Читать книгу Watching Me, Watching You - Fay Weldon - Страница 6

It’s 1972.

‘Fiddlesticks,’ says Maureen. Everyone else says ‘crap’ or ‘balls', but Maureen’s current gear, being Victorian sprigged muslin, demands an appropriate vocabulary. ‘Fiddlesticks. If Erica says her bald patches are anything to do with Derek, she’s lying. It’s alopecia.’

‘I wonder which would be worse,’ murmurs Ruthie in her soft voice, ‘to have a husband who tears your hair out in the night, or to have alopecia.’

Ruthie wears a black fringed satin dress exactly half a century old, through which, alas, Ruthie’s ribs show even more prominently than her breasts. Ruthie’s little girl Poppy (at four too old for playgroup, too young for school), wears a long, white (well, yellowish) cotton shift which contrasts nicely with her mother’s dusty black.

‘At least the husband might improve, with effort,’ says Alison, ‘unlike alopecia. You wake up one morning with a single bald patch and a month or so later there you are, completely bald. Nothing anyone can do about it.’ Alison, plump mother of three, sensibly wears a flowered Laura Ashley dress which hides her bulges.

‘It might be quite interesting,’ remarks Maureen. ‘The egghead approach. One would have to forgo the past, of course, and go all space age, which would hardly be in keeping with the mood of the times.’

‘You are the mood of the times, Maureen,’ murmurs Ruthie, as expected. Ruthie’s simple adulation of Maureen is both gratifying and embarrassing, everyone agrees.

Everyone agrees, on the other hand, that Erica Bisham of the bald patches is a stupid, if ladylike, bitch.

Maureen, Ruthie and Alison are working in Maureen’s premises off the Kings Road. Here Maureen, as befits the glamour of her station, the initiator of Mauromania, meets the media, expresses opinions, answers the phone, dictates to secretaries (male), selects and matches fabrics, approves designs and makes, in general, multitudinous decisions — although not, perhaps, as multitudinous as the ones she was accustomed to make in the middle and late sixties, when the world was young and rich and wild. Maureen is forty but you’d never think it. She wears a large hat by day (and, one imagines, night) which shades her anxious face and guards her still pretty complexion. Maureen leads a rich life. Maureen once had her pubic hair dyed green to match her fingernails — or so her husband Kim announced to a waiting (well, such were the days) world: she divorced him not long after, having lost his baby at five months. The head of the foetus, rumour had it, emerged green, and her National Health Service GP refused to treat her any more, and she had to go private after all — she with her Marxist convictions.

That was 1968. If the State’s going to tumble, let it tumble. The sooner the better. Drop out, everyone! Mauromania magnifique! And off goes Maureen’s husband Kim with Maureen’s au pair — a broad-hipped, big-bosomed girl, good breeding material, with an ordinary coarse and curly brush, if somewhat reddish.

Still, it had been a good marriage as marriages go. And as marriages go, it went. Or so Maureen remarked to the press, on her way home (six beds, six baths, four recep., American kitchen, patio, South Ken) from the divorce courts. Maureen cried a little in the taxi, when she’d left her public well behind, partly from shock and grief, mostly from confusion that beloved Kim, Kim, who so despised the nuclear family, who had so often said that he and she ought to get divorced in order to have a true and unfettered relationship, that Maureen’s Kim should have speeded up Maureen’s divorce in order to marry Maureen’s au pair girl before the baby arrived. Kim and Maureen had been married for fifteen years. Kim had been Kevin from Liverpool before seeing the light or at any rate the guru. Maureen had always been just Maureen from Hoxton, East London: remained so through the birth, rise and triumph of Mauromania. It was her charm. Local girl makes good.

Maureen has experience of life: she knows by now, having also been married to a psychiatrist who ran off with all her money and the marital home, that it is wise to watch what people do, not listen to what they say. Well, it’s something to have learned. Ruthie and Alison, her (nominal) partners from the beginning, each her junior by some ten years, listen to Maureen with respect and diffidence.

