by Fay Weldon
‘Peace, exultation, jubilation’, cried the young man in the yellow gown who could be sustained in mid-air by the energy of his being, ‘to the brotherhood of man!’
‘And the sisterhood!’ cried Ms Havelock. ‘Don’t forget the sisterhood.’ And they were gone. The Zambezi Boys were gone.
And after that nothing was quite the same, if only that Scott Hockney in Infants never dirtied his pants again—perhaps a miracle, or just because he’d jigged about so much he got some kind of control over his muscles—so the other children would play with him (and Mrs Windsor reported he could remember that the mysterious t-h-e spelt the extraordinary ‘the’ from the next Monday right through to the next Friday and for ever thereafter). And Ms Havelock took to going miles out of her way each day to take and fetch Kelly and Ellen in her 2CV instead of saying that to do so was system-bolstering and a child or two would have to die before the under-three-mile-no-free-transport system was reformed. And Neal Hodder’s Dad, who’d also danced, decided on the whole he’d better not crop-spray the field behind the school in spite of the stuffs being officially specified safe; and everyone wore trainers ever after, they being so much better for dancing, and no one kept their Kit-Kats and crisps to themselves at break, as had lately been their habit (for the greed and self-interest of governments is as catching as measles), but began to share them with the limping children off the bus, who no longer limped because trainers can be cheap and interchangeable—was not this the brotherhood, not to mention the sisterhood, of man, not to mention woman? And the dinner ladies cooked a little better and with more charity, so the children ate up better; and at the first sign of trouble there’d be a kind of thrumming of fingers on desks—one, two, three-four-five—and the trouble evaporated; and if Mr Rossiter felt his anxiety and irritation returning, and began to express it, there’d be a kind of dancing note thrumming on the floor as the children fell into step—one, two, three-four-five—on the stairs and down the corridors, and he’d hold his tongue, and just nod, and smile, and not a word had to be said; and little Cleo put her hand in Miss Walters’, who let it stay there, and even put her up for the Class Achievement Award, and the wastepaper basket in the Infants somehow got lost and was never found again. One, two, three-four-five.
Nothing was ever the same again after the Zambezi Boys came to East Bradley by mistake, on their way to Taunton, and brought with them in their yellow van the good things of the wider world—exultation, jubilation, joy, the throb of the universe—and in their easy generosity passed them on. Such things happen. That was the day the world came to Somerset, and couldn’t be kept out.
AS TOLD TO MISS JACOBS
A Gentle Tonic Effect
‘WHAT DID YOU SAY your name was?’ asked Morna Casey. ‘Miss Jacobs? Just a miss? Not a doctor or anything? Well, chacun à son goût. But tell me, do you need planning permission, or can anyone just set up in their front room and start in the shrinking business?’
Morna Casey frowned at what she thought might be a hangnail, and looked at her little gold watch with the link chain, and waited for Miss Jacobs’ reply, which did not come. ‘I have very little time for people who go to therapists,’ added Morna Casey. ‘I’m sorry, but there it is. It’s so sort of self-absorbed, don’t you think? I can’t stand people who make a fuss about nothing. If it wasn’t that my dreams were interfering with my work I wouldn’t be here.’
Still no response came from Miss Jacobs: she did not even lift her pencil from the little round mahogany table at her side.
‘You charge quite a lot’, observed Morna Casey, ‘for someone who says so little and takes no notes. But if you can get away with it, good for you. I suppose on the whole people are just mentally lazy: they employ analysts to think about them rather than do it themselves.’
Morna Casey waited. Presently Miss Jacobs spoke. She said, ‘This first consultation is free. Then we will see whether it is worth both our whiles embarking on a course of treatment.’
‘I don’t know why,’ said Morna Casey, ‘but you remind me of the owl in Squirrel Nutkin.’
A slight smile glimmered over Miss Jacobs’ lips. Morna Casey noticed, of course she did. She had declined to lie down on the leather couch, with her head at Miss Jacobs’ end, as patients were expected to do.
‘I suppose’, acknowledged Morna Casey, ‘it’s because I feel like Squirrel Nutkin, dancing up and down in front of wise old owl, making jokes and being rude. But you won’t get to gobble me up: I’m too quick and fast for the likes of you.’
Morna Casey was a willowy blonde in her late thirties: elegantly turned out, executive style. Her eyes were wide and sexy, and her teeth white, even and capped. She wore a lot of gold jewellery of the kind you can buy in Duty Free shops at major airports. Her skirt was short and her legs were long and her heels were high.
