The Fat Woman's Joke (6 page)

“I think the way you sit and stuff yourself is most undignified. I think you should have more pride in yourself. It's your own opinion of yourself that counts, not other people's.”

“Oh, Miss Smarmy,” said Esther. “I was telling you a story. If you don't want to hear it, go away.”

“Oh, please go on. You haven't told me anything yet, really.”

“There are many things I want you to understand first. One of the terrible things about marriage is the dread of change that goes with it, as perhaps even you are aware in your own relationship with Gerry. Any change, and you begin to worry. Either Alan wanted me to be thin because he was fancying his secretary, or he wanted me to be thin because he was ashamed of me the way I was. Either way, he wanted me to be different from what I was, and this to me seemed the most devastating insult.”

“He'd had secretaries before. Why were you worrying about this one?”

“Her name was Susan. I've never liked girls called Susan. I don't trust them. My mother's name is Susan.”

“What does your mother say about your not being at home? She adores Alan.”

“I'll come to that later. She's been down here, you know, prying and spying.” Her voice, as always when Esther talked about her mother, became smaller and meaner, like her eyes.

“You're awful about your mother. She's such a wonderful person.”

“Oh, yes. Of course. Any woman who gets past sixty is wonderful. I look forward to it, I'm sure. I hope to be dead by then.”

“And to suspect Alan of carrying on with his secretary because her name's the same as your mother's is just plain silly.”

“Well, that's the way it goes, doesn't it? I didn't ask you to come down here, making me talk. I'm beginning to feel very upset. I was quite peaceful before. Now I'm all stirred up. I feel sick. I'm getting indigestion.”

“It's jealousy that gives me a pain,” said Phyllis, taking another biscuit. “First I get the pain, and from that I know I'm jealous. It's down here.”

“Down here! Down here! In your womb, you silly barren bitch.”

“What a horrible thing to say! It's not in my womb, anyway. I know where my womb is. It's higher. I am not barren. Gerry and I simply can't decide whether or not we want children. Or rather, Gerry can't. And you've only got one child; why do you try to make out you're so fertile?”

“I don't. I'm not. I am wounded, through and through. Marriage is such a falling away. It hurts. When you go to the pictures you remember a time you used to hold hands. You go to bed in your curlers and remember a time you used to sleep in each other's arms. Nothing is ever as it was, in marriage.”

“I try to keep our love alive,” said Phyllis, her dolly eyes wide with virtue. “Gerry's and mine. I wouldn't dream of going to bed in curlers.”

Esther quelled her irritation by unwrapping a chocolate and eating it. It was toffee, and she had to speak now through jaws that had trouble in opening.

“Anyway, that night we slept as far apart from each other as we could, and Alan was late for work and got closer to Susan as a result.”

“How do you know?”

“Because the more he fancied her the nastier he was to me. That's the way guilt takes him. He loads it onto me. He goads me into behaving badly so then he can consider himself justified. Kick the old nagger in the teeth, and cry ‘She drove me to it!' in the young one's bed. That's the way it goes.”

“I'm sure it wasn't. I think you're making it all up about Alan. He's very loyal to you. He loves you.”

“Love, shmove,” she said, “Love, shmove!” and ate the last biscuit on the plate.

“Are you sure you want me to go on with the story?” asked Susan, when the two girls were back in the flat with the young man from abroad. He sat in the best chair sipping a cup of coffee, nodding benignly and watching every move that Brenda made. It was not clear whether or not he spoke English, since he said nothing. Susan was irritated by his presence, but could think of no good reason for objecting to it. “Perhaps you would prefer me to go out or something, so you and this extraordinary person can be alone?”

“Good heavens, no. What are you thinking of?” Brenda seemed surprised.

“Don't you want to get to know him better or something?”

“Not particularly.”

“Then, why is he here?”

“Well, he just came, didn't he? It would seem inhospitable to turn him away. He is a stranger in a foreign land, after all.”

