Fay Weldon - Novel 23 (38 page)

 
          
Dr
Joseph Grepalli went down to the Atlantic Suite to have a word with Miss
Felicity about the Utrillo. She should
either have
it
moved to a bank vault, pay for its insurance herself, gift it away to a member
of her family to avoid inheritance taxes, or simply sell the thing and put the
money in the vault. She could not just simply leave it on her walls, pretend it
was a print, and let the Golden Bowl be responsible for its safekeeping. That
would be irresponsible.

 
          
He
knocked on her door and was surprised to find there was no reply. It was
unusual for guests not to be in their rooms during the Quiet Hour. He checked
at the front desk and was told Miss Felicity had not showed up for Sona Harmony
at eleven, and had
neither eaten lunch in the Dining Hall or
ordered Room Service.

 
          
‘She
might have slipped out by the side,’ said the girl at the desk. ‘She sometimes
does.’

 
          
‘You’d
see the car,’ said Dr Grepalli. ‘Wouldn’t you?’

 
          
‘Not
if Charlie parks round the side,’ said the girl. She was new to the job, and
spoke not very good English. She left her desk and stretched to close a window.
She was pretty, thought Dr Grepalli: large soulful dark eyes in an agreeably
sullen gypsyish face; tall and statuesque and quite commanding in her bearing,
with long strong thighs and white high heels. He was surprised Nurse Dawn had
hired her: female employees were for the most part on the slight, plain side.
She told him her name was Amira.

           
She worked part time. She offered
without being asked to show documents proving her right to work in the
United States
. He said that was not necessary and asked
her where Miss Felicity was likely to be.

 
          
‘At
the Casino with her boyfriend,’ said Amira.

 
          
Dr
Grepalli felt like a child again, living in a world where everyone knew more
than he
did,
where secrets were kept, and revelations
made just when he was at his weakest. It was at the moment that you closed your
eyes for sleep that family disharmony would erupt: when you were at home with
measles that uncles crept out of bedrooms they had no business to be in, and
all life shuddered and jolted into a different gear and your headache was worse
than ever. Amira laid her hand on the doctor’s arm. The pressure was quite
urgent.

 
          
‘He
is also a very bad person,’ said Amira. ‘He has made my niece pregnant. You are
a wise and good man. You are a doctor. Mr Director, I want you to tell this man
to marry my sister. Or she will be sent home and then how will she live?’

 
          
Dr
Grepalli changed his mind about suggesting that Amira came up to his office
later so he could give her details about lessons in English available in the
locality. Instead he told her he had no powers whatsoever to intervene in such
personal matters, smiled thinly and discouragingly, and left.

 
          
He
let himself into the Atlantic Suite; he found he did not need the key. The door
had been left unlocked. He could see that this was evidence of yet more folly.
Miss Felicity was childlike in her trust. He had been wrong to overrule Nurse
Dawn. If Felicity was left to her own devices some scandal or other was bound
to erupt. She was
a loose
cannon. The Golden Bowl
lived by its reputation. He doubted that the receptionist could actually
produce the documents she offered. But try and get her off the payroll and as
a disgruntled employee she could do damage. She or the niece would call the
local newspaper and complain. Then someone would recognize Miss Felicity going
in to the Casino. What a gift to the local newspapers:

 
          
THE
LOTHARIO OF FOXWOODS

From Casino to Golden Bowl,

from
twenty-three to eighty-three,

no
woman is safe.

          
 
Journalists would
come
nosing around. Who was to say but that some other staff might not be illegals?
Institutions
such as his own
were always vulnerable to
one kind of media attack or another.

 
          
What
was the answer? Ask Felicity to leave? That was bad for business. Word got
round. And who among the elderly wanted to sell up house and home, move into a
residential institution only to be forwith asked to leave, for apparently
insufficient reason? Because they were lucky enough to have a lover! When there
was no law against gambling, only prejudice! No, the institution would be wide
open to litigation, and if Miss Felicity was indeed in the hands of an
unscrupulous villain a court case would be the perfectly likely consequence of
upsetting her. So what was to be done? Flave Miss Felicity declared incompetent
to look after her own affairs? Moved to the West Wing? Kept sedated? It was
tempting but it was even more dangerous. Dr Bronstein’s transfer to the West
Wing had been perhaps premature: if someone asked for a second opinion the
competence of the visiting psychiatrist might be in question. Joseph personally
was happy to accept Nurse Dawn’s assessment of the situation: she took the
wider view and was in a position to judge the mood and morale of the guests,
which must at all costs be preserved. The few might have to go to the West Wing
earlier, in order that the many could stay out longer. Occasionally the rights
of an individual must take second place to the welfare of the group. Dr
Bronstein’s family, God knows, had been eager enough for the transfer, being
the kind who liked to get in first to avoid trouble in the future. Some people
just assumed that physical comfort was more important than emotional or
intellectual enrichment, a view that found its apotheosis, alas, in the West
Wing.

