by Weldon, Fay
‘I must have been mad,’ said Bernard’s dad, ‘cough, cough, cough!’ He’d never smoked in his life, or drunk, or run after women. ‘Thirty-five years of my life, believing if I did my best by them they’d look after me. You take a lesson from me, lad. Don’t you believe them when they say a steady chap sticks to one job, doesn’t chop and change. That’s employers’ talk.’
‘Chance would be a fine thing,’ said Bernard.
‘Cough, cough, cough,’ went his father.
And now here Bernard was, while Flora cleaned Jane’s floor, heaving sacks of enigmatic powders off lorries and on to shelves, wheeling half-corroded drums of liquid from shed to shed, and the only safety measure he could see was a tanker of water and a hose.
‘Just dilute,’ Angus had said. ‘That’s all you ever have to do – dilute.’ And the previous day one of the drivers had remarked:
‘If you get any of the dust on you, wash it off.’
‘What sort of dust is it?’ Bernard asked. ‘Has it a name?’
‘Search me, old lad,’ the driver said, in the tones of the upper classes. Quite the little yuppie he appeared, but then nowadays men out of universities do drive lorries. They have to. It isn’t that the class system is breaking down; no: it’s just that those on top, feeling uncomfortable, lean down the ladder and grab what traditionally belongs to those on the lower rungs. Such as jobs.
‘All they saw fit to tell me,’ said the new-style lorry driver, ‘was if you get any of it on you, wash it off lickety-split. I am passing the information on to you, as is only my duty. We working men must look after each other, now they’ve cut the Factory Inspectorate by 50 per cent and those that are left are kept occupied plugging the leaks in Sellafield pipes. How do you tell a Factory Inspector? His thumbs glow in the dark. Heigh-ho!’
‘Twat,’ muttered Bernard, ungratefully, as the other drove off.
Now Flora, for her inexpert but frequent washings of the Dunbarton kitchen floor, was these days using a string mop and an old leather bucket. Leather, thought Jane, in this day and age!
‘I thought I’d thrown that old bucket out,’ said Jane.
‘I brought it back in,’ said Flora. ‘I like it.’
‘Then you’re the only one who does. It was in a job lot of bits and pieces at the auction. Whoever bought it actually went to the trouble of leaving it behind. That’s really saying something!’
‘It looks like an antique to me,’ said Flora. ‘Perhaps your husband would be interested.’
‘No,’ said Jane, sharply. She did not care for conversations with the help. She did not particularly like the house now she was here. Arthur’s furniture looked peculiar in a modern bungalow, even she could see that. Heels marked the parquet floors. She had believed that living above the shop had fuelled her paranoia: she could see that living at a distance from it was even worse. She was fifty. She had done nothing with her life, except agitate about Arthur and sweep a few floors. They’d had one daughter, Carla, now at college, whose existence seemed merely to spur Arthur on to take an interest in younger women. Carla had been her father’s child from the moment she first opened her hooded infant eyes, treating her mother with a kind of idle contempt. Terrible, thought Jane, not to like your own daughter, but there it was. She didn’t think Carla noticed.
‘If he isn’t interested,’ said Flora, ‘my boyfriend will be. He’s an antique dealer, too.’
The bracketing of Bernard, king of the rubbish tip, with Arthur, king of Dunbarton, was not music to Jane’s ears. No.
Natalie’s little grey cat sat looking up at Jane Wandle with wide eyes, reminding her of every young woman who had ever stared thus at Arthur. How the creature got in was a mystery. Jane had sealed up the cat flap, closed the ever-open window of the laundry, but there the cat somehow managed to be, staring up with a look of dependence and hostility mixed. Jane opened the back door and smacked the creature out.
Flora protested. ‘You shouldn’t do that! This is her home. She’s got to have somewhere to live.’
‘Natalie Harris should have thought of that,’ said Jane. ‘If she cared for it she should have taken it with her. Cats are expensive. Why should I take it on?’
