by Fay Weldon
‘Ever heard of parthenogenesis?’
‘We did it in biology,’ she said. ‘It’s asexual reproduction. When the mother gives birth on her own, without a father. It doesn’t happen in humans.’
‘Yes it does. Very occasionally, but it does. The egg is self-fertilised and the mother gives birth to a daughter identical to herself. A clone. So you don’t have to be her ghost, you can be her clone. How’s that?’
He took the sheet down to her waist and she raised her arms above her head, she was not sure why, but it gave her small breasts more prominence and she liked the feeling of stretch. He ran his hands down her sides and flanks and pinched her nipples a little and then rubbed his finger around first one, then the other, so they stood up.
‘Everything works,’ he said. ‘Doctor says so. You’re ripe so you can carry on where Kitchie left off. Do you like that?’
She nodded. She should have screamed but she didn’t: the night was too warm and the moon was too bright and what had begun would have to continue. She wondered what had been in the pills he gave her. Probably not aspirin. She had taken them without argument. She could see she had a liking for all things drastic. She remembered reading something about the White Slave Traffic. Bad oriental men drugged innocent white girls and carried them off as easy, willing victims to harems in foreign parts, and then kept them there by force. It was better than ending up teaching like Miss Butt, Miss Crossly, Miss Ferguson or Mrs Barker, which seemed the only opportunity open to her in life.
He slipped a tentative finger between her legs and she instinctively tightened up to stop him but he pushed her legs further apart and abruptly and roughly put in two fingers instead of one, then widened them inside her. Now her legs fell apart of their own volition.
‘You’re a natural,’ he said and she felt flattered. He said, ‘I’ll only put it in a little way,’ and she let him. It seemed too good to be true, on a par with being dead one moment alive the next. He was right. She was bringing her mother back to life, but the detail escaped her. Then she remembered and said, ‘What if I get pregnant,’ and he said, ‘You won’t, I’ll see to that,’ and put it in all the way. Then everything seemed vague, other than the weight of his body on hers was heavy, and the wiriness of the practised muscles as they stood out on his bare shoulders and forearms. It seemed what his body was made for. He should not be thwarted, it was dangerous to thwart men, she had picked that up from somewhere.
‘You’re not even a virgin, you naughty little bitch,’ he said at one stage and she said she was so, child gymnasts often broke their hymens, and he said, ‘Tell that to the marines.’ Then he said, ‘Next time I clone you we’ll do without the gymnastics,’ so perhaps he did believe her. He said the price of virgins the world over was high. He liked to talk, to keep up a running commentary. She wished he wouldn’t. He might wake Rita and for all she was trying to keep quiet herself she couldn’t. Her mouth kept uttering mews, grunts and squeals as if she was an animal, which she hated, and he put his hand over her mouth as he rutted away like the bull; and then a screeching fiend, Grendel’s mother, suddenly upon them, bursting into their secret place, tearing them apart, pulling Beverley by her hair out of the bed, Arthur sent reeling into the verandah window and the glass broken, the dogs from the farm next door woken, barking, rattling their chains, Rita shouting that Arthur was nothing but a pervert or ever had been – what was he doing to the poor stupid child –
‘Now you’ve been and done it, you silly cunt,’ Arthur said. ‘I was going to withdraw.’
Beverley at nineteen
By the time she was nineteen Beverley had a one-year-old daughter called Alice and was living in Earls Court in London. She had made an Australian friend, Dionne, on the boat over. Dionne was six foot two, blonde, luscious, big-haired and long-legged and went to drama school. She wanted to be taken seriously and play Lady Macbeth, and was doing a classical acting course, though the tutors hinted that perhaps singing-and-dancing was more suitable. Beverley paid for her tuition; Dionne helped Beverley with Alice. It seemed fair dos.
Beverley had embarked on a three-year course at Royal Holloway, an all-woman college, studying semantics and moral phil osophy. It was 1952. Only 5 per cent of women went to university, but she had passed the entrance exam easily enough. She told no one about Alice’s existence. Rita had warned her not to. Such girls as did graduate were expected to do a further secretarial course, leaving work when they got married and had children. A few women went on to have jobs in the civil service or teaching but then were expected to stay unmarried and give up their personal life.
