Remember Me

by Fay Weldon

  Philip’s father, Alan, had for a time courted a certain Philippa Cutts, who lived in Adelaide Row: One summer evening in 1919 after lying in the long grass of the garden with Philippa (as if he were a romantic lad of seventeen and not a shell-shocked veteran of twenty-seven) he had left the engine behind in the grass. He had brought it along to show her as an item of interest, a token of experience, but finding himself the interest, himself the experience, had never got round to reclaiming it. Why should he bother? Are not most of our treasures, in any case, offerings to romance, and well lost in its cause?

  Now the model engine stands, restored, polished and admired, as centrepiece to the teak room divider on the ground floor where Margot, Alan’s daughter-in-law, types Jarvis Katkin’s invoices.

  Alan lives in an old people’s home in Crouch End. It is his habit to disconcert the morning nurses by feigning death, lying grey, starey-eyed and open-mouthed when they come to wake him. It is not so much that he wants to upset them by this habit, or so he tells Philip on his weekly visit, as that he’s getting into practice. He never quite understood why he had been spared, he used to complain, one man out of the fifty lying lack-limbed and fly-blown in the mud around him, dead as doornails: but being spared, thought he might as well make himself useful. And so he was. So is Philip, after him.

  The nursing home is in Heine Avenue, near where Enid lives. The chairman of the local Ways and Means Committee, back in the thirties, had been much shocked by Hitler’s burning of the books and had done his bit to compensate, to keep Europe’s culture alive, when the question of the renaming of streets in the district had arisen.

  All things have meaning. Almost nothing is wasted. Old friends, encountered by chance: old enemies, reunited to hate again, old emotions, made sense of and transmuted into energy; old loves reappearing; all the material flotsam washed up by the storms of our experience—all these have implication, and all lead us to the comforting notion that almost nothing in this world goes unnoticed; and more, that almost nothing is unplanned.

  Dumpy, flushed Margot linked to lovely bleached Lily by chains more profound than those of employment and Margot’s childminding nature? Surely not! Lily would never consent to it.

  But see the pair of them now, Margot and Philip, on their way to the dinner party. Margot scurries behind Philip, as is her habit.

  ‘I don’t like it one little bit,’ he flings to her, over his shoulder. She is pleased. Remonstrance is better than silence; a milder form of reproof. ‘Don’t like what?’ she asks, though she knows very well.

  It is a windy night: the sky is alternately lowering and bright: clouds chase across the moon.

  ‘Getting socially involved with patients,’ he says, as expected. His suit is too tight: he has put on weight.

  Shepherd’s Pie is his favourite dish, and Margot’s speciality.

  She is a good plain cook—plain to the point of obstinacy, he sometimes thinks.

  ‘We’re only going because her other guests dropped out,’ says Margot, as if this made all the difference. The wind pushes her along, the moth into the flame.

  ‘We’re going because his first wife turned up and you were there to witness it,’ says Philip. ‘You know what some people are like. She wants us all together in one big double bed.’

  ‘Do you think so?’ she enquires, surprised. But he does not reply. If he hadn’t thought so, he wouldn’t have said it.

  Margot feels foolish. Her little feet are tight in their best shoes. Walking fast in high heels, she thinks, gets more difficult with the years: or else Philip is increasingly difficult to keep up with. Perhaps Madeleine is right, perhaps she is living in an entirely false security, and her trust in Philip is misplaced. Perhaps Philip envies Jarvis; perhaps he too would like a newer, fresher wife: perhaps he is not as indissolubly linked to her as she believes: perhaps one day he could speak of her as Jarvis speaks of Madeleine, as a stranger and enemy. The thought catches her breath, and there is a pain in her chest as if some cold hand gripped her heart. Her eyes smart.

  ‘Do you love me?’ she begs him, ridiculously, as she hasn’t begged for at least ten years. But either he doesn’t hear or he doesn’t want to reply. She trots a little faster. ‘You don’t ever feel you want to start again, with someone else?’

  ‘Good God,’ he says, ‘I wouldn’t have the strength,’ and his voice is blown away by a gust of damp wind, and his long stride takes him ahead of her again. And Margot recalls, quite clearly, the smell of the wet furs fifteen years ago, before ever she was married to Philip—well, not ever, only some four months before: when she married Philip she was three and a half months pregnant—and puts it from her mind. The past, thinks Margot, rashly and wrongly, is past.

