Female Friends

by Fay Weldon

  Grace crouches on the floor in front of the fan heater, drying her thick red hair. She has cleared a living space by the window, spread it with rugs and cushions, set up the hi-fi, plugged in an electric kettle and a small wall refrigerator, and within these limits has set up her home.

  ‘Don’t clear up the mess,’ says Grace. ‘I may have to sue. Everything has to look as dreadful as possible.’

  Over the years Grace has developed quite a taste for litigation. She who once stood in court and wept, and screamed, now has a liking for the experience. And thus the conversation goes, between her and her friend Chloe:

  Grace And how was Marjorie’s moustache? Or does she shave, these days?

  Chloe She has better things to think about.

  Grace What? The BBC? And how’s Patrick? Does she say?

  Chloe Much the same, mad and mean.

  Grace Why doesn’t she move in with him? What a waste of rent and rates.

  Chloe He hasn’t asked her to.

  Grace She has this dreadful habit of deferring to the male. She’s as bad as you, Chloe. Don’t you just love this flat?

  Chloe It’s hard to say.

  Grace I hate it. It’s been a nightmare.

  Chloe You didn’t have to move. You could have kept the house in St John’s Wood.

  Grace No I couldn’t. I sold it. I had to have the money. I couldn’t keep the buyer out for ever. His wife kept having babies and he kept complaining and in the end he had me evicted, well, more or less. The squatter people were very unhelpful.

  Chloe That house was all you had. When you’ve got rid of the money, Grace, what will you do?

  Grace Die. I hate it round here, don’t you? It’s a real middle-class ghetto. Full of short-sighted women with frizzy hair dressed all in leather and carrying teddy bears. All the real people have been driven out. You can’t think how filthy this flat was when I moved in. They had five children and the father was in prison and the mother had TB and the floorboards were sodden with piss. I tried painting them with lino paint but they still smelt so I got some builders in to replace the floors. It was when the boards were up that Sebastian moved in and said we might as well have the whole place done properly, so they started knocking down the partition walls, and then the Council turned up and said they weren’t partition walls at all, but structural, and the whole thing was illegal anyway and what about Planning Permission, and then of course the builders got disheartened and left. I’d paid them in advance—that was Sebastian’s idea, he said it was customary, to show you trusted them. And then Sebastian got this architect friend of his to do some drawings, and he met some more builders in a pub—that’s their mess over there, they were film technicians starting a new career, well, you know what the film industry’s like—and then the neighbours got up a petition to stop us spoiling the sky-line, and in the meanwhile the builders had been offered a film after all, and couldn’t refuse—they were making it in Belfast and the original crew had walked out—well, you know how it all is. I don’t have to tell you. Property is all very boring.

  Chloe What happened to the mother with TB?

  Grace Is that the only thing you care about?

  Chloe Yes.

  Grace I don’t know. I never asked. She was moved to the outskirts by some kind of agency, I believe. I paid her a thousand to get out. It was a fortune for someone like her.

  Chloe And which is Stanhope’s room?

  Grace You’ll have to ask the architect. He has a plan for some kind of ceiling suspension for guests. I don’t trust him, really. He’s all quick imaginative sketches and lots of talk and never any measurements.

  Chloe Then why employ him?

  Grace He’s Sebastian’s friend.

  Chloe It’s your money.

  Grace No it’s not, it’s Christie’s. He’s lying there in his grave—or at any rate his urn—cheering at the way I’ve mismanaged things. I’ve never earned a penny in my life, not in the pay packet sense. I wouldn’t know how to start. I’d quite like to be an opera singer, mind you.

  Chloe Like your mother?

  Grace No, not like my mother. I’d forgotten about her. I couldn’t bear to do anything which ran in the family. Is Stanhope musical?

  Chloe He never mentions it, only football. He’s your son, not mine. They send you the school reports; you could always look it up, I suppose, under Extra Activities.

  Grace I never read school reports. They should be abolished. They’re an invasion of a child’s privacy. What a child needs from a school is anonymity.

  Chloe In that case, perhaps Stanhope should go to a comprehensive school. It’s what he wants to do.

