by Fay Weldon
The girls met him.
‘But he’s so stupid,’ Mallory lamented. ‘What do they all see in him?’
‘Darling,’ Stella said, ‘his looks, his length,’ which shocked Mallory – Stella had picked up too much that was vulgar in her shopping and beauty parlour sprees with Adela. But Stella was probably right. It was certainly what their mother saw in him. Morna always reported back on the state of their mother’s bed and how it wasn’t always their father in it.
‘Lausanne will be safe enough, won’t it?’ Adela asked Igor. She felt a little bad about her decision. She needed confirmation. Sir Jeremy would only say it wasn’t safe if she asked, but was so up in arms about ‘Herr Hitler and the fascist onslaught’ his judgement could hardly be trusted.
‘I should think so,’ said Igor. It was a long time since he had been a mere White Russian refugee; now he was just a splendid equestrian on a splendid white horse. ‘I was in Lausanne only last year for the Longines Cup. A very civilised place, and a triumph for me, I may say.’
‘Such a dreadful day for me,’ said Adela, ‘and then I had to fire the nanny. I should have done it years back. She’s set such a bad example to the twins. Table manners, bad language – you know how it is with servants.’
The steak was fillet and she served it with leeks in white sauce. She made the sauce herself while he watched. Such tiny, competent little hands. Even just watching them sent a shiver up his spine.
‘You did the right thing,’ he said. ‘You always do.’ He had once seen a servant creeping about the bedroom in the early hours when they were meant to be away, but had thought it better to keep silent.
The front door bell went.
‘Bloody hell,’ she said. ‘You’d better not go. I will.’
‘Send them packing whoever they are,’ he said. ‘I am supremely happy.’
But she didn’t. It was Sherwyn Sexton, slightly drunk, and she asked him down to the kitchen. Igor and he knew each other from here and there. Igor’s position as passing lover was abundantly clear. No Sir Jeremy in the picture, Igor with his boots off and Adela had flung her old fur coat on over her negligee. Sherwyn said he knew the mink from of old and Adela said: ‘Oh, that old thing,’ and Igor assumed Sherwyn too was a former lover, which made things easier between them. Whatever it had been, it was over. Sherwyn asked for bread and cheese and was given it, and Igor opened another bottle of champagne. It made a splendid pop and Igor and Adela giggled complicitly. It seemed the girls had telephoned to ask for help. They complained that they’d been locked in without food or drink. Their mother had gone mad. Stella had kissed a boy and so Adela was sending them off to stupid Switzerland to boarding school, one which nobody had ever heard of. Mallory was meant to be matriculating in June, a year early. Physics, Chemistry, Biology, Applied Maths, Latin and Greek, what hope did she have now? Their mother had then fired Nanny, who had looked after them since infancy, and upset her very much. Their father was away in the country: he cared about his horses more than he cared about his own children. They had rung Uncle Mungo but the girl said he was in Japan selling zips. Unbuttoning’s Such A Bother. So they’d called their Uncle Sherwyn. He was to come round at once.
So he had and here he was. What did Adela have to say?
At which Adela laughed merrily and said the girls were quite hysterical; it was inevitable, alas, their stage of psychosexual development being what it was; they’d had a perfectly good lunch and to do without supper would calm them down. Mallory was too fat anyway, there was no point in paying for a nanny – had Sherwyn any idea how much servants, even the worst ones, charged these days? – for grown up girls, and the sooner they were at school the better, especially Mallory – whoever would want a scientist wife, a cordon bleu cookery course would stand her in far better stead, and Lausanne was a perfectly safe place, Igor had said so. Would Sherwyn like wine? Champagne and cheese simply did not go. Probably better if Sherwyn didn’t see the girls, he’d only stir them up.
Sherwyn went down to the wine cellar and brought back a ’29 Latour which must have cost Sir Jeremy quite a penny.
Around midnight Sherwyn said he really must be getting back to Elvira. Adela said she couldn’t think why, and Sherwyn said: ‘Because for once in my life I am happy.’
Adela said: ‘You’re such a bourgeois at heart, Sherwyn.’
Sherwyn said there was a lot to be said for early nights.
‘You didn’t think that once, Sherwyn,’ said Adela. ‘Years back, you and I, the night of that fabulous party. We were celebrating me being Lady Adela. Three in the morning at least. The caterers had gone home leaving such a mess. You helped me clear up.’
