by Fay Weldon
‘You know nothing about it, nothing.’
‘And there is no one to talk to because your family and friends look at you as if you were mad, and your paintings are to them a mystery, a nuisance, and if they like them you despise them for having no taste, and if they don’t you hate them, and you can’t win: nor can you make up your mind if you are the worst painter in the world or the best, and all painters are the same in this; because painters are visual people and see good and bad, as kind of magnetic poles. They don’t have any notion of the string hung like a washing line from pole to pole, on which paintings are pegged, ranged, at all stages between good and bad.’
‘What are you talking about now? Washing lines?’
‘And you want to talk to other painters but you daren’t, in case they’re laughing at you, despising your efforts: you share a secret with them but when you admit it you diminish that secret, because you acknowledge it as shared. So you get drunk with other painters, obliterate the mind, pick quarrels with them, say dreadful things about them behind their backs. They’re your other family. But who wants to talk to family? You are intolerably lonely.’
‘I wish I was alone, I can say that. I should never have asked you along.’
‘You had to ask me along. You can’t endure change. Only barely can you sit here in a foreign country. I am familiar, so you bring me with you. Here you are without your props. You exist in a visual world: even your peripheral vision is important. You know exactly how the light passes through the window at different times of day, and different seasons: when it’s cloudy, when it’s fine; as the sun rises, sinks. You have that degree of change taken into account. Only when it’s black black thunderclouds are you thrown into disarray. You can’t make sense of them. You haven’t bargained for that natural blackness, in whatever pact you and your kind once made with the devil. You will come downstairs and pick a quarrel with me. I used to think it was electricity in the air that made you so bad-tempered and restless when there was thunder about: one day I understood it was just too sudden a change in the quality of light that affected your peripheral vision. It annoyed you. How can non-artists be expected to understand, let alone live with, artists? It is only because I love you that I have learned to do so, that I put up with it.’
‘Now she starts all that!’ But his head was turned towards her.
‘You are interested if I speak of my feelings for you,’ she said, ‘which is why I mention them. I hope you are picking up at least ten per cent of this.’
‘Why do you always talk in percentages?’ he asked. ‘Figures are such cold and meaningless things.’
‘I have to understand the world through my reason,’ she said. ‘I have to look beyond the evidence of my own eyes. You need only the evidence of yours: it is more than enough. So rich, it gives you indigestion.’
‘In other words,’ he said with satisfaction, ‘you’re blind. It has been a great handicap in my life, having to live with a blind woman. I should have married another artist.’
‘Like your sister,’ she said, but he replied, ‘She was a lousy cook,’ and even he could see this was outrageous, and he laughed, and so did she. For a moment they looked quite happy.
A waiter from the second shift approached them. He was of broader build than the one with the cropped white hair but his eyes were just as brown, soft and sweet.
‘Hello,’ he greeted them. ‘And how are you today?’
‘I’m very well,’ she said brightly. ‘I will have a spritzer and my husband will have a glass of water.’ She liked to claim him, for all he was an artist.
‘I hate it here,’ he said. ‘The glass, the perspex, the wealth, that ridiculous flowerpiece; it must be at least twelve feet high. Are the flowers real?’
‘I think they grew,’ she said, ‘though possibly as the result of bioengineering.’
‘Here even nature is perverted. Don’t you notice that? How am I to do a flower painting ever again,’ he said, averting his eyes, ‘since the flowers themselves are man-made? This Private View is going to be a disaster. Nobody will come to it. Why should they? Californians aren’t interested in painting.’
‘Hello,’ said a really smart Afro-Asian girl, with perfect skin, perfect features, and black hair briskly and firmly swept back from a wide clear brow. ‘How are you today?’ She seemed to be a manageress of some kind. She left behind her florets of raw cauliflower and long slivers of courgette prettily arranged in a glazed pottery dish, and went away without waiting for an answer.
‘How I am today,’ said Aileen to her husband, ‘is how you are. When Jacob finally returned to the valley where his brother Esau lived, having made so many enemies that there was nowhere else to go, and remember how he had cheated and betrayed his brother and stolen his birthright, he made his wives walk before him, fearing Esau’s attack. I feel like one of Jacob’s wives, forever walking before you into danger, testing the water.’
