Fay Weldon - Novel 23 (33 page)

 
          
If
you fly Concorde transatlantic they wave you through immigration and customs.
If you fly Club Class you get to the head of the line first and get through
first. If you fly economy and at the back of the plane, as Guy, Lorna and I
did, you get to the Immigration Hall only to find yourself in competition with
another flight. It will be from some country everyone wants to leave, and
immigration will be taking its time. As luck would have it an Air Pakistan
flight landed as we did and Guy, Lorna and
myself
had
to wait in line in the vast hall for nearly three hours. Over the sea of heads
we caught sight of the Japanese couple going through the barriers within
fifteen minutes of their arrival. Lorna worried loudly about possible
infections: Guy fretted and fidgeted. I trundled meekly and silently forward,
as was my wont, a step or two at a time, along the convoluted maze of pathways,
which steered you near to the promised land of
America
and then doubled you back at an angle to
the direction you had come.
So you think
you're nearly there, we'll show you!
I felt responsible for Lorna and Guy’s
discomfiture, though indeed they were responsible for mine, my initial plan to
travel to
Boston
having been changed for their convenience.
But I did not say so.

 
          
Guy
went into a particularly English mode:
My
good man, look here, this is no way to treat guests to your country.
He
told one of the black security guards what he thought of the system, and said
that this kind of thing didn’t happen in Heathrow. I intervened and said loudly
that it most certainly did, if you were unfortunate to be labelled
Other
, and apologized for Guy’s attitude, which of course I
should not have done. It had been a long and uncomfortable flight, I said. We
were all tired.

 
          
‘What
do you think we are, lady?’ he inquired. He went away, eyes to heaven, but
later I thought I saw him have a word with the officer in the booth. But
perhaps it was about something quite different.

 
          
‘Next
time don’t take it on yourself to speak for me,’ snapped Guy.  .

 
          
‘It
isn’t wise to piss off security anywhere in the world,’ I said. ‘Language!’
said Lorna. ‘We must all just try and be patient.’ When we finally got to the
yellow line, shuffling our luggage in front of us, Guy stepped over it, and was
asked to wait in the correct place by a courteous little Hispanic girl drowned
in a navy uniform with gold buttons and a red sash. He shook off her small
restraining hand with, ‘How dare you touch me!’ I had never accepted until this
minute how timorous and law-abiding a person I was and quite how much I loathed
scenes. Guy’s eyes were dark and glazed and wild, and reminded me of my
mother’s, though I had never seen any resemblance to my side of the family
before.
But perhaps all insane people just look alike, and
Guy was certainly, if only temporarily, quite insane.
Flying does this
to some people.

 
          
When
he went up to the immigration officer and offered his passport they had a
brief exchange of words, which we could not hear, but as a result of which
security was called and Guy was taken away, physically struggling, to a cell.
Lorna and I were not allowed to go with him but had to clear passports and
customs first. We were taken off and body searched. I could hear Lorna in the
next cubicle squeaking and protesting the indignity of it all and demanding to
see the British Ambassador. They found nothing, nor had they expected to. We
were being punished. I got a phone call through to the studio travel agency as
soon as I could, and they sent someone over, Linda, to look after us. Linda
managed to persuade the authorities to let Guy out into our care, though it
hadn’t been easy, she was at pains to tell us. ‘These are not pretty people,’
Linda said. ‘Your friend was really pushing his luck. We’re happy to be of
assistance to you but in future please try and keep your friends in order. They
are not studio employees, as you are.’ She was annoyed: called out to Kennedy
on a Saturday morning when she could have been shopping. She had the brittle
thinness of a certain type of
New York
woman: good legs, lots of glossy hair and a
narrow, attractive face. She thought she was too good for this job and probably
was.

 
          
I
wished I had never set eyes on Wendy from Aardvark, or Alison, or Lucy, or Guy,
or Lorna. Guy was a little subdued by his brush with the slammer, but not much.
He chafed and wriggled with indignation in the back of the yellow cab on the
way into the city. He had been hustled, he maintained, manhandled, briefly
handcuffed. What kind of country was this? I asked him what he’d said to
provoke such a reaction.

