Death of a She Devil

by Fay Weldon

  Mrs Easton, thinking that they must be on some kind of drug, but glad that they seemed to get on (at least this one made a change from Hermione, was smart and clean and not a goth), retreated to her room to do the books.

  A passing lorry (it must have been) shook the ground so a whole cascade of corned beef fell to the ground: two blonde curly heads touched as they bent together to pick them up, and a kind of electric shock of recognition ran through them both. Before they had time to consider the folly of their ways, both were rolling about on the floor in intimate congress – a plug, to put it bluntly, looking for a socket and finding it. But the fusion did not last long, and Tyler, whose problem this happened to be, felt he had betrayed himself. Had let himself and her down. For her part, Valerie remembered how little penetration had to do with satisfaction and was glad enough when they were both back on their feet and adjusting their clothing.

  ‘I’m really sorry,’ said Tyler. Valerie was not quite sure what he was apologising for, for being too quick or that it had happened at all, but it seemed an appropriate thing for Tyler to say.

  ‘That’s okay,’ said Valerie, generously. But the incident was so out of expectation or character the memory of it seemed to have no lasting hold on her mind. No one likes their vision of themselves overturned and Valerie had assumed she was a rational and self-interested person.

  ‘Remember the job’s open,’ she did say, as she strode out. She walked like a man, he thought, long, firm, steps. ‘Contact Ms Laura up at the High Tower if you’re interested.’

  Tyler thought about it and decided he wasn’t. It might get to be even worse a prospect than the Brighton Beaux Agency. And he’d better not tell Hermione. They had an open relationship so she could hardly complain. Even so...

  Mrs Easton came out of her office and asked why there were corned beef tins rolling about on the floor. Tyler explained that a passing tractor must have shaken the shelves.

  ‘I didn’t hear a tractor,’ said Mrs Easton.

  54

  Be Afeared Of The Ghost Of Mary Fisher

  Dread mistress of the unforeseen.

  I did that! Tee-hee-hee!

  Makes a change from all that wooo-h, wooo-h, wooo-hing round the High Tower, or even the very occasional wheee-wheeeing.

  And a chirpy chirpy cheep cheep to all my readers!

  55

  Valerie Just So Happens To Run Into Dr Simmins

  Or is it Dr Simmins running into Valerie?

  Dr Simmins happened to run into Valerie in 3HT/2 and they had a little chat. Dr Simmins warned Valerie that Bobbo did not have long to go. He might hang on a week, a month, no longer. He’d be lucky to see Christmas out.

  ‘Shit,’ said Valerie, ‘but thanks for telling me. If he pegs out I might have to cancel Widdershins out of respect for the dead.’

  3HT/2 was the room used for visiting MPs, sponsors, journalists and so on, with its really spectacular view out to the open sea on fine days; though recently these did seem in short supply. But everyone agreed there was such a thing as climate change. It was to be expected. There were no change deniers in the IGP except possibly the She Devil herself, who tended to blame the sun rather than people, should things be hotting up. The sun was rather large, people rather small. It was not a view that won her much sympathy on the Board or the Committees.

  Valerie and Dr Simmins were treating themselves from the drinks cupboard. Each assumed the other was lesbian but neither cared to pursue the matter. Both needed to recover, Dr Simmins from a recent visit to Bobbo, Valerie from a session with a particularly tetchy She Devil.

  ‘Respect!’ said Dr Simmins. ‘What respect? The sooner he’s dead and gone and I’m saved that walk upstairs the better.’

  ‘Not that I’d mind all that much if I had to cancel,’ said Valerie. The actual event was already a PR success, and was proving more trouble than she had anticipated. She had left it to Ms Laura, who’d been helping out Ms Bradshap, to organise catering staff for the 21st. Ms Laura, nearly eighty, was in the early stages of Alzheimer’s, a sweet old thing if not at the best of times the sharpest knife in the box, and had only managed to raise ten agency staff. Valerie reckoned she needed at least twenty extra for a party of a hundred and fifty who expected drinks, canapés, hot sausages cooked on the spot under canvas and a buffet lunch indoors. Umbrellas, blankets and rugs would have to be hired – the She Devil had been right: the forecast was none too good – and awnings to cover the outside would have to be hired from a firm chosen by Ms Laura – an all-girl bakers called Luxuriette who were now doing events and parties and were bound to get it wrong, having diversified too fast for their own good.

