by Fay Weldon
“You haven’t even decanted this stuff, Angelica,” complained Anthea, and winced at a smeary glass. Since her hands were covered with mud and some kind of rural slime, Angelica did not take this seriously.
Lady Rice pointed out politely that since Edwin was married to her, he could hardly marry Anthea; that she, Lady Rice, knew well enough how to run her own life, and that the matter of the artist-mistress—if Anthea was referring to Susan—was nothing but mischievous rumor; that she, Lady Rice, trusted Edwin with her life; that she had to get back to her work, and re-print all the labels Anthea had destroyed, and would Anthea please leave and come back when she was sober.
Anthea said, “My God, Edwin’s right. You simply do not know how to behave. This is the end.”
Anthea left, but not before saying at least Edwin didn’t intend to father children outside the family. He had taken the Adulteress to be aborted at the time she’d had domestic trouble and was staying up at Rice Court. Just as well because stray babies could lead to nasty wars of succession.
“I tried to tell you,” said Jelly, wearily. “Now don’t you go to pieces on me.”
“Just as well there was an abortion,” said another voice, consolingly. “Think of it like that.”
Lady Rice went back to the office and wept into her computer. Still Edwin did not return.
“I hope you weren’t rude to her,” said Mrs. MacArthur. “It isn’t wise to queer your pitch with people like that. They’re the ones with the real power.”
Lady Rice got in her little car—a runabout fit for country roads; Edwin kept the Mercedes and the Range Rover for himself—and Went down to Railway Cottage. It seemed empty. The door, usually wide open and inviting, was locked. Angelica looked in the windows and saw that everything was neat, tidy and, as usual, prettily arranged. But there were no flowers in the vases. They stood drained, polished and upside down on the sill.
Lady Rice stood indecisively in the pretty English country garden. Andrew Nellor, the retired evangelist who lived in the cottage next door to Susan, in neurotic twitchiness and rumbling disapproval of everything and everyone, came up Susan’s path. He was weeping. His trousers were old, and, as were Lambert’s from time to time, held up with string. His little wife looked anxiously out from the top window. She was well-kept and pretty, like Susan’s garden.
“She’s gone,” said Andrew Nellor. “Susan’s gone. She kissed me and said she loved me, she wouldn’t forget me, and she left. I always loved her. God forgive me, I lusted after her. It was her body I wanted. She had no soul. I prayed, my wife prayed, but the lust wouldn’t go away. Such a strong, vibrant person. She had no shame: she was proud of her body. She didn’t mind what I saw, what my wife saw. She’d undress with the light on, she’d lie sunbathing naked in the garden. She saw nothing wrong with nudity. She wanted to give me pleasure. I think in her heart she loved me, wanted me. I painted her, secretly. My wife didn’t understand.
She’d cut her dead in the street. I’m sure that’s what drove Susan away. I try to forgive my wife, but I can’t. I shall hang the painting in my study, I don’t care what she says.”
“Who exactly did Susan leave with?” asked Lady Rice. “I’m sure she didn’t leave alone.”
“With the painter Alan Adliss,” said Andrew Nellor. “Susan loved me but I had nothing to offer her. I’m not rich and famous as he is.
All the same, nobody will ever understand Susan as I did. She would have been happy with me.”
“Fine about the love,” said Angelica. “Pity about the wife. Did she take the kids with her or did she ditch them?”
“She told me she was taking Roland to his father. He needed discipline.”
Lady Rice went down to the surgery, which Rosamund Plaidy now opened only twice a week for four hours only. It was out-of-hours: the surgery was closed: when was it ever not? Lambert and little Roland sat upon the stone wall opposite. Little Roland was snivelling. “I want my mummy,” he sing-sang. He was not an appealing child. The wail betokened petulance, not major grief, but what did Lady Rice know? She had no children of her own.
“Just be glad,” said Jelly White, who was in a bad, bad mood, “that the bitch has left town. And with someone else’s husband, not yours. Time you woke up, Lady Rice. You’re beginning to be a bore.”
“Go fuck yourself,” said a voice.