‘Mind you,’ says Maureen now, matching up purple feathers with emerald satin to great effect, ‘if I were Derek I’d certainly beat Erica to death. Fancy having to listen to that whining voice night after night. The only trouble is he’s become too much of a gentleman. He’ll never have the courage to do it. Turned his back on his origins, and all that. It doesn’t do.’

Maureen has known Derek since the old days in Hoxton. They were evacuees together: shared the same bomb shelter on their return from Starvation Hall in Felixstowe — a boys’ public school considered unsafe for the gentry’s children but all right for the East Enders.

‘It’s all Erica’s fantasy,’ says Ruthie, knowledgeably. ‘A kind of dreadful sexual fantasy. She wants him to beat her up so she trots round London saying he does. Poor Derek. It comes from marrying into the English upper classes, old style. She must be nearly fifty. She has that kind of battered-looking face.’

Her voice trails away. There is a slight pause in the conversation.

‘Um,’ says Alison.

‘That’s drink,’ says Maureen, decisively. ‘Poor bloody Derek. What a ball-breaker to have married.’ Derek was Maureen’s childhood sweetheart. What a romantic, platonic idyll! She nearly married him once, twice, three times. Once in the very early days, before Kim, before anyone, when Derek was selling books from a barrow in Hoxton market. Once again, after Kim and before the professor, by which time Derek was taking expensive photographs of the trendy and successful — only then Erica turned up in Derek’s bed, long-legged, disdainful, beautiful, with a model’s precise and organised face, and the fluty tones of the girl who’d bought her school uniform at Harrods, and that was the end of that. Not that Derek had ever exactly proposed to Maureen; not that they’d ever even been to bed together: they just knew each other and each other’s bed partners so well that each knew what the other was thinking, feeling, hoping. Both from Hoxton, East London: Derek, Maureen; and a host of others, too. What was there, you might ask, about that particular acre of the East End which over a period of a few years gave birth to such a crop of remarkable children, such a flare-up of human creativity in terms of writing, painting, designing, entertaining? Changing the world? One might almost think God had chosen it for an experiment in intensive talent-breeding. Mauromania, God-sent.

And then there was another time in the late sixties, when there was a short break between Derek and Erica — Erica had a hysterectomy against Derek’s wishes; but during those two weeks of opportunity Maureen, her business flourishing, her designs world famous, Mauromania a label for even trendy young queens (royal, that is) to boast, rich beyond counting — during those two special weeks of all weeks Maureen fell head over heels classically in love with Pedro: no, not a fisherman, but as good as — Italian, young, open-shirted, sloe-eyed, a designer. And Pedro, it later transpired, was using Maureen as a means to laying all the models, both male and female (Maureen had gone into menswear). Maureen was the last to know, and by the time she did Derek was in Erica’s arms (or whatever) again. A sorry episode. Maureen spent six months at a health farm, on a diet of grapes and brown rice. At the end of that time Mauromania Man had collapsed, her business manager had jumped out of a tenth-floor window, and an employee’s irate mother was bringing a criminal suit against Maureen personally for running a brothel. It was all quite irrational. If the employee, a runaway girl of, it turned out, only thirteen, but looking twenty, and an excellent seamstress, had contracted gonorrhoea whilst in her employ, was that Maureen’s fault? The judge, sensibly, decided it wasn’t, and that the entire collapse of British respectability could not fairly be laid at Maureen’s door. Legal costs came to more than £12,000: the country house and stables had to be sold at a knock-down price. That was disaster year.

And who was there during that time to hold Maureen’s hand? No one. Everyone, it seemed, had troubles enough of their own. And all the time, Maureen’s poor heart bled for Pedro, of the ridiculous name and the sloe eyes, long departed, laughing, streptococci surging in his wake. And of all the old friends and allies only Ruthie and Alison lingered on, two familiar faces in a sea of changing ones, getting younger every day, and hungrier year by year not for fun, fashion, and excitement, but for money, promotion, security, and acknowledgment.

The staff even went on strike once, walking up and down outside the workshop with placards announcing hours and wages, backed by Maoists, women’s liberationists and trade unionists, all vying for their trumpery allegiance, puffing up a tiny news story into a colossal media joke, not even bothering to get Maureen’s side of the story — absenteeism, drug addiction, shoddy workmanship, falling markets, constricting profits.

