The Life and Loves of a She Devil (14 page)

‘How indeed?’ said Ruth. ‘How circumscribed our lives are for shortage of something as simple as money!’

‘None of it’s fair!’ said Elsie. ‘I only told my husband to shake him up a bit; how was I to know it would shake him up too much? That bastard Bobbo! I want to get even.’

‘You could always write a letter to his lady-friend,’ said Ruth. ‘She has a right to know what’s going on.’

‘What a wonderful idea!’ cried Elsie Flower, and did so. She received no reply.

‘I don’t suppose she even cares,’ complained Elsie.

‘I expect she does,’ said Ruth.

‘I’m so unhappy,’ said Elsie. ‘He used me and discarded me as if I was worth nothing.’

‘I feel responsible,’ said Ruth, ‘because I sent you there. So the Vesta Rose Agency is giving you these.’

And she handed Elsie two air tickets, First Class, one to Lucerne via Swissair, and another from Lucerne to Auckland, via Qantas.

‘First Class!’ marvelled Elsie. ‘Women usually don’t like me, yet here you are being so wonderful to me!’

‘There’s just a little task I’d like you to do for me,’ said Ruth. ‘In Switzerland.’

‘Nothing illegal?’ Elsie, like anyone, became nervous when everything seemed to be going too well.

‘Good heavens, no,’ said Ruth. ‘Just a little financial dealing. The tax laws here are iniquitous, as everyone knows, and particularly against women. It’s all so much better in Switzerland.’

‘I’ll do whatever I can,’ said Elsie, easily enough convinced, as indeed people are, when only a vague morality stands between them and what they want.

‘But look,’ said Elsie, examining the tickets. ‘The one to Auckland is made out in the name of Olivia Honey.’

‘Oh yes,’ said Ruth. ‘I quite forgot. And there’s this!’ She handed Elsie a passport, easily enough obtained from the young man in the students’ café. This too was made out in the name of Olivia Honey, and contained a very flattering photograph of Elsie: the agency kept such photographs of all its employees. Her age was given as twenty-one.

‘It’s a lovely name,’ said Elsie.

‘Some would think so,’ said Ruth. ‘Some wouldn’t.’

‘I never liked Elsie,’ said Elsie. ‘And look, I’ve lost five years!’

‘Ungained them,’ said Ruth. ‘Five years of extra life, or extra youth, which, after all, is the same thing.’

‘I’ll do it!’ said Elsie.

‘I knew you would,’ said Ruth. ‘Who wouldn’t?’

Ruth transferred two million or so dollars from Bobbo’s deposit account into his and her joint account. She wrote to a Swiss bank in Lucerne — Swiss banks ask no questions — in Bobbo’s name, opening a joint account and paying in a cheque for the two million dollars. Olga intercepted the confirm-in-person-please note on the manager’s desk, and the transaction went through unquestioned. (In return Nurse Hopkins formally adopted Olga’s autistic child, thus setting Olga free to resume her career as a singer, which she forthwith and successfully did.) Ruth flew to Lucerne herself and there met Elsie, moved the money into an account which Elsie had just opened, and waited for it to be cleared. Elsie withdrew the money in cash, handed it over to Ruth, kissed her fondly goodbye, and disappeared into the airport as Olivia Honey.

Ruth returned briefly to Nurse Hopkins and the Vesta Rose Agency.

‘My dear,’ she said, ‘the time has come to say goodbye.’

Nurse Hopkins wept.

‘You must never feel sorry for yourself,’ said Ruth, ‘and you must never blame your parents for your misfortunes. They may have given you thyroid tablets as a child, but they did it out of love and concern for you, and most importantly, they left you money. Money is to be used, not hoarded. I am leaving you the Vesta Rose Agency to run and Olga’s little boy to love. These two legacies will keep you busy enough, especially the latter: too busy for you to grieve for me much.’

‘But what is in that suitcase?’ asked Nurse Hopkins, cheering up. ‘And where are you going?’

‘There is money in the suitcase,’ said Ruth. ‘And I am going into my future.’

She was only just in time. The following week the accountants moved into Bobbo’s office to do the annual audit. They stayed a remarkably long time, holding up the work of the place, and Bobbo thought at first that this was a symptom of their inefficiency.

But presently a policeman came to visit him.

‘I have no idea what you’re talking about,’ said Bobbo.

‘Don’t try to bluff it out,’ said the policeman. ‘We have a fair idea what happened. So little Miss Elsie Flower let you down. Where were the pair of you going to start again? South America?’

