Female Friends

by Fay Weldon

  ‘She only visits Patrick in the hopes of getting in touch with her younger self,’ says Grace, ‘when she was altogether more hopeful of life. Doing his washing makes her feel she’s female. Well, what else is going to? She’s the only woman in the world he doesn’t fancy. It can’t be very nice for her, though God knows these days he smells rather rancid and his feet are beginning to rot.’

  Marjorie has her family, though. She acquires a set of homosexual friends. They cluster round her like a set of lost and earnest chickens: in the warmth of their chattering, clucking regard Marjorie acquires a kind of glow: the silence of her nights are punctured with gossip and laughter. They warm her little hands, admire her cleverness, bring her little gifts. Together, she and they make giggling, anxious excursions to junk and antique shops, collecting little goodies, little treasures, little bygones, bargains all. Forever, and how positive an act it is, rescuing what is good from what is past. Marjorie develops a visual taste: her bleak flat begins to be a place of interest. She talks knowledgeably about Victorian biscuit tins, Lalique and Tiffany. She learns how to cook coq-au-vin. and not just spaghetti bolognese. But presently her friends drift off as they have drifted in. The biscuit tins look rusty rather than quaint: she drops and breaks her best Lalique plate: she starts opening cans of baked beans again.

  ‘Nothing good lasts,’ she says sorrowfully to Chloe. ‘After they passed that Consenting Adults Bill, and they could go about together openly, they seemed to lose their need of me. We’d quarrel and bitch properly, not just camping it up. And I began to feel they were mocking me and using me; they’d always pretended to, of course, but now it was for real. It was as if their lives had become serious at last, instead of just the play-acting it had always had to be, and so I couldn’t be part of it any more. I’m glad for them, but sorry for me. I miss them. It was nice to have one’s lack of bosom an asset and not a liability.’

  As for Chloe, she grits her teeth and sticks to her marriage and children as a shoemaker to his last. The lives of the spiritually unmarried, and the spiritually childless, seem sad to her.

  This morning Chloe is woken up by the sound of laughter. It frightens her at first, until she realizes it is her own, and not that of some stranger in her bedroom.

  The sun shines through her window. It is another brilliant day. The winter has been short and mild—which is why, no doubt, the greenfly are so active so early in the year. If the climate is changing, thinks Chloe, should I remain the same?

  It is eight o’clock. Chloe should get up and supervise the baking of Oliver’s rolls. Françoise tends to forget them, and leave them in the oven too long, so they become dried out, and the crust a danger to Oliver’s increasingly brittle teeth. Chloe lies in her virtuous bed a little longer. Then, when the smell of burning bread fills the room with an almost tangible cloud, she rises in temper, puts on her dressing-gown and goes into the kitchen.

  Françoise, this morning, seems determined to deny her sex. She wears a white tee-shirt, faded jeans, and a pair of Inigo’s sneakers. Her ripe female form, unintimidated, bulges alarmingly beneath. She is breathless with nervous distress, and wishes to ingratiate herself with Chloe, who merely throws open the windows in clattering and ill-tempered reproach.

  Chloe Have you no sense of smell at all, Françoise?

  Françoise Please, do not upset me. I have scraped the rolls. Oliver will not notice.

  Chloe I am afraid he will.

  Françoise On such a morning such things are not important.

  Chloe You are mistaken. The morning is not important in the least, the rolls are. If you disbelieve me, take in Oliver’s breakfast yourself, today.

  Françoise You are cross when you should be loving. I want only to love and be loved. To be properly close to those I love most in the world. You and Oliver. And all your lovely family.

  Chloe You should not get too close to Inigo’s shoes, Françoise. He has chronic athlete’s foot.

  Françoise But I see I have upset you. I cannot forgive myself. I wanted only to make you happy. But your heart is closed to me. You believe that sex is for procreation. Therefore you can only conceive of it with the opposite sex. I disgust you. To you sex is something shameful. To me it is a sacrament; I grieve for you that you cannot share something so joyous with me.

  Chloe I can only assume you are not familiar with athlete’s foot, or you would not take it so lightly.

