Fay Weldon - Novel 23 (9 page)

 
          
‘What do Golden Bowlers do?

           
They
live life to the full’

 
          
By
the end of November Felicity was settled into the Atlantic Suite of the Golden
Bowl Complex. Her house had been sold to Joy’s brother-in-law Jack, at a
knockdown price. At the last moment he had had second thoughts about purchasing
and she had brought the price down a further $50,000. It scarcely mattered.
She had $5,000,000 in the bank: the interest on which was sufficient to pay all
costs at the Golden Bowl, though if she lived to ninety-six or more, and rates
continued to rise exponentially by ten per cent a year, she would have to begin
to dip into capital. She could afford to buy a small gift here, give a little
to charity there, though she had never been the kind to dress up and go to
functions and give publicly. Too vulgar for Miss Felicity: too much gold and
diamond jewellery on necklines cut too low to flatter old skin.

 
          
Felicity’s
lawyer Bert Heller, Exon’s old friend, was satisfied that he had done his best
by the old lady, as she had once alarmingly overheard him referring to her. Her
will was in order and left everything to her granddaughter Sophia in
England
. Joy was pleased her friend was near enough
to visit but that instead of having the responsibility of an elderly widow
living alone next door, prone to falls and strokes, she now had the comfort of
a brother-in-law as a neighbour, one who would look after, rather than need to
be looked after. The move had suited everyone.

 
          
All
Felicity had to do now, in fact, in the judgement of the outside world, was
settle down, not make trouble, and
live
the rest of
her days in peace.

 
          
And why not?
The Atlantic Suite was composed of three large
rooms, a tiny kitchen, a bathroom embossed with plated gold fittings and more
than enough closet space: the view was pleasant: the rooms spacious. The world
came to her through CNN, if she cared to take an interest in it, though few at
the Golden Bowl did. Most preferred to look inwards and wait their turn to get
a word in at group therapy. The decor and furnishings were pleasing and she had
never been sentimental about her belongings: most had gone to auction.
Sometimes Miss Felicity would remember a dress she had particularly liked and
wonder what became of it: or a charming plate she’d owned, or a scrapbook she’d
once compiled. Did people steal things, had she lost them, had she given them
away? Why try to remember? It hardly mattered. She had a photograph of her
granddaughter in a silver frame on her bedside table, but that was to keep
Nurse Dawn quiet. Nurse Dawn, helping her unpack, had found it and stood it
there when first Felicity arrived, and Felicity did not feel inclined to take
on Nurse Dawn at the moment: she would wait until something more significant
was at stake. To have family photographs on the bedside table suggested that
life - by which she supposed she meant sex - was in the past.

 
          
Besides,
Sophia had inherited Angel’s Botticelli hair: Felicity was not sure she wanted
to be presented with the sight of it night and day. So she simply put the photo
on its face after room service had been in and every next day room service
stood it upright. It was an okay compromise.

 
          
Felicity
had a nasty attack of flu when she first arrived at the Golden Bowl. Stomach
cramps and weak limbs had made her more dependent upon the administrations of
Nurse Dawn than she would have wished. When she recovered she found that silly little
matters such as when breakfast would be brought to her room in the morning,
when the valet service would collect and deliver, limitations on her time in
the Library, expected attendance at the Ascension Room gatherings, had been
arranged more to fit the Golden Bowl’s convenience than her own. She had
remarked on this to Dr Bronstein.

 
          
‘It’s
very strange,’ was Dr Bronstein’s dark comment, later, ‘how many people find
themselves ill and helpless when they first arrive at the Golden Bowl.’

 
          
‘It’s
hardly likely to be a conspiracy,’ said Felicity. ‘No-one’s going to make us
ill on purpose.’

 
          
‘Aren’t
they?’

 
          
Felicity
had taken morning coffee in the Ascension Room as soon as she was able. She
felt the need of company. She’d joined Dr Bronstein and a Miss Clara Craft at
their table. Both smiled agreeably at her, and put down their magazines. Miss
Craft, who turned out to be a correspondent for
The Post
back in the thirties, and who had trouble with her sight,
had been flicking through the latest copy of
Vogue.
She wore a good deal of make-up haphazardly applied, and
her sparse hair was arranged in little plaits, which hung here and there from
her scalp. Her back was noticeably bowed. Felicity concluded that like so many
women who did not choose to thwart the natural processes, Clara took no hormone
replacement therapy. Dr Bronstein was smartly presented and was reading
Harpers
, albeit with a magnifying glass.
Nurse Dawn had lingered, hovered, and done her best to overhear.

 
          
Dr
Bronstein’s eyes were rheumy like a spaniel’s. They dripped moisture, and made
him seem in constant need of sympathy. Nurse Dawn resented this. Nor did she
like the Doctor’s choice of reading matter which to her was impenetrable but
under the terms of residency was provided free. Magazines surely meant
Time
or
Newsweek. Vogue
was acceptable, though absurd in Clara Craft’s
case. Miss Felicity had taken on herself to read
Vanity Fair
, which was bad enough, the articles being so long, but
at least, unlike
Harpers
, had a few
pretty girls and advertisements to break up the text.

 
          
* * *

           
‘Most of us will arrive here
exhausted,
^’
said Felicity, ‘and in culture shock from the winding
down of our days. Our immune systems are low. It’s not surprising we get ill.
Or perhaps it’s suddenly eating three meals a day, of good natural food. I’ve
been living out of packets for the past five years.
^’

 
          
She
was well aware Nurse Dawn was listening, under the pretence of tidying up a
bowl of flowers. She was stripping away yellowed leaves and faded blooms and
putting them in a little bag for removal. She took her time.

