Splitting (18 page)

If anyone demonstrates kindness, Lady Rice sneers, she who once gave such nice dinner parties; if anyone goes near, the creature will repay that kindness, that approach, by tearing the innocent to bits in its death throes. Beware the howling of the injured. Angel, don’t feel too safe in the body you think you control. You may be out of your depth. Jelly does nothing to annoy; Angelica is almost a friend; but Angel has left Lady Rice with her knicker elastic snapped and Lady Rice may not like it; let Angel not rely too much on the gratitude of Lady Rice, divorcee-in-waiting. Lady Rice speaks nicely but let even her own sisters beware. Not push her too far. o
n

L
ADY RICE, NOW SHE
has the knack of it, sends her spirit out to her lawyer, so that he will believe her and represent her interests better. He sleeps and snores beside his grey-haired wife, who dreams of lovers she has never known. Lady Rice speaks for all of her.

“We need alimony! We want nourishment: we are cracking and splitting. We are thin and brittle for lack of love: we have lost two stone in six months. If our husband won’t recognize our rights, then society must come to our aid: law courts and lawyers must stand in for a corrupted individual conscience. Your duty is great, Barney Evans.

“We are not motivated by vengeance or greed. On the contrary. No. Our plea is that if the scales of justice are to remain in balance there must be brought into existence, recreating itself moment by moment, the proper, decent, material reflection of ‘spiritual good.’ Lost goods—in this case love, illusion, hope (worse than lost, this latter: stolen!) have an equivalent in money; this equivalent needs to be paid monthly to the end of time. That is to say, ‘in her lifetime,’ which for the individual, of course, is the same thing. Alimony!

“The great and complex construct which is marriage—a construct made up of a hundred little kindnesses, a thousand little bitings back of spite, tens of thousands of minor actions of good intent—be they the saving of a face, the interception of an ant, the plucking of a hair, the laughing at a bad joke, the overlooking of errors, the forgiveness of sins—this cannot, must not, as an institution, all be brought down in ruins. Let the props be financial; if this is all that remains, they have to be so.

“If we—by whom I mean myself(Lady Rice), Angelica, Jelly and yes, I fear, Angel—don’t get alimony from Edwin, the whole caboodle will crumble: I can feel it. A lot rests on this. The stars themselves will implode. The scales which balance real against unreal will be shoved so far out of kilter they will tip and topple and the point of our existence, and therefore existence itself, will be gone. We will all vanish like a puff of smoke. Or implode like a collapsing marshmallow man. In the end it is money which keeps us in being, inasmuch as money is the only recognized good we have: being both abstract and real. You cannot live off justice, but you can live off money.”

Barney Evans slept. The beast slouched by outside the windows, its moon-shadow clear. It was real though Lady Rice was not: it had at this moment more corporeal existence than she. Mrs. Evans moaned in her sleep: the good dreams were turning bad.

“I know we can fail,” said the spirit of Lady Rice to the sleeping lawyer. “A Court might decide, as Edwin hopes it will and as you tell me often enough, that we’re perfectly well equipped to look after ourself, and since the doctrine of No Fault prevails in our divorce courts, and the great injustices one human being can render to another are now apparently neither here nor there, the Court may say what the hell, who is this hopeless wife, this ex-pop star who never rode to hounds at her husband’s side, who was found in bed with her best friend’s husband?—who can possibly believe her account of how she got to be there, or how little happened in it?—give the woman nothing! Yes, they are capable, I hear, of awarding the four of us nothing at all. Should all my hopes for justice fail, how will any of us live? Why, as the birds do, do I hear you say?—picking at nothing. We could always take to blackmail. We may yet have to. A word or two in a media ear would have the whole flock of them down like starlings. Do you want that?”

Barney Evans snuffled. Mrs. Evans’ eyes flew open. She woke Barney. “There’s someone in the room,” she said. But of course there was no one. “I have to be in Court tomorrow,” he grumbled and went back to sleep, but before he did they embraced cosily.

