Female Friends (32 page)

As for Marjorie, she is at work all day, and recovering from work all night. Marjorie can’t be much help. Marjorie uses Midge, as tactfully as possible of course, in a documentary about women with wasted lives. Marjorie feels that Midge cramps Patrick’s style.

‘Everything changes,’ says Marjorie. ‘You have to accept that it does. Because you had good times once doesn’t mean you have any right to have them now. Midge should never have had the children. It was selfish madness.’

Meanwhile, Kevin and Kestrel tug at Midge’s skirt and cry, and pester and mess. Kestrel’s eye gives constant trouble. It is always inflamed and weeping.

Midge is behind with the rent. She is given notice to quit. She goes to a phone-box and rings Grace’s flat, and asks for Patrick, but Grace spends so much time fetching him, that by the time he gets to the telephone Midge’s money has run out, and all he can hear is the dialling tone.

Midge has no present to give Kestrel for her second birthday, although Chloe, Marjorie and Grace have all sent little packets through the post. That’s something.

‘If anything ever happened to me,’ Midge once said to Chloe, ‘would you look after the children?’

‘Of course,’ said Chloe, not thinking. ‘What do you mean, if anything happened?’

‘An accident,’ Midge replied.

Midge takes all the sleeping pills the doctor has ever given her—she has been saving them over the years—on the eve of Kestrel’s birthday. In the morning she does not wake, and the children tug and pester in vain.

Marjorie, passing by on the way to an outside location, calls in, finds her thus, gets the ambulance, summons Chloe, and goes on to work. Well, what else is to be done?

No point in sitting around, letting grass grow under bridges.

Grace says what kind of future did Midge have anyway, if she’d been saving sleeping pills she must have had a suicidal nature; and was clearly looking for a scapegoat, and she, Grace, hereby refused the role. And what kind of woman did a thing like that to her children? Suicide, says Grace, is an act of hostility, and the murderer/murderee deserves censure, not pity.

All the same, from that time on, she seemed to lose her interest in Patrick.

Chloe took Kevin and Kestrel home. Patrick made no protest. But later, when Oliver suggested that he and Chloe might adopt them formally, he shook his head. In that case, says Oliver, pushed for money at the time, although paying Patrick some £2,000 to paint Chloe, you might pay towards their upkeep. Chloe, clothed only in her towel, on the very last sitting, all others having been completed without Patrick making a gesture other than purely artistic towards her, or she to him, brought up the subject of maintenance out of loyalty to Oliver, of course; she could never have done it for herself. But Oliver spending so much on her! £2,000 for a portrait. His brothers-in-law having just publicly paid a thousand each towards the cost of a forest on Mount Sinai.

Patrick
Chloe, try and understand. If I give money away I can’t paint.

Chloe
It’s not giving money away. It’s spending it on your own flesh and blood.

Patrick
That’s what Midge said. She was never faithful to me. She was having an affair with the man who owned those Doberman Pinschers. That’s why I tried to kill them.

Chloe
That’s absurd. Don’t say such things about Midge. She loved you. Why do you always have to make matters worse than they are?

Midge’s funeral was a desolate affair. Midge was buried, not cremated. Mrs Macklin pushed Mr Macklin in a wheelchair to the side of the grave. Mr Macklin tried to leap at Patrick’s throat but only succeeded in falling out of his chair on to the ground. Patrick, who seemed drugged or drunk or both, and quite out of his mind, had come to the funeral with a fifteen-year-old heroin addict, whose industrialist father wanted her committed to canvas while still presentable.

Grace did not come at all. Oliver, Chloe and Marjorie were there.

Patrick danced a kind of horn-pipe on Midge’s grave, until forcibly stopped by Oliver, who put out a leg so that Patrick tripped and lay on the earth where he had fallen, behind a large tombstone. He and the girl then attempted to have ritual intercourse there and then, for the sake, Patrick said, of the harvest, but both passed out before achieving any such thing.

Fortunately the Macklins had gone by then, off in their black hired Rolls-Royce, and only a younger and more forgiving generation remained.

Patrick
Then don’t ask for money for the children. If Oliver can afford to get me to paint you, he can afford to keep my children. Besides, it gives you something to do, Chloe.

Chloe
I have quite enough, thank you Patrick.

Patrick
Really? Wouldn’t you like another baby?

Chloe
Yes. But I keep miscarrying.

Patrick
That’s Oliver all over. The most uncreative character I ever met. He puts the finger of death on everything. Scripts, women, booze-ups; babies, now.

Chloe, accustomed as she is to the daily sacrifice of herself on the altar of Oliver’s creativity, is quite shocked. And the miscarriages his fault, not hers? It is too much to take in.

Patrick
Would you like me to give you another baby, Chloe? Since I can’t give Kev and Kes any money, the least we can do is offer them a sibling.

Chloe
How do you know I’d get pregnant? It’s nowhere near the middle of the month.

Patrick
Of course you would.

Chloe
I didn’t last time.

Patrick
You held that against me?

Chloe
Yes.

Patrick
How you women do bear grudges.

And there Chloe is, intertwined after all these years with Patrick, conceiving Imogen. It does not occur to her that Patrick will tell Oliver that he is the father of her baby, but of course, when Oliver repeats his demand for money for Kevin and Kes, and holds up payment of Chloe’s portrait, Patrick is driven to. And Chloe does not miscarry, which is proof enough.

Oliver forgives Chloe. Chloe does not forgive herself, or Patrick.

C
HLOE DOZES BY HELEN’S
bed. She is short of sleep. She wakes, with a start.

