by Fay Weldon
“Um,” he said cautiously. “When did you do all these?”
“I just sat in class and drew,” she said. “School gets so boring, doesn’t it?” (Late nights and hard times at the kennels, reader. Mostly she was just short of sleep.)
She was very young. He asked a few personal questions. He thought he was getting lies in return, so he changed tack.
“Why House of Lally?” he asked. “Not Yves St. Laurent? Not Muir?”
“I like the clothes,” she said, simply. “I like the colors.” She was wearing jeans and a white shirt. That was sensible. If you can’t afford clothes, don’t try. Wear what you look good in. He hired her.
“It’s hard work and low pay,” he warned her. “You’ll be sweeping floors.”
“I’m used to that,” she said, and didn’t say what came into her head next, that at least this kind didn’t get any harder and longer when the moon was full. It occurred to her that perhaps she’d had, for her age, quite an experience of the world. The thought both pleased her and saddened her, and she longed for someone to talk to; but of course there was no one, and then the kind of whirling pleasure and triumph came: “After all that, I’ve done it, I’ve got a job, I’ve actually got the right job, I’m exactly where I want to be,” and there was no one to tell about that, either. So she just smiled again at Hector McLaren, and he thought, now where have I seen that smile before, half happy, half tragic, but he did not make the connection. Afterwards he wondered, now what have I done? Why did I do that? We’re overstaffed as it is. Helen had the same effect on him, sometimes: overriding his better judgment in the most extraordinary way. He decided he was just susceptible to women. (Which of course he wasn’t, reader, or only to Lally women.)
And that’s how Nell came to work for her mother. Well, since like calls to like, it was not surprising. Something of John Lally’s talent ran in both their veins, mother and daughter alike.
LOVED
NELL LEFT HOME ON Wednesday and was taken on by Hector McLaren on Thursday, and started her job on the following Monday. She lodged in a small hotel in Maida Vale—her room free in return for two hours’ cleaning between 6 A.M. and 8 A.M., six days a week. She walked to work. There she swept floors, and was allowed to hand-sew a seam or so, and watched the cutters carefully. In the evenings she went out to discos and fell into bad company. Well, not very bad, just rather brightly-haired and with the odd safety-pin through earlobe and nose; amiable, passive and, for Nell, safe. Her new friends made no demands on her, intellectual or emotional. They drooped about and jigged around, and smoked dope. So did Nell, having noted how it had soothed and cheered Clive and Polly, forgetting how their general idleness had led to their downfall. She got to work tired, but she was used to being tired.
One Friday afternoon Helen Lally herself came into the workshop. Heads turned. She wore a cream suit and her hair was piled on top of her head. She went into the office and spoke for a little while to Hector McLaren, behind the glass. Then she came out and crossed straight over to where Nell sat, and picked up the coat she was working on, and inspected it, and seemed to approve of what she saw, though Nell knew the seam wasn’t perfectly straight. She’d fallen asleep over it, at one point, and hadn’t bothered to go back.
“So your name’s Nell,” she said. “Mr. McLaren speaks very well of you. Nell’s such a pretty name. I’ve always liked it.”
“Thank you,” said Nell, pleased and blushing. She did her best to look tough and cross, but it wasn’t much use. Helen thought the girl was too young, too thin, and probably living away from home and shouldn’t be. Later she spoke to Hector about her, looking through the glass to where Nell’s dark cropped head bent over the cloth.
“She’s too young,” she said. “It’s a responsibility. Not like you to take her on, Hector, and her seams do wander, rather. We’re overstaffed.”
“Not if the Brazilian order comes through,” he said. “We’ll be really pressed if it does.” At which point the phone rang with confirmation of the order from Rio. It was the kind of thing the House of Lally seldom undertook—an entire wardrobe for an impossibly rich and fanciful young woman, newly married, who had a penchant for red roses—or else her husband had—and such a flower had to be either discreetly or effusively, at House of Lally’s discretion, delicately embroidered on, or flamboyantly fixed upon, every single garment, from suspender belt to greatcoat.