  Grace You always give in to the children, Chloe. How can a boy Stanhope’s age know what’s best for him? He’s far happier at a boarding school. They’ve got good teachers and wonderful equipment and splendid playing fields, and he must have lots of friends by now.

  Chloe He doesn’t make friends easily.

  Grace Then think how miserable he’d be at a comprehensive school.

  Chloe You did tell him he only had to board ’til you had somewhere settled to live.

  Grace Settled? Do you call this settled? And I don’t trust that architect. I don’t think Stanhope would be happy in a ceiling suspension, do you? No, he’ll have to stay where he is. And I’m certainly not having him at a comprehensive; why does he think he wants to go?

  Chloe He wants to play soccer, not rugby.

  Grace There you are, it’s ridiculous. Besides, with a stupid name like Stanhope he’d only get laughed at, down there amongst the yobs.

  Grace changes her social attitudes along with her boyfriends, as a stick insect changes colour according to the bush it lands on. But the nervous craving for privilege keeps rearing its head. Though she is, at the moment, prepared to blow up Eton, or at any rate light the fuse for the dynamite Sebastian has laid, she will not have her son at a comprehensive school

  Chloe It was you who named him. Grace. You insisted on Stanhope, in spite of everyone’s advice.

  Grace The whole episode of Stanhope was ridiculous, I quite agree. I should have had an abortion. I should never have listened to you, Chloe. Stanhope is your responsibility. Do you like my dress?

  Chloe No.

  Grace wears a navy-blue silk dress, made circa 1946; it has an uneven hem and frayed seams. It clings rather sadly to Grace’s small bosom, seeming to miss a more robust original owner.

  Grace No? I do. I bought it down the Portobello. Marjorie’s mother had one like this. Do you think it’s the same one? I always wanted to be like Helen.

  Chloe You’ve succeeded.

  She does not mean it kindly.

  twenty-seven

  JANUARY 1945. HELEN, BACK from New York, turns up unexpectedly at The Poplars. It is eight in the morning and there is snow on the ground. She presses a ten shilling note into Marjorie’s trembling hand, and presents Esther Songford with a tin of salmon. Esther has put on a good deal of weight—her ankles are puffy and she is short of breath—but she manages to gasp her thanks.

  ‘Is Esther all right?’ asks Helen, all solicitude, drawing Edwin to one side. ‘She looks dreadful!’ Helen has left the engine of her Baby Austin running. She can’t stay more than a minute. Her passenger, grey-faced and desperate, stands in the drive, stamping his feet to keep warm, refusing to enter. He is, Helen says, a Labour politician.

  ‘Esther’s just fat,’ says Edwin. ‘Too many potatoes. She’s let herself go.’

  ‘We must none of us let ourselves go,’ says Helen. ‘We must get ready to win the peace, as we are winning the war.’

  Helen is elegant even at eight in the morning. She wears a thin spotted navy dress with padded shoulders and a pleated skirt, and a fur coat, and her stockings are made of nylon—the first pair even seen in Ulden. She has the new wedgie shoes. Her hair is piled up over her forehead and falls smoothly away behind until it reaches the nape of her neck, whence it rises again in a semi-circular half-curl, like a seawave o
n the verge of breaking. Such an effect is hard to come by: but in these times hair must look as unlike hair as possible, as must complexions. Orangy pancake make-up hides every blemish; scarlet lipstick transforms the lips into a cupid’s bow God never intended.

  Helen looks lovely, and inhuman. Esther clutches her old dressing-gown round her, clasps the tin of salmon and sinks into a chair, taking the weight off her poor aching legs. She feels sick all the time.

  ‘I’ve only a minute, my dears,’ says Helen, as they cluster round her, like bees around the honey. ‘Marjorie, you must move back to London this weekend.’

  ‘But you can’t, the V-bombs—’ says Esther Songford, from her chair. Helen ignores her.

  ‘But I can’t leave now. What about my Higher Certificate—’ says Marjorie, ‘and my University Entrance—’ Edwin scowls at her.

