by Weldon, Fay
Both women stare at Victor.
‘If only,’ observes Gemma, ‘we women could learn from one another. There’s Victor telling you what to do. Will you do it? I expect so. I put Queen Katharine’s ring upon my finger, accepting Mr Fox’s version of the world. Love is such a laziness. So, of course, is marriage. Wives bring cups of tea to torturers, chiefs of police and army generals. It is expected of them, in the name of marriage, to pass no moral judgments, let alone take any positive action to disassociate themselves from behaviour which in any other man but a husband would appear monstrous. Mind you, they usually starve if they open their mouths – and the children too. Take the advice of a friend, Elsa; do not take the train.’
‘But you are my enemy as well as my friend,’ complains Elsa. ‘How can I trust you?’
‘Because I spent the night with Victor, and you with Hamish?’ enquires Gemma, happily. ‘Does that make me your enemy? It should give us something in common.’
Elsa’s mouth drops open. Little, darling, sharp teeth revealed in all their imperfection: a lush red throat, leading down to cavernous depths.
‘For God’s sake,’ says Victor sharply, ‘shut your mouth and get dressed.’
‘Stay where you are,’ says Gemma. ‘I’ve iced her cake. It’s her birthday. Happy birthday, Elsa.’
Elsa has quite forgotten.
‘I’m not taking the train,’ says Elsa, pale with the effort to learn, to accept, to change. ‘I’m staying until you go back.’
‘But I can’t go back. Wendy and Janice are coming. They’d be upset if I leave without seeing them. I’ve caused them enough pain.’
‘Then I’ll just have to meet Wendy and Janice,’ says Elsa.
‘I’m sure they’ll all get on wonderfully,’ says Gemma brightly. ‘Do cheer up, Victor. We rely on you to keep us all cheerful. I’ve asked Hamish to let you have the library ladder. I’m sure he’ll relent.’
‘I’d rather do my own bargaining, thank you,’ says Victor.
‘But Victor,’ complains Gemma, ‘you’re so ungrateful. I was trying to do you a favour. Hamish has so much and you have so little. And you did me a favour, or tried to, and I wasn’t too proud to accept. And Elsa is doing me an even bigger one. Has she told you?’
Gemma must, thinks Elsa, mean the typing. She is tempted to confess that it is Hamish who does it, but how can she? She has taken credit for a skill which both she and Gemma respect. A worse deceit, it now seems, than arranging to sleep, behind Gemma’s back, with Gemma’s husband. Elsa closes her mouth.
‘Elsa is having Hamish’s baby,’ says Gemma, flushing with maternal enthusiasm, ‘and we’re going to adopt it. Men do it for their wives, sometimes: consent to artificial insemination. I don’t see why wives shouldn’t do it for their husbands.’
Elsa’s mouth drops open again.
‘Elsa,’ says Victor calmly, ‘you did remember to take your pill yesterday, as I reminded you.’
‘I’m sorry,’ says Elsa. ‘I’m awfully sorry, Victor, I forgot.’
Victor leaves. The pink has washed down from his cheekbones to his neck, and up over the crown of his head. He forgets to incline his head as he leaves, and scrapes the newly bald patch nastily. He doesn’t even bother to swear.
‘Let’s get on with the story,’ says Gemma smugly. ‘Now that’s settled. I thought he took it rather well. Though there’s no reason why he shouldn’t. If he can lend you out to Hamish, he can surely lend you out to me. He’s not the squeamish kind, after all. You being pregnant by another man wouldn’t put him off, would it? It would take quite a lot to put Victor off, I imagine.’
Gemma smiles at Elsa, who is crying.
‘Now where were we?’ she asks. ‘Ah, yes. A Monday morning in 1966. Queen Katharine’s ring heavy on my finger. Marion in a tizz of jealousy and resentment because of it, and Marion’s dad taking photographs of it with his new Polaroid camera.’
Gemma sat on the armchair of the uncut moquette three-piece suite and thumbed through a copy of Vogue, and dozed, and felt her ring, and inhaled the thin cigarettes Marion’s dad had rolled earlier in the evening from a new kind of tobacco sold at his workshop by the junior messenger, and thought of Mr Fox, and the Ramsbottle voices drifted over her.