 
          
‘Whose
side are you on?’ he demanded.
‘Theirs or mine?
When
that prat asked me the purpose of my visit I said to overthrow the government
and take drugs. Don’t they even have a sense of humour? It’s enough to make
your eyes weep blood.’

 
          
I
said that in a lot of countries in the world he would have been shot. Lorna
complained about the springing of the cab and the fact that the driver didn’t
speak English. She didn’t even exclaim with wonder when she saw the old Trade
Fair building or when the Manhattan skyline came into view, as do most new
arrivals, and I was disappointed. I had wanted her to be impressed: it would
have been my consolation.

 
          
They
were too tired to complain much about the Wyndham, but did the next morning.
The softness of the mattress, the shabbiness of the decor, the
reluctance of the single lift to arrive.
I explained that all this was
designed to make the English feel at home: a large part of the Hemsley
clientele was English. Americans would never put up with it. It occurred to me
when Lorna referred to ‘
mattress’
in the singular -
there were twin beds in their room - that perhaps they only used one. But it
was only a supposition. And even if they did share a bed, it might have been in
the spirit of the little brother and sister they once had been, no more than
that. It was none of my business, anyway. I was just cross with them and happy
to believe anything scandalous. I went out to the deli for coffee and bagels
with sour cream and smoked salmon and brought them back and all Lorna said was
she hadn’t come all this way to drink out of paper cups. If this was how the
Americans lived she didn’t think much of it. All they seemed to be good at was
raining down unsmart bombs on innocent children in faraway countries, in
defence of their freedoms. Of course the siblings were having an illicit
relationship.
Of course.
Guy was silent. I asked Lorna
what the matter with him was. I cannot endure men sulking. ‘He had a very
traumatic time yesterday,’ said Lorna.
‘Poor Guy.
And
you’ve upset him by seeming to take their part.’

 
          
Screw
that for a game of soldiers, I thought but did not say.

 
          
But
Harry then called me from
London
and told me he missed me. ‘Hi baby!’ he said, and the usage did not
make me squirm even a little, as it usually did. Why do men so want to relegate
women to charming helplessness, and why do women put up with it? I was just
pleased to hear his gravelly voice. Perhaps he called Holly too and said, ‘Hi
baby, how’s the baby?’ but I didn’t think so.

 
          
I
smiled at Lorna after the phone call and said, ‘That was my boyfriend,’ and
Lorna said, ‘Anyone who can make you look so happy must be okay,’ and I felt
really fond of her. Of course she wasn’t having an affair with her brother Guy.
They were just both of them very bad travellers.

 
          
When
William appeared in the French windows, a ray of light streaming through to
gloomy corners, Jack and Joy had made their excuses and left, as people will
when presented without warning with the physical manifestation of their
mistrust. Jack even managed a smile as he summoned Charlie on the mobile phone.
But then he had put in a half-hearted defence of Felicity’s suitor, and wasn’t
feeling as guilty as Joy.

 
          
‘I
didn’t know you had guests,’ William said, with a hint of reproach, when they
were gone. ‘You didn’t tell me.’

 
          
‘They
were unexpected,’ said Felicity, a little coldly. She was pleased that he was
there, but he had still caused her grief. ‘And I am still a free agent. We’re
not married yet.’

 
          
‘So
we’re going to be?’ he inquired. She did not reply. She stood with her eyes
downcast, feeling mutinous, and remembered standing in just this way as a
child. She looked at the floor: she felt dizzy. She was wearing little boots
with brown laces; for some reason she had tied them in a double bow, which was
unnecessary: a single one would have done, for the laces were not slippery, but
of the old-fashioned kind, flat, not thin and rounded.

 
          
If
she looked up now she would see another place, another country, another world.
She would see a tall, square, white painted room with brown furniture and a
lime tree pressed up against a barred window. In the summer the lime tree
dropped sticky yellow substance on the pavement outside, and on the hats of
anyone who stood too long at the front door. She could hear the rattle, rattle
of a horse and cart passing by, the clip-clop of horses’ hooves. She was how
old?
Four?