‘You’re sure you don’t mean Mungo? He was around at the time.’
‘No, I don’t mean Mungo,’ said Lady Adela crossly. ‘I mean you. You’d said that lovely thing to me. We were under my mink. It was brand new from Harrods, a present from Sir Jeremy. This very one I’m wearing now. I use it as a dressing gown.’ Even in her agreeably drunken haze she realised it was an area where she would be wiser not to go. She must be very careful not to get cross or say anything that couldn’t be unsaid.
But the men seemed to have forgotten about her. It was annoying. They were getting on well together, talking about all that old hat esoteric stuff, Gurdjieff and Ouspensky and the fourth dimension and life after death. But so many millions of men had gone off and been killed and not a single one proved to have come back from the dead, you’d have thought people would have learned. It was what everyone did these days instead of religion. It was irritating. It reminded her of her stupid youth and Monte Verità. She should never have married Sir Jeremy, he was so old and boring.
‘Well, I’m sorry,’ said Sherwyn. ‘I simply don’t remember.’ Nor did he. He could see it might have been possible. Another drunken fuck at a drunken party. But Adela? Surely not. The boss’s wife? Mind you, he’d been pretty furious with him at the time. He thought vaguely there might have been someone called Phoebe, yes, Phoebe, big bouncy girl, Sir Jeremy’s secretary. She’d typed his first Delgano novel: nice girl. Yes, possibly Phoebe. But not Adela, who was making it up. She simply had to be the centre of attention. She was looking very cross.
He returned pointedly to the conversation with Igor, and the four ways of self development talked about in esoteric circles. It seemed safer. Delgano had got involved in a theosophist group in Indonesia: Sherwyn wished he’d had the opportunity to talk to Igor earlier; Igor could have filled in where Sherwyn had to simply guess. But Adela was not going to let it go.
She even pulled at his sleeve to interrupt and say that before her day fell to pieces the girls had given her a copy of Delgano’s Archipelago for her birthday.
Sherwyn asked her how old she was which made her angrier. It was not a gentlemanly thing to ask, he knew, but it served her right.
‘I forget,’ she replied brusquely. ‘Since everyone round here seems to forget so easily. The girls, by the way, are convinced you’re their father not their uncle.’
‘That is not possible,’ said Sherwyn. ‘But let us not go into all that.’ No, it wasn’t possible, he thought. Vivvie was not forgettable. Unapproachable all those months in the goose feather bed. It might have been the case with Adela; way back then. He had drunk a great deal in those days. He needed another drink now. Elvira could wait. He was confident enough she would wait. Elvira was like Vivvie in that respect. She made no unnecessary problems.
‘Go into what?’ asked Igor, sensitive to some change in the atmosphere. Difficult to go into anything, Sherwyn thought: the air in the kitchen already being so thick with alcohol fumes, Adela’s non-stop pink Sobranies, and Igor’s snuff, evil antisocial stuff from Georgia which he’d refer to affectionately as his burnuthi. But Adela seemed deaf to Igor. Sherwyn was her prey.
‘Men are so forgetful,’ said Adela. ‘Apparently they even forget about fathering babies.’
‘Tell me more!’
‘Oh, go away, Igor! Sherwyn mad
e me pregnant that night. Do you mean men even forget when they make a girl pregnant?’
‘There’s not exactly some great thunder flash,’ said Sherwyn. ‘Life goes on as ever. But if I did I most sincerely apologise. So drunk I forgot.’
‘Oh you’re a great and convenient forgetter.’
‘What was it, a boy or a girl?’
‘A boy.’
‘Oh dear. Is he going to come through that door any moment and declare he’s my son? You’re old enough. Or perhaps he’s Igor here?’
‘You beast, you beast! You callous beast. I miscarried.’
‘How convenient.’
‘Fathered a boy on me, fathered twins on poor Vivvie. I shall never forgive you for that. You took advantage of her. She was such an innocent. I can look after myself, but Vivvie! My daughter!’
‘Hello, hello,’ said Igor, and was ignored.
‘You forget you murdered your poor Vivvie,’ said Sherwyn. ‘You let her bleed to death and stole the twins. I don’t forgive you for that.’
‘I say, I say!’ said Igor.
