The Fat Woman's Joke (18 page)

“Please,” she begged, “please let me keep it. It's nearly midnight. The whole nightmare is nearly over. I must eat it. I must.”

He got hold of the biscuit and threw it to the other side of the room.

“You take everything,” she said. “You take everything, and you give me nothing. You take my life and you throw it away.”

“You're mad. You're mad again. They never really cured you, did they?”

“You made me mad.”

“You have no self-control. You are despicable. You can't even stop eating a couple of weeks. You have to nibble, and cheat, and go behind my back, and lie, and twist, and cheat, and cheat, and cheat again.”

“I have nothing else to do but eat. What else have I got? You give me nothing. No love, no affection, no sex, nothing.”

“Take a look at yourself. You are disgusting. What do you expect?”

“I have given you everything. All my years, all my life. Everything I ever had, all wasted. Every bit of love I ever had I gave to you. And now you just throw me away.”

“Like an old glove?” he inquired. She raised her hand as if to strike him, but he dodged. “Oh, calm down,” he said. “All this fuss about an old biscuit. You're hysterical. Why do I always end up with hysterical women?”

“Is Susan hysterical too, then?”

“Here we go again. What
is
it you want, Esther? Why can't you be satisfied? You've got a home, and a child, and security, and a husband who comes home every night. I support you. I'm polite to you. I don't beat you. You're luckier than almost every other woman in the world.”

“I'll tell you my discontent. It's this. I think that if you found me ill and lying in the gutter you wouldn't bother to pick me up and take me home, you'd just pass by.”

“You're a fair weight to pick up. Ha ha.”

“You can't resist being funny at other people's expense, can you? How they must hate you at the office.”

“Oh, cut yourself a slice of cake. I'm going to get dressed and go out.” He moved toward the door. Esther moved to intercept him.

“Where?”

“That is none of your business.”

Esther stood with her back against the door, barring his way.

“Where, I asked.”

“Where I want. Anywhere in this world to get away from you. You make me sick. You want to keep me in prison. I can't even go to bed when I want any more, because I hear your prissy little voice calling down the stairs like some teenager.” He mimicked her soft voice. “‘Oh Alan, Alan, beddy-byes.' What sort of life do you think I have, sitting in a bloody office day after day, getting nowhere, doing nothing, with only ‘Alan, beddy-byes' at the end of it? This is the only life I'm going to have. I'll be dead soon. And you make me live like this. I was born a
man,
and now look at me. I am scarcely human any more. I tell you, the day I married you was the end of my life. You squeezed my talents out of me. You depleted me utterly with your demands and your naggings, you turned me into a poor gray dried-up company man with an income and a pension. It's not me, and it's your fault. I hate you. You've cheated me of my freedom, and my life. You've stolen it.”

“You're a poor balding impotent old man. A dirty old man. I read what you wrote. All your sexual fantasies. You'd be mad to think anyone would publish them. They were the sick ravings of a lunatic.”

“You're the lunatic, not me. I don't
want
you in bed. How could I?”

“I despise you too much. I pity you.”

“Get out of my way.” He tried to push past her.

“No. Where are you going? To your Susan?”

“Yes. Are you surprised? You have driven me to it. You have played your cards all wrong, Mrs. Wells.”

“Perhaps you haven't played your cards so well, either. Perhaps I have somewhere to go, too. Men don't think of that. Do you think I just sit quietly at home, and take what you deal out to me?”

“What do you mean?” But a bland self-satisfied smile just crossed Esther's face and vanished again. “What do you mean? Who would want you? Who in the world would want you?”

“You must be feeling very guilty,” said Esther, “to assume my guilt when I haven't said a thing. Not a thing.”

