Mrs Caliban and other stories

by Rachel Ingalls

  ‘The soul I know about. Professor Dexter was very interested in that. He said it was the reason why he chose to study science.’

  ‘I knew a girl once,’ Dorothy said, ‘who was stolen by a monkey when she was a baby. Dull girl. That was her one big moment of drama, before she was old enough to appreciate it. Her mother was in the hospital in Africa with her, a newborn baby, and the window was open. Opposite the window was a big tree, and the tree was full of monkeys climbing up and down the branches. Suddenly one of the monkeys came in through the window, picked up the baby, and ran out again into the tree. It sat on a branch, rocking the baby and looking back at the women all screaming in their beds. Her mother was frantic, of course. I never learned how they managed to get her back.’

  ‘They were frightened the monkey would take her away and bring her up like a monkey?’

  ‘They were probably scared it would drop her. Young monkeys automatically cling to their mother’s fur. It might have slung the baby round its neck and jumped for a branch, thinking the baby would grab on tight. Anyway, they must have gotten her back somehow, because she was there to tell the story. She did tell me, too, only I’d forgotten till just now. She seemed to think it had been such an amazing event, but that presupposes a belief that she was so much better than a monkey. And who’s to say? To herself, of course, but that isn’t a test of anything, ever, except to your own self. It’s like saying people don’t have souls, when all you mean is you’re not interested.’

  They went swimming together and made love on the beach. Dorothy still felt like a teenager. At the time when her hope and youth and adventurousness had left her, she had believed herself cheated of those early years when nothing had happened to her, although it might have. Later still, she realized that if she had made an effort, she herself could have made things happen. But now it didn’t matter. Here she was.

  They dried themselves off, drove around for a while, and walked through some of their favourite gardens in bare feet. Dorothy was less nervous than the first time they had gone out, but still felt a sense of possible danger and an edginess, which she was beginning to enjoy. She skipped and danced after Larry, as with his long legs he went loping down the length of the flowerbeds. She giggled with nerves.

  They found a back garden where there was a goldfish pond. The house next door had a bamboo grove, in the middle of which garden chairs and couches were set out. Dorothy stretched out on the plump cushions of a sofa. Larry sat next to her at the foot. She looked up at the stars. It was a warm night.

  ‘I don’t know how they’d get all this in if it rained,’ she said. ‘Maybe they just grab the pillows and let the frames get wet.’

  Larry asked her about the stars, which she didn’t know much about. He had seen a television programme about them. They both looked up for a long time in silence. A breeze rustled in the bamboo.

  He said, ‘They are real, aren’t they? Not just pictures?’

  ‘Of course they’re real.’

  ‘How do you know? It’s one of the things I find hard to understand; so many things are pictures. You watch pictures, but then you see the thing, and it’s a picture, too.’

  ‘Well, I can’t prove they’re real, but they’re so far away that it would take millions of years to get to them.’

  ‘Maybe not. Maybe it only looks like that. It could be just a reflection.’

  ‘I don’t know enough about it to explain it. You should talk to an astronomer. Doesn’t the TV programme tell you?’

  ‘Maybe they’re lying.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘They lie about lots of things. Remember the cornflakes.’ The cornflakes, kept for Fred, who sometimes liked them for breakfast, had made Larry throw up. While Dorothy had cleaned up after him, he had taken a bit out of the box and said he preferred the box to the stuff inside it.

  She laughed. They put their arms around each other. He asked, ‘Do you do this with Fred?’

  ‘Not for a long time now. Nearly two years. We used to. Then all the other business started. You know, what I told you about. And after a while, everything had changed.’

  *

  The next morning Larry was standing in the living-room, watching Dorothy vacuum the rug and taking an occasional turn with the nozzle, when the doorbell rang.

  Dorothy switched off the machine and raised her head. Suddenly she remembered.

  ‘Mr Mendoza. Quick, get back into your room and lock the door.’

  Larry fled towards the kitchen in large, easy leaps. Dorothy waited a few seconds, then opened the door.

