Down Among the Women (9 page)

In the morning Kim lies groaning, hung-over, on the sofa. Scarlet gets up to make tea and collects the letters. He asks her to read the one from Susan. Scarlet does. Scarlet thinks Susan more of a fool than ever.

All the same, she thinks perhaps she should clear up before Susan’s return; replace—if Kim will give her any money—the baby things she’s used. She certainly means to.

Susan’s ward, however, is abruptly closed, the infection—from which Susan has been saved, being in isolation—is rampant and uncontrollable. Susan is deposited back home without warning, still with stitches, and with Simeon underweight, unnamed, and sticky of eye. She hobbles in, to face Scarlet and Byzantia in her bed, and Kim talking about old times with Wanda.

Poor Susan. How flimsy her kauri trees seem these days. No protection at all.

Wanda and Kim have been arguing over Scarlet. Both want her. Scarlet wants neither of them. Scarlet has a vision of a little flat in South Kensington where she can entertain lovers and bring up Byzantia, in that order. She has decided she will never marry. She intends to be beautiful, romantic and sought after.

Lying here in Susan’s bed, attended by a nurse by day and her mother by night, visited by Kim’s handsome and exciting friends, enjoying her father’s concern, all things seem possible.

Who will pay the rent? A detail, a detail. Does she not live here amongst fitted carpets? Kim does not worry about money. Why should she? Like father, like daughter.

Byzantia nibbles and sucks, containing in her strong little body all the energies of her past, to which—to name but a few—the following have contributed:

Scarlet draws the chart on her Basildon Bond (though she has to invent the names of Stephen’s antecedents) and chants in her soul—‘The days of m. are over. Let the days of f. commence.’

Susan is approaching in her taxi to put a stop to such nonsense.

‘You only want to keep her here to annoy me,’ says Wanda to Kim meanwhile.

‘Your annoyance or otherwise is a matter of indifference to me,’ Kim says, lying in his teeth. ‘I am only interested in Scarlet’s welfare.’

‘That makes a change,’ says Wanda, with feeble sarcasm. Kim makes her self-conscious; she suspects he pities her for not being the girl that once she was.

‘No,’ says Kim. ‘It does not. I was always concerned with my daughter, but I was not allowed to show it. You would not accept my money.’

‘It was whore’s money,’ says Wanda. ‘You prostituted your talent to obtain it. And anyway,’ she adds, ‘you only offered the once.’

‘Money is money,’ he says. ‘You talk like a fool. Whether it’s made from rich idiots or from teaching infants lies, as you do, it still buys the dinner.’

‘I wanted Scarlet to grow up with a sense of integrity,’ says Wanda, sounding quite lost and forlorn.

‘Then you were impertinent,’ he says, taking no pity on her. ‘To impose such neurotic values upon my child. Look how it’s turned out.’

‘That’s right,’ she says, classically, ‘blame me.’

‘Oh I do,’ he says.

‘Your child, indeed! You never even paid her a visit. You took no interest at all.’

‘I offered. The offer was refused. What did you expect me to do, go down on my knees, humiliate myself, in order to visit my own child?’

‘The offer,’ says Wanda, ‘was refused because I was in prison where you had put me.’

‘You put yourself there. I didn’t ask you to slash my paintings. Why should I then ask the police to desist from arresting you? Why should you harm my paintings? I didn’t harm you.’

‘You had a mistress.’

‘But you didn’t know about her.’

Thus they take up the pattern of the row as they left it off, fifteen years ago. Nothing much has changed, except they are both older, and each year that passes makes strife the sadder.

‘They weren’t paintings, they were mockeries,’ claims Wanda, getting into her stride.

‘You know nothing about them. You were profoundly ignorant of what I was trying to do. You have a woman’s eye, which means no eye at all. You just liked poncing on the art world. Your envy and your malice made you self-destructive. Jealous bitch that you were. It was your jealousy drove me to that other woman, what’s-her-name.’

‘Can’t remember it, can you?’ Wanda dances about with glee.

‘No, actually.’

‘Men!’ she says. The force of the expletive shatters even her.

‘Why do you say “men” in that tone of voice? You hate them, don’t you? I think Scarlet should be saved from you.’

