Fay Weldon - Novel 23 (28 page)

 
          
Oh, the Grand Panjandrum sings:
English
folk songs crossed to America back in the eighteenth century: their natural
home seemed to be in the Appalachian Mountains, and there they stayed in a
purer form than happened back home, where for the most part they simply died
out. Except for songs like
The Sweet
Nightingale,
which they’d make us sing at school, and everyone hated but
me.

 
 
          
My
sweetheart come
along.

           
Don’t
you hear the sweet
song,

           
The
sweet notes of the nightingale flow.

           
Pray
sit your self down,

           
By
me on the ground -

 
          
Oh
yes, and we all know what happened next. Shut up singing, Grand Panjandrum,
what
did we know
as children, what was to happen next
in our life songs.

 
          
Oh, the Grand Panjandrum
calms down to
say my grandmother came to
London
to rescue her daughter, but Angel refused to go home: she was
determined to go to the Camberwell School of Art. She would be fine on her own.

 
          
‘Well,’
said Felicity, ‘I seem to remember I wanted to do ballet once,’ and let Angel
stay in a strange city with no friends. How you deal with your children depends
on your own life- experience, I suppose. Or perhaps she didn’t want Angel to
find out about Buckley’s closet gayness: the world could still be shocked, and
Buckley was increasingly rash: be that as it may Felicity set Angel up in a
small apartment in Soho and flew back to Atlanta as quick as she could.

 
          
Oh, the Grand Panjandrum
is not
surprised to note that Angel never turned up to art classes, nor did she phone
home, and that the apartment soon filled up with winos and druggies she had
asked back. The mentally ill frequently seek out the company of the
dispossessed: they have a fellow feeling for them,
an empathy
.
But victims are not necessarily nice people and soon Angel was locked out of
her own place and sleeping on the floor of the art student who was to be my
father. When I was one year old my crib was placed on the lid of the bath in
the kitchen - this was how people lived in those days: if you wanted to own a
bath the kitchen would be the only room in the house with plumbing, so the bath
would have a wooden lid which doubled as a shelf. It was okay. When I was four
my father Rufus had an exhibition at the Marlborough Gallery in
Cork Street
. He had fifty paintings on display. He sold
twenty-five. When the time came for the remaining ones to be taken down Angel
piled them against the wall outside, doused them with methylated spirit, and
set fire to them. The public had had their chance to buy these works of genius
and turned them down: they would not be given another chance. They were pigs without
taste. Rufus wept. The police did not press charges but she was made to see a
psychiatrist. She became increasingly violent. She threw the cat across the
room. Its yellow eyes proved it was the devil. But she never harmed me, or only
the once when she thought I was someone else and tried to smother me. As I grew
older I became her companion in setting the world to rights. Sometimes we’d
throw things: sometimes we’d go to the cinema together and she’d sit quiet and
good. I loved that. Sometimes I went to school, sometimes I didn’t. Felicity
flew to and fro. It was as well that Buckley by now owned an airline. Whenever
her mother came over Angel got worse. She wouldn’t accept money. If anyone gave
it to her she burned it. She didn’t approve of it. Rufus came and went: he
tried to stay but had to go, often at knifepoint. When the social workers
turned up my mother was sweet as pie and always had reasons and excuses for bad
behaviour. Sometimes they didn’t work and they’d take her away: I remember her
walking away from me down a long echoing corridor, hand in hand with a nurse
whose keys jangled at her belt. Doors slammed, with an extraordinary solid
clunk. When she finally ended her life, when I was ten, which I think she did
to save me from her, she was in a good phase, remission, they called it, but
both Rufus and Felicity were away and I had to cut down her body.

 
          
Oh,
how sick I am of the Grand Panjandrum: he’s no use at all, someone
tell
him to shut up.

 
          
The
day after her outing to Foxwoods, Felicity rose late. She breakfasted in her
room on yogurt, orange juice and caffeinated coffee. Love makes some women fat
with contentment: it makes others thin from an all-purpose eagerness. Felicity
was of the second kind. She would have to have her skirts taken in, or better
still, buy new. She wondered how William would be with shopping, and decided
not very
good
, he would be impatient and like
everything she tried on, not seeing that it mattered very much. Exon had been
an attentive escort, carrying shopping and summoning attendants, but his taste
led to the dull and out of politeness to him she would end up with clothes too
boring to wear.