 
          
No,
when it came to Miss Felicity, the answer could only be to take steps to break
the relationship: Dr Grepalli was by virtue of his situation placed
in loco parentis.
The child might be twice
his age, but with every year that passed he was increasingly a child in wisdom.
Common sense, along with the body, peaked in performance,
then
slowly declined. What had to be done for the too young had to be done for the
too old.

 
          
Dr
Grepalli moved across the room to study the Utrillo. He noted wryly that
knowing its value greatly increased his appreciation of its charm. The small
French town dozed in sunlight. Not a human figure in sight, only masonry and a
snatch of tree, which was a relief. Art had a capacity to make you feel bad:
thank God there was nothing whatsoever inside this gold frame to disturb or
affront. He supposed that to be the secret of its success, its value in world
markets. His own father’s posthumous Art of Madmen exhibition had not been a
success. Only three of the grim canvases sold out of thirty, and those to
relatives. Nevertheless he didn’t think it would be a profound loss to society
if this particular painting was kept in a bank vault and not on a wall. He
caught sight of a small figure hunched in an armchair with high wings. It was
Clara Craft, the Hindenburg person. He was glad to remember her name. He was
not as cut off from his patients as Nurse Dawn claimed.

 
          
‘Shouldn’t
you be in your room?’ he asked, quite gently, because her eyes seemed so large
and scared, and he could see the pulse in her skinny neck beating fast.

 
          
‘Miss
Felicity doesn’t mind,’ said Clara.
‘When her boyfriend’s not
around.
I used to visit Dr Rosebloom when this was his room; I like to
be in here. But now he’s dead and Dr Bronstein’s in the West Wing there’s
nobody to talk to.’

 
          
‘We
can arrange for a therapist,’ said Dr Grepalli. She shook her head.

 
          
‘I
might as well go off to the West Wing myself,’ said Clara. ‘I’d do myself in
but I don’t have the guts.’ She began to talk about the Hindenburg disaster but
her voice slowed to a stop. She was gazing in to the door of the bathroom,
which was ajar.

 
          
‘There’s
someone in there,’ she said.

 
          
Dr
Grepalli went into the bathroom.
No-one.

 
          
‘Just
a trick of the light,’ he said. But he noticed that although he had asked for
the mirror to be replaced, the original still hung there. He caught a glimpse
of his reflection in the glass which didn’t seem a particularly good
resemblance to
himself
and looked hastily away. Nurse
Dawn, saving money again! If you didn’t spend you couldn’t earn. Why was it so
difficult for people to understand this? He felt angry with Nurse Dawn. The
visiting psychiatrist was altogether too eager to do as she suggested. Was
there some relationship there he did not know about, which might in the future
be used against him?
Some male Monica Lewinsky waiting there
in the wings?
He must ensure that in future Nurse Dawn did not sit in
when patients were examined, prior to their transfer to the West Wing. A court
might decide that her judgements were more personal than clinical. He might
even have to discontinue his own relationship with her. He found himself
reluctant, even afraid, to displease a subordinate member of his own staff,
and that was ridiculous.

 
          
‘It
was the paint, not the helium,’ Clara Craft was saying. ‘They used explosive
paint. On the R101 they impregnated the aluminium powder with cellulose
nitrate - you might as well use gunpowder - so of course that went up: then the
Graf Zeppelin went down in flames as well: they’d used cellulose acetate. On
the Hindenburg they thought they had the problem licked and used cellulose
acetate butyrate, less flammable but not conductive. They were wrong. Those
poor people! Run, run, run, and still it
wasn’t
enough. They died. It’s time I joined them. What’s been the point of everything
in between?’

 
          
‘Miss
Craft,’ said Dr Grepalli, ‘what’s the name of the President of the
United States
?’

 
          
‘I
knew yesterday but not today,’ said Clara.
‘Anyway what a
boring question.’
And she scuttled from the room, running as fast as her
little stick legs would move, which wasn’t very fast at all, as if pursued by a
ball of flame: Dr Grepalli hoped she would not run straight into the arms of
Nurse Dawn. It would be held against her.

 
          
I
arrived at the Golden Bowl with Guy and Lorna at about five in the afternoon.
The spring sun was low in the sky and the Roman pillars cast long elegant
shadows over the lawn. In this sheltered spot the rhododendrons and laurel were
just coming in to bloom, narrow splashes of pink against dark green, glossy
foliage. The Golden Bowl was looking its best. Lorna was impressed.

