Fay Weldon Omnibus: Collected Works of Fay Weldon

by Weldon, Fay

  “Listen, folks, I have a tale to tell of Bagshott Towers, I know it well. Being the welfare man round here: kept sadly busy too, I fear. Here, where once stood Parrot Pier and village pond and willows dear, now soars the height of Bagshott Towers, stressed concrete takes the place of bowers –”

  ‘You live in a flowery house called The Bowers, I believe, Mr Director Angus, over on Hampstead Hill, next door to “The Cot” where Mr Bagshott used to live, before he was carted away for corruption. Bagshott tore down his dovecote, according to the gutter press, and put in a swimming pool and re-named The Cot “Amanda” after his girlfriend – and why not, Mr Director? Mr Bagshott was a vulgarian, as am I: happy Paul the sound-man. Mr Oates has a word or two to say on that. They go like this: “The grass of course is greener on the other side, where the gentry of the world reside. But listen, folks, we have a tale to tell, of how the rich and mighty fell. The property speculators’ bubble produced this land of mud and rubble. And Timothy Bagshott’s dad, I fear, is much to blame for all that’s here, and now he languishes in jail, so let Jim himself take up the tale.”’

  ‘Les,’ says Angus, ‘that’s more than enough of Paul. Can we reconstruct Amanda three months ago, when the fraud squad swooped at five that summer morning, and eased Jim Bagshott out of bed, and put him in a police car and sped him off to meet his just deserts? And can we do it within budget?’

  You, the viewer, will have seen similar scenes on TV many times. The camera, following the vanishing car, seldom turns back to the house to see the forlorn figures of those left behind, waving goodbye on the step: in this case it’s young Timothy Bagshott and his dismal Aunt Annie. Or, as Rupert Oates observes, ‘My tale’s of Timothy Bagshott, son of Jim, and how misfortune came to him, and how the lad faced up to perils great, and how at least he conquered cruel fate.’

  Paul the sound-man swears this is what goes on in Rupert Oates’ head, and Paul has the acuity of the really happy to be believed now. ‘Paul, are you happy?’

  ‘Happy as Larry, Angus.’ There is hope, you see: there is always some underlying happy refrain, if only we can hear it. Let’s for God’s sake get on before the light goes.

  ‘I’ll have something to say to my solicitor,’ says Jim, and who should he find sharing his open prison cell, of course, but Clive his solicitor, so this is how the word or two went:

  ‘What are you doing here?’ asked Jim.

  ‘Six years,’ said Clive. ‘For fraud. And you?’

  ‘Twenty years,’ said Jim, ‘for bribery and corruption.’

  ‘Last time we met,’ said Clive, ‘we had champagne and chips for breakfast. Remember that.’

  ‘And now,’ said Jim, ‘we are reduced to porridge. But, knowing us, we’ll soon have cream on it. My only worry is the boy. Poor Timothy, poor motherless boy. The house sold over his head: his school fees left unpaid. Nothing between him and destitution but my sister, his Aunt Annie, and all she cares about is herself, but then who doesn’t?’

  ‘But he’s got the Welfare, Jim,’ said Clive. ‘Let us not forget the Welfare. It’s what we paid our Poll Tax for, or failed to, as the case may be.’

  ‘What’s to become of the boy?’ asked Jim again. A tear or two fell from his eyes.

  ‘The criminal classes often weep for the sorrows of children,’ Angus the director says in a note to the actor playing Jim, ‘although they have caused the sorrows themselves.’ The actor yawns.

  * * *

  Ripple dissolve to a month ago – Angus favours ripple dissolves: they remind him of his childhood and save re-writes – when on the step of the shuttered Amanda Timothy Bagshott stood alone, his smart pigskin suitcase by his side, the very model of a smart City gent in uniform, only slightly miniatured by virtue of his lack of years. And zooming up is a battered mini-van, with Department of Youth writ large upon its rusty side – nothing rustier than the Welfare, these days, in any city in the world – and in the van our good friend Rupert Oates himself. Paul, happy Paul, pick up his thoughts!

  ‘See, here I come, the Welfare Man, in the County Council van, though Bagshott is a cursed name round here, still Timothy does deserve my care.’

  And Timothy and his poor Aunt Annie, a nervous, plain, unmarried lady in her middle years, much burdened by black plastic sacks into which are crammed all her worldly belongings and such of Timothy’s as she could be bothered to bring, step into the van. The boy would not be seen in public, even on the steps of a disgraced and shuttered house, with a black plastic sack. He would rather die than lose his dignity. This is what private education does to a lad.

