Chalcot Crescent

by Fay Weldon

  I knew that these days there was little love lost between Victor and Amos. Apart from anything else, having a jailbird stepson would be something of an embarrassment for Victor. Perhaps Victor was seeking revenge on Amos, and that was why the Redpeace website had been closed down. But this was surely paranoia running wild?

  All the same I wish I knew at least something about the art school student who imposed himself on my innocent daughter and begat Amos. God knows what sort of villainy runs in the blood the other side of the looks and charm. Perhaps one day the father will turn up and be yet another of life’s little surprises? Of course the father may not have been a student at all – Venetia implied it and I assumed it. Underneath an angular Paolozzi seemed fitting for an art student, but for all I knew it could have been a professor, or even an art critic – though they do not usually seem of the randy hitand-run type. Too cerebral. Venetia, when she was eighteen, had translucency and innocence enough to attract any villain. She has grown quite substantial as she’s grown older, and looks handsome enough but no longer breathtaking, and oozes respectability. Just right for a senior politician. He chose well.

  Pity about her family, Victor may have thought, but love conquered all.

  To fiction! There is too much solid text here for comfort.

  Victor Getting Dressed

  ‘Victor,’ cries Venetia in alarm, ‘what is all this about a show in Cork Street in March? At the Medici Gallery? I’m not an A-list painter. I’ve never pretended I am.’

  ‘You only think that because your stepfather undermined your confidence,’ says Victor. ‘Of course you are. I’ve always had faith in you.’

  ‘But no-one at the Medici has seen what I do.’

  ‘That’s neither here nor there,’ says Victor. ‘CiviArt thinks well of you and the Medici trusts their judgment. NUG is a great supporter of the arts.’

  Venetia is washing her hair. Hers is one of the few houses down the street the water cuts seem to have missed, so although it’s Saturday morning she can turn on the taps and get a pleasant, dependable flow of the precious stuff from both hot and cold taps. Not that there are many houses left in the road. This, indeed, is why she is washing her hair: the air is full of lime plaster and dust from demolished homes all around, and it wreaks havoc with hair and skin, no matter how assiduously the new maids wield the vacuum cleaners. Victor strides up and down the master bedroom and in and out of the bathroom, smiling and reassuring, looking through his recently replenished wardrobes. The tailors came to him; he did not go to the tailors. Times have changed.

  He is not the man she married, she thinks, there is something wolfish about the smile, which she never noticed before. Or perhaps she just never looked, she took him so much for granted. But he admires her bum as she bends over the washbasin and gives it a little pinch. Victor loves her, she thinks, which is just as well, for men who become successful in middle age are known to decide they deserve a younger, prettier, sexier wife than they already have, and pension the old one off.

  ‘But Victor, NUG never used to be a supporter of the arts,’ she protests. ‘When the Arts Council fired me the general feeling was that at a time of national emergency anyone with artistic aspirations was positively antisocial.’

  ‘Remind me again of the name of the guy who fired you,’ says Victor, as if casually, but Venetia found herself lying, saying she thought the poor man had died of a heart attack. He hadn’t liked firing her any more than she had liked being fired.

  ‘Saves a bullet,’ says Victor, and of course it’s a joke, but Venetia finds herself slightly shivery, and is glad of a warm towel to wrap around her wet hair. Even their towel rails stay heated all day.

  ‘It’s thanks to me, Venetia,’ says Victor, ‘that the Board is now persuaded that at a time like this it is particularly important to foster creativity in the community.’

  ‘I bet you made a really good speech, darling,’ says Venetia.

  ‘I did,’ he says. ‘I’ve really become quite something of an orator.’

  ‘Doesn’t surprise me, darling,’ says Venetia and then, ‘but it may be a little difficult to get an exhibition together by next March.’

  ‘Sorry, but that’s the timetable,’ says Victor. ‘The launch of the New Venice, Land of the Arts initiative. If it’s a problem we can bring in some apprentices to help you get things done. We thought we’d go with Venetia, Queen of the New Venice, or something like that. How does that strike you?’

  ‘Sounds good to me,’ says Venetia.

