A family of Northern Parulas - blue warblers with yellow throats and breasts - had established itself in a lilac tree in a swampy dip in the garden.
Otherwise what had happened? Just that tying the shoelaces became a little more difficult and getting out of the bath presented more of a problem than once it had. But on the whole she had been glad of the peace. Life took you up and shook you by the scruff of your neck and landed you somewhere almost without your own volition. Like being picked up by a tornado and dumped somewhere else and finding you were okay and it was rather better than the place you had left, just unfamiliar, though you were certainly bruised.
But the wounds of a lifetime healed, and here you were, and here was William, but now what about her freedom? Was she diplomat enough to manage marriage, living together, describing and accepting the other as my. My spouse, my partner. To go through the explaining and justifying of this one person to all the others - see how it already was with Nurse Dawn, with Joy, with Jack? Sharing a bed, trying not to snore: getting to the stage where you could not distinguish the self from the other and behaving accordingly: uttering reprimands which were really selfreproaches: a stream of consciousness which passed for conversation. At eighty-three, getting used to all that again? In return for what? Sex, which she now valued more as a token of esteem rather than a source of overwhelming physical pleasure? While she wasn’t looking it had ceased to be an all-consuming need.
* * *
In this she could see she was in tune with the times: these days people went to clinics for liking sex too much. The pendulum swung, and swung too far: to be allowed your sexual pleasure, which had once been the passionate ambition of women, the very symbol of freedom, the end of bourgeois repression, no longer counted for much. For a woman to take her pleasures like a man was not an interesting aspiration: rather, men took pains to take theirs like women: all feeling and sensitivity, not brute power and enviable lust. Mind you, as men got older they had little choice. William had approached her nervously at first: had later gained confidence. But he too had caught the spirit of the times; he wanted to please her, he did not just wait to be pleased.
Companionship? Of course he offered that. Security? No, not that. You could win shooting craps, but you could also lose. But if she made sure he spent his money, and didn’t let him touch hers, what did she have to worry about? Nothing.
She realized that the last line she’d thrown was actually a changing line - three heads, which being so totally yang could only turn to yin (it was nonsense, so much nonsense, of course it was). Any moment now the portrait of what was to come would turn to two heads and a tail. Six at the top. She knew before she read it that it wasn’t going to be good.
Horse and wagon part.
Bloody tears flow.
No, not good at all. It could hardly be worse. She moved on to the hexagram that resulted from the changing line. Number four. Holding Together. Better. Much better.
Holding together brings good fortune.
Inquire of the oracle once again
Whether you possess sublimity, constancy and perseverance:
Then there is no blame.
Those who are uncertain gradually join.
Whoever comes too late Meets with misfortune.
The trouble with the I Ching was that you read it and believed what you wanted to believe and ignored what you didn’t. You
might as well wait for what was going to happen and then look back and know what it was. Why be in such a hurry? Because, dear God, she was eighty-three, and there was so little time left. She cast the coins again, and got Youthful Folly.
Number four.
The young fool seeks me,
At the first oracle I inform him.
Forget it.
42
If you fly Concorde transatlantic they wave you through immigration and customs. If you fly Club Class you get to the head of the line first and get through first. If you fly economy and at the back of the plane, as Guy, Lorna and I did, you get to the Immigration Hall only to find yourself in competition with another flight. It will be from some country everyone wants to leave, and immigration will be taking its time. As luck would have it an Air Pakistan flight landed as we did and Guy, Lorna and myself had to wait in line in the vast hall for nearly three hours. Over the sea of heads we caught sight of the Japanese couple going through the barriers within fifteen minutes of their arrival. Lorna worried loudly about possible infections: Guy fretted and fidgeted. I trundled meekly and silently forward, as was my wont, a step or two at a time, along the convoluted maze of pathways, which steered you near to the promised land of America and then doubled you back at an angle to the direction you had come. So you think you're nearly there, we'll show you! I felt responsible for Lorna and Guy’s discomfiture, though indeed they were responsible for mine, my initial plan to travel to Boston having been changed for their convenience. But I did not say so.
