Fay Weldon - Novel 23 (6 page)

 
          
The
English girl said, ‘Come on now, this is the first place we’ve seen. You can’t
make up your mind just like that,’

           
‘I can,’ said Felicity. ‘And I have.
What was I told this morning?
It furthers
one to have somewhere to go?
This is the somewhere.’

 
          
Nurse
Dawn led the party through to the front reception area, where they should have
been in the first place, imbuing a proper sense of reverence, where busts of
Roman Caesars stood on marble plinths, and said, ‘You must understand we have a
long waiting list, and all applicants must first be vetted, and then voted for.
We’re very much a family here.’ This deflated the spirit of the group
considerably, as Nurse Dawn had intended. She preferred supplicants to pickers
and choosers.

 
          
Being
a woman of quick decision she had already decided to accept Felicity for the
Atlantic Suite, but it was wise to let her fret a little. She would be quite an
asset: she moved and spoke gracefully, and was of good appearance, and
though no kind of intellectual, unlike the Pulitzer Prize winner,
would not annoy the other guests by smoking
. Moreover, she quoted from
the
I Ching -
‘it furthers one to have somewhere to go
’ could only come from this
source - which meant Dr Grepalli would put up no objection. Jungians clung to
one another in their absurdities.

 
          
You
can run, but you can’t hide. When we got back to Passmore there was a black
limo waiting, with
New York
plates. I was needed back in the
Soho
editing suite, urgently. I was to take the
nine p.m.
Concorde flight out of Kennedy.
Tomorrow Forever
was, as I say, a
big-budget film. The percentage cost of Concorde tickets for a deviant editor
was minuscule, compared even to leaving the Versace sequences on the cutting
room floor. 1 told the driver to wait while I thought about it, but Felicity
asked him in and gave him coffee and cookies. Joy made a hasty exit: the driver
was some kind of bearded mountain tribesman and made her nervous. He rose to
his feet when she left the room, and bowed with exquisite courtesy, but that
only made her the more nervous.

 
          
I
could not work out at first how anyone knew where to find me. Air travel slows
my mind. True, I’d told my friend Annie where I was going. But she wouldn’t
have told anyone: and the designer upstairs had my key to let out the cat but I’d
just told him vaguely I was off to visit a sick relative: I then remembered
that some of my conversation with Felicity had been through the answering
machine. The bastard Krassner must have listened to what we said, and then put
his people on to it. Film folk can do anything if they put their mind to it.
They bribe phone operators and computer hackers and dig dirt on anyone they
want. They are ruthless in defence of the people’s entertainment and their own
profit, which comes to the same thing. Perhaps Krassner had stayed in my
apartment for some time after he woke - how many days ago was it now, four? I
had not envisaged that until now: I had simply assumed that being at the best
of times in such a hurry, he would have woken, perhaps found some coffee, to
which he was welcome, and left at once, back to work. If he had time to spare
he would surely have more glamorous and rewarding women than me to pursue and
persecute. I felt the less inclined to return and fish the team out of whatever
trouble they were now in. I called the editing suite but no-one replied. No
doubt they were too busy to
so
much as pick up the
phone for a call they had not initiated.

 
          
