Читать книгу Rhode Island Blues - Fay Weldon - Страница 9

By the afternoon Miss Felicity’s plunge into a new life had taken on a certain urgency: Vanessa, one of the part-time real estate wives, called on her mobile phone to say that she had a client she was sure would just adore the house, and who was prepared to take it, furniture and all, and had $900,000 to spend but would want to move in within the month. Miss Felicity, faced with the reality of a situation she had brought upon herself, and too proud to draw back, and moved by my advice (I had woken in the night with a mean and manic fear that now we were getting on so well she would change her mind and want to come and live in London, to be near me) had calmed down and decided she would like to stay in the neighbourhood, and, what was more, had settled in to the idea of ‘congregate living’. She would start looking this very day.

Joy, summoned for coffee, and today dressed in yellow velour and with a pink ribbon in her hair, was alarmed at so much haste. Felicity might make more from her house if she hung on, she shrieked. Joy’s brother-in-law might want to move back into the neighbourhood, and maybe would be interested in the property: these major life decisions should not be taken in a hurry. But Felicity, meantime, unheeding, was unwinding the bandage round her ankle.

‘What are you doing?’ demanded Joy.

‘Rendering myself fit for congregate living,’ said Felicity. ‘I don’t want to give the impression that I need to be assisted. Let’s see what there is around Mystic.’

‘Mystic!’ screamed Joy, teeth bared. Every one of them a dream of the dentist’s art, but you can never do anything about the gums.

‘You can’t possibly want to be anywhere near Mystic. Too many tourists.’

‘I’ve always just loved the name,’ said Felicity. Joy raised her plucked eyebrows to heaven. What few hairs she allowed to remain, the better to reinforce the pencilled line, were white and spiky and tough.

‘I thought the whole point,’ yelled Joy, ‘was that you wanted assistance. Assisted care. Someone to help you take a shower in the mornings.’

‘That is definitely going too far,’ said Felicity and left the room, giving a little flirtatious kick backward with one of her heels, while Joy forgot to smile and ground her white teeth. ‘There’s nothing whatsoever the matter with that ankle,’ yelled Joy. ‘She just wanted you over here and she got her own way.’

The seaside town of Mystic (population 3,216) lies a little to the north of where the Quinebourg River splits and meets the Atlantic just before Connecticut turns into Rhode Island. In the summer the place is full of holiday-makers and gawpers: it is less fashionable and expensive than Cape Cod further up, or the tail of Long Island opposite, but it has some good houses, some good wild stretches of beach, and attracts admirers of the old 1860 wooden bridge, which still rises and falls to let the shipping traffic through. Or so the brochures said and so it proved to be. Joy insisted on coming with us on our tour of the area: so we went in her new and so far undented Mercedes—obtained for her by her brother-in-law Jack, a retired car dealer—and I was allowed to drive.

Old people do indeed seem to congregate around the town: the Mystic Office of Commerce handed out brochures a-plenty. I could understand the charm of the name, Mystic, tempting in the hope, so needed as life draws to its inevitable end, that there is more to it than meets the eye. A place close enough to nature to make sunsets and stormy weather a matter of reflection, in which to develop a sense of oneness with the universe, in which to lose, if only temporarily, the pressing consideration of the shortness of our existence here on earth. A more benign and tranquil version of nature than in most other places in the US. No hurricanes, no earthquakes, no wild fluctuations of heat and cold to disturb old bones, only the Lyme tick which no-one took any notice of, in spite of the fact that the illness is serious enough to carry off the aged and delicate. Maybe Mystic’s convenient distance from New York, not so near as to make popping in to see the old relative an everyday affair, not so far as to make a fortnightly visit too difficult, was the greater attraction. Or perhaps homes for the elderly were just these days a fine growth market: this is trading country, as a British admiral once observed, seeing the New England settlers trading with his fleet during the War of Independence. For whatever reason there were more residential homes for the aged up and down these ponds, these woods, these beaches, and these back roads, than I’d have thought possible.

