by Fay Weldon
Stephen White, coming back from choir practice, would survey the shaky structure of the family dessert and say, “Flop and wobble again, my dear,” in kind affection and jump up and down to shake the room and make the confection collapse totally. Of such detail, it seemed to Angelica, good marriages were made. Those were the days when Angelica was called Jelly, her given name proving too long a word for easy saying.
But even blessings can turn out to be curses; land mines laid in a long forgotten war. “Flop and wobble,” Lady Rice had said aloud one early morning as she lay in her marriage bed beside Sir Edwin Rice. “Flop and wobble,” and indeed she was thinking of nothing but family tea and happy times, pre-adolescence, but Edwin took it as a slight, turned abruptly away from her, removing his enfolding arm, lay with his back to her for a little and then climbed out of bed and dressed. They had been married for ten years: the days of misunderstandings and makings-up were long past. Lady Rice could not think why he chose to take offense. Later she realized her husband was at this time “seeing” his cousin Anthea.
Unfaithful husbands divide into two kinds: the one feels guilty, brings flowers, baths babies, tries not to hurt: though later spoils things by confessing all. The other feels guilty but looks for justification in his wife’s behavior: see, everyone, how she fails to look after me properly, has grown fat, or undermines my self-esteem, whatever, wherever her weakness lies: but when the affair has ended—should it ever end—he keeps the secret to himself: refrains from burdening his wife with it: she has paid in advance, as it were, for his blow against the marriage politic.
This particular morning Lady Rice did what she could to explain: “flop and wobble,” she pleaded, was not a slur upon her husband’s prowess. How could he think such a thing? But indeed he had not lately been as moved by his wife as once he was, but Lady Rice supposed that to be a normal fluctuation in his sexual energies. Worries at work, perhaps. But Edwin would have none of her excuses, though Lady Rice prattled on. Edwin, usually so easily entertained, so happy to hear tales of his wife’s childhood, remained for once obdurate, unfascinated, profoundly offended.
“It’s no use,” said Edwin, when finally he spoke, “trying to deny your own words. What is spoken is what is meant, consciously or not. What you were doing is wishing impotence upon me. You’re trying to undermine my confidence again.”
“You just want to take offense,” she had wept. “Why are we having this dreadful time? What is the matter with you?” He gave her no clue. And being, as Edwin would have it, unobservant, or, as she would say, innocent, Lady Rice failed to connect her husband’s claim to martyrdom at her hands with his guilt. She was to be blamed for the crime against her. To put it bluntly, Edwin had fallen out of love with his wife and was inclined to blame her for this loss. He felt it, oddly enough, keenly, and the more keenly he felt it, the more he blamed her. What a mess!
Flop and wobble, verbal assault. Lady Rice could see what Edwin meant. No such thing as an accident; no unmeant, casual remark, was without meaning: no matter how unconscious the impulse to deride, it still existed.
“Come off it!” said Jelly. “Stop blaming yourself. You’re hopeless!”
(23)
Being Right
ANGELICA IS IN CHARGE. Her determination to occupy the moral high ground allows no argument. If the ticket machines on the way home from the office are out of order, she will seek out an official and pay him, to his annoyance. The more she services Brian Moss the more self-righteous she becomes. She points out discrepancies in his petty cash: or a piece of spinach stuck between his front teeth: she raises her eyebrows if he comes back from lunch late. She insists on talking about his wife and his children even as her head goes down on his member.
The others can see the unwisdom of it, but there is no holding Angelica in this mood. She won’t even let the others laugh. Everything is too serious: she’s rigid with correctness. She takes them shopping at thrift shops and signs all available petitions: she saves the whale and sacrifices tuna in the interests of dolphins. She accosts a woman, a total stranger, and reproaches her at length for wearing a fur coat. She has become a vegetarian. Jelly believes she is in control but there Angelica will suddenly be, using Jelly’s mouth to speak with. It is dangerous. This unit only works by consensus.
“Brian,” Jelly finds herself saying one morning, “would you like me to put an ad in the Times, enquiring about the whereabouts of Una Musgrave, Tully Toffener’s mother-in-law?”
She was on her knees in front of Brian Moss. Nothing further had been said about Jelly joining the permanent staff and all agreed that in the interests of job security her boss should be kept happy.
