Benefits

by Zoë Fairbairns

  It was not that you necessarily wanted a robot to do your housework, or computerised shopping or supersonic underground trains or a meal-in-a-pill, as they had (one was told) in the more advanced Western countries; it was just that it was oddly embarrassing to be cooking and cleaning as you always had as the century of progress limped towards its end, or queueing for a slow, seatless bus to the hypermarket, or popping round to the comer store with a plastic bag to see if they had any rotten potatoes. No, there was no doubt. As far as the housewife was concerned, the technological revolution appeared to have been postponed.

  And through all his wondrous childhood

  he would honour and obey

  love and watch the lowly maiden

  in whose gentle arms he lay

  Lynn’s thoughts wandered to Jane. (Love and watch! Honour and obey! I should be so lucky!) Poor kid. She was bright, that was one thing; she lost little by not being able to go to school regularly. She loved to read, anything she could lay her hands on, science, philosophy, novels, history, comics, and her brain arranged the information more effectively than any syllabus could. It was the one concession she made to pleasing her mother; or maybe she did not realise how happy it made Lynn, or she would have given it up immediately and become a gawping moron.

  Lynn had always fought to dispel her own depression about Jane’s illness by reminding herself how much worse it could have been (Jane’s case was fairly mild, and she seemed to have good resistence to infection. With proper care there was no reason why she shouldn’t survive into healthy adulthood.) But Jane could hardly be expected to see it from that point of view. All she knew was that she had deep, unpleasant coughs, difficult bowel movements and regular, hated physiotherapy sessions in which she was lain over cushions in five different positions, three times a day for half-an-hour, while her mother thumped her chest. And that she was forbidden to eat fried food or anything with fat, and coaxed constantly to down more proteins than the family could afford. She was bullied to take exercise but forbidden to get cold or wet. She swallowed pills till she rattled. And she couldn’t go out for whole days because her mother didn’t trust anyone to look after her properly.

  The one thing Jane didn’t know yet was that it was all her mother’s fault. Well, and her father’s. The thing was hereditary, they had given it to her. Once she discovered that, Lynn thought, the final seal would be set on Jane’s hatred and rebellion.

  Was it that, though? Weren’t all thirteen-year-olds difficult? Especially only children, loved invalids? Jane was so innocently deft in directing her venom. The precocious questioning: ‘Why haven’t I got any brothers or sisters?’ ‘Were you ever a famous writer, mummy?’ ‘Why don’t we ever see Jim nowadays?’ like darts to the heart from that sweet, clever face, those cloudless eyes; the instinctive interest in anything her mother disliked, the insistence, for example, on listening this morning to the monarch’s Christmas message.

  The usual stuff. Happy to think of you all together at this family time. Not much can go wrong with a nation that reveres its families. Etcetera.

  The royal women were breeding like rabbits — and drawing Benefit too, you bet your life. Set a good example. Was everyone mad? The world groaned and choked with population, yet some European nations were uneasy about their own falling birth-rates. Finding a work-force might one day be a problem; and they had grown tired of immigrants, who brought discord, not to mention dependants. Besides, who could say that their countries’ cartels might not shut off supplies of labour power one day, as nations in the past had shut off oil or coffee, as a means of blackmail? The British birth boom was of some interest.

  Lynn went close to her radio as the voices of the carollers blended and soared and faded back into murmured prayer — every one of them, from the piping choirboys to the sonorous bass, from the Eton scholar reading the lesson to the extension of themselves to which they all prayed — every one of them male.

  Our Father —

  Some feminists were into goddess religions. Lynn considered it all irrelevant. Nevertheless — how different would it sound — would it feel — would it be — if it was Our Mother? If it was (she tested as the service moved on) for unto us a daughter is given, and the government shall be upon her shoulder, and her name shall be called wonderful, counsellor, the mighty goddess, the everlasting mother, the princess of peace —

  It sounded like a different person, but what did it matter?

  frosty winds made moan

  earth stood hard as iron

  water like a stone

  And dossers thronged, she knew, through the corridors of the abandoned building at a road junction just south of the Thames that had once been the headquarters of the nation’s social security system, and they probably thronged in the churches of Cambridge too, when they weren’t turfed out for a service; and pensionless old folk knocked on doors for money, or grudging relatives crammed them into tiny flats and houses; and FAMILY had organised a Christmas procession through the centre of town, featuring pregnant women, and mothers with babies in their arms, and prostitutes whose banners proclaimed them reformed.

