by Fay Weldon
“What about it?” asked Marco.
“I’m going to buy it,” said Angie. “I’m going into films.”
“Oh yes,” said Marco. “And what will you do for an encore?”
“Just shut up,” said Angie, “and tell me the name of the priest who was hanging around. I’ve forgotten.”
“You take too much stuff,” said Marco. “It plays hell with the memory. And while we’re on the subject, Angie, we could have done without all that nursery palace shit. Our street credibility is shot to hell, thanks to you. It’s why we only got to twenty-four. His name is Father McCrombie, and he’s an ex-priest, not a priest, and there’s been nothing but trouble since we made the farting video. So watch it. And in the meantime, don’t call us, we’ll call you.”
Who wants you anyway? thought Angie, putting the receiver down. Little boys with acne. Took three of them to make one of Clifford. And where was Clifford?
In the meantime, Father McCrombie sniffed the damp air around the chapel and scented something exciting in the air, something on its way. He had a nose for these things. He rubbed his fat, thick, trembling hands together, and waited. Father McCrombie had once been a good man, and a good man gone to the bad is rottener to the core than an ordinary man merely touched by sin and bruised.
Let me tell you about Father McCrombie. He started life as a bright schoolboy with a pious nature from a good Scottish Protestant home. His father was a builder. He joined the RAF; he was a Battle of Britain pilot; he won the Distinguished Flying Cross; he helped save his country. Alone in the great silent sky, waiting for the bang and crash of battle, he would talk to God. He talked also to young Lord Sebastian Lamptonborough (the country, in its extremis, had become quite democratic in its habits: there was much interclass chatting) who, though brave, was not good. When demobilized, Michael McCrombie took holy orders. He looked for a wife (a clergyman must have a wife) but found he was by nature celibate, and presently was taken into the Catholic Church, and given a parish in Northern Ireland. In those days he did not drink or smoke. He worshipped God sincerely and kept the Pope’s laws and encouraged his flock to do the same. He was sober and he was loved. But Father McCrombie had one flaw. He was, to put it frankly, a snob. He liked a title; admired wealth; was flattered by the company of the famous, assumed it would be easier for a cultured man to reach the Kingdom of Heaven than a yobbo. This was not Jesus’s view. Now you may see snobbery as a small failing in a man (or woman). I see it as one of the Deadly Sins. It is envy. It works away from within, destroying goodness. It certainly ruined Father McCrombie. When Lord Sebastian Lamptonborough, scion of one of those wealthy High Catholic families who have had the ear of cardinals for centuries and who could get their indissoluble marriages dissolved at the drop of a papal hat, wrote to him and asked him to come and minister to the Lamptonboroughs, hear their confessions, mediate between them and their God, he accepted at once. He left his flock mid-crisis-of-faith, mid-pregnancy, mid-catechism and was off to England, fine claret, a charming chapel, beautiful ladies and drunken lords with drastic habits.
Christabel Lamptonborough, a pale and lovely eighteen, would kneel before him in the confessional and tell him her heart’s and her body’s desires. Father McCrombie wrestled with her soul. He never heard her giggles as she left, or if he did, he shut his ears to them. He lit tall white candles in the chapel and prayed for her immortal soul, and thought once he saw our Lord, standing in the light which slanted through gothic windows, elongated, his thin robed body reaching up to heaven—or was that something Christabel had dropped into the sacramental wine? Christabel thought Michael McCrombie was handsome and forbidden. She thought she’d have him. She did. She fell soon after from her horse and broke her back. Her soul was on his conscience: not to mention his own. But at least he worried. Sebastian was taking LSD. He liked to have Father McCrombie as the good friend who would accompany him on his trip to heaven (or hell) and see him safely back into the world of ordinary perception. But of course Father McCrombie was no longer good. Now LSD is funny stuff: mostly it just stuns and dazes and blanks out numerous brain cells, but it can turn people into their opposites, while keeping them somehow within their accustomed framework. I have known it to turn critics into writers, civil servants into claimants, income-tax inspectors into tax accountants, policemen into criminals, bank managers into debtors, and vice versa. This one bad trip turned Sebastian from a man who cared about the past, and his inheritance, into a man who despised it. Thereafter, if a tile blew off the roof of Lamptonborough House he took no notice. A tile fell into the conservatory and he ignored it. Stairs rotted and gates fell off hinges.