“Chance would be a fine thing,” said Jelly White, and there was a burble of hoots and jeers behind the voice which made Lady Rice’s hair stand on end. Whose were they?
“Rosamund’s thrown me out,” Lambert said to Lady Rice. “She went away with the kids. She locked me out when Susan dumped Roland on me. I haven’t got a key. And Roland’s wet his pants and is smelling.”
“Then break the door down,” said Lady Rice. “I don’t feel like doing that,” said Lambert, as if what a man felt like doing and what he did were one and the same thing. He was in no fit state to be left with a child. He, like Andrew Nellor, was unwashed and unshaven. “I haven’t been feeling too good lately,” Lambert said. “I’ve kept to my bed a lot. I don’t blame Rosamund, I blame myself. You just don’t know, do you,” he said, “when first you fuck your neighbor’s wife, the kind of thing that can happen. She took Serena round to Clive and Natalie’s, and left her there. She says Clive’s Serena’s father. I expect Natalie’s hysterical again.”
Lady Rice took Lambert and Roland home, since there seemed nowhere else for them to go. Edwin was still out. That was something.
Lady Rice put both Lambert and Roland to bed in the spare room at the top of the house and then slipped in beside them. She did this to keep them warm, no more, and provide them, and indeed herself, with some human comfort. And she was so tired. Little Roland dived down to the bottom of the bed, to be further from these suddenly and unaccountably close adults. Lady Rice was fully clothed. So was Lambert. The night was cold; the spare room, the one the chimney had fallen through in better days, was at the top of the house, where the heating, even though newly replaced, never quite reached.
“Where’s Edwin?” asked Lambert, shivering beneath the bedclothes, only vaguely aware of his surroundings, but trying to be polite. His face was flushed and unhealthy against white linen: yellow beard springing amongst pimples. Upset made him spotty, as if he were an adolescent.
“I don’t know,” said Lady Rice, “but at least Susan is with Alan Adliss. I used to worry about Edwin and Susan.”
“No need,” said Lambert. “Susan never could get Edwin. She tried, but she failed. She got all the men in the neighborhood except Edwin; and he was the one she really wanted, because of the title, because of this house, because he stood out against her. She never liked you, Angelica, but she admired you. She didn’t understand the power you had over Edwin.”
“I love him,” said Lady Rice, as if this explained everything. Then she heard Edwin clanking and calling about the house. She was too proud to get out of bed, and too tired and cold besides, and when Edwin burst in, kicking and shouting—behaving as if the door was locked when of course it wasn’t: it was just the ancient cross latch which worked the way you wouldn’t expect, as he ought to very well know—and there she was in bed with Lambert, albeit with so many clothes on she could not reasonably be supposed to be sexually motivated. She was just, like Lambert, tired, cold and emotionally strung-out. But if Edwin assumed she was there with erotic intent, Lady Rice was not going to produce little Roland from under the bedclothes as chaperon: why should she, why would she?
“Whore, bitch, slut,” shouted Edwin, yanking Lady Rice out of bed, hitting her, but leaving Lambert alone, as is often the habit of men who discover their wives with other men. They beat the woman but respect their rival, who after all has defeated them.
Edwin dragged Lady Rice down the stairs, sometimes by her hair, sometimes by an arm or a leg. She lost some clothing on the way. She hit her hand frequently on step and stone. Mrs. MacArthur stood at the bottom of the stairs and watched, aghast. “Help me,” cri
ed Lady Rice, but Mrs. MacArthur did not. She had been at Rice Court when Angelica came and she sure as hell would be there when Angelica left.
“But I’m Angelica,” Angelica cried to her husband. “Don’t do this to me,” but he wasn’t listening.
Edwin pushed his wife out of the side door and locked it. She saw the little red security lights shining in the ancient stone walls.
“Told you so!” said Jelly. “But you wouldn’t listen.”
“Why didn’t someone tell me what was going on?” wailed
Angelica.
“I did my best,” moaned Lady Rice.
“I’ve lost fucking handfuls of hair,” complained someone else unidentifiable.
Edwin’s wife lay on the ground outside Rice Court and moaned and groaned, but no help came. She thought she might die of cold and exhaustion.