  And to Adam he said, because thou hast hearkened to the voice of thy wife, and hath eaten of the tree, of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it; cursed is the ground for thy sake —

  Christmas had always been a boom time for broken marriages, and whatever Benefit had done for the birth-rate, it had done little for marital harmony, shifting the balance of financial control and uncovering new tensions. As usual, battered women would go streaming to feminist havens like Collindeane for comfort, treatment (for weren’t doctors entitled to a holiday?) or permanent shelter; they would tell of rows (‘you’re paid, aren’t you? damn well keep the place clean!’) and blows struck as the twelve days of unpaid compulsory vacation succeeded each other and the walls of the home closed in, and husbands grew bored but would not pick up a broom, and the cheap liquor that made their heads ache ran out, and children cried for things they could not have. All this was known by anyone who cared to read the more honest newspapers, or to listen properly to themselves or their next-door neighbours, but the myth persisted, the slush and the tinsel, and the bloody damn beautiful carol music continued ...

  Nay had the apple taken been, the apple taken been, then never Our Lady crowned heavenly queen —

  Another story: almost incredible: men grew primitive when denied food. Women would tell of how they had to stock up for twelve days (for weren’t shop assistants entitled to a holiday?) and stand guard as their families’ boredom and hunger threatened the stocks ... women had their eyes blacked for reminding adult men that tins of beans devoured today would not be available tomorrow. (If it came to court, magistrates put it down to the time of year.)

  Now a dignatory of the city of Cambridge, his voice resplendent in velvet and fur, was intoning, Behold the handmaid of the lord, be it unto me according to thy word. And Lynn gave an involuntary shout of laughter as the vision snapped into her mind of a golden FAMILY hand, which emblem she never saw without wishing to paint a chain round the pretty wrist. Factory after factory had fired its married women: you’re not suitable, they said, and besides you do not need to work. Often the policy cost them money; men had to be paid more; but there was male morale to be taken into account, and once the women were gone, male wages could fall. Childless men were told — you do not need so much, with only yourself to support. Fathers were told — you do not need so much, your wife is drawing Benefit. To this the unions responded with the meek suggestion that when a man was unemployed he ought at least to be the one to draw the family’s Benefit, for reasons of morale; but the government said — no way. If a man wants the status of breadwinner, let him earn it.

  Glory to God in the highest, and on earth, peace, goodwill towards —

  Lynn turned the radio off. The silence beat in her ears. And a soft tap at the front door broke it.

  She froze. The wind? Or Jim, fleeing from some fresh eccentricity of h
is mother’s, or of the tower where she made him live? Or the heavy mob come to beat up renegade mothers? There it was again.

  At first she did not recognise Marsha. Marsha from the pastl Marsha trying to look like a middle-aged lady but failing utterly, being still skinny and gauche with long hair that looked fiddled- with, and snow on her nose.

  They stared at each other.

  Lynn was feeling increasingly uncomfortable; it took time to realise it was because she was forgetting to breathe. She let air out of her lungs and felt better. The cloud of her breath spread and vanished, a magic mist that would spirit Marsha away as oddly as she had come. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘it’s you.’

  ‘Happy Christmas.'

  ‘Oh. Well. Yes.’

  ‘Can I come in?’

  ‘Er, sure. Of course.’

  Marsha came in, her coat dripping on the carpet. She looked rounded in alarm at the emptiness. ‘I thought you’d be, you know, all together. I thought I could visit.’ Still Lynn couldn’t find any words for her. ‘What are you staring at, for heaven’s sake?’ Marsha seemed very distressed now. ‘What’s happened, where is everyone, what are you staring at?’

  ‘Your nose. You’ve got snow on it.’

  They laughed and embraced and would not let go of each other.

  ‘What are you doing?' Lynn cried.

  ‘You invited me. “Why don’t you come home and see, for heaven’s sake?” you said.’