‘Well, you didn’t want them.’ Adela was weeping bitterly, though Sherwyn didn’t believe a single tear. ‘You were happy enough to see those babies go. What else was to be done? I did it for your sake. I loved you. I’ve always loved you.’
‘Thanks very much,’ said Igor with a sniff and sneeze. ‘What about me?’
‘And you loved me, Sherwyn: “I swoon, I swoon”. What a fool I’ve been!’
‘Yes,’ said Sherwyn, ‘a greater fool no woman has ever been.’
They fell quiet. Adela snivelled, and huddled into her old mink. Igor broke the silence, and talked about thunder flashes and fathering babies; a strange experience he’d had when a pretty virgin lad with blonde curls, working in Sir Jeremy’s stables. He could only have been about sixteen, an émigré youth fresh from Russia, an orphan in a foreign land preyed upon by gross and ignorant stable hands. All he had to comfort him was his love for Greystokes, a handsome dappled grey he was allowed to ride every morning. Together they would gallop the length of the downs in glorious countryside and he would practise the Cossack skills of his forefathers, and find life worth living. He owed his Olympic medal to those early morning rides with Greystokes.
‘Greystokes?’ Adela was asking. ‘Greystokes?’
‘Wonderful beast,’ said Igor. ‘I was down at Dilberne only this morning to take a look at his grandson Mayfair Lights out of the filly Bejasus.’
‘Vivvie and you? Greystokes?’
‘I don’t know what her name was, just that she had incorporated the female spirit of the horse, large limbed, smooth, storm clouds gathering, an apparition of beauty.’ Pause, snuff, sniff, sneeze. ‘She even had a mane, a reddish mane. A long, long time ago. I know you have no time for forgetfulness, but yes, men forget. On those wondrous mornings I would lean from the saddle and gather little mushrooms as the ground flew past. Yes, that is how I honed my skills. Now Mayfair Lights is to win the Grand National. I pay my homage.’
‘Blonde curls,’ said Sherwyn. ‘Blonde curls. A stable lad. The Angel Gabriel.’
‘Yes, men forget. But I do not forget those soft, welcoming eyes. Greystokes’ eyes. I lost my virginity to those eyes. Then the storm broke. But the lightning flash came after I had left the stable. Nothing can have happened. I went home and cut off my curls and after that I was safe.’
‘The conception comes after the act,’ said Sherwyn and then beneath his breath, imploring to heaven, ‘A Cossack. Now Mallory is explained. And I have been St Joseph to this oaf!’
‘But after that I became a disciple of Gurdjieff. There are more things in heaven and earth.’
Adela sprang to life. She beat upon lgor’s breast with her little fists.
‘My daughter, my daughter, you raped my daughter! I shall never forgive you.’
‘I did nothing of the sort,’ said Igor, with dignity. ‘I communed with her and she with me. Together we loved Greystokes.’
‘Hold on a moment,’ said Sherwyn. His friend Igor was having to shield himself from Adela’s blows. The woman was totally out of control. ‘Make up your mind. One moment the twins are mine, the next his. Shall we just blame the Angel Gabriel? Vivvie always did.’
‘Bloody horses,’ said Adela. ‘They’ve ruined my life.’ In this mood, she was frightening, capable of anything. He tried to divert her.
‘It’s true I fucked someone that night. I thought it was Phoebe but it might have been you. I admit it.’
‘It was certainly you in the mountains,’ Adela said, ‘in the days when you were loveable. And who the fuck’s Phoebe?’ She was beginning to calm down a little.
‘She worked for Sir Jeremy. She was his secretary back in the old days. We were rivals for her affection and I was winning.’
Oops. Bad mistake. Delgano would never have made it.
‘She still is,’ said Igor. ‘Phoebe. If she’s the nice fat one down at the stables this morning. She stays in the village most weekends. They do bed and breakfast. I stayed there last night. They have a cut-glass bowl in the cabinet. Very beautiful. The bowl, not so much the girl. The rim’s solid silver. It looks very valuable. I wonder no-one’s sold it.’
Adela’s little fists had stopped flailing. But she was ashen white. Sherwyn thought she might faint. Then she opened her mouth and started screaming, great large animal shrieks from that tiny soft mouth as if some hidden part of her was communing with the devil in a language only the devil would understand. There seemed very little the men could do. Igor went upstairs to collect his boots and they left. Adela was still screaming.