Jane thought these days that Arthur probably had indeed had an affair with Natalie Harris. She was his type; little girl impassive, clear-skinned, like one of the dolls she, Jane, collected. For all she knew Arthur was still seeing her.
‘Just because you don’t like Natalie Harris,’ said Flora, ‘is no reason to take it out on the cat.’
‘Why should I not like Natalie Harris?’ asked Jane, a rhetorical question to which Flora replied with a smirk which unfortunately Jane saw.
She was right, then. And moreover, if Flora knew, everyone knew. What could she do? Nothing. Where could she go? Nowhere. All she could do was follow the advice given to economically dependent female spouses since the beginning of time – wait for her husband to cease his wanderings, and be as loving and loveable as possible in the meantime. Jane handed Flora a scrubbing brush.
‘I pay you one pound twenty-five pence an hour, Flora,’ she said. ‘Please earn it. Use this, if you don’t mind, not the mop.’ Flora dropped the scrubbing brush in the bucket so that dirty water splashed Jane’s nice pale blue floral skirt. ‘Some things just aren’t worth the money,’ Flora said. ‘Personally I prefer cats to people! Wash your own floors.’ And she walked out. But she took the bucket.
‘Of course I’m not having an affair with Natalie Harris,’ said Arthur, in bed that night. ‘She’s not my type. I like skinny women. How you do worry yourself! I think she’s having a fling with Angus, actually.’
‘What about Jean?’
‘Jean won’t worry. She’s too sensible.’ The bed they lay in had belonged to the Harrises. It was king-size, and had gone for a song at the auction. The original Wandle matrimonial bed had fetched five hundred and forty-five pounds a couple of weeks before they’d moved into Dunbarton. How a convenient fate played into Arthur’s hands!
A buyer had come into the shop, looking for just such a rare brass bed, and Arthur had taken him upstairs and shown it to him: a splendid piece of brasswork, early nineteenth-century.
‘Just as a matter of interest,’ said Arthur. ‘Of course it isn’t stock! Very much not for sale!’
But he’d capitulated on being offered five hundred for it, five hundred and forty-five if the buyer could take it there and then in the van. He could, said Arthur, and when Jane came home from hearing reading, the mattress and bedding were on the floor and her and Arthur’s marriage bed of 26 years’ standing was gone. She’d cried, and Arthur had been abashed and apologetic, and had had a word with Angus, and was only too happy to buy her the Harris bed when the opportunity arose, which he thought she’d really like, it being modern. (Jane kept saying she hated old things, which in an antique dealer’s wife can only really be interpreted as hostility. Can this marriage be saved?)
Now he wondered on which side Natalie had lain, and which side Harry, and why it was married couples stuck to one side or the other, and what was to be made of it.
‘I wish you were happier,’ he said to Jane. ‘I wish I knew what to do to cheer you up.’
‘I don’t like the house,’ she said. ‘I know I wanted it but now I’m here I want to be back in the flat. It’s too far from anywhere. I can’t get proper help in the house and I’m lonely.’
‘If that’s what you really want,’ he said, rather too quickly, ‘we’ll put the place up for sale right away. I reckon we can get a hundred and twenty thousand. That’s sixty thousand clear profit. It’s a family house – we can wriggle round capital gains tax on medical grounds, I should think. Your nerves, perhaps – ’
‘But what will people think? Poor Natalie Harris – ’
He was quite taken aback, surprised at the speed of her mind.
‘Poor Natalie Harris? Don’t spare a pang for Natalie Harris! When the heat dies down Harry Harris will turn up in the north somewhere,
with a new name, and she and the kids will be off to join him. It’s a set-up job, don’t you see? The factory closes, the staff aren’t paid, he’s got a chunk put away no one can touch. Oh, she’s in on it, all right. What did you think she was, a poor wronged woman alone in the world?’
He could not add that since Natalie cheated on her husband she deserved no pity, but he said it in his heart. He wished he had a wife he could confide in fully. He wondered what it would be like to be lying now next to Natalie, and wished he was. Then he fell asleep.