  Françoise dissolves into hiccoughing tears, which turn Chloe cold with anger and embarrassment. She feels the desire to hurt Françoise as much as possible. Is this what Oliver feels? Why Françoise’s breasts are black and blue? What pleasure there is in withholding affection, when it is both deserved and desperately needed.

  Françoise You are unkind to me. I want to go home. But there is even worse than here. I lived intimately with my best friend the confectioner. She swore she loved me: she hated men, she said. When she made a wedding cake, she would drive a pin through the heart of the sugar groom. But then she eloped with my fiancé: she accused me to him of being a lesbian and seducing her, and so he hated me and married her. But the truth was the other way round. Why must people play when they should be serious?

  Chloe Heaven knows.

  Françoise I want to go home, where I am taken seriously.

  Chloe I think Oliver takes you very seriously, Françoise. And I very much hope you will stay. I think you must, if only for the sake of literature. Only please will you try not to cry in front of the children? And will you now take Oliver’s breakfast in to him?

  But Françoise will not. Chloe goes. Chloe takes Oliver his breakfast tray, sits on the edge of the bed, and talks soothingly about crocuses, daffodils, and Inigo’s athlete’s foot.

  Oliver I am not mad, Chloe. There is no need to humour me. I am sorry about last night.

  Chloe Let us not talk about it. I am sure that what happens at night is nothing to do with our daily selves. I am sorry the rolls are burnt.

  Oliver Françoise, I suppose?

  Chloe Yes.

  Oliver That girl will have to go.

  Chloe No, no. She’s useful.

  And so Françoise is.

  Oliver Perhaps I really should abandon the novel, and go back to film scripts.

  Chloe Good heavens no. Not after all this.

  Oliver If only one could control what one responded to sexually! I promise you, Chloe, that if I could you would head the list. It would save a good deal of trouble and effort, and putting up with really rather stupid people because one can’t resist a hefty arse and heavy tits.

  Chloe It must be dreadful to be a man, and so helpless in the face of one’s own nature.

  Is she laughing at him? Yes, she is. Her victory is complete.

  She does not much enjoy her victory. Mirth cuts at the very roots of her life.

  fifty-five

  DURING THE MORNING THE telephone rings. It is Grace. And thus the conversation goes:

  Chloe I thought you were in France, Grace.

  Grace What, me? Topless beaches and dirty old men with cameras? You must be joking. I’m far too old to compete, anyway, in the beach girl stakes. Sebastian said so, and he should know, being Competition King himself in the Great Vulgar Life Game. Not that he’ll get there, of course, his plane’s going to fall out of the sky, thank God. We met a fortune teller at a party last night, and he said so, and he’s never wrong about anything. If Sebastian wants to defy fate that’s his business, I told him so at the time. Perhaps you’re not life’s Darling to the degree you think, I said. He didn’t like that. But then I threw the teapot and put myself in the wrong, sod it.

  Chloe Grace, is it wise to quarrel with Sebastian if he’s got all your money?

  Grace Quarrel? You call that a quarrel? I’ve been down to Out-Patients for stitches in my lip, and my ribs are black and blue. I don’t care about the money. Let him keep it. It was Christie’s anyway. Christie’s last mean revenge, so I’d always be pursued by fortune hunters who defined a fortune a
s 50p. I’m glad it’s all gone. I can earn, can’t I?

  Chloe I don’t know, Grace. You never have.

  Grace I must be mad, ringing you up. You’re so pompous and respectable. Such a wet blanket. How’s Oliver? Making you watch?

  Chloe Yes.

  Grace Wait till I tell Marjorie.

  Chloe I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said that.

  Grace Too late. Why do you stay so loyal to that monster? He outwore loyalty years ago. Did you know Marjorie’s mother is in hospital?

  Chloe No, I didn’t.

  Grace I rang Marjorie in the middle of the night when Sebastian was beating me up but she wasn’t the slightest use, her mother had had a heart attack and that was all she could think about. She’s in intensive care. She’s going to be all right, though. The fuss Marjorie made, you’d have thought she was dying.

  Chloe She’s very fond of her mother.

  Grace So was I fond of Sebastian. Chloe, I am really very upset. I can’t go on like this for ever. There has to be a kind of truth about one’s life, doesn’t there? And Chloe, do you know what today is?

