Fay Weldon - Novel 23 (40 page)

 
          
‘I
want nothing,’ said Felicity. ‘I want to start again. I have my chequebook, my
credit cards, my mobile and the clothes I stand up in. That should be enough
for any woman leaving home. I have my Utrillo and its certificate of
provenance. I don’t need photographs, I don’t need mementos, I don’t want to
live my life in the past,
I
want to live it
now
.’

 
          
‘Way
to go!’ said William Johnson.

 
          
I
am quite tall and the back seat of a coupe is not the most comfortable place to
be, but the excitement of the flight made me forget my cramped circumstances.
The painting was in the trunk, still wrapped in its Golden Bowl quilt. I hoped
the Golden Bowl did not persecute her for theft of the latter. They would be capable
of it. They would be hurt and angry at her flight. Institutions always punish
people who run away, and beat them when they are returned, in order to make
them like it better. Whack, whack, that’ll teach you not to love us.

 
          
‘So
what do we do?’ said William Johnson. ‘I have to warn you no cheque of mine
will be honoured and my credit cards are up to the limit. You could join me at
the Rosemount, into whose account the proceeds of a life policy are paid
directly, and which I can’t touch. But I fully expect to be in a better
position by the end of the week.’

 
          
‘Of
course you do, William,’ said my grandmother Felicity, fondly. ‘We can’t get
married this moment because the chapels are closed, and it always seems so
unkind to wake up Judges to do it.’
I was
familiar enough with that scenario
,
of
course. Doris Day and Rock
Hudson (or
was it Gary Cooper?) back in the fifties, knocking up the Justice of the Peace
in the early hours, marrying on impulse, repenting at leisure, but it all ends
happily.

           
‘First thing in the morning will do,
and then if anyone is to be my executor and guardian it will be you, William.’
‘Grandmother-’ I started, but gave up.

           
‘So what we’ll do now is go and see
your friend the art expert.’ We drove to Narragansett Pier, where William’s
contact lived in a small wooden beach house. Charming it might be, but I hoped
that major works of art would be safe inside: the elements had stripped the
house of paint and there was seaweed on the front path. I stayed in the car
while they took the painting inside. I called Harry Krassner on Felicity’s
mobile. I found him at home watching TV. It wasn’t my phone, I told him. I was
being brief. The contact was bad and getting worse. I told him relations
between Guy and Lorna and me had broken down and I was coming back as soon as 1
could. Yes, I would have to pay extra but what did I care. Fancy him not out at
the pub or the club or the sound studio but at home.
'We're actually watching
TV,’ he said. ‘
Not even a video. Holly just loves your BBC
.’ He said in response
to some noise of mine,
'Yes, Holly’s here
with me, she’s staying the night, I’ll put her on
.’ I went into that
strange, dull emergency mode that wreaks havoc with your nerves later. Holly’s
strident yet seductive voice crackled over the
Atlantic
towards me. The signal was getting worse.
‘Harry’s told me so much about you,’ she said.
Oh yes?
‘He said it was okay if I stayed the night. I’m like him,
brother and sister, I just so hate hotels.’ The voice came and went and I could
hardly hear. Felicity and William were coming out of the house holding hands
and without the Utrillo. I interpreted Holly as saying actually there were two
of them staying, she was passing through London with her new Swedish
girlfriend; there was a lesbian adoption programme in Stockholm for which she
qualified.
And lots of spare babies after Kosovo.
Then
the voice cut out altogether.

 
          
I
asked Felicity what she had done with the painting.

 
          
‘Sold
it,’ she said.
‘To the man with a mighty chequebook.
But he’s not putting it into my bank ’til after we’re married in case anyone
tries freezing my account.’

 
          
‘He’s
honest,’ said William. ‘He’s a cousin.’

           
I said I didn’t regard that as any
kind of qualification. I asked William to drive around until I got a better
signal. He did so. He seemed an obliging sort of person: the kind who might
irritate a woman but not make her unhappy. Not the kind my family usually went
for. I felt I ought to inquire about the rumour of him making the girl at the
Rosemount pregnant - old he might be but he was an attractive man with a flash
car: it was not beyond the bounds of possibility - and did.
Boom
or bust time.

 
          
It
was Felicity who answered, not William.

 
          
‘Darling,’
she said, ‘it’s all in her imagination, and anyway it would have been before
William met me. Don’t worry about a thing.’ We drove south down Ocean Drive and
found a decent signal just before we got to the Towers, a great stone arch
which spanned the road - all that was left, William told me, of a spectacular
Casino which burnt to the ground in 1900. We stopped the car and I called
through to Harry again. ‘She’s just left for the cinema with her friend,’ he
said. ‘They hold hands all the time. There’s a lesbian season on at the BFI. I
thought you ought to speak to her. You can get paranoiac. I’m just the same,
we’ve seen too many films,
we
know what can happen
next: it’s not a criticism.’ ‘People are bisexual,’ I said.

