Fay Weldon Omnibus: Collected Works of Fay Weldon

by Weldon, Fay

  And he engaged Victor’s reluctant attention on a matter dear to him, on certain rumours circulating in the classicist community, relating to the burning down of the library at Alexandria in the year AD 304.

  Victor looked over at Bella, and speculated as to whether she closed her eyes or kept them open while she made love. Shirley kept hers closed, except when (or so Victor supposed) she remembered a passage in The Art of Loving and kept them open by an effort of will.

  Shirley, even as he wondered, leant over to him and said, ‘Do you think the children are all right?’

  ‘Why don’t you go and see?’ said Victor. So Shirley did. She slipped away between the fish and the caribou patty.

  Sergei went on talking to Victor about the library at Alexandria. It was, he said, the greatest library the world had ever known: its burning down was rated by the knowledgeable people as one of the Great World Disasters. Some contemporary historians, however, now maintained that the library had not in fact burned down at all. What happened was that the rich citizens of Alexandria, being under siege, had burned whole sections of manuscript in order to keep their central heating working. This was the reason that most of all known classical writers have their names at the beginning of the alphabet or the end. Aristotle, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Socrates – those in the middle are missing, burned. What did Victor think?

  Victor said politely that it sounded to him like a plot by a Marxist historian to discredit people with central heating. Art, as everyone knew, was preserved by the rich, not the poor. This had the ring of a typical atrocity story: something hard to disprove, founded on a grain of truth, and dear to the heart of the listener. Sergei shouldn’t let it worry him. Victor thought that Sergei was probably quite mad. If Sergei sat before him at an appointments board he would not employ him. You could tell from the soft slack mouth that he was an idealist, a man of indecision and impractical ideas. Victor wondered what could possibly have induced Joan to have him on the staff.

  19

  Shirley went up to Genghis Khan and found Hilda still sitting dutifully on a hard chair by Piers’ bed. The three children slept soundly, their curly heads damp, bedclothes up to their ears. Hilda’s pretty brown hands, with their elegant almond nails, were composed in her lap. It always annoyed Shirley that the help’s hands were so often more acceptable than her own large floppy ones, which, however conscientiously she gloved and creamed, remained red and chapped.

  ‘Can’t you see they’re too hot,’ she said crossly, busily removing blankets.

  ‘It is so cold outside!’ said Hilda, and indeed the blizzard now howled outside the window, as if some furious complaining giant prowled without, clamouring to get in. The windows of Genghis Khan, alone of all on the first floor, were not double-glazed. The outside world was only a thin pane of glass away.

  ‘That doesn’t make it cold in here, does it!’ remarked Shirley, and even as she spoke was ashamed of the sneering tone she heard coming from her own lips. But it was always the same: in defence of her own interests she was too soft and mild, in defence of the children too hard and sharp.

  ‘Perhaps now they are asleep I should go downstairs?’ asked Hilda.

  ‘They might wake and be frightened,’ said Shirley. ‘I’d rather you stayed.’ That, after all, said the tone of her voice, is what you are paid for.

  And Shirley went downstairs without further comment from Hilda, and rejoined the dinner party.

  ‘Just as well I went,’ she said to Victor. ‘They were much too hot. What an idiot the girl is! Joan is mad to trust non-Europeans. What can they possibly know about child care?’ It was a rhetorical question. Victor didn’t reply. He wasn’t concentrating. He didn’t suppose that Bella had ever had children, or would even want to.

  Now, reader, while we are on the subject of the neglected and ignored, that is to say both Shirley and Hilda in their own way, for these things are handed on down the scale of emotional underprivilege, which in my mind at least goes—

  White men

  Black men

  White women

  Black women

  Animals

  —you may be wondering about the dog, Harry. We last saw him at the opening of the novel, staring out at the snow flakes melting against the heated rear window of the Blades’ Volvo. Joan Lumb had the animal taken down to the servants’ quarters the minute he arrived. Neither Shirley nor Victor had protested much at being separated from their dog – he was the organic division of Security’s otherwise inorganic and electronic plan for the safety of the Blade family, rather than a pet. With Harry in the back of the car, their reasoning was, kidnap attempts on the children were not so likely. At the first sign of trouble, a button on the steering wheel would lower the dog mesh, and Harry would be in there, attacking the attackers, and one hoped not the children! Shirley and Victor very much admired the animal’s style and looks, and felt a responsibility for him, but it was difficult to feel fond of him. Shirley was better at it than Victor, and was often heard to say, ‘Good dog, Harry! What a beautiful animal you are! How nice it is for the children to have a pet!’ and so forth.