‘I don’t know so much about that syllabub,’ said Marion’s mum. ‘It’s on the heavy side after all that kertoffel. Perhaps on Wednesdays we could go back to jelly and cream, like in the old days. English cuisine. What do you say to that, Marion’s friend? Wake up, Gemma! Lost in a dream, isn’t she. It must be the Turkish cigarettes. You’re sure they’re nothing more sinister? Gemma, I was saying, any objection to jelly and cream on Wednesdays?’
‘Leave the girl alone,’ said Marion’s dad, ‘she’s lost in love’s sweet dream.’
‘Taking that ring home! The nerve of it. Mr First would be so upset!’ moaned Marion. ‘It’s one of their strict rules. No jewellery to leave the office without the counter-signature of the other.’
‘Be quiet, Marion!’ said Mrs Ramsbottle, offended.
‘Such a stickler!’ said Mr Ramsbottle.
‘It’s Gemma I worry for. She’ll get into trouble,’ persisted Marion, ‘with Mr First.’
‘Rules are made to be broken, Marion,’ said Mrs Ramsbottle.
‘It’s not often we have Queen Katharine’s ring in our house,’ said Mr Ramsbottle. ‘Try not to spoil it for us, Marion.’
Their daughter looked at them, evilly. They waited.
‘It’s not the only ring in this house,’ whispered Marion, ‘and you know it.’
The Ramsbottle parents jumped to their feet.
‘She’s having one of her fits, Marion’s mum,’ said Mr Ramsbottle urgently.
‘We’d better give her a pill, Marion’s dad, the way the doctor said. One of the strong ones.’
‘I’m not taking any pills!’ cried Marion. ‘It will be shock treatment next.’
‘That it will,’ said her mother, ‘if you don’t stop it, you naughty girl.’
‘Look!’ cried Gemma, trying to ease the situation. ‘Here’s a picture of Mr Fox in Vogue.’
Marion’s mum and dad forgot Marion and turned to look at the glossy page.
‘He’s smiling,’ marvelled Gemma. ‘He doesn’t often smile. He has a well of deep sorrow in his soul.’
‘She’s a poet,’ cried Marion’s dad, ‘a real poet. If only you’d taken your English O-levels, Marion, you’d have something to occupy your mind. You wouldn’t be in this state now.’
‘It is your fault I failed my English. All I ever heard throughout my youth was some bloody lingo. As for you, Gemma Joseph, you’re a bloody fool.’
Marion’s father put his hand over his daughter’s mouth.
‘Wash her mouth out with Lysol,’ said Marion’s mum.
‘No need to be harsh,’ said the father. ‘Kindness works wonders. But that’s no way to speak to the lodger, our Marion. She’s like a daughter to us.’
‘Better than me any day, I know.’ Marion was bitter. ‘You make that very plain. What would you say if I planned to go away for a dirty weekend in Tangier, the way she has?’
There was silence, while the family considered.
‘What an old-fashioned girl you are, Marion,’ said Marion’s mum, at last, speaking for both. ‘I can’t think where you get it from. A girl’s got to get all the experience she can.’
‘Well, Gemma ought to be careful, that’s all,’ Marion blurted, thwarted.
‘Gemma’s a lucky lass,’ soothed Mr Ramsbottle. ‘You mustn’t grudge her, Marion. It’s people like her Mr Fox who run the country now. It used to be the capitalists: now it’s the glossies and the Sunday sups. Style, not revolution; that’s the thing these days. Politicians don’t make the rules any more, but people with style. What we’re going to look like, what we’re going to think, where we’re going to go on our hols. And the telly commercials, of course. Après-sex, that kind of thing. The new London permissiveness. Carnaby Street. The Beat
les. I like to see the foreigners here, myself, taking a look at good British navels. What else have we got to offer, with a climate like ours, and oil on our beaches and worse, washed up with every tide. Of course, there’s the matter of the balance of payments, our Marion, there always is. But British beauties like our Gemma here help the export drive, one way or another. Look at the ring on her finger! That’ll knock ’em in Tangiers!’
‘Yes, look at it,’ said Marion, bitterly, her face cold: something in her tone now both final and dreaded.
‘She’s going, Marion’s dad!’
‘Fetch the doctor, Marion’s mum.’
‘You fetch him, I’ll kill him,’ shrieked Marion. ‘It’s rings on fingers I can’t stand. It’s the nightmares I can’t stand.’