‘Elsie Flower?’ said Bobbo. ‘Who’s she?’ And in all honesty he couldn’t remember. Bosses seldom remember typists.

M
ARY FISHER IS DISTRAUGHT
. What is happening to her life? Her happiness is held in a broken bucket, and it is all leaking away. First a letter in the post from a girl who claims to be Bobbo’s mistress. Bobbo denies it, of course he does, but Mary Fisher knows by now that such letters are usually true and that this one certainly is. She understands now that unhappiness must follow happiness, misfortune good fortune. That to love is to be vulnerable to fate and to be vulnerable is to invite attack by fate. Bobbo stops denying it, says, very well, it was true but it was over, it meant nothing, you know what typists are, they come today and go tomorrow, ha-ha; dearest Mary, I love only you, you are the light of my life, the lantern of my path; how can you demean yourself to be so downcast by the letter of a nobody? A malicious nobody, at that? And Mary Fisher forgives him; what can she do but forgive him; except lose him, and if she loses him she thinks she will die.

And how can she not forgive him, and how can she not forgive him with the imprint of Garcia’s fingers still recorded in her flesh? But oh, what is sauce for the gander is poison for the goose.

Mary Fisher lives in the High Tower at the edge of the sea, surrounded by walls of privacy and privilege, at one with nature. Once she dallied with the world, but now, with love, the world comes surging in. First it was her lover’s children, then her mother, now it comes in the shape of a policeman, knocking at the door. How the Dobermans bark and dance! She knows nothing: Bobbo knows nothing. ‘This misfortune comes from an unkind fate,’ she says.

‘It comes from your guilt,’ he says.

Mary Fisher reels as if from a blow. Is everything her fault? Of course. She it was, after all, who inspired the love that ruined them. She it was, in the carefee days of un-love, who commanded Bobbo to take her home, who allowed Ruth to be discarded, who lost his children their real mother — there is no end to her responsibilities.

Bobbo weeps. ‘It is all so like a bad dream,’ he says, denying now even that the ground she walks upon is real.

In her mind the High Tower totters, crumbles, stands derelict. It might as well.

Garcia stands at doors and listens. He delights in the downfall of the dwellers in the High Tower. ‘The higher you build,’ he says to me, ‘the further you fall. It is natural justice,’ he says.

‘Not so natural,’ I say, and laugh. She devils are beyond nature: they create themselves out of nothing.

Policemen come to the tower when Mary Fisher is not in; they search it, they find the folded letter from Elsie Flower in her jewel box, in the locked drawer, along with strings of pearls from early lovers and emerald brooches, which she keeps, out of the weakness of nostalgia, secret from her Bobbo. She has never quite forsaken the past for the present: never quite.

Garcia leads them to the jewel box. He has no shame, no qualms. She has betrayed him. Once Mary Fisher was the sun in his heaven; now she is nothing; she mingled herself with Bobbo, and became as he was — nothing.

The police close Bobbo’s office, seal his doors, confiscate his books.

‘I do not understand,’ is all he can say. ‘Mary, I love you.’

Mary Fisher sits in the High Tower and waits for friends to gather round, but they don’t. What can they say? Your fancy man, your lover, has embezzled our money. We are writers, people of talent, unworldly, trusting, and what have you done to us? Your fancy man, not so fancy, was about to run off with his typist, but she disappeared with the loot! Out of kindness to Mary Fisher, friends stay silent.

Bobbo sits in the High Tower and grows morose. He fails to shave, his chin becomes flabby, the hair on his jowls turns grey. ‘Do you believe in me, my love?’ he asks.

‘I believe in you,’ says Mary Fisher.

‘Then save me,’ he says.

Mary Fisher hires the most expensive lawyers in the world. She flies them in from distant parts. English is not their native tongue: she must hire an interpreter, too. ‘It will be expensive,’ they warn her. ‘This kind of case can go on for years.’

‘Oh Bobbo,’ says Mary Fisher, ‘if only you had not been unfaithful to me, this would never have happened,’ and even as she says it, sees love drain out of his eyes: and somehow, as a stream, which seeks its own level, it flows over into hers, and her fate is sealed. The less he loves, the more she will.

There is a knock at the door of the High Tower at three in the morning. It is the police. Mary Fisher telephones her lawyers at their expensive hotel, but they cannot understand what she is saying. Their interpreter is elsewhere. Bobbo is led away.