  ‘You love your father more than school, surely,’ says Helen. ‘We have reason to believe he will soon be repatriated, on humanitarian grounds. He’ll want his family about him after all he’s been through. I must dash now. John’s on his way to a very important meeting. I promised to drive him; so much more cosy than the train, but I’m afraid if I stop the engine we never seem to get it started again. I tell him it doesn’t matter if he’s late, he’s so important they’ll be perfectly happy to wait all day for him, but I’m afraid he’s dreadfully agitated.’

  And off she goes.

  When Chloe tells Gwyneth that Marjorie’s going back to London, tears come into Gwyneth’s eyes.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ asks Chloe, surprised. ‘She’s going home, isn’t she?’

  ‘This war,’ says Gwyneth. ‘What it’s done to us all!’ She has an unsightly rash on her hands. The doctor says it’s due to washing-up water and vitamin deficiency, but what can she do about either?

  ‘After the war,’ asks Chloe, ‘what about us? Will we go back to London?’

  But Gwyneth doesn’t want to go.

  ‘You must stay here and finish your schooling,’ she says.

  Gwyneth is proud of Chloe; her neat, pretty, clever daughter is her one achievement. She thrills with pleasure at each success in school; she panics at the slightest headache. She is selfless in her concern for her daughter’s welfare, expecting nothing in return, forever soothing, patting, encouraging, moulding, preaching patience and endurance.

  So long, that is, as Chloe’s interests and that of the Leacocks do not conflict. If this happens, the Leacocks win. Gwyneth loves Mr Leacock. Why else would she allow Chloe to get up at six on those winter mornings, risking health and energy, to do the guests’ shoes, and lay up breakfast, and waylay the milkman to get extra milk—and even, as she grows older and cleverer, to stay up late and make up the accounts after the Rose and Crown is closed? All for nothing, unless you count Mr Leacock’s smile.

  ‘What an honour,’ Gwyneth says. And believes it, and so does Chloe.

  Gwyneth has nowhere to go. She is over forty now and has no savings. Her life at the Rose and Crown has settled into a tolerable pattern of exploitation and excitement mixed. She believes that Mr Leacock loves her. And indeed, on the rare occasions when he can contrive to be alone with Gwyneth, he certainly kisses her and tells her so. They were meant for each other, he says, but their love can never be, can never go beyond kisses. Gwyneth must not, no, she must not, leave his employment because he will be miserable if she does. And no, she must not ask for more money or a shorter working week or his wife will suspect him.

  And Gwyneth, such is her guilt and such the excitement engendered by these secret meetings, is content to believe him. The years pass quickly: she is forever looking forward, forever watching for a sideways look, forever half fearing, half hoping that Mrs Leacock will see and suspect. And the more guilty Gwyneth feels about the husband, the more fond she becomes of the wife, that bright little bird-woman, pitying her for the drabness of a life which contains only an open and legal love.

  Gwyneth believes she has only to speak the words and Mr Leacock will be hers; and forever procrastinates, and never quite speaks them. Thus, lonely women do live, making the best of what they cannot help: reading significance into casual words; seeing love in calculated lust: seeing lust in innocent words; hoping where there is no hope. And so they grow old in expectation and illusion, and perhaps it is preferable to growing old in the harsh glare of truth.

  twenty-eight

  ‘OF COURSE I TOLD Marjorie that father raped me,’ says Grace. ‘Marjorie would never be able to make up anything so interesting on her own account. They’re all like that in the media—no imagination at all. Poor father. He was very drunk and very angry.’

  In what serves for a bedroom, Grace packs. That is, she empties drawers upon the floor, selects garments and stuffs them into squashy leather bags, seeming to have as much an affection for old torn knickers as she does for Yves St Laurent jumpers.

  ‘He’d taken off his belt to beat me—I think he once had a batman whose virility he admired very much, who used to say the way to keep women in order was to belt them. But all that happened to father was that his trousers fell down, and you know what those austerity underpants were like. I could see he had what I supposed—I was only fifteen—to be an erection. Usually his penis was a dim little thing snuggling in beneath his pot belly. Mother referred to it as daddy’s winkie. We had baths together, you know, to save the hot water. Sunday mornings. Marjorie went in with mother, I went in with father. It was unpatriotic to have more than six inches of water in the bath—even King George himself did not.

