by Fay Weldon
I’d started by rather loathing the Manor House, when we first moved in. Barley didn’t consult me before he bought it. It seemed so pretentious, so large, a challenge to the Official Receiver – but I grew to love it for its redbrick ungainliness. I knew every creepy-crawly corner of it, and had shoved my dustpan and brush along every dusty front and back stair. I knew its temperament and its habits, and that the attic stairs were haunted, and you could hear a drumming noise that shouldn’t be there on Friday nights, and if you went up to find out why you’d feel a nasty chill and hear voices of people who weren’t there, sometimes weeping, sometimes laughing. Other days of the week it would be okay. It never bothered me, but Carmichael would wake when he was little, and complain of a woman in white standing at the end of the bed.
And now Doris Dubois has my home and my husband to do what she wants to with them, and sleeps in the room which Barley and I once called our own. But I hear from Ross – I met him in the McDonald’s next to the Health Club – that the ceiling fell down on them and they’ve had to flee to Claridges. She’ll like that: it’s nearer the shops. Ross is trying to lose weight. Doris makes him stand on scales every Friday while he collects his pay. I give him diuretic tablets – they sometimes help.
I had thought that by the time I was in my fifties I would not be suddenly confronted by shocked older people while naked in a doubtful bed, that I would always be able to get to a washbasin to clean my teeth, that jailbird friends would not turn up to call in favours. I was wrong. In youth the convulsions of fate, fortune and love come at short intervals: as one grows older the stretches of non-event are longer, but the convulsions are more extreme, and come as tidal waves in a calm sea, rather than as little peaks of fluff and foam in choppy water. That is all that happens. Nothing changes.
What I am trying not to think about is that Doris has summoned Walter to her apartment in Notting Hill and he has gone, sketchpad under his arm, laughing at my fears. It is a worse roller coaster than any I can remember with Barley, my heart is now in my mouth, now in my boots, now banging away in my chest, I am sick to my stomach. I am an old woman, she is a young one. How can I compete? This bridge, this gleaming arrow of desire, like the one that runs between Tate Modern and St Paul’s, joining the present to the past, is in danger of setting up such a resonance of harmonics it will twist and torment itself to death.
25
Grace McNab, once Grace Salt, perhaps one day to be Grace Wells – see how down and down in the alphabet she has gone in her life – was sitting in the Harley Street waiting room of Dr Chandri the cosmetic surgeon when Lady Juliet Random came in. Grace had the five o’clock appointment, Lady Juliet the five thirty.
The waiting room was very dull: a big round table in the middle, with neat unread piles of Country Life and some stiff upright chairs pulled up to it. There was plumbing that showed. On the walls were before-and-after photographs of women – once with odd noses, and chins, and saggy eyes and fat-humpy backs, but now all looking at least ordinary, if not startlingly beautiful. The place smelt of old-fashioned chloroform and ether. Chandri was running late. It was already five twenty-five, according to the ornate ebony clock with its carved wounded stags and baying dogs which stood on the marble fireplace. If Walter Wells had been on time he would already have been with Doris Dubois for twenty-five minutes.
Harry Bountiful would let Grace know whether or not he had been on time, and the nature of what was said at the meeting. Grace felt ashamed of having been in touch with the private detective again, but jealousy drove her to it, just as jealousy had driven her to try to mow Doris down. Nothing was made better, but if you were a person ravaged by self-doubt, it was less painful to know than to guess. What you imagined was usually worse than what happened. In someone like Doris, whose self-esteem was sky high, it would be the other way round. Unpalatable truths would come as a surprise, not as a confirmation of worst fears. Harry Bountiful had not got round to taking the bugs out of Doris’s apartment, although Grace had stopped his retainer when Doris and Barley got married. What was the point? Barley would not come back. If Barley had found out she had eavesdropped on his life, he would have laughed. She did not want Walter to find out. He would not take it well.
‘My dear Grace,’ said Lady Juliet, ‘how wonderful to see you. What are you having done? I want my nose looked at. It’s much too large, as I realise whenever I look at that wonderful portrait your young Walter painted. How is all that going? You look completely glorious. Personally I think it’s the sex that does it, especially all that oral sex at the beginning. Nothing like it for the complexion.’