“Why ever did we say we’d do it?” mourned Helen. “It’s so vulgar.”
“We’re doing it because of the money,” said Hector, briskly. “And whether or not it’s vulgar depends on how it’s done.”
“But I’ll have to stand over someone all the time”—and then, cheering up, “Well, I suppose a red rose is what you make it.”
And so indeed it is! Hector thought of Nell’s portfolio and Nell was extracted from the ranks and embroidered a specimen rose or two, from scarlet buds to crimson extravaganza, which woke her up no end—and within the week was sitting in the attic studio of Helen’s St. John’s Wood house, sewing roses for all she was worth, upon fabric of every shade, weight and texture, adjusting color and thread with a sure instinct.
“Good heavens,” said Helen, “what did I ever do without you!” and to Hector she said, “I hardly have to tell her a thing. She seems to know how my mind works. And it’s really nice to have a girl in the house—I’ve gotten so used to boys.”
“So long,” said Hector, “as you don’t start seeing her as a daughter! She’s an employee. Don’t spoil her.”
It was Hector’s opinion that Helen spoiled the boys; indulging them, allowing them their own way, spending too much money on them. And he may have been right—but they were a happy household, and there is no point at all in “beginning as you mean to go on.” Why? Why not just have good times while you can, is the way many a mother feels when the children’s father is gone.
“Nell,” said Helen one day, when Nell was a week into the rose spectacular. “Where are you living?”
“In a squat,” said Nell, and then, sensing concern and offering reassurance, as was her habit, “It’s okay. There’s water and mains services. I was paying my way as a chambermaid but the squat works out cheaper.”
And she smiled, and Helen thought, where have I seen that smile before? (On Clifford, of course, but she tried not to think about Clifford.) If I had a daughter, Helen thought, I would love her to be like this. Direct, kind, open to the world. I would like her to be living somewhere other than in a squat, of course. I would like her to be less waif-like, not so thin, properly looked after. Bother Hector, thought Helen, and pursued the conversation.
“Most of our girls live at home,” she said.
“They have to,” observed Nell, “because you pay them so little.” And she smiled to take the sting out of the words. “But I don’t have a home. Not a proper home. I never have.”
Perhaps if Helen had been listening she would have pursued Nell’s history further, and made necessary connections, but she was still brooding about what seemed to her an accusation. Did she really underpay the workshop girls? She paid the going rate: was it enough? She brooded, of course, because she knew in her heart it was far from enough. House of Lally traded on its reputation in this respect also—if people line up for the privilege of working for you, you need pay them very little. This, reader, is what I see as natural justice. If Helen hadn’t been guilty she would not have been riled, and brooded, and would have regained her daughter earlier. As it was, she had to wait.
She would bring up the matter with Hector.
“Do you have a boyfriend?” she asked Nell, and Nell blushed.
“I do in a way,” said Nell, thinking of Dai, who had written to her once, “and I don’t in a way,” because when she came to think of it, or rather him, she no longer felt what she had. Distance had somehow dispersed obsession—which no doubt is why parents are forever taking girls on long trips abroad (or used to) in the hope they’ll forget an unsuitable love. At the sam
e time, Nell could see, loving Dai, at least in theory, kept her out of all kinds of trouble.
“No thank you,” she could say to importuning boys. “Nothing personal. It’s just that I’ve got this one true love—” and they would defer, regretfully, to this mysterious passion and leave her alone. And if they didn’t, it was remarkable what a swift upper (or lower) cut not necessarily to the jaw our Nell had developed at Ruellyn Comprehensive School. Smiling her glorious smile the while. Quite a girl. Helen, who knew only a fraction of all this, looked at her daughter, whom she did not recognize as daughter, puzzled and impressed.
“Nell,” said Helen, “if I found proper lodgings, would you move into them?”
“How would I pay for them?”
“The House of Lally would pay. I’d see to it.”
