Female Friends (29 page)

Oliver
I am not mad, Chloe. There is no need to humour me. I am sorry about last night.

Chloe
Let us not talk about it. I am sure that what happens at night is nothing to do with our daily selves. I am sorry the rolls are burnt.

Oliver
Françoise, I suppose?

Chloe
Yes.

Oliver
That girl will have to go.

Chloe
No, no. She’s useful.

And so Françoise is.

Oliver
Perhaps I really should abandon the novel, and go back to film scripts.

Chloe
Good heavens no. Not after all this.

Oliver
If only one could control what one responded to sexually! I promise you, Chloe, that if I could you would head the list. It would save a good deal of trouble and effort, and putting up with really rather stupid people because one can’t resist a hefty arse and heavy tits.

Chloe
It must be dreadful to be a man, and so helpless in the face of one’s own nature.

Is she laughing at him? Yes, she is. Her victory is complete.

She does not much enjoy her victory. Mirth cuts at the very roots of her life.

D
URING THE MORNING THE
telephone rings. It is Grace. And thus the conversation goes:

Chloe
I thought you were in France, Grace.

Grace
What, me? Topless beaches and dirty old men with cameras? You must be joking. I’m far too old to compete, anyway, in the beach girl stakes. Sebastian said so, and he should know, being Competition King himself in the Great Vulgar Life Game. Not that he’ll get there, of course, his plane’s going to fall out of the sky, thank God. We met a fortune teller at a party last night, and he said so, and he’s never wrong about anything. If Sebastian wants to defy fate that’s his business, I told him so at the time. Perhaps you’re not life’s Darling to the degree you think, I said. He didn’t like that. But then I threw the teapot and put myself in the wrong, sod it.

Chloe
Grace, is it wise to quarrel with Sebastian if he’s got all your money?

Grace
Quarrel? You call that a quarrel? I’ve been down to Out-Patients for stitches in my lip, and my ribs are black and blue. I don’t care about the money. Let him keep it. It was Christie’s anyway. Christie’s last mean revenge, so I’d always be pursued by fortune hunters who defined a fortune as 50p. I’m glad it’s all gone. I can earn, can’t I?

Chloe
I don’t know, Grace. You never have.

Grace
I must be mad, ringing you up. You’re so pompous and respectable. Such a wet blanket. How’s Oliver? Making you watch?

Chloe
Yes.

Grace
Wait till I tell Marjorie.

Chloe
I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said that.

Grace
Too late. Why do you stay so loyal to that monster? He outwore loyalty years ago. Did you know Marjorie’s mother is in hospital?

Chloe
No, I didn’t.

Grace
I rang Marjorie in the middle of the night when Sebastian was beating me up but she wasn’t the slightest use, her mother had had a heart attack and that was all she could think about. She’s in intensive care. She’s going to be all right, though. The fuss Marjorie made, you’d have thought she was dying.

Chloe
She’s very fond of her mother.

Grace
So was I fond of Sebastian. Chloe, I am really very upset. I can’t go on like this for ever. There has to be a kind of truth about one’s life, doesn’t there? And Chloe, do you know what today is?

Chloe
No.

Grace
Midge has been dead for five years.

Chloe
So?

Grace
Do you think it was my fault?

Chloe
Yes.

Grace
I knew it. It’s why you’re so dreadful to me so much of the time. You don’t blame Patrick?

Chloe
No. Not any more. You can’t hold men responsible for their actions.

Grace
I suppose not. They follow their pricks like donkeys allegedly follow carrots. Though I’ve never seen it myself. Well, that’s all over now. I’m going down to the hospital to be with Marjorie. Will you come?

Chloe
Does she want me to?

Grace
If you’re going to be someone’s friend, you have to intrude your friendship sometimes.

Chloe
Really?

Grace
Yes. Give my love to Stanhope, Chloe, you stealer of other people’s children.

Grace rings off. The phone goes almost immediately. This time it is Marjorie.

Marjorie
Chloe, it’s mother.