“Tear it all down,” he’d say. “Put up a housing estate!”
Christabel died while Sebastian was on trip number seventeen. Father McCrombie—who would have been defrocked and excommunicated by now, had the inquiring Cardinal not suffered a heart attack on his way back to report and the matter gotten lost in the Archbishop’s files—overwhelmed by grief and guilt and the knowledge that his prayers could hardly help her out of purgatory, took acid himself. After that Sebastian claimed the house was haunted; he thought, of course, by Christabel, but I think by Father McCrombie’s good self. Now Sebastian lived in Monte Carlo, and gambled away what was left of his inheritance, and the house crumbled and Father McCrombie drank, and lit black candles in the chapel where once he had lit white. And when a pop group turned up to make a video called Satan’s Tits, he was not in the least surprised.
He’d just wait to see what happened next.
And where, in the meantime, was Clifford?
A NEW WORLD
READER, WHILE FATHER MCCROMBIE glowers and rots, and waits in his haunted wood, and Angie plots, let us look at our cast of characters and see how the new world of the eighties is treating them. The glittery kaleidoscope that is the Art World had ground on a turn or two (you know that rough, difficult sound of scraping glass?) and stuck, shimmering and deceptive, at a point where for once John Lally was at an advantage. Already fairly well established (thanks to Clifford) and a familiar name in the art journals, his vast paintings (Clifford was right: alter the gestalt and you alter the paintings; marriage to Marjorie had released something, shifted his sense of scale) were now in great demand. Their tenor suited the times, which I’m afraid is no particular compliment. Half abstract, half surrealist, they suited the wealthy, uninformed buyer. Looking—to be crude—both arty and plotty, the paintings cast cultural credit on their purchaser and gave him something to talk about at dinner. And the wealthy, uninformed buyer was everywhere these days, begging to be relieved of money which would otherwise go into taxes, and desperate to find someone reliable to inform him.
Clifford managed to be art consultant to a whole handful of the new spectacular private galleries which in Europe and the States were springing up under private patronage, at the behest of big business; not to mention a vast clutch of art-buying multi-millionaires. All were competing for reputable canvases to cover their architect-designed walls. Reputable canvases, that is, which would not lose value. Clifford it was who decided on the “reputable,” juggling his duties to himself, his clients, and Leonardo’s. In the current climate, Leonardo’s—as well as national galleries throughout Europe—was having a bad time. Getty, to name but one, could outbuy anyone, even governments. And governments everywhere seemed more interested in funding Defense than Art.
But John Lally, for once, was happy enough. He could command such high prices for each canvas he currently covered with paint that he scarcely cared about the fate of his early works. Indeed, he looked at them and despised them. So much angst, doom and gloom—where had it all come from? He no longer had to brood about the unfairness of the sell-on-at-a-profit system for works of art, which so ignored the rights and involvement of the artist. Now that the original price was so high it was easy enough to see it as a once-and-for-all buy-out. If Ottoline’s and Leonardo’s turned out to be the same organization, what did it matter? His pai
ntings were now so large he could hardly do more than two a year anyway, let alone three. He had wanted money not because he was greedy, but to be free of financial anxiety; so he could buy as much flake-white as he wanted, and more. Now he could paint when and what he wanted—for wasn’t he financially secure? Rich, even?
If John Lally scarcely knew anymore what it was he wanted to paint, he hid the knowledge from himself. He painted what would sell—well, perhaps that was coincidental, or perhaps that was what he’d always wanted. Who was to say? What money, comfort, a happy marriage and a young son can do for a man.
He had a large studio custom-built at the end of the garden at Applecore Cottage, disregarding the pleas of neighbors. It was his pleasure, and their punishment. It was a very tall building; it had to be, to house the new canvases. City-planning permission had been a problem at first, but he’d simply given a painting—an early one—to the Town Hall and the difficulties had melted away.
