by Fay Weldon
‘No, of course not,’ says Minette. Minette tells many lies: it is one of the qualities which Edgar least likes in her. Minette thinks she is safe in this one. Edgar will not actually count the Melamine plates; nor is he likely to discern the difference between one old lumpy navy-blue sleeping bag and another unlumpy new one. ‘We do have the money set aside,’ she says cautiously, hopefully.
‘Don’t be absurd,’ he says. ‘We can’t afford to drive the car round the corner, let alone to Venice. It’ll only have sunk another couple of inches since last year, beneath the weight of crap as much as of tourists. It’s too depressing. Everything’s too depressing.’ Oh Venice, goodbye Venice, city of wealth and abandon, and human weakness, glorious beneath sulphurous skies. Goodbye Venice, says Minette in her heart, I loved you well. ‘So we shan’t be having a holiday this year?’ she enquires. Tears are smarting in her eyes. She doesn’t believe him. She is tired, work has been exhausting. She is an advertising copywriter. He is teasing, surely. He often is. In the morning he will say something different.
‘You go on holiday if you want,’ he says in the morning. ‘I can’t. I can’t afford a holiday this year. You seem to have lost all sense of reality, Minette. It’s that ridiculous place you work in.’ And of course he is right. Times are hard. Inflation makes profits and salaries seem ridiculous. Edgar, Minette, Minnie and Mona must adapt with the times. An advertising agency is not noted for the propagation of truth. Those who work in agencies live fantasy lives as to their importance in the scheme of things and their place in a society which in truth despises them. Minette is lucky that someone of his integrity and taste puts up with her. No holiday this year. She will pay the money set aside into a building society, though the annual interest is less than the annual inflation rate. She is resigned.
But the next day, Edgar comes home, having booked a holiday cottage in Kent. A miracle. Friends of his own it, and have had a cancellation. Purest chance. It is the kind of good fortune Edgar always has. If Edgar is one minute late for a train, the train leaves two minutes late.
Now, on the Friday, here they are, Edgar, Minette, Minnie and Mona, installed in this amazing rural paradise of a Kentish hamlet, stone-built, thatched cottage, swifts flying low across the triangular green, the heavy smell of farmyard mixing with the scent of the absurd red roses round the door and the night-stocks in the cottage garden, tired and happy after a day on the beach, with the sun shining and the English Channel blue and gentle, washing upon smooth pebbles.
Mona sleeps, stirs. The night is hot and thundery, ominous. Inflation makes the Monopoly money not so fantastic as it used to be. Minette remarks on it to Edgar.
‘Speak for yourself,’ he says. Minette recently got a rise, promotion. Edgar is self-employed, of the newly impoverished classes.
They throw to see who goes first. Minette throws a two and a three. Minnie, her father’s daughter, throws a five and a six. Minnie is twelve, a kindly, graceful child, watchful of her mother, adoring her father, whom she resembles.
Edgar throws a double six. Edgar chooses his token – the iron – and goes first.
Edgar, Minette, Minnie and Mona.
Edgar always wins the toss. Edgar always chooses the iron. (He is as good at housekeeping and cooking as Minette, if not better.) Edgar always wins the game. Minnie always comes second. Minette always comes last. Mona always sleeps. Of such stuff are holidays made.
Monopoly, in truth, bores Minette. She plays for Minnie’s sake, to be companionable, and for Edgar’s, because it is expected. Edgar likes winning. Who doesn’t?
Edgar throws a double, lands on Pentonville Road, and buys it for £60. Minette hands over the card; Minnie receives his money. Edgar throws again, lands on and buys Northumberland Avenue. Minnie throws, lands on Euston Road, next to her father, and buys it for £100. Minette lands on Income Tax, pays £200 into the bank and giggles, partly from nervousness, partly at the ridiculous nature of fate.
‘You do certainly have a knack, Minette,’ says Edgar, unsmiling. ‘But I don’t know if it’s anything to laugh about.’
Minette stops smiling. The game continues in silence. Minette lands in jail. Upstairs Mona, restless, murmurs and mutters in her sleep. In the distance Minette can hear the crackle of thunder. The windows are open, and the curtains not drawn, in order that Edgar can feel close to the night and nature, and make the most of his holiday. The window squares of blank blackness, set into the white walls, as on some child’s painting, frighten Minette. What’s outside? Inside, it seems to her, their words echo. The rattle of the dice is loud, loaded with some kind of meaning she’d rather not think about. Is someone else listening, observing?