Her mouth needed a rest; the muscles had begun to ache from overwork.
“But why?” asked Brian, startled. “Because it’s right,” said Jelly/Angelica, bleakly. Brian Moss’s erection faltered and Jelly gave up altogether. She rose and went back to her desk to write out the advertisement. He scowled and fidgeted.
“Why should you care about Tully Toffener, anyway?” asked Brian Moss. “The man’s a total freak.” He could see the transition from occasional sexual engagement to the normal master/servant relationship becoming more and more of a problem. If the intimacy went on for too long, Jelly would feel entitled to take over his conscience entirely. Wives were expected to look after that, and be damned as wet blankets, but not passing girls at the office. “Freak or not,” his secretary replied, “Tully Toffener’s your client and you are obliged to look after his interests.”
“For God’s sake,” said Jelly, “shut up.”
“It’s my duty to speak out,” said Angelica.
“We’ll lose this job if you go on,” said Angel. “Not that I mind.
There are more ways than one of earning a living.”
“Angelica is right,” said Lady Rice. “Tully and Sara Toffener sat at my dining table.”
On the same principle that some cultures believe that if you save another’s life you are then responsible for all the bad deeds they may go on to commit, so Lady Rice felt she owed Tully and Sara at least this much—that Sara’s right to inherit did not go by total default; either because Brian simply couldn’t be bothered, or because she, Jelly, sapped his strength and his interest in his work.
“And another thing,” said Angelica, “sex with a married man is totally wrong. You have to stop, Jelly.”
“Blow-jobs don’t count,” said Jelly. “Everyone knows that.”
“It’s disgusting,” said Lady Rice. “It’s sheer torture. I hate you doing it.”
“If it’s the taste you’re complaining about, put cinnamon in his coffee,” says Angel.
“Angel,” asks Lady Rice, “how do you know these things?”
Angel says that everything Lady Rice knows, she knows; it’s just she, Angel, will admit it and Lady Rice won’t.
“I’m not going to stop it,” says Jelly. “I don’t care what any of you say. I like the feeling of power; I like to have him helpless. Anyway, I want to ask him for a rise.”
“Do that,” says Angelica, “and we’ll get fired. Things are touch and go anyway. You just wait and see.”
Ajax suddenly says, “We Heroes of Troy were at it all the time. I loved Ulysses, and so died on my own sword. I could not bear the humiliation of betrayal.”
“Get that man out of here,” Jelly, Lady Rice and Angel shrieked at Angelica. “This is girl talk.”
“Why blame me?” asked Angelica, and they all listened carefully, but Ajax had gone. “Anyway,” added Angelica, “that’s just gender prejudice.”
The next day Jelly, anxious to prove Angelica wrong, asked Brian Moss for a rise.
“It would be sordid,” said Brian Moss, with that pomposity which so often accompanies financial discussions. “Sleazy, even, to raise your wages in the light of this new relationship of ours. It could only reduce you to the status of a whore. Presumably you’ll want to get married one day, Jelly: I’m sure you wouldn’t
want to have any such blot upon your reputation. Such a bore living with secrets from the past; time bombs waiting to explode. I have one or two myself. No, better no secrets at all. Sex must never be exchanged for money: it reflects badly upon all involved. I’ll keep it to our lunch hour, if you like, so there’s no suggestion of sexual harassment in the office. You are working by the hour, after all. And presumably these intimacies of ours give you as much pleasure as they do me or you wouldn’t be doing it in the first place.”
“He must be joking,” said Angel. “Blow-jobs are all take and no give, ask any woman.”
“Well, I like it,” said Jelly. “That is to say I don’t want to stop it. Office life can get boring.”
“Next thing,” said Angelica, “it won’t be no rise because you’re doing it, it will be do it or I’ll fire you. And then you’ll have to do it, because upon this job depends our future prosperity, in more ways than anyone could imagine. You’ll have no choice.”
“Then I’ll do it,” says Jelly, her mouth being by this time again occupied with Brian Moss’s engorged and twitching member, which mention of money always cheered up. “I don’t care. No problem.”
“She is a heroine,” says Lady Rice. “She really is.”
Brian Moss stopped mid-blow and bore Jelly down upon the sofa and lifted her skirt; desire finally overcame guilt. “I’m so tired of second best,” he says.
