Down Among the Women (7 page)

Where has Scarlet’s father been this afternoon, thus allowing his wife to be so cruelly exposed to his daughter? He has been building the future, all our futures, talking to a new client, who works in a shed in the hills behind High Wycombe trying to dry and pulverize coffee beans on a commercially viable scale. There seems a future in it; Kim must be pleasant to the client, who likes to drink in the afternoon, but has nowhere in High Wycombe to do so, except at home where his wife is teetotal.

Kim takes his client round the drinking clubs of Soho and fixes him up for the evening with an available girl Kim knows. The client, he suspects, would rather go home to his wife but can hardly look a gift lay in the teeth. Besides, is he not growing rich? Are such things not his perks? Kim telephones the client’s wife and says her husband is having dinner with him, and then retreats back to the safety of his own home as quickly as he can.

Kim keeps his painting past, his canvases, in racks in the attic. One day, when the Tate brings his two bought paintings up from their basement and hangs them where they can be seen, he means to sell the rest and grow rich, and thus encouraged, paint again. In the meantime he will put his faith in coffee beans.

When he first sees Scarlet on the stairs he thinks for a terrible moment it is Susan. He feels bad about lying to the client’s wife, and expects retribution. Seeing it is not Susan, but someone far more mountainous, he is relieved. The groans of this stranger, he feels, are, though disturbing, at least not his fault.

They have gone but two steps upwards—she is very heavy and seems to have little instinct for self-help—when they are overtaken by Mr Joseph Justice, who has received a garbled message from his recording machine. The tape was set at the wrong speed and the words cannot be deciphered but he has recognized the timbre of his patient’s voice and come at once.

Together they make better speed. They find the door on the chain and Kim rattles, shakes and shouts to wake Susan, who staggers sleepily to open it.

A three-part monster enters her home. She can make little sense of it at first. One speaks, crossly. It is her husband’s voice.

‘Why in God’s name was it on the chain?’

She sees, now. Her doctor, her husband, her stepdaughter, united in monstrosity.

‘Shall I ring for an ambulance?’ her husband is asking.

‘Too late for that,’ her doctor replies. ‘Get her in to the bed.’

Susan tries to stop them; she tugs and drags at the lumbering heap.

‘You can’t,’ she cries, ‘you can’t!’

Her husband, horrified, shakes her off.

‘You don’t understand,’ moans Susan, ‘it’s your daughter. It’s Scarlet.’

Kim, though shaken, is deflected only for a moment. As for Mr Joseph Justice, he’s delighted. He thrives on the bizarre.

Susan sits and cries in her chair while her stepdaughter’s child is delivered in the bed prepared for her child. It is Susan’s doctor who smiles his expensive smile at the wrong mother and means it, for Scarlet is too terrified even to moan and so get mistaken for a brave good mother.

And who will pay the bill? Why, Susan’s husband. He paces the room, consumed with rage, at Susan, at the world, at everyone.

Bitterness against Wanda, which he thought was dead, has been foxing him, lying dormant. Now once again it is seeking out the old pathways. Kim finds himself anxious: but then Wanda was always good at making him anxious: there is a pain in his chest: when he was with Wanda he was always in pain. And Wanda would infect him with the expectation of disaster—moral, financial, emotional, political and practical—and thus make him aware that he had always feared, somehow invited, calamity. Now she has sent this emissary, this daughter, yet surely no part of him, here to torment him and complicate his future.

He cannot find words to talk to Susan. She is too young. She cannot, will not understand. Look at her now, pouting and grizzling, incapable of any serious emotion.

In the bedroom Mr Joseph Justice holds Byzantia up by the heels and slaps her on the bottom. There is no need for it, since she is breathing perfectly well, but the gesture seems to reassure his patient. Besides, it is traditional. ‘Take that,’ says the doctor, in effect. ‘And that! See if you enjoy it either!’

Byzantia cries.

‘It’s a girl,’ he says to Scarlet.

‘You’re lying,’ she says.

‘A granddaughter for you, Mr Belcher,’ sings out Mr Justice through the open door, hoping for a more reasonable response.

But there is silence. Susan stares at her old, old husband; and he stares into his soul and sees that it is no longer young.

‘Say something,’ whines Susan presently.

‘Splendid, splendid,’ he calls back to Mr Justice, which was not what she had hoped for.

