Weldon, Fay - Novel 07 (29 page)

 
          
In
London
the sun shone
day after
day. It was hot. Karen’s boyfriend, Pete, was found asleep in the potting shed
and lost his job. He turned up at Karen’s house and introduced himself to
Karen’s mother. Karen’s mother was a psycho-therapist, and asked him in.

 
          
“How
dare you have him in the house without asking me first,” shouted Karen, all red
hair and spoilt pout, already on her way to Ray’s.

 
          
Helga
let her in. Ray and Bella and Richard were all out. Karen watched Helga wash dishes
and
peel
potatoes and despised her.

 
          
Ray
came home and was both disconcerted and delighted to find Karen in his kitchen.

 
          
“I’ve
left home,” said Karen.

 
          
“You
can stay here,” said Ray. “Bella won’t mind. You can help Helga with the
children.”

 
          
They
went upstairs. Helga chattered and crashed. Karen revealed to Ray that Bella
was having an affair with Richard, an item of news she knew from an unkept
confidence of her mother. Ray hit Karen, so shocked was he; Karen fell into
Bella’s arms as she returned home with Richard. Ray knocked Richard down the
stairs, and Karen ran shrieking from the house.

 
          
Ray’s
nose bled heartily from Bella’s blow, and she had to mop him up in the
bathroom, her own eyes blurred with tears of remorse and indignation mixed.
Richard rose, dazed and alone, from the floor, and gathered his belongings and
prepared to leave, out into the night, wondering where he would go.

 
          
But
Bella and Ray barred his way.

 
          
“Don’t
go,” said Ray, “we must talk everything out,” and they led him by the hand to
the kitchen, and there they sat all night eating French bread and Brie, and
drinking coffee, and more coffee, and whisky and more whisky, while tears ran
and voices grew husky, and childhoods were remembered and rankling incidents
recalled, and marital failures and erotic disappointments mulled over.

 
          
Richard
realised that he was a bit-part player in Ray and Bella’s drama, and he feared
he had much the same role in Miss Martin’s life. He was her route to
self-esteem, not the gratification of her desires; and in all fairness, she was
his. He understood at last that Liffey, his marriage partner, was his true
love, his true security, his true faithful companion and his happiness. Richard
said as much. He wept. They all wept.

 
          
Ah,
what a night it was, the Night of the Confessional, of remorse and whisky and
embraces and the signing of pacts and the announcement of good intentions, and
as the day broke and the noise of traffic grew, and the grass of the park
emerged out of dawn grey into brilliant morning green, all felt purged and
reborn.

 
          
It
was "only when
The Times
was
stuffed through the letterbox, and Tony and Tina were still asleep, and the
replacement kitten was yowling with hunger, that it was realised that Helga
had gone.

 
          
Packed
her bags and gone.

 
          
Richard
left for the office. Tina and Tony emerged, startled, from their bedroom and
organised their own breakfast and departure for school, and wrote their own
notes apologising for their lateness, which they presented to Bella for
signing. Ray took offence at this. Both children were weeping over Helga’s
leaving, but neither parent showed much concern.

 
          
“For
God’s sake,” snapped Bella, “stop whining. She was only the maid. It’s not as
if she was your mother.”

 
          
Richard
knew he must break off his relationship with Miss Martin. She made it easy for
him.

 
          
“You’re
never going to marry me, are you, Richard?” she blurted, out of her typewriter.

 
          
Richard
was startled. He could not remember her ever using his first name. She had so
far avoided it, as he avoided hers. He was not even sure, come to think of it,
what her first name was. “No,” he said.

 
          
“I’ll
tell your wife about us,” said Miss Martin: her eyes were hollow and her cheeks
sunk. Her figure, no longer solid and shapeless, seemed scraggy and shapeless.
Her eyes were malevolent.

 
          
Richard
rang through to the Personnel Department and arranged to take its head out to
lunch.

 
          
Miss
Martin was sent for by Personnel during the course of the afternoon and
transferred to the Computer Room. Her replacement was a young woman with
downcast eyes, a demure look and practiced ways, lately transferred from the
Manchester
branch. Richard read invitation in the
eyes, eventually raised to his over lunch—it was customary for bosses to take
secretaries out to lunch on the first day of their appointment so they could
get to know each other—but steadfastly refused the invitation.