  And off the van goes, through the dilapidation of poor Parrot Pier, to the slightly less broken structures of the new estate. Here removal vans abound: the hopeful and the hopeless, the repossessed and unpossessed: have you got them in shot, Les? You’re not doing a promotional video now: this is real life.

  ‘Till Timothy’s fortunes we decide,’ thinks Rupert Oates, ‘it’s been judged best that he reside, for such are fate’s ironic powers, with his aunt in Bagshott Towers. A Council rent book! Oh what a shame, to those with Bagshott as a name.’

  Les captures the faces of Timothy and his Auntie Annie, as they stare up the soaring, if truncated, face of Audrey Tower, their future home. Twelve floors finished and twenty-five hoped for. ‘Most of us,’ observes Rupert, ‘of course are glad to take what there is to be had, but Audrey Tower I have to tell is where the problem families dwell, and as a pleasant place to live is quite the worst the Council has to give.’

  The arrival of the Bagshott aunt and nephew and Mr Oates in Council towers is observed by one Jon-Jon Ooster, a sixteen-year-old punk of some charm and intelligence, albeit white-faced, grimy and hung with leather, chains and nose rings. Jon-Jon, a vegetarian, smokes a cigar in the corridor he is to share with the Bagshotts (and a dozen others, of course, but they’re too in terror of Jon-Jon to leave their apartments to put in an appearance). Paul, a snatch of conversation, please. Are you dreaming? We have to hear as well as look.

  ‘I’m certain there’ll be a shortage of oxygen this high up,’ said Aunt Annie. ‘If Timothy’s asthma returns I shall hold you responsible, Mr Oates.’

  ‘I didn’t know you had asthma, Timothy,’ says Mr Oates.

  ‘I haven’t,’ says Timothy.

  ‘Yes, he has,’ declares Aunt Annie. ‘It started the day his mother left home. He was only seven. Do you remember that day, Timothy?’

  ‘Not if I can help it,’ observes Timothy.

  ‘See? How he suffers!’ says Aunt Annie. ‘Poor little Timothy! Poor wee boy!’

  Aunt Annie has decided that the mercy directed at Timothy, by virtue of his childish state, shall include her too, by reason of the sympathy and concern she clearly shows for her nephew. Aunt Annie is not without a soupçon of her brother Jim’s self-interested genes.

  Into the flat they go, gene sharers both, sister and child of brother Jim, and find it bleak, and sparse and grim. The view’s terrific, even so.

  ‘Is this really how the workers live?’ asks Annie. ‘Come away from the window, Timothy, it isn’t safe. Timothy suffers from vertigo. Don’t you, Timothy?’

  ‘No,’ says Timothy.

  ‘You must understand, Mr Oates,’ says Aunt Annie, ‘that it’s impossible for us to live here.’

  ‘All flats on the Bagshott Estate are of standard size and shape, Miss Bagshott,’ observes Mr Oates. ‘You are very lucky indeed to have anywhere at all to live. Bed and breakfast is the best that you could have reasonably hoped for. I had to plead your case most strongly at the last Council meeting to get you even this.’

  ‘But my brother built the place,’ says Aunt Annie.

  ‘Exactly,’ says Rupert Oates.

  ‘Ingratitude!’ exclaims Aunt Annie. ‘And how are we expected to live? I am penniless, you understand. All my money was in my brother’s companies.’

  ‘So was the Council’s,’ says Mr Oates. ‘The Social Security office is not far. Try to attend early,
otherwise a queue builds up.’

  ‘I must live on charity?’ asks Annie.

  ‘It’s that or work,’ says Rupert Oates. ‘The same for you as it is for everyone. Nor can the Council continue Timothy at his private school: last term’s incidentals, we notice, came to £1,500. Timothy must say goodbye to riding lessons, stables for his mounts, music and fencing tuition, and a log fire in his study. Timothy must go to the local comprehensive, like anybody else. To Bagshott School.’

  Les, turn your camera to the comprehensive school; a structure twenty-five years old, once pride of Parrot Pier, now in excessive disrepair, except a recent Council grant of £150,000 paid through Jim Bagshott’s companies has recently effected some meagre improvement. Graffiti sour the walls, the scuttle of cockroaches unnerves the listening ear.