But Ruthie gave birth to Poppy, unexpectedly, in the black and gold ladies’ rest room (customers only — just as well it wasn’t in the staff toilets where the plaster was flaking and the old wall-cisterns came down on your head if you pulled the chain) and that cheered everyone up. Business perked up, staff calmed down as unemployment rose. Poppy, born of Mauromania, was everyone’s favourite, everyone’s mascot. Her father, only seventeen, was doing two years inside, framed by the police for dealing in pot. He did not have too bad a time — he got three A-levels and university entrance inside, which he would not have got outside, but it meant poor little Poppy had to do without a father’s care and Ruthie had to cope on her own. Ruthie of the ribs.

Alison, meanwhile, somewhat apologetically, had married Hugo, a rather straight and respectable actor who believed in women’s rights; they had three children and lived in a cosy house with a garden in Muswell Hill: Alison even belonged to the PTA! Hugo was frequently without work, but Hugo and Alison managed, between them, to keep going and even happy. Now Hugo thinks Alison should ask for a rise, but Alison doesn’t like to. That’s the trouble about working for a friend and being only a nominal partner.

‘Don’t let’s talk about Erica Bisham any more,’ says Maureen. ‘It’s too draggy a subject.’ So they don’t.

But one midnight a couple of weeks later, when Maureen, Ruthie and Alison are working late to meet an order — as is their frequent custom these days (and one most unnerving to Hugo, Alison’s husband) — there comes a tap on the door. It’s Erica, of course. Who else would tap, in such an ingratiating fashion? Others cry ‘Hi!’ or ‘Peace!’ and enter.

Erica, smiling nervously and crookedly; her yellow hair eccentric in the extreme; bushy in places, sparse in others. Couldn’t she wear a wig? She is wearing a Marks & Spencer nightie which not even Ruthie would think of wearing, in the house or out of it. It is bloodstained down the back. (Menstruation is not yet so fashionable as to be thus demonstrable, though it can be talked about at length.) A strong smell of what? alcohol, or is it nail varnish? hangs about her. Drinking again. (Alison’s husband, Hugo, in a long period of unemployment, once veered on to the edge of alcoholism but fortunately veered off again, and the smell of nail varnish, acetone, gave a warning sign of an agitated, overworked liver, unable to cope with acetaldehyde, the highly toxic product of alcohol metabolism.)

‘Could I sit down?’ says Erica. ‘He’s locked me out. Am I speaking oddly? I think I’ve lost a tooth. I’m hurting under my ribs and I feel sick.’

They stare at her — this drunk, dishevelled, trouble-making woman.

‘He,’ says Maureen finally. ‘Who’s he?’

‘Derek.’

‘You’re going to get into trouble, Erica,’ says Ruthie, though more kindly than Maureen, ‘if you go round saying dreadful things about poor Derek.’

‘I wouldn’t have come here if there was anywhere else,’ says Erica.

‘You must have friends,’ observes Maureen, as if to say, Don’t count us amongst them if you have.

‘No.’ Erica sounds desolate. ‘He has his friends at work. I don’t seem to have any.’

‘I wonder why,’ says Maureen under her breath; and then, ‘I’ll get you a taxi home, Erica. You’re in no state to be out.’

‘I’m not drunk, if that’s what you think.’

‘Who ever is,’ sighs Ruthie, sewing relentlessly on. Four more blouses by one o’clock. Then, thank God, bed.

Little Poppy has passed out on a pile of orange ostrich feathers. She looks fantastic.

‘If Derek does beat you up,’ says Alison, who has seen her father beat her mother on many a Saturday night, ‘why don’t you go to the police?’

‘I did once, and they told me to go home and behave myself.’ ‘Or leave him?’ Alison’s mother left Alison’s father. ‘Where would I go? How would I live? The children? I’m not well.’ Erica sways. Alison puts a chair beneath her. Erica sits, legs planted wide apart, head down. A few drops of blood fall on the floor. From Erica’s mouth, or elsewhere? Maureen doesn’t see, doesn’t care. Maureen’s on the phone, calling radio cabs who do not reply.

