by Fay Weldon
“Bernard!” wailed Angela, but Bernard just spread his fingers helplessly, and licked his lips.
“It’s her or me,” cried Angela. “I’m warning you, Bernard.”
“I do as I like,” said Bernard. “What you do is up to you.”
“This is our business, not yours,” said Maria’s mother to Angela, as once she should have said it to Eleanor. “You go, we stay.” And she looked Angela’s suit up and down as if to say this is a funeral, not a wedding; can’t you tell the difference? I’m old enough to do as I like but you’re not. Whoever can have brought you up?
Angela looked at Maria’s mother’s attire and curled her lip. “Mutton dressed up as lamb,” she actually said.
“Excuse me,” said a group of black-suited, sleek-haired men, passing through, bearing a coffin on accustomed shoulders. The little cluster of mourners had to part and re-form. Maria wondered if the body inside the coffin were male or female, young or old; how they’d lived, how they’d died. Whether they were persecutor, self-interested and invalidating; or victim, understanding and forgiving, this was the outcome. Since there was no justice in death, you’d better find it in life, however disagreeable it made you in the eyes of others, in your own eyes too.
“Just go away,” Maria said to Angela, with a snap of anger so sharp and severe it all but cracked and slivered the sheltering bell-jar; or at any rate a breath of cold, fresh, lively air suddenly whipped around their legs: a memento of winter in the presence of spring. Everyone looked startled.
“Go away,” repeated Maria, “and take Bernard with you.”
Bernard said, “I can’t do that. I’m the chief mourner. He’s my father. I have to stay. But you don’t have to, Angela. Really it’s best that you don’t. Wait in the car.”
And Angela walked meekly off to wait. Maurice moved over to stand by his mother’s side.
“That’s better,” said Maria’s mother. “At last!”
“What’s more, I’m not living beneath a baby,” said Maria to Bernard, “let alone you, Angela and a baby. What do you think I am?”
“That’s okay,” said Bernard. “Now my father’s dead I can afford to move out. You can have the whole house.”
They stood together in the chapel, and afterwards went their separate ways. Bernard to Angela and a new baby, Maria and Maurice back home, Maria’s mother back to her cards. Red on black, black on red; red on black, life on death.
KNOCK-KNOCK
“KNOCK-KNOCK,” SAID THE child into the silence. He was eight. The three adults looked up from their breakfast yoghurt, startled. Harry seldom spoke unless spoken to first. He’d seemed happy enough during the meal. The waiter had fetched him a toy from the hotel kitchens, a miniature Power Ranger out of a cereal packet, and he’d been playing with that, taking no apparent notice of a desultory conversation between Jessica, his mother, and Rosemary and Bill, his grandparents. “Who’s there?” asked his mother, obligingly. “Me,” said Harry, with such finality that the game stopped there. He was a quiet, usually self-effacing child; blond, bronzed and handsome.
Perhaps he’d been more aware of the. content of their talk than they’d realised. It had of course been coded for his benefit, couched in abstract terms. The importance of fidelity, the necessity of trust, different cultural expectations either side of the Atlantic, and so on: its real subject being the matter in doubt—should Jessica go home to her faithless husband in Hollywood, or stay with her loving parents in the Cotswolds. To forgive or not to forgive, that was the question.
They’d tried to keep the story from the child, hidden newspapers and magazines. It wasn’t a big scandal, just a little one; not on the Hugh Grant scale: nothing like that, not enough to make TV, just enough to make them all uncomfortable, leave home and take temporary refuge in this staid and stately country hotel, with its willowed drive, its swan-stocked lake, its Laura Ashley interior, where reporters couldn’t find them to ask questions. If you answered the questions it was bad; if you didn’t answer them it was worse. The solution was simply not to be there at all.
The story, the embryo scandal, goes thus. Young big-shot Hollywood producer Aaron Scheffer sets off on holiday with English wife of ten years, Jessica, and eight-year-old son, Harry, to spend the summer with her parents. At the airport he gets a phone call. His film’s been brought forward, its budget tripled; rising star Maggie Ives has agreed to play the lead. Aaron shouldn’t leave town. He stays; wife and child go. Well, these things happen. Two weeks in and there’s a story plus pics in an international showbiz magazine: Aaron Scheffer intimately entwined behind a palm tree on a restaurant balcony. Who with? Maggie Ives. They’re an item. Other newspapers pick up the story.
