Fay Weldon - Novel 23 (39 page)

 
          
‘Who’s
been sleeping in my bed?’ said Felicity’s voice, waking me up. For a moment I
couldn’t think where I was. The same voice had come to me over decades, with
its lilt, its warmth, its determination to pass on energy. Waking from that
dense, pleasurable, jet-lagged sleep I could have been any of the mes: the
child I still felt I really was; or the adolescent with the pudgy face which
hadn’t yet found itself, its lineaments blurred by a mother’s and a father’s
death; or the driven, ungracious young woman getting her degree in film
studies, wearing a ring through her nose, and green nail varnish on her toes,
thinking herself so proud and strong and
different.

 
          
The
best thing you can do with tragedy is turn it into difference, into narrative,
and be proud of it.
It’s
how Felicity dealt with it:
so did I. She handed the art on to me, that familiar, chiding voice in my ears
through all my years.
Take nothing
seriously. It’s all fairy
tale
. Who's been sleeping in
my bed?
As if there was any choice: each family ends up in the same old bed
no matter how it struggles. Like Felicity, like me. Sure she had once butted
out when things really got tough: left me to find my swinging mother, but how
was she to know that that would happen next? How was I any different? Joy had
called me in London to say Felicity had suffered a stroke, she was in hospital,
and what had I done? Thought up an excuse for not rushing to her side, and got
on with my work. We can’t all be strong all the time, I suppose, we can only
take shifts at virtue. I forgave my grandmother there and then for her sins of
omission and commission.

 
          
I
launched myself across the room at her, thinking I was still the child with two
living parents, and nearly knocked her off her feet. ‘Where have you
been
, Miss Felicity
?
⁵

 
          
‘At
the Casino,
^’
she said, recovering her balance, shaking off her
shoes, massaging her feet. ‘Thank God I changed my shoes. These are meant to be
comfortable but still they’re hell. What a day! We’re both of us wiped out. It
goes like that. But luck evens out, you know. Lose today, win tomorrow. It’s
all there in the
I Ching
and I must
say life bears it out.
^’
She was bright-eyed with adrenaline. William
had dropped her off, she said, and gone home to the Rosemount. They were both
exhausted.

 
          
Guy and Lorna.
Where was Guy?

           
I confessed. I watched her face go
grim with annoyance and then clear again. She looked at me with a fondness I
did not deserve. ‘For someone who thinks themselves so clever,
^’
she
said, ‘you are remarkably stupid.
^’
It didn’t get any worse than
that. I couldn’t have borne it and she knew it.

 
          
‘What
you mean to tell me,
^’
she said, ‘is that Lois’s grandchildren are
after my Utrillo on the grounds that I’m not fit to look after it, and are
prepared to go to law to have me put away, and William will be used as evidence
against me.
^’

 
          
I
said yes, more or less. She went to the phone and called William and told him
to get over right away. She put her shoes on again as if she could see the
necessity of sudden flight. I was relieved at that.

 
          
‘People
do get whisked off to the West Wing for less than this,
^’
she said.
‘I have seen it.
Weep tears of blood.
I wondered why the
I Ching
gave me
that this morning. But we have time. The enemy is still gathering its forces.
Thank the fates I came back when I did, that the Casino wiped us out so we came
back early.
When the
enemy is weak, attack.
Sun Sziu’s
Art of War.'

 
          
She
then did an extraordinary thing. She took the quilt from her bed. She got me to
help her take the Utrillo down from the wall. She was strong but her poor arms
were quite thin and weak. The years take their toll on the body but not if you
are lucky on the mind. She wrapped the painting in the quilt. Together we
carried it, in the moonlight, to the other side of the rhododendron bushes,
where the gardeners had their shed. It had tools inside it, and deck chairs
which would be brought out when the weather got warm. It was not locked.
Gardeners, like Felicity, tend to have trusting natures, unless circumstances
suggest otherwise. She leant the painting against the wall and put a folding
table in front of it. Then we went back indoors, and got the pretty girl at the
front desk who spoke so little English to bleep Nurse Dawn.

 
          
Nurse
Dawn was showing Guy around the West Wing. The bright moon shone into darkened
rooms, where the incontinent and the senile and the simply old
drowsed
their lives away; where there was no argument and
none of the shrieks and howls that sometimes rent the air at the Glentyre back
home in Twickenham. Guy said as much to Nurse Dawn. They were getting on
famously.

 
          
‘It
seems a pity for Miss Felicity to be spending her own money on her keep,’ said
Guy. ‘If she turns out to be a UK citizen the State back home will provide for
her, and very comfortably, though not of course to this degree of comfort.’

 
          
‘You
are thinking of taking her home?’ asked Nurse Dawn. She had not anticipated
this.