When I asked what exactly we were looking for, Felicity said, ‘Somewhere with good vibes’, at which Joy snorted and said she thought cleanliness, efficiency, good food and a good deal was more to the point.

Good vibes! I thought Felicity would be lucky to find them anywhere in New England. Although a landscape may look stunningly pleasant and tranquil, the ferocious energies of its past—and few landscapes are innocent—are never quite over. The impulse to exterminate the enemy, to loot and plunder, to gain confidence with false smiles before stabbing in the back, is hard to overcome: if it’s not with us in the present it seeps through from the past. And these are dangerous parts: the first coast of the New World to be colonized, three and a half hundred years back. Bad things have been able to happen here for a long, long time. A massacre here, death by hunger there; an early settlement vanished altogether over winter: no trace left at all when the ships come creeping up the coast with the spring. And who in the world to say what happened? We all await the great debriefing when everything will be made known, the Day of Judgement which will never come.

Later the plantation owners of the South made this coast their summering place: later still the mob leaders from Chicago: then the Mafia. Of course they did. Like calls to like. The strong colour of old wallpaper had ample time to show through to the new, and they liked it. The edginess of something about to happen, something just happened. Vacations can be so dull.

Good vibes! Maybe it was in Felicity’s nature forever to be moving on, in search of a landscape innocent of earlier crimes. If so she would be better advised to go West than East, where there wasn’t so much history. Joy was by nature a stayer in one place, Felicity a mover on. Felicity would always listen and learn and be enriched, Joy would shut her mind to new truths. Felicity was inquisitive and never averse to a little trouble and discomfiture, Joy never wanted to stir anything up. Therein lay the difference between them, though God knows both ended up in much the same condition in life, living in the same kind of clapboard house, in the same kind of widowhood, albeit Joy today in startling yellow velour, and Miss Felicity in a floating cream and green dress bought at great expense at Bergdorf Goodman, and an embroidered jacket of vaguely ethnic but tasteful origin, cut so as to hide any thickening of the waist or stooping of the shoulders. She held herself erect. From the back she could have been any age: except perhaps her ankles were too thin to belong to a truly youthful person.

We took the coast road out of Mystic to historic Stonington, the Rhode Island side of the river from Mystic, where there’s a statue of a Pequot Indian with a large stone fish under each arm. Old people tottered around it, relatives holding dependent arms: a group whizzed about it in mechanized wheelchairs, never too old to be a danger to others. They came, in whatever state, to contemplate the past, since there was so little future to contemplate: they invaded the nearby souvenir shops by the busload, while old limbs still had the strength. We all want to think of our nation’s past as wondrous and charming, as we would want to think of our own. But Joy declined to get out of the car.

‘I’m no tourist,’ she said. ‘I live round here. As for those Red Indians, they take everything and give nothing back. If China invaded they wouldn’t object to being defended, I can tell you that.’

Felicity slammed the door as she got out of the car. But Joy lowered the window.

‘Scarcely a pureblooded Pequot left,’ she shouted after us. ‘They’ve all intermarried with the blacks anyway. Now they run their casinos tax-free on Reservation land. They rake in millions and are let off taxes, just because their ancestors had a hard time. Poor Mr Trump, they say he’s having a real bad time in Atlantic City, because of Indians.’

‘Hush!’ begged Felicity.

‘You’re so English, Felicity! If the old can’t speak the truth who can?’ Calm, quiet people turned to stare at Joy. Her white-powdered, hollow-eyed face stared out of the darkness of the car, her chin resting on the ledge of the lowered window, which I thought was rather dangerous. Supposing it suddenly shot up? I couldn’t think who she reminded me of and then I realized it was Boris Karloff in The Mummy. Some people, as they get older, simply lose their gender.

‘I’ve nothing against them personally,’ she shrieked. ‘But if I was one of them I wouldn’t want to be called a Native American. The way I was brought up, a native is a savage.’ Felicity and I, realizing there was no other way of silencing her, simply gave up our exploration of the town and got back into the car. Joy smiled in triumph.