No air-conditioning in the grandparental home in England: how could it ever work? Why try? The place is impossible to seal. Too many chimneys: too many people in the habit of flinging up windows and opening doors, even when it’s hotter out than in. You’d never stop them. And it’s hot, so hot. A heat wave.
Aaron calls Jessica, much distressed. It’s a set-up, don’t believe a word of it. I have enemies. Jessica replies of course I don’t believe it, stay cool, hang loose, I trust you, I love you.
A chat show runs a piece on spouse infidelity: featuring the phoney airport call: how to get the wife out of town without her suspecting a thing. Ha ha ha.
The heat may be good. It has an anaesthetizing effect. Or perhaps Jessica’s just stunned. She cannot endure her parents’ pity: the implicit “I told you so.”
Harry’s happy in the grandparental English garden. He is studying the life cycle of frogs. He helps tadpoles out of their pond, his little fingers beneath their limp back legs, helping them on their way. Once tadpoles breathe air, he says, everything about them stiffens. Jessica feels there’s no air around to breathe, it’s too hot.
Best friend and neighbour Kate, back in LA, calls to say, Jessica, you have to believe it, you need to know, everyone else knows: Aaron’s been seeing Maggie for months. That’s why she’s got the part.
Jessica can’t even cry. Her eyes are as parched as the garden. Forget tragedy, forget betrayal, how could she ever live in a land without air-conditioning?
Phone calls fly. Her father Bill frets about the cost. Aaron says not to believe a word Kate says. Kate’s a woman scorned. By whom? Why, Aaron, the minute Jessica’s back is turned. Come home now, Jessica, pleads Aaron, I love you.
“I’ll think about it,” says Jessica. She asks her mother whether it’s safer to trust a husband or a best friend? “Neither,” says her mother. “And Aaron probably only wants you home for a photo-opportunity, to keep the studio quiet.”
The first reporter turns up on the step. Is she hurt? How does it feel? He has other photographs here; they’d like to publish with her comments. Will she stand by her man? Doors slam. No comment. More phone calls.
Aaron confesses: words twinkle across continents and seas. “Maggie and I lunched. We drank. We shouldn’t have. She asked me back to her place. I went. I shouldn’t have. We succumbed. We shouldn’t have. We were both upset. I was missing you. I felt you’d put your parents before me. Afterwards we both regretted it. I took her to a restaurant so there’d be no embarrassment, so we could get back to being friends, colleagues, nothing more than that.”
“And there just happened to be photographers around,” Jessica drawls. Heat slows words.
“Her boyfriend spies on her.”
“I’m not surprised,” says Jessica. She’s melting. But perhaps that too is just the heat. “What was Maggie so upset about?”
“I’ve no idea,” says Aaron. “I can’t remember.”
“That’s a good sign,” says Jessica. “But if you two have to work together, and I can see you can, supposing she gets upset about something else? What then?”
“Why should she,” asks Aaron, “now she has the part she wants? Please will you come home tomorrow?”
“No,” says Jessica. She feels mean and angry. She’d rather he’d gon
e on lying. She wants him punished.
“Then I’ll come and collect you,” he says. “Meet me at Heathrow.” She puts the phone down.
More reporters on the step. The family wait for nightfall, then slip away to the hotel. Jessica calls Aaron. He’s already left for England, says his secretary. Everyone has three days off. Maggie Ives is sick. Aaron’s due at Heathrow at 11:30 Friday.
Now it’s 8:30 and Friday. And Harry is saying knock-knock, who’s there, me! And her parents are saying, if she hears them correctly, because they’ll never say it outright, Don’t go to him, stay here with us. Crisis time.
And here was home, where no one said anything outright, so at least everything was open to change. Perhaps she hated Hollywood. Perhaps she hated all America. Perhaps the only people you could trust were family, blood relatives; and husbands weren’t even blood relatives. Other people had serial marriages, why shouldn’t she?