 
          
Now
he was free of Bella, Helga and Miss Martin, he would concentrate on loving
Liffey. It was clear to him that the world and the people in it were not
perfectable; that one person’s happiness could only be gained by the
unhappiness of another; that if Liffey were to be happy, Miss Martin must be
unhappy, and Bella, and Ray, and even himself. For deprived so suddenly of the
sexual activity of which he had been accustomed, Richard was restless and
wretched and irritable, and dissatisfied, and jealous, and very very hungry.
But he bore all for the love of Liffey; and in a mood of self-congratulation
and sorrow mixed, and with a feeling of achievement and some kind of personal
storm weathered, did he return, in the thirty-eighth week of Liffey’s
pregnancy.

 
          
Bella,
Ray, Tina and Tony went too. Bella thought Tina and Tony would benefit from a weekend
in the country. Ray wondered if Liffey would be up to it, but Bella said of
course she would. Anyway, she, Bella, would look after Liffey: she felt she had
behaved badly towards her and wanted to make amends.

 
          
It
was the children’s half-term the following week, and Bella thought perhaps she
should leave them behind to look after Liffey. They were really very good. Tony
could help carry shopping and Tina could make beds and bread or whatever.

 
          
Didn’t
Richard think so?

 
          
Thirty-eight weeks.

           
Liffey’s baby was eighteen inches
long, its weight was six pounds one ounce; it was layered nicely with
subcutaneous fat. The vernix creased richly in the folds of its body. It
lay
head down, knees meeting wrists, ankles turning little
feet towards each other, buttocks jutting out at a point just above Liffey’s
umbilical cord. The baby was now almost fully mature, and had it been born into
the world that day would have had a 90 per cent chance of survival. Only the
lungs were not quite ready and would have had some trouble in performing their
required task, the converting of oxygen.

 
          
Liffey-herself
was languorous and uncomfortable, and the normal relief expected at such a
time, when the baby’s head drops into the pelvis and the maternal organs are
relieved of this untoward pressure, did not occur. It could not. The placenta,
positioned as it was, prevented it. The baby swayed and moved, and stayed free.
What yet might prove its undoing remained for the time being a
blessing.

           
Liffey moved slowly about the house.
From time to time she breathed heavily and deeply. Every now and then her
uterus contracted, painlessly, but growing taut and hard. It was a reassuring
sensation, as if the body at least knew what it was doing. The contraction
would last some twenty seconds and then fade away.

 
          
Liffey
dreamt. How she dreamt! Were they the baby’s dreams or hers? She dreamed of
strange landscapes, and of the dark, warm, busy world that was inside her. She
dreamed that the baby was born, that it jumped out of her side and ran off
laughing. Its hair was curly and it was aged about two. She dreamed she gave
birth to a grown man, and when he turned his face to look at her, it was
Richard. She dreamed she gave birth to
herself, that
she split into cloned multitudes. She dreamed that Madge tied her feet together
and forbade her to give birth at all. She dreamed that Mrs. Lee-Fox shut her in
the seaside cottage, and the waves rose and broke against the window, and
rockets flew overhead, and she escaped in a junk. But there was a kind of blank
panel in the mural of all her dreams, where the face of Mabs should have appeared
but never did.

 
          
In
the mornings she woke slowly, and dressed slowly, and the evenings came before
the day had scarcely passed. She had very little sense of the passage of time;
she functioned, yet her senses closed down around her: she saw and heard and
touched the world through a dark film, as if preferring to see and hear and
touch as the baby must—rocked and lulled in the dark.

 
          
And here they were
on Friday evening,
pouring out of Richard’s car, and yes, they were real: Richard and Ray and
Bella and Tony and Tina: and yes, they were chattering and laughing and looking
for sleeping bags, and oh, they were hungry and tired, and no, Liffey mustn’t
move, not an inch, they were going to do everything, everything, only where was
the tea and were there any more towels?
and
no,
Liffey, don’t move the beds, get Ray to do it—where’s Ray? Looking for flying
saucers—everyone is these days, and this is UFO country, isn’t it?—and, Liffey,
is there any brown paper we can use for the loo, newspaper is so crude, isn’t
it? And, Liffey, no, Liffey, sit down—-just tell us where the onions are so we
can make a sauce for the spaghetti—oh, in the garden—where in the garden
?—
ah, there—where are the plates, Liffey? Liffey, is there
any hot water?
and
, Liffey, Tina’s fallen and hurt her
knee on the torn mat; yes, thank you for the plasters, and I do think the mat
ought to be moved—where’s Richard? Ah, taken Ray to try Tucker Pierce’s cider,
how like a man, to leave everything to the womenfolk. How long, Liffey? Two
weeks! Now if we can just get the table laid and the candles—where are the
candles? —lit, everything will be ready by the time the men get home. Can Tony
just have some cocoa and go to bed?