  12

  AH, BON APPETIT!

  Lily is an altogether admirable hostess. What a happy note she strikes between ostentation and prudence, between self-advertisement and the pleasure of her guests. Dinner will be served in the dining room: french doors open on to the long garden: it is summer. The weather, contrary to the long-range forecasts, is good. The garden itself has a pale and washed out look: partly due to the lack of rain and partly to Lily’s liking for plants with pale foliage and paler flowers. A spectacular passion-flower vine covers the high trellis, which shuts out the neighbour’s gardens, but does not keep out the sun. The big lime tree, which once housed a wood pigeon’s nest, and every second year shed a sticky substance mortal to all growing things, and from the boughs of which the infant Hilary used to swing, has long been cut down. Pale rock plants grow obediently in the crevices between the York Stone slabs with which Lily and Jarvis personally sealed down the recalcitrant roots of the tree, for the stump refused to die for several years. (Sam the estate agent eventually suggested drilling a hole in the stump and inserting a common kitchen clove, which rite Jarvis duly performed. Whether the final death of the tree was due to the York Stone or the clove was never known—but one or the other worked.) A pond, moulded in plastic to a shape somewhere between a kidney and a heart, but its edges now tastefully mossed, is currently a home for some seven hundred tadpoles (Hilary counted, one infinitely boring Sunday afternoon), seven goldfish and twelve frogs. A fountain plays, thanks to a pumping mechanism bought cheap from Gamages in the week before that useful emporium closed; the pump is splendidly reliable, except in the spring, when clogged with tadpoles.

  Bon appetit!

  The guests will dine on cold consommé, topped by lump-fish roe and whipped cream, served with little hot crescent rolls (for the greedy) followed by the Selfridge’s crown roast, served with mange-tout, pommes duchesse (for the weak) and green salad: then lemon mousse, the Selfridge’s cheese served with low-calorie crackers (which Lily will eat). Jarvis bought the wine at Augustus Barnett—it is a light Beaujolais and innocuous enough. Lily asserts that she prefers Beaujolais to claret, but never gives a reason. She would really rather not think about it.

  (Lily’s first sexual experience—a near rape, alas—was with a business executive who had taken her out to an expensive dinner, ordering fillet steak and a good claret—which latter seemed in retrospect to taste of menstrual blood and graveyards mixed.)

  Lily bleeds, yes she does. Red drops of death and birth, like anyone else. She is bleeding tonight: though through such a barrier of aspirin, expanding plugs of cotton wool and proofed pants that she is able to forget all about it. Lily’s dress tonight is silver grey, slippery, high in the waist, low in the bust: her breasts are clearly defined, her ankles neat in newly fashionable, high-heeled, dainty shoes. In the kitchen, between courses, she goes shoeless for speed and efficiency.

  The refectory table on which they will dine is in faded English walnut. It cost £65 in the days—the happy days—when such a price seemed exorbitant. Jarvis bought it as it happens, in the week during which both Madeleine and Lily lived in the house. The table mats are a pale brilliant green and come from Heal’s. The cutlery is of silver, and was left to Jarvis by his mother Poppy. Lily, dear Lil
y, has had the dents made by Madeleine beaten out. Madeleine used the spoons, Jarvis’s heritage, to open stubborn tins; she used the points of knives to change electric plugs; she used the forks to stir up the earth in the cat tray. Lily arrived in the house only just in time. As it is, Jarvis estimates that an eighth of his mother’s knives, a quarter of his mother’s spoons and a sixth of his mother’s forks have found their way, via Madeleine’s malice, into the dustbin. It is a matter of some grief to him.

  Lily has had a waste disposal unit installed, so any cutlery in danger sets up an instant uproar. His mother’s silver remains as it should—clean, dry, polished and safe in a green felt box; on the table only on special occasions, and then briefly, very briefly, in the washing-up bowl.

