Fay Weldon - Novel 23
Page 34
‘Not Holly,’ he said. ‘She never does things by halves. I reckon we’ve got a year of lesbian chic.’
It wasn’t too bad. A year. One can’t expect fate to deliver perfect packages. William drove us down to Galilee and Point Judith, where we left the car and went down the rocky path to the lighthouse and the wind whipped round our ears and the moon raced in and out of dark and yet darker clouds. William took Felicity’s arm. I thought he truly loved her. 1 thought it would be one up to me if I had a baby before Holly did and then dismissed the thought as beneath me.
We went to call on Joy and Jack though at first William was against it. ‘Why give yourself hassle when you don’t have to?’ But Felicity said Joy was her friend and had been good to her, Felicity, in hard times, and only occasionally bad. You couldn’t expect more from people. Jack acquiesced.
We drove to Passmore and found the approach road blocked by a stock fence. In the security lights we could see activity outside: Charlie and his family were moving out of Windspit’s guesthouse and into Passmore. The boys could help the builders. We went on to Windspit without investigating further. Joy and Jack between them must have owned sixteen rooms and eight bathrooms. It was more than enough for two people. Wealth is reckoned in some surveys by the number of taps in a household, and between them Passmore and Windspit would have a hundred, if you reckoned bathrooms, kitchens, utility rooms and the yard water supplies. Felicity had started out with a single tap. She said she could go back to that if she had to. William remarked that there were only two at Passchendale. He told me about the house. I said it sounded really nice, why didn’t he and Felicity go and live there. They could more than afford it. Then I wondered if I had said the right thing. If you interfere with other people’s lives they are your responsibility for ever. That is the wisdom of Buddhism. Felicity said she’d consult the I Ching. I said she’d left it behind at the Golden Bowl. She said she’d buy another.
We looked in the undraped window of Windspit and saw Joy and Jack sitting companionably together on the sofa. Felicity changed her mind. She left them undisturbed. Now she’s got him, she doesn’t need me, she said. The less she needs me, the more free I am.
I said she wasn’t to bother about me. I didn’t need her, I loved her. She can be very English and me saying this embarrassed her but I think she was pleased.
We drove to Passchendale. There were no lights. No electricity. Still only the fitful moon. I lay down on a sofa which I found in the dark, directed by William. My hands passed over strange smooth curved wooden surfaces as I felt my way. Now go in between Eros and Civilization, he said, after that leave Motherhood to the right and The Fathers to the left. Nonsense. Art works. Sculptures. I was grateful to be guided. I stretched out on the sofa. I heard them giggling and shuffling on the stairs like teenagers. I slept.
It rained in the night and in the morning the hillside was unbearably beautiful, and the house numinous. There was a butane stove with something left in it, and some old, old pitiful coffee which we drank. There were biscuits. We were all hungry. Felicity said she had taken my advice. William was going to buy the house back from Margaret. They were going to live here to the end of their days. She reckoned they had ten years left: they would just about outlast the house. They would all three fall to bits together. Felicity, William and Passchendale. I said surely she could afford to get the builders in, do it up, make the place strong and sound again. But they didn’t want to do that. They liked its dereliction. It made them feel at home. If she divided the money from the Utrillo and what she already had into ten, that gave them $400,000 a year to see them out. This was the amount William lost annually, if you averaged out the winning and the losing years. They would spend their days gambling at Foxwoods; and if they lost there would be no sorrow, because they expected to, and if they won they could rejoice. They would aim to lose, and not win, and so could only be victorious. It was an entirely new strategy.
‘But Felicity,’ I started, and gave up. Why? I didn’t want to inherit. I had my own future, forget the past. There would be nothing for Guy to quarrel over.
We drove into Boston: Felicity had to buy some clothes to get married in and a copy of the I Ching. William needed the wherewithal to get Passchendale going. Fie said if he saw Jack about trading in the Saab for something more practical, one of the new station wagons, perhaps, Jack and Joy might decide to forgive him for existing.
I did not stay to watch the wedding ceremony. I took the first flight back to London, Business Class, full fare, happy to travel on my own. Flarry actually came to Fleathrow to meet me. I don’t know why I was surprised, or even why I say actually. A kind of neurotic affectation, I think, rather than a real emotion, which I might learn to do without to everyone’s advantage. I saw that I had extra decades to go, more than I thought. Life elongated before me. I saw it in my head as a kind of special effect, or SE (as the screenplay computer programs have it): paleish green and glowing and stretching into the distance, only slightly uphill: a path. Really there was no hurry to get everything right.