Benefits

by Zoë Fairbairns

  Posy lay inert. Marsha said, ‘You don’t seriously think David would enjoy being married to me, do you?’ and Posy said, ‘He may be all kinds of pervert for all I know.’

  Marsha woke very early to a sound she had not heard before. Great sobs racked Posy’s body like an earthquake.

  ‘You can’t leave me high and dry, Marsha.’

  ‘Come with me.’

  ‘We’ve got so much to do here.’

  ‘You have. I’ve got to find something for myself. I’ve got to stop being your bloody wife.’

  Posy sat up fiercely and dashed a single tear from her eye. ‘I might have known,’ she said, ‘not to expect constancy from a lesbian.’

  The remark was so stunning that Marsha fell back to sleep, but it troubled her dreams and she woke again and demanded to know what Posy had meant.

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘You want a cup of tea or what?’

  ‘I want to know what you meant.’

  ‘Well.’ Posy swung her legs out of the bed and fumbled with the day’s clothes. ‘You made me into a lesbian and now you’re leaving me.’

  ‘I —’

  ‘Come on, you’ll miss your boat.’

  ‘Posy, you can’t just say — I mean, I was the one — I mean, I always assumed —’

  Posy stood up and turned on her. Her hair was standing on end and the rims of her eyes were encrusted with sleep. Her massive flesh drooped and there were stains under the arms of the nightshirt she had made out of an old sheet.

  ‘You assumed. Yes. Everyone always assumed I was because of how I looked. Big bossy butch bitch. Must be gay. Of course.'

  ‘Posy, I’ve got an hour before I leave and you say this to me.’

  ‘I've been saving it.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I don’t want to hear you apologising, Marsha. Your apologies bore me. You don’t have to apologise to me. You didn’t insult me by assuming I was a lesbian, you insulted lesbians, you insulted yourself!’

  ‘Me! But I’m not — I mean, I wasn’t — until —’

  ‘I’ll carry your suitcase.’

  As they neared the harbour, Marsha said in a low voice, ‘There’s so much I want to know.’

  ‘Forget it.’

  ‘Just one thing.’

  'Forget it.'

  ‘When we first started going to bed together, I always felt it was, you know, you who knew what to do and I was sort of following.’

  Posy shrugged. ‘You made it clear what you liked.’

  ‘Didn’t you like it?’

  ‘Oh, sure. But there was nothing I couldn’t do for myself. Better if you want to know.’ She looked around the morning wharf. ‘Is this where the prostitutes go? I might get myself a man.’

  Marsha shrugged. ‘It’s a woman’s right to choose.’ Anger rose in her. ‘What a bitch you are. Giving me all this to think about. I don’t even know if I believe you.’

  It was time to board the ship. She put her arms round Posy and kissed her several times. It was always a surprise how soft and sweet-tasting her lips were. She said, ‘I may be back, you know.’

  ‘Yeah, well, I may be here.’

  ‘Send me an address if you move.’

  ‘What will your address be, Marsha?’

  ‘Care of ... I don’t know.’

  ‘House of Commons?’

  ‘Lynn’s.’

  The sleek ship slid from the harbour. Called ourselves lovers, Marsha thought wildly, and I still don't even know whether she said all that to hurt me or because it was true. Still, there's lots of time to work it out.

  The ship steamed up to Darwin and lit out to the open sea. Marsha had a berth and a table with three other single ladies. She hinted at a bereavement so they would not press her to talk.

  She remembered the early time at Collindeane Tower when she went every day to help the women build and paint, but kept her own flat. Posy had always sought her out even then; she’d felt like the new girl favoured by the head prefect. ‘I don’t know why you don’t come and live here like the rest of us,’ Posy had said one day when they were scraping rust from window frames, adding, ‘at least, I do really. It’s that boyfriend of yours.’ And Marsha had been so relieved that Posy had not discerned the real reason, which was that she liked being private and comfortable in her own place, that she’d nodded and pulled sheepishly at her hair: ‘Yes, I suppose David would have a blue fit if I moved into a squatted commune of women.’