 
          
After
breakfast she spoke to William on the phone about this and other matters for at
least half an hour. The more time two people spend together the more there is
to say when they are apart. Trivia between intimates is as compelling as major
world statements between strangers. Felicity had seen a rare green-throated
indigo bunting outside her window: it had stayed where it was for at least five
minutes, giving her time to find her bird book and identify it. She could swear
that’s what it was. Good things were coming to her door. William had a blister
from his new shoes, and the question was did one burst the skin and let the
fluid out, or slap a plaster on it so the fluid dispersed? And so on.

 
          
By
the time Felicity wandered down to the Library to have a chat with Dr Bronstein
and possibly Clara Craft, it was nearly
midday
.

           
If she found Clara there she would
have to listen yet once again to the details of the Hindenburg disaster, which
ran through Clara’s mind like a film seen over and over, blocking out other
thoughts. Just sometimes the footage seemed to leave her alone and then she
would have a lot to say of interest. As it happened there was no Dr Bronstein
seated among the leather armchairs: only Clara, whose skinny hand clutched
Felicity’s arm, Ancient Mariner fashion. Dr Bronstein had been taken away,
Clara whispered, against his will, in full view of his relatives, to the West
Wing. Something must have been put in his drink: he had seemed confused. Not
his usual self.

 
          
‘When
was this?’ asked Felicity.

 
          
‘Just
after the Reinforcement Session with Dr Grepalli,’ said Clara. ‘Yesterday
afternoon. Everyone else had left the Library. I will never sing that half-full
song again. Our cup is half-empty, I don’t care what he says. You should have
been here, Miss Felicity. You could have stopped them doing it.’

 
          
‘I
don’t see how,’ said Felicity.

 
          
‘People
take notice of you,’ said Clara. ‘They don’t of me. You have a present. The
rest of us only have pasts.’
Which at a less distressing time
would have flattered Felicity greatly.

 
          
‘Fie
didn’t want to go,’ said Clara. ‘Nurse Dawn manhandled him. She told him he had
to go: he had no choice: they’d taken out some legal order. As for family, I
don’t see what rights they could possibly have had, three generations down. But
they don’t play it by the book, they do what suits them.
Poor Dr
Bronstein, his great-great grandson and his
girlfriend, not even married, too young to know anything!’

 
          
Miss
Felicity had to manually loosen Clara’s grip on her arm. The rheumatically bent
fingers seemed to have gone into spasm. They were hurting. Clara didn’t notice.

 
          
‘Mind
you,’ said Clara, ‘I never know how old young people are any more: they might
only have been in their mid-twenties. She was trying to be kind: she said it
was for his own good: if you didn’t know the name of the President of the
United States
you weren’t capable of looking after your
own affairs. And she was the one who wasn’t even a blood relation. They didn’t
know I was listening. I was snuggling down in my chair.’

 
          
* * *

           
More likely, thought Felicity, Clara
hadn’t been able to get out of it without help and Dr Bronstein had suddenly
found himself in no position to give it. The chairs were low, deep and squashy
and a perpetual challenge to the elderly.

 
          
Nurse
Dawn entered the Library, smiling sweetly. She carried in her arms, cradled
like a child, three long-stemmed white lilies of the kind people used to give
on the occasion of a death. Both Felicity and Clara were of an age to know that
cut white lilies are unlucky.
Funeral flowers.
Seeing
Nurse Dawn and the lilies, Clara stopped talking and didn’t have the sense to
switch the conversation, as Felicity would have done.

 
          
‘Something
you don’t want me to hear, Miss Craft?’ inquired Nurse Dawn, consequently.
‘Some terrible event to equal the loss of the Hindenburg?’
She carefully laid down her lilies and went from chair to chair, testing their
seats. She stopped at one, with disapproval.

 
          
‘Damp!’
she exclaimed. ‘Dr Bronstein’s favourite chair, of course. We can’t be
surprised, though we can be revolted. Only one thing for it, replacement, and
you know the expense of these real leather chairs. We kept Dr Bronstein out of
the West Wing longer than was wise. Well, as they say back home no good deed
goes unpunished. This kind of thing is not pleasant for the other guests.’
‘They don’t say that back home,’ said Miss Felicity, ‘I say it, and I’m sure
I’ve never set foot in your home state, Nurse Dawn. As for damp, that is not in
the least damp.’ She had braved herself to test the soft, leathery surface, and
found it dry enough.