  She hardly knows what else to say. Does she want to be a famous painter or a good painter? What is a good painter anyway? What would Karl do? She needs time to think. She used to talk things like this over with Victor, but he’s someone else now. Her mother would complicate things even more; the boys aren’t interested; talking to Polly about the new Victor seems slightly dangerous, for some reason; and talking to her friends would be construed as disloyal. She doesn’t know why she feels she has to be very, very careful but she does.

  ‘How are things looking for next Friday?’ asks Victor.

  ‘Same as usual,’ says Venetia, surprised. ‘Chicken.’

  ‘Because we have a camera crew coming in to take a few pictures,’ says Victor. ‘Perhaps better if we don’t have Amos around. Henry’s fine: man of the soil, nothing elitist about this typical family. Don’t get too big a chicken; we’re a people family like Obama’s, and food is short. We can have a second supper afterwards.’

  ‘Okay,’ says Venetia.

  It feels safer not to raise difficulties. For some reason she remembers that she has always meant to read the autobiography of Svetlana, Stalin’s daughter. Perhaps she will be able to get round to it finally, if the house is filling up with servants and apprentices, all determined they will do the chores. What happened to Svetlana’s mother? Didn’t she commit suicide? At least Victor doesn’t have a moustache.

  Victor decides on a dark brown silk shirt with high collar, which suits him well but makes him look a little military. He’s standing straighter and taller. He used to have a soft kind of jaw, but it’s changed, and become squarer and harder. She realizes she really fancies him, which is just as well, since he’s bearing her down upon the bed, wet hair and all. He’s so cheerful.

  ‘When I am King, diddle diddle,’ he says, diddling away, ‘you shall be Queen.’

  The car comes to collect Victor and take him to NIFE. CiviSecure men salute him. Venetia, waving him goodbye, sees that they are all young and wear smart brown denim shirts. She calls up her sister Polly and asks her to drop by for a coffee. Polly says she’s waiting for the girls to come back. She’s tried to get them on their mobiles and can’t get through. She really ought to stay home to supervise their homework, and anyway she hasn’t got money for a taxi, and Venetia laughs and says she’ll send a car. Polly agrees to come; it’s fun riding in the central lanes. One of the best schemes devised by NUG, part of their Nation, Back to Work! initiative, was building the lanes: there’s always a sense of excitement about them, of a nation visibly about important business.

  It’s tricky finding a quiet spot for the sisters to have coffee. The house is having two extensions built, one on either side, and the existing interior is being renovated, which means plasterers need to wander round putting up classical friezes and plumbers installing gold taps and fittings in the bathrooms, so wherever they go there is company. The minute Victor left the builders moved in: they are very polite but are working to plans signed by NUG’s chief architect and initialled by Victor. They showed them to her when she said she didn’t want the two front rooms made into one and chandeliers installed – it didn’t suit the house at all, but she could see it was going to end up less like a home and more like a palace anyway, so she didn’t argue.

  The kitchen and dining room are being left as they were, which seems a bit strange. Though the three neat, quiet, pretty maids, who speak no English, are busy doing out the backs of the cupboards, and cleaning out the knife dr
awer when Venetia and Polly try to settle in the kitchen.

  ‘Bet you’ve never cleaned out a knife drawer in your life,’ says Polly.

  ‘Well, I am an artist,’ says Venetia. ‘Tidiness isn’t my forte. But I am a good cook. Mum would come over and do it sometimes, when the children were small, and she’d clean and wash behind the taps, that kind of thing. And when the children came in from school, they’d notice and say, “Gran’s here! Where is she?”’

  ‘I’m a bad cook,’ says Polly, ‘but always tidy. It’s odd how the genes go.’

  ‘Don’t start all the gene stuff,’ says Venetia. ‘You’re as bad as Mum. Actually, an initiative came round the school the other day saying, I quote, “In the nature/nurture debate proper attention must be given to the heredity factor in academic response.” There’s a lot of backtracking going on there. Some of the things NUG is doing these days are really quite worrying. Surely we are all born equal!’