 
          
‘Not
Holly,’ he said. ‘She never does things by halves. I reckon we’ve got a year of
lesbian chic.’

 
          
It
wasn’t too bad.
A year.
One can’t expect fate to
deliver perfect packages. William drove us down to Galilee and Point Judith,
where we left the car and went down the rocky path to the lighthouse and the
wind whipped round our ears and the moon raced in and out of dark and yet
darker clouds. William took Felicity’s arm. I thought he truly loved her. 1
thought it would be one up to me if I had a baby before Holly did and then
dismissed the thought as beneath me.

 
          
We
went to call on Joy and Jack though at first William was against it. ‘Why give
yourself hassle when you don’t have to?’ But Felicity said Joy was her friend
and had been good to her, Felicity, in hard times, and only occasionally bad.
You couldn’t expect more from people. Jack acquiesced.

           
We drove to Passmore and found the
approach road blocked by a stock fence. In the security lights we could see
activity outside: Charlie and his family were moving out of Windspit’s
guesthouse and into Passmore. The boys could help the builders. We went on to Windspit
without investigating further. Joy and Jack between them must have owned
sixteen rooms and eight bathrooms. It was more than enough for two people.
Wealth is reckoned in some surveys by the number of taps in a household, and
between them Passmore and Windspit would have a hundred, if you reckoned
bathrooms, kitchens, utility rooms and the yard water supplies. Felicity had
started out with a single tap. She said she could go back to that if she had
to. William remarked that there were only two at Passchendale. He told me about
the house. I said it sounded really nice, why didn’t he and Felicity go and
live there. They could more than afford it. Then I wondered if I had said the
right thing. If you interfere with other people’s lives they are your responsibility
for ever. That is the wisdom of Buddhism. Felicity said she’d consult the
I Ching.
I said she’d left it behind at
the Golden Bowl. She said she’d buy another.

 
          
We
looked in the undraped window of Windspit and saw Joy and Jack sitting
companionably together on the sofa. Felicity changed her mind. She left them
undisturbed. Now she’s got him, she doesn’t need me, she said. The less she
needs me, the
more free
I am.

 
          
I
said she wasn’t to bother about me. I didn’t need her, I loved her. She can be
very English and
me
saying this embarrassed her but I
think she was pleased.

 
          
We
drove to Passchendale. There were no lights. No electricity.
Still
only the fitful moon.
I lay down on a sofa which I found in the dark,
directed by William. My hands passed over strange smooth curved wooden surfaces
as I felt my way.
Now go in between Eros
and Civilization
, he said,
after that
leave Motherhood to the right and The Fathers to the left.
Nonsense.
Art works.
Sculptures.
I
was grateful to be guided. I stretched out on the sofa. I heard them giggling
and shuffling on the stairs like teenagers. I slept.

 
          
It
rained in the night and in the morning the hillside was unbearably beautiful,
and the house numinous. There was
a butane
stove with
something left in it, and some old, old pitiful coffee which we drank. There
were biscuits. We were all hungry. Felicity said she had taken my advice.
William was going to buy the house back from Margaret. They were going to live
here to the end of their days. She reckoned they had ten years left: they would
just about outlast the house. They would all three fall to bits together.
Felicity, William and Passchendale.
I said surely she could
afford to get the builders in, do it up, make the place strong and sound again.
But they didn’t want to do that. They liked its dereliction. It made them feel
at home. If she divided the money from the Utrillo and what she already had
into ten, that gave them $400,000 a year to see them out. This was the amount
William lost annually, if you averaged out the winning and the losing years.
They would spend their days gambling at Foxwoods; and if they lost there would
be no sorrow, because they expected to, and if they won they could rejoice.
They would aim to lose, and not win, and so could only be victorious. It was an
entirely new strategy.

 
          
‘But
Felicity,’ I started, and gave up. Why? I didn’t want to inherit. I had my own
future, forget the past. There would be nothing for Guy to quarrel over.

 
          
We
drove into
Boston
: Felicity had to buy some clothes to get
married in and a copy of the
I Ching.
William needed the wherewithal to get Passchendale going. Fie said if he saw
Jack about trading in the Saab for something more practical, one of the new
station wagons, perhaps, Jack and Joy might decide to forgive him for existing.

 
          
I
did not stay to watch the wedding ceremony. I took the first flight back to
London
, Business Class, full fare, happy to travel
on my own. Flarry actually came to Fleathrow to meet me. I don’t know why I was
surprised, or even why I say
actually.
A kind of neurotic affectation, I think, rather than a real emotion, which I
might learn to do without to everyone’s advantage. I saw that I had extra
decades to go, more than I thought. Life elongated before me. I saw it in my
head as a kind of special effect, or SE (as the screenplay computer programs
have it): paleish green and glowing and stretching into the distance, only
slightly uphill: a path. Really there was no hurry to get everything right.