“I couldn’t do that,” said Nell. “The other girls wouldn’t like it. Why should I have something the others don’t?” Which was why Helen, after much argument, prevailed upon Hector to raise the workshop girls’ wages by a full twenty-five percent—which meant the garment prices had to rise by five percent. And the market stood it without apparently noticing. So they notched them up a further five percent. And Nell consented to move out of her squat—she was heartily glad to go, as it happened. Her friends were wearing thin—quite literally, a couple were on heroin by now. The trouble with drugs, as Nell now remembered from the old Faraway Farm days, is that they’re a dead stopper on conversation. If you want to talk, tell your life story to your doper friends—forget it! Nell lodged with Hector and his wife. The food was good, the hot water plentiful, the attic room was warm and she saved up and bought an easel and even got a little painting done on weekends. She woke in the mornings to the agreeable feeling, which the young have when all’s going well for them, of life opening up, and the right choices being made, that the world was her oyster.
“Tell you what,” said Helen, one momentous day, as Nell moved on to the eightieth rose, and scarcely two had been the same—she was now using as many as twenty different reds to a single rose, and experimenting with a kind of 3-D effect, so that the tiny lush petals seemed to burst from their center—“if you promise not to let it go to your head, we’ll try you out as a model.”
“Okay,” said Nell, trying not to look pleased.
“When will you be eighteen?”
“In June,” said Nell.
“I had a daughter called Nell,” said Helen.
“I didn’t know that,” said Nell.
“She kind of got lost along the way,” said Helen.
“I’m sorry,” said Nell. What else can one say? Helen didn’t go into the manner of her loss, and Nell didn’t ask.
“She would have been eighteen next Christmas. On Christmas Day.”
“I’m always sorry for people who’re born on Christmas Day,” said Nell. “Only one set of presents! I’m a midsummer baby myself. Do you really want me to be a model?”
“You have the face and figure for it.”
“It’s just that models are two a penny,” said Nell. “Anyone can be pretty. There’s no possible merit in it.” And Helen wondered, now who do I know who says that kind of thing? Her father, of course, but how was she to make the connection?
“I’d rather be a dress designer,” said Nell. “That takes real talent.”
“And time,” said Helen, “and experience, and training.”
Nell seemed to get the point. She smiled.
“I’ll be a model, if I can keep my hair like this,” said Nell. It was short, black, spiky and brushed straight up.
“It’s hardly House of Lally image,” said Helen. But she could see it might be easier to change the House of Lally image than Nell’s mind, and Nell won. Then the boys came in—Edward, Max and Marcus—and were introduced, but Nell was only one of the staff so they didn’t take much notice of her. They wanted their mother to come down to the kitchen and make supper, and, being her mother’s daughter, she went with them to do just that. Nell felt oddly lonely when they were all gone, as if an overhead light had been switched off and left her in the dark. She finished the rose, and later that evening phoned Mrs. Kildare, just to say she was well and working, and Mrs. Kildare wasn’t to worry, and love to Brenda, and, oh, yes, regards to Mr. Kildare. Then she went and signed up for A level evening classes in Art, History and French. She was back on course again.
UNLOVED!
NOW, READER, SHALL WE get back to Angie’s complexion? Remember how she had what the cosmetic surgeons call a facial peel and it went wrong? How the crevices and bumps were worse than before? She didn’t really want to sue the clinic: the publicity would be agony. But when in the course of their correspondence with her they suggested the trouble was unrelated to the peel and psychosomatic in origin, but that they would pay for a psychiatrist’s fees, she accepted. She went to Dr. Myling, of the new holistic school. She’d heard he was young and good-looking. He was.
“What do you think the matter is?” he asked.
“I’m unhappy,” she heard herself saying. She was amazed at herself.
“Why?” He had bright blue eyes. He could see into her soul just as Father McCrombie did, but he was kind.
“My husband doesn’t love me.”
“Why not?”
“Because I’m unlovable.” The words shocked her, but they were her own words.
“Go away and try to be lovable,” he said. “If your skin’s still bad in two weeks, we’ll try pills. But only then.”
Angie went away and tried to be lovable. She did this by calling Father McCrombie and saying she was selling the chapel and no longer needed his services. She was beginning to feel spooked at the whole thing. Sometimes, in the night, when Clifford was away—which was usually—she’d hear her father laughing.
