Fay Weldon - Novel 23 (23 page)

 
          
Once
we were in bed again - and under the duvets, not on top of them - Krassner
said: ‘I had a call from home, while you were out.’

 
          
It
was a cold night, and a great wind got up and found branches and leaves to
fling against our window even here in the very heart of London; and the street
signs swung around and creaked atrociously; and the sound of breaking glass had
more to do with the weather than the recreational violence so common in these
parts as the nation prepares itself for its Monday morning best- foot-forward,
but Harry and I were snug and warm. I remember lying in my narrow bed as a
child and wondering what the future held: would I ever lie next to a man as of
right: would I have a wide bed forever rumpled, or with children crawling
around it and over me: would there be maids to bring orange juice and toast,
and a silver tray for the post? Knowing even then that things turned out never
as good as you hoped, never as bad as you feared.

 
          
Perhaps
the bed would be forever narrow, and clean, and quiet, as Angel’s was? She was such
a still, cool sleeper: as if all her energy was taken up by her mind, roaming
and plotting and scheming even while her body slept. I was all over the place,
tossing and turning and murmuring in my dreams: she’d complain of it. ‘Like
your father,’ she’d say, which to the child of the single parent is
condemnation, less for the girl than the boy, but there all the same. I have
broad plain hands, not like Felicity’s or Lucy’s, not like Angel’s, like my
father’s, Angel said, and I vaguely remembered. And what crimes had they not,
in my mother’s mind at least, committed? I will tell you more about my father
presently.

 
          
Right
now here I am happy with Harry in my bed, my leg pushed between his, his arm
over my shoulder. Nevertheless ice gripped my heart again, when he said he’d
had a call from home. It is terrible to be a woman in love, if only because
such images come to mind. Ice gripping the heart! I suppose you could do it in
special effects but it would look pretty silly. I remembered Kay, Gerda’s childhood
sweetheart in the Hans Christian Andersen story. Just a sliver of ice in the
heart from the Snow Queen and he wandered the world as her servant, forgetting
Gerda back home. Harry was the real Kay, Holly was the Snow Queen, and I was
Gerda. Such a plain, dull
name,
and such a silly good
girl. She got him back in the end, though.

 
          
I
thought the phone call could only be Holly summoning Harry back. She would want
to go into therapy with him, to recover from the shock of losing the baby (it
would seem to her like the most drastic miscarriage, no doubt), something,
anything, to have him by her side and not have to come after him herself, swell
her ankles at 30,000 feet. What would she think of me, if she knew about me?
She wouldn’t mind much, I didn’t imagine. I was only the hired help, one of the
production team. Not one of the principals, the ones who counted. I wasn’t
seen with Harry Krassner in publicity photos outside smart nightclubs, or
entwined by someone’s pool or in the gossip columns, any of those things that
so upset the great and famous: I didn’t think she’d much mind Harry’s habit of
sleeping entwined with me, to the detriment of my back (it always ached in the
mornings) or the calm domesticity of how we got along. Him putting up shelves:
me sweeping outside my front door with dustpan and brush, singing: doing, as
Harry put it, my Doris Day impersonation. Not Holly’s style.
Terrible
to think of one ending up as the girl next door.

 
          
I
had a feeling that maybe bed didn’t count in Holly’s scheme of things: what
counted was how you stretched and roamed in your silk wrap first thing in the
morning, and sat sipping your orange juice in your vast kitchen which
overlooked the ocean, with Harry Krassner, hairy-legged and white dressing
gowned, facing you, saying the kind of things film stars say to their
director-lovers, binding them closer and closer, delivering charm, demanding
guilt, while the paparazzi duck and dart beneath the windowsills. But the call
wasn’t from
Hollywood
: it was from farther north and to the west,
where the winter days are short and cold and people still fall in love, not
into relationships.

 
          
‘I
think it was a friend of your grandmother’s,’ said Harry. ‘It was hard to tell,
she shouted so loud. I kept saying I wasn’t you, but she didn’t believe me.’

 
          
‘That
would be Joy,’ I said. ‘I hope everything’s okay.’

