Female Friends

by Fay Weldon

  Grace is of course right about Christie’s motives in marrying Geraldine. She has been right about Christie longer than anyone. As Marjorie says, it is a pity that Grace who is, as it turns out, of all of them the one most capable of moral action—for did she not leave Christie on the grounds of moral principle, rather than on the promptings of personal female desperation?—should thus hide the light of her essential rectitude beneath a bushel so dreadfully overflowing with nonsensical bad behaviour?

  Pleasant days for Marjorie, too, believe it or not. Marjorie is working her way up through the ranks of the BBC. With her Double First and short-hand typing to back her, she becomes first a secretary, then a research assistant, then is promoted to Personal Assistant to a Hungarian drama director by name Marco, who talks ceaselessly in praise of his own talents—which indeed are considerable.

  Thus Grace and Chloe discuss their friend, at the time:

  Grace She’s in love with him. She must be, to put up with him.

  Chloe She’s paid to put up with him. Besides, she’s learning a great deal from Marco. She says so.

  Grace That means he’s getting her to do all the work. Camera scripts and so on. While he sits on his arse. I expect she sleeps with him after tapings to relieve the tension: they all do, you know, those PAs. It’s their function.

  Chloe Marjorie isn’t easily taken in. She’s much too clever.

  Grace Clever never got a woman anywhere. Look at me. No, Marjorie’s become a BBC camp-follower, that’s all. It’s a dreadful fate. Those PAs never marry. It’s their own fault. They do all the work and are shocked if they get any credit. They give it away in handfuls to whoever they’re in love with, producer or director. They sublimate by becoming dedicated to the media, like nuns.

  Chloe How can you be a camp-follower and a nun at the same time?

  Grace You are so literal, Chloe. You must drive Oliver mad. I suppose this Marco of hers is married?

  Chloe I believe so.

  Grace (Triumphant) There you are, you see. He’ll use her to do his camera scripts and send flowers to his wife when he’s away in the Bahamas doing a thirty-second insert for some boring play, which he could just as well have done in Margate, and Marjorie will wait for him for ever. Serve her right for having no principle and going with married men.

  Grace is just off to sleep with Patrick. Midge is due out of hospital the next day. Chloe murmurs a protest but Grace ignores it.

  Grace is as wrong about Marjorie as she is right about Christie. Marjorie escapes the category that waits for her like a Venus flytrap, becomes first a director in her own right, and then a producer. She must put up with the obloquy which follows successful women in offices—the criticism of looks, dress and manners—and withstand the implication that by virtue of having attained a position which many grown and earning men would dearly like to reach, she must somehow be lacking in essential female grace. It is all nothing new to her: it is, in effect, merely the old vision of herself, repeated, which her mother so frequently held out to her.

  Pleasant days. An ill wind, Marjorie sometimes thinks, toughening up her poor cold heart. If she’d had the baby, would she have come so far? If Ben had lived, would she have wanted to?

  forty-eight

  LEFT-OVER DAYS FOR GWYNETH, with Chloe gone.

  Chloe goes to Ulden to visit her mother. She takes Inigo, aged eight. Oliver has bought Gwyneth the cottage next to the Rose and Crown, and now Gwyneth sleeps there and spends her day off cleaning its floors, and is not noticeably grateful for the change in her circumstances.

  On this particular Sunday, the Leacocks are off to Italy on holiday. Gwyneth has, for once, been left formally in charge, and not just unofficially. The Rose and Crown flourishes: it has twenty beds, ten bathrooms, not enough fire escapes and a restaurant with a good wine list and a Spanish chef and Portuguese waiters. The public bar has been swept away, along with good cheap local beer, and the spirit of the Cosy Nook extends throughout the premises; somewhat plushed up, of course, with rosy mock Victoriana replacing the faded maroon original.

  Gwyneth earns four pounds a week plus meals. A five hundred per cent increase on her original salary, as Mrs Leacock emphasizes. Gwyneth rises these days at seven and goes to bed at twelve. The girls who work under her earn double what she does, but Gwyneth seems to take a pride in the lowness of her wage.

  ‘Only four pounds a week,’ she says, with awe. ‘They wouldn’t get anyone for that now.’

  Although she is always pleased to see Chloe, and delights in Inigo, she seems uninterested in Chloe’s London life. Chloe is half relieved, half hurt. It was as if, with her marriage, she has become a stranger to her mother.