 
          
‘As
we get older,’ said Nurse Dawn, ‘our tactile senses get less acute. We smell
and don’t know it, repeat
ourselves
and don’t realize
it. And when we lose our judgement we have to be looked after by others for our
own good. Sometimes we even smudge our lipstick and can’t see it even in a
magnifying mirror.’

 
          
She
leaned forward and touched the edge of Felicity’s lips with the edge of a
tissue she took out of her pocket. It smelt of disinfectant. Felicity drew
back in disdain. ‘Which is what seems to have happened this morning, Miss
Felicity,’ Nurse Dawn continued, unabashed. ‘We don’t want to look like hen
dressed as chicken. As we grow older we should use less make-up. At least then
we keep our dignity.’ And she shook a plump finger at Miss Clara, whose face
was slashed across as ever with a line of scarlet lipstick, drawn regardless of
the shape of the lips.

 
          
‘If
only Dr Bronstein had known where Kosovo was, Dr Grepalli might have been
persuaded to let him stay,’ went on Nurse Dawn. ‘Pique might have led the good
doctor to forget the name of the President, as I was at pains to point out to
the family, but it is not a good sign when once intelligent old men forget
geography that’s been all over the papers and CNN. We tend to forget what we
want to forget. Place names, unconnected as they are with emotion, are usually
the last to go in the descent into senility. Not many people know that. But I
hope you had a good outing yesterday, Miss Felicity.’

 
          
‘I
did,’ said Felicity. ‘I shall organize outings to Foxwoods from the Golden
Bowl. There are special rates for those wise in years.’ ‘Wise in years,’ jeered
Nurse Dawn, sticking the lilies into a vase amid existing foliage, as if they
were javelins. The tough stems pierced with ease through obstacles of leaf and
stalk. ‘If only women didn’t get sillier as they got older. And what euphemisms
these places use.’

 
          
‘That’s
a big word,’ said Felicity.

 
          
‘In
my days at the
Post
,’ said Clara, who
had taken all this time to get her courage back, ‘we were never allowed to use
a long word if a short one would do.’

 
          
‘So
you have observed a hundred times, Miss Craft,’ said Nurse Dawn. ‘I hope you
know what year we’re in
..
Dr Bronstein got that wrong
too.’

 
          
‘I
do indeed,’ said Clara, sensing danger, forgetting to be languid. ‘And it’s far
beyond any I ever thought or hoped to see. When I was twenty I hoped to die by
thirty, when I was sixty I found that quite astonishing, now I am ninety I wish
I had died yesterday but haven’t got the courage to do it.’

 
          
Nurse
Dawn was now pushing her active fingers through the greenery in the great
vases, which stood in the formal fireplace where no fire ever
blazed,
searching out withered leaves and faded flowers. She
wore her bold white uniform today, with brass buttons on the shoulders,
voluminous pockets, and little tarty red high heels which she had forgotten to
change.

 
          
‘You
wouldn’t want our visiting psychiatrist to think you were depressed,’ said
Nurse Dawn to Clara. ‘In his book that’s one of the worst geriatric disorders.
We like everyone to be happy, our cups half-full not half-empty. I don’t think
too many of our guests will even notice Dr Bronstein’s absence. So shall we not
draw too much attention to his departure? I thought I caught a glimpse of you
yesterday, Miss Craft, hiding in your chair, legs drawn up like a naughty
little girl, trying not to be noticed.’

 
          
‘It
wasn’t me,’ said Clara. Her courage had been short-lived. Nurse Dawn smiled
with her mouth and not her eyes, and left, taking with her a little bag which
she kept in her uniform pocket, into which she stuffed the derelict leaves and
flowers
she had stripped from their stalks.

 
          
‘Is
visiting at some special time over in the West Wing?’ Miss Felicity asked
Clara.

 
          
‘You
wouldn’t want to visit over there,’ said Clara. ‘It would be too distressing.
Goodness knows who we would see, who we’ve forgotten. Did you know I was one of
those people on the ground when the Hindenburg caught fire as it landed?’