I
had woken up a little. I liked the clear air and the woods and the deer ticks
kept at a safe distance from the house, and Felicity was cheerful and Joy was
funny and we’d spent a good morning at the Golden Bowl, and the world of
downtown Soho seemed a long way away and not a place anyone would gladly return
to, not even by way of Concorde and free gifts in best-quality leather which
nobody ever wanted. Felicity had been enchanted by the Golden Bowl: we had been
shown over its gracious Library, its sparkling clean kitchens, where only the
best and freshest food was prepared, and not a sign of a Lite packet anywhere;
its Refectory, where guests could sit and eat by themselves at little round
one-person tables - though Nurse Dawn did not approve of this: the digestive
processes apparently function better if eating is a social affair - its elegant
community rooms, its nursing wing, empty of patients: we met Nurse Dawn’s team
of nurse-attendants, all bright, cheerful and friendly: we met the Professor of
Philosophy, though his eyes were dull and all he wanted to talk about was the
state of the golf course. We were told that Felicity could bring her own
furniture in if she required though most Golden Bowlers chose to abandon the
material trophies of the past, the better to live in the present. She should
live very much as she lived at home. Various amiable and reasonably intelligent
persons passed us in the corridors, of whom only a small percentage had walking
frames, and one or two of the elderly gentlemen gave Felicity a second look.
That really pleased her. In the country of the blind the one-eyed man is king,
and in a nation-state such as the Golden Bowl Felicity would have more people
at hand to admire her than she would if she kept the company of those younger
than herself. We looked in at a Psychic Nourishment session in the Conservatory
- the soul needs nourishment as much as does the body, according to Dr Joseph
Grepalli, whom we were privileged to actually meet in his very grand offices.
He had the rooms above the Portico: the only suite to which stairs were
required. His wide windows looked out over the long rectangle of the lily pool.
There were learned books in his bookcase.

 
          
‘We
are blessed by synchronicity, dear lady,’ said Dr Grepalli to Felicity. ‘Our
brochure comes through your letter box the very day your granddaughter arrives
from London: you make the decision to remake your life amongst others of like
mind, and our new Atlantic Suite, now converted from one of the libraries to
personal use, is ready for occupation. All these things are a good sign. As
Nurse Dawn will have told you there is already a long list of people waiting to
join our community, but if you would be good enough to fill in the
questionnaire, we’ll see what we can do, and we will let you know within the
next couple of weeks.’

 
          
He
was, even to me, an attractive man, broad-chinned, brighteyed, on the jowly
side. I like men a little fleshy, Kubricky. In fact, Dr Grepalli reminded me of
the abominable Krassner. Thinking back, it seemed strange to me now that I had
not joined the latter in my bed. My last sexual relationship had been over six
months previously, and that had been fleeting. My grandmother Felicity was
obviously impressed by Dr Grepalli. Her wrinkled eyelids drooped over her still
large, clear eyes. She actually fluttered her lashes, and moistened her lips
with her tongue and sat with her hands clasped behind her neck. She had not
read as many books on body language as I had, or heard so many directors
expound on it, or she would have desisted. She was in her mid-eighties, for
God’s sake, and forty years older than he.

 
          
To
be seen from Dr Grepalli’s side window, at a little distance from the main
villa, was a long, low building. Of this particular place we had not had a
guided tour. As I looked an ambulance drew up and a couple of men went inside
with a trolley, and a couple of nurses came out: the bleached, hard, noisy kind
you tend to find in places other than the Golden Bowl. Dr Grepalli decided the
sun was getting in our eyes and drew the net curtains between my eyeline and
the building. I didn’t ask him what went on in there. But obviously some old
people get Alzheimer’s: in the end some fall ill, some die. It can get
depressing for others. There would be some form of segregation: there would
have to be, to keep the fit in good cheer.

 
          
I
fought back my doubts. All this was too good to be true.

 
          
Dr
Grepalli and my gran3mother were having a conversation about the
I Ching.
Let the living and lively
respond to the living and lively, while they can. Joy gaped open-mouthed. I
don’t think she really understood what was going on, perhaps because she was
wearing her hearing aid again and unaccustomed sound came to her
undifferentiated.

 
          
‘But
some of those people were chanting,’ she protested on the way home. ‘They were
all out of their minds. And did you see the potatoes in the kitchen? All
different shapes and sizes with dirt on them.’

 
          
‘Potatoes
come from the ground, Joy,’ said Felicity. ‘They are not born in the
supermarket. That’s what vegetables look like in real life. I loved that place.
All such a hoot.
Now all I have to do is wait and see
and pray.’

