dinner is either ready or is not ready, and if it is not this is what happens,’ and he hit her.
Now, the kind of row that occurred between Gina and Clifford was of a rather different genus than the one that slowly developed between Jane and Tom. It was not a black cloud that little by little took over a clear sky: not a virus sent to blight the life of the potentially happy. No, this was the kind of domestic discontent that runs like gutter sludge through the houses of the depressed and desperate, be they smart new bungalow, palace or slum – and once your children get their feet wet there’s no drying them out. Mothers’ noses get broken, eyes blacked, kidneys damaged, unborn babies killed; the little witnesses have a hard time of it; thwarted in their desire, their passion, to love someone, anyone, who is worthy of their love, they grow up to lay about them likewise. It is never over. Parents must be worthy of their children’s love, and that’s all there is to it. And whoever grows up, properly, finally? Not you, not me, not him, not her.
‘Where’s my dinner?’ he says. He might be four. ‘Not ready,’ she says. She might be six. Wham he goes: he’s all of fourteen.
‘How can you?’ she wails; fifteen if she’s a day; and to the neighbours, grown-up at last, ‘I walked into a lamp-post,’ denying truth, so what sort of grown-up is that? And not so different in essence perhaps, just more swift, more desperate, more dangerous than Jane and Tom. Where’s my dinner means did you care for me in my absence, did you notice I was gone, Mum oh Mum, how can I trust you? Not ready means no actually I didn’t, I don’t care about you one bit; wham means I can’t express this sorrow, this grief, this disappointment, in words, you self-righteous bitch, you cow: the wham arrives reinforced by a great communal strength, the sudden surge of the male’s hatred of the female who will not be possessed, will not be owned, will not be all body but will have a soul, and who in the refusing suggests some unattainable, other ideal. And then her tears, her silly tears of resentment mean see I knew you were like this, you’ve proved it again; her loyalty acknowledges that if I am punished it must be my fault, things will get better, you my neighbour can’t possibly understand the complexity, not his fault, mine, I have failed, I have failed – the whole thing’s impossible…
If there’s no one around for Gina, and no one around for Cliff, either will kick the cat. There! Told you after all that I was unloveable. See what you’ve done?
In the next room the children turn up the TV – they’d have done better to stay in the park, in a different kind of fallout. Presently Gina comes in to say, ‘Sorry about the explosion. It’s all over now.’ Except her nose is bleeding, so it clearly isn’t. Why does she tell such lies? Why doesn’t she leave? She doesn’t leave because how can she leave, where can she go, she hasn’t got the courage: one day perhaps she will, she says, leave. But leave what? Who? Herself – that’s what she fails to understand, late with his dinner because Chernobyl exploded. How does she leave herself behind?
He is the product of her imagination taken flesh: she married him to make him flesh, he is what she deserves. She stood there and said, ‘I will, I will!’, knowing his nature, the strength of his backhand, the cheap wine reddy-brown upon his teeth.
Those who have rows are more alive than those who don’t: make better friends, more interesting companions. They may wreak havoc but they understand their imperfections – witness how they project them upon others – they cry to heaven for justice. They believe in it.
Alice had a row with her agent. He was her nearest and dearest. Other men came and went, but he was the voice on the phone, unsweaty, unsmelly, a man firm and strong upon a letterhead.
He rang her to say Kiev was cancelled. She’d been going to do a show there.
‘I don’t believe it,’ she said. ‘You’re doing it on purpose.’
‘Alice, be reasonable,’ he said. ‘How could I make a nuclear power station explode?’
‘You’re using it as an excuse. You didn’t want me to do this show. You don’t want me to represent my country abroad. You want me to do some cheap swimsuit for some cheap mag because there’s more in it for you.’
Alice was 5 foot 8 inches tall, 33 inches around the chest, 22 round the waist and 32 around the hips. She’d spent a week longer in the womb than Jane or Julie, and eight weeks longer than Gina. She exercised and dieted. She was in love with herself: she would stand naked in front of a mirror and run her hands across her body: she would do anything for herself.
‘There’s never anything in it for me,’ he said. ‘Ten per cent! A tip. That’s all it ever is, a tip.’
‘Perhaps it’s time I got a new agent,’ she said.
‘Perhaps it is,’ he said.
There she went again. Prove you love me, before I prove you don’t. Later he called to apologize. She knew he would. He needed her more than she needed him.
