Fay Weldon Omnibus: Collected Works of Fay Weldon Page 4

  LOVER AT THE GATE [1]

  Eleanor Darcy’s birth

  ‘I think I feel a pain,’ said Wendy Ellis, Eleanor Darcy’s mother. It was the middle of the night, in the summer of a year somewhere between 1959 and 1964. Wendy lay in bed next to her boyfriend Ken. Wendy was twenty-one and wore an apricot-coloured shortie nightie in brushed nylon. Her hair, for all she was eight months and one week pregnant, had that day been coiffeured, lacquered and backcombed until it stuck out all around her head. Wendy lay on her back. No other position was comfortable. Ken lay beside her, stiff and tense, not able to sleep. Her body was warm and relaxed; she had no choice in the matter. The baby dictated things such as maternal temperature and tension. It seemed to have no power to affect the father. Ken had come home late from a gig he had not enjoyed. He played banjo for a living and did a little woodwork on the side: fitting a bathroom here, a kitchen there, anywhere but at home.

  ‘I think he’s on the way,’ said Wendy.

  ‘She,’ said Ken.

  ‘He,’ said Wendy. ‘I know it’s a boy.’

  ‘We only have girls in our family,’ said Ken. He had five sisters.

  Ken was twenty-eight. He had a round pink face, little bright eyes, a small body, a lot of fair hair, quick fingers, a quick mind, and a great deal of energy. He was no beauty, women agreed, but he had charm. A twinkle from the back of the band and they were his. If he wanted, which he told Wendy he didn’t, now he had her. Tonight he was tired and contrary. Anger had tired him. What he described as the class system had rendered him contrary. A private party: mostly Rolls-Royce dealers: five hours’ practically non-stop playing: family favourites only: raised eyebrows if the band took a break; stale ham sandwiches and bright yellow orange squash the only meal provided, part of the deal, and ten pounds for the whole band divided by five. Not enough. The guests drank champagne. The men wore dinner jackets: they brayed; the women evening dress and squealed. The band wore dinner jackets too, the girl singer more jewels than the lady guests, but Ken had sussed that one a long time ago. It was a joke played by the haves against the have-nots. You don’t work for money, the haves conceded, all you want is to be near us in order to become us. So dress like us for an hour or so: come close, come closer: brush up against us if that’s what you want. We’ll dance to your tune the happier, syphon off your magic the better. Then take your money and go. Back to your hovels. Now he was back in his hovel and naked, lying next to a girl who was having a baby and had moved in with him on that account.

  ‘If you only have girls in your family,’ said Wendy, ‘how come you exist?’ She was quarrelsome. That too the baby seemed to dictate. She thought perhaps the baby was very clever: her friends remarked upon how sharp she’d got since she became pregnant. It stood to reason, Wendy thought, that the mother–baby connection worked both ways. With every child you had, you’d get infected with that baby’s qualities. The ‘friends’ were mostly girls at work: she had to have those independently of Ken. Ken tended to put people off. He slept when he was sleepy, ate when he was hungry, only talked if he had something to say, whether there were guests in the house or not. Wendy liked him the way he was. He made her feel real. She would rather have him than a hundred friends.

  ‘By mistake,’ said Ken sharply. ‘Go to sleep.’

  ‘I can’t,’ said Wendy. ‘I keep getting this pain.’

  ‘I didn’t hear that,’ said Ken. ‘I’m so tired I’m deaf,’ and he fell asleep. She soothed his brow for a little. He smiled in his sleep. Wendy rang her mother.

  ‘I keep getting this pain,’ Wendy whispered. ‘Do you think it’s the baby?’

  ‘You woke me up,’ whispered Rhoda. ‘It’s only indigestion. You’ve three weeks to go and first babies are always late.’

  ‘If they’re always late,’ said Wendy, a little more loudly, ‘then they’re not late, they’re just normal. First babies just take longer to hatch than other babies. So why don’t they admit it? Why do they insist all babies take the same time?’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ whispered Rhoda. The phone was by the bed and her husband Bruno slept by her side. Bruno was Wendy’s father. He was Italian. He had grey hair and a black moustache which rose and fell as he breathed. Rhoda liked to see it. He stirred and woke and stretched out his hand towards her in an enquiring and generous fashion. Ken, beside Wendy, did not stir.