‘I could do with some help,’ says Mr Justice, ‘what’s the matter with you both?’

‘Go on,’ says Kim, ‘you’re a woman.’

‘You go,’ says Susan. ‘It’s your daughter. It’s nothing to do with me.’ It is the first time she has defied him.

‘I’m sorry about it,’ he manages to say, ‘but you knew when we married that Scarlet existed. I hid nothing. I wasn’t to know she’d turn up.’

But he can’t say anything right.

‘You can’t just shift the responsibility now,’ says Susan. ‘Go on in there.’

‘I’m a man,’ he says. ‘It’s no place for a man. Did she say who the father was?’

‘No.’

‘Didn’t you ask?’ His voice makes clear what a fool he thinks her.

‘No, I didn’t. I’m not supposed to be upset. In case you’ve forgotten, I’m having a baby any minute. Not that I suppose you care now. You’ve got a grandchild, haven’t you? A girl too. What you wanted.’

It is true. He has longed for a girl. They both have. To replace the baby Scarlet torn from him so many years ago by Witch Wanda. Scarlet is back now in the adult flesh, groaning, bleeding, space-consuming, troublesome. He doesn’t, frankly, want any kind of baby any more.

He puts his arms round Susan. He lies bravely. ‘Never mind,’ he says. ‘Never mind. It’s your baby I want. Our baby.’

But Susan can only respond with petulance. She shakes him off, as her mother did to her, unforgiving, punishing. Twelve (waking) hours without talking for a minor offence: twenty-four (waking) for a major. Then a timed and calculating smile. Susan’s face is set and cross. Kim is disappointed and fears for the first time the triviality of their future together. He takes away his arms, forlorn. He remembers the girl he left his coffee client with—as pretty as Susan, he thinks, and twice as generous, pleased only to give and be given pleasure. Why, the world is full of them. Full of pretty girls. What is the difference between one and another?

Susan’s hand creeps into his. His tightens over hers. Then he goes in to help Mr Justice. She calls after him.

‘Kim.’

He pauses. ‘Well?’

‘I think perhaps I should have my baby in hospital,’ she says, hoping to drive home to him the enormity of the situation. But all he says is, ‘Yes. Perhaps you should.’

Susan is hurt. She cries afresh. She hears someone coming up the stairs. The front door still stands open. Wanda comes in. She too has had a garbled message of desperate phone calls, and has come searching for her daughter.

Susan knows without being told that this is Wanda. And she in her folly has summoned her. Susan makes no move. It is all too terrible. Wanda looks at her briefly, appears to dismiss her.

‘Where is she?’

‘In my bedroom,’ says Susan.

‘Is there a doctor?’ asks Wanda, making towards the bedroom door.

‘Yes. My doctor. And my husband’s in there too.’

Wanda takes time off duty to smile a rare appreciative smile, and then goes into the bedroom.

‘It’s born,’ says Susan, after her. ‘It’s a girl.’

How lucky, Susan thinks, to be Scarlet. Scarlet has everything, and deserves nothing. Susan wants her mother. Susan cries. Susan has a pain.

‘I’m going to have a baby,’ she says into the shambles of her life.

Susan has a slow and difficult labour. It lasts forty-two hours. She is taken to hospital because it seems simpler to the others than to turn Scarlet out so instantly, and besides, nothing at home is now ready for Susan. There is a ’flu epidemic at the hospital. They are short-staffed—Susan’s in the ante-natal ward (no visiting, thank you) for thirty-five hours, with sporadic attention, then moved into the labour room. Here the system, loses touch with her. She lies alone on a high hard narrow couch for six hours, forgotten. She rings the bell but no one comes.

They have gone to tea. She is afraid of moving for fear of falling off the couch. Time passes. The pains intensify until, each time, she is on the verge of fainting, then diminish, bringing her, as might some skilled torturer, back to full consciousness and ready for the next application. Presently she screams, though it scarcely seems to be her who is making this shattering noise. Someone comes running. Figures cluster and move. There is a feeling, she gathers, against anaesthesia. She strikes out at someone. Simeon dives into the world. She is surprised. She has forgotten she is here to have a baby. She has fifteen stitches; her legs strung up to poles specially devised to be fitted to the ends of maternity beds. She gets fearful cramps in her legs—there is a delay, a queue of women, legs strung in preparation for the student stitcher—while she waits, and thinks the pains are almost as bad as the earlier ones. But of course they aren’t.