“Selling the chapel might not be wise,” said Father McCrombie, lighting another black candle. “Begorah and it might not at all.” Father McCrombie was Edinburgh-born, as we know, but people liked the Irish brogue, and he’d cultivated it. Sometimes, he played not the devil’s disciple, but the lovable rogue; sometimes he even thought his good self had returned, and his soul was his own again.
“You can’t frighten me,” said Angie, though he did. So instead of having her social secretary simply call the real-estate agents and say “Sell!” Angie went around in person to their offices. She wanted to do it herself; she wanted to be courageous; she was not used to feeling fear. She wanted to get the better of it, to taste it properly before spitting it out. I think she was very brave. (You know my policy on speaking well of the living—never mind the dead.)
It was a wet day. You could hardly see for the rain. Angie stood at the junction of Primrose Hill Road and Regents Park Road, just about where Aleister Crowley, the Beast of 666 fame, used to live, and wondered which way to turn. Horns blared and lights blazed toward her. She could not make sense of them—noise and light seemed to leap together into the air—there was a second’s soaring silence, and then a thwack from above, which crushed light, life and soul out of her. Perhaps the lesson is that the bad should not attempt to be good. The effort will kill them.
FREAK ACCIDENT KILLS DRUG-CASE MILLIONAIRESS said one paper, trying to hide its mirth. A gasoline truck, careening out of control down Primrose Hill, had struck the curb, overturned, sailed through the air and landed flat on Angie. POOR LITTLE RICH GIRL CRUSHED AS ART-CASE HUSBAND STANDS TRIAL IN NEW YORK said another.
“The world’s well rid of her,” said John Lally, in spite of the way that Ottoline’s had served him, and I am sorry to say there were few to disagree. Only little Barbara wept.
Angie, dear Angie, I don’t know what went wrong, what made you so cross and sad, able to bring pleasure to so few. Should we blame your mother, inasmuch as she never loved you? Well, Clifford’s mother, Cynthia, didn’t love him either, and granted, it didn’t do him much good, but it didn’t make him unlovable. (Well, look at Helen. Look at your author, who keeps excusing him. He at least has some insight into himsel
f; and a kind of honesty in his selfishness, not to mention a capacity for change—perhaps the most important quality of all.) It is too easy to blame mothers for all the ills of the world. Everything would be okay, we tell ourselves, if only mothers did what they should—loved wholly, totally and completely, to the exclusion of all others. But mothers are people too. All they can do in the way of love is the best they can, and the child’s report of them always goes “could do better if tried.” Should one blame fathers? Angie’s father, we know, found her unlovable. Did that make her unlovable? I don’t think so. Helen’s father John Lally was pretty impossible, but Helen was never nasty. Feckless and irresponsible in youth, no doubt, but the opposite in her maturity.
Angie, I search for good things to say about you, and can find very little. Yet, wait. If it were not for Angie, Nell would not be alive. She would have been lost to the horrid snip, snip of Dr. Runcorn’s metal instruments. Angie’s motives were not good—but to do good for the wrong reason is better than not to do good at all. And now we have searched her past and found at least this one good thing, let us mark her memory RIP, Rest in Peace, and set about picking up the wreckage Angie strewed around her in her life, and piecing it together again as best we can.
We all live by myth, reader: if only by the myth of happiness around the corner. Well, why not? But how good we are at holding the myths of our society in one corner of our minds—say, that most people live in proper family units—father out to work, mother at home minding the children—while the evidence of our own eyes, our own lives, shows us how far this if from the truth. And how bad we are at facing truth. But we are stronger than we think. The myth might hurt, but the world won’t come to an end. The sun won’t go out. We are all one flesh, one family. We are the same person with a million million faces. We include in us Angie, and Mr. Blotton and even Father McCrombie. We must learn to incorporate them, include them in our vision of ourselves. We must not hiss the villain, but welcome him in. That way we make ourselves whole. Angie, friend, rest in peace.