  Mr Mendoza stood on the path, looking to the side, as though he couldn’t make up his mind whether to ring again or go away. Dorothy smiled.

  ‘Thank you for the note. I’m sorry I wasn’t in. Shall we go through the list now?’

  Mr Mendoza smiled back and dipped his head. He was a quiet, charming man, slow in all his movements and with a facial expression of relaxed steadiness. Dorothy had liked him from the beginning. He had come to work about a year after Bingo was run over, and it had been a help to be with someone and not to be expected either to make conversation or to respond to it. It was still like that. She knew a little about his family, but when they talked, it was usually about plants and flowers, and they still called each other by their last names, like people of her grandmother’s generation. At some point, just as she had thought of suggesting that they drop the formality, she had realized that he took it as a sign of respect.

  Mr Mendoza gestured towards the far corner of the garden, up against the fence. He touched the brim of his hat and said something about the dangers of insecticide. Dorothy nodded. One of the reasons why Mr Mendoza was going through a period of great popularity was that in addition to being honest, sober, hardworking and punctual, he avoided chemicals. And one of the reasons why he remained loyal to Dorothy when other people were clamouring for his expert care and probably offering him huge salaries, was that she listened to what he said, was interested in it, deferred to his judgement and asked his opinion about things she had read or heard. Nor did she forget what he told her. She was a good gardener herself now, because he had been her teacher.

  They discussed vegetables and compost, Dorothy asked if he’d like to come in for a cup of coffee, but he regretted that he had to go see Mrs Henderson. She said that she understood the regret: she had once met Mrs Henderson. Mr Mendoza chuckled quietly. He raised his hand in a lazy wave as he went down the path.

  She looked in on Larry, finished the vacuuming with him, and watched a television programme. He liked to have her with him to explain things. On some days when she came home from shopping, he would ask one question after another. The only programme he enjoyed as entertainment rather than information was one peopled by puppets. The puppet she liked best was the wild one with all the teeth; his favourite was the saxophone player.

  One day she had come home to find him doing an imitation of something. ‘What is it?’ he asked her, but she couldn’t understand what he was doing: punching, stalking, listening, fighting, twitching, acting all at once. He wouldn’t tell her what it was supposed to be. It was the first question she had failed to explain since her collapse over the subject of industry and progress. She had started out with the introduction of agriculture, the coming of industry, the exploitation of women, the fact that it all started in the home where there was no choice, the idea that eventually robots and machines would release people to live a life of leisure and explore their own personalities; but, just before she reached that point, she forgot how to wind it up. A friend of Estelle had once mapped it out for her so that it all sounded so clear, but now she couldn’t remember just how it went. Even what she could recall didn’t seem to make so much sense any more. In fact, it was sort of a mess and impossible to explain. She had stopped, confused, and added, ‘But what people really want is to be happy.’

  She had a cup of coffee and made Larry an early lunch. As she was drying her hands on a paper towel, the phone rang. Estelle w
as at the other end with a breathless story of how Sandra had the car and could Dorothy bring hers instead.

  ‘Yes, sure. See you soon‚’ Dorothy said, and hung up. She talked about Estelle, and said that Estelle was the one person she would like Larry to meet, but that she just couldn’t take the chance.

  ‘Better not‚’ he agreed, as he sliced an avocado into the salad bowl. ‘We need some more of these.’

  On the way to Estelle’s house, she bought another large bag of avocados. The man in the grocery store said, ‘Giving a party?’ and she nodded. They weren’t cheap either. In a little while, Larry’s presence would begin to show on the food bills after all. Perhaps, if she and Larry hadn’t become lovers straight away, she would have had an ally. Fred would have been the natural person to turn to for help. She might have been able to tell him about Larry. She thought about it, and decided that maybe even now it wasn’t too late.

  Estelle came to the door all dressed up. Dorothy said, ‘Est-elle, are they going to be filming the audience?’

  ‘It’s for my ego, dear. Drive on. I’m sorry about the mix-up with the arrangements. We’re going to have to go in your car all the way, I’m afraid. Sandra’s getting impossible about how much she needs the car.’