 
          
‘I
could tell from the pitch of her voice that it wasn’t,’ said Harry. ‘I said
you’d call back.’

 
          
I
reached across him for the phone, disturbing his tranquillity. ‘God,’ he said.
‘You really worry about your family.’ Men never like it if you pay too much
instant attention to anyone other than them. ‘For someone who has so little of
it, it’s truly wondrous.’

           
I got through to Joy. I begged her
to put in her hearing aid and once she had the vibrations of her voice became
differentiated and it was possible to tell what she was saying. She had been on
to the Golden Bowl and warned them that a fortune hunter was after Felicity.
She had hired a private investigator to check him out: I was going to get the
bill: after all I was family, she was only a friend. I said perhaps she should
have waited until I came over, and could judge the situation for myself. Joy
thought otherwise, said I was selfish and ungrateful and took after my mother, and
put the phone down.
So much for transatlantic calls.
I
re-entwined myself with Harry but he was asleep; real life drama did not
impinge on him; presumably it wasn’t focused, drifted along, needed editing.
Outside the wind banged and crashed. I lay awake and listened to the radio,
which told me what I already knew, that force seven winds were sweeping
London
.

 
          
The
phone went again: I leaned across Harry and still he did not stir, though my
elbow went into his hairy chest. This time it was Jack, apologizing for Joy.

 
          
‘She’s
upset for your grandmother,’ he said, ‘I guess you’ve got to excuse her. She
isn’t as young as once she was.’

 
          
‘Are
you over in Joy’s house?’ I asked. I like to envisage where people are when
they speak, that’s all, but the question seemed to make him defensive.

 
          
‘I
just came over for a game of cards,’ he said. There was the sound of a struggle
as Joy took charge of the telephone.

 
          
‘Jack
says I was hard on you,’ she said. ‘It’s just such a worry. I shouldn’t have to
go through this kind of thing at my age.’

 
          
I
agreed, no, she shouldn’t. I am the great placator; the picker-up of
unconsidered pieces: the scavenger of the good deeds of the universe, the
fitter-together of snippets to make as narrative. I like to create a cheerful
viewing, a good read. I should have said, ‘If you can’t stand the heat get out
of the kitchen,’ but I didn’t. I should have said, ‘Call off your dogs,’ but I
didn’t.

 
          
And
while I was busy reassuring myself, Guy and Lorna, I could see in retrospect,
sat up late and wondered how they could get their hands on the Utrillo, sooner
rather than later, for the fees Alison was paying to the Glentyre Nursing Home
were excessive, and Happiness would have to be sold to pay for them, and they
had remembered how much they loved the house, and what happy childhoods they
had enjoyed, and wanted to live on the banks of the sweet Thames for ever and
ever, to the end of their lives, which is much the same thing, in Happiness.

 
          
So
Lois must have felt, waiting for Sylvia to die, so she could marry Arthur and
move in, and oust Felicity who was not her own blood, or joined to her by semen
as a husband is, making the pair more one flesh than otherwise. Lois worked by
atavistic instinct, to plant her own family in this good soil, to look after
her own, and not the stranger’s.
The cuckoo in the nest,
easing out the contender’s genes.
No, that was just some film starring
Joan Crawford or was it Bette Davis? Or had Felicity not been an innocent
victim at all: perhaps she’d set out to seduce Anton to pay Lois out? Perhaps
Arthur had seduced an innocent Lois? All we knew of Lois, really, was what her
child, who was not a reliable witness, had said: and how two of her
grandchildren had turned out. Could one work backwards? No, because others could
choose to conclude that because I was taking Harry from poor lost and
bewildered Holly, in all probability Felicity was a bad lot too.
Far-fetched to see Felicity not as victim but as perpetrator.

           
But it was there in my head, the
archetypal scene, waiting to be born:
Fatal
Attraction
or
The
Mistress’s Revenge.
Of course we do not
do this kind of thing these days, not in sophisticated circles: I was able to
contemplate Holly’s existence easily enough: I was not moved to murderous rage.
I hoped the same could be said of her, in relation to me.

 
          
Harry
stirred and put his arms around me, and beseeched me to stop thinking: he could
feel it through my skin. I did too much of it.