We saw a couple of what were called congregated communities, but they were built around golf courses. Those who lived there looked as if they had stepped straight out of the advertisements: the strong, well-polished, smiling elderly, their hair wet-combed if they still had any—and there were some amazing heads of hair, not necessarily natural, to be seen, in both sexes. The men wore bright polo shirts, the women shell suits. They made Felicity feel frail. By mistake we saw an assisted living home where the old sat together with their zimmer frames, backs to the wall, glaring at anyone who dared to come into their space. The sense of quiet depression was such I could have been back in my own country. The smell of cheap air freshener got into my lungs. Felicity looked shocked. Joy wouldn’t step inside the room they showed us, so proudly.

‘I’d rather die,’ she shrieked. ‘Why don’t they just polish themselves off?’ If the inhabitants heard they did not stir. Management did, and showed us hastily out, but not before giving us their list of charges.

I relented. Nothing we saw looked at all suitable for my grandmother’s dash into the future. I told Felicity if she wanted to come back to London I’d do what I could for her: find her somewhere near me, even with me. I declared myself prepared to move house to live somewhere without stairs, into the one-floor living that seemed to be a requisite for anyone over sixty. I spoke coolly and my reluctance by-passed my brain and settled itself in my stomach in the form of a bad pain: appendix, maybe.

‘She’ll drive you crazy,’ shouted Joy. ‘You’ll regret it.’

Felicity persisted that she did not want to return to London, even to be near me. (The pain at once subsided.) I was too busy, too taken up with my own life. She would just feel the lonelier because she’d never get to see me, and I would just feel the guiltier for the same reason. Besides, she was used to the US.

Life in England was too cramped, too divorced from its own history, the young had no interest in the old, the IRA left bombs around, the plumbing was dreadful and she was too old to make new friends. And we certainly could not live together. Joy was right, I would kill her, or she me. I did not argue. We went home in depressed silence.

‘You just have to be patient,’ said Joy, softer again. ‘Don’t sell to this stupid client of Vanessa’s. Anyone who wants to move in within the month is bound to be a bad neighbour. You do owe a little consideration to the rest of us.’

She took the wheel of the car and bumped off in a way that never happened when I drove. It was scarcely more than a year old, and fitted with every possible kind of gadget to ensure a smooth ride. I don’t know how she managed it.

When we got back to the serenity of Passmore we found that a brochure had been pushed through the letterbox. It was from an establishment called The Golden Bowl Complex for Creative Retirement. Felicity examined it over toasted cinnamon bagels spread with Cream Cheese Favorite Lite. ‘This Golden Bowl place,’ said Felicity, ‘doesn’t sound too bad at all. They have a Nobel Prize winner in residence, and a Doctor of Philosophy. Fancy being able to have a conversation with someone other than Joy. And what synchronicity that it should arrive today!’

It would have been even more synchronicitous if it had arrived in the morning rather than the afternoon, so we could have visited it when in the area, but I held my tongue. The Golden Bowl charged at least double the fees of any other institution we’d seen, and they went up ten per cent each year. Which when you worked it out meant that in ten years’ time you would be paying double. But by then Miss Felicity would be well into her nineties. It might not be so bad a deal. It was a gamble who would end up making money out of whom.

I hoped her liking for the place wasn’t because it was the most expensive on offer. Reared in penury as she had been, Felicity now had an almost innocent faith in the power of money: she believed that the more you spent the better value you would get. She always bought the most expensive bottle of wine on the menu. She’d choose caviar not because she liked it but because of what it cost.

