by Weldon, Fay
‘Worm and the sperm!’ said Jane.
‘Disgusting,’ said Julie and Alice together.
‘I will not be your mother,’ said Joanna May. ‘I hereby renounce the role. If this is motherhood, save me from it. I always wanted it, but this is all it is! Nag, nag, nag!’
‘She can’t be our sister,’ said Alice scornfully. ‘She’s much too old.’
‘She’ll only get jealous,’ said Jane, ‘of the way we are.’
‘She does age well,’ said Gina. ‘I suppose that’s something to look forward to.’
‘I don’t want to look forward,’ said Julie. ‘I want to live now.’
They allowed Joanna May no authority: she had disclaimed mother, she must take the consequences: they would not even accept her status as originator. They looked her up and down, inspected her, now their equal, their equivalent, but somehow dusty with it. So that was what the passage of the years did – it made you dusty. They resolved never to wear black. It did not suit them. They were in a manic state. As for Joanna, she wanted their pity, all of a sudden, their acknowledgement of her wrongs, but they’d allow her none of that. An easy life, a quiet life! Married for thirty years! To Carl May, the famous Carl! They had all been wronged, more than she, each one claimed. Joanna of all of them had her proper place in the world; she’d been born at the right time. They were a generation out. No wonder they’d been lonely: their lives had been in a mess. They could see now that was the trouble – they’d been lonely. They used men to stop them being lonely. No wonder it all went wrong. Now they had each other, nothing need be the same. They were delirious, giddy. It was absurd, wonderful. Joanna thought they were far too young, far too noisy, far too energetic. She wanted to be alone. She said so. They wouldn’t have it.
‘We’ll make her chairman,’ said Julie. ‘That’s what we’ll do. That should keep her happy.’
‘Chairperson,’ said Jane. So that was what Joanna May consented to be: someone who controlled an agenda but couldn’t vote. Mavis watched, and said nothing, but every now and then looked out the window, uneasily.
Ben came into the room and said ‘Mum’, and Julie and Gina both looked up. ‘Those men are back,’ he said. ‘There are five of them this time, and if you don’t do something about it I’m going to take Anthony somewhere safe. And Sue too, I suppose.’
Jane said, ‘You let him watch TV, Gina, you shouldn’t,’ but Joanna said, ‘No, we have to be careful. You don’t know Carl.’
‘I’d rather like to meet this Carl,’ said Julie. ‘Can it be managed?’
‘At last,’ said Alice, ‘a man worth loving.’
‘What everyone wants,’ said Jane.
‘If you did, Joanna,’ said Gina, ‘so could we.’
‘To be able to love!’ said Julie. ‘Truly love.’
‘He’s a demon, a monster,’ protested Joanna. ‘It wasn’t love I felt. Something else! He doesn’t deserve to live. He is wicked, he is mad. It took me a lifetime to see it.’
‘All that happened,’ said Alice, ‘is that you grew old.’
‘Lost energy,’ said Gina.
‘Got the worst out of him, not the best,’ said Julie.
‘Any of us could manage him better,’ said Jane.
‘How would you do that?’ asked Joanna.
‘By not taking him seriously!’ said Jane, and they all crowed with delight, and poured more champagne, and Joanna turned to Mavis in alarm.
All Mavis said was, ‘I didn’t think about the back,’ and tried the telephone but there was no dialling tone when she lifted up the receiver.
Ben said, ‘It’s OK, I’ve already called the police. All the times I wanted to call the police, Mum, and never dared, because it made it worse for you.’
Jane, Julie, Alice and Joanna were shocked. They turned and looked hard at Gina, and Gina said, ‘I know, I know, I can’t cope, I’m an awful mother, I don’t want to be a mother, please help me.’
Mavis and Ben seemed to understand each other, to comprehend that the world was a desperate and dangerous place. Police sirens sounded. Joanna said, ‘Why did they come so quickly?’ and Mavis said, ‘It depends what Ben said,’ and Ben said, ‘Well, I’d better get it over,’ and went out, and Mavis followed.
Alice said to Gina, ‘Why don’t you go after him, he’s your son?’ and Gina said, helplessly, ‘Well, he’s a boy,’ and Alice said, ‘This can’t go on; personally I hate children but after all he is my nephew. Something has to be done about this.’