Poor Susan. Lucky Susan. Her mother, oddly, comes to visit her, almost immediately. She studies the poor lopsided little baby—Simeon was much distorted on his leisurely journey out, though of course the condition will right itself. Or so Susan has been told. Susan’s mother speaks.

‘Still, he’s all right, isn’t he? You never know, when the father’s getting on in years. I was so worried.’

When Kim comes to visit her, Susan can hardly remember who he is.

T
HERE WILL NOW BE
a short intermission. Sales staff will visit all parts of the theatre, selling for your delight whale-fat ice-cream whirled into pink sea waves at two shillings, or ten new pence, the plastic cone; at the apex of each you will find wedged a stiff syrupy strawberry. Or if you prefer, try a hamburger from our foyer stall at only two shillings and sixpence, or thirteen new pence; dig your teeth into the hot pink rubber sausage. The bread is hygienic and aerated (did you know?) with that same substance which creates the foam on your daily detergent.

Truly, yes, truly delicious. Or at any rate, all right by me. Time was when the children had rickets. More hens in the country now than people. Free-range for the hundreds, or battery for the millions, you make your choice. I know which I make. A good woman knows that nature is her enemy. Look at what it does to her. Give her a packet of frozen fish fingers any day, and a spoonful of instant mashed potato, and a commercial on the telly to tell her it’s good. We swallow the lot, we mothers, and laugh.

Down here among the women, or up, up, up, in the tower blocks; those rearing phalluses of man’s delight.

Down here among the women you don’t get to hear about man maltreated; what you hear about is man seducer, man betrayer, man deserter, man the monster.

What did we hear last week, during our afternoons in the park?

Man leaves his wife, young mother of four. She is waiting to go into hospital for her cancer operation. He returns from a holiday abroad, stays a couple of hours, and leaves for good, saying, by way of explanation, he is tired of being married. He probably is, too.

Man runs off with secretary the day his son brings home his first girlfriend.

Man leaves home while his wife’s in hospital having the baby. She comes home to an empty house and unpaid bills. Yet he visited her in hospital, brought her flowers and grapes … no one can understand it.

Man seems not so much wicked as frail, unable to face pain, trouble and growing old.

Yesterday L walked with me. A rich girl, clever, cultivated, desiring to marry M, an equally rich and cultivated person—if married already—much in the public eye. A suitable match for suitable people. How to dispose of the unsuitable wife, but kindly, without hurting her? Without mentioning L’s name? For two whole years, I learn, he professes his love for his wife, whilst making himself as unpleasant to her as he can; finally, in her distress, it is the wife who asks for a divorce. The consummation to be wished. He acts his hurt surprise, his indignation, silent joy mounting in his veins. Rushing to the telephone. She’s asked, she’s asked! At last! Such kindness. Can you imagine such kindness? Yes, truly, they imagine they are kind.

Dear God, preserve us from such love.

Down here among the wage-earners, of course, we don’t have that class of patience. Our love is less lofty. Money and law interfere. Let me quote a poem I know. It is called ‘The Poet to his Wife’.

‘Money-and-law

Stands at the nursery door.

You married me—what for?

My love was not to get you clothes or bread,

But make more poems in my head.

I’ve fathered children.

God!

Am I to die

To turn them out as fits a mother’s eye?

I wanted mothering, and they, this brood

Step in and take my daily food.

Money-and-law

Stands at the nursery door.

Money-and-law, money-and-law

Has the world in its maw.’

Well.

Susan sits up in her hospital bed. Her father sends flowers: he’s in the United States discovering more about instant coffee. Susan’s stitches are infected. Movement is painful. Kim is kind but thinks she is fussing. Well, it isn’t his first baby. There was, after all, Scarlet, a full twenty years ago.

Scarlet, they (Kim, Wanda, Scarlet and friends, but not Susan) have decided, may as well stay in the flat with her baby daughter until Susan returns with her son. Susan wants to return now, at once. But Susan is running a slight fever in the evenings. The hospital doesn’t want to take any risks. And the baby is not yet back to its birth-weight. Susan’s breasts are cracked and painful. When the baby sucks, male and searching, tears of pain and humiliation spurt from her eyes.