No ‘For Sale’ board went up. It would have caused talk and speculation. Arthur just had a word with Angus at Waley and Rightly, and Angus said he’d do what he could. Arthur offered a 25 per cent commission, which seemed reasonable inasmuch as it was Angus who had arranged for the house to be sold to Arthur, at, roughly, half its market value. Though a new selling price of one hundred and twenty thousand was pushing it, said Angus. The second bathroom was like a box. But then when did Arthur never not push a profit to its limit?
Traumas
Natalie went up to the Abbey grounds to see Peter the groundsman. He swept; she walked along beside him. She had collected her DHSS draft and had managed to give Sonia the slip somewhere in Glastonbury. Ben and Alice now walked home from school by themselves; Ben put up with the embarrassment of being seen with his sister with the merest shrug, as if this was the least of his troubles. Sometimes Natalie could hear him through the bathroom wall crying in his sleep, but by day he was brisk, competent and distant, and seemed to make no distinction between Sonia and his mother, which might have been an elaborate act of revenge or might not, how could Natalie tell? Certainly he blamed Natalie for so carelessly losing his father. As for Alice, it was hard to tell what went on in her head. She sucked her thumb, and played with Teresa as if she were the same age and not four years older, and pulled Edwina’s hair when she thought no one was looking. The clear-eyed, protected look had gone. Alice no longer prattled, but whined. Perhaps she was just growing older; perhaps she was deeply traumatized? Who would ever know, who could ever tell?
‘You ought to tell them about Harry,’ said Sonia.
‘But I have nothing to say,’ said Natalie.
And indeed, what was there to say? ‘Your father really loves you.’ Absurd. ‘He really loves me.’ Nonsense. ‘He’s coming back soon.’ Unlikely. ‘He’s gone mad, had a brainstorm.’ Lies. He’d left her and the children in the shit and buggered off and what was the point of talking about it. Least said, soonest mended.
She’d written to Harry’s father in Geneva, finding the address by chance on the back of a Christmas card envelope while she was packing up Dunbarton, and there had even been a reply. No, he hadn’t heard from Harry, nor did he expect to. He was sorry to hear what had happened but the state of his health and his finances would not allow him to get involved. Piss off, Natalie, in other words. She hated Harry and hated to see him in her children. She grieved for them and was cold to them at the same time. Just as Sonia saw Stephen looking out of the eyes of Teresa, Bess and Edwina, Natalie saw Harry in Alice and Ben. Once you have children by a man, that’s it. You are never free of him, unless you can free yourself of your children too. Chances are you can’t. Chances are they’ll turn up at your funeral and throw a rose or so into your grave.
Sonia gets on all right without her children. If they want to strike up a relationship with her when they’re teenagers and can wipe their own noses that’s fine by Sonia. Their stepmother, Sandy, is okay. Sonia used to know her well. Steady, Catholic, moral, plain, doesn’t say much but tidies up a treat. Will suit Stephen down to the ground. Sandy will never be found in delicto flagrante, or in flagranto delicte, or whatever, when Stephen goes to open the back of the family car. Sandy will never crack sour jokes and upset people. Sandy will stop Edwina painting her toenails and backcombing her hair at the age of five. Five, yes. Was four, is five. Sandy will have given Edwina a birthday party. Stepmothers are always in the business of doing better than the mother. Sandy will have put up with the racket and boredom and mess of the party without a murmur. And cleared it up, quick, so Stephen could stand in front of his hearth and have a quiet glass of sherry before dinner. Let Sandy do it. Good luck to her. She’ll need it. It’s Sonia the kids will want later. Sonia will never lose them now. Those you want for ever, give away. Like boomerangs, they’ll return.
Sonia hopes Sandy made the cake herself, that’s all. That it wasn’t a shop one; not for Edwina, who’s so special.
Here come Sonia’s pills. She needs them! Goodnight.