‘If I painted the girl who brought the vegetables,’ was all Rix said, ‘would it come out like Tretchikoff, who must be the richest painter in the world? You know the one—the girl with the green face and the flower behind her ear?’
‘I know the one,’ said Aileen, and waited for him to make some reference to Bill, her first husband years and years ago, an insurance agent, who in Rix’s mind stood for everyone in the ordinary world, both philistine and fascist, but he didn’t. He just said, ‘I’m sure you do.’
‘How I am is how you are,’ she said. ‘And, another thing, you are superstitious, and both our lives are narrowed by that superstition. You are superstitious about how you work, where you work. You must have certain brushes, laid out in a certain order, a certain number of tubes of titanium white in reserve; and each must be just so, the leaf-fringed window of the studio to the left, the old yellow sofa to the right. I understand you. You hate me to understand you but I do. You stopped painting altogether for many years; on the day you started again the brushes were laid out just so; the window was there, the sofa was here; and lo, it worked. The muse descended. The magic returned. It seemed to you such a miracle, such a heavenly coming together of events and circumstances, that ever since you’ve been frightened to alter any of the ingredients in case the whole thing falls apart again, in case the magic stops working. You have, alas, included the window and the sofa in the jigsaw, so now we hardly ever go away, or you hate it when we do, and we can’t have the sofa cleaned and it is filthy beyond belief, but part of the gestalt you depend upon. The sofa has become a sacred object. You can just about tolerate the way the creeper loses its leaves in winter, that being according to nature not man, but if you could prevent it you would—intercede with God to alter the seasons just so you could paint your vision out.
‘But you are stronger than you think; or rather your art is. You could paint anywhere and it would work; even in our hotel room upstairs, but no, you would rather brood upon your own fragility: build up your own self-importance, see yourself as the message, and not what you are, merely a messenger. The instrument, not the music itself. You and your dirty old sofa. Throw it out the window: chop the creeper down at its mouldy old root. It would make no difference.’
‘I know you can write anywhere,’ he said. ‘But painting is not writing.’
‘Not so different as you think,’ she said. A waiter, unnoticed, had brought them their drinks. In hers stood a glass spike, for mixing.
When she drank, it all but pierced her eye.
‘If you were blind,’ he observed, ‘you could still write. You would dictate.’
Waiters began to carry trays of glasses through to the Gallery. Boxes of wine were already stacked by the white-sheeted tables. More staff arrived to clear the far part of the lounge-bar to create an extra annexe. It looked as if they expected a crush. They ran around with the tall palms in their ornate pots and the elaborate silk screens, and Aileen watched through and around them in the distance the shifting shapes of oranges and ochres of her husband’s paintings. They seemed to her
, even seen like this, through change and confusion, to have a validity, a right to exist, more intense than anything else the world offered. Mira appeared, tiny and thin and smart and no longer young, to beckon them through. They followed her. The first guests were arriving: bangles clanked and tanned and handsome faces glowed.
‘I’m fine, I’m fine,’ they greeted one another. The high ceiling echoed to their fineness. Aileen and Rix paused together in the glass doorway.
‘Oh well,’ said Aileen, ‘I’m on your side really. This is going to be terrible. The only thing that really worries me, is that though how I am is how you are, how you are is nothing whatsoever to do with how I am.’
‘Exactly,’ he said. ‘Me being a painter and you being a writer.’