  ‘But why didn’t you tell me? I mean — when did you arrive? And where have you been? Oh Marsha, how do we even start to talk?’ They giggled and punched each other and had another hug. Lynn brought Marsha a hot drink.

  ‘Good God. What’s this?’

  ‘Koffee with a k, from the industrial heart of Europea.’

  ‘The industrial heart of what?’

  ‘Europea. Oh some new broom’s bright idea for a new version of the Common Market, more exclusive than the last. Haven’t you heard of it, you colonials? Well. You obviously aren’t going to be asked to join.’

  ‘Don’t want to join.’ Marsha sipped her drink and flinched. ‘Got punch, this, eh? Gets you in the gut. What’s it made of?’

  ‘Plutonium.’

  Ha ha.’

  ‘Maybe not, but our rich partners don’t half sell us a lot of waste.’

  ‘Does Dave have to drink this stuff, or do ministers get the real thing?’

  ‘What makes you ask that?’

  ‘He used to go a bit mad if he didn’t get enough coffee. ’

  ‘Have you seen him? How long have you been back? Where have you been?’

  ‘Collindeane.’

  ‘Did you see Jim?’ Lynn’s face was eager.

  ‘I don’t know ... there are some boys, but they don’t sort of mix ...’

  ‘But Judy’s still there?’

  ‘Oh yes.’

  ‘Then he must be.’ Lynn clenched and unclenched her fists. ‘He’s devoted to his mother.’

  ‘When did he go back to her?’

  ‘When she found she could claim Benefit for him.’

  Marsha tried to break the silence by describing the birth-of-the-sun ceremony. ‘It was beautiful, but I got a bit sentimental. Odd, isn’t it? I thought, today is Christmas day, and what I need is a family.’ She paused, seeing the hard thin line of Lynn’s mouth. ‘I’ve said the wrong thing, haven’t I?’

  Lynn laughed. ‘It’s a knack you have.’

  With time and talk they relaxed a bit. Marsha gave a vivid account of her travels and adventures, but her silence on Posy and herself screamed aloud. Lynn presumed that the thing with Posy (whatever it was) had ended sadly, and she would learn about it when Marsha felt ready. Lynn’s inhibitions melted. It was a long time, she realised, since she had had a good honest talk with a woman friend, one of those talks in which politics and jokes and emotions just interwove at will and conclusions emerged only to be shattered into pieces, each one of which contained as much truth as the original.

  ‘So this is the future,’ Marsha sighed, after Lynn’s account of the fall in living standards, the inexorable creep of poverty. ‘Whatever happened to the oil-bonanza?’

  Lynn frowned. There was one ... I think. Or maybe we’re still in it. A lot of factories got built and there’s less unemployment now and rich people went abroad to escape the taxes. It didn’t penetrate very far to the, you know, lower echelons. Well, we owed a lot of money anyway, didn’t we — to Arabs and people. And the Third World countries started getting uppity about their commodity prices, and Europe practically dictating trading terms to us ... whoever thought the oil was going to solve everything? I didn’t, for one. The government could have asked me.’

  Marsha wasn’t laughing. ‘Would you like that? I mean, to be a sort of government adviser, or civil servant or something?’

  ‘You’re tactfully asking me if I don’t wish I had a job. I’ve got a job. I look after a little girl who’d be dead if I didn’t. Okay? Anyway, no one employs women now, and if you earn anything at all you lose your Benefit.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘We can’t afford this house for a start. But we had to move, for Jane. Her things are expensive too — quite apart from the pills, she’s supposed to eat three high-protein meals a day. Who in the world can afford three high-protein meals a day? And Derek’s on half-salary. He’s in one of these very democratic departments where they share jobs instead of making people redundant. What it means in practice is that he does twice the work for half the money, you get the idea? Behind the picturesque frontage, we’re dirt poor. I work, of course. I type and edit and index stuff for Derek’s mates, and there are agencies that specialise in finding home-work for intellectual Benefit mums on the quiet, but you can guess how they pay.’

  ‘Do you mind very much?’

  ‘I mind. No, not very much. There have been times — you’ll laugh.’

  ‘I won’t.’