 
          
‘We’ll
see how things go,’ said Guy. ‘If she were in the Glentyre she could be back
with her daughter again. Either way, she’s certainly not up to handling her own
affairs any more, we both know that.
Bad enough having a
batty old woman in charge of a major work of art, let alone her being in thrall
to an unscrupulous gambler, twenty years younger than she is.
I imagine
the Golden Bowl could find itself sued if anything went wrong.’

 
          
‘I
don’t think it can be as much as twenty,’ said Nurse Dawn, playing for time.
‘I’m quite an expert at ages: I’d say more like ten or eleven. What do you
mean, go wrong?’

 
          
‘If
the painting was lost, or stolen, say: or if she was talked into parting with
her money, and you had done nothing to prevent it.’ ‘I think the thing to do,’
said Nurse Dawn, ‘is for her to be declared incompetent by the visiting
psychiatrist, and she can move into the West Wing where we can keep an eye on
her. After that the court will make no objection, I’m sure, to having you made
her guardian. Sometimes the Golden Bowl takes on that role, but if relatives
want the bother, so much the better.’

 
          
‘I’d
better take the Utrillo back to London for safekeeping,’ said Guy. ‘It’s been
in the family for a long time.’

 
          
‘If
you must,’ said Nurse Dawn. ‘We’d love to have it gracing our walls, but
insurance costs over here are outrageous.’

 
          
They
looked into a darkened room and there saw Dr Bronstein sleeping quietly.

 
          
‘We’re
so proud of Dr Bronstein,’ said Nurse Dawn. ‘What a lovely old fellow! He once
nearly won the Nobel Prize, you know. He and Miss Felicity are such good
friends. She’ll be happy to be near him.’

 
          
Guy
looked at the tubes and leads attached to Dr Bronstein’s body and could see
that being near was about all that could happen. It seemed quite safe. What had
to be avoided at all costs was marriage. Things might become complicated in
the courts. Considering how temporary marriage was, these days, it always
surprised him that the law took the act of trust so seriously.

 
          
The
screensaver on the computer monitor on the table under the window flickered
into colourful life. Birds fluttered across the screen. Nurse Dawn strode
across and switched the thing off at the wall. ‘No point in wasting
electricity,’ she said. ‘Poor Dr Bronstein can’t actually see it any more, let
alone get out of bed. But we encourage our guests to have things they love
around them.’

 
          
The
room was suddenly bathed in light. Dr Bronstein’s eyes jerked open.

 
          
‘Joseph!’
exclaimed Nurse Dawn. Dr Grepalli had been sitting in the dark unnoticed, at
the far side of Dr Bronstein’s bed. It was he who had turned on the light.
‘What are you doing there? Praying?’

           
‘That might not be such a bad
idea,’ said Dr Grepalli. ‘I just popped in to have a chat with Dr Bronstein,
but he does seem to have gone downhill rather fast. I looked at his medication
chart, Nurse Dawn, and the stuff he’s getting is remarkably strong.’

 
          
‘I
am the qualified person round here,’ said Nurse Dawn, ‘and I don’t recommend
you go round stirring up too many hornets’ nests, Dr Grepalli. I don’t know if
the Board realizes you’re a doctor of literature not of medicine, and perhaps
it’s time they were informed, and of a few other things that go on round here.
Sexual harassment’s only just a start.’ She felt aggrieved. He had abused her
and bullied her into bed, using his position of authority as a weapon. But she
could see it might not be too easy to prove, the law always siding as it did
with the powerful, and softened her position a little. ‘We have too few trained
staff here to meet State requirements; good hearts alone don’t qualify. The
fact of the matter is they could come in and close us down any time. Of course
we’d fight it, but a lot of relatives might withdraw their loved ones in the
meantime. We don’t want Dr Bronstein agitated and distressed: I see to it that
he isn’t. Why do you think the West Wing is so peaceful? Well, you’re the one
in charge round here. You’re not meant to think, you’re meant to know. Now I
suggest you leave Dr Bronstein to me.’

 
          
At
the time of his divorce, Guy had once visited a dominatrix. He had heard that
voice before. Dr Grepalli seemed to quail under it. At any rate he rose and
left, though not quite willingly, as a person emerging from
a
hypnosis
might still accomplish the entertainer’s tricks. Guy stayed
where he was and watched Nurse Dawn’s little high red heels grind into the soft
pink pile of the carpet as she prepared a new injection for the old man. Guy
liked her more and more. Why couldn’t Lorna be more like this?

 
          
Dr
Bronstein’s eyes were shut again - ‘There, out of his misery once more,’ said
Nurse Dawn - and she and Guy made their way back to the main building, where
Nurse Dawn left an urgent message for the Visiting Psychiatrist to call, that
evening if possible. Amira, at the desk, was putting on her coat and preparing
to leave.

 
          
‘You
can’t leave now,’ said Nurse Dawn. ‘You have another hour to go before your
shift it is over.’

