by Fay Weldon
The bangs, crashes, screams and metallic chords of Slaves of Blood and Savagery had fallen silent. Tayla had turned the sound off, but played on, helmeted, cut off from human contact. She seemed happy and relaxed. Valerie had been relegated to just-another-girlfriend status. More fish in the sea, no doubt lining up for rich, gorgeous, important Tayla, the She Devil’s heir. Hermione had already been up at the High Tower once or twice, selling her wares. The young put so little store on fidelity.
Under Valerie’s influence she had madly believed that the man-woman, the woman-man could become the norm and that would be the end of the gender wars, and with that so many ills. That Tayla/Tyler was the great prophesying energy. She doubted it now. He/she was a false prophet.
And she was the one who had let him in, let him share her crown, given him dominion over all her lands. She realised, and it was a horrid realisation, that in the war between the sexes, the gender war, men had just won a decisive victory. Finding themselves despised and derided, they had won back control. They had lied and cheated, plotted and planned. Feminist Man, in pretending to be an ally, was the most dangerous enemy of them all. She’d been right. The Tom Brightlingseas of this world were the very thin end of the wedge: Tyler might have tucked away his manhood but it was a small sacrifice in a greater cause. With Tyler in charge the nunnery in no time at all would be the monastery. The needle would swing back; women would be despised and derided once again. In her folly the She Devil had betrayed her gender.
All this she thought while she recovered her breath, and Tyler’s helmeted head bent to his game. All was silent. Now the lights went on at the foot of the High Tower. The main power was back on. She could see a few female shapes still moving about down below. Most women were probably in bed and asleep. Dark rocks and lapping waves reflected back light. A moon flickered in and out between racing clouds.
As if on cue noise suddenly blasted from the loudspeakers: the game’s sound track, noises of warfare, terror and rapine synthesised to make a jolly jape. Tyler looked up briefly and smiled but did not turn the sound down. It was a message. He was telling her something. Tyler had declared the war between the genders over, claiming the privileges of both – while opening hostilities on another and quite unexpected front. It was worse even than she had thought. War between those who loved noise and those who hated it, the strong against the weak, the quick against the slow, digital against analogue.
It was a war between the young and the old. Energy would always trump wisdom. With Tyler on top the young would win.
Now she could make out the lyrics through the racket: the squelching of flesh, the slicing of knives, the sobs of victims, the moans of the ruined: not nice or meant to be: the glory of chaos and damage, the power of want over ought. B-doong, b-doong, b-doong. ‘I am the rapist!’ B-doong, b-doong, b-doong. ‘I am the greatest!’ B-doong, b-doong, b-doong, ‘Wild!’ B-doong, ‘Wow!’
She thought she heard Bobbo laugh.
The Assumption
Ruth, the She Devil, rose from the white sofa with some difficulty – her stiff knees and weak thighs made rising from any low chair difficult. It was the same sofa, though she had forgotten this, where once Bobbo had lain with Mary Fisher and all the trouble had begun. She picked up the suitcase, oh how heavy: she trembled – and went to the wooden door which opened onto the narrow stone stairs leading up to what seemed to her to be the phallic glans, the very top of the Tower where the aerials spurted forth. Few ever came up here.
Dusty, flakey walls closed in on her as she climbed, the space narrowing and the steps growing steeper as she approached the top. She dragged the suitcase behind her, the thump as it rose each time sending pain shooting through wrist and knee. She took her time. There was no hurry. Tyler had not noticed her leave; his game was addictive. Ruth wondered whether he had chosen a male or female avatar – men often chose women anyway for reasons known only to psychologists – but she suspected he saw himself as the predatory male. Her breath came in short gasps.
When she pushed the door open and heaved the suitcase outside the force of the gale took her breath away altogether. It was ferocious. Wind snatched off her black wig and carried it far, far up and away. It did the same for her full red skirt, so she had to stand there in her knickers, poor bald old granny with scarred and skinny trembling bare legs. The wind eased to let her drag the suitcase to the edge of the parapet. A full moon showed itself briefly between clouds.
‘I see the moon and the moon sees me,’ she sang, looking up at it, not that anyone could hear her. Moonlight caressed her. She was glad that at least she had her knickers on. She felt like a child again.
Rain, sleet and hail had stopped. Down below the little ants of people still worked away under searchlights, making good, fighting desolation, chaos, entropy, as was human custom. She felt great affection for them. She had tried to make things better for them, and failed.
She had got the suitcase out of the future She Devil Tayla’s clutches, but now what was she to do? The wind decided for her, swerving from northwest to north, cyclonic again. It howled, grew icy, burst the case open, and flung its contents far off to a stormy sea, whereafter they were of no value to woman or man.
Looking up, the workers down below thought they saw a disturbance on the top of the High Tower. Some swore they’d seen the She Devil standing there naked and as she had been in her youth, magnificent and glittery eyed, arms stretching up to heaven, demanding justice. Others said they’d seen a lightning bolt. Perhaps that had consumed her, for when the Security girls got up there to investigate they found nothing but an old, empty suitcase.
Some assumed she’d jumped into the sea – but why would the She Devil do such a thing? She had disappeared, and was never to be seen again.
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About Fay Weldon
FAY WELDON, one of the most successful advertising copywriters of her generation, is now recognized as one of our most important and distinctive literary voices. She published her first novel, A Fat Woman’s Joke, in 1976, and has gone on to write over thirty novels, as well as short stories and screenplays. In 1983, she wrote The Life and Loves of a She Devil. The story of Ruth, taking delicious revenge on her cheating husband Bobbo, has become a modern classic, adapted for film and television and recently serialised on Radio 4.
In 2001, Fay was awarded a CBE for services to literature. In 2015, her short story collection, Mischief, celebrated four decades of her witty, engaging and socially observant writing. She teaches creative writing at Bath Spa University and lives on a hilltop in Dorset.
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About The Love & Inheritance Trilogy
The Love and Inheritance trilogy is a family saga set between 1899 and 1906. The aristocratic Dilberne family lurch from wild wealth, to bankruptcy, and back again, their fortunes dependent on the new steam-powered automobiles, Spiritualist gatherings and Christmases at Sandringham. But as the century turns, the rigid rules of society begin t
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Following lives and loves upstairs and downstairs, and brimming with Fay Weldon’s trademark wit, wisdom and warmth, this is a trilogy to treasure.
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First published in the UK in 2017 by Head of Zeus Ltd
Copyright © Fay Weldon, 2017
The moral right of Fay Weldon to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
This is a work of fiction. All characters, organisations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Extract from There Are Bad Times Just Around The Corner by Noël Coward, © NC Aventales AG by permission of Alan Brodie Representation Ltd / www.alanbrodie.com.
9 7 5 3 1 2 4 6 8
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN (HB): 9781784979591
ISBN (TPB): 9781784979607
ISBN (E): 9781784979584
Design: gray318
Author photo: Niels Ahlmann Olesen / Scanpix
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