Mona cries out. Minette gets up. ‘I’ll go to her,’ she says.
‘She’s perfectly all right,’ says Edgar. ‘Don’t fuss.’
‘She might be frightened,’ says Minette.
‘What of?’ enquires Edgar dangerously. ‘What is there to be frightened of?’ He is irritated by Minette’s many fears, especially on holiday, and made angry by the notion that there is anything threatening in nature. Loving silence and isolation himself, he is impatient with those city-dwellers who fear them. Minette and Mona, his feeling is, are city-dwellers by nature, whereas Edgar and Minnie have the souls, the patience, the maturity of the country-dweller, although obliged to live in the town.
‘It’s rather hot. She’s in a strange place,’ Minette persists.
‘She’s in a lovely place,’ says Edgar, flatly. ‘Of course, she may be having bad dreams.’
Mona is silent again, and Minette is relieved. If Mona is having bad dreams, it is of course Minette’s fault, first for having slapped Mona on the cheek, and then, more basically, for having borne a child with such a town-dweller’s nature that she suffers from sunburn and sunstroke.
‘Mona by name,’ says Minette, ‘moaner by nature.’
‘Takes after her mother,’ says Edgar. ‘Minette, you forgot to pay £50 last time you landed in jail, so you’ll have to stay there until you throw a double.’
‘Can’t I pay this time round?’
‘No you can’t,’ says Edgar.
They’ve lost the rule book. All losses in the house are Minette’s responsibility, so it is only justice that Edgar’s ruling as to the nature of the game shall be accepted. Minette stays in jail.
Mona by name, moaner by nature. It was Edgar who named his children, not Minette. Childbirth upset her judgment, made her impossible, or so Edgar said, and she was willing to believe it, struggling to suckle her young under Edgar’s alternately indifferent and chiding eye, sore from stitches, trying to decide on a name, and unable to make up her mind, for any name Minette liked, Edgar didn’t. For convenience sake, while searching for a compromise, she referred to her first-born as Mini – such a tiny, beautiful baby – and when Edgar came back unexpectedly with the birth certificate, there was the name Minnie, and Minette gasped with horror, and all Edgar said was, ‘But I thought that was what you wanted, it’s what you called her, the State won’t wait for ever for you to make up your mind; I had to spend all morning in that place and I ought to be in the gallery; I’m exhausted. Aren’t you grateful for anything? You’ve got to get that baby to sleep right through the night somehow before I go mad.’ Well, what could she say? Or do? Minnie she was. Minnie Mouse. But in a way it suited her, or at any rate she transcended it, a beautiful loving child, her father’s darling, mother’s too.
Minette uses Minnie as good Catholics use the saints – as an intercessionary power.
Minnie, see what your father wants for breakfast. Minnie, ask your father if we’re going out today.
When Mona was born Minette felt stronger and happier. Edgar, for some reason, was easy and loving. (Minette lost her job: it had been difficult, looking after the six-year-old Minnie, being pregnant again by accident – well, forgetting her pill – still with the house, the shopping and the cleaning to do, and working at the same time: not to mention the washing. They had no
washing machine, Edgar feeling, no doubt rightly, that domestic machinery was noisy, expensive, and not really, in the end, labour saving. Something had to give, and it was Minette’s work that did, just in time to save her sanity. The gallery was doing well, and of course Minette’s earnings had been increasing Edgar’s tax. Or so he believed. She tried to explain that they were taxed separately, but he did not seem to hear, let alone believe.) In any case, sitting up in childbed with her hand in Edgar’s, happy for once, relaxed, unemployed – he was quite right, the work did overstrain her, and what was the point – such meaningless, anti-social work amongst such facile, trendy non-people – joking about the new baby’s name, she said, listen to her moaning. Perhaps we’d better call her Moaner. Moaner by name, Moaner by nature. Imprudent Minette. And a week later, there he was, with the birth certificate all made out. Mona.
‘Good God, woman,’ he cried. ‘Are you mad? You said you wanted Mona. I took you at your word. I was doing what you wanted.’