If only this hotel, which claimed to have air-conditioning but had only a hideous roaring box in a corner of the dining room, was more American: if only her child didn’t knock at her conscience, saying “remember me?” then she could think.
Aaron was in the air now, somewhere up above the frozen seas or the hard unyielding land, on wings of love or self-interest, how could she know which? Knock-knock, who’s there? God or the Devil?
Harry put down his spoon and asked politely if he could leave the table. Rosemary said yes before Jessica could speak. He must go to his room to put on sun-block first. Harry said okay.
Bill remarked that he was an unusually good child. Jessica said yes, but she’d had him checked out with a therapist, who’d said no problem, except he might be overly mature for his age. Rosemary observed that Hollywood must be a dreadful place to rear a child: either vulgar wealth in Bel Air or shoot-outs in McDonald’s, and therapists everywhere. Bill said any child was best reared in green fields in a gentle climate; Jessica should get a cottage in the village near them. Presumably Aaron would look after her financing. They’d be near, as families should be, but would of course respect each other’s privacy. And so on.
Harry was now out in the garden: the other side of the long French windows. He threw a ball against the wall, hard: it bounced back off uneven bricks; he’d leap to catch it. Hurl again. The garden was remarkably pretty. English pretty. The high wall was made of slim, ancient, muted red bricks, beneath which were hollyhocks and delphiniums, pleasantly tiered. Drought restrictions were in place, but Bill said he’d looked out of his window in the early hours and seen the gardener using the hose.
“Harry’s got a good throw,” said Bill. “He’ll be good at cricket.”
“Or baseball,” said Jessica. Rosemary groaned. Jessica understood, suddenly, what was obvious but she hadn’t seen: that she was their only child, Harry their only grandchild. Of course her parents wanted her back in the country. She could hardly look to them for impartial advice. Thud, thud, thud, against the wall. Knock-knock. What about me? Father, lying but loving, v. doting grandparents? Broken home v. green fields and no air-conditioning?
“We both like Aaron,” observed Rosemary, “you know that, but there’s no denying he’s ambitious!”
What did her mother mean? That no truly ambitious man would put up with Jessica? That she wasn’t bright, beautiful or starry enough for Aaron? That it was a miracle he’d taken her on in the first place? So long as Aaron was the one persuading her to stay while she tried to leave, she could cope. But supposing it went the other way: Aaron decided he preferred Maggie Ives to Jessica? How would she survive then? She was playing games she might regret.
“I could take the car and drive to meet him,” said Jessica to her parents. “He and I could at least talk. I owe him that. I’d just about make it to the airport in time.”
“I’d have to drive you,” said Bill. “My car has gears. You can only drive automatic.”
“Bill can’t possibly drive you,” said Rosemary. “It’s much too hot. His heart won’t stand it. We don’t have air-conditioned cars over here, which is just as well for the ozone layer. And I daresay you think you could afford a driver, but where would you find one at such short notice?”
Such silly practicalities! But still they stood in her way. It was Fate. Better, Jessica thought, to stick by her original decision. So public and powerful an insult from husband to wife could not be excused, and that was that. All her friends would agree. The waiter poured more coffee. “Good to see the little fellow enjoying himself,” he remarked. Everyone nodded politely. Harry came in from the garden. “If I died,” he said, “you’d forget me at once.”
“We wouldn’t, we wouldn’t,” exclaimed Jessica. “We all love you so much!”
And even Bill and Rosemary, though talk of such emotion came with difficulty to their lips, assured their grandchild of undying and unflinching love. “No,” said Harry, refusing their comfort. “I’m right about this. I’m just not important to you. In a couple of hours you’d forget all about me. In fact if I were out of your sight for just ten minutes you wouldn’t remember who I was.” And he bowed his head beneath the shower of protests and went back into the garden, to his ball. Thud, thud, thud.
Jessica stood up and said, “Dad, give me the keys. I’m going to meet Aaron. I’m going to bring him back here, you’re going to be nice to him; then we fly back to Hollywood. I’m not leaving Aaron, I’m not divorcing him, I love him. And I have to think of Harry. Every good boy deserves a father; we’ve made him so dreadfully insecure. I hadn’t realised.”