  Valerie had been outside to check that a circuit right round the High Tower was feasible and thank the Gods it was. Just a few steps down to sea level would need to be created (it wasn’t only the She Devil, but so many of the guests who were elderly and not too steady on their feet) but out of solid rock and apparently there’d need to be a hand rail too. She was on a tight budget, and all-female firms who handled heavy machinery and were prepared to do anything at short notice and at a low cost were in short supply.

  She seldom picked off more than she could chew, but she had a terrible feeling that this time she might have. She felt stressed. Perhaps she was suffering from bipolar syndrome, and not quite in control of herself? She felt afflicted by emotions, rather than just having them. And sometimes she felt elated for no reason. The strange business with Tyler down at the village shop; so out of character! He hadn’t applied for the job. She’d rather thought he would.

  Valerie confessed that things were getting her down rather and Dr Simmins said she could come by for tranquillisers if ever she wanted them.

  ‘I daresay,’ Dr Simmins said, ‘it would suit you rather well if Mr Patchett shuffled off his mortal coil around the week before Christmas.’

  ‘I suppose it would,’ Valerie said, laughing merrily. ‘I do so hate things going wrong. Better if they don’t happen at all.’

  ‘Wretched old man,’ said Dr Simmins. ‘One less useless soul on the earth. But one mustn’t forget one’s Hippocratic oath.’

  ‘That old thing!’ said Valerie. ‘I swear by Apollo and by Asclepius and so forth – rather outdated, don’t you think?’

  There was a sudden flash of lightning that almost blinded them. The ground even shook a little. They waited for the thunder but it didn’t come.

  ‘Femina Electrical,’ said Valerie, ‘seem to create lightning bolts out of thin air. I don’t know why the Diabolissima puts such trust in that dreadful firm.’

  ‘Diabolissima!’ repeated Dr Simmins. ‘Not Diavolessa. That’s really good!’

  56

  Depression Is Just Postponed Anger

  Mary Fisher faces her demons – better late than never.

  No wooo-h, wooo-h, wooo-hs this time. I’m so angry I could scream, but I took charge of myself in time and brought the wind back under control. Sometimes I think I am the wind. I almost broke the windows of the village shop in my temper. One must be careful not to blame the wrong people. Mrs Easton is a fool of a woman, says stupid things and is very annoying but she is well-intentioned, and my anger needs to be reserved for the She Devil.

  It is the She Devil’s fault that generations of women feel free to so denigrate men. Women are ungrateful. Men are glorious creatures, designed by nature to look after women, support them and their children, guide and advise. Though I have to admit, in his time Bobbo rather failed in his advisory role. Women are so wishy-washy in their multi-tasking, they never get anything of importance done. I hate to see Tyler sweeping up: cleaning is for women and servants to make the place nice for men. That loud-mouthed sadistic bitch Elaine Swanson has reduced my love to this. She will be punished.

  I must say that recently I have begun to feel stronger, more conscious of being ‘myself’. My leeway for independent action is less limited than it was. While once I was confined to making wooo-h-wooo-h-ing noises round the High Tower,
crashing the odd wave against a window and sending the occasional bird to its death, I can now venture abroad and make my presence felt.

  I put it down to my love for Tyler, but then I would, wouldn’t I? I do so love being in love. The eye brightens, the step quickens, the very skin glows; the God approaches: rationality is for the birds; ah, the languorous, drowsy succumbing. A whole life changes within the day. If only I had substance. Girls nowadays have no idea. For them a vibrator will do as well as the real thing. And it’s safer. Just as a Facebook friend is safer than a real one. Their Gods have feet of clay. And for this, rightly or wrongly, I blame the She Devil, an angry, spiteful woman who turned my Bobbo against me. Now she has distressed my darling, my delight, my Tyler! She has brought tears to his precious eyes. The tides of battle swing to and fro. She will not win this one.