‘It’s always something,’ her parents chorused.
‘Don’t talk about the dream,’ begged Gemma. ‘Mr Fox asked you not to.’
‘Quite right, too,’ said Marion’s mum, ‘we don’t want to hear any more about that dream of Marion’s. What an imagination she’s got. As if anyone at Fox and First would do anything like that! Push a customer out of the window! And a relative, too. People have more respect for life than ever they used to – it was on telly last night.’
Mrs Ramsbottle spoke quickly and lightly, but there was a look of dread in her eyes, as well there might be.
And Marion was shrieking and clawing.
‘I hate you all! You don’t care about me. You never have. All you ever care about is holidays and I pay my share but you never go where I want. I wanted to go to Tangiers last year but you wouldn’t, and now I’ll never go, because I’m sensitised to the sun, you didn’t know that, did you: I went to the doctor and that’s what he said. “Sensitised to the sun!” But Gemma isn’t and she’s going to Tangiers and if you ask me you think more of her than you do of me, your own flesh and blood. Well you can have her for a daughter if you like, only it won’t be for long, because she’ll be as dead as Joanna First, if she’s not careful, the way you want me to be. Dead and out of the way, saving you the third fare.’
‘Now what’s she on about?’ moaned Mr Ramsbottle. ‘Get the doctor, I can’t stand her like this.’
‘Look at that ring,’ shrieked Marion, and people on either side of the little terrace house started knocking on the wall.
‘Look at that ring! It’s not Mr Fox’s to give. It’s Mr First’s. He won’t stand for it. You’ve got to be so careful at that place. No one believes me. Ophelia caught on. She got out, just in time. Blood on the carpet! He had her modelling, too, the way he’s got Gemma. Standing there with next to nothing on; all in the name of art, I’ll be bound. Till the next time.’
‘Not next to nothing,’ murmured Gemma, cool and provocative, disagreeable as only Gemma could be, at certain moments in her life, not her father’s daughter for nothing. ‘Nothing, unless you count the ring.’
‘Go on then,’ shrieked Marion to Gemma. ‘If you don’t believe me go up and look in my top drawer. It’s in there. I can’t bear to open it myself; only I catch the pong every now and then. You thought it was gran’s mattress, I know you did, but it’s not. I can’t even get at my clean knickers any more. I have to wash and wash the ones I’ve got on, and they’re damp every single morning and nobody cares.’
‘What do you mean, you dirty girl!’ exclaimed Marion’s mum. ‘What’s in your drawer?’
‘The finger,’ whispered Marion.
‘Not again,’ Mr Ramsbottle shook his head.
‘It’s so little,’ complained Marion. ‘A finger without a hand is so little. The ring’s not little. It’s worth thousands. We could all fly to Zambesi or somewhere.’
‘We can’t take her into the funny-farm,’ said Marion’s mum, aside to her husband, ‘not with Capri coming up. We can’t go on holiday and hospital visiting at the same time, can we?’
‘That’s all very well,’ said her dad, ‘but we can’t have her not changing her underwear. It’s not nice for Gemma. It’s self-neglect, and certifiable’.
At which Marion screamed aloud and left the room, running, sobbing, and slamming the door. A barrage of neighbourly knocks and raps swelled on either side of the room, and presently died away.
‘I wish the pill had been around when I was a girl,’ said Marion’s mum, bitterly. ‘Kids are a dead loss, if you ask me. They grow up and what have you got, just more people, and all that work for nothing. Don’t you ever have kids, Gemma. It’s not worth the trouble.’
‘I’m glad you never took the pill, Marion’s mum, in spite of what happened in the form of Marion,’ said Marion’s dad, warmly. ‘They do say it makes females neuter, like worker bees, and I’d rather take risks and have a properly female wife, thank you very much, than any kind of neuter.’
‘I’ll go after her,’ said Gemma, and though they remonstrated, saying Marion would calm down more quickly if left alone, she did so, though more in the hope of a little peace than out of any real concern for Marion.
It was, alas, one of the characteristics of Gemma’s love for Mr Fox that it rendered her indifferent to others’ troubles: like many a romantic love before and after, it was debilitating. Sexual passion, requited, invigorates the parties concerned, and enhances rather than diminishes the response to the outer world. An excellent patent medicine for all afflictions – curing madness, rheumatism, the bloody flux, anxiety, depression, warts and so on – at least for a time. Romantic love, on the other hand, seems to work as slow poison, making the suffered egocentric, vapid, consumptive, and hard to get along with.