She thought about this for a little, and observing how smart little Mira Kaplan came hurrying back to collect him, and how possessively the red fingernails were laid upon his arm, decided to leave her to it, and indeed him, and turned and went upstairs to pack. She would go and stay with Rowena Gersh for a long, long time
TALES OF THE NEW AGE
Down the Clinical Disco
YOU NEVER KNOW WHERE you’ll meet your own true love. I met mine down the clinical disco. That’s him over there, the thin guy with the jeans, the navy jumper and the red woolly cap. He looks pretty much like anyone else, don’t you think? That’s hard work on his part, not to mention mine, but we got there in the end. Do you want a drink? Gin? Tonic? Fine. I’ll just have an orange juice. I don’t drink. Got to be careful. You never know who’s watching. They’re everywhere. Sorry, forget I said that. Even a joke can be paranoia. Do you like my hair? That’s a golden gloss rinse. Not my style really: I have this scar down my cheek: see, if I turn to the light? A good short crop is what suits me best, always has been: I suppose I’ve got what you’d call a strong face. Oops, sorry, dear, didn’t mean to spill your gin; it’s the heels. I do my best but I can never quite manage stilettos. But it’s an ill wind; anyone watching would think I’m ever so slightly tipsy, and that’s normal, isn’t it. It is not absolutely A-okay not to drink alcohol. On the obsessive side. Darling, of course there are people watching.
Let me tell you about the clinical disco while Eddie finishes his game of darts. He hates darts but darts are what men do in pubs, okay? The clinical disco is what they have once a month at Broadmoor. (Yes, that place. Broadmoor. The secure hospital for the criminally insane.) You didn’t know they had women there? They do. One woman to every nine men. They often don’t look all that like women when they go in but they sure as hell look like them when (and if, if, if, if, if, if) they go out.
How did I get to be in there? You really want to know? I’d been having this crummy time at home and this crummy time at work. I was pregnant and married to this guy I loved, God knows why, in retrospect, but I did, only he fancied my mother, and he got her pregnant too—while I was out at work—did you know women can get pregnant at fifty? He didn’t, she didn’t, I didn’t—but she was! My mum said he only married me to be near her anyway and I was the one who ought to have an abortion. So I did. It went wrong and messed me up inside, so I couldn’t have babies, and my mum said what did it matter, I was a lesbian anyway, just look at me. I got the scar in a road accident, in case you’re wondering. And I thought what the hell, who wants a man, who wants a mother, and walked out on them. And I was working at the Royal Opera House for this man who was a real pain, and you know how these places get: the dramas and the rows and the overwork and the underpay and the show must go on though you’re dropping dead. Dropping dead babies. No, I’m not crying. What do you think I am, a depressive? I’m as normal as the next person.
What I did was set fire to the office. Just an impulse. I was having these terrible pains and he made me work late. He said it was my fault Der Rosenkavalier’s wig didn’t fit: he said I’d made his opera house a laughing stock: the wig slipped and the New York Times noticed and jeered. But it wasn’t my fault about the wig: wardrobe had put the message through to props, not administration. And I sat in front of the VDU—the union is against them: they cause infertility in women but what employer’s going to worry about a thing like that—they’d prefer everyone childless any day—and thought about my husband and my mum, five months pregnant, and lit a cigarette. I’d given up smoking for a whole year but this business at home had made me start again. Have you ever had an abortion at five months? No? Not many have.
How’s your drink? How’s Eddie getting on with the darts? Started another game? That’s A-okay, that’s fine by me, that’s normal.
So what were we saying, Linda? Oh yes, arson. That’s what they called it. I just moved my cigarette lighter under the curtains and they went up, whoosh, and they caught some kind of soundproof ceiling infill they use these days instead of plaster. Up it all went.
Whoosh again. Four hundred pounds’ worth of damage. Or so they said. If you ask me, they were glad of the excuse to redecorate.
Like a fool, instead of lying and just saying it was an accident, I said I’d done it on purpose, I was glad I had, opera was a waste of public funds, and working late a waste of my life. That was before I got to court. The solicitor laddie warned me off. He said arson was no laughing matter, they came down very hard on arson. I thought a fine, perhaps: he said no, prison. Years not months.
You know my mum didn’t even come to the hearing? She had a baby girl. I thought there might be something wrong with it, my mum being so old, but there wasn’t. Perhaps the father being so young made up for it.
There was a barrister chappie. He said look you’ve been upset, you are upset, all this business at home. The thing for you to do is plead insane; we’ll get you sent to Broadmoor, it’s the best place in the country for psychiatric care, they’ll have you right in the head in no time. Otherwise it’s Holloway, and that’s all strip cells and major tranquillizers, and not so much of a short sharp shock as a long sharp shock. Years, it could be, arson.
