‘He is also a very bad person,’ said Amira. ‘He has made my niece pregnant. You are a wise and good man. You are a doctor. Mr Director, I want you to tell this man to marry my sister. Or she will be sent home and then how will she live?’
Dr Grepalli changed his mind about suggesting that Amira came up to his office later so he could give her details about lessons in English available in the locality. Instead he told her he had no powers whatsoever to intervene in such personal matters, smiled thinly and discouragingly, and left.
He let himself into the Atlantic Suite; he found he did not need the key. The door had been left unlocked. He could see that this was evidence of yet more folly. Miss Felicity was childlike in her trust. He had been wrong to overrule Nurse Dawn. If Felicity was left to her own devices some scandal or other was bound to erupt. She was a loose cannon. The Golden Bowl lived by its reputation. He doubted that the receptionist could actually produce the documents she offered. But try and get her off the payroll and as a disgruntled employee she could do damage. She or the niece would call the local newspaper and complain. Then someone would recognize Miss Felicity going in to the Casino. What a gift to the local newspapers:
THE LOTHARIO OF FOXWOODS
From Casino to Golden Bowl,
from twenty-three to eighty-three,
no woman is safe.
Journalists would come nosing around. Who was to say but that some other staff might not be illegals? Institutions such as his own were always vulnerable to one kind of media attack or another.
What was the answer? Ask Felicity to leave? That was bad for business. Word got round. And who among the elderly wanted to sell up house and home, move into a residential institution only to be forwith asked to leave, for apparently insufficient reason? Because they were lucky enough to have a lover! When there was no law against gambling, only prejudice! No, the institution would be wide open to litigation, and if Miss Felicity was indeed in the hands of an unscrupulous villain a court case would be the perfectly likely consequence of upsetting her. So what was to be done? Flave Miss Felicity declared incompetent to look after her own affairs? Moved to the West Wing? Kept sedated? It was tempting but it was even more dangerous. Dr Bronstein’s transfer to the West Wing had been perhaps premature: if someone asked for a second opinion the competence of the visiting psychiatrist might be in question. Joseph personally was happy to accept Nurse Dawn’s assessment of the situation: she took the wider view and was in a position to judge the mood and morale of the guests, which must at all costs be preserved. The few might have to go to the West Wing earlier, in order that the many could stay out longer. Occasionally the rights of an individual must take second place to the welfare of the group. Dr Bronstein’s family, God knows, had been eager enough for the transfer, being the kind who liked to get in first to avoid trouble in the future. Some people just assumed that physical comfort was more important than emotional or intellectual enrichment, a view that found its apotheosis, alas, in the West Wing.
No, when it came to Miss Felicity, the answer could only be to take steps to break the relationship: Dr Grepalli was by virtue of his situation placed in loco parentis. The child might be twice his age, but with every year that passed he was increasingly a child in wisdom. Common sense, along with the body, peaked in performance, then slowly declined. What had to be done for the too young had to be done for the too old.
Dr Grepalli moved across the room to study the Utrillo. He noted wryly that knowing its value greatly increased his appreciation of its charm. The small French town dozed in sunlight. Not a human figure in sight, only masonry and a snatch of tree, which was a relief. Art had a capacity to make you feel bad: thank God there was nothing whatsoever inside this gold frame to disturb or affront. He supposed that to be the secret of its success, its value in world markets. His own father’s posthumous Art of Madmen exhibition had not been a success. Only three of the grim canvases sold out of thirty, and those to relatives. Nevertheless he didn’t think it would be a profound loss to society if this particular painting was kept in a bank vault and not on a wall. He caught sight of a small figure hunched in an armchair with high wings. It was Clara Craft, the Hindenburg person. He was glad to remember her name. He was not as cut off from his patients as Nurse Dawn claimed.
‘Shouldn’t you be in your room?’ he asked, quite gently, because her eyes seemed so large and scared, and he could see the pulse in her skinny neck beating fast.
‘Miss Felicity doesn’t mind,’ said Clara. ‘When her boyfriend’s not around. I used to visit Dr Rosebloom when this was his room; I like to be in here. But now he’s dead and Dr Bronstein’s in the West Wing there’s nobody to talk to.’