 
          
‘Oh
they want you all right,’ shouted Joy. ‘They want your money.’

 
          
But
here was the
limo come
especially for me, here in my
hand was the Concorde ticket, there was the thought of Kubricky- Krassner back
home. There was the driver whose name was Charlie, and who looked like a
mountain tribesman in
The Three Feathers
,
dangerous and glittery-eyed, glancing with meaning at his watch. It would not
do to cross him. ‘You go on back to
London
, Sophia,’ said Felicity. ‘There’s nothing
more you can do here. I’m going to become a Golden Bowler. If I don’t do
something I shall just fade away.’

 
          
‘I
think you’re crazy,’ roared Joy. ‘And you’re selling this place far too cheap.
I’m going to ask my deceased sister’s husband, Jack Epstein, He’s in car
dealership in
Boston
.’

 
          
I
thought I could safely leave them to it. I had done what I had been summoned to
do: endorse Felicity’s decisions. She seemed well and positive. She could look
after herself okay without me. I decided not to thwart the mountain tribesman
but simply to go home. Joy was not best pleased, but didn’t set up too many
difficulties, impressed as she was to discover I was the kind of person for
whom limos were sent from
New York
. She had assumed
,
I suppose, that I was someone’s
PA.
Or the make-up girl.

 
          
Felicity
finished asking advice of the
I Ching
while Joy helped me get my few things together. That is to say she banged and
crashed about, and tripped over chairs and the edges of carpets and got in the
way.

 
          
‘I’d
have gone on looking after your grandmother if I could,’ she shouted. ‘But I’m
too old for the responsibility.’

 
          
‘Don’t
worry about it,’ I said. ‘I’m family. It’s up to me.’

 
          
‘The
only family I have left is Jack,’ she said. ‘That’s my deceased sister
Francine’s husband.’ Jack and the sister Francine came into her conversation
rather frequently, I noticed. Something beyond her betrayal of my grandmother
was bothering her.

 
          
‘You
young things and your careers!’ she said. ‘I’ll help her pack up the house, of
course. Someone’s got to. A lot can go in storage, I daresay.’

 
          
‘I
don’t know how sensible that is,’ I said. ‘When and where is everything ever
going to come out of it? Better sell up and use the money.’

 
          
I
felt brutal saying it, but it was true. The storage space of the Western world
is full to overflowing with the belongings of deceased persons, which no-one
quite knows what to do with, let alone who’s the legal owner. I cut a
prize-winning documentary about this once.
You
Can't Take It with You.

 
          
‘I’ll
get Jack to help her sell the antiques,’ said Joy. ‘There are so many villains
around, just waiting to take advantage of old women alone.’

 
          
I
said that the only thing she had of any real value was the Utrillo, and
presumably Felicity would take that with her to the Golden Bowl. Joy asked what
a
Utrillo was and I explained it was a painting, and
described it. Joy doubted that it was worth anything, being so dull, but had
always quite liked the frame.

 
          
‘It’s
not as if Felicity is going far,’ Joy consoled herself.
‘Only
just over the state line to
Rhode Island
.
It’s a much rougher place than here, of
course, all has-beens and losers, artists and poets, yard sales and discount
stores. Everyone rich and poor trying to pick up a bargain, and still they
think well of themselves. They’ll have to wake up when the new
Boston
to Providence Interstate cuts through.
Forget all those woods and falling-down grand houses, it’ll be just another
commuting suburb. Property prices will soar: the Golden Bowl will sell up and
what will Felicity do then?’

 
          
‘She’ll go to the barn
_,

           
And
keep
herself
warm,

           
And
hide her head under her wing.

           
Poor
thing,’

 
          
I
murmured, and then was sorry because she had no idea what I was talking about.
How could she? When I was small my mother Angel would say the rhyme if I ever
worried about the future, and really it was no consolation at all.

 
          
‘The north wind doth blow,

           
And
we shall have snow.