by Weldon, Fay
Jane received three letters by the same post. One was from her employers to announce the appointment of the new head of the London office: and it was not Jane but a snip of a girl of twenty-three, without a degree to her name, who got it. Too old at thirty! If you hadn’t made it by thirty in the film world, you’d had it. The next was from someone she’d never heard of, a woman called Anne, written on thin blue paper in what looked like a drunken scrawl, saying she, Jane, should take her claws out of Tom and let him get on with his life, or she, Anne, would come round and personally strangle her, and the third was from the ground rent landlords, asking her for her £8000 contribution towards repairing the roof, a matter she’d never heard of until that moment.
She rang HBO and offered her resignation, which was accepted with an alacrity she found humiliating. She rang Tom and asked him who Anne was, or rather screamed at him about her, and Tom said she was just a friend: he’d come round. She rang the landlords and said it was monstrous, and they agreed, but nevertheless, there it was. If she did not hand over £8000 forthwith they could, if it came to it, foreclose on her mortgage and resell to raise the necessary funds. She rang her father, Jeremy, who said he feared she hadn’t read the small print of her tenancy, and she said, ‘Why couldn’t you read it for me? Why have you never helped me?’ and he said, ‘Jane, you were always so self-sufficient, even from a baby: it came more easily to admire you than help you,’ and for some reason this made her weep and weep more than did any of the other sudden and unexpected blows from fate.
Tom came round and showed her photographs of Anne, who was blowsy and uneducated and had a daughter called Roma, aged eleven. Anne was his landlady. Yes, he spent nights with Anne sometimes. Why not? Why had he never told her? It didn’t seem anything to do with her, that was why: Jane only wanted half of him, so she could have half. She couldn’t own him: they didn’t have a child. Jane knew he wanted a child. Little Roma needed him. She didn’t have a father of her own.
‘You’re not fair, you’re not fair,’ wept Jane. Once men, according to Madge, said if you don’t sleep with me I’ll find someone who will. Now the threat had changed, gotten worse: now it was if you don’t have my baby other women will be only too glad.
Anne didn’t have a degree: she worked down the council baths: she had a council house: she acted as his model: yes, he was painting nudes. No, he didn’t want Jane as a model, she was too twitchy. She couldn’t relax. He thought he would have an exhibition soon. He was sorry about her job, her roof, her father. But her job made her hard and smart and cynical; it was a good thing she’d lost it: if she sold her car she could pay for the roof: and she’d always been hopelessly in love with her father and how could he, Tom, compete: and yes of course he loved her, what was all this talk about love all of a sudden; if he moved in with her and she settled down and they had a baby he would finish with Anne though of course he’d have to go on seeing Roma, she was only a child.
‘You go back to Anne,’ said Jane. ‘That’s the end, I don’t need you, I don’t want you, I don’t want to see you ever again.’
So he went, and she wondered why it all felt so familiar. She began talking to friends and colleagues about possible openings not just in films, but in journalism, put her solicitors on to the matter of the roof, went round to the doctor and demanded a sterilization, which was refused. She did not argue, however.
For it seemed to her, as she advanced reasons, both laudable and derisory, in favour of her sterilization – her career, her freedom, her revulsion, her dislike of baby mess and smells, her figure, her need of sleep – that there was another one she was only just now beginning to put her finger on. She didn’t want a boy; but who would understand that? If she had a boy it would be homosexual. It would have to be. Because how could she, being female, give birth to something male? Her little twelve-week foetus, which they’d said was male, had looked a real mess to her, and she wasn’t surprised. She could understand how her body could somehow spit out a daughter, a replica: but the female was less than the male: how could the lesser give birth to the greater? How could she tell Tom a thing like that? Better forget the whole thing: just not have babies: just be in some other more rational arena, where life was for living not passing on. Nevertheless, when refused, she was remotely, somewhere, somehow, pleased. She had a coil put in, instead.
So much for the Queen of Wands.
As for the Queen of Pentacles, Julie, well, her husband Alec flew in, ate supper without tasting it, went to bed without noticing her new provocative nightgown, let alone her determined serious sweetness – she had parted for ever (or so she really and truly believed) with her lover, for the sake of the marriage – was too tired to make love, rose in the morning, grumbled at the state of his shirts – though they were perfect – and flew straight off to West Berlin.