Sometimes Alice felt alone in the world. She wished she’d had a sister: all she had for company was her little grey cat, and that was often left for neighbours to feed an
d so was cantankerous. Nevertheless the penalties of continual companionship, that is to say marriage, seemed too onerous to contemplate. What did she need with a husband in the flesh when her agent on the phone cared so much about her – how she looked, how she felt, where she’d been, what she earned – and all in exchange for a tip. Sex she could take or leave – and often left, for the sake of her looks. Not just because of the necessity of early nights if her eyes were to stay bright and large, but because sex made her screw up her face and that encouraged wrinkles.
One day she might marry, one day. Not yet. One day she might find the courage to marry.
So thought and felt the clones of Joanna May, before they discovered each other and themselves.
12
After his conversation with Carl May, Gerald Coustain put down his cordless telephone and said to his wife Angela, ‘The man’s a monster.’ They sat in the garden. She was setting examination papers in Α-level European history: she had lean academic fingers. He was potting out delphiniums: he had plump and clumsy ones: he was a civil servant of the stout complacent kind. She did not reply: what was the point: she knew Carl May was a monster. The sun went behind clouds; the wind was suddenly cold: there was rain in it.
‘I think perhaps we should go indoors,’ he said.
‘Why’s that?’ she asked, absently, lost somewhere in the Boer War. ‘It will stop in a minute: it’s only spitting.’
‘There is a possibility the rain is radioactive,’ he said.
‘Don’t be absurd,’ she said. ‘Things like that don’t happen.’
But she gathered up her papers and they went inside. He left the delphiniums to take their chances.
‘Perhaps we should change our clothes and shower?’ he said.
‘I would rather die than do anything so extreme,’ she said.
‘Death itself is extreme,’ he said.
‘If you envisage this alleged radiation as life-threatening,’ she said, ‘shouldn’t you be measuring it to find out? Or something?’
‘Our organization is a little sketchy,’ he said, ‘and I am not getting much cooperation where I had hoped to find it. I can’t get through to the Department. The lines are jammed.’
‘Perhaps you should go in to the office,’ she suggested.
‘On a Sunday? I spend Sundays with my family.’
‘All the same,’ she said.
‘Besides which,’ he said, ‘it’s safer indoors. Bricks and mortar offer some small protection. No one would expect it of me, to go in to the office through radioactive streets on a Sunday.’
He felt her disapproval and stood out against it. He must be allowed to make his own decision, surely.
‘How is poor Joanna?’ he asked, to change the subject. Angela had been Joanna’s best friend, until the divorce. After that, of course, the relationship had become difficult.
‘Joanna was never poor,’ said Angela. ‘Nothing poor about Joanna. Her house would make two of this, she has a park rather than a garden, her month’s alimony is my year’s housekeeping.’
‘In the circumstances, Carl May was generous. I would not be so generous, if I caught you at it.’
She laughed. It was hardly likely that he would. She was plain as a pikestaff, warts and moles all over the place and hairy legs. People were amazed at the match. He’d been a good-looking man when young: he could have done better for himself. But he hadn’t wanted to: he’d wanted her: and as for her, she didn’t give two figs for her looks. Their children, surprisingly, were all handsome, in a tall, strong-jawed way, and being male, their facial hair was not a matter for concern.
‘That way he can control her,’ said Angela. ‘If she accepts his generosity.’
‘I suppose it is better to be controlled than ignored,’ he said. ‘Poor thing.’
‘She has a young friend,’ said Angela. ‘The gardener: the man who pots out her delphiniums.’
‘You’re making it up.’ Gerald Coustain did not want to know this.
‘But I saw him when I went round the other day. She was looking wonderful. Not quite so perfect and clear-cut as she usually is – a little blurred around the edges. Swollen-mouthed. Sex, I suppose.’
‘What were you doing round there, in any case? I’d rather you didn’t call on her. Meet for lunch, of course, in town, if you insist. But not too close, Angela. No home visits: especially not if what you say is true. Carl May might see you as an accomplice. Be prudent.’
‘If your promotion depends on my prudence, you’ve had it anyway,’ said Angela. ‘Hadn’t you better be getting along to the office?’
‘There are no trains to speak of, not on Sundays.’
‘Then get a taxi.’
