by Fay Weldon
A TURN OF FORTUNE
YOU KNOW HOW IT is, when nothing seems to happen for ages and then everything all at once? With Angie’s death it was as if a whole tangle of threads was suddenly pulled tight. Everything shifted, changed, interlocked. There was certainly no stopping the process, though how it was to go, of course, depended on the way the threads had been placed, with good intent or bad, over the past decade.
Now Father McCrombie, the ex-priest, in return for a bed to sleep on (a foam mattress in the toll-house), a bottle of brandy (or two) a night, a very small fee (Angie was as mean as only the born-rich can be—you know my views on that), had been in the habit not just of lighting black candles whenever he thought of it, but of conducting a rather formal weekly Black Mass in the Satan’s Enterprise Chapel (which Angie didn’t know about. She’d only have laughed, mind you, half believing, half not-believing, in all such nonsense). Father McCrombie, if the truth be known, these days only half-believed as well, but took good money from those who did turn up and took it seriously. Nevertheless, ill wishes do no one any good, for when Angie phoned out of the blue to say she was selling the chapel and thus depriving him of his income, and Father McCrombie had lit his own big black candle and called down the wrath of the Devil, had not Angie on that instant been squashed flat, like a swatted mosquito? It was enough to frighten a saint, let alone a villainous ex-priest, defrocked and excommunicated, his mind blasted by psychedelic drugs.
Father McCrombie decided enough was enough, blew out his candles, said a quick and partly sincere Hail Mary, bade adieu forever to the ghost of Christabel, closed the chapel, and lumbered out into the world to make his fortune some other way.
Father McCrombie’s friends being who they were, and his connections with Angie what they were, it was not surprising that in his search for semi-honest employment he presently met up with Erich Blotton, who now went by the innocent name of Peter Piper of Piper Art Security Limited, a firm which supervised the transport from place to place of national art treasures, protecting and insuring them against theft, flood, fire, ransom, switching and general deception.
Remember Erich Blotton? The chain-smoking, child-snatching lawyer who had escaped with Nell when ZOE 05 crashed? Erich Blotton, on the strength of one short interview with Clifford, years back in the days of his child-snatching, had decided to go into Art. There, obviously, money, power and prestige lay—not to mention rich pickings.
Piper Art Security worked out of rather small, smoky offices in the Burlington Arcade, above a knitwear boutique. The boutique’s owner complained that the stench of cigarette smoke got into her stock, but what could she do? Peter Piper would certainly not stop smoking. It was, he told her, and with some truth, the only pleasure he had in life.
Erich Blotton was not a happy man. He missed his wife, who had given two million pounds away to children’s charities, and died the week before he’d judged it safe to slip back into the country and bring her out with him.
“You’d better come back soon, Erich,” she’d once told him on the phone. “Because until you do, I’m going to spend, spend, spend!” Men had come around looking for him, she said. Big, dangerous, black men. Such men could only be, he supposed, hit men, out to get him. Too many people altogether had been looking for him. Bereft and angry parents, he’d come to realize, make bad enemies—more dangerous than police, or criminal associates. So he missed his wife’s funeral, changed his name, his profession, and his way of life. He thought he was safe. But it was all such hard graft; he lamented the past.
Father McCrombie went to see Peter Piper and said, “Begorah, how would it look if a man like me came in with a man like you? I have my talents, you have yours.”
Peter Piper was never a big man. He smoked a hundred cigarettes a day and coughed, wheezed and trembled as a result. He had bad circulation in his right leg. Canvases are large and heavy. So was Father McCrombie, and frightening too, with his red hair, red beard and strange rolling red eyes. A good man to have around. Or so it seemed to Peter Piper. Perhaps Father McCrombie had hypnotic eyes?
“Why not?” said Peter Piper.
They talked briefly of Angie Wellbrook’s death. Much of Piper Art Security’s business was with Ottoline’s.
“Tragic!” said Peter Piper. “Poor woman!”