  ‘I must go now, darling,’ said Rhoda.

  ‘But what about this pain?’

  ‘What does Ken say?’

  ‘He didn’t seem to think it was anything,’ said Wendy. ‘He just went to sleep.’

  ‘Then that’s all right,’ said Rhoda. ‘Ken’s always right,’ and put down the phone. One of Wendy’s fears was that if her father died her mother would want to marry Ken. She liked a decisive man, she said. Bruno was not decisive. He was a jobbing gardener by trade. He liked to stand about to see what the weather was going to do next. Wendy took after him, said Rhoda.

  Wendy rang her friend Louise but there was no reply. Ken slept on. The pain grew worse. She got out of bed. The waters broke. She mopped the liquid up from the floor with a clean towel, though she knew it meant presently lugging it all the way down to the launderette. Ken didn’t like washing machines, or indeed any domestic machinery, in the house. Should it go wrong he would be expected to mend it: he was a musician, not a mechanic. Presently Wendy wrote a note for Ken suggesting he came on down when he’d had breakfast, walked fifteen minutes to the hospital and admitted herself.

  The baby was born at 7.20 in the morning, in the labour ward not the delivery room because Wendy failed to persuade any of the nurses that the baby was on the way.

  ‘Nurse,’ said Wendy politely, at least once or twice, ‘the baby is coming out. I can feel it.’

  ‘Nonsense,’ replied the nurses, ‘you’re not even three fingers dilated,’ until one of them, a girl with a lot of red hair, opened Wendy’s legs and looked and screeched, ‘But I can see the head! Why didn’t you tell me?’ and ran off for help. The baby was wholly out by the time she got back with Sister, though in a caul, as if giftwrapped in Clingfilm. ‘Holy Mary Mother of God!’ cried the nurse, crossing herself. Then she fainted, hitting her head on the metal bedstead. Sister attended to the nurse while Wendy attended to the baby, clearing its mouth, nose and eyes. A passing student doctor clipped and tied the umbilical cord for her, and told her the baby was a girl and just fine. These things sometimes happened in even the best run hospitals, he said, and this one was not even particularly well run. By the time Sister returned Wendy had removed the rest of the baby’s wrapping, and was reproached for so doing. Heaven knew what harm she had done. But the baby, so far as Wendy could see, was in good order, firm of limb, bright of eye, smooth of skin and, once released from its wrapping, extremely lively.

  ‘Why didn’t you wake me?’ asked Ken. ‘Sounds as if you needed me. You’re too independent for your own good.’ It was four o’clock in the afternoon. He had wakened at eleven thirty, only just in time for his lunchtime gig. He’d come over as soon as he could. He inspected the baby. ‘Are you sure it’s mine?’ he asked.

  ‘Of course I’m sure,’ said Wendy. ‘Why do you ask?’

  ‘We’re not married,’ he said. ‘How do I know what you get up to?’

  ‘Perhaps we ought to get married now there’s a baby,’ said Wendy. The girls at work admired her for living with a man and not being married to him, but she could forgo that pleasure, she thought, for the baby’s sake.

  ‘Musicians make rotten husbands,’ said Ken. ‘When I took up music, it meant giving up all thought of a family. It isn’t fair to the kids.’

  ‘I suppose it isn’t,’ said Wendy.

  ‘I hope this baby doesn’t grow up to have your brains and my beauty,’ said Ken. ‘I hope it’s the other way round.’

  He’d brought her not flowers, not fruit, but a little orange kitten, which he’d found wandering in the street outside. It dribbled something nasty
from its back end on to the white sheet. Ken put it on top of the locker, where it staggered around the perimeter mewing and testing space with its paw.

  ‘You’ll just have to take it home,’ said Wendy.

  ‘I can’t,’ said Ken. ‘I’m going straight on to a gig.’

  He kissed her fondly.

  ‘Rhoda isn’t going to like being a grandmother,’ he said.

  ‘I know,’ said Wendy, happily. Ken went to his gig. Wendy marvelled at her baby. When Rhoda came she brought her daughter a bottle of sherry.

  ‘You’re not supposed to drink while you’re breastfeeding,’ said Wendy.

  ‘Nonsense,’ said Rhoda. ‘I did.’

  Wendy drank half the bottle straight off.

