by Fay Weldon
Hetty Grainger was shortly built and mousily pretty, with soft natural hair which fell brownly around a pale plump face. But her hips were wide and filled the antique carver chair at the head of the table almost as amply as had those of her predecessor, Mrs. Audrey Andrew. Dr. Hetty didn’t diet, as Audrey had. Dr. Hetty knew that if you ate a healthy, wholesome diet, as additive-free as could be managed, you would be the weight and scale that nature intended, not that fashion dictated. If fate had made you pear-shaped, so be it.
Dr. Hetty’s husband, Philip Andrew, engineer, regarded his new wife fondly from the other end of the table, carving knife poised ready to start on the turkey. His chin had doubled compliantly and happily since Hetty had replaced Audrey. Now his body was heavier but his life was agitation-free. Dr. Hetty was against conventional medicine. The weighing of the body, the measuring of blood pressure, cholesterol, and so on, was just the orthodox doctor’s way of adding to the stress of modern life.
Dr. Hetty Grainger should know: she’d trained as an orthodox doctor. But a patient had died under her care in the hospital where she’d had her first job; not her fault: an inquest had exonerated her; but Dr. Hetty had realised just how dangerous medical practice could be and had chucked the whole thing in. She’d wondered what to do with her life, had happened to meet Swami Avakandra, had been most impressed, had trained as an Avakandrist—a six-month residential course—and thereafter counselled in the Swami’s name.
The Jungians looked kindly on the Avakandrists, who mixed the search for the archetype with a rich interpretation of symbols, made extensive use of dream and hypnotherapy, acknowledged a deep inherited collective unconscious, whilst teaching that the knowledge of ultimate reality came through sexual love rather than through cognitive processes. A state of ill health, whether mental or physical, would arise when a spiritually sensitive individual, consciously or otherwise, distanced himself from that ultimate reality. The task of the Avakandrist healer/therapist was to lead that individual back to appropriate paths of awareness. And thus Hetty had led Philip.
“I’m so pleased,” Dr. Hetty Grainger went on, “that after the upsets of the last year we can all come like civilised people to the Christmas ritual!” And she raised her glass of wine to all of them, the glass being one which just happened to have been Audrey’s favourite. A strand of blue ran through the clear stem. Audrey had bought it at a car boot sale which she’d gone to with Philip, just a couple of years back. The goblet had turned out to be Venetian glass—what a snip! That had been one of the couple’s last outings before Philip, facing possible redundancy at work, suffering from enigmatic heart pains, had become Dr. Grainger’s patient, or client, and had realised that the time had come to think about himself, not his family. Everyone’s spiritual duty was to themselves.
“Yes, I’m so pleased we have managed to be civilised!” murmured Dr. Hetty Grainger. “Divorce and remarriage needn’t be a source of grief and anger, if only they can be seen for what they are; a healthy re-adjustment and re-arrangement of family relationships.”
And the Andrew family nodded an only slightly muted agreement. On either side of the refectory table were seated Henry, son no. 1, aged twenty-six, strong and handsome, and his pretty wife Angie with the little girls Sue and Sal; Petula, twenty-two, daughter no. 1, with her artist boyfriend Chris; and Penny, nineteen, daughter no. 2. And of course Martin, aged nine, Audrey and Philip’s last child, the afterthought, the happy accident, the apple of everyone’s eye. Child no. 4. Son no. 2.
Martin alone looked puzzled. Martin alone responded.
“What’s ‘civilised’?” asked the child. Interesting! They all waited for Dr. Hetty’s reply. Dr. Hetty would know. She was the one with the insights, who knew what maturity meant, who knew how peace of mind was achieved. She it was who had brought the Andrew family all together again round the Christmas table, in harmony after the previous season’s dispersal and disarray. Dr. Hetty, who that day had stood in what was once Audrey’s kitchen and was now hers, and had worked so hard to prepare the turkey, in spite of her vegetarian convictions, and made the nut-roast, and the plum sauce with chestnuts, and boiled the organic pudding. Who, with Philip, the father, had strung the home with tinsel and sparkling globes, and adorned the tree with decorations taken from the cardboard boxes into which Audrey had so carefully packed them two Twelfth Nights back, before placing them in the cupboard under the stairs. Here Dr. Hetty had come across them. “So pretty!” she cried. “In some things Audrey had such good taste.” Oh, Dr. Hetty was generous.