“Get up,” said Jelly.
“What’s the difference if I’m up or down?” said Lady Rice. “I’d rather be dead, anyway.”
“Well, I wouldn’t,” said Angelica. “So get up and start walking.”
“Where do I go?” asked Lady Rice.
“To Mum’s,” said Jelly. “Where else?”
Edwin’s wife walked for an hour and reached her mother’s house. Lavender Hatherley opened the door, wearing an apron she’d been wearing as long as Angelica could remember. Behind was a glimpse of familiar shapes and colors, but a new, strange man in her father’s armchair.
“Quite the stranger!” said Lavender Hatherley, with a touch of anger in the voice, but she took her errant daughter in, washed her, warmed her, fed her and put her to bed as if she were six.
News got round Barley that Lady Rice had left her husband and gone to her mother. She’d been discovered in bed with Lambert Plaidy, and Rosamund had walked out on Lambert as a result, taking the children. Lady Rice’s name was mud, but what could be expected from a rock-star? Angelica White should have accepted the position God had given her in the world: stayed a girl from the estate, daughter of the school choirmaster, and married a local boy. But like mother like daughter—think how Lavender White had behaved!
Barley mourned the loss of Susan, and saw merit in the fact that she’d gone back to her first husband, her one true love. They blamed Lady Rice for Susan’s departure: news of the dinner party had got round, and it was thought that Lady Rice and Natalie had conspired to bring about Susan’s humiliation and hurl lobster soup in her face. It was as if blame and Susan were of the same magnetic pole: you could bring them together, think you had closed the gap, then at the last moment they’d veer suddenly away. By all the laws of nature they were unable to meet.
And that was the end of that.
(17)
Angelica Barred from Home
ANGELICA SIMPLY DOESN’T KNOW what to do.
The doors of Rice Court are locked against her. She has not been allowed in to collect even her personal belongings. Any security guard who might recognize the former lady of the house and pity her has been replaced. Those who now man the gates have been shown photographs and been told she is a madwoman, and when she appears weeping and distraught, to beat upon the doors or batter her hands upon the uniforms of their strong breasts, they can see that she is indeed mad. They catch her small wrists in their big hands and call for police and ambulance to restrain and help her, but by the time the authorities turn up she has always gone.
A suitcase of her clothes, her toothbrush, and so forth, turns up at her mother’s house, dropped off by Robert Jellico, to demonstrate that she has no ally in him.
“Where’s her eight hundred thousand pounds?” Lavender Hatherley calls after him, and she could swear he replied, “What eight thousand pounds?” but he was revving his Range Rover at the time to get away as fast as he could, and Lavender cannot be sure.
Sir Edwin will not receive his wife’s telephone calls. Lambert Plaidy has gone to Australia with Roland. Rosamund has given up her medical practice altogether. Even Natalie shuts the door in Angelica’s face; she has Serena to look after now. Natalie is bringing her up as part of her own family. She wants to put the past behind her and Lady Rice is part of that past. The greengrocer gives Angelica the smallest, meanest apples. Ventura Lady Cowarth receives her, but in the kitchen. Lord Cowarth is ill in bed with suppurating mouth ulcers, but that is probably just a story. Lady Rice is out, out, out. Ventura tells Lady Rice she will be happier out of Barley altogether, and recommends a London divorce solicitor, one Barney Evans.
“But I don’t want to be divorced,” cries Lady Rice. “I want to be back home with Edwin and happy again. I can’t bear him thinking badly of me.”
“Then you shouldn’t have been such a silly girl,” says Ventura.
“Her back’s still bad,” says Jelly. “You can see when she moves.”
“Good,” says Angelica.
Angelica is not sure whether or not she wants a divorce: she knows she needs money. She has none. She goes to the bank and finds the joint-account closed. One of her credit cards still works, however. Her friends from the old days are out of sympathy with her. Music is all rap and funk and acid house, and the drugs have changed. She is alone. She can’t stay home with her mother; Mary Hatherley, once her friend, now her step-sister, sleeps in her bed and Angelica is left with the sofa.