‘Walter is painting Doris Dubois’ portrait,’ said Grace, bleakly. ‘She made him.’
‘Doris does rather make people do things,’ Lady Juliet agreed. ‘I’m sure Barley never really wanted to leave you: it was just unlucky that of all people he should run into her. Like treading on a scorpion in one’s shoe: no-one’s fault, but there you are, stung and screaming. Only this morning she had the nerve to call me up and try to buy my Bulgari necklace from me, the one Ronald gave me when our son was born. As if the whole thing was about money. And no doubt poor Barley’s expected to pay. I explained it was the best part of a million, it wasn’t one of their everyday ready-made pieces at a tenth of the price, and even that didn’t put her off. I gave her short shrift, you’ll be glad to hear. Poor Barley, I have the feeling he may be in for a bit of trouble soon; he really shouldn’t be spending the way she makes him. The Manor House was always a fairly beastly place but I believe it’s a real nightmare now. All you can do with those old places is fill them with chintz, put in a new kitchen, stick to a couple of rooms and put up with being cosy not smart.’
‘What sort of trouble?’ asked Grace. ‘Not the Opera Noughtie? Poor Barley!’ She was on his side and anxious for him: it was quite automatic.
‘Just a whisper in the wind,’ said Lady Juliet. ‘But I should sell that flat of yours while the alimony’s up and running and put the money where Barley can’t get at it. I love him dearly but you know what he’s like.’
‘Yes, I do,’ said Grace, and then Dr Chandri appeared, all charisma and glow and soft eyes, and it was her turn to go in the consulting room. Lady Juliet beamed and said she had all the time in the world to spare, no-one was to hurry on her account, and opened a Country Life to show she meant it.
Chandri – he liked his patients to call him simply Chandri – was a sculptor as well as a surgeon. Stone artworks of lovely ladies, as he described them in his brochure, stood here and there about the consulting room, with their gallery labels still on them – Tokyo, Ontario, New York, Berlin – women rendered into massive, shiny granite. But he liked to work with the living body best of all. To join with another in the search for beauty was a wonderful thing. God had given him the gift of loveliness – and he was indeed good-looking, in a plumply soulful, olive skinned, Hare Krishna, mesmerising kind of way and also the longing to share it. He had Grace’s file open in front of him.
‘Do I have this wrong? Mrs Salt’s daughter, perhaps?’ ‘I am Mrs Salt, though now I am known as Grace McNab.’ He had pictures of her, full face and profile, taken when she had been to see him last. ‘So you didn’t trust me! You chose another surgeon. He did a good job, whoever he was.’ He was generous. He could afford to be.
‘I didn’t see anyone else,’ said Grace, ‘I just decided not to go ahead.’
‘There is no letter to that effect in the file. You broke the appointment.’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Grace. She had forgotten that. ‘I was in rather a state at the time.’
So she had been. It was in the month after Barley had told her he was going. Helen the cleaner, discovering her weeping in the bed, had told her she wasn’t surprised, that she’d let herself go, told her to go on a diet and have her face done, her eyes opened, her chin lifted, buy some decent clothes, and fight back. While her sister Emily – still just about talking to her at the time, but that was before the trial and t
he sentence had told her not to trivialise herself, and how well rid she was of Barley. Helen had won, Grace had consulted Chandri, and then other eventualities had come to pass. In prison you could just about get out to have your teeth fixed if you had toothache, forget cosmetic surgery.
‘It’s hard to believe this person in front of me and the person in the photographs is the same person,’ said Chandri. ‘Your eyes are twice the size, the skin is taut of its own accord, the neck is smooth.’
He seemed put out. He felt behind her ears for scars and there were none. His voice rose to a high pitch. The olive skin became quite red and dark as blood suffused it. He accused Grace of being a journalist trying to catch him out, of being a terrorist feminist, an anti cosmetic surgery hysteric. They had paid her to come along, posing as her mother, to see if he noticed. He looked round for hidden cameras and tape recorders. He demanded to see in her bag. Grace opened it, obligingly. There was nothing electronic in it, only tissues and lipsticks and post-its and keys and pens, credit cards and old receipts, as in any innocent person’s bag.