  On the table Lily has placed two white china candlesticks, containing pale green candles; these she will ask Jarvis to light as soon as the guests are seated. The matches stand ready. There is a posy of pale wild flowers in the centre bowl (of fairground glass; only 25p in a junk shop which knew no better). The chairs are matching and are in mid-Victorian maple. The walls around are papered in a floral pattern; tiny white daisies and pale pink roses intertwine on a pale yellow ground. The dining room curtains are pale yellow velvet and a mistake, but one too expensive to rectify.

  The guests this evening are a mistake, Lily fears: boring and blatant at the same time, like the curtains. The meal, costed by Lily at £24.25—she calculates such costs to a penny, including an estimate for electricity for cooking; and two runnings of the washing-up machine after the meal—will, thanks to the loss of the Bridges, bring very little return in either entertainment, improved contacts for Jarvis, or return invitations which she will enjoy. Why she ever asked Dr Bailey and his wife she cannot now imagine. Nor can Jarvis.

  Margot arrives dressed in a dinner gown bought (in Lily’s estimate) in 1969, and timeless even then. It is of shiny black material, high-necked and long-sleeved. Wearing it, Margot looks more like a plump skin-diver than a doctor’s wife. The image flashed through Philip’s mind as his wife dressed, but he was too loyal to utter it.

  If Philip has infidelities, they are in Margot’s mind, not his.

  Philip wears the brown suit he always wears when he goes out. He bought it at C & A eight years previously; it is of a hardwearing Swedish cloth, in an enduring style. It is tight round his waist. Much of his dislike of going out lies in his dislike of putting on the suit, and knowing that every time he does so it will be a little tighter, and his end a little nearer.

  Jarvis, as befits the husband of a young bride and father of a two-year-old, wears jeans and Mao-blue shirt. If Lily has her way, Jarvis will hold back the passing of years for ever. Sometimes he would like to sigh, and heave, and sink back gratefully into a middle-aged torpor like a hippopotamus into mud, but Lily will not have it. Lily keeps him slim, healthy and sober. Lily even cooks in margarine, not best butter. Lily will keep Jarvis alive for ever, if she can.

  In the pale, plumply upholstered living room, which runs through from the front to the back of the house, Jarvis provides Margot with sherry, Philip with a glass of red wine, and himself with whisky. He makes Lily a long Campari and soda. The glass stands waiting, frosted and sugared at the rim. Margot marvels, as Lily had supposed she would.

  Conversation, at first, is difficult. The Baileys seem, outside their own territory, to be a silent pair. Philip is in the habit of thinking before he speaks, lest his patients misunderstand his meaning, as they will if they can. His family wait kindly upon his words, but in households such as these, he has no sooner opened his mouth than the conversation has leapt three subjects on. His very slowness gives him an air of wisdom, as if though clearly considering what has been said, he does not see fit to comment upon it. He makes poor Lily nervous. That, and the fact that he knows about the sometime erosions on her private parts, the result of too violent intercourse: knows her ridiculous fears of VD: weighed her weekly during her pregnancy with Jonathon, during which she under-ate absurdly, weighing as much at thirty-six weeks as she had at four; once even pushed his sheafed finger up her anus, inspecting piles. He knows too much and speaks too little. And as for Margot, she clearly waits to take her conversational lead from her husband and he is offering no leads at all. Lily thanks God she is not as other wives.

  Lily’s colour is brighter than usual as she steers what passes for a conversation; gracefully and quickly over subjects which scarcely count as politics, since they are surely open to little dispute, but which she assumes will interest the doctor and his wife.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ says Lily, in her cool sweet tones, ‘but I think, personally, we all have a perfect right to educate our children how and where we want and to pay as much as we want for the medical attention we choose. What business has the State to tell us what to do and how we’re going to live?’

  No one replies. Only Jarvis, passing, grabs at her buttocks and vulgarly squeezes. Lily grows quite pink. ‘Personally I want the best for Jonathon and I hope you do too, Jarvis. It’s like workers’ control, socialism run riot. I mean, the average person’s IQ is a hundred, isn’t it. And someone with an IQ of a hundred can barely read or write. How can people like that run the factories, poor things? But I mustn’t bore you with politics; Jarvis is making dreadful faces at me. Why, darling? Am I being too political? Am I behaving like Madeleine? Mind you, Madeleine was red in tooth and claw, and I’m sure no one can say that of me.’ She laughs, apologetically, and then remembers, too late, that the Bailey children go to the same Comprehensive as Hilary.