“Poor woman,” said Father McCrombie, and crossed himself.
May God have mercy on her soul.
No thunderbolts descended, but should have.
“Of course,” said Peter Piper, “her death is a great misfortune to Piper Art Security,” and Father McCrombie felt it was his bounden duty to help the new firm out in whatever way he could. And there, for the time being, we leave the two of them, plotting away, but at least without the help, for once, of disagreeable cosmic forces, though Father McCrombie sniffed the air, and felt expectation in it—the expectation of excitement and evil. Something of the atmosphere of the Satan Chapel seemed to travel with him; there was not much he could do about it.
Peter Piper said, “Can you smell something?” and sniffed as well, but he smoked so much it was hard for him to differentiate between one smell and another, hamburger onion from the spoor of the Devil, so he lit another cigarette and gave up, and downstairs Pat Christie of the Knitwear Boutique picked up the phone and made arrangements to break the lease. Somehow the girl didn’t like the place anymore.
BLOWING THE GAFF
CLIFFORD WAS IN THE dock of a criminal court in New York at the very moment that Father McCrombie blew out his final candle. McLinsky had taken the unusual step of going to the police with an account of his dealings with Leonardo’s (New York). Now perhaps the general feeling was that the English were muscling in too hard and too fast on the Big Apple’s art scene, and had to be taught a lesson or two—perhaps McLinsky’s outrage was genuine and his Puritan stock simply showing—but there Clifford was, actually indicted, and a charge of deception and fraud to be faced.
A hundred pressmen and cameras were there as well, of course. This was the stuff of world headlines. Leonardo’s, that august institution, thus insulted and impugned; Clifford, his face familiar to TV viewers the world over. Nor were things going well. The Leonardo’s battery of lawyers was gray-faced. The Court was frowning. You just cannot throw zeroes around with impunity, even in conversation, in circles where conversations equal deals and those conversations were taped. Taped?—the faces of Leonardo’s lawyers turned from gray to white.
Poof! Poof! Poof! Out went the candles in the Satan Chapel. Clifford’s head lightened—or was it just coincidence? Enough is enough. He was no criminal. He stood up.
“Look here,” he said. “If I could just address the Court—” How polished and perfect his English was. The Court decided to go for it, not resist it.
“If that’s the way you want it,” said Judge Tooley. And Clifford spoke. He spoke for an hour, and no one’s attention wandered. He borrowed from John Lally’s indignation, now past, but well-remembered by Clifford. He presented it without its cloak of paranoia; and how convincing it was. The truth is.
He told those serious people there assembled about the disgraceful State of the Art. Of the involvement of big, barely honest, money; of the enormous fortunes made and lost on the backs of a few struggling artists. Well, it had always been so. Hadn’t van Gogh died alone and in poverty, Rembrandt likewise? But another element had entered in—mega-money, and all that went with it. He spoke of the strange social hierarchies of the Art World, the dubious structures of the auction houses, the rings which controlled prices; the outrageous commission taken, the breaches of contract, the ignorance of experts; the ranks of unscrupulous middlemen who stood between the artist and those who simply wished to enjoy his work, of the buying and selling of critics, of reputations wrongly made and others cruelly ruined, all in the name of profit.
“An extra zero?” he asked. “You need a tape to tell you if I added an extra zero? Of course I did. This is the atmosphere in which I work, and the noble McLinsky know
s it very well, or he’s a fool. Which I’m sure he doesn’t wish to appear to be.” Out went the candles and Clifford was back in form, no longer cringing, but outrageous, passionate, charming and, in his way, sincere.
The Court and the jury cheered and clapped, cameras flashed, and Clifford left a free man and a hero and, that evening, took to bed a tough, bright, frizzy-haired young woman called Honesty and, as usual, longed for Helen’s softness. Or was she soft, these days? Perhaps success had toughened her? How could he know?