‘Other people recognise me,’ she said, reasonably. ‘Lady Juliet Random knows me well. She’s outside in the waiting room. Shall we ask her in?’
But Chandri would have none of that. He did not want Lady Juliet, an excellent client, exposed to this unpleasantness.
‘I was unhappy at the time, and I am happy now,’ said Grace, firmly. ‘That’s all it is.’ And as she said it, she knew it to be true. The misery of the past was trying to seep through into the present and destroy it. She was being obsessive and unreasonable: Walter could very well paint Doris Dubois and not be seduced by her, not even like her one bit. Harry Bountiful would have nothing to report: she should not have sent him in, she should not have doubted Walter: she should trust to love and leave it at that. Grace wanted to find Walter and tell him she was sorry. She wanted to leave this madman’s consulting room at once: only good manners prevented her from rising there and then. The fewer manners the surgeon had, the more she would have. She was cross with herself: she had sought out Chandri in panic and desperation, hoping for a transformation, longing for youth, believing this was the way to keep Walter. But she was in no danger of losing Walter anyway. Even thinking that a face-lift would draw Barley back to her had made more sense. Barley put a premium on youth: Walter did not.
‘I am in love,’ she said soothingly. ‘That changes people.’ The statement seemed to calm the surgeon. His face returned to its proper colour: his voice fell to its normal level of serenity, calculated to inspire trust.
‘Love,’ he said. ‘Ah, love.’
He took her into his surgery, a small white room full of mysterious electronic equipment and there, with the help of his pretty nurse, scanned and measured and photographed her face from this angle and that. He fed details into a computer. He printed out a computer image. He seemed pleased with himself.
‘This process is usually done in reverse,’ he said. ‘But I am such a master of technology the computer holds no terrors for me. I have taken your current face and aged it by twenty years,’ he said, ‘and it turns into the photographs of you I have on file, taken two years ago. See for yourself.’
Grace obligingly studied the photographs. There seemed very little difference to her between one set of images and the other. You grew so familiar with your own face in the mirror, it was hard to distinguish between what you saw today and what you’d seen in the past, what was recollection and what was happening now.
‘You mean I’m growing younger not older?’ she asked.
‘That would be a miracle,’ said Chandri, and his voice faltered, but he went on bravely. ‘And here in the West miracles do not happen.’ He was hurrying her out of the door. ‘Let me just say you do not need my services. I am known to be a man of integrity and cannot take money on false pretences. Should you change your mind and let me know the name of the surgeon who operated, I would not charge you for this appointment. To do all this and leave no scar – there was no talk of gene therapy?’
‘None,’ said Grace. What was the point of argument? Chandri did well enough by Lady Juliet but she would not trust her own face to him, and was glad she had not done so in the past. The man was an hysteric.
Grace dismissed the episode from her mind and hurried home to see if Walter was back, but he was not.
26
Ross met Harry Bountiful at the Juice Bar of the Health Club. Grace had recommended the place, and its excellent swimming pool, to both men. They sat on adjoining stools and fell into conversation over red grape juice, last orders before the place closed. The stools were high, hard and narrow, and Ross’s backside flowed uncomfortably around his, but Harry managed well enough. He had the leanness of Humphrey Bogart, and quite looked like him too. Of all available juices, both agreed, red grape was the most like wine, and gave the illusion of some kind of nourishment. Ross explained he was on a diet imposed by his boss’s new wife. Harry said sod that for a laugh he wouldn’t put up with it, he’d hand in his notice; Ross said he was sorely tempted but felt too sorry for his boss to leave him.
Harry said he was trying to give up smoking because in his kind of work it was important to be able to leave a room quickly and cleanly and not leave a lingering smell of tobacco in the air. A client had told him that swimming helped kick the habit. Both men complained about the smell of chlorine which pervaded the bar, and which no amount of joss sticks could disguise, and went off to have a proper drink and a bar snack. After a couple of beers each, Harry bought a pack of cigarettes and Ross ordered a bar snack of fish, chips and peas.
It was a gay pub, and noisy, so the two heterosexual men skulked in a dark corner, tried not to draw attention to themselves, and leaned together so they could hear one another speak.
Ross let it be known that his boss’s new wife was Doris Dubois and Harry nearly fell off his chair. He said he’d spent that very evening listening to Doris Dubois in conversation and otherwise with an artist called Walter Wells. He had the tape in his pocket.