 
          
That’s
one dinner saved! And Tina had better have some too. They simply love the
country. You’re so lucky, Liffey, right out of the rat-race, and I’m sure one
gets on better with a husband for not seeing him all the time, and of course
Richard, as everyone knows, adores you, Liffey, and is fundamentally absolutely,
totally faithful to a vision of you, Liffey. Liffey, is there any ice? I can’t
seem to get it out of the tray. Most people have plastic, Liffey, not tin. Now,
you’re not to overtire yourself.

 
          
Liffey,
exhausted, faded back into a kind of gentle stupor. Richard came back from
Cadbury Farm in
a
uxorious and loving mood. His arms
were full of puffballs. He laid them in rows of ascending size upon the kitchen
table.

 
          
Who
needs shops when the fields are so abundant?

 
          
Liffey
waited until the guests were in bed, and Richard had made gentle, affectionate
remorseful love to her and had fallen asleep, and got up and cleaned the
kitchen and laid breakfast, feeling that this was the way she could best
allocate her strength, and then went back to bed and propped pillows beneath
her back, and slept as upright as she could manage.
A light,
uneasy sleep.
She thought the baby did not want the visitors. But they
kept Mabs away.

 
          
In
the morning Richard sliced a sharp knife into the biggest puffball, and where
the cut was, the flesh gaped wide, as human flesh gapes under the surgeon’s
knife, and Liffey stared, aghast.

 
          
“What’s
the matter?”

 
          
“Nothing.”

 
          
He
dipped the slices of puffball into first flour, then egg, then breadcrumbs, and
fried them in butter. Bella and Ray and Richard ate with enthusiasm; Tina and
Tony politely declined and made do with
Weetabix,
and
Liffey fainted dead away.

 
          
“Perhaps
we’d better call the doctor,” said Ray when Liffey had been patted and coaxed
awake, which took only half a minute or so.

 
          
“Honestly,
I’m all right,” said Liffey.

 
          
“I’d
better leave Tony and Tina,” said Bella. “She shouldn’t be on her own, should
she?”

 
          
“I
don’t know why puffballs should have such an effect,” said Richard.

 
          
“It’s
because of the operation,” said Tina softly. No one, usually, listened to
Tina.

 
          
Liffey
wondered about whether or not to go to the doctor about her fainting fit, but
the assembled company, now sitting in the garden in the early sun drinking
coffee, clearly did not want to get into cars and drive her anywhere so boring.
Liffey, the general feeling was, was showing her hypochondria again. Pregnant
women fainted; everyone knew that.

 
          
Liffey
went inside and swept floors and made beds. Tina helped, and told her about
Helga, and how Helga was now working for her girlfriend’s boyfriend, making
Indian sweetmeats. She had no work permit for anything other than domestic
work, so was earning only fifteen pounds a week, but don’t tell Mummy because
her visa has expired, and if Mummy tells the Home Office, Helga will be
deported and we’ll never see her again.

 
          
“Why
should Bella do a thing like that?” asked Liffey, surprised.

           
Tina shrugged. She was a sad, sallow
little girl with a round face and button eyes. She kept her eyes fixed on
Liffey’s tummy.

 
          
“I
don’t think I want a baby,” she said.

 
          
Her
brother, Tony, wandered around the garden, kicking at tufts of grass and
slashing the heads off what he claimed to be weeds but were usually budding
flowers. He stared at Liffey’s stomach too, but in a more prurient, less
sympathetic way.

 
          
“It’s
because Helga’s left, I’m afraid,” said Bella. “She really was an irresponsible
little bitch.”

 
          
Tony
watched Liffey and Richard together, and giggled, and sniggered, as if
imagining them in the act of love.

 
          
“I
don’t know why it is,” complained Bella. “I thought if you brought children up
to be open about sex, they didn’t get like that. I expect it was Helga. What a
little prude she always was.”

 
          
Ray
lay in the sun and Bella rubbed his back with oil.

 
          
“Do
we really have to stay here two whole days?” asked Bella. “I’m missing a
perfectly good publisher’s party on Sunday.”

 
          
“We
can’t just dump the children and go,” said Ray.

 
          
“It’s
not dumping,” said Bella.

 
          
“Anyway,
I like it here,” said Ray.