Beverley preferred not to give the future too much attention. She had too much to think about what with Alice who, though she was a pretty, charming, easy baby, expected more time and attention than Beverley had reckoned on. Beverley had rather gone off sex, or if not sex, the kind of loaded emotional sex men seemed to demand, and sex itself was too overwhelming, and led to babies, an inbuilt sort of punishment. But she liked parties, and dressing up: she liked to lead men on and then turn them down and soon got the reputation of a pricktease, and on several occasions only escaped rape by the skin of her teeth. Men assumed that no meant yes, and it was reasonable to get violent if you kept insisting it didn’t. Good girls didn’t get themselves into these situations, bad girls did, and bad girls were fair game.
She liked older men; boys her own age were callow, pimply and weak and, though more likely to take no for an answer, never seemed to have sufficient weight on her body. Dionne, on the other hand, really liked pretty boys. Men’s eyes followed Dionne wherever she went. Beverley felt quite jealous but Dionne comforted her by saying that even if they looked down her, Dionne’s, cleavage, there was nothing to see, whereas Beverley had lots. The fashion was for full skirts with layers of petticoats beneath so they billowed out, a cinched-in belted waist and black V-necked tops which you could push right down over your shoulders to show as much cleavage as you dared. Beverley dared a lot and the feeling of going out without knickers was stirring. She got to see a lot of thick rough red penises, or penes, but the art was to never let them get inside you. None ever seemed as impressive as Arthur’s but she pushed her mind away from that whenever she could. They both went to elocution lessons to get rid of their New Zealand accents. Both decided, whatever the future, it had better be posh.
When it became apparent to Beverley that she was pregnant, she had been in England for two months and was running out of money – so she wrote to Rita and asked her what she should do now. She didn’t know who else to ask. She and Dionne were waitressing, earning £5 a week and sharing a room at £3 a week rental. Beverley was not entirely certain that Arthur was the father of the baby, having met an attractive and lively young naval officer on the way over, who also practised the withdrawal method so favoured at the time, though Arthur was the most likely.
Rita’s reply was prompt and brisk. Beverley felt a wave of affection towards her. She knew enough by now that sex could send you mad: Rita had been mad: she, Beverley, had not been Arthur’s helpless victim, she had wronged Rita, who had to live with a man who might be a murderer and might not be; just as she, Beverley, had put up with a father so ambiguous it didn’t bear thinking about, and in all likelihood was grandfather to his own daughter. Alice had Arthur’s high domed forehead but that didn’t mean she was definitely Arthur’s. She could still be the naval officer’s child and the domed forehead come down from Beverley herself.
A cheque for a £1,000 fell out of the envelope. You could buy half a house for that, and a good one too.
Dear Beverley, wrote Rita, this is a fine kettle of fish. I am glad to hear from you all the same, we were worried about you. But you are grown up now and it is natural for young people to make their own lives. I am enclosing a cheque for the amount left over from the sale of your father’s farm, after your board and lodging for all those years is taken care of. I think this is fair. We always did our very best for you and I am sorry things turned out the
way they did. About the baby. Abortion is a criminal offence so don’t do that or you’ll end up dead or in prison. Some people I know try drinking gin and taking very hot baths but I’ve never known it to work. Buy yourself a wedding ring from Woolworth’s and always tell people you are a widow, or they won’t talk to you. Go to an adoption society and see if they’ll take you on. Tell them the father is a good-looking young medical student you met on holiday and he gave you a false name. If they think there might be anything wrong with Baby they won’t have you on their books. Or a French or Belgian soldier, an officer, is another favourite I don’t know why. So long as you don’t make him a German. The money I’ve sent you will help if you want to keep Baby, but it won’t last for ever, and you are a pretty girl so your best bet is to find someone to marry you and give you and the baby a roof over your heads. Not many men will take on a girl who has a bastard, but sometimes an older man will, though he won’t be the pick of the crop. Arthur took me on, and you as well, so it sometimes works out, and Mr Right does come along, so don’t be too sorry for yourself. At least you were born to respectable married folk and weren’t sullied before you were even born, which happens to some. Best not to keep in touch, dear. Things got very complicated round here and I don’t suppose they’ll get much better. I told Arthur your news and all he said was how do I know it’s mine. You know how men are. Well, we all make our beds and have to lie on them. I wish you all the best in the world. Love from your mother Rita.