Bright and Purposeful
Where did I leave Natalie? Why, up in the Abbey grounds, chatting to Peter in that rather cosy, companionable way which means you want a job and the other might have one. ‘There’s a waiting list for working here,’ said Peter. ‘And the Abbey Fathers are very traditional. Outdoor work is man’s work, so far as they’re concerned. But you could try up at the quarry, if you’re desperate. Emphysema land.’
‘Emphysema?’ Really, Natalie knew nothing.
‘Dust in the lungs,’ said Peter. ‘Kills you in the end. But by that time you’ve got your cards, and are off. Why should they care? And what can they do about it? Spread used tea leaves when they blast, to keep the dust down?’
‘I’ve just got to get myself out of this situation,’ said Natalie. ‘Since there’s no one to help me I’ll have to help myself.’
‘Try the quarry then,’ said Peter. ‘The Devil helps those who help themselves.’
Since taking his advice, although it was always enigmatic, had turned out well in the past, Natalie took it now and the next day went up to that part of the old quarry which was still being worked, in the section of the hill above Bernard and Flora’s caravan. White dust shrouded the road and fields for yards around. It crunched underfoot as Natalie walked. Sirens sounded, and a whole section of Somerset hillside crumbled and collapsed in its own special granite cloud. A line of ancient giant rock-crunchers prepared to receive that day’s splendid dinner. The ground shook beneath her as the rock fell away.
‘Okay,’ said the site manager to Natalie. ‘You want to be the gofer? You be the gofer! You’re here in person, which is more than can be said for the one we employ now. No phone call, nothing! Can’t say I’m sorry; his mum’s up here all the time, about one thing or another. The trouble with today’s young, they can’t tell a job from a classroom.’
‘What will I have to do?’ She had no idea, but she was astonished and gratified to find a job was so easy to find.
‘Make the tea, run errands, copy out the work chits. Can’t use a computer out here: the dust gets into the works.’
‘And the lungs,’ she said, coughing, but he didn’t seem to think that was funny. Not one bit.
‘Shift work Monday to Thursday: 6 a.m. till 2. Thursday through Saturday: 3 to 11. Forty quid.’
‘The day?’
‘The week,’ he said. ‘No arguments. Take it or leave it. If you don’t take it someone else will.’
‘I can’t manage on that!’
‘Lady,’ said Bob, for so he was called, ‘that’s no concern of mine. Try for Family Income Supplement, if it’s not enough. Don’t expect me to keep you in luxury. Start on Monday.’
‘All right,’ she said.
‘Where do you live?’ he asked, in rather more friendly tones than before.
‘Eddon Gurney.’
‘Oh, Eddon. No bus. I’d give you a lift up in the mornings but the wife wouldn’t like it.’
‘I’ll manage,’ said Natalie.
Now what Natalie failed to notice, being not, as we have observed, the most perceptive or sensitive girl in the world – in spite of what I’ve said to the contrary in the past, in Natalie’s defence: I do think it takes a pretty obtuse kind of person not to notice when a husband plans to leave – was the flash of the Quattro round corners and hedges wherever she went. Angus was well and truly hooked on Natalie, as men can sometimes be on women whose moral app
roval they want. Of course Angus wanted her body – who wouldn’t? – but he wanted her to like him, approve of him, admire him and tell him he was doing just fine, as well. All those very reactions, in fact, a man can reasonably expect from a wife, but seldom gets, and Angus certainly did not receive from Jean.
‘I reckon you’re a closet queer,’ Jean would say, blaming him for her lack of orgasm.
‘You were a fool to buy this car,’ she’d say, every time the garage filled it up yet again. ‘More money than sense!’ ‘She’d never look at you, you’re past it – an old man with a paunch,’ she’d say, if he admired some woman on TV. ‘Why can’t you take up an honest profession,’ she’d say, if he pulled off some stupendous property deal.
‘Big fish in a little pond,’ she’d say, if he got his name in the local paper. And if he gave her a cheque, out of the blue, she’d say ‘Now what are you trying to buy?’ Or if he bought flowers, ‘What have you been up to, Angus?’