And Helen? I wish I could report that she at least was happy and content. She should have been. She deserved to be. She was, after all, free of a philandering husband; she was independent, and successful. She had recovered, or so she thought as the years passed and Clifford and Angie were long married, from the shock and pain of the divorce. And did not everyone agree this time around that Clifford was most definitely the guilty party, whatever the law said, and herself blameless? And weren’t the twins the image of their father, no matter what Clifford had to say about that? Did she not have three children to keep her busy (as if she weren’t busy enough already) and fill her house with gentle, sleeping, nourishing breath at night? Did she not have friends and admirers aplenty? Had not the world changed around her, so that a woman alone was not pitied, but (by some, anyway) envied?
And as for House of Lally—well! What a runaway success!
Young Royalty, not to mention anyone who was anyone, simply adored her designs. Clothes by Lally had a color, a richness, a softness and quality of fabric which made them sensuous rather than flashy, honorable rather than vulgar, as sometimes the most expensive clothes can be. The fashion story of the century, according to the press! As soon as the Lally label appeared on a rack—no matter how expensive, how exclusive—it was snapped up within minutes. Even John Lally had to grudgingly admit the fabrics were okay, the designs passable, whilst disapproving of the kind of person who bought them. He still had no time for the idle rich, which was sensible enough, when you consider Angie. Though, mind you, Angie’s trouble, or ours with her, may have been that she was not idle enough. If only she’d just lain back and enjoyed her wealth and her butler, and not been forever poking and prying and stirring things up—
But no one could accuse Helen, these days, or Clifford, of being idle. Leonardo’s troubles kept Clifford busy, at any rate in such times as he had free from his other clients to devote to them.
STIRRINGS
AS FOR NELL—WELL, guess who comes to visit Nell one day, but Polly! Polly’s lost a stone or two. Polly looks ever so smart in a navy two-piece suit. Her face is made-up, her hair bobbed. She looks, and is, a successful businesswoman. While in Holloway she had the benefit of a psychotherapist who has changed her life (Polly says). Clive will be out soon and Polly won’t be waiting for him. Polly is off drugs and now runs a Health and Beauty clinic outside London.
“You can’t stay here!” says Polly, looking around the gloomy bungalow which is the Kildare’s household, the wire compounds outside, the overhanging Welsh hills; the whimper and howl and barks of dogs forever in the ears; the smell of disinfectant and animal mixed.
“I rather like it,” says Nell. “They’ve been ever so good to me.”
“Hmm,” says Polly, setting up a seed of doubt in Nell’s mind, which was to grow and grow.
“What about boys?” asks Polly. Well, that’s the important question.
“There’s someone called Dai Evans,” says Nell, blushing. Now Dai Evans, as we know, keeps well clear of Nell; he’s a nice lad and knows when he’s out of his class, which is more than Nell does. If you live in the Welsh hills, doing A levels, helping out in the kennels, teenage culture passes you by and you have very little sense of your own capacity to attract. But sometimes he meets her for coffee in the little cafe behind the Ruellyn fish and chip shop and that makes Nell’s week.
“That’s nice,” says Polly, and so, if you ask me, it is.
Nell is in love, turning the emotion over in her mind, freely, testing it out—it is, for Nell, almost a theoretical matter. Pain and joy are mixed; sex has not yet entered into the equation. She fights off other boys, instinctively.
“Still drawing?” asks Polly.
“I’m into fabrics more,” says Nell. And so she is, to her Art Teacher’s despair. Art A level is a funny subject—you don’t pass it by doing your own thing or developing your own taste. “You know there’s a special kind of tree lichen with ever so pretty fluted edges which makes such a lovely yellowy dye you can’t imagine?” Nell’s teacher did not want to hear it.
“I hope you’re having no trouble with him?” asks Polly, meaning Mr. Kildare, whom she’s never liked.
“Trouble? What do you mean?” asks Nell, and indeed, Mr. Kildare, to his credit, has managed to keep his feelings about Nell under control. Or perhaps he’s just waiting until the kennel profits have topped the £100,000 mark, when he can afford to buy a piece of land he’s got his eye on, where he could abandon dogs and go into horses. There’s more money in horses. He has this idea of starting life all over again, with someone more suited to him than his wife. They’ve really stayed together because of Brenda—or so he sees it—though he’s never said as much to Mrs. Kildare. But all that’s another story, and a rather gloomy one, reader.