In fact Dr. Hetty Grainger was doing everything she could to repair the damage to nerves and family-togetherness perpetrated by Audrey, who had been so insanely negative, so angry, so bitter, so antagonistic to the point of insanity when her husband had fallen in love, wholly, fully, totally and for the first time, at the age of fifty-seven.
“But this marriage has been dead for years,” said Philip to Audrey. “Why are you being like this? What are you objecting to? Surely it’s better to be open about these things?”
“I didn’t think it was dead,” said Audrey, “and neither did you until you started going to see that bitch. How much does she charge you for the privilege of breaking up your marriage, your family, your life?”
“She’s trying to save my life,” said Philip. “You wouldn’t understand. She believes in me, she listens to what I’m saying. She’s patient, she’s kind, sweet, gentle, never in a hurry.”
“You pay her to be those things,” wept Audrey. “I’m just your wife. What chance do I have?”
None, it seemed. He had walked into her surgery; Dr. Hetty Grainger had looked up from behind her desk and met his eyes and seen Osiris to her Isis. The love and compassion she felt for all her patients had blossomed at that moment into something amazingly particular. Philip Andrew was what her life was all about. Dr. Hetty Grainger, his. Both had had to wait through dreary years, but now the time of decreed fruition had come. Her marriage was over; his family all but grown. Their drudge through the material world of pre-love was at last finished. Even before the sexual contact, so intrinsic a part of Avakandrist healing, both had understood that this was destiny. The initial touch, her finger stroking his cheek, had merely confirmed a love, a connection, already in existence.
Philip Andrew, engineer, nuts and bolts man, hadn’t known a thing about Isis and Osiris, but it all made sense when Dr. Hetty explained it: spouse and sister both. His own previous ignorance now horrified him: why had he waited so long to start living? Yet he was fond of Audrey; he loved his children. He did not want to hurt them. He could only hope in the end wife and family would understand.
He loved the way Dr. Hetty Grainger could explain and define not just the world but him to himself. She knew so much! But then she worked for a living; she wasn’t idle; she got out into the world; she was open to fresh ideas. Audrey had always stayed home; she was a traditional wife. Her very existence could only be parasitical not just on her husband’s maleness and income but on his mind. Audrey had docked her husband’s spirituality as she tried to dock his sexuality, by owning it, withholding it, confining it. Not her fault, probably, but there it was. No wonder poor Philip had heart pains.
Hetty, for all her prim and gentle looks, would do anything Philip wanted, follow anywhere her patient’s sexual fantasies led. This, too, was part of the Avakandrist teaching: the approach to ultimate reality through strange and winding paths, through unconditional yet unpossessive physical love. The Avakandrists didn’t make much of this aspect of their doctrine in their public statements, didn’t stress it too much in their publications; the world was a sexually nervous place, all too likely to unfairly misunderstand, to use scandal to condemn a life-enhancing and primarily spiritual movement. To put it bluntly, spouses, at the best of times the source of stress, would object too much if they knew too much. But now it was Christmas Day; the second since the split, the first since Philip’s divorce and remarriage. Hetty was now training, at Philip’s
expense, as a straightforward Jungian: she’d lost her dedication to the Avakandrist doctrine—her new husband did not want her showing too many male clients the way to health and happiness, selfish of him though it might be—and the family was once again gathered together under one roof and all was peace, prosperity and understanding. Tranquillity. Thanks to Hetty’s strength of purpose and the lawyer she’d recommended to Philip, Audrey had failed in her attempts to take the house and disrupt the family.
Everything was fine, in fact. Except for Martin, staring at Hetty, still waiting for an answer, his big eyes narrowed in his little face. He spoilt his looks when he scowled. A pity Martin was so much Audrey’s child in both looks and temperament: Martin the afterthought, the late child; the mistake, to put it bluntly. Philip had not wanted his declining years—or so he had regarded them pre-Hetty—filled with first nappies and infant protest, then school bills and teenage trouble; Philip had thought it self-willed and selfish of Audrey to go through with a late and unplanned pregnancy. Though once Martin had arrived he was of course welcome.