Chloe
Yes I know. Grace told me. How is she?

Marjorie
Bad news, I’m afraid. It was malignant.

Chloe
I don’t understand. Grace said it was a heart attack.

Marjorie
Grace gets everything wrong. It was a brain tumour. She might have had it for years, they said. The surgeon asked if she ever acted strangely. What’s normal, I wanted to know, but he couldn’t tell me. Anyway they’ve taken away what they can, and she’s sitting up in bed with her head shaven and a great knitted scar on her temple, plucking her eyebrows. Is that strange or normal?

Chloe
It sounds quite lively, Marjorie. And not as if she’s in pain. Do you want me to come down? Grace said she was going to.

Marjorie
Oh my God! Did she? Well, she might as well. And she did know mother, and so did you. Come this evening. I hate hospitals. I’m a perfectly competent person until I smell those corridors, then I go to pieces. They won’t say anything. You’re always asking the wrong person, anyway. I said is she going to die, and all they said was we’re all dying, and she is an old lady. What do they mean? Poor little mother. She was always so brave, and everything was so dreadful for her, but she’d always wring some sort of goodness out of the bad.

It doesn’t sound at all like Helen to Chloe, but she says nothing. Poor Helen, she tries to think, but all she remembers is Helen’s disparagement, all those years ago, of her social standing. Little Chloe, the barmaid’s daughter. All those years! Has Chloe really borne this grudge for so long? Yes. Chloe has. It is not Helen’s treatment of Marjorie which causes Chloe’s animosity towards this poor, defeated, bandaged old soul, but this harboured, treasured slight.

Marjorie
She’s changed. I don’t know whether it’s sanity or madness, that’s the trouble, but she’s being so nice to me. She calls me my little girl, so proudly. She’s never said anything like that to me before. And she takes my hand and pats it. You know how she usually hates touching anyone.

Chloe
I expect it’s sanity, Marjorie.

Marjorie
But the nurse said ‘they’re often like this after brain ops.’ I can’t stand it, Chloe.

Chloe
You have to stand it, Marjorie. You have no option.

Marjorie
I could bring the cameras in, I suppose, and deal with it that way, through a lens darkly.

Chloe
But you won’t. Not this time.

Marjorie
No. Thank you, Chloe.

Marjorie rings off.

Chloe does the ironing. She does not trust Françoise to do it with proper reverence—to take the time and trouble to get the corners of the shirt collars smooth, and the gathers of sleeves uncreased. Besides, Chloe enjoys ironing. She likes the smell of damp linen and hot iron; the dangerous sniff of scorching in the air, the growing pile of ordered neatness. Her hands move deftly and calmly.

So Gwyneth, Chloe’s mother, damped and ironed in her day, with little Chloe watching, her nose peering about the ironing board.

So, while Gwyneth ironed, did Mr Leacock watch entranced, and stand behind her and put his arm around her waist, so that her hand first faltered, and then safely setting the iron on its end, leaned back against his male chest, her body folding gently against his, her head turning so her cheek rested against his shoulder, in a gesture of female submission—which, if the truth were known, and it never was made clear to Gwyneth, endeared her to him even more than her profitability to him and his wife (who never in all her born days rested her head in weakness anywhere). Let us not suppose Mr Leacock’s romantic imagination was any less involved in Gwyneth, his employee, than hers was in him, her employer. The pity of it lay in the ending of the tale, not the beginning.

But let us perhaps be thankful that Imogen’s nose does not peer above Chloe’s ironing board. She is with the boys in the garden shed constructing a glider out of balsa wood, which is doomed never to fly.

Oliver works in his study.

Françoise plods about the kitchen, setting it to rights.

In the afternoon the phone rings. It is Grace.

Grace
Chloe, can I speak to Stanhope.

Chloe
(Suspicious) What about?

Grace
I’m very upset, Chloe. Please don’t argue, just go and get Stanhope. He is my son.

Chloe
What are you upset about?