“Blackmail’s out of fashion,” Jelly’s employer Brian Moss happened to say to her the next day, “because no one’s ashamed of anything any more,” and she nodded and smiled politely but thought, “what do you know?” Other people’s imaginations clearly didn’t run the way hers did. These days she had a pocket full of floppy discs, stolen from the files, the way others had pockets full of rainbows, or claimed to. She’d take home to The Claremont in her shopping bag files containing letters and transcripts of bugged conversations, depositions and affidavits from many sources, and not just those relating to
Rice
v.
Rice,
matrimonial. People do chatter on to their solicitors, and Jelly was beginning to take an interest in someone other than herself, or selves. The great thing about employment, as Lavender White always used to say, is that it takes a girl away from the personal.

As for Lady Rice, she doesn’t react much, can’t react: she is too eaten up with anger to marvel at anything, even her alter ego Jelly’s delinquency, or Angelica’s pickiness, let alone Angel’s whorishness. Lady Rice likes to rant on about justice, and finds some relief in it, but is still not relieved of the burden of sexual jealousy. She makes herself contemplate the reality of her husband in the arms of another, but familiarity with the source of distress, looking it in the” eye, unflinching, does not weaken it as it is meant to. It makes it worse. Still jealousy rages: it gives her a pain in her midriff: it exhausts her.

But what Lady Rice can now see, at least, thanks to Angel, is that when it comes to it she’s no lady.

T
HE STRESS OF LIVING
at The Claremont on stolen credit cards is telling on Angelica. When the phone goes, she jumps. Supposing it’s the management, telling them they must move on? They will be found out, thrown out, punished, disgraced!

Angelica has always lived in fear of being found out. Never mind how much money she has in the bank, if the telephone behind the grille buzzes while she’s at the counter she thinks the call must relate to her—she’s been discovered as an imposter.

Angel loves to order champagne and endless club sandwiches from room service. Angelica, for no good reason, feels she will be safer if she orders Coke and Danish pastries. Lady Rice can only pick at a steamed lobster. Angel offers to seduce the bellboy who brings these goodies so he forgets to charge them if that makes Angelica feel safer, but Angelica shudders and declines. A great deal of food is ordered, but very little eaten.

Lady Rice signs the account the Hotel Manager proffers weekly, and Jelly waves him away. So far, it seems, the account is accepted and paid without question, however unwillingly, by the Rice Estate. Angelica moans and groans about theft and cheating.

But Angelica has been hearing other voices in her head. The one most predominant is male, she’s sure of it. It happens when the others are sleeping. The voice is preoccupied with Robert Jellico’s sins and self. It drones on, creating a rumbling background of aggressive discontent.

“I’d like to ram a red-hot poker up Jellico’s arse,” grumbles the voice. “I’ll do it. I will. I’ll get him. He’ll rue the day he was ever born. The man’s a thief, as well as a criminal; ought to be strung up, crucified. I’m on your side, baby. If anyone gives you a hard time, let me know … I’ll tear his eyes out for you …” and so on. Sometimes the voice becomes brisker and more intelligent, the threats and imprecations more subtle. It is as if the new self—which Angelica fears it is—is looking for some definite, suitable, and lasting identity before making itself properly known.

She does not tell the others. She is ashamed to have a male inside her, part of herself, as Angel turned out to be part of Lady Rice. What will they think? She feels unnatural and debased.

Angelica finds herself trying to mend the gold taps in the marble bathroom, fixing the shower, instead of waiting for Housekeeping to come along and do it. She has wrenched the, fitments unnecessarily hard and broken them. She has kicked the television because by so doing she can make it change stations without need of the remote control.

“What are you
doing?”
begs Jelly. “You are breaking the place up. Are you losing your wits?”

Angelica laughs hollowly.

“Cheap muck!” complains the voice. “God, this place is a rip-off. You know all this marble is plastic veneer?”

“Who’s that?” asks Lady Rice suspiciously. “Just me in a bad mood,” says Angelica, but she knows it isn’t true. A man is taking shape inside her, as Angel took shape in

Lady Rice. Angelica feels polluted and disgraced, but can see that if she could accept the male part of herself she would be a fuller, rounder, more effective person. The man has a good appetite: Angelica finds herself devouring hamburgers and chips, sausages and mashed potato. He orders beer. Angelica has bought some weights on the way home from work. She stands in front of the mirror and body-builds. Swing, lift, lower; swing, lift, lower.

“Stop it!” shrieks Angel. “I don’t want muscles. That’s the last thing a girl needs.”