‘I don’t think you should have said that,’ said Sherwyn, as they turned from Belgrave Square into Upper Belgrave Street. They were both quite shocked.
‘Eezveenete,’ said Igor. Sherwyn supposed he was speaking Russian. He took it as agreement.
‘One rule for the ladies,’ said Sherwyn. ‘Another for us.’
‘Da,’ said Igor. Sherwyn understood that. A simple ‘yes’. Igor’s hand was rather familiarly upon Sherwyn’s arm. Sherwyn shook it off.
Coda
August 29th 1939. Harley Street
‘Why on earth would Adela want to poison me?’ asked Sir Jeremy. ‘I offered her a divorce but she didn’t want one.’
Phoebe sat at Sir Jeremy’s bedside and took shorthand notes. She took them down at the rate of a hundred words a minute. Sir Jeremy was dictating an article on how the British ruling class would decline to bomb German factories because the Cabinet had declared them to be private property. The hypocrisy and mendacity of the imperialist classes knew no bounds.
‘Isn’t that so, Phoebe?’
Phoebe smiled placidly, put down her pencil, took Sir Jeremy’s hand and squeezed it affectionately. The bouncy girl Sherwyn remembered had turned into a sensible-looking sturdy woman of the stoical-personal-assistant kind, with a pleasant face, brogues on her feet, in a knee-length black skirt and white blouse damp under the armpits. Luckily, Phoebe showed no sign of recognising Sherwyn as her suitor of long ago.
They were in the London Clinic. Sir Jeremy sat in a hospital bed propped up by pillows. It was a hot day. He had been admitted ten days before suffering from mushroom poisoning and had, they said, barely survived. His liver and kidneys had been severely affected but he had won through. Enquiries had apparently traced the source of the poisoning to the death cap mushroom, by way of potato soup in a thermos ingested by Sir Jeremy at the office. There had been little time lately for long lunches at Simpson’s or Rules.
Sir Jeremy looked thin, pale and decidedly older. But a nurse, or perhaps Phoebe, had combed and smoothed his hair and in his white hospital gown he looked tidy, composed and almost impressive. He boasted of having lost half a stone.
‘It’s an ill wind, dear boy. And why assume Adela is the guilty one?’ he said.
Sherwyn refrained from saying that having arrived back from France to find Phoebe ensconced with Sir Jeremy at No 17 Belgrave
Square, Adela might well have seen it as the last straw and perhaps added a sprinkling of powdered death cap to the potato soup Phoebe had prepared for his lunch. Sherwyn had used that plot in Delgano’s Archipelago, which he believed Adela had read. He doubted that Sir Jeremy had. These days the actual reading of books was left to those who ran the money-making side of Ripple & Co, the fiction and biography lists, while Sir Jeremy got on with the political tracts and little magazines.
‘Perhaps it was just an accident. Perhaps a genuine error. Perhaps someone mistook a death cap for a field mushroom. They look a bit similar.’
‘Far more likely,’ said Sir Jeremy, ‘to be a political opponent or a disgruntled employee. I have made enemies, as how can a man of integrity and forethought not? I have fought hard to speak the truth and truth is never popular.’
‘Or it could be Morna,’ said Phoebe. ‘She peeled the potatoes for the soup.’
‘Morna!’ said Sherwyn, surprised. ‘Is she still around?’
‘With the girls in Lausanne and Adela in Fontainebleau,’ said Sir Jeremy, ‘and me all alone in that great house, Morna was better than nothing. But white food, always white food! Now Phoebe’s with me, I’ve been trying to get Morna to go home to Ireland where she belongs. But she’s quite hard to dislodge, I find. We should all be where we belong in wartime.’
‘It might all die down,’ said Sherwyn. ‘It might be just a storm that blows itself out.’
‘I doubt it,’ said Sir Jeremy. ‘We are heading straight for an imperialist and unjust war for which the bourgeoisie of all the belligerent states bear equal responsibility. It is inevitable: the phoenix of equality will rise from the ashes. Are you taking this down, Phoebe?’
‘Oh I am, Jeremy.’ Another loving smile. Sherwyn was startled. It was the first time he had heard Sir Jeremy addressed as simply Jeremy, without his title. And lo! he was real flesh and blood: in Phoebe’s eyes a moving, feeling, failing human being, not a publisher. He realised who Phoebe reminded him of. It was his stepmother with the face like a horse.