The phone rang. Angie? She had a knack of disturbing him at such moments. “Don’t answer it,” said Honesty, but Clifford did. He stretched out his blond, hairy arm and heard the news of Angie’s death. He took the first flight back to England and to Barbara and, I’m sorry to say—if we are one whit sorry for Angie and I am, just a bit—to Helen. He did not even wait until after the funeral.
HELEN AND CLIFFORD
“CLIFFORD,” SAID HELEN, “YOU’RE being absurd!” She sat in her pleasant front room, all pale-green watered silk and blond furniture, the white telephone in her hand. She wore a soft cream-colored dress, embroidered over the bosom with tiny yellowy flowers, and her brown curly hair fell over her face. At the sound of Clifford’s voice she had turned pale, but she allowed no tremor into her own. Nell watched from a corner of the room, no longer sewing roses—that order had long ago been completed—but just somehow still part of the household. How could she not be? She shouted at the boys to wash up, clean their rooms, answer the telephone for their mother, and they just laughed and groaned and did as she said, accepting her. It made Helen laugh, too, to watch her. She’s my daughter, she thought, the daughter I never had. As for Nell, watching Helen on the phone to Clifford that night, she thought she’d never seen a woman so beautiful, so clearly destined to affect the hearts and lives of men. “If only I could be like that,” Nell thought. “If only she was my mother.” And then thought, “No, I never can be like that, I am too spiky and blunt, and glad of it. I don’t want to live my life through men. Beside them, of course, but not because of them.”
Nell herself, now that she had Helen to take care of her, to insist on her eating and sleeping properly, to give point and purpose to her life, was beautiful enough, but scarcely knew it, as girls without fathers tend not to. Her hair, still short, black, spiky and absurd, now that she was House of Lally’s leading model, had become her trademark; it added a kind of permitted frivolity to the rich but slightly serious Lally tag. The danger always had been, and Helen knew it, that the clothes, following money rather than taste, would drift in popularity up the age groups and become just rather stodgy. Nell kept the Lally image young. She thought her success was some kind of fluke. She could hardly take herself seriously. That too is the fate of girls without fathers.
“Clifford,” said Helen lightly, “we have been married twice already. Three times would be two times too many. And the twins wouldn’t like it.”
“If you say the twins are mine, I’ll accept it,” said Clifford, which was as near to an apology as he could get, but still not quite enough for Helen. “Who cares anyway?”
“They do,” she said.
“We’ll go into that later,” he said. “You’re free to marry, aren’t you?”
His voice was loud and firm. Nell had no difficulty in overhearing it.
“I am,” said Helen, “and I like it. I want to stay that way.”
“I must speak to you seriously,” said Clifford. “I’m coming over.”
“You’re not,” said Helen. “Clifford, for years I’ve waited for this call but now it’s come too late. I’ve just met someone else.”
And she put down the phone.
“You haven’t, have you?” asked Nell, in alarm. And then, “I’m sorry, that was private. I shouldn’t have been listening.”
“How could you help it?” said Helen. “Anyway, you’re part of the family.” (Nell’s heart leaped.) “Of course there’s no one else. I just don’t want to be hurt again,” she said, and wept. Nell didn’t like that one bit. She was accustomed to seeing Helen calm, cheerful and in charge, which was how she tried, very properly, to present herself to the children.
“At least if you hurt you know you’re alive,” said Nell, and felt silly, but it was all she could think of to say.
“Then I’m alive,” said Helen. “Very much alive.”
“Phone him back,” said Nell. “I would.”
But Helen didn’t.
The next few dresses Helen designed just didn’t somehow work (I’m afraid love does this to some women. It undermines their creativity. With other women, of course, it works the other way. They blossom and flourish in it, workwise) and Nell, given the sketches to finish, had to redo them almost in their entirety. Helen hardly noticed. The designs were things. Nell’s eyes gleamed. This was her real ambition. Anyone could model—put on clothes, stand in front of cameras, this way, that way, but this! Ah, here was real achievement!