Guy went into a particularly English mode: My good man, look here, this is no way to treat guests to your country. He told one of the black security guards what he thought of the system, and said that this kind of thing didn’t happen in Heathrow. I intervened and said loudly that it most certainly did, if you were unfortunate to be labelled Other, and apologized for Guy’s attitude, which of course I should not have done. It had been a long and uncomfortable flight, I said. We were all tired.
‘What do you think we are, lady?’ he inquired. He went away, eyes to heaven, but later I thought I saw him have a word with the officer in the booth. But perhaps it was about something quite different.
‘Next time don’t take it on yourself to speak for me,’ snapped Guy. .
‘It isn’t wise to piss off security anywhere in the world,’ I said. ‘Language!’ said Lorna. ‘We must all just try and be patient.’ When we finally got to the yellow line, shuffling our luggage in front of us, Guy stepped over it, and was asked to wait in the correct place by a courteous little Hispanic girl drowned in a navy uniform with gold buttons and a red sash. He shook off her small restraining hand with, ‘How dare you touch me!’ I had never accepted until this minute how timorous and law-abiding a person I was and quite how much I loathed scenes. Guy’s eyes were dark and glazed and wild, and reminded me of my mother’s, though I had never seen any resemblance to my side of the family before. But perhaps all insane people just look alike, and Guy was certainly, if only temporarily, quite insane. Flying does this to some people.
When he went up to the immigration officer and offered his passport they had a brief exchange of words, which we could not hear, but as a result of which security was called and Guy was taken away, physically struggling, to a cell. Lorna and I were not allowed to go with him but had to clear passports and customs first. We were taken off and body searched. I could hear Lorna in the next cubicle squeaking and protesting the indignity of it all and demanding to see the British Ambassador. They found nothing, nor had they expected to. We were being punished. I got a phone call through to the studio travel agency as soon as I could, and they sent someone over, Linda, to look after us. Linda managed to persuade the authorities to let Guy out into our care, though it hadn’t been easy, she was at pains to tell us. ‘These are not pretty people,’ Linda said. ‘Your friend was really pushing his luck. We’re happy to be of assistance to you but in future please try and keep your friends in order. They are not studio employees, as you are.’ She was annoyed: called out to Kennedy on a Saturday morning when she could have been shopping. She had the brittle thinness of a certain type of New York woman: good legs, lots of glossy hair and a narrow, attractive face. She thought she was too good for this job and probably was.
I wished I had never set eyes on Wendy from Aardvark, or Alison, or Lucy, or Guy, or Lorna. Guy was a little subdued by his brush with the slammer, but not much. He chafed and wriggled with indignation in the back of the yellow cab on the way into the city. He had been hustled, he maintained, manhandled, briefly handcuffed. What kind of country was this? I
asked him what he’d said to provoke such a reaction.
‘Whose side are you on?’ he demanded. ‘Theirs or mine? When that prat asked me the purpose of my visit I said to overthrow the government and take drugs. Don’t they even have a sense of humour? It’s enough to make your eyes weep blood.’
I said that in a lot of countries in the world he would have been shot. Lorna complained about the springing of the cab and the fact that the driver didn’t speak English. She didn’t even exclaim with wonder when she saw the old Trade Fair building or when the Manhattan skyline came into view, as do most new arrivals, and I was disappointed. I had wanted her to be impressed: it would have been my consolation.