‘I didn’t say that.’ She was crying, weak from childbirth, turmoil, the sudden withdrawl of his kindness, his patience. ‘Do you want me to produce witnesses?’ He was exasperated. She became pregnant again, a year later. She had an abortion. She couldn’t cope, Edgar implied that she couldn’t, although he never quite said so, so that the burden of the decision was hers and hers alone. But he was right, of course. She couldn’t cope. She arranged everything, went to the nursing home by minicab, by herself, and came out by minicab the next day. Edgar paid half.
Edgar, Minette, Minnie and Mona. Quite enough to be getting on with.
Minette started going to a psychotherapist once a week. Edgar said she had to; she was impossible without. She burned the dinner once or twice – ‘how hostile you are,’ said Edgar, and after that cooked all meals himself, without reference to anyone’s tastes, habits, or convenience. Still, he did know best. Minette, Minnie and Mona adapted themselves splendidly. He was an admirable cook, once you got used to garlic with everything, from eggs to fish.
Presently, Minette went back to work. Well, Edgar could hardly be expected to pay for the psychotherapist, and in any case, electricity and gas bills having doubled even in a household almost without domestic appliances, there was no doubt her earnings came in useful. Presently, Minette was paying all the household bills – and had promotion. She became a group head with twenty people beneath her. She dealt with clients, executives, creative people, secretaries, assistants, with ease and confidence. Compared to Edgar and home, anyone, anything was easy. But that was only to be expected. Edgar was real life. Advertising agencies – and Edgar was right about this – are make-believe. Shut your eyes, snap your fingers, and presto, there one is, large as life. (That is, if you have the right, superficial, rubbishy attitude to make it happen.) And of course, its employees and contacts can be easily manipulated and modified, as dolls can be, in a doll’s house. Edgar was not surprised at Minette’s success. It was only to be expected. And she never remembered to turn off the lights, and turned up the central heating much too high, being irritatingly sensitive to cold.
Even tonight, this hot sultry night, with the temperature still lingering in the eighties and lightning crackling round the edges of the sky, she shivers.
‘You can’t be cold,’ he enquires. He is buying a property from Minnie. He owns both Get Out of Jail cards, and has had a bank error in his favour of £200. Minnie is doing nicely, on equal bargaining terms with her father. Minette’s in jail again.
‘It’s just so dark out there,’ she murmurs.
‘Of course it is,’ he said. ‘It’s the country. You miss the town, don’t you?’ It is an accusation, not a statement.
The cottage is on a hillside: marsh above and below, interrupting the natural path from the summit to the valley. The windows are open front and back as if to offer least interruption, throwing the house and its inhabitants open to the path of whatever forces flow from the top to the bottom of hills. Or so Minette suspects. How can she say so? She, the town dweller, the obfuscate, standing between Edgar and the light of his expectations, his sensitivity to the natural life forces which flow between the earth and him.
Edgar has green fingers, no doubt about it. See his tomatoes in the window-box of his Museum Street gallery? What a triumph!
‘Couldn’t we have the windows closed?’ she asks.
‘What for?’ he enquires. ‘Do you want the windows closed, Minnie?’
Minnie shrugs, too intent on missing her father’s hotel on Northumberland Avenue to care one way or the other. Minnie has a fierce competitive spirit. Edgar, denying his own, marvels at it. ‘Why do you want to shut out the night?’ Edgar demands.
‘I don’t,’ Minette protests. But she does. Yes, she does. Mona stirs and whimpers upstairs: Minette wants to go to her, close her windows, stop the dark rose heads nodding, whispering distress, but how can she? It is Minette’s turn to throw the dice. Her hand trembles. Another five. Chance. You win £10, second prize in beauty contest.
‘Not with your nose in that condition,’ says Edgar, and laughs. Minnie and Minette laugh as well. ‘And your cheeks the colour of poor Mona’s. Still, one is happy to know there is a natural justice.’
A crack of thunder splits the air; one second, two seconds, three seconds – and there’s the lightning, double-forked, streaking down to the oak-blurred ridge of hills in front of the house.
‘I love storms,’ says Edgar. ‘It’s coming this way.’
‘I’ll just go and shut Mona’s window,’ says Minette.
‘She’s perfectly all right,’ says Edgar. ‘Stop fussing and for God’s sake stay out of jail. You’re casting a gloom, Minette. There’s no fun in playing if one’s the only one with hotels.’ As of course Edgar is, though Minnie’s scattering houses up and down the board.
Minette lands on Community. A £20 speeding fine or take a Chance. She takes a Chance. Pay £150 in school fees.