  But these are not even ‘my’ thoughts. They hover in the air about me. It’s the great plotter who sends them, Momus, the puppet-master in the sky, forever looking for his story, searching for event. I am in the wind about me. I am the wind. I vanish and return, sometimes soft and gentle, zephyr-like. I reckon if I got to hurricane strength I could blow the High Tower itself away. Its structures are riddled with dry rot. Even I can smell it and my senses are nothing to write home about, Momus knows.

  57

  Valerie Ups The Game

  Things are going well – perhaps too well?

  ‘Diavolissima,’ said Valerie Valeria, ‘less than a week to go before the Widdershins Walk. Shall we go down and inspect the site? We’ve put in railed walkways over the tricky part so no one’s going to get their feet wet. Amethyst Builders have done a splendid job. And it’s a lovely day: it will be really good for you to get out and get some Vitamin D.’

  And it was true. The sun was actually shining. Everything was going well in the preparations for the day. Valerie had found an all-female construction team, Amethyst Builders (who apart from an annoying determination to communicate by email rather than telephone, so both Ms Bradshap and Ms Laura had been of less use to Valerie than usual), and they had come up trumps with good ideas. Why try and carve through solid rock when you can build up above with wood? You could now walk round the whole Tower complex in about ten minutes – if ageing limbs allowed – and there would be frequent stops for speeches, the Feminista Singers and the Trans & Co. Brass Bandsters had promised to put in an appearance.

  Contract staff numbers were up to scratch. Ms Bradshap had even agreed to get outside caterers in to provide a more robust kind of food than she felt comfortable supplying. Valerie had called in the Luxuriette cooks. There would be cream and sugar a-plenty; meringues and hot chocolate would be served after the Walk (a once a year treat would surely do no one any real harm), and Shepherdess Pie, followed by a Peach Melba for the sit-down supper in the Castle Complex before departure. The She Devil wanted women – she would get women. This way the Widdershins Walk would not only be celebrated as an annual Women’s Feast Day but be looked forward to worldwide. Valerie meant to go far. The High Tower today, UNESCO tomorrow.

  Valerie had managed to hire two hundred umbrellas from Harrods Wedding Boutique to be delivered on the 20th should the three day weather forecast suggest rain or snow, but the long term forecast still looked hopeful. The High Tower kept five hundred blankets in-house anyway, along with other emergency relief stores, on behalf of the Coastal Community Foundation.

  Everything had been prepared, everything was looking good, and had been since the rather extraordinary encounter with the She Devil’s beautiful grandson. It had meant nothing, of course, but it had been exhilarating for some reason and the sun had shone ever since. Bobbo could die whenever he liked, and no skin off Valerie’s nose. Dr Simmins must make her own choice about the ethics of the timing.

  Yes, things were going well. The She Devil had even given up lamenting the split with her children, now she knew that Tyler existed. Valerie might yet persuade her that it would be a really good idea to process with Tyler on this auspicious day of the 21st of December, so as to declare a new alliance with the former enemy, man. Valerie was already preparing a press release: Hand in hand at last – Patriarchy meets Matriarchy. Or should it be the other way round? Valerie would somehow contrive a prior meeting between grandmother and grandson, and she, Valerie, would have a reason to see Tyler again soon. Perhaps the heretics were right and female sexuality, lesbianism, was a more moveable feast than male gayness.

  ‘I take pills for Vitamin D,’ said the She Devil. ‘I do really prefer not to go outside if I can help it, especially not in winter. But I will trust your good judgement. I have agreed to walk. So walk I will, and even head the procession. If you tell me that walking widdershins will end up with a photo of me that won’t make me look like a witch rather than a sage, so be it. I will do it once, not more than once. If I go outside now I will only catch cold and be ill on the twenty-first. Is that what you want?’ It was a long speech. Her voice cracked and hoarsened as she spoke. She was old, old, old.

  Valerie sighed but conceded. She said she had so wanted the She Devil to see the sheltered platform Amethyst Builders had made where sausages could be barbecued for the Widdershins Walk trail-blazers.