The Golden Bowl, according to its brochure, was an establishment run on therapeutic lines. Golden Bowlers (ouch! but never mind) were encouraged to live life to the full. Age need not be a barrier to the exploration of the self, or the exercise of the mind. Golden Bowlers were not offered the consolations of religious belief, which came with difficulty to the highly educated: but rather in some vague, Jungian notion of ‘adjustment to the archetype’ in which all staff were trained, and could bring joy and relief through the concluding years. Reading between the lines, those who ran the Golden Bowl held no truck with reincarnation; death was death, and that was that. What they were after was reconciliation with what had gone before since nothing much was to come. And they mentioned the word death, which nobody else had done.

It was persuasive, and Felicity and I were persuaded. I should have spoken out more firmly against a Residential Home for the Aged where the residents were known as Golden Bowlers. I should have realized that the connection with Ecclesiastes, which I assumed, was minimal. It wasn’t mentioned in the brochure.

Remember now thy Creator in the days of thy youth,

while the evil days come not,

nor the years draw nigh,

when thou shalt say,

I have no pleasure in them;

While the sun,

or the light,

or the moon,

or the stars,

be not darkened,

nor the clouds return after the rain:

How did it go after that? My mother Angel would teach me chunks of the Bible. It was her lasting gift to me, along with life itself, of course.

…and desire shall fail:

because man goeth to his long home,

and the mourners go about the streets:

or ever the silver cord be loosed,

or the golden bowl be broken at the fountain,

…then shall the dust return to the earth as it was:

and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it.

Felicity would never acknowledge that the Golden Bowl, whatever that was meant to represent, was cracked. A day would never dawn when she took no pleasure at all in it. There was bound to be trouble. ‘Vanity of vanities,’ saith the preacher, ‘all is vanity.’ But we were blithe: we put our trust in synchronicity.

The next morning Felicity consulted the I Ching, the Chinese Book of Oracles with the Foreword by Jung himself, to see what that had to say about the Golden Bowl. She had been in her fifties in the midsixties, when I was born, when the I Ching was all the rage.

She had just found her pencil and got round to throwing the coins when Joy appeared shouting in through the French windows, a vision in orange velvet with a crimson headband, determined that this day she would really make her mark upon the world. Felicity had the grace to hastily hide the coins under a sheet of paper. And then we all set off in high spirits to inspect the Golden Bowl, Felicity, Joy and me, in Joy’s Mercedes. Once again I drove. It was fun, all of a sudden.

‘This place is going to be just as terrible as the others,’ Joy assured us, quite softly. She was wearing her hearing aid and it was a bright morning so no doubt the world was less misty than usual. ‘But it’s nice to be driven.’ This morning she had a flask of vodka with her and lifted it to her lips from time to time as she sat in the back seat. I could see her in the mirror. She had apparently decided I was to be trusted.

‘I didn’t have time to read the coins,’ Felicity confided in me on the way. ‘But I threw Duration leading to Biting Through. Thirty-two leading to twenty-one: lots of changing lines, which means we’re in a volatile situation.’ I hadn’t heard talk like this since I was a little girl, when my mother would scarcely buy groceries without consulting the Chinese Book of Wisdom.

‘Oh yes,’ I remarked. ‘Is that good or bad?’

‘Duration.’ She quoted from memory. ‘Success. No blame.

Perseverance furthers. It furthers one to have somewhere to go.’

‘Like the Golden Bowl?’

‘I should think that’s what it meant, wouldn’t you?’ I concentrated on the road. Over the hills I could catch a glimpse of the sea, a thin edge of blue melting into a hazy sky. It was a good day for November: there had been a sharp, hard wind during the night but it had dropped, and the sky was left watery bright. Maybe on just such a day the sails of the Viking longships had caught the sun as they approached the coast. On such a day perhaps the captain of an English privateer had stumbled on deck and said, ‘Beautiful morning for November,’ while wondering if he would live to see the evening. To wonder about death was more commonplace once than it is now, and the present must have seemed the more glorious. Inland the trees, heretofore muzzy with wet leaves, had become stark and bare and beautiful overnight.

‘Poor Joy,’ said Felicity loudly, to anyone who cared to hear. ‘She has such a drink problem.’ Joy had turned off her hearing aid.