  ‘A boy with Bagshott as a name at Bagshott School? It seems unkind but that’s the rule,’ muses our friend and Timothy’s, Rupert Oates, who now uses his mobile phone to get in touch with Mr Korn, headmaster of Bagshott School.

  Picture Mr Korn, frame him in shot: a good man, the hope of the nation, of middle class origin and working class aspirations: he has children’s art upon his walls: night and day he fights for the rights of his pupils and the survival of civilisation, in the face of finance cuts, the irrationality of the parent classes and the original sin of his pupils. He’s tired but he won’t give up. What’s he saying, Paul?

  ‘I’d like to oblige but I can’t. The second year’s full and I’m understaffed as it is. I know, Mr Oates, that it’s my happy duty to educate all the kids in this area regardless of race, colour, creed and handicap. If there were only something special about him. There is? What is it? His dad’s in prison? So are all the dads in prison. What’s that you say? Jim Bagshott’s boy? Impossible! I won’t be responsible. He’ll be lynched, and I’ll be blamed.’

  But Mr Oates puts the pressure on and so the second years squeeze over to make room for Timothy Bagshott. On his way down twelve flights of stairs – the lift is broken – Mr Oates has a word or two with Jon-Jon Ooster, who keeps him company.

  ‘I had a letter from your headmaster, Jon-Jon.’

  ‘Two thousand pupils and Mr Korn writes about little me! Quel honneur!’

  ‘You can hardly count as a pupil, Jon-Jon, since it seems you seldom attend.’

  ‘They go on at you if you’re there,’ says Jon-Jon, ‘and they go on at you if you aren’t. So what does it matter one way or another?’

  ‘Tell you what, Jon-Jon,’ says Mr Oates, ‘since we’re all in this together, how about you keep a helpful eye on young Timothy Bagshott, your new neighbour. You’re a good boy at heart. Help him settle in.’

  And Jon-Jon laughs and says, ‘Yes, me and my mates, we’ll help settle any Bagshott in.’

  ‘Ingratitude, complaints,’ thinks Rupert Oates, ‘what else can be expected? We have so far from nature’s way defected, the Bagshott lift in Bagshott Towers is often stuck for hours and hours; they piss into the shaft and rust soon turns all moving parts to dust.’

  ‘I say,’ said Timothy Bagshott to his Aunt Annie as dirty water from the loo bubbled up into the sink, ‘I’m sure the Pater never imagined his own family would end up here or he’d have seen to everything very differently. Tell you what, try running the bath: sometimes it’s a simple matter of an airlock,’ but both are distracted by cries of help from the Ooster household and a sudden blow is directed upon the thin front door, which splinters, and there stands Jon-Jon.

  ‘My mum,’ says Jon-Jon, ‘cannot abide it no more. Every time you empty your bath her loo fills up.’

  ‘Too bad, old chap,’ says Timothy, and shuts the door in Jon-Jon’s face.

  ‘People like that having the nerve to complain!’ remarks Annie. ‘Why, they’re nothing but a Problem Family!’

  Another blow upon the door: a burst of splinters in the room: Jon-Jon enters in unasked, and with him brothers both older and younger.

  ‘Ooster’s the name,’ says Jon-Jon, ‘and this is Joe-Joe and this is little Ripper, and as for me, I’m Jon-Jon.’

  ‘What quaint names you have round here,’ says Timothy.

  ‘None so quaint as Bagshott,’ observes the middle Ooster lad. ‘Ripper’s called Ripper for a reason, and Joe-Joe’s back from Borstal where they taught him love of animals and how to have a cold shower every day. We Oosters get about, enjoy life: they suspend our sentences more often than not, to save the prison service aggro.’

  ‘How fascinating,’ observes Timothy.

  ‘I am reliably informed,’ says Jon-Jon, ‘that you are about to attend Bagshott Comprehensive. I am a pupil there myself. If I were you, I’d get your Auntie Annie not to take a bath from now on, because my mum don’t like it when she does.’

  ‘I’ll think about it,’ says Timothy, and closes what’s left of the door and tries not to tremble.

  * * *

  News of his family’s predicament flics fast to big bad Jim, but how can he help his little son?