  ‘Women only,' Posy had leered, ‘wouldn’t get his oats then, eh?’

  ‘He’s not getting them now,’ Marsha had retorted, thinking, she’s jealous, (only now she added, but of whom?).

  David hadn't got his oats for some time; but in the end her curiosity and mild desire overcame the reluctance that his insistence inspired — it seemed a little enough thing if he wanted it so much ... the discovery that he actually wanted to hurt her took her breath away.

  ‘David, for heaven’s sake!’

  ‘I’m sorry, you must have a tough hymen, it’s inevitable.’

  ‘What do you mean, it’s not hurting you, is it?’ He sighed, withdrew, explained: ‘It’s an evolutionary mechanism to prevent young girls embarking on sex with a man they don’t love — well, trust — enough to let him hurt them a little.’

  ‘Great. Thanks very much.’

  She permitted him to proceed, but it got worse, he became masterful and tender, the reluctant inflictor of cosmic pleasure- pain, a role to which he was so grossly unsuited that her physical discomfort melted into embarrassment. Posy had been utterly unsympathetic when she heard about it (jealous? Marsha had wondered again) — ‘Should’ve broken your own hymen. Do it in the bath, quite painless.’ Now Marsha wondered: had Posy ever been with a man? Did she want to? Had her sex life been a succession of women seeking gentle love and political correctness when what she really wanted was a man to enter through her self-ruptured hymen, all evolutionary mechanisms forestalled?

  Crossing the equator. Fun and ceremonies for the youngsters. (Youngsters, twenty and thirty! She was not much more, surely — she caught a glimpse of herself, gaunt, grey and witchlike in the sunlit waters of the swimming pool.) She remembered leaving England. After the performance in bed, David had seemed obsessed with a need that she should know he would not abandon her. His offer of marriage was so fervent that she felt trapped. When she told him she was going away with Posy he said bitterly, ‘I always knew she’d take you away from me.’ (You see? He’d assumed it too ...)

  The African coast, the canals, the coasts of Southern Europe. The uniform tall, white buildings creeping to shorelines all over the world, across desert sands or lush vegetation, as technology and the press of human bodies advanced. From the ship they looked celestial, clean, white and misty; you could not see the conditions inside, or the people who scratched a living from the alleys that separated them, like dirt between toes. What would England be like? Would anyone remember her? Did she want to be remembered? Some caustic things had been written about ‘media stars ripping off the women’s movement’ and Marsha had recently become suspicious of the ease with which Posy obtained television or newspaper coverage. Media men seemed to think that by giving space to a quotable, eccentric, hilariously photogenic middle-aged lady who was prepared (unlike most feminists) to call herself a leader and speak on behalf of the female world, they did their duty to women, and the tired topics of equality and birth-control could be given a rest. And if Posy noticed the increasing tendency to put her on gossip pages and comedy shows, she did not seem to mind overmuch.

  The ship was in European waters. The same waters they’d passed through in the packet-boat when they’d first left. The night crossing. Posy laying down the law about how they would go to Paris, stay with feminist sisters there (of course they’d be welcome), Marsha terrified, wondering if they were both mad. Swigging whisky in the saloon to put off going to bed in the tiny cramped cabin Posy had booked. Posy urging, �
��Come on, you’ll feel awful in the morning.’ Going to bed, separately, nothing happening. Getting to Paris, nothing happening. Marsha, frustrated, frightened, humiliated, adrift, picking up a man; Posy scornful (scornful she’d seemed, but now, for the hundredth time, Marsha wondered: jealous?) ‘Like it did you?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Experienced, was he?’ ‘I would say so.’ ‘Makes a change from Laing. Hope he didn’t give you the clap.’ But it was a good quarrel because later in the night Marsha wanted to make it up without waking the other women sleeping in the big communal room, so she crept over to Posy’s bedside and crawled in beside her to keep warm while they talked, and fell asleep; and woke in the morning to Posy’s big relieved grin and her voice saying, ‘Well, that’s solved that onel’

  Now as she reached London’s docks, Marsha tried to put aside all remembering, tried to leave everything in the churning wake behind the ship. She was glad she’d come gently by sea. She couldn't have tolerated the brutal metamorphosis of air travel.