‘This can’t go on,’ she said, and made an appointment to see a solicitor. Yet Alec had flown in and out, just so, a hundred times before.
Julie, Queen of Pentacles.
Gina, Queen of Swords, woke up to a usual kind of day and limped to the doctor’s, as she often did. But while she was sitting in his waiting room – and she had to wait for a full hour with coughing young women and spluttering old ones all around, trying to reassure Ben (who had stayed off school to help her) and pacify little Anthony, who sat grizzling on the floor dealing harshly with the few old toys brought in by passing benefactors – she said something strange, to no one in particular. ‘This can’t go on,’ she said.
‘What, Mum?’ asked Ben. ‘What did you say?’
Ben always listened out anxiously as if his life’s duty was to be on guard, waiting for something he could do nothing about, except watch for its coming.
‘Never you mind,’ she said. ‘But don’t worry. Things will get better,’ and she’d said that to him a hundred times before, and it hadn’t got better. But this time when she limped into the surgery – her knee stiffened and swelled with every hour that passed – and the doctor said grimly, ‘I suppose you fell downstairs again,’ she actually said, ‘No, I was pushed. Will you write it down, please. I’ll need some kind of record.’
The doctor wrote it down, with alacrity. The clones of Joanna May always found protectors: though it must be said that this particular clone seldom looked her best.
Gina, Queen of Swords.
And as for Alice, Queen of Cups, that morning Alice woke from a terrible dream in which she had been split into five from the waist up and four of them were eating alive, with fanged teeth, the one which was her, and when only one of her eyes was left and half her mouth, Alice woke screaming. She told the essence of her dream to the photographer who happened to be with her and he said well that’s you struggling for survival with your four big brothers, and having understood it, or thought she understood it, she felt better. Except that the one-eyed image continued to bother her, and instead of going back to sleep, she thought about it. One eyed, cock-eyed; something was wrong. She, usually so restrained, too controlled even to smile if she could possibly help it, suddenly kicked the sleeping photographer (his name was Radish; an absurd name) with a smooth, round muscular foot and shrieked, ‘I can’t stand it a moment longer. Go back to your wife’ – for of course Radish was married: her relationships usually were with married men, who could be relied upon to go away – so he did go back to her, poor man, startled, surprised and upset. That is to say, he walked the streets until ten the next morning, when he was due back home, believing Alice had thrown him out because he was married, and had the evening before explained how he couldn’t leave his wife, she being pregnant and relying upon him, and so forth. He could see it was all for the best: but it hurt, it hurt.
Alice had to take four sleeping pills before she could get back to sleep and as a consequence failed, for the first time in her life, to turn up for a 7.00 a.m. call. The studio had to send a taxi for her, and she arrived without her make-up box, and was, in fact, so thoroughly unprofessional all round they decided not to u
se her again. She was clearly paranoic. She claimed she was being followed by a young man carrying a child’s lunch box, that he was standing outside the studio even now, and if they looked out they’d see him – and they looked to placate her – but there was nothing unusual to be seen, just people standing about on street corners waiting for taxis, and workmen waiting for other workmen and so forth, but no one looking out for Alice. Who did she think she was? Really beautiful women are admired and loved but seldom liked. She could not afford to step out of line, and she had. Alice, Queen of Cups.
34
Carl May did not believe in divinatory magic, of course he did not. To tell the cards, the stars, the lines of the palm, tea-leaves and so forth was to divine what was in the fortune-teller’s heart, and that was all. How could it be otherwise, the clues to interpretation being so numerous and to reach that interpretation so many contradictory clues having to be taken into account? Moreover, the wisdom behind that interpretation – that is to say the sum of the experience of long-dead seers and necromancers – had always been so sloppily recorded and translated from one language to another, one culture to another, as to add up in the end to sheer gobbledygook.
Gobbledygook, and he would prove it.