  When Shirley returned from seeing the children, and had recovered a little from Victor’s apparent non-interest in their welfare, she pulled herself together and joined in the general conversation. A dog, at the very least, is always a talking point. ‘So much is a matter of terminology,’ the General was saying. ‘I used to work for the Ministry of War. Now it’s the Ministry of Defence. Same place, same people, different name.’

  ‘For peace read war,’ said Baf. ‘When I hear the word peace I reach for my gun. I know I’m going to have to defend myself.’

  The General and Baf laughed uproariously. They were getting on like a house on fire, like a house exploding, like a nuclear blast. Talking of which, when the physicists from Los Alamos let off the first atomic bomb in New Mexico, in 1945, nobody really knew what would happen. Some of them thought the blast might set off a chain reaction which would destroy all matter, that is to say the world. Some of them thought the reaction would stop after a time and destroy only the state of Nevada. Those ones left in a hurry. The more optimistic just stood off five miles, crossed their fingers, pressed the button, and hoped.

  There was first a cloud of dust, then a swirling inferno, then an enormous, wonderful bang, a glorious mushroom cloud, and a two-mile crater. They’d got it right! Well, roughly. And they weren’t down-wind, so they didn’t get the fall-out. They didn’t know about fall-out, until the cattle and sheep and people down-wind lay down and died, but it made the new weapon even more interesting and likely to win the war, so they dropped one first on Hiroshima and then on Nagasaki, both cities having been kept un-bombed all through the war so as to provide a clean testing ground, and then sent in teams of scientists after it. These latter were really nice men, good guys, and met no opposition, no hostility. They remarked upon that and could make no sense of it. In order to be good guys you have to meet up with bad guys. Anyway, enough of all this. More plaintive civilian whines! They were great exciting days at Los Alamos and the frontiers of knowledge were pushed well and truly back by Oppenheimer, the future’s equivalent to Henry Shrapnel, inventor of the exploding cannonball.

  ‘Well,’ said Shirley, ‘if you can call a gun Peacemaker, I’m going to call Harry the dog Peacebarker!’

  And everyone laughed some more, and Victor felt quite proud of his wife, and even Joan Lumb seemed to approve.

  ‘Harry’s a walking defensive weapon,’ said Victor.

  ‘If he bit you you’d describe him as offensive,’ said Panza, who found life down the end of the table boring and kept craning his powerful neck to join in.

  ‘Well, anyway,’ said Shirley, ‘all I hope is he’s all right down there with the servants. You know what these people are. Some of them actually eat dog!’

  Now dogs are indeed eaten in many parts of the world, but in the same civilised and ritual manner that lambs and cows are eaten in our own. Shirley did not kno
w this. How could she? She had a vague feeling that the living animal would be seized up, wrenched apart, and the warm flesh devoured uncooked without benefit of knife and fork, and the tender raw bones chewed upon, and that would be the end of Harry.

  It was unfortunate that just as she expressed her fear that Peacebarker would be eaten, Acorn was bending over her right shoulder serving the cranberry jelly which went with the caribou patty (and how rubily red and rich it looked, rather like congealed blood) and the method of his revenge was made clear to him. He would hesitate no longer. Oppression, poverty, hardship, even the violation of human rights can be put up with, in the search for at best a quiet life, at the least survival. It is the wilful stupidity of the master races which in the end cannot be borne. It is their unreasonable assumption of moral superiority which proves intolerable. Miriam had died that day. Her death was at the diners’ hands. Downstairs was restive. Inverness might yet prove a real danger. The scales must be righted. A gesture must be made.

  Acorn finished serving up the jelly, went downstairs (leaving Rainbow in charge) and summoned Inverness.

  ‘Kill the dog. Stew it.’