‘We can arrange for a therapist,’ said Dr Grepalli. She shook her head.
‘I might as well go off to the West Wing myself,’ said Clara. ‘I’d do myself in but I don’t have the guts.’ She began to talk about the Hindenburg disaster but her voice slowed to a stop. She was gazing in to the door of the bathroom, which was ajar.
‘There’s someone in there,’ she said.
Dr Grepalli went into the bathroom. No-one.
‘Just a trick of the light,’ he said. But he noticed that although he had asked for the mirror to be replaced, the original still hung there. He caught a glimpse of his reflection in the glass which didn’t seem a particularly good resemblance to himself and looked hastily away. Nurse Dawn, saving money again! If you didn’t spend you couldn’t earn. Why was it so difficult for people to understand this? He felt angry with Nurse Dawn. The visiting psychiatrist was altogether too eager to do as she suggested. Was there some relationship there he did not know about, which might in the future be used against him? Some male Monica Lewinsky waiting there in the wings? He must ensure that in future Nurse Dawn did not sit in when patients were examined, prior to their transfer to the West Wing. A court might decide that her judgements were more personal than clinical. He might even have to discontinue his own relationship with her. He found himself reluctant, even afraid, to displease a subordinate member of his own staff, and that was ridiculous.
‘It was the paint, not the helium,’ Clara Craft was saying. ‘They used explosive paint. On the R101 they impregnated the aluminium powder with cellulose nitrate - you might as well use gunpowder - so of course that went up: then the Graf Zeppelin went down in flames as well: they’d used cellulose acetate. On the Hindenburg they thought they had the problem licked and used cellulose acetate butyrate, less flammable but not conductive. They were wrong. Those poor people! Run, run, run, and still it wasn’t enough. They died. It’s time I joined them. What’s been the point of everything in between?’
‘Miss Craft,’ said Dr Grepalli, ‘what’s the name of the President of the United States?’
‘I knew yesterday but not today,’ said Clara. ‘Anyway what a boring question.’ And she scuttled from the room, running as fast as her little stick legs would move, which wasn’t very fast at all, as if pursued by a ball of flame: Dr Grepalli hoped she would not run straight into the arms of Nurse Dawn. It would be held against her.
50
I arrived at the Golden Bowl with Guy and Lorna at about five in the afternoon. The spring sun was low in the sky and the Roman pillars cast long elegant shadows over the lawn. In this sheltered spot the rhododendrons and laurel were just coming in to bloom, narrow splashes of pink against dark green, glossy foliage. The Golden Bowl was looking its best. Lorna was impressed.
‘I must say,’ she said, ‘it’s a whole lot better than where Mother is in Twickenham. Of course, Grandmother Felicity has more money. Those pillars are actually marble.’ Guy said he thought they were made of some kind of compressed plastic aggregate. Lorna reminded him that this was America: no cheapskates here. The area was rich in metamorphic rocks. He replied, not to be outdone, that it was rich in Senators too. Although the smallest state in the US it sent two senators to Congress. Lorna said if they were Senators they probably went to the Senate. Charlie watched
the pair of them from the car and by comparison he was 3-D colour wraparound digital Dolby Sound and they were European black-and-white, subtitled.
I could see the shape of a man standing in Felicity’s open French windows, silhouetted by blowy curtains. Could this be the tricksy Mr William Johnson? But it soon became apparent that it was Dr Grepalli and there was no sign of Miss Felicity. It had simply not occurred to me that she might not be there. Eighty-three, one somehow assumed, was old enough to keep people more or less in one place. But no.
* * *
Dr Grepalli came forward to greet us with great affability. I introduced Guy and Lorna as Felicity’s grandchildren. I did not go into more detail.
‘It’s too bad,’ said Lorna. ‘She knew we were coming. You’d have thought she’d have waited in. Mother used to do things like that. I was hurt at first but then it turned out to be Alzheimer’s.’
‘We don’t use that word so much in this country any more,’ said Dr Grepalli. ‘There being so many variations of the disorder.’ ‘Senile’s senile,’ said Guy, and Dr Grepalli smiled bravely, and said he believed Felicity was out visiting a Casino with her friend, but we were welcome to stay. He’d check us in with the front desk. Room Service would bring us refreshments.