“He loves me!” cries Lady Rice.
“Oh, oh, oh,” cries Angel in ecstasy, entwining her legs round the small of Brian Moss’s back; there is no sealing her lips or steadying her breath: the others give in and think of alimony.
(24)
Angel Out on the Town
ANGEL REMONSTRATED WITH LADY Rice. If they all submitted thus to Brian Moss, why was she being stand-offish with Ram? She, Angel, had really enjoyed the rides to work. Even in the back seat of a Volvo in a car-park Ram had been a better lover than Brian, who was okay but not really connecting. He was worrying too much about his betrayal of Oriole, or whether the forever locked office door would attract comment, to be open to much real passion. It was all lust, no love, and lacked aspiration. Time and privacy might well improve her boss’s performance, but when was that ever going to be available?
“He shouldn’t worry about discretion,” said Jelly. “It’s too late. The whole office is buzzing. Nothing like this has happened, so Holly in Accounts told me, who’s ninety if she’s a day, since old Gerald Catterwall got off with Una Musgrave before she disappeared.”
“We can’t possibly go with Ram now,” said Lady Rice, “even if it was a possibility before. Surely one can only have one man at a time?”
Angel hooted with laughter, and Lady Rice sulked. “Holly in Accounts can’t see a thing, thank God,” said Angelica. “That’s why The Claremont’s bills get paid. Supposing she gets new glasses? What then?” Embracing Brian Moss so totally had set all her anxieties off again. She was biting their fingernails. Angel took offense. “Well, I’m going with Ram tomorrow,” said Angel. “I’m going to ask him to drive down to the car-park, and none of you can stop me. Jelly, what do you say?”
“I say,” said Jelly, “let’s do it. A girl can get quite an appetite for this kind of thing: I feel so lively and peculiar and restless. I wish Brian and I had had a proper bed, not an office sofa; he didn’t really have a chance. But I don’t want to be hurt; I don’t want too many eggs in one basket; yes, let’s take Ram down to the car-park. Let’s spread the load. Angelica?” Angelica said, “Okay. I feel bad about biting my nails. Perhaps it’ll make me feel less anxious.”
Lady Rice said, “No, no, no. It isn’t right. Sex with a chauffeur! It’s humiliating. If anyone finds out, they’ll say I’m promiscuous. All those years of virtue for nothing! I can’t give in now.” But Angel said, “Sorry, Lady Rice, that’s three against one. You lose. I really can’t stand another evening cooped up in this fucking hotel: I’m going out and you lot are coming with me.”
“Where?” Lady Rice, Jelly and Angelica asked nervously, but Angel just laughed and fastened her net stockings to the little bobbles which hung from the thongs of her lacy suspender belt.
“I like the grip of the fabric round my waist,” she said, “and the stretch of elastic down my thighs. I can’t stand the way you girls wear tights, just because they’re practical.”
Angelica and Jelly fell silent; they had no option but to let their wilful and drastic other self her head. There was no holding her: she, Angel, had taken over the senses: it was she who moved the limbs, used the mouth, turned the eyes. They were intimidated. Later, instead of sleeping or watching television, they all, including Lady Rice, accompanied Angel down to the bar and allowed her a triple gin, and a wink or two at an Italian couple, man and wife, glossy and worldly, who, being on holiday, seemed anxious for a third to join them in the bed. Angel had the knack of knowing whom to wink at, and whose smiles best to respond to. Angel responded in the manner the couple hoped, and they paid her two hundred pounds in cash, in advance.
“I’m a realist,” said Angel to the others by way of apology, accepting the notes.
“We’re on our own. We can’t go on in Brian Moss’s office for ever. He’s going to find out sooner or later. We’ll be fired. Then what? We have to have another career up our sleeve.”
“Slut, whore, bitch!” ranted the others, but Angel took no notice. And they feared she never would again. They were finished. The “cash on completion” was not, as it happened, forthcoming. Angel was lucky to get out of it alive.
There was hell to pay the next day. Lady Rice was so furious, miserable and suicidal that Angel, subdued and pathetic, declared she would never do such a thing again, on pain of Lady Rice taking an overdose of sleeping pills and putting an end to the lot of them. She had learned her lesson. She would never mix sex and money again. Then Jelly had to take a day off to recover from the excesses of the night, so they didn’t get to the car-park with Ram: she felt too shaken to call Brian Moss to say she would not be in that day. He’d think she’d walked out on him: Angelica claimed he wouldn’t be sorry, and Jelly accused her of gross cynicism, but not for long: she was too depleted.