“What’s ‘civilised’?” Martin asked again, and Hetty publicly pondered. Everyone waited. Philip noticed that the skin of the turkey was pale, dry and stretched, not brown, wrinkled and juicy as it would have been had Audrey cooked it. As she had done for the family for how many years? Twenty-six? Well, Christmas was a tricky time for everyone, as Hetty had pointed out, now so many made sequential marriages. Meanness of spirit created a “who goes where” syndrome.
When the point of the carving knife met the stretched skin, the flesh split and shuddered apart, and when the knife went into the meat the blade met a kind of pallid, stringy resistance. Audrey’s turkeys dissolved to the touch of the blade, gave themselves up willingly to the feast. But then she basted. Hetty didn’t bother. Philip shivered a little. Audrey was okay, though. She had finally gone to her parents in Edinburgh. Audrey had wanted Martin to spend Christmas up north; Philip felt that was out of the question. This was the house where Martin was accustomed to opening his presents; his elder brother and sisters were coming for the day; the child should not be used in the parents’ disputes. “But Mum will be all alone, Dad, if I’m not there.”
“Christmas is for the children, Martin; stop worrying about the grown-ups. It’s too bad of your mother to make you feel guilty.”
And in the end it had been decided through solicitors—Hetty felt it was always easier on the child to deal with such matters formally—that Audrey could not provide so domestic, peopled and cheerful a festive season as could Philip and Hetty, with their two incomes, so today Martin sat at his father’s table, a little niece on either side of him—how they adored him! If only the boy wouldn’t try and spoil the atmosphere: like his mother, a born wet blanket.
Dr. Hetty Grainger’s feeling had always been that Martin might need a little pressure to help him adjust to the new set of interpersonal relationships at home. Dr. Grainger should know. She worked with children a good deal, though having none of her own. Dr. Hetty was on something called the Victims of Child Abuse service register and spent an afternoon a week counselling at the Family Therapy centre.
“What’s ‘civilised’?” Martin repeated.
Martin rang his mother frequently, all the way to Scotland. That was understandable, that was okay, except his mother kept him talking and talking, no doubt on purpose. The telephone bill would probably amount, as Hetty observed one night to Martin, laughing her gentle laugh, tucking her short legs between his long skinny ones, to a few months’ worth of her current retainer from the VCA.
“The trouble with Audrey,” Dr. Hetty said, “is that she’s one of the Pall Bearers of life. I’m using an Avakandrist term here.”
“A pall bearer?”
“One of those people who blame others for difficulties they themselves have brought about. They’re the hands which hold back the wheel of life, refusing ever to let go. You can tell them because they always cost you money!”
Audrey had never slipped her leg at night between Philip’s. Audrey had liked to lie parallel but close, taking up whatever position her husband did: her strong, flawed, bony, cool body stretched against his. Only when Audrey was pregnant did she become warm—really warm: it was like sleeping next to a hot-water bottle. Hetty gave Philip her legs as a token but kept the rest of her body at a distance. Hetty was both intimate but remote: less familiar, less familial, more exciting, forever a challenge to be approached with reverence and respect. Sometimes he worried about sleeping in the same bed with Hetty as he had for so many years with Audrey, but Hetty said a good bed was hard to find and had performed some kind of ceremony with candles and incense which would, she said, deconsecrate the bed, free the material object from its person-past. Hetty was spiritual but not sentimental. Now, answering Martin’s question, she took her time. Everyone waited.
“Civilised behaviour, Martin,” said Dr. Hetty Grainger, finally, “is acting, not acting out. For example, not running up telephone bills simply to spite your father and me.” She smiled as she spoke, to show she wasn’t being in any way negative, merely constructive. Martin’s eyes narrowed further. Audrey’s eyes could look just like that, thought Philip. Martin should have been allowed to go to Edinburgh for Christmas.