  ‘And here father was, pointing this great big swollen thing at me, like a gun. I told Marjorie he got me down on the bed and put it in, because that’s what she wanted to hear, and I might have known she’d pass the word along, but I don’t think he actually did. One would remember a thing like that, I suppose? Though in fact, in sexual matters, one remembers what one wants to forget. At the time I wanted it to be true. I told Patrick my father had raped me. I wanted him to take an interest.’

  ‘Did he?’ asks Chloe.

  ‘Yes,’ says Grace. ‘He laid me in the ditch, there and then, to take the taste from my mouth, he said. And then he said tell no-one, or I’ll go to prison, you’re under age, look what a risk I’m taking on your behalf. Forget it outside but remember it inside, he said. ‘It’s good for you.’

  ‘Patrick and his therapeutic dick,’ says Chloe, sadly.

  Occasionally, as Grace tosses about amongst her piles of clothing—as she used to toss about, as a child in piles of autumn leaves—she will lift a jersey or bra to her nose and sniff, and if she finds it offensive she will either throw it into the waste bin, if she considers it too far gone, or spray lavishly with cologne before returning it to its pile. Chloe is half admiring, half shocked.

  ‘It’s a relief to be able to talk about such things,’ says Grace. ‘All those years we had to keep quiet! Sebastian talks about everything all the time, every detail, as if nothing that happened was too terrible to mention. When we make love, which isn’t often, thank God, he keeps up a running commentary. I don’t like it at all.’

  And indeed, Grace prefers the silent embraces of her youth, when there were no words for what she did, or what was done to her, or if there were, she didn’t know them.

  In those other days of speechless intertwinings, she feels, a darker force came into play, linking her more closely to the mindless patterns of the universe. Now this procreative essence shrivels in the light of knowledge. Fellatio, cunnilingus, sodomy—is this what is happening? Is this better than the night before, or what the Jaggers do? Grace would really rather not know, but to Sebastian such knowledge is all in all. Presently it will be the same for her. She knows it.

  ‘I preferred it when fuck was a swear word,’ says Grace.

  ‘You ought to get this place cleared up,’ says Chloe, nervous of what Grace might say next.

  What does Grace have to offer Sebastian, Chloe wonders, since it’s not her sexual cooperation? You could leaf thr
ough a whole month’s supply of women’s magazines and not find the answer. Certainly not his creature comforts, let alone a secure and supportive base from which to face the outer world. Apart from the builders’ droppings, the floor is littered with books, crumbs, bills, mouse-traps, wine corks, empty bottles and old camembert boxes. The toilet has recently overflowed and the floor has been only cursorily cleaned. Out on the balcony Grace has been building a curious part-shiny part-encrusted tower with the foil boxes in which Chinese take-away food has been delivered. So much for talent.

  Grace If you don’t like the mess, don’t look. You’re a poor cowardly timorous thing, like your mama. You think if you don’t clean up, no-one will love you.

  Chloe (Lying) It’s not that at all. It’s if you don’t clear up you get typhoid.

  Grace (Happily) We have rats. That ought to look good in court. I feed them.

  Chloe You must get in new builders. It’s impossible to live like this.

  Grace How can I? I haven’t any money until I get damages from the last lot.

  Chloe Grace, you must have some money. You’ve just sold the Acacia Road house.

  Grace I’ve given it all to Sebastian. He has to make a feature film about a strike in the Warwickshire coal fields in 1933.

  Chloe (Horrified) Grace!

  How many times has she not spoken that word, in just those tones? Perhaps it is to hear it that Grace behaves as she does? Spoken by Chloe, a wail of concern.

  Grace Sebastian says it’s Christie’s money anyway. It ought to be ploughed back as soon as possible into the society whence it was milked.

  Chloe But that’s nonsense.

  Grace Do you think so? In any case I’m certain to get it back. I have a percentage of the profits.

  Chloe What profits? You’re crazy. If you want to invest in a film why didn’t you ask Oliver first?

  Grace Because I don’t love Oliver: I love Sebastian. Anyway Oliver belongs to another world. He’s too old. What a bourgeois soul you have, Chloe. You’ve gone quite pale.