  ‘Sausages? Ms Bradshap has allowed bought-in sausages?’ The She Devil was incredulous.

  ‘I had a word with her. And Luxuriette are doing the catering. Their motto? “A treat now and then – and do it again!” And this is once in a year.’

  The She Devil nodded serenely; but it seemed to her that Valerie was gaining altogether too much power and influence with the Board. She must be on her guard.

  ‘Tell you what,’ said Valerie. ‘I know where your grandson is to be found. Supposing we took the new Mercedes – nice and warm, and a really comfy ride – and took a look. You don’t have to talk to him, just look at him. You might change your mind.’

  ‘No thanks,’ said the She Devil.

  58

  But What Is This?

  Matters come to a head...

  It was 2.15 in the morning when Tyler, a little lame from another round of wild sex with Hermione at her cottage – so they can’t have been all that finesse-free, no matter what she claimed – walked up Echo Close towards his front door: so different from Hermione’s, no worn stone step and bedraggled foliage, but a smooth maintenance-free concrete patio. All the lights in the house were ablaze, all the windows were flung open (someone was in a real temper) and ‘Full Moon Mass’ by The Cnuts was blaring out into the road: Danish death metal. That would be Mason’s doing – Madison preferred Lady Gaga.

  Fortunately the other four houses in Echo Close, though under offer, were still empty. They all had a clone-like family resemblance, the best new-builds Endor Grove estate had to offer, with ‘traditional brick, grey slate roofs, picture windows on the ground floor, flexible floor space, ample storage, low heat-loss water cylinders’. The sounds of screaming and hysterical sobbing merged with the sounds of the song, and it all seemed of a piece to Tyler, whose taste was trance music.

  He had hoped to go peacefully and quietly to bed in a sleeping household; he stood hesitantly at the door. Then it was kicked open from the inside and his twin sisters burst out, first Madison, then Mason, manhandling a collection of cases and bags into the outside world and lining them up on the kerb. Someone else slammed the door as soon as all the bags were out of the house. Someone upstairs turned off the thrashing music in mid-song. Someone downstairs closed the windows and drew the curtains. Apparent normality returned to Echo Close.

  Tyler thought it prudent to hide himself in the shadows until their taxi should come – presumably the twins were waiting for Uber; who else at this time of night? – but they caught sight of him and pulled him out into the lamplight. They were dressed alike, except Madison’s pussy pelmet length fake fur coat was mauve and Mason’s was pink. They shared the same aesthetic sense (or lack of it, as Hermione observed) but liked to distinguish themselves by colour. Madison’s fishnets were green and Mason
’s blue: both had the same black hair in retro beehives. Those gastric bands distorted everything. They should never have done it – but their mother had done it first and swore by it: two girls with long thin legs and short ribby torsos, lean and hungry faces and bad tempers, necks too short and heads too big.

  ‘Trust you, Cyclops,’ said Madison. ‘Spying again!’

  ‘Loser,’ said Mason. ‘Dirty stop-out.’

  It was a familiar kind of greeting and Tyler took no offence. He asked where they were going.

  ‘To a hotel,’ they chorused. They were identical so often chorused. ‘We’re not spending another night in that shitty hole.’

  ‘She’s a lesbo,’ said Madison. ‘Nicci our mother is a fucking dyke. It’s disgusting.’

  Tyler had thought for years that this was a possibility, but it had never seemed sensible to raise the matter with either his mother or his sisters.

  ‘We came back from evening shift expecting tea but that woman was moving in,’ said Mason, ‘and not just her but her two girls. Little sluts.’

  ‘Not just staying over but shacking up with us, all bloody three of them,’ said Madison. ‘All their clothes, pots and pans, pictures on the wall. If you were any sort of man at all, Cyclops, you’d throw them out, but you won’t. If Mum hadn’t had you this wouldn’t have happened.’

  ‘And you keep your own room, and we have to share. Just because we’re twins, and girls, and you’re a boy. It’s not fair.’

  Well, they were upset and no worse than usual. Tyler smiled placidly and asked them who it was had moved in and the girls chorused, ‘Matilda, her name is Matilda.’