  She leaned on the ship’s rail. It was December. Summer in Sydney. The air was wintry, her coat was thin. She shivered as the dim wharf got closer. Little knots of cold people huddled together, waiting. Were any of them for her? It was impossible. No one knew she was coming. If she had written to Lynn it would have closed the option of changing her mind, it would have meant spelling out what she was going for.

  She approached the immigration desk. The officer peered closely at where her passport said she had right of abode. He rubbed the ink with his finger and checked her face against the photograph. A security man wandered over with a gun at his belt, but she was waved through.

  Disappointed? Did she want to be sent back?

  She felt her nose go red with cold, she pressed her warm hair close to her cheeks. She looked for a taxi. (Where to? Lynn had said why don’t you come home? but that wasn’t necessarily an invitation.) There was no sign of the old style box-shaped London cabs, but maybe they were new now, different. A green car whispered to a halt in front of her, polished and bright. A shiny — uniformed chauffeur stared straight ahead. The back door with its smoked-glass window opened a few inches and she was shocked to recognise David Laing. He looked smart and tense. He had aged. He no longer wore those thick anxious spectacles; now his gimlet eyes blinked at her from behind tiny ones with round gold rims, thin as the wrinkles on his brow.

  ‘David.’

  ‘Welcome home, Marsha. Would you like to get in?’

  He was trying to look formal. He was pretending to be a cabinet minister.

  ‘How did you know?’

  ‘Get in, Marsha.’ She recoiled from the savagery in his voice. He toned it down with a watery smile. ‘Or — or don’t. I can’t hang around.’

  She got in. They were partitioned off from the chauffeur by the thick glass.

  ‘Well —’

  ‘How —’

  ‘Who —’

  ‘When —’

  Marsha shrugged. ‘Did you just happen to be passing in your chariot?’

  ‘I knew you were landing today.’

  ‘How?’

  He let himself smile. ‘Cabinet ministers know these things.’

  ‘I don’t like that. Where are we going?’

  ‘Nowhere in particular, till you say where you want to go. We can stop any time and let you out. I’m not planning to intrude on whatever’s brought you back — I just thought you might feel a bit bleak landing alone a day like this.’

  ‘You knew I was alone as well?’

  ‘No. If you hadn’t been, you wouldn’t have seen me.’

  ‘I’m alone.’ She shut her eyes in alarm against the onrush of the first tears since leaving Australia. She felt his hand pat hers, inept and tender.

  ‘Don’t,’she said.

  ‘Okay,’ he said, ‘I won’t.’

  She felt mean. ‘It makes it worse,’ she explained.

  ‘No one can see you, just sit there.’ The oily plastic seating was uncomfortable, even through her trousers; there was a sweetish smell, vaguely reminiscent of coffee. ‘Anyway, we’re all alone when it comes to it.’

  He could have meant anything, except perhaps what she meant. The surge of tears died away. ‘Well, Minister. How’s Family Welfare?’

  She opened her eyes. He was looking at her in a way she pretended not to recognise. ‘I think I know why you’ve come back,’ he said.

  ‘Oh, no doubt.’

  ‘Britain’s been chosen as the flashpoint, yes?’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘For the world revolution of women?’

  If it was sarcasm it was subtle. He seemed embarrassed by her incomprehension, but deadly serious. ‘I read that you and Posy —’

  ‘Oh, you follow feminist news, then?’

  ‘It’s part of my job. Have I misunderstood?’

  ‘A bit, yes.’

  He was silent for a while. She realised she ought to be alone soon, find out what was happening before she said something foolish or lost some advantage. He said,‘What about ... Posy?’ ‘What about her?’

  ‘She’s not here.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘What an idiot I am,’ said Dave dully, ‘Do you know what I thought when I heard you were coming back? I thought — if you were alone and could perhaps — well — feel differently now we’re both a bit older — I thought we might, well, get married.’