  ‘Oh well,’ she says, ‘oh well. I have my own views. I’m sorry if they don’t suit. Poor Jarvis, how he suffers from his wives. What did you think of Madeleine, Margot?’

  ‘She seemed much like anyone else,’ says Margot.

  ‘Was she drunk?’

  ‘I don’t think so.’ Margot is quite startled. ‘She usually is, by lunchtime. It was always her great problem. It was very silly of her to come round here—she knows we can get the restraining order re-enforced anytime we like. If she really wanted to know where Hilary was, she could have phoned. But then she’d have lost the opportunity of making a scene in front of you. Poor thing. I really feel sorry for her. I just wish she wasn’t so rotten to poor Hilary: she stuffs the poor girl like a pig for the slaughter. And, of course, I’m good for playing nursemaid tonight, since she’s off gadding somewhere. She really has a good time, that woman, on Jarvis’s money; but she loves to pretend she doesn’t. Are you sure she wasn’t drunk, Margot?’

  ‘I suppose she might have been,’ says Margot, betrayer. And Jarvis, to change the subject, pinches his wife. Colour again.

  ‘Please don’t do that,’ says Lily, ‘it makes me feel ridiculous.’

  ‘You never mind in private,’ says Jarvis, and Lily relaxes, bridles and giggles. Jarvis can always bring her pleasure by alluding publicly, and naughtily, to their private happiness. ‘I expect Jamie and Judy are late because they’re quarrelling,’ says Lily, to her punctual guests, of her unpunctual ones. ‘Judy says they always quarrel when they’re coming to us.’

  The doorbell rings. Jamie and Judy stand quarrelling upon the step, like fieldmice arguing over a grain of wheat.

  Jamie is fifty and feels thirty: Judy is thirty and feels twenty. That’s only ten years difference. Jamie is short, well-dieted and trim, grey hair tight and curly, face benign and wrinkled; he too is dressed in conventional Mao-blue. Judy is a top-heavy little thing; Afro hair shelters a small grey face and a spindly little body. Her thighs are taut and narrow, as if made for the forcing apart, and her mons pubis is apparent beneath a startling dress of red and yellow and very thin African cotton.

  Jamie’s voice is powerful, booming. Hers, answering, is soft but nasal. Judy was a working girl from Liverpool, and sees no reason to forget it. Judy married a London business man on her twentieth birthday and came south to live on a Span housing estate, all glass and greenery. Living next door, the other side of a couple of sheets of gla
ss and a bush or so, who did she find but her heart’s desire, Jamie, actor and would-be writer and connoisseur. And also, of course and alas, Albertine his wife, who claimed to be an actress but was really only a store demonstrator; unemployment in the acting profession running at a slightly higher than usual eighty-five per cent. There, next door Judy lived for eight years, during which time she had two children, made love with her husband some 2,000 times, and with Jamie some 500 times. On the 501st occasion Jamie’s wife and Judy’s husband, returning together from the local dramatic society’s rehearsal of Cosy Nook, interrupted Jamie and Judy’s ardours, and responded not with grief, remorse and self recrimination, but by falling in love with each other and absconding together, taking all the children, all, to create a cosier and more reliable nook elsewhere, and who could blame them?

  Judy and Jamie, left with what they so much desired—that is, their freedom and each other—were married. Well, the other two were. Judy freaked out her hair and Jamie took to wearing jeans: she writes theatre crits, he runs a little theatre. They live in a penthouse, caring for a rich man’s dogs while he is on safari, and hopefully lost forever in the jungle.

  They seldom venture out so far into the suburb, but Lily is known as a good cook and Jarvis and Jamie are old friends, left over from other days. Jamie went to school with Jarvis.

  Listen to Jamie and Judy now, as Lily opens the front door to them.

  JUDY: Lily, I’m sorry we’re late. Jamie has no sense of direction. That’s his trouble. When I pointed out we were driving round in a circle and it was symptomatic of his whole life, he hit me. Look! Is it bleeding? His nails are very sharp.