‘I don’t hate men,’ she says, recovering her composure. ‘I pity them. They are inadequate creatures. They cannot bear to be with their equals. They must always seek out their inferiors. In bed or in the pub, it’s just the same.’

‘I don’t know what you mean,’ he complains. He is a little shaken, all the same.

‘Marrying this poor child Susan! It’s nonsense and you know it is.’

‘I love her.’

‘Love is for equals,’ she says.

‘You know nothing about her.’ He feels trapped. He remembers the feeling from long ago.

‘I saw her, that was enough. I suppose she admires you.’

‘Yes, she does.’

‘She doesn’t criticize.’

‘No. Why should she?’

‘What poor frail things you are, you men,’ says Wanda, laughing, feeling quite cheerful, now she feels her point is proved. ‘Why do you do these foolish things? You didn’t visit her in hospital tonight. Why not? Does she bore you? Does she complain? Is she a nagger and a whiner, this child bride of yours?’

‘It’s her first baby,’ he says, more defensively than he would like.

‘I don’t think you would be wise asking Scarlet to stay,’ says Wanda. ‘Scarlet would see through you in no time. And I hardly imagine Susan will appreciate the littering up of her love-nest with new-born relatives.’

‘Susan is a sensible girl. Susan has always been in favour of renewing contact with Scarlet. Susan accepts the fact, as I do, that Scarlet is my daughter.’

‘Scarlet is
my
daughter,’ cries Wanda with passion. ‘I gave birth to her. All these years I’ve looked after her. You can’t just step in now and say she’s yours. Fatherhood, as conducted by you, means nothing.’

‘That’s not what Scarlet thinks.’

‘Scarlet hasn’t got a mind to think with.’

‘I would have liked to have been a father,’ Kim compromises. ‘You prevented me. You wanted her to yourself. I think you are very wicked, Wanda.’

‘And I think you are incestuous,’ says Wanda, beside herself with rage. ‘You ignore her as a child. You wait until she’s nubile and now you have her in your bed. The police might be interested in that. It would make a change for
you
to be in prison.’ Kim is quite shaken.

‘I thought I’d got rid of you years ago,’ is all he can think of to say. ‘Do you have no life of your own that you have to come creeping back into mine?’ This hurts her.

‘I am very sorry for you,’ she says. ‘You used to be quite a good painter. Now look at you. Advertising! It’s hardly what you would have wanted for yourself. A pity to see talent go down the drain.’

‘I thought you said they weren’t paintings, they were mockeries,’ he manages to say.

‘Oh, that exhibition, yes. That was a disgrace. Cunts, tits and arseholes. Don’t look so shocked. If you can paint them I can say them. I did you a favour, slashing them. I suppose
she
liked them.’

‘Who?’

‘What’s-her-name. The female whose name you’ve forgotten. The one you were shacking up with when you were married to me and I was working fourteen hours a day to keep you in paint, and doing your shirts and emptying your ashtrays, when I got home exhausted at night.’

‘And doing them very badly, as I remember,’ he remarks.

She looks round wildly. He remembers the days when she would throw things. He flexes his thumbs, remembering how he could restrain her, pressing them into the two vulnerable nerve ganglions on her shoulders, until she cried with pain. He quite looks forward to it. In those days fights would end in love-making. Now he is not interested. The fight will be for the fight’s sake, but it is a long time since he has had even that pleasure.

Fortunately Scarlet calls out, as she would call out from her bed when a very little girl, disturbed if not by the sound of battle, then by the tension in the air.

Now she wants, not water, as she did when small, but to be fetched the olive oil to rub into her tummy—it has the look of a deflated balloon, and she’s not having that. She has her future as London’s leading mistress to consider.

Wanda hands over the bottle—Crosse & Blackwell Olive Oil, used by the English in those days for cosmetic rather than culinary purposes. Scarlet could have stretched for the bottle herself, perfectly well. Wanda is grim-faced and silent. Scarlet is made uneasy and anxious. She wishes Wanda would go away, and leave her to empty chats with her father. She suspects that Wanda knows her fantasies.

When Wanda returns to Kim his thumbs have relaxed. He even smiles, amiably.