‘I try not to provoke him, but I never know what’s going to set him off,’ mumbles Erica. ‘Tonight it was Tampax. He said only whores wore Tampax. He tore it out and kicked me. Look.’

Erica pulls up her nightie (Erica’s wearing no knickers) and exposes her private parts in a most shameful, shameless fashion. The inner thighs are blue and mottled, but then, dear God, she’s nearly fifty.

What does one look like, thigh-wise, nearing fifty? Maureen’s the nearest to knowing, and she’s not saying. As for Ruthie, she hopes she’ll never get there. Fifty!

‘The woman’s mad,’ mutters Maureen. ‘Perhaps I’d better call the loony wagon, not a taxi?’

‘Thank God Poppy’s asleep.’ Poor Ruthie seems in a state of shock.

‘You can come home with me, Erica,’ says Alison. ‘God knows what Hugo will say. He hates matrimonial upsets. He says if you get in between, they both start hitting you.’

Erica gurgles, a kind of mirthless laugh. From behind her, mysteriously, a child steps out. She is eight, stocky, plain and pale, dressed in boring Ladybird pyjamas.

‘Mummy?’

Erica’s head whips up; the blood on Erica’s lip is wiped away by the back of Erica’s hand. Erica straightens her back. Erica smiles. Erica’s voice is completely normal, ladylike.

‘Hallo, darling. How did you get here?’

‘I followed you. Daddy was too angry.’

‘He’ll be better soon, Libby,’ says Erica brightly. ‘He always is.’

‘We’re not going home? Please don’t let’s go home. I don’t want to see Daddy.’

‘Bitch,’ mutters Maureen, ‘she’s even turned his own child against him. Poor bloody Derek. There’s nothing at all the matter with her. Look at her now.’

For Erica is on her feet, smoothing Libby’s hair, murmuring, laughing.

‘Poor bloody Erica,’ observes Alison. It is the first time she has ever defied Maureen, let alone challenged her wisdom. And rising with as much dignity as her plump frame and flounced cotton will allow, Alison takes Erica and Libby home and installs them for the night in the spare room of the cosy house in Muswell Hill.

Hugo isn’t any too pleased. ‘Your smart sick friends,’ he says. And, ‘I’d beat a woman like that to death myself, any day.’ And, ‘Dragging that poor child into it: it’s appalling.’ He’s nice to Libby, though, and rings up Derek to say she’s safe and sound, and looks after her while Alison takes Erica round to the doctor. The doctor sends Erica round to the hospital, and the hospital admits her for tests and treatment.

‘Why bother?’ enquires Hugo. ‘Everyone knows she’s mad.’

In the evening, Derek comes all the way to Muswell Hill in his Ferrari to pick up Libby. He’s an attractive man: intelligent and perspicacious, fatherly and gentle. Just right, it occurs to Alison, for Maureen.

‘I’m so sorry about all this,’ he says. ‘I love my wife dearly but she has her problems. There’s a dark side to her nature — you’ve no idea. A deep inner violence — which of course manifests itself in this kind of behaviour. She’s deeply psychophrenic. I’m so afraid for the child.’

‘The hospital did admit her,’ murmurs Alison. ‘And not to the psychiatric ward, but the surgical.’

‘That will be her hysterectomy scar again,’ says Derek. ‘Any slight tussle — she goes quite wild, and I have to restrain her for her own safety — and it opens up. It’s symptomatic of her inner sickness, I’m afraid. She even says herself it opens to let the build-up of wickedness out. What I can’t forgive is the way she drags poor little Libby into things. She’s turning the child against me. God knows what I’m going to do. Well, at least I can bury myself in work. I hear you’re an actor, Hugo.’

Hugo offers Derek a drink, and Derek offers (well, more or less) Hugo a part in a new rock musical going on in the West End. Alison goes to visit Erica in hospital.