  Venetia moves her head in the direction of the maids to remind Polly that they can be overheard, but Polly laughs and says they don’t speak English anyway and what she is saying is hardly treasonable. On Polly’s insistence they decide to ignore the maids and sit in the kitchen, and Polly raves about the quality of the coffee and Venetia says she’ll give some to Polly before she goes; the CiviStore has been round to deliver.

  ‘That’s a new departure,’ says Polly.

  ‘Victor doesn’t want me going out until a proper security routine has been worked out,’ says Venetia. ‘So they come to me. I just make out a list of what I want. I’m sure if I put a Stanley Spencer painting, six feet by four feet, that would come round too.’

  ‘But where would it have come from?’ asks Polly.

  ‘Don’t ask,’ says Venetia and fortunately there is a cry and a crash from upstairs and the maids run off to put right whatever needs putting right. They move as a little unit, smooth and quiet.

  ‘A prisoner in your own home,’ says Polly and laughs, but the laugh fades away and they look at each other.

  ‘This filming on Friday night,’ says Venetia. ‘I think they want to get it established how simply and traditionally we live. As soon as that’s done what’s the betting the kitchen will be moved into one of the extensions and equipped to serve banquets, suitable for the CEO of NIFE and possibly even CEO of the Arts at NUG headquarters.’

  ‘Things are moving fast,’ said Polly. ‘Feels like 2010 all over again.’

  That was the year Europe began to fall apart, and the idea of the nation state to reassert itself – not that it had ever really gone away.

  ‘I don’t know that I’m cut out for a political hostess,’ says Venetia. ‘I’m an artist. All I want to do is paint pictures. And maybe I’m not even very good at that. Daddy was probably right.’

  ‘Daddy always had great faith in you,’ says Polly. ‘He just hated acrylics and you were so stubborn about that. Anyway it’s too late now. I should just enjoy. And Victor’s hardly going to make you wear ball gowns and diamond tiaras. You can start a fashion in CiviKindness chic.’

  ‘I’m not sure about that,’ says Venetia darkly. Victor, who in the days of Cancer Cure had given her toasted-sandwich machines, food blenders and such for her birthdays, had last year given her a ruby necklace.

  What Polly doesn’t understand, she says, is why NUG, usually so low key, positively reclusive, on the subject of its top people, has suddenly decided to make Victor some kind of celebrity. Why, when it maintains it’s just an efficient, well-trained management team put in to run the nation – quite unlike the greedy, self-seeking politicians of yore, with their manic squabbling – until such time as the depression bottoms out and elections become a viable option once again, are NUG suddenly putting Victor on TV? Couldn’t they have chosen a woman?

  Venetia says she thinks it’s because NUG has decided it needs a public face – it’s too somehow amorphous for the public to grasp – and Victor fits the bill. He’s loyal, presentable, a bit gullible, a good family man, with a scientific background yet religiously observant but in no way extremist –

  ‘Without ambition,’ says Polly, ‘but dedicated to the public good. Living simply and quietly in the same house where he raised his family, with his lovely wife Venetia, most talented artist in the land – seen here at Shabbat, all his family gathered round –’

  ‘That’s about it,’ says Venetia, ‘But not Amos. Amos is too, well, enigmatic, to fit the required picture.’

  ‘Enigmatic is rather a good word for Amos,’ says Polly. ‘Not too negative, not too positive. Sort of wait and see. And you converting to Judaism too?’

  Venetia looks startled. ‘You’re not meant to know about that.’

  ‘Mum told me.’

  ‘I should have known,’ says Venetia. ‘If it mattered any more that she kept it to herself, I wouldn’t have told her. But NUG has decided secularism is counter-productive. The family that prays together stays together. And I don’t mind. It’s not as if I was an atheist, like you. Victor thinks it’s less hypocritical if I receive instruction.’

  ‘That’s one way of looking at it,’ says Polly. ‘Victor is just so good at wishful thinking.’