‘Walter Wells!’ said Ross. ‘But that’s the young guy Grace Salt moved in with.’
‘That’s right,’ said Harry. ‘She’s my client.’ And they marvelled at the coincidence that had brought them together, which of course was no coincidence at all.
‘Well that puts me in a quandary,’ said Ross. ‘Do I tell Barley Salt that his new wife’s having it off with this Walter Wells or not?’
He scraped up the last of his peas, rolling them first in the remnants of his tartare sauce; there was an agreeable greeny-golden swirl at the bottom of his plate: food is such a richness of delights. It is hard to give up.
‘I don’t know yet what went on,’ said Harry. ‘Because I haven’t listened to the tape. Grace didn’t want me to.’ She’d told him to leave it with the porter at the Tavington Road flats. He felt for it in his pocket. Yes, still there, safe. ‘But since Doris asked him round to her Shepherd’s Bush apartment, and they were snuck up in there alone, I guess something did. Grace certainly thinks so or she wouldn’t have sent me round.’
‘Doris was meant to be selling that flat,’ said Ross. ‘Poor old bugger Barley believes she is, anyway. Here I am, balanced on the horns of a dilemma which doesn’t come easily to a man of my comfortable build. Tell? Or not to tell? He gives me the push, as bearer of bad news. Or she does, for not just not losing weight, but putting it on.’
‘That’s what happens,’ said Harry, ‘when you make a man do what he doesn’t want to do. My wife left me because I wouldn’t give up smoking. Told me I was giving the kids asthma. It was her being over-clean about the house which gave them asthma. Kids can do with a peck of dirt and a whiff of the old nicotine to sharpen up their lungs. The worry of it all turned me from a two pack a day guy to a four. Now I have to give up because of the job.’ He coughed into his beer. Both men were in their fifties. It is hard to adapt to the new age, for some. They did try, down the health club, swimming and drinking, but the hedonism of th
e world as it used to be kept calling them back with its siren song.
‘Tell you what,’ said Ross, ‘let’s have a listen to that tape.’
They went back to Harry’s place and listened. Since Harry’s wife had left six months back he had not vacuumed a floor or washed dishes in any determined way. He kept budgerigars in a cage in the living room, which added to the musty smell. But it was cosy and womb like; they settled down with their cans of beer and crisps.
27
The tape was activated at 4.25 p.m. Microphones picked up noises around Doris’s flat: the sound of a kettle, the sound of Doris undressing and showering, then the sound of a cat meowing; Doris’s voice, accompanied by scuffling and what seemed to be a naked chase round the room; the noise of the shower coming and going.
‘You beastly thing, how did you get in. You don’t live here any more. Get out!’
The sound of china breaking.
‘Now see what you’ve made me do! Oh, poor pussy, did I hurt you? Yuk, is that blood? I didn’t know cats bled. No, you’re just making a stupid fuss. There’s nothing wrong with your paw or you wouldn’t be purring. You belong next door. You’re nothing to do with me any more. I paid her to take you in. I should have taken you to the vet and got you put down. You’ve no business barging in here and making me feel bad. I’m not a cat person, I told you from the beginning. Now get out, get out, get out before I take you to the vet!’ A whimper as the cat goes out the door, then a few tears from Doris.
‘What could I do? Barley hates cats. I hate Barley.’ The shower finally gets turned off: Country and Western on the radio. Doris sings along to D.I.V.O.R.C.E..
The phone rings. The music goes off.
‘Oh it’s you, Flora. What do you want? Why are you calling me here? Can’t you keep it to office hours? … No, it’s not a mistake. The show doesn’t need you any more. Yes, three months in lieu of notice. It’s perfectly standard. Who wants disgruntled employees hanging round a TV show -? You are only on a temporary contract: all my researchers are … no, signing these bits of paper, or in your case not signing these bits of paper, isn’t a formality, it’s dire reality, darling … Let’s just say, kindly – you’re not cut out to be a TV researcher … I have nothing more to say on the subject. Yes, of course it’s been through the proper channels. Yes, of course Alain knows: he’s Head of Department. He notified Personnel. Just go away. Flora … I do not believe these tears.’