by Fay Weldon
No. 23 was always a bit dank and dreary, though I’d done my best by putting in damp courses and having the square of a back garden landscaped by a genius young designer, who removed all the nasty, worn-out old Victorian soil (my brothers would piss out the back window when the toilet was occupied, events which I remembered all too well) and replaced it with much-needed hygienic and sterilised earth.
All this was very good for property prices in Standard Road, and you would have thought people would have been grateful up and down the street, but no, it was just more of the ‘who does she think she is?’ jibes, and once a turd came through the new letterbox. But my activities must have stirred up the Gods because they came to my rescue.
Intervention By The Gods
A new For Sale sign went up outside No. 24. Activity begets activity, activity begets profit. The asking price went up £5,000 to reflect the comparative grandeur of its newly painted neighbour; the For Sale sign itself seemed rooted more firmly in the earth. (The way to sell a flagging lipstick brand is to double the price, not halve it. It’s the magic that sells, not the coloured grease itself.) And it was when the For Sale sign went up that I stopped the Cheyne Walk negotiations – though that decision still nags away at me. £900,000 then, £9,000,000 now! (Surely I could have rented out No. 23?) But so many of our yesterdays are littered with houses we should have bought but didn’t! Lamentation is to no avail. The moving finger writes… etc.
When the new For Sale board stood straight and upright over No. 24 I had the strangest, strongest pricking of the thumbs feeling. ‘By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes’, though these days ‘wicked’ is used for something really good as well as really bad. One just can’t tell which it’s going to be, just that something remarkable is about to happen in one’s life.
And by this odd spooky breathless kind of understanding, this pricking of the thumbs, I understood that I was not intended for Cheyne Walk, it would be dangerous to proceed. So I didn’t. I know it sounds nonsense but I’m like that. I do get these kind of prophetic gut feelings from time to time; it’s a trembling feeling, an inner excitement, and a conviction that something life-changing is about to happen. And not of one’s own volition, which is why it’s so spooky.
It’s different from the feeling I get when Mercury, my ruling planet, goes retrograde. It happens two or three times a year – a special kind of irritated, fed-up mood, a shadow that passes over one’s normal spirits and good cheer. I run to Google to look it up, and yes, Mercury’s gone retrograde – at least that’s what it looks like from Earth, though it’s really an optical illusion – and you know that for the next few weeks nothing is going to go right: the Hellenic God Hermes, messenger of the Gods, known in Rome as Mercury, the God of communication, is up to his tricks, good and bad. Thieves flourish, con-men succeed, gangs rejoice, crime reaches new heights, cheques bounce, messages go astray, friends take offence, contracts don’t get signed, shows are cancelled, emails simply vanish. At least I am forewarned, and take extra care while it’s going on and then the day comes and suddenly Mercury is back to his customary cheerful self again, and communication is back to normal.
The God Mercury is presented as a handsome teenager in the Greek statues, an intern, with winged feet for speed, and a moody, slightly untrustworthy look. I don’t see why we insist on having one God – having a whole pantheon makes more sense to me. The kind of people you meet around but more so – not unlike the celebrities we have today, celebrated for just being them, not for anything they’ve done or achieved.
Anyway, Mercury went retrograde just after the new For Sale sign went up, so nothing happened for a month or two – there was the normal retrograde delay in getting papers together, I suppose; there was quite a housing glut at the time so demand was slow. No. 24 was a cheap house in a cheap area in an unfortunately named road – it would have done better as Maple Drive or Milton Road – anything but ‘Standard’, which denied any possible peculiarity – and it had suffered the V-1 bomb damage in the war. I remember cowering in my bed as a four-year-old and hoping the engine wouldn’t cut out, but it did. One of one’s first major disappointments. Another one being that while I was dithering about whether or not to buy the Cheyne Walk property someone else snapped it up. I could have kicked myself, and my thumbs altogether stopped pricking.