Grace
Everything. I’ve got no money and no boyfriend and you tell me I’m a murderess, and I feel extremely old, and I’ve been to see Marjorie’s mother in hospital—I must be mad—and that was a nightmare.

Chloe
Why?

Grace
That’s how I’m going to end, I’m sure of it. Sitting up in bed with a shaved head and a bloody bandage, thinking I’m twenty and asking the nurse to take the baby away, it’s too ugly. I’ve been dreadful to Stanhope, haven’t I? Like Helen was to Marjorie.

Chloe
How’s Marjorie taking it?

Grace
It’s all very embarrassing. And Sebastian’s plane landed safely after all so I might as well have gone. Please let me talk to Stanhope, Chloe.

Chloe
What do you want to say to him? He’s very busy. He’s watching football on telly.

Grace
You’re being very wicked, Chloe. You’re trying to separate us.

Chloe acknowledges the truth of Grace’s accusation. It puts her at a disadvantage. It is Chloe’s fatal weakness, her moral Achilles Heel. She ingratiates herself with other women’s children, providing them with better biscuits, better treats, better bed-times, and a kindlier and more rational atmosphere than any natural mother, even in the very best of circumstances, could provide.

The natural mother is ambivalent towards the child. The unnatural one behaves much better.

Grace
Bring Stanhope to the phone, Chloe. Or I’ll only write and say I rang and you wouldn’t let him speak to me, and he’ll never forgive you and neither will I.

Chloe fetches Stanhope from the television.

Chloe
I’m sorry, Stanhope. It’s your mother.

Stanhope
I thought she was in France.

Chloe
She changed her mind.

Stanhope
Wack-oh.

He takes the receiver.

Grace
Stanhope, I don’t like to think of you staring at television all the time. You’ll get square eyes. Why don’t you play football instead of watching it?

Stanhope
I’m tired.

Grace
Stanhope, perhaps you’d better come and live with me as soon as I’m settled. Say the rain in Spain stays mainly on the plain.

Stanhope (Baffled)
What?

Grace
And you might as well go to a Comprehensive, come to that, for all the good that other place does for you. Stanhope darling, there’s something I have to tell you. How old are you, dear?

Stanhope
Twelve.

Grace
Well, that’s quite old enough. You know the facts of life and so on. Now listen. Are you listening?

Stanhope
Yes.

Grace
Your father was not that other husband of mine, the air-pilot, but a very important and talented portrait painter called Patrick Bates.

Stanhope
But that’s Kev and Kes’s father. Only they never see him. He’s mad.

Grace
He isn’t mad, he’s very talented. If I were you I’d be proud of having such a famous father instead of finding fault instantly. Chloe will tell you all about it, she’s good at explaining that kind of thing. Can I have her back now, darling?

Stanhope hands the phone over, and fidgets beside Chloe.

Grace
I told him about Patrick, Chloe. You always said I should. And Stephen’s always going on about being honest with children. Come to think of it, Stephen is Stanhope’s brother as well as his uncle. Isn’t life extraordinary. I’m glad I’ve told Stanhope. It’s a weight off my mind. Supposing I died, or something, and someone else had to tell him? You’ll have to tell Imogen some time, too, won’t you? You shouldn’t put it off, Chloe.

Chloe puts the phone down, and cuts Grace off.

Stanhope
She says I can go and live with her in London and go to a Comprehensive. Do I have to?

Chloe
I shouldn’t think so.

Stanhope
Is she a little bit mad?

Chloe
I don’t know, Stanhope. I think she’s rather upset.

Stanhope
The menopause, I expect. She said I had the same father as Kev and Kes. Does that mean I can’t marry Kestrel?

Chloe
I suppose it does. Why, do you want to?

Stanhope
My God, no. Is that all? Can I go back to Match of the Day?

Chloe
Yes. Unless you want to know more about Patrick.

Stanhope
I’ll think about it all some other time, if you don’t mind. Could I change my name to Bob?

Chloe
Why not?