‘I went to see a doctor,’ said Morna Casey, ‘which is a thing I hardly ever do—I can’t stand all that poking and fussing about. But the nightmares kept waking me up; and if you’re going to do a good job of work it’s imperative to have a good night’s sleep. I’ve always insisted on my beauty sleep—when Rider was a baby I used ear plugs: he soon learned to sleep through.’
Rider was Morna Casey’s son. He was seventeen and active in the school potholing club.
Morna Casey leaned forward so that her shapely bosom glowed pink beneath her thin white tailored shirt. She wore the kind of bra which lets the nipples show through.
‘The fool of a doctor gave me sleeping pills, and though I quadrupled the dose it still didn’t stop me waking up screaming once or twice a night. And Hector wasn’t much help. But then he never is.’
Hector was Morna Casey’s husband. He was head of market research at the advertising agency where Morna worked. She was a PR executive for Maltman Ltd, a firm which originally sold whisky but had lately diversified into pharmaceuticals.
‘Helping simply isn’t Hector’s forte,’ said Morna Casey. ‘You ask what is? A word too crude for your ears, Miss Jacobs, probably beyond your understanding; that’s what Hector’s forte is. I first set eyes on Hector in a pub one night, eighteen years ago: I said to my then husband, “Who’s that man with the big nose?” and Hector followed us home that night and we haven’t been apart since.’
Miss Jacobs looked quite startled, or perhaps Morna Casey thought she did.
‘People say “Didn’t your husband mind?” and I reply, “Well, he didn’t like it much but what could he do?”’ said Morna Casey. ‘He moved out, which suited me and Hector very well. It was a nice house: we bought him out. Hector’s one of the most boring people I know: he has no conversation apart from statistics and a very limited mind, but he suits me okay. And I suit him: he doesn’t understand a word I say. When I tell him about the dreams, all he says is, “Well, what’s so terrible about dreaming that?” It was the doctor who suggested I came to see you: doctors do that, don’t they? If they’re stumped they say it’s stress. Well, of course I’m stressed: I’ve always been stressed: I have a difficult and demanding job. But I haven’t always had the dreams. I told the doctor I was perfectly capable of analysing myself thank you very much and he said he didn’t doubt it but a therapist might save me some time, and time was money, which is true enough, and that’s the reason I’m here. At least all you do is poke about in my head and not between my legs.’
Miss Jacobs took up her notepad and wrote something in it.
‘What’s that?’ asked Morna Casey, nastily. ‘Your shopping list for tonight’s dinner? Liver? Brussels sprouts?’
‘If you’d lie down on the couch,’ said Miss Jacobs, ‘you wouldn’t see me writing and it wouldn’t bother you.’
‘It doesn’t bother me,’ said Morna Casey. ‘Sorry. Nothing you do bothers me one little bit, one way or another. And nothing will make me lie down on your couch. Reminds me of my father. My father was a doctor. He smoked eighty cigarettes a day and died of lung cancer when he was forty-three and I was seventeen. He’d cough and spit and g
asp and light another cigarette. Then he’d inhale and cough some more. I remember saying to my Uncle Desmond—he was a doctor too—“Do you think it’s sensible for Daddy to smoke so much?” and Uncle Desmond replied, “Nothing wrong with tobacco: it acts as a mild disinfectant, and has a gentle tonic effect.” I tend to believe that, in spite of all that research—paid for by the confectionery companies, I wouldn’t be surprised—about the tobacco-lung-cancer link. It’s never been properly proved. The public is easily panicked, as those of us in PR know. My father enjoyed smoking. He went out in his prime. He wouldn’t have wanted to be old.
‘But I’m not here to waste time talking about my father. When you’re dead you’re dead and there’s no point discussing you. I’m here to talk about my dream. It comes in two halves: in the first half Rider is miniaturized—about twenty inches long—and he’s clinging on by his fingertips to the inside of the toilet, and crying, so I lean on the handle and flush him away. I can’t bear to see men crying—and at seventeen you’re a man, aren’t you. That part of the dream just makes me uneasy; but then out of the toilet rise up all these kind of deformed people—with no arms or two heads or their nerves outside their skin not inside so they have a kind of flayed look—and they sort of loom over me and that’s the bit I don’t like: that’s when I wake up screaming.’
Morna Casey was silent for a little. She stretched her leg and admired her ankle.