Bill handed over the keys.
“We all have to think of the children,” he said.
“We abide by your decision,” said his wife. “For Harry’s sake.”
“Tell Harry I’ll be back with his father,” said Jessica. “Tell him to stop worrying.”
Bill and Rosemary watched as the car lurched and shuddered on the gravel drive while Jessica got the hang of the gears. Then the car shot off into the heat haze, grating and grinding, out of the shade of the willows into the sun. The waiter hovered. Harry stopped throwing and came to stand beside them, watching.
“Where’s Mom gone?”
“Mummy,” corrected Rosemary. “She’s gone to meet your father.”
“Um,” said Harry, approving but not especially so. Then he said,
“Knock-knock.”
“Who’s there?” asked Rosemary.
“Told you so!” said Harry. “Forgotten me already! Ten minutes and see, you’d forgotten all about me. Gotcha!”
And Harry laughed uproariously, cracking up, bending over a gold and damask chair to contain his stomach and his mirth, making far more noise than they’d ever heard him make before. And the waiter was bent over laughing too, holding his middle. “I told him that one,” said the waiter. “Poor little feller. He needed a laugh! We all do, this time of year.”
When Harry had finished laughing he went serenely back into the garden, for more throwing, thudding, catching. The heat seemed to affect him not one whit.
GOING TO THE THERAPIST
SANTA CLAUS’S NEW CLOTHES
“I’M SO HAPPY WE can all be together like this,” said Dr. Hetty Grainger. She sat in the antique carver chair at the head of the Andrews’ festive board. There was turkey for the carnivores, and nut-roast for the others, with a rich plum and chestnut sauce to go with it, to prove vegetarians can be indulgent too, not to mention sensuous, should ritual so demand. There were crackers on the table, and paper hats, and the scent of incense to remind everyone that the Hindu, the Buddhist and the Christian gods (did not the Trinity make three?) come from the same source, are of the same oneness. The Andrews were the kind who normally went to church once a year, to midnight service on Christmas Eve. But not this year.
Dr. Hetty Grainger’s voice was sweet and low. She murmured rather than spoke, so that all the Andrew family, usually so noisy, fell silent to hear her speak. “I’m so happy we can all be together like this.”
Although now in
theory an Andrew herself, Dr. Hetty had retained, if not exactly her maiden name, at least the one she’d acquired on her first marriage: Grainger. She’d done this, she said, for her patients’ sake. Troubled as they were by one kind of stress or another, they hankered, or so Dr. Grainger said, for the tranquillity of continuity. To turn from Dr. Grainger into Dr. Andrew would be to rub the salt of her own new-found happiness into the wounds of her clients’ neuroses. “Tranquillity” was one of Dr. Grainger’s favourite words. She used it a lot. The Sea of Tranquillity on the moon, for example, was a place with which Dr. Hetty Grainger felt she had some special connection. It sent its sentient spirit out to her. Just to think of this unearthly place—so quiet, so dark, so cool, so beautifully named—lulled Dr. Hetty Grainger and soothed her when she was in any way stressed.
“She’s okay, I suppose, but she’s ever so sort of astral,” said Penny, aged nineteen, on first meeting her father’s therapist, soon to be her new stepmother. “I always thought the moon was just a cold lump of rock which caught the light of the sun as it went round the earth. Or is it the other way round? But apparently no: the moon is all sentient spirit and significance and stuff. Or is she just talking crap?”
And Chris, Penny’s sister Petula’s boyfriend, said, “No, it isn’t crap. I think what Dr. Grainger has to say is really interesting. This is the New Age, after all. Everything means something. And at least she makes your father happy.”
And, after that, opposition to Hetty Grainger within the Andrew family fell away. She made their father happy.
This year the Christmas Eve service on local offer seemed to the family a rather formal, old-fashioned and decidedly chilly event, in a church which had needed a new heating system for years and never got one. Hetty didn’t want to go, anyway, so in the end nobody went. It would have felt impolite to leave their new stepmother behind.