Beverley folded the letter up many times until it was just a small wedge and put it at the back of her drawer and kept it through her many travels, and has it today at Robinsdale, in the drawer where she keeps her valuables. She has never reread it since that one time. It contains all the confusions of her early days. Arthur ruined her, money saved her. Rita was just not very bright.
Beverley was entitled to a small grant to get her through university – not much because she was from abroad – and was able to pay for Dionne’s drama school course and their elocution lessons out of Rita’s money. The rest she put in Post Office Savings, and that, and the money she earned cleaning, one shilling and sixpence the hour, kept her going until Alice was five. Dionne did nude modelling for a men’s photographic club three evenings a week at five shillings the hour. She stood on a stand with no clothes on striking poses while old men took photographs of her. It was quite harmless, though she worried that when she was famous someone could use the pictures to blackmail her. Sometimes Beverley joined her but never without black bra and panties. They were risqué enough; the norm was white or pink. But the girls got by. They even had a good time.
They shared a flat on the fourth floor of a large Victorian house in Earls Court. They lived rent free. The landlord was an amiable young Maltese called Jesus who ran a thriving whoring business elsewhere, liked the girls and required nothing of them but that they both spent a couple of hours with him on Friday evenings between ten and twelve. When they pointed out that that would leave Alice without a babysitter he changed his requirements to one hour each on Wednesday and Friday nights, and threw in the electricity bill. He was very protective of Alice.
Beverley and Dionne were more than satisfied with this arrangement. His first suggestion had been problematic: it would have been embarrassing to face one another on Saturday mornings after performing whatever intimate lesbian antics Jesus would have expected of them on Friday nights. As it turned out, their obligations were not onerous, even rather sweet. All that was required in the new arrangement was one or other of them kept him company, whilst sitting decorously at the kitchen table, albeit naked, embroid ering prayer kneeling cushions, cross-stitching tapestry cushions in the Berlin pattern, as his mother and aunts did back home, occasionally getting up to stir the soup he was making. Sometimes there was full sex, but it was perfectly conventional and soon done: he had a fiancée at home and missed her.
Afterwards he would call either Dionne, if it was Wednesday night with Beverley, or Beverley, if it was Wednesday night with Dionne, to come down with baby Alice and join him, decently clothed to eat the meal he had made. He liked to cook for them: his specialty was kawlata soup, made of cabbage and pork. Jesus loved London, where he could grow rich modernising its antiquated sex industry, but found the food execrable.
He liked to feel he was playing a part in helping the girls get an education: it was an investment: with his help they would end up as high-class call-girls, bound for the top escort agencies, rather than lapsing into the hard-eyed hookerdom which was the fate of so many lost girls with no family.
‘But why? Why?’ Beverley would ask. She found men strange. ‘Why? Why?’ was a refrain that echoed through her life. It was more in Dionne’s nature to answer questions than to ask them. She was forever offering unlikely solutions to imponderable questions.
‘Perhaps when he was a tiny little boy in Malta,’ said Dionne, ‘he would sit on the floor and wonder what his family looked like with no clothes on. Now he is in a strange land and has unlimited money he can find out. I think it’s rather sweet.’
Dionne was to fulfil Jesus’ prophecy and end up as the widow of a senior government minister in Paris. The nearest she got to playing Lady Macbeth was to pose in tableaux vivants like Nelson’s Emma Hamilton, striking classical attitudes based on Greek sculptures for the pleasure of important guests. No one thought the worse of her for any of it, any more than they did of Pamela Harriman in her time or Carla Bruni today. Dionne was content.