 
          
‘Don’t
sulk, Fel,’ she heard her mother say, ‘there’s nothing to sulk about.’ She did
not dare look up; she would see her mother’s face. What did it look like? She
did not know: she could not even remember knowing. You forget so soon, and
there had been no photographs. Lois had burned them all: everything had gone.
Even the tiny pink chiffon scarf that still held traces of her mother’s warmth,
her scent, left by mistake in the back of the coat cupboard in the hall, had
one day just not been there any more. She asked Lois once what her mother had
looked like, and Lois had replied, ‘She’s a skull by now, I daresay.
The worms crawl in, the worms crawl out
-
They go in slim and they come out
stout'
She didn’t ask after that.

 
          
‘What’s
the matter with Miss Felicity?’ she heard a man’s voice say.
Her
father.

 
          
‘She
can’t tie her laces,’ her mother said, still living, still with her own warm
flesh and blood face. ‘And she won’t let me teach her. She thinks she can do it
without.’

 
          
‘Everyone
has to be taught to tie laces, Fel,’ said the father’s voice. ‘It doesn’t
happen by magic.’ He was laughing; the voice was strong and kind, she believed
it as she didn’t necessarily believe her mother, but now she felt a spasm of
rage so great she gasped. Where did it come from?

 
          
William
had her arm, was sitting her down. She stretched out her feet and stared at her
shoes. Flat brown old-fashioned laces, tied in a double bow: her father
teaching her, her mother watching.
Right
over left, tighten: catch the string between finger and thumb, loop over,
under, out,
pull
.

 
          
‘My
father was already seeing Lois,’ she said to William. ‘He must have been.
Before my mother died.’

 
          
‘Oh,
the past,’ said William. ‘Is that all? It catches up from time to time, but
only when you’re strong enough. I must be good for you. Tell me more.’ But
Felicity couldn’t find the words. She was an old woman or she was a child, and
there was no space in between.

           
‘You said you’d take me to Foxwoods
today,’ was all she said. ‘I called, and Maria answered. At least I suppose it
was Maria. What do I know about your life? What do you ever tell me? She said
you’d already gone, without me.’

 
          
‘My,
we are insecure,’ he said. ‘I had a visit or so to make before I came along
here. Stop sulking.’

 
          
‘Where
did you go?’ She was childlike again, querulous, but now with the confidence of
the child who knows however badly it behaves the sky won’t fall in. Once she’d
behaved badly, and it had fallen, but that was then and this was now. Once
she’d said to her stepmother’s brother that she’d be really nice to him if he
took her to
Sydney
, but without knowing, of course, what being
really nice meant. She was a child. Girls were, then, at fourteen. But that was
not altogether true: you knew something by virtue of just being alive, more
than enough. You knew why your father chose Lois, not your mother, and it was
the worse part of him, and he knew it, and didn’t care, and all things were
sacrificed to male desire.
Lois, the cruel voluptuary.

 
          
It
had been winter and the lime tree was without leaves and pressed up against the
window of the tall room, like bony skeleton fingers, grasping at you, and there
was a fate indeed worse than
death, that
you didn’t
die, but lived with terror and evil for ever. That was what you fled from all
your life, over oceans and continents, joining up with others, springing apart
again because it was too dangerous, the hounds not of Heaven but of Hell
pattering after you, because once you were complicit in the evil, and now they
would never let you alone. If you stayed still too long you could feel their
warm breath, hear the panting, smell the stench. She’d felt it, heard it, smelt
it one day at Passmore: the creatures must have circled and circled for years
before making their presence felt. They’d come for her. She tried to explain it
to a doctor at the hospital, but he’d said it was a sensory disturbance caused
by a minor stroke: it would pass. That was really why she’d left Passmore, sold
up, come here, where there were good people, busy with their chanting, their
determination to make the best of things. The hounds of Hell couldn’t get at
her here. They liked silence, and loneliness.

 
          
*                
*                
*

 
 
          
The
old understood better than the young that the foundation of the earth was
composed of good and evil, no matter how you struggled to see it in terms of
money and sex and luck. The trouble was the old had no words, no language, no
real remembrance; what afflicted the soul in the end afflicted the body. The
old peered out of rheumy eyes, dimmed by too much exposure to the truth,
deafened by a lifetime of lies, bent by the burden of guilt. They lost their
wits like Dr Bronstein. Age itself was evil, and there was no escaping it: the
young pity the old because once you know too much this awareness can only be
perceived as paranoia. But what else can you do? How else express what you have
learned of life, other than
beware
, beware, bloody
tears flow
?