But then all of a sudden the Smithsons, or rather Clive Smithson and Xandra Barker – they were not yet married – were standing outside on the pavement looking up at the house. The estate agent was making a bad job of fake enthusiasm. He was blasé and bored and evidently thought they were wasting his time. Mercury in a sulk. And me, my thumbs were pricking like billy oh again.
Not just one but two Tar Babies had entered my life – Clive and Xandra. I had stooped out of care and concern to rescue the young couple from the prickly bush and got entangled, and years later I still am. And the two became three, and now there’s Rozzie, Tar Baby par excellence.
The Wheels Of Fate
I was wheeling my bike out of No. 23 when I saw this little huddle on the pavement under the For Sale sign. The woman seemed perfectly normal, if you disregarded the ring through her nose – young, neither plain nor pretty, and sensibly dressed, as if she had better things to do than worry about how she looked. The nose looked a little swollen and red and my guess was that she’d been having a hard time trying to remove the ring before the viewing appointment and had failed. I’m a jeans and T-shirt kind of person but I do notice these things.
The man was a different matter, tall and exceptionally good-looking in a matinée idol kind of way. Mid-twenties, expensive clothes and tailored black leather jacket – one could sense the muscles as he moved – and the latest Nikes in the very latest style on his feet. He moved with a grace you seldom see in men. ‘How did she ever manage to catch him?’ I remember thinking. Thick dark hair and amazingly blue eyes with long black eyelashes – a young Terence Stamp. And then it struck me.
I felt the shock of recognition without realising quite what I was recognising – the shocking blue eyes, the thick fringe of eyelashes, the perfect nose and the lovely lips. It had been a long time ago. And hadn’t he kept his eyes closed while I was busy stealing his virginity, and modestly lowered afterwards? This person did not seem in the least modest: rather, he looked the sort to throw his weight about. No, this was probably not the same person at all. My defensive paranoid personality disorder was showing again. I stopped my bike on the edge of the pavement and fiddled around with my wicker basket and listened and looked.
My thumbs were pricking. I was breathless: a kind of catch in the throat but not unpleasant. It wasn’t a something-in-the-future feeling either, it was right here in front of me. A Goddess, or even a God, swooping down amongst mortals to reward or punish. You felt it in the disturbance of the air as somehow it was being sucked from your lungs. Immensely exciting but also dangerous – one never knows quite how the Gods will react to things. Or even what has drawn them in. They’re whimsical.
‘It’s not just a house, it feels like a home,’ Xandra was enthusing. I could see she was really quite cute, large soft blue eyes, a retroussé nose and an appealing, charming manner. Pity about the nose: it gave her a frivolous air when actually she was a rather serious, almost humourless person. ‘There’s even a garden. We could live here, start over, get married and raise our family here. It’s cheap and it’s just right. Our darling little home! I feel it in my bones. Oh, Clive, do let’s!’
So his name was Clive. Modest stripling lads turned into men. He was indeed the same person as the boy whose virginity I’d taken. I was right. That raised a practical worry. Had I broken some law? Girls were protected by age of consent law: but boys? I realised I had no idea. It had hardly seemed relevant at the time.
But then ‘It’s a bit dark and damp and terracy and the rooms are too small’ came from the beautifully curved, sensuous lips in a voice that was risible. It was a hoarse, broken, Miss Piggy squeak which c
ame and went, so unlike anything one would have expected that all first impressions had to be spiked. I was wrong. He might be called Clive but never, ever my Clive. I was having to stop myself giggling. The estate agent was having difficulty keeping his face straight.
And this Clive couldn’t finish there, he felt obliged to squeak more, in the form of a quote. ‘A house is made of walls and beams; a home is built with love and dreams,’ this Greek god squeaked. ‘I think I dream of something a little grander, Xandra, if you’ll forgive me.’ He was reproachful.
‘A grand house needs a grand income,’ said Xandra, primly. She could be very prim. She didn’t seem in the least troubled by the voice. ‘But until that happens this is just right. I can get a job at the Hampstead Hospital up the road, there’s a good school round the corner, it’s a quiet street and safe enough for a child to play in.’ Oh, she had such normal ambitions!