  Inverness’s eyes gleamed from behind his thick glasses. So Zia, one evening in 1975, had spoken of Bhutto.

  ‘Is this wise?’ he asked.

  ‘A life for a life,’ said Acorn. ‘They hold their pets dearer than they do their servants.’

  Miriam lay wrapped in silver foil upon a shelf in the cold store. When the snow cleared she would be buried in the old pets’ cemetery which had existed for hundreds of years in a clearing of the Shrapnel woods. Here some twelve of the staff lay: long human bones, sturdy human skulls, in amongst tiny cat jaws, little lap-dog thighs, delicate monkey fingers.

  ‘But where will it end?’ pleaded Inverness. ‘One atrocity begets another.’

  ‘Let us not think of endings,’ said Acorn, grandly, to considerable applause from those who had gathered to listen, ‘when we haven’t even begun.’

  It is doubtful whether at this point Acorn really wanted all-out war. Few war historians are ever certain of this point. Does this nation or that really want war? Does this husband, this wife, really want divorce? It’s just the way one thing leads to another, in marriage as in war. This unfortunate remark – calculated or even casual, as Shirley’s was – leading to that act of revenge: this saving of face leading to that punitive action – and before you know where you are the children are homeless, crying in the streets, either in their hearts or in real life, and everything’s banging and popping all around. Why I make a distinction between ‘the heart’ and ‘real life’ I can’t imagine. The heart is real life.

  And of course, as Inverness so boringly pointed out, Acorn’s act of retaliation, the first definite act of war, was not altogether a wise one. It is better to start a war with a deed which can easily be attributed to the enemy. Your side then has the moral ascendancy throughout the conflict: that is to say ‘we didn’t start this, you did, yah, yah, yah—’ and fights the better for it. Or, as Napoleon said more loftily ‘the moral is to the physical as three is to one’. But sometimes indignation overwhelms prudence. Acorn had not been formally trained in military matters – apart from one summer holiday spent learning the practical arts of guerilla warfare for SWORD – but in law; and in life, in the school of general hardship and upset. But that does not help. Those who sit on soft cushions and live politely and eat well and play war games, have the advantage in energy and cunning over those who starve and suffer and are bitter. Everything’s so much easier when it’s fun! Everything goes better if you don’t take it seriously. On the other hand, Downstairs has a vast superiority in numbers over Upstairs and the advantage of surprise and an inbuilt system of informers – well, we will see.

  Upstairs, the caribou patties were, to be frank, a little stringy. The meat had been flown over from Canada, marinated, as caribou should be, in a mixture of claret, brandy and the animal’s own blood (vacuum packed for the journey in a tough plastic sachet), then simmered in the marinade with a bouquet garni in a very low oven indeed. The flesh should then all but have tenderly disintegrated. Unfortunately this particular animal had led a wilder and randier life than most, and was unusually tough. Raindrop had to almost pulverise the meat to get it to a consistency which mixed well with the egg yolk and spices Mrs Simcoe’s recipe required, and the result was both stringy to the teeth and floury to the tongue, though no flour was of course used in the making. (No good cook ever thickens with flour: he reduces, or uses a little tomato puree.) The flavour was excellent, but the texture failed. Joan Lumb wondered if she should fire Raindrop, and thought perhaps she would. It kept the staff on their toes, to dismiss one or two from time to time, when things went wrong.

  Muffin picked at her patty and wondered why she had lost her appetite and decided it was because Baf was talking animatedly, and making people laugh, and she thought he was doing it for Bella’s benefit.

  ‘Do you know the General’s secretary?’ Muffin asked of Mew. ‘No,’ said Mew. ‘Thank God. I don’t move in army circles.’

  Muffin rubbed an itchy place on her chin and realised she was growing a pimple. Bella Morthampton might (and might well, from the look of her) die of consumption but would never be afflicted by anything as absurd as a spot. Bella wore a plain black dress. Muffin was wearing rather a lot of pink flounces. She hated herself.

  ‘Of course she isn’t his secretary, at all,’ said Muffin to Mew, rashly. ‘Everyone knows she’s his mistress. Bella Morthampton’s famous. She started off in the Ministry of Defence canteen, and has gone up and up, that is to say older and older, ever since.’