  ‘You’re only supposed to have a little at a time,’ said Rhoda. ‘It’s not like orange squash.’

  ‘I was thirsty,’ said Wendy.

  The baby hiccoughed. Rhoda took the kitten home. Its eyes were gummy. The red-headed nurse said she’d put it in the incinerator herself if nobody took it away, and fast. She said that babies born in a caul were born to great fame or great misfortune, certainly something special. Sister said that was superstition: a caul was just nature’s way of giftwrapping.

  ‘Isn’t that a sweet idea?’ said Wendy.

  Rhoda said to Bruno that perhaps all Wendy’s brains had gone into the baby. She certainly didn’t seem to have any left.

  On the day Wendy was to go home a woman came to issue a birth certificate for the baby. She was annoyed to discover that Wendy was not in fact married to Ken: it meant she had to tear up one certificate and start making out another.

  ‘He doesn’t believe in marriage,’ Wendy explained. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘I don’t take any moral stance on this,’ said the woman. ‘I just keep the records. If you and the father haven’t decided on a Christian name you have just six weeks in which to do it.’

  ‘We decided ages ago,’ Wendy said, crossing her fingers. ‘Jason for a boy and –’ Her eye fell upon her brushed nylon nightie.

  ‘Apricot if it’s a girl. Her name is Apricot.’

  ‘You don’t have to decide now,’ said the woman, quite kindly. ‘You might like your thoughts to mature.’

  ‘Oh no,’ said Wendy. ‘I’m quite sure. Her name’s Apricot.’ She drank the other half-bottle of sherry: nobody had filled her water jug since she’d been admitted. Apricot!

  ‘But you didn’t even consult me,’ said Ken reproachfully when presently it occurred to him to ask what she’d called the baby, and Wendy told him. ‘I’d never have called a boy Apricot.’

  ‘The baby’s a girl!’ said Wendy. She didn’t blame him. She knew Ken’s mind was on a new arrangement of ‘I Don’t Mean Maybe’. ‘And Apricot’s a lovely original name for a girl.’

  ‘I suppose it’s better for a girl than a boy,’ said Ken doubtfully, ‘but all the same you should have asked me.’

  ‘I’m really sorry,’ said Wendy, and she was. She could see she’d been impetuous. If Ken had only put his mind to it he might have in the end come up with something even better. It was just that in the end would have been so far the other side of six weeks as to be out of sight, and she couldn’t stand any more writs, summonses or legal documents in long brown envelopes. Lactation, or something, made her weak. Ken bought her a bottle of gin to celebrate her return home. She drank it all in a day and the baby slept beautifully. Soon she was pouring herself a glass of whisky for breakfast, instead of a cup of tea.

  ‘Apricot!’ said Rhoda. ‘Did Ken think of Apricot as a name, or you?’

  ‘I did,’ said Wendy.

  ‘I don’t like it at all,’ said Rhoda. ‘Poor little baby.’

  Rhoda said Wendy wouldn’t keep Ken long if she went on being so bossy. It wasn’t as if she were married to him.

  The kitten had to go to the vet three times in as many weeks and was more expensive than the baby. The baby slept in the bottom drawer of the dresser: the kitten had a feather cushion. Ken had to take on more and more gigs to keep the family boat afloat. It was a good thing, Ken admitted, that Wendy had such a placid and loving temperament. Sometimes her eyes, he noticed, didn’t quite focus, and the washing-up was seldom done, but he wasn’t fussy about things like that. There was a new girl singer in the band, whom he fancied. She had an emerald in her navel. It wasn’t as if he was married to Wendy, or that she knew about it. She was busy with her baby. The baby had been her idea, not his.

  Valerie stops work to listen to Hugo’s tape

  ‘You must listen to this,’ said Hugo, and Valerie, out of simple love, stopped writing and listened, though Lover at the Gate was in mid-flow and she did not want her concentration spoiled: what she now put on the page was beginning to have the quality of automatic writing: she feared the cutting-in of her own rationality: doubt would come with it, and hesitation.

  Q: But this Darcy’s Utopia of yours, this paradise, is surely merely a dream. The product of wishful and naϊve thinking – nothing but a cruel deceit: a phantasmagoria.