  ‘Lovely piece of renovation we did on that school,’ observes Jim. ‘He shouldn’t have too hard a time. Renamed in my honour. A deal of asbestos in the assembly hall walls and high aluminium joists as well; not too good at stress-bearing but economical. Perhaps I should mention it? What do you think, Clive? Imprisonment makes me indecisive. I blame the Courts!’

  ‘Quieta non movere,’ replies Clive, which, being translated, is ‘let sleeping dogs lie’.

  ‘A lot of glass in that assembly hall,’ muses Jim. ‘What with the roof. They may have had the impression it was anti-ultra-violet glass, but the contractors let me down. What could I do?’

  ‘Quieta non movere,’ says Clive.

  ‘A fuss about nothing, a scare, this ozone layer,’ says Jim. ‘If a boy gets skin cancer it’s easily cured. I blame his mother; she had no business walking out on me. Everything a woman could want – a fur, a chauffeur, nannies, holidays. Ingratitude! The boy takes after his mother, Clive, and that’s the truth of it. All that money spent on his education, and not a flicker of gratitude: has he been to visit me? No! He thinks himself a cut above me: always did. Sneered at me from behind the bars of his cot. I hope his Aunt Annie’s coping. Perhaps I should get in touch with his mother?’

  ‘Quieta non movere,’ is all Clive says, and Jim fears his friend means to sleep the years of his sentence away...

  An evening or two later (Angus deals with the passage of time on screen by flicking over the days in a calendar; that simple nostalgic device) and there’s Auntie Annie removing soup stains and ironing a secondhand school uniform for Timothy to put on in the morning for his first day.

  ‘Black, grey and navy blue,’ observes Timothy. ‘How dreary; necessary, I daresay, amongst the great unwashed or why would those in charge choose it? And supposing I get head lice, or impetigo? What then? Perhaps I should aim for a quick medical discharge?’

  ‘Timothy dear,’ says Auntie Annie. ‘Try to be sensible. Co-operate. Don’t put on airs. Be like the others. If you ever want to escape from Bagshott Estate you must work hard and pass exams, and I must be here to help you. There is some talk of a cut in our subsistence allowance, of my going out to work; but my work is here with you, helping you get an education. You look on me as a mother, don’t you, Timothy dear?’

  ‘Of course I do, dear Aunt,’ says Timothy. ‘Never let it be said that a Bagshott worked from nine to five.’

  ‘Or seven to midnight,’ said Auntie Annie, ‘now the Shop Act is cancelled and a crust is so very hard to earn.’

  ‘I will do what I can for you, Aunt,’ says Timothy. ‘I will aim for suspension rather than expulsion. Needs must and all that. But I will not willingly keep the company of the Oosters of this world.’

  Even as he spoke, a great convulsion shook the corridor, indeed the very structure of the dwelling block, the elevator quivered between its rusty girders and fell an inch or so: Maisie Ooster was rounding up her boys. Maisie Ooster was twenty-four stone and perfect with it, if l
oud. Annie stuck her head out of her splintered front door.

  ‘Take no notice of me,’ cried Maisie Ooster. ‘I washed these lads last night and I can’t do a thing with them today,’ and she laughed so loud and heartily that Annie joined in, but not Timothy, and so night fell, and the full moon arose over Bagshott Towers, and made all things so boldly brilliant and beautiful even the rats and the cockroaches paused in their rustling, and the human scavengers lifted up their hearts, and even the muggers paused to consider the nature of creation, and the wild creatures of the night slept, thinking it was day: and those who normally slept by night awoke, including Rupert Oates; in the morning Paul had his thoughts on tape ready for playback to Angus. Paul’s tapes are like some film, really sensitive, and just as film will pick up scenes that never were, so Paul’s tapes pick up sound. He is always in employment. Perhaps that’s why he’s so happy.

  ‘Night falls on Bagshott Towers,’ mused Rupert Oates that moonlit night, ‘on good and bad and in between, as most of us are seen to be. And who’s to blame? Your poor old mum? No. She had a mum herself, you know, and is what she was made, as are we all. Moon on Bagshott Towers! And there’s a fox, and there the night owl flies. Listen; the wild life of the city cries – and morning breaks, and unreality breaks in, on this strange world we’re living in.’

  The moon set. The sun arose. Cameraman Les, up bright and early, uninstructed by Angus, who has a hangover, is filming the kids of Bagshott Comprehensive arrive – some on crack and some still clutching teddy bears: some pregnant and some virtuous still, and all shockable one way or another, either at the innocence of some, or the knowingness of others.