They were too tired to complain much about the Wyndham, but did the next morning. The softness of the mattress, the shabbiness of the decor, the reluctance of the single lift to arrive. I explained that all this was designed to make the English feel at home: a large part of the Hemsley clientele was English. Americans would never put up with it. It occurred to me when Lorna referred to ‘mattress’ in the singular - there were twin beds in their room - that perhaps they only used one. But it was only a supposition. And even if they did share a bed, it might have been in the spirit of the little brother and sister they once had been, no more than that. It was none of my business, anyway. I was just cross with them and happy to believe anything scandalous. I went out to the deli for coffee and bagels with sour cream and smoked salmon and brought them back and all Lorna said was she hadn’t come all this way to drink out of paper cups. If this was how the Americans lived she didn’t think much of it. All they seemed to be good at was raining down unsmart bombs on innocent children in faraway countries, in defence of their freedoms. Of course the siblings were having an illicit relationship. Of course. Guy was silent. I asked Lorna what the matter with him was. I cannot endure men sulking. ‘He had a very traumatic time yesterday,’ said Lorna. ‘Poor Guy. And you’ve upset him by seeming to take their part.’
Screw that for a game of soldiers, I thought but did not say.
But Harry then called me from London and told me he missed me. ‘Hi baby!’ he said, and the usage did not make me squirm even a little, as it usually did. Why do men so want to relegate women to charming helplessness, and why do women put up with it? I was just pleased to hear his gravelly voice. Perhaps he called Holly too and said, ‘Hi baby, how’s the baby?’ but I didn’t think so.
I smiled at Lorna after the phone call and said, ‘That was my boyfriend,’ and Lorna said, ‘Anyone who can make you look so happy must be okay,’ and I felt really fond of her. Of course she wasn’t having an affair with her brother Guy. They were just both of them very bad travellers.
43
When William appeared in the French windows, a ray of light streaming through to gloomy corners, Jack and Joy had made their excuses and left, as people will when presented without warning with the physical manifestation of their mistrust. Jack even managed a smile as he summoned Charlie on the mobile phone. But then he had put in a half-hearted defence of Felicity’s suitor, and wasn’t feeling as guilty as Joy.
‘I didn’t know you had guests,’ William said, with a hint of reproach, when they were gone. ‘You didn’t tell me.’
‘They were unexpected,’ said Felicity, a little coldly. She was pleased that he was there, but he had still caused her grief. ‘And I am still a free agent. We’re not married yet.’
‘So we’re going to be?’ he inquired. She did not reply. She stood with her eyes downcast, feeling mutinous, and remembered standing in just this way as a child. She looked at the floor: she felt dizzy. She was wearing little boots with brown laces; for some reason she had tied them in a double bow, which was unnecessary: a single one would have done, for the laces were not slippery, but of the old-fashioned kind, flat, not thin and rounded.
If she looked up now she would see another place, another country, another world. She would see a tall, square, white painted room with brown furniture and a lime tree pressed up against a barred window. In the summer the lime tree dropped sticky yellow substance on the pavement outside, and on the hats of anyone who stood too long at the front door. She could hear the rattle, rattle of a horse and cart passing by, the clip-clop of horses’ hooves. She was how old? Four?
‘Don’t sulk, Fel,’ she heard her mother say, ‘there’s nothing to sulk about.’ She did not dare look up; she would see her mother’s face. What did it look like? She did not know: she could not even remember knowing. You forget so soon, and there had been no photographs. Lois had burned them all: everything had gone. Even the tiny pink chiffon scarf that still held traces of her mother’s warmth, her scent, left by mistake in the back of the coat cupboard in the hall, had one day just not been there any more. She asked Lois once what her mother had looked like, and Lois had replied, ‘She’s a skull by now, I daresay. The worms crawl in, the worms crawl out - They go in slim and they come out stout' She didn’t ask after that.
‘What’s the matter with Miss Felicity?’ she heard a man’s voice say. Her father.
‘She can’t tie her laces,’ her mother said, still living, still with her own warm flesh and blood face. ‘And she won’t let me teach her. She thinks she can do it without.’