“I expect he comes from the East End, if the truth was known. I don't want to go on if he can understand. It is all very personal to me.”

The two girls stared at him. He smiled and nodded, as if he would say something nice if only he knew how.

“Don't be silly,” said Brenda. “You see! He doesn't understand a word we say. He's just a nice friendly man having a cup of coffee in a foreign land.”

“Very well. We'll leave it at that. But just don't let it go any further. You sometimes behave in a very eccentric way, Brenda. Your relationships can be very shallow.”

“Oh no. I'm a very conventional person, I'm afraid. I'm not brave, like you.”

They took their cups of coffee and sat by the gas fire—Brenda pulling her short skirt down to hide her stocking tops as best she could—and Susan took up the story.

Alan was late at the office on the second day of the diet. Susan was watering the pot plants with a green-and-red watering can from Heals, especially designed for watering pot plants. Alan was bad-tempered. His agent had appreciated his novel, but his life had not thereby been transformed, and he felt cheated.

“Oh, Mr. Wells,” said Susan, reproachfully, “you're late.”

“Well?”

“You're late.”

“I am not late. I am just not as early as usual. If you can't be polite, at least try to be accurate.”

“I suppose your being so often late is a protest against your coming to the office at all. I think it would be sensible for you to hand in your notice altogether. Why spend your days doing something you don't like? You only live once.”

“It is too early in the morning for this sort of conversation. I might as well be at home.” He hung his coat behind the provided curtain and looked discreetly down at his stomach. It seemed much the same.

“It is not early for me. I've been up since five.”

“What ever for?”

“The light is good at that time for painting. The whole world seems different, somehow, when everyone else is asleep. It's unobserved, and it shows.”

“You must show me some of your work, sometime.”

“I am very particular to whom I show my paintings.”

“You must try and be a little more particular about your typing,” was all he said, looking at the list of the day's engagements which she had typed.

She was wearing a white ribbed jersey, which seemed too small for her, an abbreviated skirt, and a leather belt which hung around her hips.

He thought it scarcely seemed suitable attire for a secretary in an advertising agency. It would never have been allowed in a permanent girl.

“How can it be,” he said, “that I have no meetings until late this afternoon?”

She sat down behind her typewriter and spoke coldly, for she had been snubbed.

“Today was the day you were supposed to be going to the Sussex shampoo factory. They waited as long as they could, and I rang Mrs. Wells and she said you'd only just left, so Mr. Venery went in your place. That's why.”

“Oh.”

“They thought Mr. Venery would do just as well.”

“Oh. Did they?”

“And I daresay they were right. He can be very impressive when he talks.”

“You are becoming quite impossible. I know you like to make it clear that you are not by nature a secretary. But since you are being paid, couldn't you at least act the role? It is very disconcerting to have a girl like you sitting about all day.”

“Thank you.” She smiled.

“I didn't mean that as a compliment, either. Offices are serious places, where work must always take precedence over everything else. I daresay, to a girl as emancipated and free-thinking as you, the work we actually do must appear strange, even bizarre. I can see that to an outsider the vision of a group of gray-suited gentlemen of high moral principle and even higher income sitting round a table discussion the attitude of teenage girls to dandruff must seem somewhat ludicrous. But teenage girls have dandruff. And they need and like to have it cured. And a great many people work in factories making the cure, and others like us work at selling it in its most acceptable and cheapest form. It has its own kind of dignity, the work we do—if only because it is so open to mockery. It is easy enough to laugh at dandruff—just so long as you haven't got it.”

“You could use that as a headline. I wasn't laughing at dandruff in particular, as it happens, or at you. You've sold out, that's all, and I think it's sad. It's a waste of your potentiality. I'm sure if someone had said to you when you were fifteen that you'd end up selling dandruff cures you'd have committed suicide on the spot, and perhaps you would have been right to do so. People have a duty to their talents. It's a crime to throw them away.”