By evening they felt better. Angelica observed that the world of forbidden sex was too full of euphemisms to be safe. You could get killed, suffocated, or whipped to death, and then be disposed of, and who would know? “Joining a couple in bed,” sounded cosy, white-sheeted, yawny and warm, but in fact turned out to be cold, unhygienic, and a matter of strippings, whips and manacles as the wife took her symbolic revenge on a decade of the husband’s mistresses, with his consent, and the husband reasserted his right to have them as, when and how he chose. There was a kind of masochistic pleasure, she could see, in being a victim and without choice, but there was a difference between being a Bad Girl and a Whore, and in the end, if they survived at all, whores lost their heart of gold, coming up as they did all the time against too much evil and despair; they ended up with hard, cold eyes, and a hard false smile which frightened children. She’d go along with Angel as a Bad Girl but not as a whore. People got altogether too romantic about the latter.
“Okay, okay, okay,” said Angel. “I get the message.”
“I was so frightened,” said Angelica.
“So was I,” said Angel, “actually,” and began to cry, and they all cried softly together.
“I have to have a holiday,” said Angelica, when the pillow was thoroughly wet with tears. “I simply have to. I want out.”
“So do I,” said Lady Rice.
“And me,” said Angel.
“Oh no, you’re not, Angel,” said Jelly. “If I have to hold the fort here, if I’m to keep Brian Moss happy, if I’m to have a good time with Ram, if I’m going to keep an eye on our divorce, I need you, Angel.”
“Ram!” said Angel, perking up. “I’d forgotten about Ram.”
(25)
A Gust of Chilly Wind
UNA MUSGRAVE ANSWERED THE ad
vertisement in the Times. Like an answer to Tully Toffener’s prayer, like the wild gust of chilly wind which accompanies the gods on their travels, she appeared in Catterwall & Moss’s downstairs reception. Jelly just happened to be sitting behind the desk: she was helping Lois out. Lois, a born again Christian, had handed in her notice: she was going at the end of the week, to, everyone said, an office where there was less scandal and intrigue. Though Brian Moss had said to Jelly, “The problem is she’s in love with me. She’s jealous of you. Remember once when I thought I’d locked the door but I hadn’t, and she pushed the door open—?”
To which Jelly replied, “Oh phooey, she’s underpaid and overworked, like the rest of us—”
He had not taken offense. Nothing seemed to make him take offense, just as nothing would make him pay her more. He liked her to be tart, anyway. The sharper her tongue the more pleasure there was in silencing it, the more intimate its flavor. They had reverted from full intercourse to its lesser form: Oriole had won in her absence. Everyone knew blow-jobs didn’t count.
But here was Una Musgrave, sitting on Jelly’s desk, looking at her hard and speculatively, as if she knew very well what went on behind the scenes. Jelly felt that she had met her fate, her comeuppance; that her soul was known. She was in her mid-sixties, Jelly supposed: one of those women who is born unstoppable and impossible; a face handsome from good cosmetic surgery, hair thin from bleaching but glossy from care, a figure skinny from Pritikin, large kittenish eyes, high silicone breasts, long polished nails on liver-spotted, always moving, energetic hands. Jelly thought—or was it Angel?—no matter how liver-spotted the long sharp scarlet talons: a danger and a challenge to the cosseted dick. And Angel thought—or was it Jelly?—yes, but he’d have to pay for it somehow. Lots.
“You have something for me to hear to my advantage,” said Una Musgrave. “I read it in the Times, so it must be true.” And Jelly stood up, pale and demure with a triple set of pearls from Fenwicks and a nice pale pink cashmere sweater, half-price because of a single pulled thread which Lady Rice came out of retirement to attend to, a red pleated skirt, shoes a trifle battered but well polished (The Claremont’s overnight service) and sturdy tights; hair neat, an exceptionally clear complexion (Brian Moss swore that was his doing) and a buttery little mouth, and led Una Musgrave to Brian Moss’s outer office. She was very conscious of Una’s eyes upon her.