  ‘How about Stan and Charlie – think they might be there?’

  ‘If it was sportscars, maybe. Not dresses.’

  The day was beginning to warm up. It was going to be like a summer day. Estelle put on a pair of dark glasses against the glare. Dorothy hummed as she drove.

  Out at the studios, the parking was crowded even though they were early, but inside the buildings there was room to move. Dorothy was looking at the other people, most of them women, who wandered in small groups from one large glass case to another. And so it was that her attention was not really fixed on any one object when suddenly something seemed to loom in front of her. Like an animal that was showier than the peacock, and raised up as if riding in state from the safety of its glass box, a dress displayed itself to her. It was tiered, arranged in lacy scallops, pleated folds, glittering swags, and appeared to be made of solid gold. Inside, presumably helping to hold it upright, stood a woman-shaped white china dummy. But the dummy was nothing; the dress was everything. There had been no face painted on the blank head, but a powdered wig had been placed on top.

  Estelle said, ‘No wonder they had a revolution, huh? Think of the cost of that thing. And this one’s only a copy.’

  ‘It must have kept a lot of people in work.’

  ‘Come on. Wouldn’t you rather be the one to wear it than the one to make it?’

  ‘Oh, sure. I didn’t mean that. Anyway, I read somewhere that these cost almost as much as the originals would have. They are amazing, aren’t they? It changes your whole idea of what a dress should be for. It would have been like walking around in your own little silk house.’

  ‘Nothing below the waist, that was the idea. Women were such pure creatures. From the waist down, they were just a flow of brocade. And they didn’t wear underwear, either.’

  ‘It must have been cold. Especially without central heating. They must have worn something in the winter.’

  ‘I can’t imagine living in a different time,’ Estelle said. ‘Not in the future, and certainly not in the past. Can you?’

  ‘I’ll tell you something even harder to imagine,’ Dorothy said, thinking about Larry. ‘Can you think what it would be like to live in a different world?’

  ‘Like Bel-Air, you mean?’

  ‘No, not this world. A different one.’

  ‘In the future?’

  ‘Any time. Like science fiction. Where the people look sort of like you, but not quite the same.’

  Estelle laughed. ‘Little green men?’

  ‘Big green men‚’ Dorothy said. She caught sight of two more dresses in their glass cases: one white, like a wedding cake, the other black. She thought suddenly of the days when gentlemen and ladies assembled in such clothes to dance the minuet, and how Larry might look among such a company; large, dark-green and handsome, bowing to a woman in a layered dress and dancing with a strong, springy step.

  ‘My God,’ Estelle whispered, ‘there’s Charlie. And look what he’s got with him. A sixteen-year-old red-head.’

  ‘Where?’

  Estelle pointed the pair out to Dorothy, and led her behind the black dress. Charlie and the girl were moving away, their backs towards the two women.

  Dorothy said, ‘I think they’re heading for the exit.’

  ‘The bastard.’

  ‘How do you know? Maybe it’s his daughter.’

  ‘How many girls like that do you know who hold hands with their fathers in public and look goo-goo-eyed at them?’

  ‘I think you’re probably right.’

  ‘I bet he’s told her he’s a producer. I wouldn’t put it past him. I wouldn’t put it past any of them.’

  ‘But now you’re free to do the same thing. Never mind. I’m sorry, Estelle. It isn’t nice, is it?’

  They moved on to a grey dress covered in sparkling jewels.

  ‘Well, it’s a bit of a kick in the teeth,’ Estelle said. ‘If only I’d played around like that when I was young.’

  ‘And you’d have gotten impotent men in their fifties wanting to get back at their wives and doing it through you. You had all that time in highschool with the boys.’

  ‘I bitterly resent all that wasted time. And what I resent most of all is that the ones I did get, never, never looked like the Greek statues.’

  ‘The Greek-statue types may have been too busy going out with other boys to notice you.’

  ‘In a way. They were usually just too busy playing football and getting drunk. They didn’t bother much about any of us.’