The air remains dry and still. Thunder and lightning, though monstrously active, remain at their distance, the other side of the hills. The front door creaks silently open, of its own volition. Not a whisper of wind – only the baked parched air.
‘Ooh,’ squeaks Minnie, agreeably frightened.
Minette is dry-mouthed with terror, staring at the black beyond the door.
‘A visitor,’ cries Edgar. ‘Come in, come in,’ and he mimes a welcome to the invisible guest, getting to his feet, hospitably pulling back the empty ladderback chair at the end of the table. The house is open, after all, to whoever, whatever, chooses to call, on the way from the top of the hill to the bottom.
Minette’s mouth is open: her eyes appalled. Edgar sees, scorns, sneers.
‘Don’t, Daddy,’ says Minnie. ‘It’s spooky,’ but Edgar is not to be stopped.
‘Come in,’ he repeats. ‘Make yourself at home. Don’t stumble like that. Just because you’ve got no eyes.’
Minette is on her feet. Monopoly money, taken up by the first sudden gust of storm wind, flies about the room. Minnie pursues it, half-laughing, half-panicking.
Minette tugs her husband’s inflexible arm.
‘Stop,’ she beseeches. ‘Don’t tease. Don’t.’ No eyes! Oh, Edgar, Minette, Minnie and Mona, what blindness is there amongst you now? What threat to your existence? An immense peal of thunder crackles, it seems, directly overhead: lightning, both sheet and fork, dims the electric light and achieves a strobe-lighting effect of cosmic vulgarity, blinding and bouncing round the white walls, and now, upon the wind, rain, large-dropped, blows in through open door and windows.
‘Shut them,’ shrieks Minette. ‘I told you. Quickly! Minnie, come and help –’
‘Don’t fuss. What does it matter? A little rain. Surely you’re not frightened of storms?’ enquires Edgar, standing just where he is, not moving, not helping, like some great tree standing up to a torrent. For once Minette ignores him and with Minnie gets door and windows shut. The rain changes its nature, becomes drenching and blinding; their
faces and clothes are wet with it. Minnie runs up to Mona’s room, to make that waterproof. Still Edgar stands, smiling, staring out of the window at the amazing splitting sky. Only then, as he smiles, does Minette realise what she has done. She has shut the thing, the person with no eyes, in with her family. Even if it wants to go, would of its own accord drift down on its way towards the valley, it can’t.
Minette runs to open the back door. Edgar follows, slow and curious.
‘Why do you open the back door,’ he enquires, ‘having insisted on shutting everything else? You’re very strange, Minette.’
Wet, darkness, noise, fear make her brave.
‘You’re the one who’s strange. A man with no eyes!’ she declares, sharp and brisk as she sometimes is at her office, chiding inefficiency, achieving sense and justice. ‘Fancy asking in a man with no eyes. What sort of countryman would do a thing like that? You know nothing about anything, people, country, nature. Nothing.’
I know more than he does, she thinks, in this mad excess of arrogance. I may work in an advertising agency. I may prefer central heating to carrying coals, and a frozen pizza to a fresh mackerel, but I grant the world its dignity. I am aware of what I don’t know, what I don’t understand, and that’s more than you can do. My body moves with the tides, bleeds with the moon, burns in the sun: I, Minette, I am a poor passing fragment of humanity: I obey laws I only dimly understand, but I am aware that the penalty of defying them is at best disaster, at worst death.
Thing with no eyes. Yes. The Taniwha. The Taniwha will get you if you don’t look out! The sightless blundering monster of the bush, catching little children who stumble into him, devouring brains, bones, eyes and all. On that wild Australasian shore which my husband does not recognise as country, being composed of sand, shore and palmy forest, rather than of patchworked fields and thatch, lurked a blind and eyeless thing, that’s where the Taniwha lives. The Taniwha will get you if you don’t watch out! Little Minette, Mona’s age, shrieked it at her infant enemies, on her father’s instructions. That’ll frighten them, he said, full of admonition and care, as ever. They’ll stop teasing, leave you alone. Minette’s father, tall as a tree, legs like poles. Little Minette’s arms clasped round them to the end, wrenched finally apart, to set him free to abandon her, leave her to the Taniwha. The Taniwha will get you if you don’t watch out. Wish it on others, what happens to you? Serve you right, with knobs on.