‘Certainly not. It is not a question of my promotion, Angela, but of your safety. God knows what Carl May might do next. He had his wife’s lover written off, blanked out, knocked off the perch, however you want to express it –’
‘Murdered. But there were special circumstances. One can’t condone it, of course.’
‘It has hardly reached “condone”, Angela. One doesn’t even know about it! Just don’t get involved, that’s all. I hope she has the sense not to boast about her lover to you ladies, or this one won’t last two minutes either.’
‘You ladies!’ she scorned him. ‘You ladies! Where has your courage gone? Can’t say boo to Carl May, can’t get to the office in case the rain’s radioactive –’
In the end he went, as she knew he would. Angela served as her husband’s conscience. Women who play this role are often as plain as pikestaffs – indeed, the plainer the better: Angela had a grey skin, a double chin, short grey greasy hair and wore belted navy blue around a waist almost larger than her hips, and her husband was never rude to her, or tried to make her unhappy.
13
The next day Angela called Joanna.
‘How are you, darling?’ she asked.
‘Do you really want to know?’ asked Joanna.
‘Yes,’ said Angela, settling in to listen. Angela had undertaken to see Joanna through her divorce: so much one woman will often do for another, although with luck the service may never have to be reciprocated. But you never know, you never know! The burden of guilt, indignation, upset, and general sense of injustice must be handed round, communally shouldered: it is too much for one person, one ‘I’, to bear. The ‘you’ must take a hand. At first the phone calls come at any time of day or night: the woman wronged, the ‘I’, has no idea of time, place or pertinence: then the notion of the otherness of the recipient, the sharer of distress, the you reasserts itself: the calls are at least prefaced by ‘is the milk boiling over? the toast burning? is Hollywood on the other line? have you a minute?’ and it’s clear the healing process is under way. Joanna was by now far down the road to recovery: whole conversations could be held without mention of Carl. But of course Chernobyl and his face on the television screen that morning had stirred up what Angela saw as a good deal of muddy sediment: nasty little insects crawled again in and out of slime: they had only been playing dead: they were back again, spreading disease and discomfort.
‘When I think how Carl has behaved to me!’ said Joanna, and it was clear to Angela she had had quite a relapse. ‘When I think how I wasted my life, simply threw it away! Why did my parents allow it? Carl May was a completely unsuitable match: it was unforgivable of them. They just wanted me out of the house. I was born to have children, but no, Carl May wouldn’t have that: the day before we were married he told me he didn’t want any. What could I do? Everything arranged: all the guests: the presents: I had to agree. You know what he’s like. I was so young I thought it didn’t matter. Infatuated! His unhappiness had to be loaded on to me; that was what it was. He denied life, made me deny it too. He turned me into some sort of snow queen and when I made just one small attempt to thaw myself out he used it as an excuse to throw me out of his life – he set it all up, I swear he did. He was just waiting for the opportunity to be rid of me.’
‘Ye
s, but Joanna –’ said Angela, cautiously.
‘I’m sorry, am I boring you? You do agree, don’t you? I am right?’
‘Carl may look at it a little differently. Carl came into his art gallery one day and found you and that Egyptologist together.’
‘For heaven’s sake, Angela, I was over fifty.’
‘What has that got to do with it?’ Angela sounded really interested: she really wanted to know.
‘Obviously I was desperate and Carl should have understood that.’
‘But Joanna, I’m over fifty and I’m not desperate.’
‘But you’re happily married!’ Joanna’s normally quiet voice was suddenly quite loud.
‘And now you’re not married at all,’ replied Angela.
Joanna was silent. She sniffed a little.
‘I don’t know what’s the matter with me today. Why did Carl choose to come into the gallery at that particular time? He never went in, normally. Besides, I thought he was away: he usually was.’
‘Perhaps he suspected something. Perhaps you seemed unusually happy.’
‘Oh, I was. Isaac was so much the opposite of Carl. But he had to put paid to that, didn’t he? And then that accident – if accident it was.’
‘Of course it was, Joanna.’ Though nobody believed that for one minute – Isaac, crossing the road outside the Eton Square house, in too much of a hurry, knocked down and killed by Philip the chauffeur, reversing into the garage. Oh yes!
‘Carl was so hard and cold about it all: not an ounce of sympathy for me.’
‘Could you expect it?’
‘Yes I could! We’d been married for thirty years and it was always me looking after him, worrying about him, listening to tales of his dreadful childhood; didn’t I deserve anything in return? We were supposed to love each other.’