 
          
‘I
go,’ said Amira. ‘Charlie
wait
.
Charlie
my husband.’
And sure enough Charlie was waiting, big and bright and
filling up more space than seemed possible, in the doorway.

 
          
‘Amira’s
coming with me,’ said Charlie. ‘It isn’t safe for her to walk home alone.’

           
‘If Amira goes now,’ said Nurse
Dawn, ‘that’s the last pay cheque she’ll get from me.’

 
          
‘I
wouldn’t advise that,’ said Charlie. ‘Someone might find out you’d been
employing illegals.’ And Amira, happy and smiling, went with Charlie.

 
          
‘Always
best to stick to the letter of the law,’ said Guy, sympathetically. ‘But if
Charlie’s here, Lorna’s back. Let’s go and visit Miss Felicity, before my dear
cousin Sophia stirs her up. Sophia is a sweet girl but very naive and the naive
can be dangerous.’

 
          
What
did they find? They found Miss Felicity flown, Sophia gone, a blank space on
the wall where the Utrillo had been. The painting had not been up on the wall
for long enough to mark the wallpaper: that is, to leave a square behind
around which colour had faded and dust had gathered. Lorna sat disconsolately
alone. ‘Where has everyone gone?’ she asked, querulously. ‘As I came in
Felicity and Sophia were leaving. All this way and I never even got a chance to
meet my own grandmother. She just brushed past me.’

           
‘Were they carrying a painting?’
asked Guy.

 
          
‘No,’
said Lorna. ‘Not that I could see. All she had with her was a purse.’

 
          
‘Then
there’s no evidence they have it,’ said Guy.
‘Only
supposition.’

 
          
‘There
was a bright red Saab coupe waiting for them,’ Lorna went on. Excitement had
made her garrulous. ‘My boyfriend the crystallographer had one of those. I
thought he was overcompensating for his dullness, you know what
men are - long car
, small dick - but perhaps he wasn’t.
Perhaps I misjudged him. That chauffeur is completely insane. He parked on the
waterfront in the moonlight, made a pass at me, and then asked me to marry him
and when I said of course I wouldn’t he just reversed the Mercedes and took me
straight back here and dumped me and the luggage. He must have thought I was
desperate. Now what do we do?’

 
          
‘What
sort of pass?’ asked Guy, red to his gills with mounting fury.

 
          
‘It’s
nothing to do with you, Guy, nothing,’ said Lorna. ‘You’re my brother, for
God’s sake. You don’t own me.’

           
‘Your brother should learn to
control his temper,’ said Nurse Dawn, ‘or one day he’ll pop.’

 
          
‘Better
to let it out than keep it in,’ said Guy, losing interest in her, ‘but you
Americans will never learn that.’

 
          
Nurse
Dawn put her head in her hands and sighed. One side of a border always chose to
think ill of the people on the other, no matter who drew the line in the sand,
it could be a square line that marked off a politician’s map, like
Rhode Island
from the rest, or something more sensible
like the path of a river or a mountain range. A whole ocean divided
herself
and this man, for whom she had felt the stirrings of
interest.
But no more.
He could be a turkey cock as
much as a man, a mere victim to his own testosterone. She marvelled at her own
wisdom, and at how misunderstood she was. You worked so hard to get where you
were: there was no appreciation and no gratitude. She had done her best for the
Golden Bowl and its old folk. She had believed in Dr Grepalli for a time, and
discounted his sexual proclivities. You had to do that with men, or where would
you find anyone to admire? But like all the rest, he was hopelessly
sentimental, a mixture of greed and the need to like himself. To con the old
people he had first to con himself: that was the worst of it. Of course you had
to keep the West Wingers drugged out of their minds or they’d swarm all over the
place like incontinent flies. She was not going to stay on the coast. The
weather was too fitful; too changeable; you never knew where you were. God
lived over the
plains,
you felt His presence there,
shimmery and dangerous in the hot air. Sometimes these days she felt He didn’t
hear her prayers: she was on the margins of His presence: if she wasn’t careful
she would wake one morning without His restraining hand and start increasing a
dose here, a dose there, forget the Longevity Index: she would find herself
doing Nature’s work, not God’s. She’d lost one job like that already.
Dangerous to push deaths up beyond the statistical margins, though
almost impossible to prove what had gone on in any but the most recent cases.
Bodies were either already cremated or who wanted all that wretched business of
disinterment? But she would not risk it, she would go back home where there was
less money, and life was richer but shorter, and the old were grateful and left
you money in their wills, and God was there to listen, and His wrath appeared
in twister form, grey and writhing over a flat landscape, and you could see it
coming a mile off. She loved that. She would write a letter to the Board just
before she went, concerning Dr Grepalli’s maladministration of the Golden Bowl
and the fudging of the Longevity Index.