Mr Fox, Mr Fox, Gemma loves you. Sleep sweetly on your circular jungle bed, with its smell of olive oil, garlic and sweet crushed herbs. Sleep while you may!
Gemma, at the top of the poky stairs, red carpeted, went along the narrow landing, linoed, and tapped on the bedroom door, glass-handled, and softly, enquiringly called, ‘Marion, Marion –’ and hearing no response went on to the end of the corridor where the toilet was, with its cerise woolly cover and matching mat, and found that door shut, and sobs coming from within.
Gemma crept back to the bedroom, and the chest of drawers, and tugged at the left-hand drawer. It stuck. She tugged again, harder. And a third time she pulled and this time it opened, and Gemma rifled through Marion’s Marks & Spencer undies and British Home Stores scarves, and Marion’s gran’s old gloves and found nothing remarkable.
Except one little white chiffon scarf at the back, rolled up and stuck in the crack where the drawer met its case; and she pulled at this, and it came up and away with her hand and something flew out of it and landed with a clatter on the floor. Gemma bent to look, and screamed, and screamed, and felt a hand over her mouth.
It was Marion’s.
‘It’s not real,’ whispered Marion. ‘Really it isn’t. It’s a dream. What were you doing, anyway, going through my drawers? You had no business!’
But Gemma, eyes wide over Marion’s broad fingers could see very well that it was real: a finger without a hand, and a ring upon it, lying at her feet.
‘What shall we do with it?’ whispered Gemma, when Marion had set her mouth free again to speak.
‘Put it in its proper place.’
‘Where’s that?’
‘Anywhere hidden!’ Marion was wild-eyed. ‘They never believe me, about anything. About gran wetting her bed, about what it’s like at work, about the pains in my stomach and my head. When I was a little girl my teacher used to take me behind the bushes: they wouldn’t believe that either. Anything that’s inconvenient. They’ll take me to a psychiatrist, that’s different. Get me put in a loony-bin for August, to save the fare. I’m surprised they don’t have me put down, like a cat. Then we can have a nice little kitten in September. They only did that to me once, to be fair. Seychelles year. Put me inside, that is.’
There was a little plop from the floor. The ring had trickled off the finger, and now lay on the boards. The two girls stared at ring and finger, finally separated.
�
��I suppose flesh does shrink, once it’s dead,’ said Gemma. ‘It would all dry up.’
‘It’s not as if she was a nice person,’ said Marion. ‘She was greedy, and a nuisance. She was always eating buns and sweets; done up to the eyes in woollies even in the hottest weather. She could never leave anyone alone. She’d looked after her old mother all her life, she never married, and when finally the old woman went into a home, she turned up on the doorstep. Mr First was always very kind to her, though, in a sorry sort of way, until she started pestering Mr Fox, and then he got angry. I saw him once trying to shut the door in her face, but she was pushing and struggling and screaming to get through to see him. Well, that’s no way to go on. I was in love with a man once. I didn’t behave like that. I just kept out of his way. It depends on the opinion you have of yourself, I suppose...’
Marion’s voice trailed away, as Gemma stooped and picked the ring from the floor. It was a massive diamond, set in one of Leon Fox’s settings – naked bodies twined in an erotic chain. The stone flung back the light from the overhead bulb – fly blown and bakelite shaded – and turned it into something magical. The ruby on Gemma’s finger glinted suddenly as if in recognition and welcome. Deep deep red and brilliant white. Rose Red, Snow White.
‘It’s a wedding ring,’ said Gemma, enchanted. ‘It must be.’
‘Put it on your finger,’ said Marion, in her new hard voice. ‘It’s what you deserve. It’s what you want. You’ve worked for it.’
And Marion thrust the diamond ring on to Gemma’s finger, over the knuckle, so that it lay next to Queen Katharine’s ring, and again Gemma cried out in pain; and then she smiled.
‘See how the gems come to life,’ she said. ‘That diamond was nothing when it was on Joanna First’s finger. Poor Mr Fox. How he must have suffered!’
Still the finger lay there, on the floor, like some dried-up bean, reproaching them.