She takes her story and her plight to Barney Evans. He is a large, fleshy man with a double chin and a benign and bumbling air. He wears a dusty suit, a pink shirt and a pinky-yellow tie.
“What does that remind you of?” asks Angelica.
“The lobster soup the night of the dinner party,” says Lady
Rice.
“So it does,” says Angelica. “When your memories are strong enough, I have them too.”
“We’d better pay attention,” says Jelly. “This is important.” In real adversity they are quite companionable.
“Are you sure you’re telling me the truth?” Barney Evans is asking her. “It may be hard for a court to take your story at face-value. Fully clothed, you say?”
“Yes,” says Angelica. “You have witnesses?”
“No,” says Angelica. “By the time Mrs. MacArthur saw me I had hardly any clothes on at all. He’d ripped them from me.”
“And you walked to your mother’s in that state?”
“Yes. There was a child in the bed, too.” Barney Evans raises his eyebrows.
“The quieter we are about that one the better,” he says. “You know how people’s minds work these days.”
“We were all just keeping warm,” she says. Barney Evans stares at her.
“You make my life difficult if you don’t tell me the truth,” he says. “However, we will work with what we have. If you do decide to divorce, it seems unlikely that you have any claim on the matrimonial home or contents,” says Barney Evans, “since both are owned by the Rice Estate. As for alimony, the Court may well take the view that you are young and healthy and have earned very well in the past, and can earn again; and will award you very little.”
“What about my £832,000? The money I brought to the marriage?”
“But you seem to have no receipts, no documents.”
“I handed the cash over to Robert Jellico. He was very grateful. He’ll tell you. He’s a trustworthy man, everyone knows that. It will be in his books somewhere.”
“The Rice Estate has creative accountants: sometimes things show up in their books, sometimes they don’t. Depends what they want to happen. And it is Robert Jellico’s job to appear trustworthy.” Barney Evans smiled at Lady Angelica Rice.
“Things don’t look too good, do they?” remarks Jelly.
“No,” reply Angelica and Lady Rice together.
“I’m sorry,” says Lady Rice. “I haven’t managed any of this very well.”
“You didn’t even get any good fucks either,” says the so far unidentified voice, querulously.
“Never mind,” says Barney Evans. “Cheer up! I’ll look after you. I’ll take my
chances with your fees. I daresay you’ll end up with a penny or two. I’m not pressuring you, but it might be a good idea to start proceedings before your husband does. The one who initiates the divorce normally has the Court’s sympathy.”
“Edwin would never divorce me,” says Lady Rice. “All this is just a temporary upset.”
Barney Evans raised his bushy grey eyebrows.
And here ends Jelly’s formal and official account of how Angelica Lamb split, and took her life into her own hands.
Part Three
A Perforated House
(1)
Sir Edwin Begins Divorce Proceedings
ANGERED BY RECEIVING A divorce petition from Sir Edwin stuffed full of malicious and lying allegations, from lesbianism to bestiality, bad cooking to adultery, Angelica booked into The Claremont, using the credit card Sir Edwin’s advisors had forgotten to cancel.
On her way to the hotel Angelica stopped at Fenwicks, the Bond Street department store, and there bought suede leather thigh boots, open mesh stockings, a small silver skirt, a white singlet and a leather jacket. She charged these to her card. She changed out of her depressed and dowdy country clothes in the powder room, and would have surely dumped the full, long floral skirt, chunky sweater and sensible laced and muddy shoes behind, but Lady Rice said that would be a wicked waste of money and insisted on stuffing the discarded garments into bags and carrying them about with her.
Lady Rice was made nervous by Angelica’s general desire to stride free, shove what she needed in a pocket and leave her purse at home. On the way out of the store, Jelly stopped Angelica in her confident lope and made her buy knee-length skirts, white blouses, cashmere sweaters and plain little-heeled shoes, and a collection of wigs. Angelica explained to the salesgirl, who regarded the kind of clothes she was required to sell with obvious distaste, that these were for her sister, who was acting the part of an office worker in a TV commercial. “No-one,” said Angelica, “would be seen dead in these—in real life.”