In the morning the interpreter is found and says ‘Incarceration is nine-tenths of the law. We’ll do what we can.’ And so her lawyers do, but it seems to be marvellously little. They apply for bail and settle down to prepare the case, as well as one, a difficult and tricky one, for political asylum for themselves. They appreciate a country full of Mary Fishers!

Mary Fisher puts one house on the market: it is not a good time for selling houses. Her lawyers say one house is not enough. How many do you have? Only three? Oh dear! Well, that will just about see us through to the trial. This is fixed for some nine months hence. Such delays are inevitable, the times being what they are, and the judge appointed being a certain Henry Bissop, an unpredictable, popular and busy man. But they will do what they can to release her Bobbo on bail, to return him to Mary Fisher’s arms.

Garcia no longer visits Mary Fisher at night. He has altogether lost his appetite for Mary Fisher. He enjoys the sound of her weeping. Why should he try to stop it?

Mary Fisher lies awake and alone at night, and weeps for lack of Bobbo. He is her child, her father, her everyone, her everything. Her only consolation is that in prison he can hardly be unfaithful to her.

Beyond the High Tower the constellations wheel, as if nothing untoward had happened here on earth. Mary Fisher wonders if Bobbo can see the sky from his prison cell, and if he thinks of her. Somehow, when she visits him, the matter does not come up.

J
UDGE HENRY BISSOP LIVED
in great luxury in a house on a hill overlooking the city. The house was newly built in a kind of reddish puckered cement varnished to a high gloss, in imitation of wet brick. It was set in an acre of plastic grass, which could be cared for by hosing down rather than mowing. The judge feared robbers, having met so many, so the house was studded with locks and bars and shutters, but a virtue had been made out of necessity and all had been forged in intricate wrought-iron by master craftsmen. From some angles it looked like a castle, from others a bungalow.

Inside, the purple carpets were of the deepest pile available, the many little lampshades were of the finest pink satin trimmed with gold braid, and the plump sofas were of the most expensive orange leather imaginable. Walls were panelled in glossy mahogany veneer, or lined with crimson flock paper, of the kind found in Indian restaurants. This was Lady Bissop’s taste, not the judge’s, but he let her have her head in this, as in nothing else. He liked to watch the expression on the faces of visitors as he showed them into the living room, to catch the flicker of dismay, quickly suppressed. It was to the observation of such fleeting facial flickers in court, and his quick interpretation of them, that much of his reputation for wisdom was owed, and he could not get enough of them.

No use, thought the judge, having a natural talent for spotting liars — you had to work at it, develop it, watch the rubbing of ears, the licking of lips, the quick slide of the eyes.

‘Like the décor?’

‘Why yes, Judge. Wonderful!’

‘All my wife’s idea. She has a fine, natural talent, don’t you agree?’

‘I certainly do, Judge.’

‘And isn’t she a lovely girl!’

‘She certainly is. You’re a lucky man, Judge.’

Lies, all lies!

Lady Bissop, although considerably younger than her husband, was no beauty. He had chosen her on this account. He feared the seduction of beautiful things: he feared life’s irony. He had heard and seen too much of it. Go to a concert, and a thief runs off with your harp. Have your wife’s portrait painted and she runs off with the artist. Stare too long at the beauty of a flower, marvel at the nature of creation, and your grip on the universe is instantly loosened, and all kinds of random events rush in to overwhelm you. If Judge Bissop had a vision of God it was of a great script-writer in the sky, churning out B-feature scripts, studded with coincidence, improbable events and unbelievable motives.

So Lady Bissop was not the kind of woman whom painters ran off with or for whom Troy fell; she had a large nose and a receding chin and rather dull eyes and a disappointed expression. She had borne the judge two sons, who took after her, and were quiet and well-behaved. The judge disciplined them in the same way as he himself had been disciplined as a child — that is, if they did anything to annoy him he would scoop up whatever was nearest — sand, earth, salt — and stuff their mouths with it. It was uncomfortable, but it was safe (up to a point), quick and effective. The children took care, as they grew up, not to annoy or disrupt. He thought they were the happier for it, and if Lady Bissop did not agree, she did not say so.

The judge himself, even at sixty, was a wonderfully handsome man: tall, broad-shouldered, even-featured, self-controlled. His hair was plentiful, snowy-white, and cut weekly. When the judiciary was having its photograph taken Judge Bissop would be pushed to the fore, for he looked like what a judge should be — distinguished, wise, firm but kindly.