“You fat slut.” He tried to move her from the door, but she spread her arms against it as if crucified. Noiselessly, they struggled. He was stronger than she, for all her size, and it was evident that he would get the door open in time, but she would not give in. Her face kept appearing, almost willfully, in the path of his fists. He slapped her hard on the side of the face, and she tore at his cheeks, with her nails. He put his hands around her neck and squeezed. When she sank to the floor, he let go. He opened the door and left the kitchen. Esther, still crouching on the floor, heard him go up to the bedroom, dress, collect his coat, come down the stairs and let himself out of the front door. Presently she raised her head and surveyed the kitchen. She stood up, ran a finger along a dusty ledge and cursed Juliet. She took a couple of biscuits, and poured some milk into a pan, and started to make herself cocoa.

“The night she walked out on him,” said Susan to Brenda in the pub, “he came to see me. He'd never been in the night before, only office lunch-hours and on the way home after work. I didn't let him in. I didn't want to be treated like that again; like an old dustbin for all his old rubbish. And anyway I kept thinking William might turn up—isn't that your silent friend coming in?”

Brenda blushed and lowered her eyes. The man from the night before saw her, looked surprised and then gratified, and crossed to sit beside her. Susan rose. “I'll be off then,” she said, “to see Peter. Make sure he buys your drinks, and not the other way round.”

“I can't speak to him, so I can't make him do anything. I'll just have to accept him as he is, won't I?”

“Put your charges up. Then he'll value you more.”

“I do live a very dull life,” said Phyllis to Esther. “Gerry never tries to strangle me, and his girlfriends never come to visit me. Perhaps he doesn't have as many as he would like to think; perhaps, in fact, it is all talk with him—” she looked hopefully at Esther, but Esther made no sign of either assent or dissent—“or perhaps it's just all over so soon they never get round to finding out my address. I think as soon as he gets what he wants he loses all interest.”

“That's right,” said Esther. “It's in, out, and off. That's Gerry. Very boring, and not worth discussing.”

Phyllis fell silent. Then she ate a biscuit.

“Funny thing,” said Esther, “I don't feel hungry any more. I think your horrible doctor was right. I was sickening myself. Now I'm purged, and I'm better. Eat up, Phyllis, it will do you good. You know the thing that disconcerted me most about Susan's visit? It was the way she called me Mrs. Wells, but Alan by his first name. I realized how small a part of his life I was, or ever had been. It was hard to stomach.”

“What are you going to do next?”

“Nothing. Stay here. Eat, read books. Die. Be buried. Rot. Be finished.”

“That's silly.”

“It is true,” said Esther. “I am finished. I am over. It is very simple, really. I am a woman and so I am an animal. All women are animals. They have no control over themselves. They must have children—there is no merit in it, there is no cause for self-congratulation, it is blind instinct. When I was a girl I searched for a mate to father my children. I found Alan. I had my child. Now the child is grown up and I have no further need of the man. I shuffle him off. And he has no need of me, because I am no longer a fit mother for his possible children. Let him beget more if he can, and start the whole thing over again with someone else. That's his affair, not mine. The drive is finished in me. I am dried up. I am useless. I am a burden. I wait to die. Phyllis, I am making myself feel hungry again.”

“I am not an animal.”

“You coward. You prissy miss, with your curls and your sexy little suits. You're an animal. You said to me once you were chained to your bed. Well, so you are. Because you're a female animal, and your brain and your mind and all your fine feelings are no help to you at all. You're just a female animal body, fit to bear children and then be thrown away. And if you don't have children, you'll be on the rubbish heap all the sooner. So watch it.”

“You're still not well.”

“I don't expect to be well.”

“There's someone coming down the steps,” said Phyllis, who was sitting near the window. She craned her head upwards. “Oh good heavens, it's Alan. It's your husband.” She turned to her friend, panic-stricken and trembling.

“Don't get so panicky,” said Esther. “I know all about you and him.”

“How? What do you mean?”

“It has been evident from your manner all day. It doesn't matter in the least. I doubt that either of you enjoyed it. A simple matter of tit for tat. And you can think about
that
phrase a little longer, and repeat it to your bosom doctor, from me.” She crossed to the door to let her husband in. He loomed crossly through the doorway.

“What are
you
doing here?” he said to Phyllis. “What mischief are you making now?”

“Esther is very ill,” said Phyllis. “She needs help. I'm glad you've come—she says the oddest things.”