So that’s what I did, I pleaded insane, and got an indefinite sentence, which meant into Broadmoor until such time as I was cured and safe to be let out into the world again. I never was unsafe. You know what one of those famous opera singers said when she heard what I’d done? ‘Good for Philly,’ she said. ‘Best thing that could possibly happen: the whole place razed to the ground.’ Only of course it wasn’t razed to the ground, there was just one room already in need of redecoration slightly blackened. When did I realize I’d made a mistake? The minute I saw Broadmoor: a great black pile: the second I got into this reception room. There were three women nurses in there, standing around a bath of hot water; great hefty women, and male nurses too, and they were talking and laughing. Well, not exactly laughing, but an Inside equivalent; a sort of heavy grunting ha-ha-ha they manage, halfway between sex and hate. They didn’t even look at me as I came in. I was terrified, you can imagine. One of them said ‘strip’ over her shoulder and I just stood there not believing it. So she barked ‘strip’ again, so I took off a cardigan and my shoes, and then one of them just ripped everything off me and pushed my legs apart and yanked out a Tampax—sorry about this, Linda—and threw it in a bin and dunked me in the bath without even seeing me. Do you know what’s worse than being naked and seen by strangers, including men strangers? It’s being naked and unseen, because you don’t even count as a woman. Why men? In case the women patients are uncontrollable. The bath was dirty. So were the nurses. I asked for a sanitary towel but no one replied. I don’t know if they were being cruel: I don’t think they thought that what came out of my mouth were words. Well I was mad, wasn’t I? That’s why I was there. I was mad because I was a patient, I was wicked because I was a prisoner: they were sane because they were nurses and good because they could go home after work.
Linda, is that guy over there in the suit watching? No? You’re sure?
They didn’t go far, mind you, most of them. They lived, breathed, slept The Hospital. Whole families of nurses live in houses at the foot of the great Broadmoo
r wall. They intermarry. Complain about one and you find you’re talking to the cousin, aunt, lover or best friend of the complainee. You learn to shut up: you learn to smile. I was a tea bag for the whole of one day, and I never stopped smiling from dawn to dusk. That’s right, I was a tea bag. Nurse Kelly put a wooden frame round my shoulders and hung a piece of gauze front and back and said ‘You be a tea bag all day’ so I was. How we all laughed. Why did he want me to be a tea bag? It was his little joke. They get bored, you see. They look to the patients for entertainment.
Treatment? Linda, I saw one psychiatrist six times and I was there three years. The men do better. They have rehabilitation programmes, ping-pong, carpentry and we all get videos. Only the men get to choose the video and they always choose blue films. They have to choose them to show they’re normal, and the women have to choose not to see them to show the same. You have to be normal to get out. Sister in the ward fills in the report cards. She’s the one who decides whether or not you’re sane enough to go before the Parole Committee. The trouble is, she’s not so sane herself. She’s more institutionalized than the patients.
Eddie, come and join us! How was your game? You won? Better not do that too often. You don’t want to be seen as an over-achiever. This is Linda, I’m telling her how we met. At the clinical disco. Shall we do a little dance, just the pair of us, in the middle of everything and everyone, just to celebrate being out? No, you’re right, that would be just plain mad. Eddie and I love each other, Linda, we met at the clinical disco, down Broadmoor way. Who knows, the doctor may have been wrong about me not having babies; stranger things happen. My mum ran out on my ex, leaving him to look after the baby: he came to visit me in Broadmoor once and asked me to go back to him, but I wouldn’t. Sister put me back for that: a proper woman wants to go back to her husband, even though he’s her little sister’s father. And after he’d gone I cried. You must never cry in Broadmoor. It means you’re depressed; and that’s the worst madness of all. The staff all love it in there, and think you’re really crazy if you don’t. I guess they get kind of offended if you cry. So it’s on with the lipstick and smile, smile, smile, though everyone around you is ballooning with largactyl and barking like the dogs they think they are.