 
          
‘Do
you have a grandmother?’ I asked him, refraining from entering into a debate
as to whether he ever felt Holly thinking through hers. He laughed and said he
barely had a mother. He’d left her long ago in
Sacramento
. Americans don’t seem to have elderly
relatives in the way we do. It’s as if they spring fully fledged into the world,
and the old keep going playing golf and singing in choirs until one day they
just drop down dead or retire gracefully into places like the Golden Bowl,
where visitors are discouraged. The weak die young from drink, drugs and
rock’n’roll: those who survive are strong, fit and wealthy. I know it can’t
really be so: I daresay the old creep and shuffle in the States as anywhere:
all I know of the nation, like most Europeans, is from out the window of cabs
in Boston, New York, Washington, San Francisco, Los Angeles and the odd dash up
to Seattle: wherever films open or are edited and occasionally I get sent. And
my little scraps of family visiting into
Connecticut
, and the land of the Rhode Island Reds, the
best laying hens in
all the
world. And the whole history
of film, of course, and Harry in my bed; focusing all
America
, my new-found land, my love. See what I
mean? As bad as turned to ice: the leap to cliche, to what e’er was felt, and
ne’er so well expressed. E’er being ever, and ne’er being never, those Victorians
being so punctilious about rhyme. What’s on the late-night film, what old
black-and-white love story? Turn the sound softly. Krassner sleeps again.
Outside the wind drops.
A stillness
descends.
Everything stops in the face of love, freezes, for just one second before
entropy wins again. I sense it. To hold back time itself, to halt the
inexorable descent into the darkness of death mid-flight, what power is this?
It’s not as if new life were going to come out of this union.

 
          
Felicity
was waiting at the French windows of the Atlantic Suite for her day’s mystery
outing by ten on Monday morning. She had dressed leisurely and carefully, in
the full pleasure of expectation, addressing every spot and blemish. So she
remembered similar outings in her youth, when her skin had been firmer and the
line of her jaw cleaner. She did not care. Only one woman in the whole world
could look in the mirror and be told ‘You are the fairest of them all’, so what
did degrees of failure matter? And if that was what the mirror did ever tell
you, everyone hated you: you became wicked witch to Snow White. And besides, it
didn’t last: good looks were all anxiety and disappointment: she had given up
worrying years ago. She caught a flicker of Dr Rosebloom in the mirror today:
she thought he approved.

 
          
She
would miss a lecture on
How the Past
Feeds the Present
by a Gloria Fensterwick PhD and Monday’s Light Lunch,
which would be ham quiche, arugala and boiled potatoes. She had recently
ordered a book called
Salad, the Silent
Killer
from a publisher whose list specialized in healthy living and
thinking, and left it prominently in the dining room, to have it slammed back
in her room by Nurse Dawn. The lecture and the lunch would be no great loss.

 
          
A
spectacular red Saab coupe, driven by William, swept past the French windows
and round the corner to the formal Atrium entrance of the Golden Bowl, and
parked in the appropriate place.

           
The days of secrecy were over.
William Johnson stepped out, dapper for once in a blue and white striped
shirt, red and yellow tie, navy suit, and ordinary well-polished loafers, which
might or might not have been Gucci.

 
          
Felicity,
dressed more seriously than usual, without the usual swathing of scarves, in
taupe and stone and other neutral colours, did not wait to be summoned but left
her room and went to the front desk where William was waiting for her. Nurse
Dawn appeared as if by magic, to protest that Felicity had not cancelled lunch
in proper
time,
and she could not countenance a trip
out in such weather. Mr Johnson was irresponsible in suggesting such a thing.

 
          
‘Good
heavens,’ said Felicity, ‘it’s a perfectly fine day. Mr Johnson and I are going
out on a date, and I don’t suppose we’ll even notice the weather.’

 
          
Nurse
Dawn said that was a pity: she’d hoped Miss Felicity would be there this
morning to help Dr Bronstein stay in the land of the sane.

 
          
‘What
can you mean?’ asked Felicity, alarmed, stopped in her tracks as she swept out
on William’s arm.