Guy looked astounded.
‘A Casino? Gambling? A woman in her mid-eighties? And she’s allowed to? I don’t think it would happen in Britain.’ I squirmed. Guy went over to the Utrillo and studied it, standing so close you would think his breath might poison the surface.
Joseph Grepalli said mildly that he imagined human rights were pretty much the same in both countries.
‘People can and should be locked up for their own protection,’ said Guy, absently. He took a magnifying glass out of his pocket and studied an inch or so of the painting yet more carefully. ‘Especially old ladies who revert to adolescence and start keeping bad company. I should know, it happened to my own mother.’ ‘You and my senior nurse would get on very well,’ observed Dr Grepalli.
‘I must meet her,’ said Guy. ‘In any case my grandmother isn’t technically a US citizen. It seems she went through a marriage ceremony with a GI back in the forties, but she was married already. Only a couple of months previously, so she can hardly claim to have forgotten. I imagine bigamy’s bigamy, in this country as well as ours, and all future marriages are invalidated. An interesting legal point.’
Dr Grepalli nodded politely, decided not to be involved, and left the room.
‘Oh, Guy,’ squeaked Lorna, ‘you promised you wouldn’t say a thing until I’d told Sophia.’
‘Felicity is our mutual grandmother,’ said Guy, ‘and I’m sure I’m as entitled as Sophia is to find things out. Sophia doesn’t own Aardvark. And God knows I paid Wendy enough.’
But Wendy was mine. I was the one who asked questions, fed out delicate strands of new knowledge as I saw fit, playing with fate like a fish on the end of a line. And here was Guy, who fished by simply throwing dynamite into the pond. How could Wendy have done this to me? Was there not some conflict of interest? But I supposed not, or none that she would see. We were all family: one grandchild was much like another. The worst I could say of Wendy was that she was disingenuous: but why should I expect anything else of her? If people slide and twine along the borders of legality, like a snake round a wrist, that’s what they do. Why should there be an exception made for you just because you’re you?
I’d asked Wendy to give me further details of my grandfather the folk singer, and provided her with the clues to trace him, but not the money to do it. I’d said wait until I got back from the States. I had given Guy and Lorna the same clues. It was information freely given and so could be freely used. And they had used it better than I had. I, in the creative arts, in the humanities, drew back instinctively if I thought I might find out something I didn’t want to know. Guy and Lorna, professionally trained, he in law, she in academia, worried away at the facts however inconvenient the outcome.
‘All Guy did was ask Aardvark to check the marriage registry around the time Felicity was pregnant,’ said Lorna, rather too defensively. ‘He wasn’t to know they’d come up with bigamy.’ Guy rubbed the surface of the Utrillo gently with his fingertips. ‘Well, well, well,’ he said. ‘Who’d have thought it. It’s the real thing. White period. Worth about two million in the right auction house.’
‘Dollars or pounds?’ I asked.
‘Pounds sterling,’ he said, scathingly, ‘or two and a half million Euros. And absolutely no security at all. We were able to walk straight in. I don’t think our relative is strictly compos mentis.’
I didn’t want Felicity to suddenly turn up and discover us like this, making free with her home, her things, uninvited. Okay for me, perhaps, but not for Guy and Lorna, though they would never understand why. I went to the French windows and called Charlie in.
Outside the sky was darkening: the rhododendrons glowed red against velvet. A moon was rising. It was all moving shadows out there. I felt quite frightened. Charlie had the interior light on, in the Mercedes. Presumably he was reading the law book he kept in the glove compartment. He never wasted a moment.
‘Not bad for an alcoholic, I suppose,’ said Guy, standing back from the painting and eyeing it up as if it were some kind of enemy. Such a gentle little painting, too. ‘Though personally I could never see why anyone reckons them more than picture postcards. White period, fortunately. They fetch the most. Nineteen- eight to nineteen-fourteen. After the war started a bit more colour crept in. And no security here whatsoever. We walked straight in. She really should be locked up.’