‘About Gina, you mean,’ said Jane.
‘I’d like to help,’ said Julie.
Mavis came back and said Ben’s wonderful; he told them this tale of child assault, sex assault, five men in the car, and they believed him, and they took the men away; now they’re going to have to talk themselves out of that. Ben’s got to go down to the station. Someone ought to go with him.
Gina didn’t stir. It was Julie who said, ‘I’ll go,’ so that decided that.
Joanna, Jane, Julie, Gina, Alice.
52
A memo reached Carl May from the Divination Department: his PA thought it advisable to let this one through. The department was becoming an expensive joke, rumours of its existence having reached the media. The memo took it upon itself to warn Mr May fairly and squarely that the auspices for the day of the projected PR event in Wales were bad indeed. The common pack had produced the Ace of Spades 40 per cent above probability: the Tarot pack the Tower 90 per cent likewise; the I Ching, the Chinese Book of Oracles, that normally sedate and encouraging book, had come up with No.23 (Splitting Apart) four times running with mention of Tears of Blood; the prophetic dreamer had wakened screaming, the encephalic discs popping off of their own accord; so far undiagnosed telekinetic forces in the office had shredded the Welsh map, and the teacups came up repeatedly with coffins on the rim.
Carl May laughed aloud. ‘Gobbledygook,’ he said, and to the gratification of his PA dictated a memo back to Divination: ‘If you have foretold anything it is the death of your own department: the end of your payslips,’ and told his PA the Welsh PR event was now on and he himself would graciously participate.
A couple of days later, Hughie Scotland ran his finger down the M’s in his private address book, and once again got straight through to Carl May.
‘I take that back about you being a dry old stick,’ said Hughie Scotland. ‘I understand you mean to jump into a cooling pond to prove radiation’s safe. Young Bethany has certainly brought you back to life. I hope you’re grateful.’
‘Moderately,’ said Carl May, who sounded buoyant, almost happy. ‘It’s the TV producer’s idea. I must make a fool of myself, it seems, to bring the country to its senses.’
‘I jumped into a trout pond for the same reason,’ said Hughie Scotland, ‘to popularize freshwater fish. These days we men of power must make sacrifices.’
‘I thought you were drunk,’ said Carl May. ‘Bethany told me you did it because you were drunk.’
‘Bethany tells lies,’ said Scotland. ‘How is Bethany? You know my wife’s in Nigeria? Is Bethany jumping in the cooling pond, too?’
‘The TV man says yes,’ said Carl May. ‘We’re in his hands. And Bethany is looking forward to it.’
‘What is a cooling pond exactly?’ asked Scotland. ‘Is it safe?’
‘I wouldn’t be jumping into it if it weren’t,’ said Carl May. ‘It’s where they put the old spent fuel rods to cool off, lose any short-term radioactivity they might have picked up in the pile, before they’re carted off to Sellafield. No harm in them at all. The water’s filtered and purified, monitored daily, just to be on the safe side, to keep the local populace happy.’
‘I’d rather Bethany didn’t jump in it,’ said Hughie Scotland, ‘all the same. I find I’m very fond of Bethany. Does she ever talk about me?’
‘No,’ said Carl May, ‘and she is indeed jumping into the cooling pond with me. It can hardly be worse than into a trout pool with you. Personally I find freshwater fish unnatural.
Our streams and rivers are a great deal more polluted than our seas, even the North Sea, and that’s saying something. Well, good to speak to you, Hughie. I take it your men will be there in force, cameras and all. If one’s going to do something like this, one might as well make as big a splash as possible.’
A joke too. Hughie Scotland winced.
‘As it happens,’ added Carl May, ‘Bethany and I are getting married.’ And he put the phone down. That last would stir up Scotland and his media troops.
Carl May told his secretary to confirm detailed arrangements with the NBI. He did not think he would marry Bethany, when it came to it, not even to annoy and upset Joanna. What he did not want, what he did not like, what upset him, was Bethany staying away of her own accord. But when she was there, he could do without her. He could never win in his own head, only in the outside world.
Bethany looked up briefly from her computer game.
‘I have the highest score ever,’ she said. ‘There’s this little figure you have to guide through rooms full of demons and ghosts. I’m really good at it. What was that about you marrying me?’