  ‘Really!’ said Mew, and took something small and black from inside the elasticated cuff of the sleeve of her blouse (not hers at all, of course, but Muffin’s) and pointed it down the table. Click! Click! ‘Army Sex Scandal! General’s Sexual Toy!’

  But that’s a camera, Muffin thought. She’s taking photographs.

  ‘You can’t do that!’ said Muffin.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘It isn’t done.’

  ‘Surely no one here has anything to be ashamed of?’

  ‘But you’re a guest. This is dinner!’

  ‘Of course, if it upsets you—’

  Mew put the camera away, having done with it all that she needed to. Click! Click! ‘Low wages lead to life of degradation! Sexual exploitation of canteen workers!’

  ‘Thanks,’ said Muffin, feeling a little sheepish at having made a fuss. But since her mother and father had died, Joan Lumb and the Academy had taken their place, and she felt she had to be loyal. She wished she could explain this to Mew, but how could she begin?

  The caribou patty finished, turkey pie was served. The General would have preferred plain roast turkey, which was his favourite, but this would do. The young man on his right, whom he so liked, now seemed to be trying to sell him something. What was he saying? A flame thrower you could hold in the palm of your hand? Life moved ahead so quickly these days, it was hard to keep up.

  For life, as it were, read death.

  For peace, as Baf keeps saying, read war.

  20

  Now. Let us go back a little in time. When Harry arrived at the Shrapnel Academy he was taken downstairs and shut in a disused laundry room, together with a bowl of water. He went amiably enough. He recognised, when he saw it, a definite chain of command – and this one went from Victor to Shirley to Joan Lumb to Blackthorne – into whose care Joan Lumb had placed him, with the obvious consent of Victor, who stood placidly by while he, Harry, was led away. Each transaction the dog noted, and accepted. All these people he could now include in the list of non-enemies (Harry did not aspire to actual friends) and the more non-enemies he had the better. If anyone attacked one of his non-enemies, they would then become enemies and fair play for what he most loved doing – growling, crouching, bristling, leaping, biting, tearing, rending, throwing living flesh in all directions, and all in legitimate defence of the n
on-enemy. Keeping the peace! Oh, terrific!

  Harry settled down to sleep on the blanket provided – if a dog has nothing else to do it sleeps, and the laundry room was swept, scoured and empty and devoid of interest – when presently the door opened and a certain young woman, Agnes, was pushed inside. Agnes was a used and abused ex-child-prostitute from Korea. When Agnes wept, groaned or showed her private parts too often and too much it was the staff’s custom to shut her away for a time until she regained her composure. And no doubt this community care was a better alternative for Agnes than any offered in the world outside: that is to say, if not deported, then drugged and locked up in some secure hospital for lunatics. Which Agnes plainly was: it could not be denied that she had finally, while in the Shrapnel Academy, lost her wits.

  Joan Lumb had taken Agnes on in her better, more lucid days, to be the girl who cleaned out the upstairs lavatories. It had soon become clear that Agnes was not fit for upstairs work. She upset the young gentlemen by popping her stolid head round corners and smiling and beckoning, when they had other things on their mind, and even if they hadn’t, certainly wouldn’t wish to make do with the likes of Agnes. Now, if it had been Muffin, or Hilda, smiling and beckoning that would have been another story. As it was. complaints were blushingly made.

  So Agnes lost her job; that is to say, Joan Lumb fired her, and assumed her to have packed her bags and gone. Of course she merely did without her wages and joined the other illegal occupants living in the servants’ quarters of the Shrapnel Academy off the scraps of the upstairs’ table. Where else was she to go?

  Agnes, disturbed by the changing atmosphere of the staff quarters, by the increasing mutterings for revenge and justice, had done what she always did when upset – that is to say, taken off all her clothes and smiled. She was pushed unceremoniously into the laundry room, to stay there until she felt better. Hastings, from the Philippines, an electrician by trade but now a gardener, did the pushing, unaware that Harry, or Peacebarker, was already occupying the room. He pushed Agnes into the dark and switched on the light only as he closed the door behind her. If she was left in the dark she would sometimes start screaming.