  The maids troop back in, and, after what amounts to a kind of brief choreographed curtsey to Venetia and Polly, silently continue with their cleaning. The conversation between the sisters becomes more casual. How Mum went mad when she heard about Henry, but was bound to find out some time. How Corey was fine, working unpaid for CiviSport; the girls liking art school and such good friends now with their cousins, round at Hunter’s Alley all the time, neglecting their homework, but anything’s better than drink or drugs. Polly had a fright in the Underground: the platform was so crowded that some male idiot lurched into her and nearly knocked her into the path of a train –

  An electrician comes in with a ladder and starts to run a fine wire round the door frame and along the skirting board.

  ‘What’s that for?’ asks Venetia and he shrugs and gestures that he doesn’t speak English.

  ‘He’ll be bugging the place,’ says Polly and they both laugh, but their laughs die away.

  Venetia finds a couple of packets of coffee and gives them to her sister. On the way out they both hear the electrician saying, ‘Oi, mate, pass over the other drill bits,’ but neither woman remarks upon it to the other.

  What’s Really Going On

  I deduced the above from a couple of remarks of Venetia’s about converting to the Jewish faith, and of Polly’s about how security was now tight at Venetia’s and how the houses next door were being demolished. I rather hope I am wrong about all this. Victor, I know, adores Venetia and would love her to be Queen almost more than he would love to be King. But to be loved by a man of dubious sanity can be a dreadful thing. I hope she is not being frightened into too much acquiescence.

  I am also worried, I realize, though I had not let this surface until now, by Polly’s belief that someone tried to push her under a London Underground train. Polly is a literal girl, and not given to flights of fancy. Death by casual push is rumoured to be one of NUG’s favoured methods of assassination. There is no evidence whatsoever that NUG are in the habit of assassinating people in the first place, but unless you show yourself in public rather more than does NUG, paranoia is bound to flourish. Perhaps that’s why they need someone like Victor as their public face.

  Since the Bite, paranoia has swept the country: we who used to be so trusting, so welcoming of immigrants, dismayed by a smacked child, hopeful of globalism, who felt loyal even to our mortgage company, are now thoroughly suspicious. Someone stumbles against someone else on a crowded platform, and Mother assumes it is a murder attempt. I must not be like this. And who on earth would have a motive for getting rid of Polly? She is no threat to Victor, even if I am right about his showing signs of incipient megalomania. Now Amos is a different matter. It does no good at all to have an Amos, a drug-taking jailbird, an utterer of profanity, in the close family of a politician – sorr
y, a top management man, a NUG man. If NIFE appears can NUG be far behind?

  If I peer out of the back window I think I see shapes running across the potato patch under the cover of the beanpoles and through a door that leads into Rothwell Street, where no-one has fixed the CiviCam. They lose no time. Are they up against some kind of timetable, some ticking clock, some, don’t say it, ticking bomb? But Redpeace is not a banned organization.

  Later: I put my laptop to sleep – it has a good battery, and is eight years old, but better than anything that has replaced it since – and go to the new, sleek CiviSoft computer on the desk at my front window. There is free access to the Internet. You have to be quick; if the battery hasn’t run out the wifi connections will be down of necessity to save power and the planet: local wifi is fed through the Neighbourhood Watch. (I know perfectly well William Pitt the Younger said, ‘Necessity is the argument of tyrants and the creed of slaves,’ but our particular NW are a cosy, companionable, potato-growing lot, hardly tyrants.) I got through to Google and looked up Redpeace. Google did its best but finally gave me the annoying message in thin print that says, ‘This page cannot currently be displayed.’

  I looked back through my emails to see if I still had the latest circular from Redpeace, but I had deleted it after a cursory reading, more fool me. My computer allows no time for second thoughts and has no ‘deleted items’ box. You either have it or you don’t, and since mailboxes seem to have shrunk in size and get full rather quickly and you have to empty them to get more, paper is scarce and expensive and you have to cut it down by hand with scissors to fit the printer anyway, and who can be bothered, keeping records can be a problem. No wonder my grandchildren hide and run through the beanpole arch as dusk falls. Life has been made difficult for the conspiring classes. I am decidedly proud of them. Fearful, yes: but proud too.