‘Only for the press,’ said Carl May. ‘We want them all there, not just the science boys. Why, do you want to marry me?’
‘Of course I do,’ said Bethany, but she wasn’t sure. It would take her too much out of circulation. You could never divorce Carl May, and if he divorced you you’d be lucky to be alive to collect your decree absolute. The Barbers of the Bath might sing you to death.
‘It was Hughie Scotland on the line,’ said Carl May, waiting to see how she’d respond.
‘That’s nothing to me,’ said Bethany, and for once she didn’t lie. She had a short emotional memory which, considering her life, was just as well.
53
The journey to Britnuc B, in the heart of the Welsh hill country, impressed and awed as many of the journalists and newsmen who travelled down, by car, by train, by helicopter, to cover the media event of the year (for that, according to Britnuc’s PR, was what it was) as it troubled and depressed others. The wild beauty of the hills, their sheer scale, the overwhelming presence of nature unorganized and unconfirmed, the indifference of the shaggy cattle, the unkempt quiet roads, the general dwarfing and rendering risible of mankind, inspired as much deference to nature as resentment of it.
Britnuc Β had been carefully landscaped so as to offend the aesthetic sensibilities of landscape lovers as little as possible. Some – on the whole those with country cottages – shuddered as they approached the power-station complex, and their radios crackled and faded beneath the marching pylons. Others were thankful that something sensible, profitable and organized had at last, thanks to Britnuc, enlivened the rural torpor of the area.
Green grass grew wherever possible inside the security fence: the massive containment unit was so placed that it was all but dwarfed by the flat rock face that reached up to the sky behind it. Birds wheeled unconcerned above it, delighting in updraughts and downdraughts, the low, interesting, steady thunder of the heavy steam-driven turbines. As Carl May loved to say, ‘What is a nuclear power station but a gigantic kettle? All we do here is boil water!’
Only the security gates themselves, the high fences, the handing out of security badges, the requiring of passes, the writing down and checking of names, made matters appear the least unusual: that here was the focus of a nation’s terror, the very fount of paranoia.
Britnuc’s PR teams made coffee, poured drinks, handed out booklets. Chernobyl could not happen here, the Russian designs were other, all other, hopelessly old-fashioned, and even if it did, would be no worse than a coal-mine explosion – less horrible, in fact, less likely to be a lethal accident. Nuclear power plants were the opposite of labour intensive! Carl May himself wished to make this very point. And if this proved too technical for the mass-circulation papers, middle rather than front page stuff, why, Carl May was engaged to be married – yes, he was free to marry – yes, he was divorced: a matter of mutual consent many years back: there would be a press handout presently. In the meantime, international TV was present on this wonderful day: a cinema film was being made, not just TV – though we’re glad so many TV stations are represented here today: we really do have to get this message across to the general public. Yes, the film was to be part-funded by Britnuc: of course, why not? Part of the PR job – and look here, mementoes for everyone, on this splendid occasion. Choose from a genuine leather-bound Filofax or this genuine Barbour – if the rain should just possibly fall no one must get wet – and of course there’d be a buffet lunch after the event. Telephones, telex and fax facilities all available in the press office – and out, everyone out into the beautiful fresh air of Wales! The show’s beginning. Carl May, nuclear magnate, and Bethany his bride – well soon to be his bride: no, the date wasn’t quite fixed, but the press would, of course, be informed the minute it was – would ceremoniously jump into the cooling pond to prove low-level waste was no threat to anyone, and the future of nuclear power, clean, efficient, safe, would be assured.
And all trooped out into the clean, bright, windy air: a good day! A long way to come but at least Britnuc knew how to organize things.
‘Do I have to jump?’ asked Bethany. She stood on the edge of the concrete bunker looking down at the clean bluish water below. She’d felt the water with her long, nervy, trembly fingers. Pink fingers, as Carl kept saying. Pink fingers. It made her uneasy. The water was just nicely warm. Bethany wore a yellow bikini, with polka dots; it was cut high up the thigh to make her long legs longer. Her red hair flowed out in the wind. Her bosom was only just encased in yellow, polka-dotted fabric.
‘This is really something,’ murmured Hamish Tovey. ‘Get a look of that!’