“What are you playing at, Esther? It's absurd, living in two places at once. I thought you'd come to your senses sooner and come home. Your behavior is very inconvenient for everyone. Have you calmed down enough to come home, do you think?”

“I don't want you down here, nagging. Go away. You're a pompous old bore.”

“Peter needs you. He's very upset these days. He's emotionally immature. He's unstable.”

“I think he'll be all right.”

“It's you he needs.”

“I have needs, too, you know.”

“My face is beginning to heal, at last. It has been most embarrassing. It went septic. Your nails must have been dirty.”

“Oh, you poor thing,” said his wife.

“You really must try not to be so hysterical. It does a lot of damage. You can't go on living in this pigsty. How much do they charge you?”

“Five pounds a week.”

“It's robbery. It's damp. It's a slum. I haven't seen anything like this since I was a child.”

“We lived in a room like this the first year we were married.”

“And a terrible place it was, I remember. You've got fatter; you don't look at all well.”

“I'm back to where I was before I started that terrible diet of yours.”

“I was on it too,” said Alan.

“Is that an apology?”

“What have I got to apologize for? Let's just forget it all. Come home, Esther, don't be silly.”

“I like it here. No one nags. I can breathe better, too, now the swelling on my throat has gone down.”

“Throat?”

“Where you tried to strangle me.”

“You drove me to it. You goaded me.”

“I'd better be going,” said Phyllis brightly.

“Oh, don't,” cried Esther falsely. “Do stay to tea, Phyllis darling. You'd love her to stay to tea, wouldn't you, Alan?”

“And you can stop that here and now,” he said. “If you walk out on me, you can take the consequences.”

“What about Susan?”

“What about her?”

“I was with you then. I had done nothing wrong.”

“I was on a diet. I was very upset. There was all that terrible business with the agent and the publishers. It was very humiliating for me, Esther, and you didn't help at all. Susan was a nothing.”

“Poor Susan, then. Just a nothing. I think she will be revenged.”

“How?”

“Never mind. That's another story. I will tell it one day.”

“Wives always win in the end,” said Phyllis hopefully; she had moved into profile against the light, so that her new and improved breasts stood out to advantage. It was for Alan's benefit, but he took no notice. “All they have to do is hold out long enough.”

“You silly, prissy, smarmy, common bitch,” said Esther. “I don't think I can stand you much longer, Phyllis. Will you please take yourself and your bosom away, and this nagging bore of a man with you?”

“But it's true,” Phyllis persisted, with a note of hysteria in her voice. “Wives win.”

“And what a victory, over what?”

“Please, will you both calm down,” said Alan. “There is no point in you staying here wasting money. You can't be happy. You might as well be at home where you can be of some use.”

Esther put her head on her hands. She appeared to be defeated.

“No,” she said, “we mustn't waste money, must we? I suppose I might as well be there as here. It doesn't seem to make much difference where one is.”

Phyllis began to whine.

“Oh, shut up, Phyllis,” said Alan. “Why do you keep butting in on other people's family quarrels? I hope you haven't got much luggage, Esther. I only brought the Mini.”

“Just what I took with me. A few old clothes. I'll leave the paperbacks. And that stupid pot plant. We'll leave that.”

“The plant is growing,” said Phyllis. “Can I have it?” Esther got up, crossed to the window sill and peered into the flower pot. A little sprig of green disturbed the dusty surface. She was inordinately pleased.

“Good heavens! Do you mean to say I did that? Do you mean to say it's growing for me? Alan, look!”

But Alan did not turn round. He was looking with amazement into the food cupboards.

She shrugged.

On the other side of London Susan cried happily into Peter's shoulder and recited tales of domestic living with William and sexual adventures with Alan, while Peter lovingly whitened his cricket pads. And in the pub Brenda held hands with the man she couldn't speak to, and was overwhelmed with such a sweet surge of love and gratitude that tears came into her eyes. He wiped them away, gently, with his pocket handkerchief, thinking she had been drinking too much and that he must take her home quickly in case she fell asleep.