Clifford called Helen daily, and daily she refused the calls.
“What shall I do?” Helen asked Nell, all aquiver.
“He does seem to love you,” said Nell, cautiously.
“Until the next one comes along,” said Helen, nose in the air.
“He’s ever so rich,” said Nell, always practical.
“Her millions,” said Helen. (Poor dead Angie, ungrieved for!) “Really, he’s despicable. And I would never look after the child. I know he’d expect me to. In fact he probably only wants me because she needs a mother, and he thinks I’ll do. I can’t even remember her name.”
“Her name is Barbara,” said Nell, firmly. Helen must surely know what it was. The rest of the world did. She’d always been news, since banned from the Royal nursery. The ban was now rescinded. Barbara visited the Palace, PALACE PITIES MOTHERLESS TOT, observed the papers, WEEKENDS OK, PALACE DECREES. (That could only include Clifford, now rehabilitated in polite society. An indictment, these days, when men in high social places had themselves up for murder and worse, is nothing to speak of. Besides it was in another country.)
“I just couldn’t,” said Helen. “I’d only do something terrible to the child, I know I would.”
“But why?”
“I don’t know.” Helen felt hopeless, and helpless, and that it was all too late. A little wall of Father McCrombie’s black candle smoke still hung in the air. Such stuff is hard to get rid of.
“But you do love him?” inquired Nell.
“Oh, you’re so simple,” Helen complained. “Of course I love him.”
“Then marry him,” said Nell. It was what she wanted to happen, though she was not sure why. On the face of it, remarrying Clifford—whom Nell knew only as a face in the papers, and a strong insistent voice on the telephone—was the last thing Helen should do. But Nell said it, and poof, out the window went not quite the last of the smoke, but most of it.
“I’ll think about it,” said Helen.
Clifford, of course, had no intention of being put off. Helen, whatever she had said to Nell, still refused to see him, so he found ways of seeing Helen.
REFORMATION
AND THAT WAS HOW it came about, reader, that Leonardo’s (New York) mounted an exhibition of Designer as Artist; and that the English House of Lally was to feature prominently therein. That was why it came about that Clifford made his peace with John Lally, going so far as to finally return the canvases which had lingered so long in Leonardo’s vaults; surprising John Lally and Marjorie in their neat garden—or what was left of it—saying, “I have five of your canvases in the back of my car. Take them. They’re yours”—thus making John Lally a millionaire, and not just a hundred-thousander, for the early paintings were enjoying a surge in popularity—that is to say price. (They were still not the easiest paintings to hang on the walls and enjoy.) No matter that Clifford could easily afford such gestures—all Angie’s wealth was now his; no matter that he did it in part to win favor in Helen’s eyes; I think he also did it because he felt he
ought to. Clifford could see that natural justice required just such an act. Perhaps in his speech to the New York court he had actually converted himself? I hope so.
John and Marjorie unloaded the car and carried the canvases into the studio. Clifford helped.
“Gloomy old paintings,” said Marjorie. “You must have been in a state to paint them, John. I bet Evelyn was glad to get them out of the way!” (Those who live happy lives have simply no idea what it is to be unhappy.)
Neither John nor Clifford replied.
“A pity you and Helen can’t get together,” said John Lally to Clifford. It was his way of apologizing. “Those boys of yours are a handful.”
“I’m not much of a father,” said Clifford. Though he was trying, and trying hard, with Barbara, who took the news of her mother’s death with surprising equanimity. She just clung to her nurse a little tighter and said now perhaps Nanny could stay and she wouldn’t have to have a new one for Christmas.
“We can all change,” said John Lally, and picked up a cricket ball and threw it for young Julian, who was playing about rather forlornly with stumps and bat. Julian looked both astounded and gratified.
“It certainly seems so,” observed Clifford.
FORGIVENESS
HELEN, HEARING THE AMAZING news from her father, called Clifford. He’d known she would.