  A: I promise you this: Darcy’s Utopia is no dream. It is here; it is all around: it is ours for the asking, the taking: it is the picking of the apple on the tree. A ripe apple: just a touch and it falls into the hand, round, perfect, fitting just right. We live in a world of unimaginable plenty, unbelievable surplus. More than enough food for our millions and millions: high technology serves us. We have become so clever: it has become so easy. Houses to shelter us a-plenty: we know how to build them. Clothes to cover us: so many old clothes in the world! Brenda is on income support, yet you should see how the washing basket overflows! The trouble lies in distribution: not in production. Machines serve us: technology serves us; our habits oppress us, and enslave us. One man has a house with twelve rooms: another lives in a cardboard box. The man with twelve rooms is a decent guy. What stops him sharing? He’ll put a coin or a note in a charity box: he uses money to salve his conscience: the very money that causes in its plenty the rich man’s grief, in its absence the poor man’s woe: it is the symbol of our failure, not our success. ‘Let them spend more on health!’ we cry. ‘On schools! On happiness!’ Spend what? Coins, notes? ‘Money’ has stopped working. Pour millions upon millions into a nation’s health service, it makes no difference: still the people hack and cough and go untended, die for lack of attention, because money no longer represents what it did – labour, skill, concern, capital, organization, involvement. It has become a commodity itself, to be bought and sold by people skilled only in doing just that, and they have taken the guts out of money, weeded it out.

  Do you have a mortgage on your house? Have you built up a debt to the bank? If those paper debts were wiped out in the computer that prints your monthly statement, would it make any difference in real terms to anyone else? Would there be less wealth in the world? No! Would it affect the communal resource of food, services, capital? Of course not. Those debts relate to the past, not now. Their wiping out would merely free the individual from anxiety, heal his ulcer, lighten his step, brighten his eye. Money has become a thing of no value: usury, once a sin, is now the faith of nations. Buy on your credit card: buy, buy, buy! What have you got? Nothing that makes you happier than a child’s Christmas toy, bought in the land of plenty, broken and forgotten by Christmas night, discarded, swept up, thrown away; some unbiodegradable bit of plastic, moulded into partial or sentimental shape. Transitory, a panacea to stop the wail of the poor muddled infant: one that didn’t even work for long. What’s it all about? Money! The human race has had enough of it. As a medium of exchange it no longer works, and that’s that. We have to face it. Work hard, grow rich? You’re joking. Work hard, stay poor; that is the message of money. The brightest are wasted: the cunning triumph: the robber barons are back. Who saves, these days? No one. Who believes that by working now we can store up security for the future? We can’t. We know in our hearts money is worthless but how can we escape its tyranny: how begin afresh to judge ourselves and one another? />
  Q: You have an answer?

  A: Wait, wait! For a few to have money in abundance and others too little is the root of all social ills: it is the differential which results in unrest, riot, war, discrimination, class systems, crime, snobbery: the belief that one man is of more intrinsic value than another for reasons other than his temperament, his moral qualities, and his likeability. The only real, the only true wealth lies in friends in abundance, company in plenty, comfort in abandon, love overflowing: what have these things to do with money? – except that we cheat and lie and use money to acquire them; knowing no other way to do it. The man who gives a boat party knows in his heart that his friends like his yacht more than they like him: he is lonely and restless in their company. He picks up his mobile phone, dials his stockbroker in Tokyo. ‘More money, more money!’ he demands, and clever minds set to work at his behest, the computers shift and change a little all over the world, and presently his bank balance shows another nought; and, so that that nought should be there, somewhere in the undeveloped world another ten backs break needlessly.

  Lack of money causes misery, anxiety, early death: the cramping of personality, the limiting of human potential. Lack of money prevents us eating properly when we are children, ruins our health, rots our teeth, makes our parents quarrel and take to drink, stops us having the clothes we want, the friends we like, the parties we long for, stops us having the tuition which would enable us to get an education – makes us end up street sweepers and not doctors; induces women to have babies because there is no money for travel or entertainment, or to leave the parental home any other way: lack of money humiliates us all our lives: lack of money makes us live with husbands or wives we no longer love: lack of money makes us age earlier than we need: makes our hands rough with toil and our brows creased with anxiety: keeps us weeping by day and sleepless by night: the terror in our lives is the bill through the door which can’t be paid: our lives close in the knowledge of failure – we failed to make enough money. We never did what we wanted with our lives. How could we? We didn’t have the money.