 
          
‘
Poor Dr
Bronstein,’ said Nurse
Dawn,
‘is getting quite confused. What we used to call senile in the old days, before
we knew so much. He so enjoys his chats with you: they keep his mind alert. His
appointment’s after lunch; I don’t want him to let himself down.’

 
          
‘What
appointment?’

 
          
‘With the psychiatrist.
His
family think
it’s time he was declared fiscally incompetent and moved on to the West Wing
for fuller nursing care. And Dr Grepalli agrees he’s beginning to quite
disturb the other guests with his ramblings. We can’t have that.
Poor Dr Bronstein.
You know the kind of questions they ask,
to see if you know where you are and who you are. What year is it, who’s the
President, where’s Kosovo, that sort of thing.’

 
          
Felicity
leaned against one of the Roman pillars. She seemed to feel suddenly weak.
William held her arm in support.

 
          
‘Oh
dear,’ said Nurse Dawn. ‘I hope I haven’t upset you. Pm sure Dr Bronstein will
do just fine. It’s just we’d all really miss him if he had to move on to the
West Wing, especially you, Miss Felicity. You two are such friends. Don’t worry
about it: I’ll speak up for him: my recommendation counts for a lot.’

 
          
‘Once
you pay the Danegeld,’ said Felicity, enigmatically, recovering, ‘you never get
rid of the Dane. I will keep to my plans, but thank you for mentioning it,’ and
she smiled at William and they went out.

 
          
‘You
have a nice time now,’ Nurse Dawn called after them.

 
          
‘I
didn’t know you could look so smart,’ said Felicity.

 
          
‘I
had a good week last week,’ said William, looking for some wood to touch.

 
          
‘If
I’m not mistaken,’ said Felicity, ‘those clothes are all new.’

 
          
‘I
went into
Hartford
,’ said William, ‘I couldn’t let you down.’
‘And the car?’

 
          
‘Do
you like it?’

 
          
‘I
love it.’

 
          
‘All
for you,’ he said.
‘All because of you.’

 
          
William
took Route 95 North to Exit 92, then Route 2 West: they travelled through roads
where sometimes the woods crowded in to the very edges of the tarmac, sometimes
kept aloof so you could see the shapes of the hills: the eye became accustomed
to muted browns and greens. It was a bright day: the world seemed young and
cheerful. It felt natural for Felicity to be sitting there beside him: as if
she had been doing it all her life. There was
a rightness
about it. He drove fast and competently, like a man twenty years younger, at
the height of his power to impress the world, eager to be getting where he was
going. Men always drove more slowly coming home. She buried anxiety about Dr
Bronstein: Nurse Dawn was being both absurd and malicious. Even if the good
Doctor too was due for a psychiatric examination that afternoon, which was not
necessarily the case, it wasn’t likely that a conversation over lunch would
make much difference to the Doctor’s mental state. He talked and she listened;
it was not exactly sparkling dialogue. She could of course have checked that he
knew the year and the President’s name, and they could have looked up Kosovo
together - she dismissed the thought. This was her day and Nurse Dawn was not
to be allowed to spoil it. Felicity didn’t take up the matter with William. He
was not going to be impressed with her concern for another man: Dr Bronstein
relegated to the West Wing would suit William well enough, and even, for all
she knew, Dr Bronstein himself. Just because she, Felicity, feared the West
Wing, and the chancy kindness of nursing staff as over the years you were
stupefied by tranquillizers, rendered paranoiac by painkillers, confined to
your bed and became a source of profound irritation and trouble to others, did
not mean the rest on the world shared her fears. Some might quite look forward
to the rest, the absence of decision,
the
notion of
too late now.
Some cared what others
thought of them scarcely at all: worried only about what they thought of
others. In the West Wing Dr Bronstein could talk on to himself, without the
bother of having a face opposite, sitting watching. She knew she was trying to
convince herself. She should have done her duty by friendship and stayed. But
when did a woman ever put a friend before a lover?

 
          
It
was not too late. She would ask William to turn back. She opened her mouth to
say so, and closed it again. So much you could do for others, no more. This was
her day: hers and William’s.