‘I think I understand the first part of the dream,’ said Morna Casey presently. ‘I gave birth to Rider in the toilet bowl at home. I wouldn’t go to hospital. I wasn’t going to have all those strangers staring up between my legs, so when I went into labour I didn’t tell a soul, just gritted my teeth and got on with it, and it ended up with Hector having to fish the baby out of the water. Now Rider climbs about in potholes—he actually likes being spreadeagled flat against slimy rock faces, holding on with his fingertips. His best friend was killed last year in a fall but I don’t worry. I’ve never worried about Rider. What’s the point? When your number’s up your number’s up. Sometimes I do get to worry about the way I don’t worry. I don’t seem to be quite like other people in this respect. Not that I’d want to be. I guess I’m just not the maternal type. But Rider grew up perfectly okay: he was never much of a bother. He’s going to university. If he wants to go potholing that’s his affair. Do we stop for coffee and biscuits? No? Not that I’d take the biscuits but I like to be offered. Food is an essential part of PR. The laws of hospitality are very strong. No one likes to bite the hand that feeds them. That’s one of the first things you learn in my job. You should really seriously think about it, Miss Jacobs.’
Morna Casey pondered for a while: A fly buzzed round her head but thought better of it and flew off.
‘I don’t understand the second part of the dream at all,’ said Morna Casey presently. ‘Who are all these deformed idiots who come shrieking out of the toilet bowl at me? I really hate the handicapped. So do most people only they haven’t the guts to say so. If there’d been one single thing wrong with Rider, an ear out of place, oesophagus missing, the smallest thing, I’d have pushed him under, not let Hector fish him out. Don’t you like Rider as a name? The rider of storms, the rider of seas? No one knows how poetic I am: they look as I go by and whistle and say, there goes a good-looking blonde of the smart kind not the silly kind, and they have no idea at all what I’m really about. I like that. One day I’m going to give it all up and be a poet. When Hector’s old and past it I’m going to push him under a bus. I can’t abide dribbly old men. When I’m old Rider will look after me. He loves me. He only clambers about underground to make me notice him. What he wants me to say is what I’ve never said: “I worry about you, Rider.” But I don’t. How can I say it; it isn’t true.’
Miss Jacobs raised an eyebrow. Morna Casey looked at her watch.
‘I have a meeting at three thirty,’ said Morna Casey. ‘I mustn’t let this overrun. I’m on a rather important special project at the moment, you may be interested to know. I’m handling the press over the Artefax scare.’
Artefax was a new vitamin-derivative drug hailed as a wonder cure for addictions of all kinds, manufactured by Maltman and considered by some to be responsible for a recent spate of monstrous births—though Maltman’s lawyers had argued successfully in the courts that, as the outbreaks were clustered, the Chernobyl fallout must be to blame—particles of caesium entering the water table in certain areas and not in others.
‘So you’ll understand it’s all go at the moment,’ said Morna Casey. ‘We have to restore public confidence. Artefax is wonderful, and absolutely harmless—you can even take it safely through pregnancy; you’re not addicted to anything, and all it does is have a mild tonic effect. Our main PR drive is through the doctors.’
Morna Casey was silent for a little. Miss Jacobs stared out of the window.
‘Well yes,’ said Morna Casey presently. ‘I see. If I changed my job the dreams would stop. But if I changed my job I wouldn’t worry about the dreams because it wouldn’t matter about the job, would it. All the same I might consider a shift in career direction. I don’t really like working for the same outfit as Hector. It does rather cramp my style—not that he can do much about it. I do as I like. He knows how boring he is; what can he expect?’
‘There’s a good opening coming up,’ said Morna Casey, ‘or so I’ve heard on the grapevine, as head of PR at Britnuc; that’s the new nuclear energy firm. I think I’d feel quite at home with radioactivity: it’s like nicotine and Artefax—in reasonable quantities it has this gentle tonic effect. Of course in large quantities I daresay it’s different. But so’s anything. Like aspirin. One does you good, two cure your headache, twenty kill you. In the Soviet Union the spas offer radioactive mud baths. Radon-rich, they say. They’re very popular.’
‘Thank you for the consultation, Dr—sorry, Miss -Jacobs. I won’t be needing to see you again. I’m much obliged to you for your time and patience: though of course one can always do this kind of thing for oneself. If I ever give up PR I might consider setting up as a therapist. No planning permission required! A truly jolly pièce de rich gâteau, if you ask me.’