 
          
‘I
went to see an art dealer I know to ask about the Utrillo, okay?’ William said,
but she scarcely took in what he was saying. ‘He’s retired and lives in
Narragansett Pier, but he understands the art market.’

 
          
‘Do
you know who Nurse Dawn reminds me of?’ Miss Felicity asked, not registering
what he had said at all.
‘Lois my stepmother.
How strange to meet up with her again, after all this time.’

 
          
She
smiled brightly at him and tried to focus on the here and now. On the pink
striped wallpaper,
which was pretty enough but dull: and
outside the trees struggling to come into bud, and just a faint suspicion of
spring in the air.
Life was all renewal, as well as decay. She must hold
on to that.

 
          
‘I’m
a bit upset today,’ she said. ‘I thought you’d let me down, gone off without
me, and it triggered off all kinds of rubbish. Stuff so long ago I’m the only
one alive to remember it.’

 
          
‘You’ll
tell me when the time’s ripe,’ he said. ‘
It’s
talk of
marriage does it. It’s stirred up things for me as well. I thought I’d take you
to the ancestral house in the woods, on the way to Foxwoods.’ ‘If it’s in the
woods,’ she said, ‘I’d better change my shoes.’

           
‘But those are so pretty,’ he said.
‘The little boots with the laces. You were wearing them to the funeral. That
was what I first saw of you. I was looking down at the grave, and my eye was
caught by these little shoes. Not in the least sensible. In the face of death,
I thought, someone’s very much still in life. And I let my eyes travel upwards
and there you were.’

           
‘Double bows?
^’
she asked,
‘like today?’ But how could he possibly remember a thing like that. Her father
had said
And
to be doubly sure, you can do a double bow,
not a single one.
Be doubly sure. What had her father ever been doubly sure
of? He had married a monster, from a family of monsters: a sister who knew how
to trap a man and please a man, in unladylike ways in a ladylike time, when sex
was in the dark and for procreation, and mouths never used except by whores: a
brother who thought it was funny to seduce and debauch a child, first teach her
the ways of whores, then make her pregnant and leave her to her fate. Her
mother might look down from the heavens and grieve, but she doubted her father
was by his wife’s side. If you took another wife, that was that. He would have
to peer up from Hell, along with Lois.

 
          
Which
of her many partners, her many lovers, her nearest and dearest, would she find
herself next to, met up again with after death, the way the spiritualists said?
Were they all expected to get on? If you had more than one spouse, who
qualified in the afterdeath stakes? If she went with Exon she’d be looking
down, but it did not seem her natural place. If she went with William she’d be
looking up. Hell was where the profligates, the sinners and the gamblers went.
The fornicators and the loose-tongued.
Him and her: that
felt more like it. But perhaps they’d team her up with Sophia: she had earned
Sophia, in return for Angel. Men came and went, family stayed.

 
          
On
the way out with William, wearing flat shoes without laces, she asked, ‘Why are
you suddenly so interested in the Utrillo? Nurse Dawn was talking about it too.
What’s so remarkable about it?’

 
          
‘Its
value,’ he said. ‘It just isn’t sensible having something worth three million
dollars hanging there on a downstairs wall with no security.
Word
gets round about these things.
You’re on your own here. I worry for
you.’

 
          
‘As much as that?’ she marvelled.
‘I had no idea. Good for
Buckley. At least he knew how to buy a painting. There’s no problem. I have a
call button by the bed. It’s part of the Golden Bowl deal. And who round here
can tell an original Utrillo from a print?

           
Except now possibly a retired art
dealer in Narragansett Pier, who might well put the news about.’

 
          
She
was back on form, here in the present, and it was good, and ongoing, and she
loved him and would marry him. But she wouldn’t tell him quite yet.

 
          
It
wasn’t until she was in bed that night that Felicity wondered how Nurse Dawn could
possibly know the painting on the wall was an original. She’d told Joy once but
Joy hadn’t taken it in. Why did she always have the feeling that there were
people around who were plotting against her? Age or truth, which bore in upon
her more?

 
          
If
you showed yourself to be paranoiac, like Dr Bronstein, you ended up in the
West Wing. Just because you think there’s a conspiracy against you, doesn’t
mean there isn’t.