 
          
‘Natural
?
⁵
asked Dr Bronstein. ‘I hope I didn’t hear you
say natural. It’s an illusion to believe that because something is natural,
it’s good for us. Nature doesn’t care whether we live or die. Nature’s only
purpose is to get us to procreative age in one piece, by whatever slipshod
manner she can contrive. Once we’re past that she has no interest in us at all.
We live by our ingenuity, not by her will. It behoves us oldsters to treat
nature as enemy not friend.’

 
          
‘Man’s
ingenuity!’ interjected Clara Craft. ‘I must tell you, Miss Felicity, I was
present when the great airship Flindenburg caught fire as it landed. That was
in 1937.
One of the most spectacular tragedies of the decade.
I was one of those little figures running away from the flames in the newsreel.
Flow I escaped with my life I’ll never know.’

 
          
Nurse
Dawn, having heard all about the Flindenburg disaster too many times before,
and finding herself bored even as an eavesdropper - to whom most things are
fascinating by virtue of the secrecy attached - left the room. Miss Felicity -
forget Clara’s adventures, which were already being repeated, like a stuck
record - found herself glad to be in the company of a man who used the word
behove
in ordinary speech. Such words
had certainly not been in Joy’s vocabulary. Felicity could see her horizons
expanding. Once you could lose the sense that age was the most important thing
about the old: that the passage of years wiped out individuality and that you
were old yourself, just like everyone else around, all was not gloomy. Clara
fell suddenly asleep.
Vogue
dropped
to the ground and lay there. Dr Bronstein told her that he was eighty- nine:
that until his enforced retirement he had been a biochemist, and, he was happy
to admit to Felicity, had been a conspiracy theorist all his life. He was in
good health, though he believed his two new titanium knees and one plastic and
one steel hip (implanted of necessity over four decades of medical care - he
had played baseball for his college team, and squash thereafter, and there is
nothing like sport for damaging the joints, but who in the vigour of their
youth is ever prepared to believe it) set up some kind of electrical discharge
which interfered with his mental processes. He kept up an animated flow if not
exactly conversation - he was too deaf for that - but at any rate talk.

 
          
That
night when Nurse Dawn came by to turn off Felicity’s light - Felicity had
told her not to bother, she could turn off her own light perfectly well, but
Nurse Dawn had seemed hurt so she’d consented - Nurse Dawn said: ‘A friendly
warning. Don’t take too much notice of our Dr Bronstein. He has a problem with
authority. Give him a chance and he’ll feel free to buttonhole you for the rest
of your life.’

 
          
Which
Felicity realized with a shock might well be spent as a Golden Bowler. She
refrained after all from asking Nurse Dawn if she could have Fat Free Choco
Lite for her good-night drink, and decided to go along with whatever Nurse Dawn
thought was best. As with the matter of the family photograph, it was of minor
importance: she would save her energies for some greater battle which she had
no doubt would soon enough come along. In the meantime she would lull Nurse
Dawn into complacency. But wasn’t this how one behaved with husbands? Putting
off confrontation until a right time which never came? In the end, if only by
default, you ended up living their life, not jours. But why not, here at the
Golden Bowl?

 
          
The
good-night drink provided by Nurse Dawn turned out to be semi-skimmed
unpasteurized milk with a little acacia honey stirred into it, for, Nurse Dawn
said, sweet dreams. As soon as the woman was gone Felicity got out of bed and
poured the sickly stuff down the bathroom sink, keeping her eyes averted from
the gilt-framed mirror.

 
          
* * *

           
On the day she had first moved in
she’d thought she’d glimpsed the face of an elderly man looking out at her from
the glass. The image had been brief but vivid. She’d told herself that she was
overtired but hadn’t quite convinced herself. Vision it had been. Well, these
things happened from time to time in one’s life and were overlooked in the name
of sanity. She could only hope the vision was not prophetic: that she was
looking at herself in ten years’ time. It was sadly true that as one got older
the distinction between a male face and a female one lessened, but hardly to so
whiskery and rheumy a degree as this. Surely there would never come a time when
she, Felicity, would cease to tweeze the hairs from her nose and chin? Or
perhaps some kind of ghost looked back at her? Felicity had once owned a cat
who continued to haunt the house for a few weeks after its death at the age of
ten, under a car: just a flick of a tail out of the corner of the eye: the
sound of purring where no purring should be, the feel of fur rubbing up
affectionately against her shin: these things happened. She knew well enough
that the Atlantic Suite had fallen vacant upon the death of the previous
occupant: why else the new bed, the frantic redecoration? If the one she
replaced now appeared to her, was it in welcome or in warning?

 
          
The
apparition had appeared only briefly: she had looked away at once, in shock,
and forcing herself to look again, had seen only herself. That of course was
bad enough. You looked into a mirror as a young woman and your reflection
looked out at you as one who was old. So what, honestly, was the big deal if
the one looking out had changed sex as well? The shock of the stranger in the
mirror was with you every time you looked into one. So why worry?

 
          
She
didn’t mention the matter to the management. As you grew older you had to be
careful not to give anyone an inkling that you were not in your right mind.
Incarcerated as she had once been, though briefly, during the course of a
divorce, in a mental home, she had been much impressed by the difficulty of
proving you were sane. If you wept because you were locked up and miserable,
you were diagnosed as clinically depressed and unfit to leave. If you didn’t
weep someone else would decide you were sociopathic, and a danger to the
public. Those who ran institutions tended to register criticism as ingratitude
at best and insanity at worst, and though the Golden Bowl was not an
institution in the locking-up sense, the mere fact of being old made you
vulnerable to those who might decide you and your $5,000,000 needed to be
protected for your own and its good.