‘But we’d have to get a big mortgage. Simpler to stay where we are and go on renting.’
‘If we buy, Mama will guarantee a mortgage, she said she would. She’d love to get us properly settled. It’s not you she hates, it’s my living in sin. Oh please, Clive, let’s do it! This is a real home, not just any old rented place.’
‘Behind every successful man lies a surprised mother-in-law,’ squeaked Clive/one or was it Clive/two? ‘Of course she hates me. I’m an out-of-work actor and if there’s anything worse it’s one who’s in work.’
‘It’s perfectly possible that these streets will go up in value,’ said the agent, ‘walking distance from the centre, and easy to run.’
‘Or down,’ squeaked Clive/two. ‘Dismal and dilapidated never changes.’ This was not the kind of sentiment which Clive/one would utter. It couldn’t possibly be the original one. But then I dithered and thought back to that incident long ago, so short yet stored in my memory – so much beauty, grace and innocence erupting into that rather grisly, money-making world I then inhabited – and I wondered.
The cris de jouissance men make come in all shapes and sizes, a fact that always fascinated Madame Clothilde; had Clive/one’s been of the squeaky variety? Perhaps this new voice was the same, just hadn’t ever broken due to some medical condition? Could this happen? At what age did men’s voices break anyway? I had no idea. I thought back to Ernest Lough singing ‘O, for the Wings of a Dove’ in that high pure, beautiful voice, on my mother’s favourite 78 record of the ten she owned. I thought back to my four brothers who had once shattered the peace of the street as they raced up and down it, and all I could remember was shouts and yells. I had so few good memories of my childhood. And yet here I was, back again, lured by some invisible string, my past rearing up to meet me.
I realised I couldn’t go on fiddling with my bicycle basket indefinitely, without beginning to look foolish.
‘I bet it will go up, and it’s a really good buy.’ Xandra was hopping about on her little ballet-type shoes.
‘A titled lady lives next door. An area on the very brink of breakthrough, and these small terrace houses will certainly always more than keep their price.’ Then he yawned. They were wasting his time. He’d given up hope of any possible sale – an excitable girl without proper shoes, far too flimsy for the weather – and an out-of-work actor? He’d never get a mortgage even with a guarantee. The agent wanted to get back to his tea and to selling more salubrious properties up in Hampstead.
Perhaps it wasn’t just the pricking of my thumbs, but the way I was feeling that day – over-emotional and all stirred up because I’d just had a letter (those were the days: letters not emails!) from another old flame of the Madame Clothilde days, which made me want to conclude that Clive/one and Clive/two were indeed one and the same and I needed them next door in order to make amends. If I had spoiled his life with too early a sexual encounter, I would make it up to him. I really wanted this pair living next to me. I could feel in my thumbs that they were the allies I needed.
Was it actual recognition or subliminal guilt? I suppose I will never really know, and I certainly never mentioned the possibility to either of them during our years of acquaintance. All I really know is that I laid the bicycle down on the pavement outside No. 23 as if I had given up hope of ever fixing the basket, and said, ‘Oh do please be my neighbour. It’s such a friendly road and the houses are so convenient and easy to manage!’
And thus we made our acquaintance, and when the time came and Xandra’s mother Anna refused to guarantee their mortgage, I was the one who stepped into the breach. No problem for me. I had lots of money. I said how nice it was to have young people in Standard Road – we were all growing so old – and hoped they wanted to have children and they said it was their dream and ambition.
‘They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself – Gibran,’ Clive was to quote later, even as Mr Ipswich my solicitor looked on and I signed.
I have to admit another thread ran through my thinking. Clive/two was Ganymede grown up, and I could think of nothing nicer than having him living next door. I could put up with his voice. I could put up with Xandra.
I told you I was an unreliable narrator.
A Certain Loss
I sometimes wonder if there can be something mystical about losing one’s virginity? It certainly propels one into a different stage in one’s life: more important even than losing one’s handbag, though that can seem dire indeed.