  ‘Look at this.’ Dorothy stopped in front of an embroidered jacket. ‘I thought this was going to be just the dresses.’

  ‘No, all the costumes. I wonder if they’re going to sell some of them off, like that sale last month.’

  ‘Thinking of buying one?’

  ‘Mmm.’ Estelle moved to a case containing another white dress. This one looked as though it had been sprinkled with shimmering dots of some kind, little twinkling bits of jewels. The past months’ sales of dresses out of the studio wardrobes had included evening gowns that had been designed in the thirties and forties and could still be worn nowadays, but these – even at a costume party, they would stand out.

  ‘Estelle, you aren’t serious?’

  ‘It would be a hell of a thing to own, wouldn’t it?’

  ‘But where would you wear it? In the kitchen while you were opening the cat food?’

  ‘Dotty, sometimes you are just so unromantic, I can’t understand it. If we all only owned the things we needed! You don’t understand the nature of desire.’

  ‘I do‚’ Dorothy said. ‘I do now. But I wasn’t talking about that. I was talking about how you’d look sort of sitting somewhere eating a sandwich in a dress like a box. In the first place, how would you sit down?’

  ‘Slowly‚’ Estelle said. ‘Let’s see what they’re giving us to eat.’

  They had just finished two rounds of sandwiches and a cup of coffee, and were going back to get a few more sandwiches, when a man in front of them who was trying to go in the opposite direction, said, ‘Hi, Estelle.’

  ‘Oh, hi‚’ she answered. They passed each other. As Dorothy reached the table, Estelle turned and looked backwards. She said, ‘Let’s go.’

  ‘You don’t want the sandwiches?’

  ‘Oh, all right.’ Estelle grabbed some of the sandwiches, put them into a paper napkin, and moved down the table. ‘That was Stan,’ she said.

  ‘Oh. He looks nice.’

  ‘And so did the woman he was with. Jesus, both of them in the same afternoon. Isn’t there anything else going on in town but they’ve got to bring them here?’

  When they were sitting in the car again, Dorothy turned the key and said, ‘But they still don’t know about e
ach other, do they? And now you wouldn’t have to feel guilty about that, if you ever did. And you don’t know what relationship they have with those women.’

  ‘Hah!’

  ‘Anyway, they keep going out with you. And they wouldn’t if they didn’t like you.’

  ‘Maybe I’m just Tuesday or Friday, like handkerchiefs, or those sets of underpants with the days of the week sewn on them.’

  ‘Not really?’

  ‘A girl I went to school with had a set.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘She told me. As a matter of fact, she showed me. I was so impressed. She said the writing was in a different colour for each day. She’d been given them for her birthday.’

  Dorothy was happy as she drove along the highway under the blue sky. She thought about Larry. She hummed again.

  Estelle said, ‘I feel pretty terrible.’

  They had coffee at Estelle’s house. Dorothy tried to comfort her, but Estelle was more interested in thinking up some plan of revenge.

  ‘I suppose‚’ Dorothy said, without thinking, ‘you could hire somebody out of central casting and pretend he was your latest.’

  ‘That’s an idea.’

  ‘I was joking. And wouldn’t that drive them away?’

  ‘I don’t think so. I’ve told you already, they want to get married. Hah! Get married to me, and go out with their fancy-pants girlfriends.’

  Dorothy clicked her tongue and shook her head. She looked over the edge of her coffee cup and said that, on the other hand, Estelle had been two-timing them both from the beginning, hadn’t she?

  ‘Oh, that’s different.’

  ‘Oh, uh-huh. How’s it different?’

  ‘That’s just like insurance, that’s all. In case one of them quit on me. I wasn’t the one who kept asking to get married. That’s what makes it so horrible. They’ve got to have somebody to do all their domestic drudgery full-time, and substitutes when the fancy one is out with somebody better.’

  ‘Maybe it would make you feel better to find a third one for a while.’

  ‘Maybe it would make me feel better to have a drink. Want one?’