‘Don’t let’s quarrel,’ he says. ‘We’re too old for that.’

‘I’m not quarrelling,’ she says. ‘I’m making statements of facts. If you want to support Scarlet I suggest you pay a banker’s order monthly into my account.’

‘You’re joking.’

‘Her account, then; though you know how impractical she is.’

‘I don’t, as it happens. Not having much of an acquaintance.’

‘Well, will you?’

‘Will I what?’ He is being obstinate.

‘Give some money?’

‘No.’

‘I thought not.’ She is triumphant.

‘Not if she’s with you. Only if she’s with me. It wouldn’t be fair to Susan.’ He smiles sweetly. He has a sweet smile. One would almost think he meant it.

‘Oh no.’ She is sarcastic. ‘It wouldn’t be fair to Susan. Bring her in when convenient, not otherwise. Poor bloody neglected little cow.’

‘Susan’s doing all right for herself,’ he says, with a kind of rough and almost friendly conceit.

‘There isn’t room for Scarlet here.’

‘A good deal more than at your place, I gather. Peter didn’t look after you well, did he?’

‘Peter?’ She is lost.

‘Peterkin,’ he reminds her. ‘Your lover.’

‘Oh, him.’ He was lost a long time ago, lost in the misty past of lovers.

‘He didn’t last long,’ remarks Kim.

‘He had his uses,’ drawls Wanda. ‘He bailed me out, and he was good in bed.’ She cannot remember whether he was or wasn’t, but it serves to annoy Kim.

‘Pity his wife died like that. From over-use, perhaps.’

‘From abstinence, more like. She wouldn’t.’ They look at each other with a kind of alarmed sympathy. They are beginning to enjoy themselves.

‘Quite like old times,’ says Kim; he smiles tentatively.

‘Yes,’ she says, cool as can be. ‘Do you have any good rows with soppy Susan?’

‘No,’ he says before he can stop himself, and is instantly mortified. He lapses into silence.

‘I tell you what,’ he says presently, ‘let’s ask Scarlet.’

‘She shouldn’t be upset,’ says Wanda.

‘You’re frightened, aren’t you? You’ve been a bad mother for bloody years and now it’s coming home to roost.’

He is right. Wanda is scared stiff. She, who has longed, vociferously, for the day when Scarlet will leave home and set her free, panics at the notion that her wayward child might now not so much reject her, as actually choose her father.

Together they go to face Scarlet. She clasps Byzantia to her bosom and regards her parents as they enter the room.

‘What a pity,’ she remarks, ‘that Susan exists. Otherwise we could all be together again.’

It is at this point that Susan, poor Susan, re-enters her home.

Susan does not have a key, having left the flat so hurriedly, and has to ring the bell. Wanda goes to answer it. Susan stands forlornly on the doorstep; Simeon is crying. He has a piercing, insistent cry.

Wanda takes the baby. Susan does not resist. She walks through to the bedroom and there finds her husband and her stepdaughter. Her face puckers.

‘Darling,’ says Kim, startled. ‘What are you doing here?’ He had thought her safe in hospital.

‘They turned us out,’ says Susan dully. ‘People were dying all around me.’

‘Dying?’ enquires Scarlet sharply. ‘What from?’ Susan ignores her.

‘Would you like me to go away again?’ enquires Susan of Kim, with masochistic intensity. ‘That is, if I’m in the way.’

‘Darling,’ he says. ‘Darling. You should have rung. I’d have fetched you.’

‘I wanted to give you a nice surprise,’ says Susan dismally. Wanda pushes his child into his arms.

‘Pity about its eyes,’ she says, for Simeon’s lids are still encrusted.

‘Keep it away from Byzantia, if you please,’ Wanda adds.

‘What’s wrong with its eyes?’ Scarlet is sharper than ever in defence of her child, but no one replies.

‘You should be lying down,’ says Kim to Susan, and then to Wanda—‘she should be lying down, shouldn’t she?’

‘I’m perfectly all right,’ says Susan, ‘I just want to be at home.’

‘She wants us out of here,’ says Wanda.

‘She wants nothing of the kind,’ says Kim. ‘Do you, darling?’

Susan does not reply.

‘The baby’s hungry,’ says Susan.