I lost mine in 1955 to the most divine folk singer, backstage at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane. It was my sixteenth birthday. It was an awards show and the winner that year was The Dawn of My Very First Love. I too believed there would be happiness and joy ever after, as girls could in 1955. Divorce was rare: young female sexual hysteria was not. I was a fan not a groupie. I screamed and shouted at all the best shows, and was overjoyed to be picked by this handsome young bearded sandal-wearing, dirty-toed singer and taken behind the stage. I believed, as one could in those days, that love and sex were the same thing. It was very quick, and did hurt – but oh! those eyelashes, the perfect black curve against the smooth young cheek – or perhaps I get confused and misremember? At any rate I thought sex and love equated. He looked like Ganymede to me. I hoped and hoped he’d left me pregnant, and so he had. If he’s still alive and doesn’t have dementia he’ll be worrying about historical sexual abuse, or should be.
Whatever was going on in my life, I have trained myself to look out for beauty where beauty is to be found. I am, after all, a painter. I found it first in the folk singer. What if his name too was Clive? What a hoot that would be! (The Gods are all about irony, and as I say, what really goes on in the Bardo Thodol heaven alone knows.) But I don’t think so. He looked more like a Fred, just with a nice voice and this young, bouncy skin.
The next morning he did not even recognise me as he got on the tour bus – I was outside it waving. I was at a gawky stage at the time, to which I was to return. I noticed his toes were perfectly clean – the grime had been nothing but a folksy affectation. I was stupid: I deserved no better.
But like Eos – who sacrificed her virginity to Ares, Aphrodite’s consort, thus rousing her to anger – I was henceforth condemned to lust only after god-like men, while being perpetually lusted after by inferior mortals. Well, it was good for business, if not for my heart.
Perhaps Aphrodite lifted the curse when I took Clive’s virginity, he being so god-like in his youth. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, give one, take another. Eos had earned her release. Nonsense, I know: but better to feel that I had balanced some kind of psychic scales than carry guilt round with me for ever. And certainly, in the unfeeling world I inhabited at the time, I at last seemed able to feel a genuine affection for my very elderly, now deceased, husbands, if not exactly love, and certainly never lust. But at least it was not all self-interest on my part. I earned my first two inheritances, though I daresay scarcely deserving the third, having upset my brothers so much, and not perhaps being the nicest, kindest, big sister in the world. But I was always top-totty-call
-girling, something done in comfort and with grace rather than street-walking, though my brothers are too dumb to tell the difference; all they understand is imprecations. Foul words of dismissal and insult.
But I took sex seriously; I never stopped; to me it was a sacrament, a heavenly gift to be passed from one human being to another, the ultimate sharing of the gift of life, as well as a means of earning a living. I was Aphrodite’s honoured slave.
The Love Of Beauty
Beautiful men do exist. Beauty falls like a cloak over some people, a rare gift from a fairy godmother; they’re born with it; mostly women, sometimes men. It lasts a lifetime. Both Clives had it, Rozzie too, I never did. What I had in the Madame Clothilde days was good looks, slim legs, even teeth, a nice voice, a sexy manner and a lot of energy, but not the magic gift of beauty itself.
I recognise beauty when I see it. Odd thing about Clive: himself the epitome of beauty, he fails to recognise it in anything else. He and Xandra rely on IKEA for taste guidance, but seem always to go for the worst not the best on offer. The sofa he chooses is always going to be garish and ugly; if a lamp, it will be expensive but useless; if a bunch of flowers, old stock – though Clive did sometimes bring expensive bunches home, in silent apology I always thought, for something in all probability going on behind Xandra’s back. Clive’s father the car salesman was a great brothel-goer, after all, and I suspect it’s an inheritable tendency. Not necessarily all bad: extra-marital sex saves a lot of marriages. But I would say that, wouldn’t I.
When Rozzie came along Clive didn’t even recognise her as a beauty. But she too had been blessed at birth. But where Clive was all strong skin colour, like the virile young Adonis, Rozzie was the most delicate of pinks, a Botticelli Venus rising from the sea.