“I have not ‘ended up,' as you put it. And I sell a great many other things besides dandruff cures. And I think, incidentally, you are too old to be wearing that gear. It's for teenagers, not grown women.”

“Why do you feel the need to attack me? Why do you want to hurt my feelings all the time? Do my knees worry you so much?”

“No. It is not so much your knees, as you well know, but your thighs.”

“I am sorry,” she said. “If it worries you I will wear skirts to my ankles. If you ask me to do anything, I will.”

“Good heavens,” he said, “good heavens, it's much too early for this kind of thing.”

“I told you it didn't seem early to me. I've been up for hours.”

He circled her.

“What am I going to do for the rest of the day, with nothing arranged? And you quite willfully tormenting me?”

“Act like the middle-aged company man you delude yourself you are. Spend a useful day stabilizing your relations with the rest of the staff. Write memos to remind your superiors that you exist—it seems to be necessary. Go on a tour of inspection; there must be something to inspect. Ask your staff if they're happy.”

“Are you?”

“I'm always happy.”

“I don't believe you.”

“I always do what I want.”

“You are very fortunate, then.”

“Not fortunate. Sensible. I dreamed about you last night.”

“What?”

“It was very private. It was marvelous.”

“Good heavens,” he said, “good heavens. What do you see in me? I'm a middle-aged man with a middle-aged mind. You are young, beautiful, talented, intelligent and truly, truly, remarkable.”

“You have a wonderful turn of phrase, just sometimes; did you know that? But a lot of the time you speak platitudes. What element in yourself is it that you hide from? You use clichés as a shelter, and it is not necessary. I hope you don't use them when you write.”

“It is a lovely day. Shall we go for a walk in the park? How very irregular! But we could talk about books. Did you know I have just written a novel?”

“Yes, as a matter of fact.”

“Would you be interested in reading it?”

“Oh, yes.”

“I haven't got a copy at the office. There are two at home, though. I'll bring one in. It might interest you. Many people might be shocked—but not, I think, you.”

They put on the red “engaged” light above his office door and went out, by different staircases, into the street and met in the park. He felt the same pleasure as when he had played truant as a child; she felt agreeably conspiratorial. The sun shone.

“What did you have for breakfast?” she asked.

“Eggs.”

“I don't think food is at all important, but I can see that for people who are used to it, going without would be most difficult. I don't think you ought to, actually. You are a shadowy enough figure as it is.”

“Shadowy?”

“You lack substance. Men do tend to lack substance in women's eyes. They are figments of lust, vague sources of despair. I think the least a man can do, in the circumstances, is to endeavor to exist well and truly in the flesh. I believe in you on account of you are so solid. It is the other way round with women. A woman has all too much substance in a man's eyes at the best of times. That is why men like women to be slim. Her lack of flesh negates her. The less of her there is, the less notice he need take of her. The more like a male she appears to be, the safer he feels.”

“My wife doesn't half fight back, then.”

“Is she
very
fat?”

But he was silent.

“Did you used to be a painter?” she asked presently, returning to safer ground.

“Why do you ask?”

“From the way you pick up a pencil. From the way you scribble over bad layouts. You seem to know exactly what you're doing.”

“You are very quick. I did study once.”

“What happened?”

“I had a couple of shows. But it was hungry work. Then I married. You have to earn a living. Once you embark on family life, it is too late to do anything else. Thoughts of self-expression fly out the window.”

“Not if you have courage. I think perhaps you lack courage.”

“If true courage lies in doing what you don't want to do, from a sense of duty, then I am a truly courageous man.”

“Not at all. True courage lies in doing what you want to do, and not caring whom you hurt.”

“True courage,” he said, “lies in employing temporary secretaries with beautiful legs and wayward thoughts.”

He kissed her in the bushes where he was sure no one from the office could possibly see. She was vastly pleased, and took the afternoon off—he could scarcely refuse—and went home and told William all about it.