  ‘I’ve pretended to go out on stories. I’ve gone along to some event and pretended to be from a paper that doesn’t exist. I don’t know why.’

  The conversation retreated, rallied, regrouped, advanced over dangerous ground. Marsha wanted to know why, really, Lynn was so tied. Lynn explained sharply about Jane needing constant care. Marsha persisted. Couldn’t Derek, neighbours, schoolteachers, learn how to look after her? No, said Lynn, because she fusses and cries and becomes so piteous that it takes a mother’s love to cut through all that and hurt her for her own good. ‘Maybe you could teach me,’ said Marsha hesitantly, and Lynn snapped back, ‘Why? Are you planning to live here?’ She didn’t feel as hostile as she sounded; she would quite like to have Marsha around, even for a long time; she’d just had a flash of anger at being taken for granted, of being intruded upon, of yet another free person using her home as a base from which to sally forth and take over the world.

  Marsha said shortly, ‘I’m going to live at Collindeane. You could get involved there if you wanted. And bring Jane.’

  ‘I’m a FAMILY woman myself,’ said Lynn.

  ‘You?’

  ‘No, of course not. They’re smug and revolting, but they have emotional appeal, a thing the women’s movement is a bit short on for someone in my position, FAMILY tells me I’m a valid, glorious noble person and gives me money of my own. It doesn’t tell me I’m a sucker wasting my time, it doesn’t tell me I should be on the streets demanding institutions to put Jane in so that I can go out and fulfil myself, unquote.'

  ‘Lynn, it isn’t like that.’

  ‘Isn’t it? It’s just coincidence, is it, that the majority of those women are either childless or selfish bitches like Judy Matthews who only want their children because of the income they bring in —’

  ‘That isn’t even true.’

  ‘I know. Have you seen this?’ Lynn tossed over a glossy, colourful booklet entitled Family Care in these Difficult Times. Marsha thumbed through the laborious hints for saving money: getting the best from cheap meat, high-rise horticulture, mend your own shoes. ‘I
have been known,’ Lynn was saying, ‘to sneak out on dark nights to the perimeters of hypermarkets and forage in the gutters. You’d be surprised what you find. You’d be surprised who you run into as well — the nicest class of person. This is the new style professional poverty, you know. No rags, no begging. Just a bloody load of work.’

  ‘For women.’

  Lynn shrugged. Marsha said, ‘You do talk well. I wish I’d been making notes.’ She explained about Posy’s book. Lynn said, ‘What’s this then, a fact-finding mission?’

  ‘That, and to see you. Hey, maybe you can help?’

  ‘Oh? How much are you paying? It’s all right, it’s all right, just a joke. It’s just this assumption that boring housewives are always just dying to help people write their books. Don’t you think I’d be writing my own if —’

  ‘Lynn, I’m sorry, and you couldn’t ever be boring.’

  Lynn stuck out her tongue. ‘I know.’

  They talked and drank koffee and Marsha glanced round the room, bare of decorations, and declared it the best Christmas day she’d ever spent. The snow was swirling thickly outside, and the night sky had a greenish tinge. At about seven the front door opened and Derek and Jane came in; Derek was pink with slight tipsiness but trying to hide it by being very solemn, crumpling a gold foil hat into his pocket; Jane was giggling as she came in the door, but immediately took on a pale, pained expression as she caught sight of her mother and her visitor.

  Derek didn’t recognise Marsha at first, but was enthusiastic and welcoming when he did; Jane, however, made it clear that she did not want third parties intruding on her relationship with her mother. She had a normal build for a thirteen-year-old, skinny with the faint beginnings of breasts, but very adult features. Her hair was flaming red, her skin white and her eyes penetrating and resentful. She seemed to lack any sense of play; she spoke in short, economical sentences and sat about in adult poses, only deigning to behave like a child when her mother ventured to announce that it was time for her physiotherapy. A painful scene ensued. Marsha was tom three ways. She felt pity, of course, for the child. But as a visiting aunty she must not, by so much as a flicker of her face, show any emotion that might be taken as interference. Overriding this dilemma, however, was the murderous anger she felt against the brat whose struggles and howls as Lynn coaxed her upstairs seemed timed with the precision of a ballerina, and deadly accurate in their power to hurt.