To this end Carl May had started Britnuc’s Divination Department, housed on the eighth floor, a floor which had heating and ventilation problems. Divination was made up of cartomancers, astrologers, crystal gazers and so on, and the greater part of its work involved participation in research, funded jointly by Britnuc and the University of Edinburgh, into the comparative validity or otherwise of the various occult disciplines. So far, as Carl May had expected, the balance was tipping otherwise. To justify the existence of the department in the eyes of his fellow directors and the shareholders its reports and prophecies were registered along with those of other sections: forward planning now included propitiousness of time in relation to event in its computerized forecasts. All other things being equal, which seldom happened, recommendations from the eighth floor would be allowed to tip the balance on minor decisions this way or that. Carl May reckoned it would be no worse than tossing a coin, which on occasion he had been known to do – though sitting alone at the head of the great board table as he did who was to say whether he reported its fall correctly?
Carl May was interested and displeased to observe how quickly the staff came to take the existence of the department for granted: how it had become common practice for Garden Developments to plant according to phases of the moon in spite of the virtual impossibility of controlled testing – variables in the rearing of plants being almost as numerous as they were for humans; how at lunchtimes the lifts to the eighth floor would be busy with not only female clerical staff (which he would have expected) on their way to have their fortunes told, but with middle and senior management as well. He wondered if there were a marker gene for gullibility: he waited impatiently for Holly to repent and come back on line. He would not wait for ever.
Since the Chernobyl event Carl May had had Divination, in conjunction with the University, working on maps of the British Isles, predicting regional variations of wind patterns and subsequent fallout. Now came a phone call through to his office from Edinburgh. A former music-hall entertainer, Wee Willie Bradley, who had the apparent gift, or talent, or capacity – call it what you like – of shutting his eyes and projecting imagined pictures on to ordinary black and white film, was proving successful in producing accurate maps two days in advance.
‘How successful?’ demanded Carl May, who was putting on his shirt.
‘One hundred per cent,’ said Edinburgh, smugly.
‘Impossible,’ said Carl May, ‘because no one’s maps are accurate. As well say today’s instrumentation readings are influenced by Wee Willie’s maps two days ago.’ Which stumped Edinburgh, for a time.
‘What’s your star sign?’ Carl May asked Bethany, who, dreamy and languid, still lay on the palely carpeted office floor, since she found the designer chairs too uncomfortable to sit upon. Since bits of carpet came off on her yellow cashmere sweater she hadn’t bothered to put that back on. It was an idle kind of day.
‘I can’t remember,’ said Bethany, prudently, for all Carl May was in a good mood. ‘I don’t really believe in all that junk.’
He wondered whether there might be a gene for the propensity to tell lies, and whether it would be desirable or undesirable to shuffle it out. Would Bethany honest be less or more desirable? He tickled her chest with his bare toes. The red light on the telephone blinked.
‘What a busy day,’ said Bethany.
It was Gerald Coustain. He had come back to Carl May, reluctantly, to ask if Britnuc could possibly make available to the Government one or two technicians properly trained in radiation diagnostic techniques, in the urgent national interest. Carl May was pleased to put at his disposal Britnuc’s entire Divination Department.
‘I don’t quite understand,’ said Gerald. ‘What use are astrologers and palm-readers in this particular situation?’
Our research shows,’ said Carl May merrily, ‘that they’re as good at anticipating fallout as our technicians and they certainly cost less.’
‘That may be,’ said Gerald cautiously, ‘because your diagnostic equipment is out of date. You have the technicians, the Department has the equipment; couldn’t we just get them together?’
‘I’ll think about it,’ said Carl May cheerfully. ‘How’s the family?’
‘Just fine, thank you.’
‘I hear you’ve been seeing something of my ex-wife.’
‘We all had a jaunt to the lido, one day,’ said Gerald, after only a second’s pause.
‘Joanna must have really liked that,’ said Carl May. ‘I’m glad to hear she’s taken up swimming. Women need to look after themselves as they get older. Poor old thing, did you hear about her gardener?’
‘I think she called Angela, just to say. Quite a shock.’
