by Fay Weldon
Venetia calls round every couple of weeks. We are distant and friendly, and talk about nothing that might disconcert either of us. Once a month I am asked round to a Shabbat-style dinner. Photographers and film-makers are often present, as we talk about social issues. As for Polly, I suggested to her the other day that she and Corey and the girls moved into Chalcot Crescent, where there is more light, air and good cheer than in Mornington Crescent. When I pointed out to her that the girls would get fewer colds, she capitulated. So a new generation of Prideauxs moves in. It’s good. I am all for continuity. And perhaps Rosie and Steffie will have daughters.
Sometimes I see myself like Job, whose ‘latter days God blessed more than the beginning.’ God and the Devil fight it out over Job: he loses his possessions and is visited by every calamity under the sun. Job challenges God, God accepts his rebuke, and Job says okay, he’ll stop whining. By giving in to the system, he gets everything. He ends up with fourteen thousand sheep, six thousand camels, a thousand yoke of oxen and a thousand she-asses – something of an overkill, one might think, suggesting a biblical writer eager to get home to his dinner. And in all the land were no women found so fair as the daughters of Job. That’s what it feels like to be me. Blessed, but only at the very end.
I wish Cynthia were here so I could tell her all about what happened next. So contrary was she, had I told her it was okay to go to Turkey she’d probably have stayed home and not fallen out of the sky. But there you are. One does what one does.