“Civilised behaviour, Martin,” said Dr. Hetty Grainger, “is my understanding why you do such a selfish thing, and forgiving you for it, and helping you not to do it again. You want to hurt me, Martin, because you are angry and jealous: of course you are, you feel there is not enough love in your father for you as well as for me, but there is, I promise you there is.”
And she smiled again at Martin, brown eyes glowing. He did not smile back.
“Civilised behaviour,” said Dr. Hetty Grainger to the whole table, her entire being alight, spoon poised over the brussels sprouts—the whole serving system (Philip, turkey and nut-roast; Henry, plum sauce; Hetty, vegetables) was held up—“is coming to terms with and controlling our negative emotions, letting go. It is the manners which come from an open heart. It is sharing and caring. It is the open acknowledgement of our passions. It is moving over to let others in. It is smiling, even when we don’t want to, until the smile is real. We must try to be civilised, we must act civilised, otherwise we end up as the Serbs and the Croats, at each others’ throats. Literally. Here in the Andrew family we’ve tried and we’ve succeeded, and, as I say, I’m proud of us all. That’s my speech for today.”
She lowered her bright eyes, her face sweetly pink with emotion, vulnerable and charming. No wonder Philip loved her.
But Martin stared on, unsatisfied. Dr. Grainger ignored him.
“Where’s Granny?” asked Sal, who was four. “Why is that lady in Granny’s chair?”
“Granny chose not to be here,” said Philip, “and I’m sorry about that too. She was invited, of course.”
“But she chose not to be civilised,” said Hetty. Now Sal’s eyes narrowed. Some characteristics do seem to run in the genes: or was she just copying Martin?
“Shall we pull a cracker, Sal?” asked Philip, quickly.
“No,” said Sal, pushing away her plate. “Crackers come between turkey and pudding, not now, stupid.” And neither Sal nor Sue, who was three and took her lead from Sal, ate a thing thereafter. Angie apologised for her children.
“They’re so fussy about their food sometimes. And of course they’re exhausted. They were so excited last night they couldn’t sleep. What with Santa Claus and coming to Grandpa and Granny for Christmas Dinner …” Her voice faltered.
“Audrey preferred to be in Edinburgh,” said Philip, unnecessarily. “You know how she loved those Scottish winters.”
“Mum isn’t in the past tense for me,” said Henry. “Not yet, at any rate.”
Martin, strangely, was holding Sal’s little hand against his heart. Perhaps she gave him strength.
“Let go of the past,” said Dr. Hetty Grainger quietly and softly from her carver chair at the head of the table. “I would
have welcomed Audrey here today, but she refused: not even for her own children would she come. That is her decision. We must accept it, rise above the sorrow it causes us. Let us raise our glasses to a future filled with love.”
“I think you’re a selfish bitch,” said Martin to Dr. Hetty Grainger, clearly and stoutly. “You’ve no business sitting there. That’s my mother’s chair. She’s meant to be serving the vegetables, not you. Those are her plates you’re handing round. You didn’t even heat them. You talk so much everything’s gone cold.”
“Little Martin,” said Hetty, “I understand your aggression but there’s more to this ritual than heated plates. Christmas is not about food, or presents, but about rebirth. It’s the festival of starting over, and that’s what we’re trying to do. As for chairs and plates and so on, your mummy told us she didn’t want any of the material objects in this house, that your daddy could have them all, and since your daddy and I share everything, love and life, that includes the relevant things as well. Your mother walked away from all this of her own free will because she couldn’t understand love; she was not a spiritual person. And your daddy worked for this lovely house all his life, didn’t he? Your mummy just sat and enjoyed the fruits of his labour until one day the bough was empty and no fruit fell. Everything is ripe for the time it’s in; love must be worked for, earned. So here’s to the future!”
How luminous her eyes were as she raised her glass.
“Bitch,” said Martin again. “Why does nobody see she’s a bitch?”
“Don’t embarrass your stepmother,” said Philip. But nobody was following Hetty’s example and raising their glasses. It seemed she was drinking alone.
“Is that lady sleeping in Granny’s bed?” asked Sal. “There was a nightie under the pillow which wasn’t Granny’s. I bet she is. Why doesn’t Grandpa stop her?”