  And indeed—living with, getting pregnant by, and marrying Oliver, without her mother’s knowledge, let alone permission, were not deeds calculated to increase the bond between them. Rather it was to loosen it—with that destructive instinct for self-determination which the loving daughters of loving mothers sometimes so alarmingly exhibit. And loosen it, it did.

  Gwyneth has understood and forgiven. But she keeps her daughter at a distance now.

  ‘The girls are so slip-shod,’ she complains to Chloe. ‘They have no standards. You have to watch them all the time,’ and although it’s her day off she takes Chloe to lunch in the restaurant, instead of cooking for her in the cottage, so that she can keep an eye on the staff, the food, and the guests.

  Gwyneth makes excuses.

  ‘I do hardly any cooking in the cottage,’ she says. ‘I can never get used to cooking food for myself. All that work and only me to appreciate it. Besides, if I eat by myself I get indigestion. It’s the quietness, it worries me. I like a bit of clatter and a shout or two, and even an argy-bargy, so long as it doesn’t turn nasty!’

  The waiter brings Inigo a mountain of chips, especially prepared for him in the kitchen. He’s pleased by this special attention and smiles benignly at his mother and grandmother. He is a beautiful, clear-eyed child. Chloe feels such a pure clarity of love for Inigo, at this age, that it pierces her with almost more pain than any Oliver has ever caused her. Chloe picks at gammon and pineapple. She does not have much appetite, these days.

  Chloe When you retire, mother, you’ll have to be a little more on your own. Do try and get used to the cottage.

  Gwyneth (Horrified) I mean to work until I drop.

  Chloe But why? You don’t have to work any more. And if you’re getting varicose veins—

  Gwyneth Only little ones—

  Chloe And if your insides are giving trouble—

  Gwyneth has complained to Chloe that occasionally, though past the menopause, she bleeds a little from time to time.

  Gwyneth If I forget about it it will go away.

  She asks after Marjorie. Gwyneth has seen her name on the television screen—albeit low down on the credits—and is pleased to know she is doing well.

  Gwyneth Such a bright girl. So were you all, bright as buttons.

  She asks with some temerity after Grace. Tales of Grace are often cataclysmic.

  Chloe Grace? Litigating.

  Gwyneth That should keep her out of trouble for a while. And little Stanhope? What a name to call a baby!

  Chloe He’s with me most of the time. Well, with the au pair.

  Gwyneth I expect it’s for the best, though it’s hard on you. She never sounded the best of mothers, to me. Leaving the poor little thing alone like that.

  Grace goes out drinking, one night, leaving the sleeping two-year-old Stanhope locked in the flat. He wakes, is terrified, dials telephone numbers at random, gets through to the Continental Exchange, who keep him soothed and reassured while the call is traced and help summoned. When Grace comes home at three with a Nigerian in national dress there are the police, the NSPCC and a Children’s Department official waiting for her.

  Poor Grace. Everyone gets to hear about it. Even Gwyneth, tucked away in Ulden.

  Poorer Stanhope.

  Grace consents to let Chloe have S
tanhope. She has never cared for him. It was Chloe who talked Grace out of having an abortion so it seems only fair that Chloe should put up with the consequences.

  Gwyneth Poor Grace. Poor little Grace. She always seemed to have so much and really it was nothing.

  She puts her hand on Chloe’s arm and strokes it, with a brief return of the passionate, protective love she once had for her child.

  Gwyneth I’m glad things are all right for you. I did my best for you but it wasn’t much. I don’t deserve what you’ve turned out to be. And Oliver doesn’t mind about you having Stanhope?

  Chloe No. He has a great respect for Patrick Bates.

  Gwyneth (With unaccustomed asperity) I can’t think why. I must say I could never see his charm. It was a bad day when he was posted here. I wish he’d been sent to Aberdeen. Upsetting all you girls the way he did. And that poor wife of his, I don’t know why she puts up with it.

  Chloe He’s very creative.

  Inigo has been taken off by a waiter to inspect the ice-cream stores. At the table next to theirs four grey-suited men with competent, choleric faces grow impatient because their steaks take so long to arrive.

  Gwyneth excuses herself, and vanishes into the kitchen. Gwyneth’s rump is broad and solid, her waist vanished into stolid flesh. If she was ill, thinks Chloe, surely she’d be thin? The steak appears at the next table: the four men eat. Gwyneth returns, satisfied.