‘Erica has some liver damage, but it’s not irreversible: she’ll be feeling nauseous for a couple of months, that’s all. She’s lost a back tooth and she’s had a couple of stitches put in her vagina,’ says Alison to Maureen and Ruthie next day. The blouse order never got completed — re-orders now look dubious. But if staff haven’t the loyalty to work unpaid overtime any more, what else can be expected? The partners (nominal) can’t do everything.

‘Who said so?’ enquires Maureen, sceptically. ‘The hospital or Erica?’

‘Well,’ Alison is obliged to admit, ‘Erica.’

‘You are an innocent, Alison.’ Maureen sounds quite cross. ‘Erica can’t open her poor sick mouth without uttering a lie. It’s her hysterectomy scar opened up again, that’s all. No wonder. She’s a nymphomaniac: she doesn’t leave Derek alone month in, month out. She has the soul of a whore. Poor man. He’s so upset by it all. Who wouldn’t be?’

Derek takes Maureen out to lunch. In the evening, Alison goes to visit Erica in hospital, but Erica has gone. Sister says, oh yes, her husband came to fetch her. They hadn’t wanted to let her go so soon but Mr Bisham seemed such a sensible, loving man, they thought he could look after his wife perfectly well, and it’s always nicer at home, isn’t it? Was it the Derek Bisham? Yes she’d thought so. Poor Mrs Bisham — what a dreadful world we live in, when a respectable married woman can’t even walk the streets without being brutally attacked, sexually assaulted by strangers.

It’s 1974.

Winter. A chill wind blowing, a colder one still to come. A three-day week imposed by an insane government. Strikes, power cuts, blackouts. Maureen, Ruthie and Alison work by candlelight. All three wear fun-furs — old stock, unsaleable. Poppy is staying with Ruthie’s mother, as she usually is these days. Poppy has been developing a squint, and the doctor says she has to wear glasses with one blanked-out lens for at least eighteen months. Ruthie, honestly, can’t bear to see her daughter thus. Ruthie’s mother, of a prosaic nature, a lady who buys her clothes at C & A Outsize, doesn’t seem to mind.

‘If oil prices go up,’ says Maureen gloomily, ‘what’s going to happen to the price of synthetics? What’s going to happen to Mauromania, come to that?’

‘Go up-market,’ says Alison, ‘the rich are always with us.’

Maureen says nothing. Maureen is bad tempered, these days. She is having some kind of painful trouble with her teeth, which she seems less well able to cope with than she can the trouble with staff (overpaid), raw materials (unavailable), delivery dates (impossible), distribution (unchancy), costs (soaring), profits (falling), re-investment (non-existent). And the snow has ruined the penthouse roof and it has to be replaced, at the cost of many thousands. Men friends come and go: they seem to get younger and less feeling. Sometimes Maureen feels they treat her as a joke. They ask her about the sixties as if it were a different age: of Mauromania as if it were something as dead as the dodo — but it’s still surely a label which counts for something, brings in foreign currency, ought really to bring her some recognition. The Beatles got the MBE; why not Maureen of Mauromania? Throwaway clothes for throwaway people?

‘Ruthie,’ says Maureen. ‘You’re getting careless. You’ve put the pocket on upside-down, and it’s going for copying. That’s going to hold up the whole batch. Oh, what the hell. Let it go through.’

‘Do you ever hear anything of Erica Bisham?’ Ruthie asks Alison, more to annoy Maureen than because she wants to know. ‘Is she still wandering round in the middle of the night?’

‘Hugo does a lot of work for Derek, these days,’ says Alison carefully. ‘But he never mentions Erica.’

‘Poor Derek. What a fate. A wife with alopecia! I expect she’s bald as a coot by now. As good a revenge as any, I dare say.’

‘It was nothing to do with alopecia,’ says Alison. ‘Derek just tore out chunks of her hair, nightly.’ Alison’s own marriage isn’t going so well. Hugo’s got the lead in one of Derek’s long runs in the West End. Show business consumes his thoughts and ambitions. The ingenue lead is in love with Hugo and says so, on TV quiz games and in the Sunday supplements. She’s underage. Alison feels old, bored and boring.