  She didn’t want to believe him mad, but his eyes were wild and his voice shook. Her adrenalin coursed, clearing her grief and confusion like detergent chasing oil; she was alert to him. He was talking now as if she wasn’t there. ‘It’s obscene. Reducing such things to politics ...’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘It could be a symbol, couldn’t it? If we got together — an alliance of moderates —’

  ‘David.’

  ‘Do you remember how you used to keep a rein on me?’

  ‘I did?’

  ‘I used to get so brutal. I couldn’t stand the pain of people who wouldn’t be helped. You always said it wasn’t their fault —’

  ‘I didn’t know you listened.’

  ‘I listened. I’ve missed you. How much do you know of what’s going on here?’

  ‘Not much. Sexual politics don’t make the international editions, you know. Trivial, fashion-page stuff. Oh, I know about your famous Benefit.’

  ‘You know we pay it indiscriminately?’

  Marsha stared. ‘I thought that was the idea.’

  ‘We may not be able to go on with it. Things are getting out of hand.’

  ‘Things! You mean women?’

  ‘Marsha, stop it and listen. Who’s going to hold me back? I couldn’t believe it when I heard you were coming. There are pressures. Hounds snapping round my heels. Youngsters in the party after my job with their modem ideas. Benefit’s expensive, Marsha, and the great oil miracle hasn’t been a miracle at all. Foreign bankers ...’ he shrugged, lost for words. ‘Read the papers.’

  ‘They want you to scrap Benefit?’

  ‘Oh, I should shut up. But I never talk to anyone, Marsha. I never have, since you went. I just argue and make speeches.’

  ‘Will you ask your driver to stop the car and let me out?’

  ‘Yes of course I will, if you want me to. Can I say this first, though?’ He poised his knuckle to attract the driver’s attention, but waited for Marsha’s nod of permission to talk a bit more first. She gave it. ‘It was silly to say that about marriage, why on earth should you? Why on earth should I? I get carried away — I’d like you to be my friend. My ... adviser, though no one would have to know. Well, you wouldn’t want them to either. It’s frightening, being a politician. It’s like a drug. I manipulated my way into it, it was sport, I won. It’s more frightening than being a social worker, you’ve only got individuals then. In politics, it’s masses, millions. Theory and reality come together. You’ve got to get the theory right and then you’ve got to be ready to hang on when reality picks it up and runs with it, otherwise
you’re sunk.’

  ‘Interesting mix of metaphors,’ she murmured, and wished she hadn’t.

  ‘Sometimes I wake in the night to the sound of my voice saying the things I’ve said in public, and they’re unbearable, unhearable. Once I made a speech about people being rats. The wrong rats. I got elected.’

  ‘Yes, I heard about that.’

  ‘But if you’d been here you’d only have had to say “you can’t call people rats, David” in that way of yours, and I’d —’

  ‘Hadn’t you better stop crying, Minister?’

  ‘I believe the things I’ve said — sometimes — I have believed them, some of them, but things come out wrong. I don’t believe people are rats, of course I don’t, but I do believe some people are better than others, and you believe it too if you’re honest, and so does everyone, but most people aren’t required to say anything or act on the belief, so it never gets embarrassing for them, they can stay pious, keep their hands clean.’

  ‘What do you mean, exactly,’ she asked, ‘by some people being better than others?’

  ‘Better.’ He hunted despairingly for different words. ‘Better, better, better. That’s all I can say. If you don’t know what I mean, maybe we can’t talk any more, but I think you do, I think we all know, but you leave it to people you can then call fascists to work out what'you mean and what to do about it. What I’m trying to say is ... you sort of saved me from that. Your ideas were always as ludicrous as mine but we sort of ... anchored each other. Stopped each other from getting washed away.’

  ‘And now?’

  ‘And now I think I’m going to need the anchor a bit more.’

  ‘I have this feeling I’m being threatened.’

  ‘It could be. It could be that the most important thing you could do for women would be to be my ... friend. Everyone says I’m anti-feminist. I’m not. But how can I know what feminists even want —’

  ‘Are you going to tell me what this is all about?’

  ‘I can’t.’

  ‘So why say anything?’

  ‘Work it out.’

  ‘Have you decided how you’re going to do it?’

  ‘Do what?’