 
          
‘I
must say,’ she said, ‘it’s a whole lot better than where Mother is in
Twickenham. Of course, Grandmother Felicity has more money. Those pillars are
actually
marble
.’ Guy said he thought they were made
of some kind of compressed plastic aggregate. Lorna reminded him that this was
America
: no cheapskates here. The area was rich in
metamorphic rocks. He replied, not to be outdone, that it was rich in Senators
too. Although the smallest state in the
US
it sent two senators to Congress. Lorna
said if they were Senators they probably went to the Senate. Charlie watched
the pair of them from the car and by comparison he was 3-D colour wraparound
digital Dolby Sound and they were European black-and-white, subtitled.

 
          
I
could see the shape of a man standing in Felicity’s open French windows,
silhouetted by blowy curtains. Could this be the tricksy Mr William Johnson?
But it soon became apparent that it was Dr Grepalli and there was no sign of
Miss Felicity. It had simply not occurred to me that she might not be there.
Eighty-three, one somehow assumed, was old enough to keep people more or less
in one place.
But no.

 
          
*
* *

 
 
         
Dr Grepalli came forward to greet us
with great affability. I introduced Guy and Lorna as Felicity’s grandchildren.
I did not go into more detail.

 
          
‘It’s
too bad,’ said Lorna. ‘She knew we were coming. You’d have thought she’d have
waited in. Mother used to do things like that. I was hurt at first but then it
turned out to be Alzheimer’s.’

 
          
‘We
don’t use that word so much in this country any more,’ said Dr Grepalli. ‘There
being so many variations of the disorder.’ ‘Senile’s senile,’ said Guy, and Dr
Grepalli smiled bravely, and said he believed Felicity was out visiting a
Casino with her friend, but we were welcome to stay. He’d check us in with the
front desk. Room Service would bring us refreshments.

           
Guy looked astounded.

 
          
‘A Casino?
Gambling?
A woman in her
mid-eighties?
And she’s allowed to? I don’t think it would happen in
Britain
.’ I squirmed. Guy went over to the Utrillo
and studied it, standing so close you would think his breath might poison the
surface.

 
          
Joseph
Grepalli said mildly that he imagined human rights were pretty much the same in
both countries.

 
          
‘People
can and should be locked up for their own protection,’ said Guy, absently. He
took a magnifying glass out of his pocket and studied an inch or so of the
painting yet more carefully.
‘Especially old ladies who
revert to adolescence and start keeping bad company.
I should know
,
it happened to my own mother.’ ‘You and my senior nurse
would get on very well,’ observed Dr Grepalli.

 
          
‘I
must meet her,’ said Guy. ‘In any case my grandmother isn’t technically a
US
citizen. It seems she went through a
marriage ceremony with a GI back in the forties, but she was married already.
Only a couple of months previously, so she can hardly claim to have forgotten.
I imagine bigamy’s bigamy, in this country as well as ours, and all future
marriages are invalidated.
An interesting legal point.’

 
          
Dr
Grepalli nodded politely, decided not to be involved, and left the room.

 
          
‘Oh,
Guy,’ squeaked Lorna, ‘you promised you wouldn’t say a thing until I’d told
Sophia.’

 
          
‘Felicity
is our mutual grandmother,’ said Guy, ‘and I’m sure I’m as entitled as Sophia
is to find things out. Sophia doesn’t own Aardvark. And God knows I paid Wendy
enough.’

 
          
But
Wendy was
mine.
I was the one who
asked questions, fed out delicate strands of new knowledge as I saw fit,
playing with fate like a fish on the end of a line. And here was Guy, who
fished by simply throwing dynamite into the pond. How could Wendy have done
this to me? Was there not some conflict of interest? But I supposed not, or
none that she would see. We were all family: one grandchild was much like
another. The worst I could say of Wendy was that she was disingenuous: but why
should I expect anything else of her? If people slide and twine along the
borders of legality, like a snake round a wrist, that’s what they do. Why
should there be an exception made for you just because you’re
you
?

 
          
I’d
asked Wendy to give me further details of my grandfather the folk singer, and
provided her with the clues to trace him, but not the money to do it. I’d said
wait until I got back from the States. I had given Guy and Lorna the same
clues. It was information freely given and so could be freely used. And they
had used it better than I had. I, in the creative arts, in the humanities, drew
back instinctively if I thought I might find out something I didn’t want to
know. Guy and Lorna, professionally trained, he in law, she in academia,
worried away at the facts however inconvenient the outcome.