  Gwyneth Creative! What kind of excuse is that? Your father was creative, and he did what he had to for his family. He knew real life came first. The other is make believe.

  Chloe (Flatly) Father died. If he’d gone on painting pictures and not the outside of houses, he might still be alive.

  Gwyneth It was the choice he made, and the right choice. You’ve got to live by ought, not want.

  Chloe No. People should do what they want. If they don’t it just means trouble for everyone.

  It is the nearest they have ever come to an argument. Gwyneth’s mouth tightens. Chloe moistens her lips. She feels an unaccountable rage with her mother. The four men at the next table are in discussion with the waiter, who presently sidles up to Gwyneth.

  Waiter That’s the new management. Sneaky bastards, the Leacocks. They’ve gone and sold the place. I don’t suppose they told you either.

  Gwyneth turns pale. She looks as Chloe remembers her looking twenty-five years earlier, when she came home a widow from the Sanatorium, having left the house a wife.

  And that is what the Leacocks have done. Sold the Rose and Crown as a going concern to a big chain of hotels. And why not? It’s what the Leacocks always meant to do: and he is sixty and she is fifty-five, and Gwyneth should have seen it coming. And if they did not confide in her—well, why should they? Gwyneth is only an employee.

  So Gwyneth tells herself, as once she told herself that there was no good reason why Chloe, a grown woman now, should ask her to her wedding. And telling herself often enough, convinces herself, and when the Leacocks return from holiday, Gwyneth smiles at them, and when they leave for Wales, within the month, giving her a lampshade as a farewell present, she waves good-bye and promises to write, and only when the following week the new management replace her with a younger woman from another hotel, and she finds herself unemployed, she wonders briefly why the Leacocks have not seen fit to safeguard her position. Twenty years!

  Gwyneth sits in her little cottage and thinks of nothing in particular for a long time, and next time Chloe goes to visit her, she complains of stomach pains and Chloe tries to get her to go to the doctor but she won’t.

  ‘It’s the change in diet,’ she says, ‘it’s nothing. I’m very happy here and all sorts of people pop in to see me, you mustn’t worry about me, Chloe. And I had such a nice postcard from the Leacocks—they’ve bought a little house in Malta.’

  ‘Those monsters,’ says Chloe.

  ‘You mustn’t say that about them,’ says Gwyneth. ‘They’ve always been very good to me.’

  ‘They’ve exploited you for years,’ shouts Chloe. ‘They’ve conned you and laughed at you, and you asked for it. You’ve stood around all your life waiting to be trampled on. Can’t you even be angry? Can’t you hate them? Where’s your spirit?’

  She stamps and storms at her mystified mother. It is the worst of her times. Oliver has been out with Patrick for the last two nights. Out prowling like any tomcat, bent on nocturnal mysteries. If I love him, Chloe tells herself, I’ll let him do what he wants, and a jealous wife is an abomination; and listening to herself, believes herself. Not for nothing is she her mother’s daughter. When Oliver comes home she’ll smile and make a pot of coffee and tell him who’s phoned and who she’s seen.

  It drives him mad. His trousers are stained with semen; he hasn’t even bothered to take them off, then, or else he’s been too drunk. Chloe washes them, patiently, with purest, gentlest soap flakes. He’s trying to provoke her. She will not let herself be provoked. Even going to the doctor for treatment for VD she does not permit herself anger, only distress.

  Oliver gives up the effort; he stays home, says hard things about Patrick, doesn’t drink, writes another script. Is this victory, or just postponed defeat? Chloe thinks it’s victory. Oliver stares at her with sombre, furious eyes, and says nothing, and at night drives himself and her into the most elaborate and curious of positions, and still she merely smiles, and obliges, and if in the morning she’s bruised and bitten, isn’t that love and didn’t she enjoy it?

  In the meantime she has pushed and prodded her mother to the doctor’s. What you want, mother, is a hysterectomy, says Chloe. Get your womb taken out, removed, cut away. Then you’ll be a person, not a woman, and perhaps you’ll get your spirit back from those sad depths to which it has so pitifully sunk.

  ‘Cancer,’ says the doctor, investigating, and lo, there it is, everywhere.