‘Good domestic staff is always hard to find,’ said Carl May, ‘even more difficult than trained technicians and accurate, up-to-the-minute equipment in this ever-changing field of ours. Perhaps the Department of Energy will see its way to some form of co-funding when this Chernobyl lark has calmed down. That way we could ensure Britnuc was always in a position to help you lot out.’
‘I’ll put it to my Department,’ said Gerald.
‘And I’ll put your requirements to mine,’ said Carl May. ‘You’re quite sure you can’t make use of my Divination Department?’
‘No thank you,’ said Gerald.
‘Pity,’ said Carl May. ‘What a lot of old stick-in-the-muds you civil servants are!’ He was in a talkative mood. ‘Reminds me of someone I used to have working for me. What was his name? King? That’s it. Curator of the gallery – you know my gallery? The May Gallery? Egyptologist fellow. Well, never mind, it’s a long story – he was interested in the Tarot pack. Hieroglyphics, and so forth. Poor fellow, he got knocked down in a road accident, killed.’
‘I seem to remember that,’ said Gerald, cautiously.
‘That’s the problem for stick-in-the-muds,’ said Carl May. ‘So stuck they can’t even look where they’re going!’
‘Well,’ said Gerald, ‘it’s been an interesting conversation, Carl. I’ll come back to you when I’ve spoken to my Department.’
As Gerald Coustain put the phone down he heard Carl May laughing, and the sound of agreeable female giggles. He wondered if it were mad laughter and decided probably not: just that Carl May had discovered the answer to executive stress. You murdered the people who angered you, tormented those you despised, teased those who depended upon you, and kept bimbos in the office. He was about to pick up the phone and discuss these suppositions with Angela, but thought better of it. If Carl May knew about the trip to the lido, someone’s phone was probably tapped: possibly even his own. It could wait till he got home.
35
The Queen of Swords and the Queen of Pentacles.
The Queen of Sw
ords left the doctor’s surgery with one child in a pushchair and the other walking just a little behind her, as was his practice, and had been for years. She walked away from home, not towards it, she wasn’t sure why.
‘Where are we going?’ Ben asked.
‘I don’t know,’ she said, ‘but I don’t want to go home.’
‘Where else is there to go?’ he asked, which was of course the point. But he moved up to keep pace with her, and actually took charge of the pushchair, since she was limping, and it was the first time he’d done that – as if admitting their common interest, mother and son, in what was going on in the family, and encouraging this new train of thought in her: namely that things could not go on as they were, but would, unless she did something. At least for once she was walking away from home, away from Cliff, and not back towards him. They kept walking in the wrong direction until it was lunchtime – although Ben should have gone straight to school, and she would have been more prudent to have just sat down and rested her leg, as the doctor had instructed. Then they went to McDonald’s, which was a luxury, and bad for them, but she had lost faith in a future in which care taken meant benefit returned. Ben ordered at the counter while she, her whole leg now painful and throbbing, unstrapped Anthony and heaved him out of the pushchair and into the high chair provided by McDonald’s. He enjoyed sitting in it, which was something. She should never have had him, of course.
‘These children that we should never have had,’ she said aloud, ‘still have to eat.’
The Queen of Pentacles heard. Julie was sitting at the table next to Gina’s. She had gone to visit her solicitor: he had not given her good news: she had no children and the house was in her husband’s name: she was young and able-bodied: if she divorced she would be expected to shift for herself. At the same time she did not, as her solicitor pointed out, have the capacity, let alone the training, to earn a decent living. His advice, offered to her unasked, was to stay home and make the best of things. And so she had driven not home but in the wrong direction, not sure why or where, alone and lonely, childless and more than ever conscious of it, but also let it be said without the exhausting responsibilities that went with the company, the pleasure of children. This Julie recognized, and now tried not to stare curiously at Gina; this messy, overweight, distracted, sloppy woman of too many responsibilities who had said aloud something so remarkable. ‘I might have been like that,’ she thought, ‘if I’d had too many children too young,’ and envied the other woman but at the same time pitied her, and felt, if not grateful for her own lot, at least a little more reconciled to it. Her heart was breaking, but she would not, would not, see the vet again. He was married, so was she. Supposing Alec found out? A woman could lose everything, so easily.