 
          
“I
don’t,” said Bella. “It’s tiny and scruffy, and fancy having to eat pork and
beans at our time of life, and the beds are uncomfortable, and Liffey lumbers
round making everyone feel bad—she used to be such fun, do you remember?—and
Richard can only talk about freeze-dried peas.”

 
          
“You
don’t like seeing Richard and Liffey together. You’re jealous.”

 
          
“I
could have Richard any time I wanted him, but I don’t want him any more.”

 
          
She
didn’t, either. She felt quite happy with Ray. She had forgiven him for not
being her rightful husband. Anger and guilt had been purged by the confessional.
She could even accept the episode of Karen as her rightful punishment for past
sins.

 
          
Like
candyfloss in the mouth—so much abundant glory gone, melted, nothing. All she
was now was bored.

 
          
“Can’t
we go tomorrow morning?”

           
But no, Richard had accepted an
invitation to Sunday lunch at Cadbury Farm.

 
          
“Oh
Christ,” said Bella to Ray. “Now we’ll all get food poisoning. What does
Richard see in those boring peasants anyway?”

 
          
“They’re
real
people,” said Ray, turning his
mottled chest to the sun.
“Bred out of the soil.”

 
          
He
still yearned for Karen. Karen told her friends how she had seduced Ray, and
about the sorry state of his legs, and the funny mottled colour of his member,
and was believed; and whenever they saw his picture at the head of his column
in the
Evening Gazette
she and her
friends laughed, and felt less powerless in the world.

 
          
Miss
Martin’s mother had a bad night with her daughter, who presently demanded to be
admitted to a mental hospital. They spent a long morning waiting in the
out-patient department of a psychiatric hospital, only to be told that the
case did not require in-patient treatment and that pills would do. Jeff was
most supportive, but believed on balance that Miss Martin was fantasising, and
feared his own liking for pornographic magazines was somehow to blame.

 
          
While
Bella oiled Ray and complained, and Liffey toiled, and Tony and Tina mourned,
Richard talked to Tucker about the benefits of planting in phase with the moon.

 
          
“Never
heard of anything like that,” said Tucker.

 
          
“
It’s
part of the old knowledge,” said Richard. “It’s died
out here where it originated. Now the city folk have to bring it back to the
countryside. Root crops are planted at the waxing of the moon, leaf crops at
the wane.”

 
          
“His
brain’s weakened,” Tucker complained to Mabs. “I hope you haven’t been giving
him anything.”

 
          
“I’ve
no quarrel with him,” said Mabs. “Only with her, and that’s your fault.”

 
          
“I
don’t really want to go to the farm tomorrow,” said Liffey to Richard at tea.
He was cutting open another puffball. Its rich, sweet, sickly scent stood
between her and the fresh clean air her lungs demanded. She opened the window.
“You are full of whims and fancies,” he complained.
“Why not
now?”

 
          
“Mabs
frightens me,” said Liffey.

 
          
“Mabs!”
He laughed.

 
          
“She
kicked one of those puffballs to pieces,” Liffey said.

 
          
“Country
people are superstitious about them. I don’t know why.”

 
          
“She
wants to harm me, Richard.”

 
          
“Why,
Liffey?” Richard sounded quite cross.

 
          
“I
don’t know.”

 
          
“Perhaps
you’ve been messing with Tucker?” He was joking.

 
          
He
sliced into the next puffball, and Liffey thought of her own pale, stretched
flesh.

 
          
“Supposing
the baby starts early?” she asked.
“Supposing I start to
bleed.”

 
          
“Liffey,
you are making ever such heavy weather over this pregnancy.”

 
          
“Sorry.
I suppose
London
’s full of girls just dropping their babies
in a corner of the office and going straight back to the typewriter?”

 
          
“Well,
yes.
More or less.
That sounds like the old Liffey.”

 
          
The old Liffey.
Little lithe silly Liffey.
Liffey remembered her old self with nostalgia, but knew it was gone for good.
Tucker had driven it out of her. Mabs flew shrieking through her mind, perched
on a broomstick, heavy, smooth, nyloned legs ready to push and shove and get
her in the stomach. All Richard did was slice puffballs, and smile, and pretend
that nothing had changed. But it had. Richard had changed too. He had grown
from a boy into a man, and she was not sure that she liked the man.

 
          
But
she had to. He paid the rent. He bought the food. She and the baby had to have
a home. And he was the baby’s father. Richard
,T
like
you. I love you.