  Chloe No.

  Grace Midge has been dead for five years.

  Chloe So?

  Grace Do you think it was my fault?

  Chloe Yes.

  Grace I knew it. It’s why you’re so dreadful to me so much of the time. You don’t blame Patrick?

  Chloe No. Not any more. You can’t hold men responsible for their actions.

  Grace I suppose not. They follow their pricks like donkeys allegedly follow carrots. Though I’ve never seen it myself. Well, that’s all over now. I’m going down to the hospital to be with Marjorie. Will you come?

  Chloe Does she want me to?

  Grace If you’re going to be someone’s friend, you have to intrude your friendship sometimes.

  Chloe Really?

  Grace Yes. Give my love to Stanhope, Chloe, you stealer of other people’s children.

  Grace rings off. The phone goes almost immediately. This time it is Marjorie.

  Marjorie Chloe, it’s mother.

  Chloe Yes I know. Grace told me. How is she?

  Marjorie Bad news, I’m afraid. It was malignant.

  Chloe I don’t understand. Grace said it was a heart attack.

  Marjorie Grace gets everything wrong. It was a brain tumour. She might have had it for years, they said. The surgeon asked if she ever acted strangely. What’s normal, I wanted to know, but he couldn’t tell me. Anyway they’ve taken away what they can, and she’s sitting up in bed with her head shaven and a great knitted scar on her temple, plucking her eyebrows. Is that strange or normal?

  Chloe It sounds quite lively, Marjorie. And not as if she’s in pain. Do you want me to come down? Grace said she was going to.

  Marjorie Oh my God! Did she? Well, she might as well. And she did know mother, and so did you. Come this evening. I hate hospitals. I’m a perfectly competent person until I smell those corridors, then I go to pieces. They won’t say anything. You’re always asking the wrong person, anyway. I said is she going to die, and all they said was we’re all dying, and she is an old lady. What do they mean? Poor little mother. She was always so brave, and everything was so dreadful for her, but she’d always wring some sort of goodness out of the bad.

  It doesn’t sound at all like Helen to Chloe, but she says nothing. Poor Helen, she tries to think, but all she remembers is Helen’s disparagement, all those years ago, of her social standing. Little Chloe, the barmaid’s daughter. All those years! Has Chloe really borne this grudge for so long? Yes. Chloe has. It is not Helen’s treatment of Marjorie which causes Chloe’s animosity towards this poor, defeated, bandaged old soul, but this harboured, treasured slight.

  Marjorie She’s changed. I don’t know whether it’s sanity or madness, that’s the trouble, but she’s being so nice to me. She calls me my little girl, so proudly. She’s never said anything like that to me before. And she takes my hand and pats it. You know how she usually hates touching anyone.

  Chloe I expect it’s sanity, Marjorie.

  Marjorie But the nurse said ‘they’re often like this after brain ops.’ I can’t stand it, Chloe.

  Chloe You have to stand it, Marjorie. You have no option.

  Marjorie I could bring the cameras in, I suppose, and deal with it that way, through a lens darkly.

  Chloe But you won’t. Not this time.

  Marjorie No. Thank you, Chloe.

  Marjorie rings off.

  Chloe does the ironing. She does not trust Françoise to do it with proper reverence—to take the time and trouble to get the corners of the shirt collars smooth, and the gathers of sleeves uncreased. Besides, Chloe enjoys ironing. She likes the smell of damp linen and hot iron; the dangerous sniff of scorching in the air, the growing pile of ordered neatness. Her hands move deftly and calmly.

  So Gwyneth, Chloe’s mother, damped and ironed in her day, with little Chloe watching, her nose peering about the ironing board.

  So, while Gwyneth ironed, did Mr Leacock watch entranced, and stand behind her and put his arm around her waist, so that her hand first faltered, and then safely setting the iron on its end, leaned back against his male chest, her body folding gently against his, her head turning so her cheek rested against his shoulder, in a gesture of female submission—which, if the truth were known, and it never was made clear to Gwyneth, endeared her to him even more than her profitability to him and his wife (who never in all her born days rested her head in weakness anywhere). Let us not suppose Mr Leacock’s romantic imagination was any less involved in Gwyneth, his employee, than hers was in him, her employer. The pity of it lay in the ending of the tale, not the beginning.