 
          
The
Saab turned a bend in the road. There, gaudy, impossible and sudden, towering
over the woods, stood an emerald-green
Disney
Castle
, all spires, glass, turrets and towers.

 
          
‘Foxwoods
Casino,’ said William, happily.
‘My secret.
Property of the Mashantucket Pequod Tribal Indians.
This is
reservation land.
All profits free of tax, in due compensation
for the injuries of the past.’

 
          
‘This
place can hardly be secret,’ said Felicity, ‘to anyone who comes along this
road.’

 
          
‘It
is only a dream,’ said William, ‘which keeps coming true. It is happiness
snatched away and rendered back to you. It is wealth beyond your wildest dreams
yet always in them and beyond them. It is excitement and compulsion and
infinite choice. It is the battle against the self. It is Eros in the face of
Thanatos. It draws you back and back and yet it never happened. Outside you,
this is my life. Last week I played the purple tables. Minimum bet $500; I
chose orange chips only. That’s $1,000 a throw. I cleared $50,000 and left
before it was gone again. I had to, to get back to you.

           
That’s your influence, Felicity. My
luck has turned. I’m on a roll. Can’t you sniff it in the air?’

 
          
He
smiled as he drove, for her but no longer to her. There was a gleam in his eye,
an alertness
; she could feel the magnet pull as well.
Others had the same idea. The road filled up: they were part of a pilgrimage.
She felt jealous. She wanted to be his only preoccupation. This was no fly in
the ointment: this was a great writhing caterpillar with staring eyes on
stalks. She had not bargained for this.

 
          
‘What
a perfectly frightful building,’ she said, as English as she could be.
‘How quite extraordinary.
Whoever gave them permission for
that!
’ She felt she spoke with Nurse Dawn’s tongue but
couldn’t help it.

 
          
‘They
don’t need permission,’ William said. ‘It’s their land, not Uncle Sam’s. You
get used to it, you get even to like it. I come here most days, mornings only
since I met you, and two or three evenings a week.’

 
          
‘Gambling,’
she said.
‘A gambling man.
That’s why you have nothing
left, why you live in the Rosemount. It’s an addiction.’ ‘Good car, good shoes,
good tie,’ he said. ‘They can’t take this away from me.’

           
‘No, but you can lose them again,’
she said sharply. He looked sad, misunderstood. She put her hand on his knee:
and he cheered up suspiciously quickly. He had been too sure of her. Perhaps
she could cure him? She’d thought that once of someone - who was it had had the
drink problem? -
and
of course been wrong. Those were
in the Twelve Step days, but whoever got beyond six?
Hello, I am a reformed gambler, drug addict, alcoholic,
loveaholic
. How can I help you?

 
          
William Johnson, gambling man, the opposite of contrite.
Take his money from his bank, put it on a horse, or its casino equivalent, weep
and grovel for a bit and then go back for more.
Except he did
not seem the grovelling type.
She wanted to overlook it, tell herself it
didn’t matter, a man of seventy-two was allowed his entertainment, but what
would Exon say? His stiff, kind face would have turned stiffer still in
disapproval: even Buckley, back in
Savannah
, who played poker on mahogany tables in the
houses of friends, would never have frequented a casino. ‘That’s why your
family left,’ she said. ‘That’s why you’re all alone. They couldn’t stand it.’

 
          
‘Margaret’s
a po-faced bitch,’ he said. ‘She wanted the house. She got it.’ He showed her a
savagery he had not so far brought to her attention, but did today, almost
carelessly. He was handing her reasons to break the relationship off, sink back
into the safeness of the Golden Bowl, to spar with Nurse Dawn till the West
Wing called. Anything was better than that, even the attentions of a gambling
man, when he had time off from his obsession to think of you.

 
          
‘So
what do you want me to do?’ he asked. ‘Turn back? Is it too much for you?
Too vulgar to endure?’

 
          
‘Of
course not,’ she said.

 
          
‘Praise
the Lord,’ he said, and put his foot on the accelerator in his eagerness. She
could see that if he had delivered her back home again, he would simply have
set out again for these shimmering topless towers of
Ilium
. Take me, take all of me.