‘This’ll travel round the world,’ said someone from a newspaper not in the Scotland chain. ‘This’ll really hit headlines.’
The Scotland chain were concentrating on the copycatting angle. They were rerunning the Scotland/Bethany trout-farm pics, to go out side by side with this one, inviting the reader to decide whether Bethany was going up or down in the world.
‘Focus on the girl,’ said Hamish, as Carl May joined Bethany on the concrete ramp. He wore black swimming trunks and was in good trim condition for a man of his age. But he was shorter than she was. ‘Forget him.’
Carl looked Bethany up and down: he was elated.
‘She wore a teeny weeny ultra-teeny
Yellow polka-dot bikini –’
he chanted.
‘No, Carl,’ said Bethany. ‘I’m sure it’s not ultra-teeny.’
He pushed her in.
‘Oh Christ,’ shouted Hamish. ‘What are you playing at? We’ll have to do that again!’ Though most of the press had got it, he wasn’t yet rolling.
‘We’ll do it without the girl,’ said Carl May. ‘She’s irrelevant,’ and so they had to, because Carl May said so. The mood of the day changed. The media became bored and sour: what a waste of time: all the way to the Welsh mountains to get one old man, who had to hold in his paunch, jumping into a pond, top executive or not. Carl was in and out of the water six times before NBI was satisfied. They did not make it easy for him. As for Bethany, she’d scrambled to the side at once and had a really good hot shower straight away, and washed and dried her hair, and then sat gently crying. Carl May had finally really upset her. She hadn’t wanted to do it in the first place: she had only said she would for the sake of the nation, for their moral health, as Carl put it: to keep the flag of faith flying, as her father did: doing the kind thing which was the right thing. And now Carl was angry, swimming around in the water, doing stupid things for a camera, not himself – where was his pride? Where was his integrity? She had more than he had when it came to it, and now she was frightened again: Carl had taken the name of marriage in vain and would be punished for it: yet he knew no better. She found she was sorry for Carl, which was almost worse than being bored and she hated the countryside: green hills closed in around her. She wanted to b
e back in the city.
A man came up to her and said he was Hughie Scotland’s PA: Hughie had said if she wanted a lift home, he could give her one. Bethany was doubtful. Then she looked over to where Carl May still thrashed about in the water of the cooling pond, white head bobbing.
‘Hughie says not to worry,’ said the PA, who was young, broad-shouldered, good-looking and interested. ‘Hughie says he’ll look after you. If you know what I mean.’
‘OK,’ said Bethany. ‘I seem to remember what he means.’
She sat next to the PA in the car on the way back to London, not in the back as he’d expected. She felt shivery and a little sick presently, but it soon passed. She took out her contact lenses.
‘I like your eyes grey,’ he said, his own eyes off the road.
‘Do watch where you’re going,’ she said, ‘or you’ll kill us both,’ but she was pleased. Presently she started humming to herself:
‘I do, I do, I do,
And I ain’t going to tell you who.
But I belong to somebody,
Yes indeed I do!’
and felt positively brave and cheerful, and as if her life had begun anew, which indeed it had.
54
Carl May sat amongst the Pharaohs and wept. ‘I am a stranger in my own land,’ he thought. He shivered and felt sick. Painted eyes stared at him, oval, beautiful and calm: the carved and soulful eyes of strange beasts, but there was no one to talk to. His impatience had driven them away. His own easy irritation, his flashing anger, his unreasonable demands, had seared a burnt and blasted space around and no one came near him. Why should they? He wouldn’t if he were them. He lived in a kennel, and barked. If he’d been his own mother, he’d have put himself there.
He was dying. He did not care. Only that none of it had been what he wanted, none of it what he meant. He hoped Bethany would be all right. Death, he could see, was too great a punishment for the habit of correcting someone out of turn. Nausea made him feel kind: as if you needed strength to be cruel and kindness was just the easiest, most natural thing. There was no more time to investigate the notion. The mind had to die, that was the dreadful thing: bodies were two a penny, but that all the buzzing speculation of the individual mind had to go – therein lay the tragedy. He should never have got involved with the Barbers of the Bath. That had been insanity. He wished to apologize to the clones of Joanna May. But he didn’t have the strength. Too late.