“I’m too tired,” moans Lady Rice, “for all this.”

“Keep us healthy,” Jelly concedes. “We don’t get enough exercise.”

“Sex is the best exercise there is!” says Angel. “We get plenty. What, do you want more? I’m easy!”

Three times a week they go with Ram to the car-park. He picks them up three-quarters of an hour early so they’re not late for Brian Moss. On the other mornings he’s booked for other regulars—though none, he assures them, that involve his sexual services. They all begin to like him really quite a lot.

Swing, lift, lower; swing, lift, lower: there’s no stopping Angelica. She waits till the others are asleep. Listens.

“Hi,” she says. “Who are you?”

“An A, a J, an A, add X, the unknown factor.”

“Ajax,” she says.

“Ah-ha!” he says. “So what’s your problem?” and is gone.

Angelica thinks about her problem and comes up with an answer. It’s this: “Call my problem X and solve it. Too many Xs for a simple equation: quadruple equation either. X = ex.

“Ex-virgin, ex-pop star, ex-wife, ex-socialite, ex-convent girl, ex-everything, ex-everyone, that’s me: primarily ex-daughter of a radio ham. When Daddy wasn’t running the Barley school choir he was up in the small back study, where Lavender never went, surrounded by banks of electronic equipment, tangled in wires, deafened by headphones, in touch with others everywhere just like him, who’d rather say ‘hi’ to a perfect stranger, and ‘well, have a nice day’ to a ship’s telegrapher, than kiss his wife or cuddle his child. Daddy, Daddy, speak to me! I can’t my darling, my angel, I’m saving ships at sea. What ships, Daddy, what sea? I don’t know, my darling, my angel, but sooner or later, if I search the airwaves long enough, I’ll rescue someone, somewhere, and you’ll be proud of me. In the meantime, sweetheart, just leave Daddy in peace.

“Are you Daddy’s darling or Mother’s little helper? God knows.

“My problem is I feel as Zeus, must have before Athena burst out of the top of his head. The pressure on me is tremendous: the others sleep, I cannot; I am an insomniac; guilt and anxiety stop me sleeping: velociraptors, velcro-raptors prowl within my head, as well as my sisters’. A black band as if the head itself were a hat, begins to confine and tighten. The whole bulging swarm of identities is getting a terrible headache and I’m the one who feels it. Something has to give.

“I repeat: I can’t live for ever in an hotel room, no matter how grand and marble-lined, so pinkly frilled, so golden brown its furniture and exquisite its fitments, so profoundly desired its address, so lordly my fellow guests. I can’t just live here under a false name, growing alternative personalities as if they were pot plants, feeding them, nurturing them for lack of anything else to do, while I wait and wait for my life to resolve itself, for the legal profession to catch up with itself; all because it suits Edwin to claim I committed adultery with my erstwhile best friend Susan’s lover Lambert. Lies, all lies! What really happened is that Edwin wanted to marry Anthea, and organized my exit from his life. Edwin was tired of me, that was all. What I thought was marriage, would endure for all our life because apart we were nothing but together we were something, oh yes, something, was just Edwin’s way of growing up. I hate Edwin now for what he did to me, for the loss of my faith in the goodness of people; he has stolen my capacity for love, and doesn’t care enough for me, doesn’t remember me clearly enough, even to discuss the matter with me. Used and abused, that’s me, but, worse still, forgotten.

“Or look at it another way: I am the twisted cord of a telephone wire: dangle it and watch the rapidity with which it untwists itself; so rapidly indeed that it then twists the other way, almost as badly, and who then has the patience to wait for it to settle? Not me, whoever I may be. I’d rather wrench the whole thing from the wall and go cordless. But how can I shake off these others, who travel with me wherever I go?

“Too much unravelling, that is my problem. Too many exes, and too much unravelling. Of course I have a headache.”

Still there was no response from Ajax.

Angelica thinks that perhaps a bath may soothe her. The baths at The Claremont are deep, wide and made of marble. They are also, she notices, difficult to clean. She takes the scouring powder from the cupboard beneath the basin, and with the help of a damp facecloth, stretches to reach the section the maid has failed to clean and, when she straightens up, catches her head on the shower fitment.

She staggers to the bed. She lies down. Her headache is much, much, much worse.