“Nothing,” says Polly, glad of the response. “I often think of you, Nell,” she says. She has a kind and sentimental heart. Nell asks to hear the story, once again, of how she arrived at Faraway Farm, and listens carefully. Perhaps somewhere here is a clue to her origins—but there’s nothing.
“Polly,” says Nell, “can you do me a favor?”
“What’s that?” says Polly.
“I don’t have a birth certificate or Health Card or anything,” says Nell. “I need a passport. Just in case I ever want to go anywhere. Not that I do, of course”—how could she ever leave Dai Evans, not see that curly head, those young brown eyes again? “But just in case—”
“Easiest thing in the world,” says Polly, and they go off together to the Ruellyn Post Office where there’s a photo machine and take two pictures of Nell, which the postmistress signs on the back and six weeks later a passport comes in the mail for Nell. What it is to have friends in certain, if not high, places. Look, reader, I think it’s just as well that Dai Evans didn’t respond to our Nell, the way she hoped. (He liked her very much as a person—who wouldn’t?—but in fact was to grow up to be far more interested in his own sex than in Nell’s.) So many girls—and usually the best and liveliest—fall in love too young, marry too young, and thereafter have a decade or so’s trouble getting themselves back onto the right path—and there are children to think about, aren’t there, and divorce is horrid, and they’re not trained or equipped as they ought to be. Whole lives get wasted. And hard luck on the boys, too, come to that.
ILL-WISHED
ANGIE, AS WE KNOW, was bored and cross. Angie became particularly cross one day. It was with Harry Blast, who had lured her onto his “Art Today” program on BBC and then portrayed her as the kind of rich dilettante who dabbled in art to the detriment of artists, and what is more, lit her so badly that every flaw in her complexion showed.
“Dabble! I’ll give him dabble!” she said, as one who liked to do exactly that with the Black Arts. She got Father McCrombie, who was now in her employ and caretaking for the Satan Chapel, to light a black candle or two and invoke a curse upon Harry Blast’s now-balding media head.
Angie ran a company called Lolly Locations, which hired out sets and properties to film and
television people. The Satan Chapel was much in demand. It had a fine, quiet location in a particularly spooky wood, not far from Elstree Studios, and was permanently wired inside and out so there were few of the normal problems with lights. Angie knew how to do things. Father McCrombie kept caged bats, which could be released—behind fine, almost invisible netting—and retrieved at will. He kept a couple of falcons which could pass as eagles. A man of many parts. He himself was in demand as an extra—he had a broad, lined, decadent face, which if lit properly looked positively devilish, and red contact lenses, which (for a fee) he was prepared to slip in to enhance the effect. Angie allowed him to live in the little toll-house, adjacent to the chapel, and paid him enough to keep him in drinks, young boys and the long clerical gowns he loved. He was grateful, but like her, got bored. And his drinking made him not perhaps as specific as she would have liked when lighting his candles and invoking his powers.
No trouble, anyway, fell upon Harry Blast’s head. The Dilettante program was hugely successful and “Art Today” rescheduled for prime time. But trouble seemed somehow to spill over in other directions—there where Angie’s real, profounder griefs and resentments lay.
But how can one be sure? Was it one of Father McCrombie’s spells which tipped Clifford’s dealings over from sharpish practice into sheer dishonesty and lies? Or was it just pressure of circumstances, the unsure responses of an unhappy man; something that was bound to happen sooner or later? The unhappy do lose their judgment.
What happened was that when Homer McLinsky, the young press tycoon, made an inquiry about a rather indifferent Seurat passing through Leonardo’s hands, Clifford said he’d already had an offer of $250,000, when in fact that offer had been $25,000. “What’s a zero?” thought Clifford. That was in the New York offices, where “What’s a zero?” is easily thought. McLinsky looked at Clifford a little oddly and gave Clifford an opportunity to retract, but Clifford didn’t. The old Clifford would have noticed the look and done something about it. The new Clifford, what with Father McCrombie’s black burning vengeful candles glittering away in the Satan’s Chapel, simply didn’t notice.