‘Everyone has to be taught to tie laces, Fel,’ said the father’s voice. ‘It doesn’t happen by magic.’ He was laughing; the voice was strong and kind, she believed it as she didn’t necessarily believe her mother, but now she felt a spasm of rage so great she gasped. Where did it come from?
William had her arm, was sitting her down. She stretched out her feet and stared at her shoes. Flat brown old-fashioned laces, tied in a double bow: her father teaching her, her mother watching. Right over left, tighten: catch the string between finger and thumb, loop over, under, out, pull.
‘My father was already seeing Lois,’ she said to William. ‘He must have been. Before my mother died.’
‘Oh, the past,’ said William. ‘Is that all? It catches up from time to time, but only when you’re strong enough. I must be good for you. Tell me more.’ But Felicity couldn’t find the words. She was an old woman or she was a child, and there was no space in between.
‘You said you’d take me to Foxwoods today,’ was all she said. ‘I called, and Maria answered. At least I suppose it was Maria. What do I know about your life? What do you ever tell me? She said you’d already gone, without me.’
‘My, we are insecure,’ he said. ‘I had a visit or so to make before I came along here. Stop sulking.’
‘Where did you go?’ She was childlike again, querulous, but now with the confidence of the child who knows however badly it behaves the sky won’t fall in. Once she’d behaved badly, and it had fallen, but that was then and this was now. Once she’d said to her stepmother’s brother that she’d be really nice to him if he took her to Sydney, but without knowing, of course, what being really nice meant. She was a child. Girls were, then, at fourteen. But that was not altogether true: you knew something by virtue of just being alive, more than enough. You knew why your father chose Lois, not your mother, and it was the worse part of him, and he knew it, and didn’t care, and all things were sacrificed to male desire. Lois, the cruel voluptuary.
It had been winter and the lime tree was without leaves and pressed up against the window of the tall room, like bony skeleton fingers, grasping at you, and there was a fate indeed worse than death, that you didn’t die, but lived with terror and evil for ever. That was what you fled from all your life, over oceans and continents, joining up with others, springing apart again because it was too dangerous, the hounds not of Heaven but of Hell pattering after you, because once you were complicit in the evil, and now they would never let you alone. If you stayed still too long you could feel their warm breath, hear the panting, smell the stench. She’d felt it, heard it, smelt it one day at Passmore: the creatures must have circled and circled for years before making their presence felt. They’d come for her. She tried to explain it to a doctor at the
hospital, but he’d said it was a sensory disturbance caused by a minor stroke: it would pass. That was really why she’d left Passmore, sold up, come here, where there were good people, busy with their chanting, their determination to make the best of things. The hounds of Hell couldn’t get at her here. They liked silence, and loneliness.
* * *
The old understood better than the young that the foundation of the earth was composed of good and evil, no matter how you struggled to see it in terms of money and sex and luck. The trouble was the old had no words, no language, no real remembrance; what afflicted the soul in the end afflicted the body. The old peered out of rheumy eyes, dimmed by too much exposure to the truth, deafened by a lifetime of lies, bent by the burden of guilt. They lost their wits like Dr Bronstein. Age itself was evil, and there was no escaping it: the young pity the old because once you know too much this awareness can only be perceived as paranoia. But what else can you do? How else express what you have learned of life, other than beware, beware, bloody tears flow?
‘I went to see an art dealer I know to ask about the Utrillo, okay?’ William said, but she scarcely took in what he was saying. ‘He’s retired and lives in Narragansett Pier, but he understands the art market.’
‘Do you know who Nurse Dawn reminds me of?’ Miss Felicity asked, not registering what he had said at all. ‘Lois my stepmother. How strange to meet up with her again, after all this time.’
She smiled brightly at him and tried to focus on the here and now. On the pink striped wallpaper, which was pretty enough but dull: and outside the trees struggling to come into bud, and just a faint suspicion of spring in the air. Life was all renewal, as well as decay. She must hold on to that.
Fay Weldon - Novel 23 Page 28