  But let us perhaps be thankful that Imogen’s nose does not peer above Chloe’s ironing board. She is with the boys in the garden shed constructing a glider out of balsa wood, which is doomed never to fly.

  Oliver works in his study.

  Françoise plods about the kitchen, setting it to rights.

  In the afternoon the phone rings. It is Grace.

  Grace Chloe, can I speak to Stanhope.

  Chloe (Suspicious) What about?

  Grace I’m very upset, Chloe. Please don’t argue, just go and get Stanhope. He is my son.

  Chloe What are you upset about?

  Grace Everything. I’ve got no money and no boyfriend and you tell me I’m a murderess, and I feel extremely old, and I’ve been to see Marjorie’s mother in hospital—I must be mad—and that was a nightmare.

  Chloe Why?

  Grace That’s how I’m going to end, I’m sure of it. Sitting up in bed with a shaved head and a bloody bandage, thinking I’m twenty and asking the nurse to take the baby away, it’s too ugly. I’ve been dreadful to Stanhope, haven’t I? Like Helen was to Marjorie.

  Chloe How’s Marjorie taking it?

  Grace It’s all very embarrassing. And Sebastian’s plane landed safely after all so I might as well have gone. Please let me talk to Stanhope, Chloe.

  Chloe What do you want to say to him? He’s very busy. He’s watching football on telly.

  Grace You’re being very wicked, Chloe. You’re trying to separate us.

  Chloe acknowledges the truth of Grace’s accusation. It puts her at a disadvantage. It is Chloe’s fatal weakness, her moral Achilles Heel. She ingratiates herself with other women’s children, providing them with better biscuits, better treats, better bed-times, and a kindlier and more rational atmosphere than any natural mother, even in the very best of circumstances, could provide.

  The natural mother is ambivalent towards the child. The unnatural one behaves much better.

  Grace Bring Stanhope to the phone, Chloe. Or I’ll only write and say I rang and you wouldn’t let him speak to me, and he’ll never forgive you and neither will I.

  Chloe fetches Stanhope from the television.

  Chloe I’m sorry, Stanhope. It’s your mother.

  Stanhope I thought she was in France.

  Chloe Sh
e changed her mind.

  Stanhope Wack-oh.

  He takes the receiver.

  Grace Stanhope, I don’t like to think of you staring at television all the time. You’ll get square eyes. Why don’t you play football instead of watching it?

  Stanhope I’m tired.

  Grace Stanhope, perhaps you’d better come and live with me as soon as I’m settled. Say the rain in Spain stays mainly on the plain.

  Stanhope (Baffled) What?

  Grace And you might as well go to a Comprehensive, come to that, for all the good that other place does for you. Stanhope darling, there’s something I have to tell you. How old are you, dear?

  Stanhope Twelve.

  Grace Well, that’s quite old enough. You know the facts of life and so on. Now listen. Are you listening?

  Stanhope Yes.

  Grace Your father was not that other husband of mine, the air-pilot, but a very important and talented portrait painter called Patrick Bates.

  Stanhope But that’s Kev and Kes’s father. Only they never see him. He’s mad.

  Grace He isn’t mad, he’s very talented. If I were you I’d be proud of having such a famous father instead of finding fault instantly. Chloe will tell you all about it, she’s good at explaining that kind of thing. Can I have her back now, darling?

  Stanhope hands the phone over, and fidgets beside Chloe.

  Grace I told him about Patrick, Chloe. You always said I should. And Stephen’s always going on about being honest with children. Come to think of it, Stephen is Stanhope’s brother as well as his uncle. Isn’t life extraordinary. I’m glad I’ve told Stanhope. It’s a weight off my mind. Supposing I died, or something, and someone else had to tell him? You’ll have to tell Imogen some time, too, won’t you? You shouldn’t put it off, Chloe.

  Chloe puts the phone down, and cuts Grace off.

  Stanhope She says I can go and live with her in London and go to a Comprehensive. Do I have to?

  Chloe I shouldn’t think so.

  Stanhope Is she a little bit mad?

  Chloe I don’t know, Stanhope. I think she’s rather upset.