Dionne is old now, and arthritis has got her bones, but she has, as they say, her memories, and quite a lot of love letters from important people which she can, if necessary, sell.
Beverley at thirty
‘Now Bev,’ said Winter. ‘I think we are going to call you Rosa. Beverley is not the right name for you. It’s dismissive, throwaway, colonial. We are revolutionaries. We are calling you Rosa after Rosa Luxemburg – last night’s vote was unanimous. The same beautiful eyes, arched brows and springing hair over that high domed forehead. But why do you wear that dreary green shapeless sweater all the time? One of the comrades turned up last night in a topless dress. They’re not exactly topless, just come down in a V to the middle of the waist. Women need to do what they can to cheer the men up, as vice versa; we are gender equal. Who’s Rosa Luxemburg? Good Lord, Bev – Rosa – You are so ignorant. They didn’t seem to teach you much at that Holloway College of yours, but then it is a woman’s college. I expect they make it easier to get a first. I got a third deliberately. As Gramsci pointed out, the crisis in the educational process of differentiation and specialisation has taken place chaotically, without clear and precise principles, without a well-thought-out and consciously fixed plan, and the more one adds to the chaos the better. If your obvious firsts get thirds, and vice versa, that undermines the whole bourgeois educational conspiracy. Rosa Luxemburg was a socialist revolutionary who was murdered by the fascists in 1919.’
Winter Max – born 1928, christened Julian Waxmann Maidment, nicknamed at school (Harrow) Earglue – was a good-looking young man with a Zapata moustache, not too much brain and a swaggering air. Beverley loved him very much, quite a lot of the time. She found a picture of Rosa Luxemburg and saw a horse-faced woman with a sour gaze and was horrified. But world revolution was obviously a must and everyone she knew believed in it, and the men had agreed that marriage was incontestably a form of exclusive private property and as such was to be abhorred.
But Winter was prepared to marry her and formally adopt Alice in spite of his principles, which seldom seemed to apply to him but only to others, if she changed her name to Rosa and wore a topless dress to a meeting or two. So she did, and he was then proud to own her, and she vaguely proud to be owned.
She had a job as a secretary at University College London where the mummified body of Jeremy Bentham sat in a chair by the doorway, but even her degree would not get her any further than that. The savings had long ago run out and she remembered what Rita said: in the end you will have to marry t
o get a roof over your head.
Jesus had bought a house in Paris more suitable to his wealth and status, and the girls had been roofless once again. Dionne followed him to Paris; Beverley had Alice to think about and stayed in West London where the child was doing well at Holland Park Comprehensive. Here Alice was taught by Gramsciist ideologues who’d studied Fromm and Marcuse and saw a new way to the ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’ in things like teenage consumer culture. At any rate Alice had been a top-notch little gymnast until six months previously, when she was told that competition was a tool of capitalism, whereupon she had suddenly grown sultry-eyed and started buying lipsticks and refusing to wear tennis shoes.
It seemed to her mother that the spirit of competition, deprived of its natural sustenance, simply turned to acquisition instead. She tried to say as much to Joey Matthews the cell leader when the matter came up for discussion. Joey Matthews – born 1914, christened Josef Maybaum, later of Trinity College with Blunt and Burgess – sighed and said in his perfectly modulated voice: ‘The long march through the hegemony is very long and slow indeed, I fear. When it is feminised it becomes more a limp than a march,’ which Rosa took as a rebuke. She, a woman, was holding up the long march by quibbling with doctrine. He then quoted Adorno: ‘“Sport is the liberation of the body humiliated by economic interests, the return to the body of a part of the functions of which it has been deprived by industrial society,”’ and advised, ‘Wean the child off it, Rosa.’
Tell that to a ruptured hymen, thought Rosa, rudely, and quite went off Marxism for a bit, especially when Joey, who had been particularly charmed by the topless dress, came into the kitchen while she was making coffee for everyone, and made a pass at her with his trembling hand.