I decided I simply loathed Guy, and always had. I’d dug him up from under rotting leaves. And I had led him here. What an innocent I was. I felt quite giddy and had to sit down and longed for Harry Krassner to be sitting beside me, looking out at the world with his quizzical overseeing eye. Once upon a time I had been like that, not now. I couldn’t think of any film at all to relate to my current predicament, let alone solve it.
Charlie joined us and sat down on the end of Felicity’s chaise longue, making himself at home, which was of course his great gift. Lorna moved up to make room for him. I can only describe her as dimpling at him. We really had to get out of here before Felicity came back.
‘Guy knows such a lot about art!’ said Lorna, admiringly. ‘He deals in a small way, but the art market is so up and down, you can’t rely upon it. I really can’t understand how women can abandon their babies the way Felicity did poor Mother.’
‘It was a long time ago,’ I said. Where to begin? What was the point?
‘So cruel and selfish!’ said Lorna. ‘Life’s simply not fair, is it. When someone like Mother who gives up everything for others ends up in a dump like Twickenham and someone like Felicity ends up in this palace with major art works on the wall.’
I suggested to Charlie that since we had nowhere planned to stay the night, he should take Lorna and Guy into Mystic, or Wakefield, and find a hotel, leave the luggage and have a look at Narragansett Bay in the moonlight. I’d come over later by taxi when I’d seen Felicity. Charlie could get back home. They could visit the Golden Bowl tomorrow. Travelling is all logistics, and other people complicate them no end.
Why had I ever opened up the Yellow Pages and my eye lighted on the Aardvark agency? Why had I been so blind and frivolous as to find the name funny? Seedy is seedy and there’s no getting away from it. From blighted seeds grow weedy plants.
And Guy wasn’t having it. He wanted to be there when I talked to Felicity.
‘Good idea,’ he said. ‘But you go with Charlie, Lorna. I’ll wait for Felicity with Sophia. And I want a word with the front desk. Several, in fact.’
Thus it was that Lorna went off into the night with Charlie, and Guy vanished into the marble halls of the Golden Bowl.
Left alone, I used Felicity’s phone and called through to the cutting room but there was no-one there. Of course not: I not being there to reproach them everyone would ha
ve gone home early. I called my apartment but there was no reply, and Harry had not switched on the answering machine. Faced by this blankness I panicked. I called through to Holly, in California. I’d stolen her number from Harry’s address book and put it in mine, just in case, though in case of what I couldn’t be sure. If you have people’s numbers you own a little bit of them. He of course knew hers by heart. It had been his for long enough. Four years. I had never called her before. Her answering machine was switched on and the message went, in Harry’s voice: Hi, you've reached Harry Krassner and Holly Fern. It meant nothing, of course. It probably just made Holly feel better to have Harry’s voice on her tape, so she’d never wiped it off. But I was shaken. Of course I was. I lay down on my grandmother’s bed and slept, and slept, and slept.
51
‘Who’s been sleeping in my bed?’ said Felicity’s voice, waking me up. For a moment I couldn’t think where I was. The same voice had come to me over decades, with its lilt, its warmth, its determination to pass on energy. Waking from that dense, pleasurable, jet-lagged sleep I could have been any of the mes: the child I still felt I really was; or the adolescent with the pudgy face which hadn’t yet found itself, its lineaments blurred by a mother’s and a father’s death; or the driven, ungracious young woman getting her degree in film studies, wearing a ring through her nose, and green nail varnish on her toes, thinking herself so proud and strong and different.
The best thing you can do with tragedy is turn it into difference, into narrative, and be proud of it. It’s how Felicity dealt with it: so did I. She handed the art on to me, that familiar, chiding voice in my ears through all my years. Take nothing seriously. It’s all fairy tale. Who's been sleeping in my bed? As if there was any choice: each family ends up in the same old bed no matter how it struggles. Like Felicity, like me. Sure she had once butted out when things really got tough: left me to find my swinging mother, but how was she to know that that would happen next? How was I any different? Joy had called me in London to say Felicity had suffered a stroke, she was in hospital, and what had I done? Thought up an excuse for not rushing to her side, and got on with my work. We can’t all be strong all the time, I suppose, we can only take shifts at virtue. I forgave my grandmother there and then for her sins of omission and commission.
Fay Weldon - Novel 23 Page 32