And Morna Casey adjusted her short taupe skirt over her narrow hips and walked out, legs long on high heels, and Miss Jacobs, whose hand had been hovering over her appointment book, put down her pencil.
Moon Over Minneapolis or Why She Couldn’t Stay
MISS JACOBS, YOU THOUGHT I was safely off your hands. You thought I would never return to lie like an idiot with my feet towards your window, my head towards your chair, at fifty pounds an hour, and think myself lucky. Have you changed the couch since I last lay here? I’ll swear it’s harder. It used to feel like an operating table on which I lay stretched while an operation was performed upon my brain without anaesthetic. But there was at least some padding beneath me. Now it’s more like a coffin: I lie on bare planks, unseasoned, roughly nailed together, as I suppose the coffins of the homeless, of criminals, of derelicts, to be. Those who have nobody. I am a corpse, a talking corpse. Is that what you had in mind for your patients, Miss Jacobs? What you meant when you changed the couch (not before time, I may say: the drumming heels of the desperate, the dying, had quite worn the green velveteen down the far end)? To move us yet further out of comfort into discomfort? Like one of those mean and judgemental parents who say to the child, ‘You’ve got to learn what the world is like—start now!’
No, before you say anything, my parents were neither mean nor judgemental: on the contrary, they veered towards the overgenerous and the careless. They could give nothing its proper attention. They were too busy.
A corpse which talks. Very well, I accept my own definition. That is what it feels like. The mouth continues for a time after death to open and shut, open and shut, and a thin stream of words flows out like liquid forced up by convulsing lungs. When even that fails, I will finally be quiet.
No, I did not kill myself. What happened was that my sister finally k
illed me. I always knew she would. She made me come home from Minneapolis. She didn’t have to fire a gun into the wedding marquee, or spike my champagne with cyanide; she didn’t have to utter a word of reproach; all she had to do was exist. I don’t blame her. I just hate her.
I cross my hands on my chest as if I were the corpse she made me. My breasts stick up too high for comfort and convenience. She always envied me my breasts. They are too large for corpsely grace, for true refinement. But she won’t accept that: she would rather envy me. Envy is her stock in trade. When we were thirteen we measured ourselves and compared notes. My chest was definitely half an inch larger than hers, yet we were supposed to be identical in every way. Minnie took it as yet another sign of my privilege, the unfair blessing which fate kept heaping upon my poor bowed shoulders. Personally, I longed to be flat-chested, then as now. Clothes hang better. But try telling Minnie that.
Minnie my murderer. Miss Jacobs, I swear I did not know that Tom came from Minneapolis. The Midwest, he said. A city of lakes, of spires, of flour mills old and new, of grace and contemporary art; well, sixties art—a Rauchenberg, a Lichtenstein or so in the Walker, a splatter-burst of mess contained in the cleanest white shapes available to the architectural imagination.
What, you haven’t been to the Walker, Miss Jacobs? Of course you haven’t. You have sat here in this room for ever, you will be here for ever: you are the dustbin into which we scrape all our left-overs; we, me and my siblings, your other clients. The ones you so carefully don’t let me see. Come in this door, go out that! Once I stood in the shadows of the trees on the other side of the road for a whole Tuesday and watched your back door. They came out at hourly intervals but there was no one amongst them I knew, or anyone who was of any interest to me. Such a dull collection of others, denatured because they had left so much of themselves with you, the analyst. You are going out of fashion, I hope you know that? Freud is debunked—a Viennese neurotic: Klein neglected—what is this good breast bad breast junk? Adler exposed—family order, tests tell us, has no effect whatsoever upon personality. Only Jung is in fashion, with his yin and yang, his animus and anima, all that dreamy let’s-love-one-another touchy-feely stuff. Are you listening to me? Are you asleep? Or are you knitting again? Click, click, click! You told me you were taking notes, that was what the sound was, but I think you were lying. Knitting needles click; pens don’t. Or perhaps you’re chewing gum and your dentures are loose? I would push myself up and turn my head and look but I daren’t: I might see the devil’s face, I might see you weren’t there at all, just a black cat sitting in your chair, the Dark Thing, and anyway I can’t move, I’m dead. Minnie killed me. I can see my clasped hands in front of me. White dead hands. Tom loved my hands. The polish on my right little fingernail is chipped. Fancy lying in a coffin with a chipped nail. I thought they were supposed to see to that sort of thing.