  ‘In my young days,’ says Gwyneth’s friend Marion, who keeps the sweet shop, ‘that word was never spoken, and it was better that way. It’s talking about it makes it happen.’

  forty-nine

  THE CHILDREN ARE IN bed. But only Kevin sleeps. Sleep obliterates Kevin’s day as his head touches the pillow, as a lake might obliterate a candle. The other children lie awake. Stanhope learns League Tables—he hopes one day to win a Brainchild Quiz and impress his mother. Kestrel lies wide-eyed in the dark and tenses and relaxes her calf muscles to strengthen them for a hockey victory. Imogen, precocious, reads the Bible, as once her mother did.

  ‘Remember now thy creator in the days of thy youth,

  When the evil days come not—’

  And they don’t. So much Chloe has achieved.

  Inigo waits up for midnight dinner. At eighteen his life has already fallen into a kind of quiescence. He has the patience and dignity of an old man. Sixteen was riotous with sexual activity, as he was obliged and blown by a whole tribe of lost girls, aged thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, who had hysterics in lessons, and collapsed at games—dizzy with sleepers, bombers, pot and acid—grasping at sexual straws in a sea of parental anxiety and distress. Now a couple of years later, the girls have grown respectable. They work for their exams, polish their shoes, wear no eye make-up, return to a state of near virginity and instead of passing into other worlds at parties, would waltz and fox-trot if only they could.

  Inigo thinks he will go into politics, and bring about the Socialist revolution his parents so patently failed to achieve. Kropotkin and Engels are his heroes. Marx and Lenin he considers rather trashy modern stuff. And Chairman Mao a mere poet.

  So much Chloe has achieved.

  The boeuf-en-daube is cooked. The rice is drained, the salad tossed. Françoise has laid the table, and arranged a posy of spring flowers as a centre-piece. She has picked crocuses. Chloe has never known anyone to pick crocuses before. She had thought them inseparable from the earth in which they grew, but it seems she was mistaken.

  Inigo goes to fetch Oliver. When Oliver is in an uncertain temper, Inigo is commonly sent to fet
ch him. Oliver is proud of Inigo, flesh of his flesh, love of his love, so socially and sexually competent, and president of the school astronomical society as well. No bar-mitzvahs, no chicken soup, no aie-aieing for him. Presently he’ll go to Oxford, and won’t have to go on a scholarship.

  So much Oliver has achieved.

  Oliver has had a bad day. He sits and broods and considers his ill-fortune. Thus:

  A letter from his father demands that the roof over his poor old head be mended. It is leaking. The Rudore family house has long since been condemned, and stands alone and crumbling in a sea of builder’s mud while Mr Rudore’s solicitors (at Oliver’s expense) fight the compulsory purchase order.

  Two telephone calls from Oliver’s sisters, now cheerful, fertile ladies living next door to each other in the Bishops Avenue—that mecca of all desire—with expensively coiffeured hair, crimson nails, chauffeurs and charge accounts, suggest to him that since their husbands have that week given away all their wealth to an Israel Defence Fund, the least that he, Oliver, can do to compensate (for what they regard as anti-Zionism and he as natural common sense) is not just mend but renew his father’s roof. What’s more, they say, they have been together to see Oliver’s latest little film—showing, without his knowledge, at an Art Cinema in Golders Green—and have found it quite brilliantly funny. Oliver can’t remember there being a single laugh line in it.

  Chloe has been to London to see her friends. His indifference is faked—anxiety knots his stomach. Is she disloyal? Do they talk about him? Do they laugh? Oliver lives in terror of being laughed at. When he leaves a script-conference it is his habit to lean against the closed door to make sure they’re not laughing at him. Quite often, of course, they are.

  Oliver has succeeded in reading his last completed chapter to Françoise, having contrived Chloe’s absence without upsetting her—but instead of it bringing gratification and reassurance, as he had hoped, and a literary response as obliging as her sexual one, she has been rancorous and hard to please, and even criticized his grammar. He had thought for a while, that Françoise, with her stocky limbs, solid peasant frame and slow smile, was the personification of primitive female wisdom; and, rightly, that her instinctive perceptions would turn out to be only thinly overlaid with academic sophistications: but essential wisdom has turned out to be stupidity, and innocence limitation, and honesty intransigence. Françoise hears only the construction of his sentences, and is deaf to their meaning and the intertwining patterns they make; and does not even possess that natural and kindly grace which at least Chloe, for all her faults, deigns to offer him—that of keeping quiet about what she does not like.