 
          
‘All
Guy did was ask Aardvark to check the marriage registry around the time
Felicity was pregnant,’ said Lorna, rather too defensively. ‘He wasn’t to know
they’d come up with bigamy.’ Guy rubbed the surface of the Utrillo gently with
his fingertips. ‘Well, well, well,’ he said. ‘Who’d have thought
it.
It’s the real thing.
White period.
Worth about two million in the right auction house.’

           
‘Dollars or
pounds?’
I asked.

 
          
‘Pounds sterling,’ he said, scathingly, ‘or two and a half million
Euros.
And absolutely no security at all.
We
were able to walk straight in. I don’t think our relative is strictly
compos mentis
.’

 
          
I
didn’t want Felicity to suddenly turn up and discover us like this, making free
with her home, her things, uninvited. Okay for me, perhaps, but not for Guy and
Lorna, though they would never understand why. I went to the French windows and
called Charlie in.

 
          
Outside
the sky was darkening: the rhododendrons glowed red against velvet. A moon was
rising. It was all moving shadows out there. I felt quite frightened. Charlie
had the interior light on, in the Mercedes. Presumably he was reading the law
book he kept in the glove compartment. He never wasted a moment.

 
          
‘Not
bad for an alcoholic, I suppose,’ said Guy, standing back from the painting and
eyeing it up as if it were some kind of enemy.
Such a gentle
little painting, too.
‘Though personally I could never see why anyone
reckons them more than picture postcards. White period, fortunately. They
fetch the most. Nineteen-
eight to nineteen-fourteen
. After the war started a bit more colour
crept in.
And no security here whatsoever.
We walked
straight in. She really should be locked up.’

 
          
I
decided I simply loathed Guy, and always had. I’d dug him up from under rotting
leaves. And I had led him here. What an innocent I was. I felt quite giddy and
had to sit down and longed for Harry Krassner to be sitting beside me, looking
out at the world with his quizzical overseeing eye. Once upon a time I had been
like that, not now. I couldn’t think of any film at all to relate to my current
predicament, let alone solve it.

 
          
Charlie
joined us and sat down on the end of Felicity’s chaise longue, making himself
at home, which was of course his great gift. Lorna moved up to make room for
him. I can only describe her as dimpling at him. We really had to get out of
here before Felicity came back.

 
          
‘Guy
knows such a lot about art!’ said Lorna, admiringly. ‘He deals in a small way,
but the art market is so up and down, you can’t rely upon it. I really can’t
understand how women can abandon their babies the way Felicity did poor
Mother.’

 
          
‘It
was a long time ago,’ I said. Where to begin? What was the point?

           
‘So cruel and selfish!’ said Lorna.
‘Life’s simply not fair, is
it.
When someone like
Mother who gives up everything for others ends up in a dump like Twickenham and
someone like Felicity ends up in this palace with major art works on the wall.’

 
          
I
suggested to Charlie that since we had nowhere planned to stay the night, he
should take Lorna and Guy into Mystic, or Wakefield, and find a hotel, leave
the luggage and have a look at Narragansett Bay in the moonlight. I’d come over
later by taxi when I’d seen Felicity. Charlie could get back home. They could
visit the Golden Bowl tomorrow. Travelling is all logistics, and other people
complicate them no end.

 
          
Why
had I ever opened up the
Yellow Pages
and my eye lighted on the Aardvark agency? Why had I been
so
blind and frivolous as to find the name funny? Seedy is seedy and there’s no
getting away from it. From blighted seeds grow weedy plants.

 
          
And
Guy wasn’t having it. He wanted to be there when I talked to Felicity.

 
          
‘Good
idea,’ he said. ‘But you go with Charlie, Lorna. I’ll wait for Felicity with
Sophia. And I want a word with the front desk.
Several, in
fact.’

 
          
Thus
it was that Lorna went off into the night with Charlie, and Guy vanished into
the marble halls of the Golden Bowl.

 
          
Left
alone, I used Felicity’s phone and called through to the cutting room but there
was no-one there. Of course not: I not being there to reproach them everyone
would have gone home early. I called my apartment but there was no reply, and
Harry had not switched on the answering machine. Faced by this blankness I
panicked. I called through to Holly, in California. I’d stolen her number from
Harry’s address book and put it in mine, just in case, though in case of what I
couldn’t be sure. If you have people’s numbers you own a little bit of them. He
of course knew hers by heart. It had been his for long enough. Four years. I
had never called her before. Her answering machine was switched on and the
message went, in Harry’s voice:
Hi
,
you've reached Harry Krassner and Holly
Fern.
It meant nothing, of course. It probably just made Holly feel better
to have Harry’s voice on her tape, so she’d never wiped it off. But I was
shaken. Of course I was. I lay down on my grandmother’s bed and slept, and
slept, and slept.