‘Poor little Midge,’ Marjorie says from the bed where she lies, as if she too were a patient. She is crying.

Chloe
Why don’t you cry for yourself, for a change? Why choose something ten years old?

Helen’s eyelids flutter but do not open.

Marjorie
If I started I might never stop. All the things I should have done, and didn’t do. Wasn’t it strange the way I called in at Midge’s flat that morning making myself late. I never had before. Too late to help, all the same. I drove round and round the block first, like some kind of zombie. If I’d only obeyed the impulse, and not struggled against it.

Chloe
It’s always like that when people die. If only.

Marjorie
And poor little Kevin opened the door. He could just reach. There was nothing I could do, except what I did. Call the ambulance and wait for you. But I think something else was expected of me, and all I did was just go back to work.

Chloe
What do you mean, something else?

Marjorie
I don’t know. Just being there. Or at least finding out for certain whether she was going to live or die. I didn’t really want to know. Such cowardice. And I shouldn’t have used her in that documentary. It can’t have helped. All the things one does, and shouldn’t.

Chloe
What else?

Marjorie
Handing Ben that light-bulb. I was angry with him. He was going to see his mother and I knew she didn’t like me, so I made him reach too far. I hoped he’d fall off. And the other thing, the awful thing—I didn’t send mother a telegram when father came home. I don’t think I did. I went to the post office to send it, and I know I wrote it out, and then I think I just screwed it up, Chloe.

Chloe
Think?

Marjorie
You know how every penny counted, in those days. It was send the telegram, or buy the butter. I hated margarine. Everyone called me Marge at school, especially you, Chloe.

Chloe
I’m sorry.

So she had. Her own name, Chloe, rare and strange, had elevated her from common status. To call Marjorie Marge was to demote her, and when she could, she did.

Marjorie
Too late now, I just thought I’d mention it. Anyway it wasn’t that. I wanted father for myself. I thought mother would be bad for him. And he died.

Chloe
Marjorie, have you told Helen’s friends that she’s in hospital?

Marjorie (Ignoring her)
And the other thing, the Frognal house. I should never have stayed there. Patrick was right, it was me haunting myself, sending myself messages. Get out, forget it, forget everything, start again. Stop trying to wring blood out of stones. My blood, staining those stairs. How strange it all is. I should have been glad when mother changed the locks and kept me out, but I wasn’t.

A house, thinks Chloe, a home. If I only had somewhere to go, would I take the children, leave Oliver? No.

Chloe (Persistent)
Marjorie, who else have you told about Helen being here?

Marjorie
No-one. Just you and Grace.

Chloe opens Helen’s crocodile handbag, which stands on the bedside locker, and searches it for an address book. What sacrilege! Rifling mother’s handbag. Will Chloe grieve for Helen when she is dead; and if then, why not now? Or will it be pity for herself she feels; another’s death, by implication, being her own. We must live in the expectation of death, Chloe thinks, for ourselves and others. Only in the light of our ending, do our lives make any kind of sense. Helen’s handbag is neat and clean. A little vanity case; powder-case and rouge. A lace handkerchief, amazingly white. A note-case, decently filled. A suede purse, unscuffed and unstained. A sachet of eau-de-Cologne. A dentist’s card. The address book, with a tiny pencil tucked down the spine, and the pages neatly filled with tiny writing. An old lady’s handbag, but full of expectation. Marjorie accepts the address book.

Chloe
Marjorie, when I was sleeping just now, did I snore?

Marjorie
What a funny thing to ask. No, of course you didn’t.

Chloe
It’s the kind of thing one never knows.

Marjorie leaves the room in search of a telephone. Chloe is left alone with Helen, and is afraid. And indeed, as if relieved of the weight of Marjorie’s presence, Helen’s eyelids flutter, and lift, and Helen stares full at Chloe. She speaks, in a lilting fashion, in the manner of some thirty years ago.

Helen
I wish you’d do something about your hair, Marjorie. Why can’t you be more like Chloe Evans? She’s always so neat.

Her eyelids fall again. She sighs, exhausted. Two nurses, one black, one white, both tired, come in with a trolley and set about transferring Helen from her comfortable bed on to its uncomfortable surface.

Chloe
Where are you taking her?

Nurse
Are you the next-of-kin?

Chloe
No.

Nurse
Well, I don’t suppose it matters. Just down to X-ray.

Helen’s bed is empty when Marjorie returns. She brings Grace with her. Grace has been visiting Patrick. She wears faded blue jeans, a navy shirt and a denim jacket. Her eyes are still puffy from the outbursts of the morning, and her face seems lax and flushed. She is growing old, thinks Chloe. But Grace sits on the edge of the bed and swings her legs like a girl, and is undaunted.

Grace
I’m sure it’s all right, Marjorie. They wouldn’t be X-raying her if they thought she was going to pop off any moment. Patrick says people live for years with brain tumours. He says he thinks perhaps he has one himself. I wouldn’t be surprised. What an excuse for bad behaviour! Please sir, it’s the tumour. He’s looking dreadful. I’m sure he’s got scurvy. He’s living off kippers and tea and has at least six chains on the door to keep out robbers. You should see the ulcers on his gums. He wants his washing back, Marjorie, clean or dirty. He doesn’t trust you.

Marjorie
I have other things to think about.

Grace
I only told you to amuse you. I nearly brought him with me. You know how he loves hospitals.

Marjorie
Yes, well he never loved mother.

Grace
I suppose not. Why are you looking so glum, Chloe? Do you want me to go away?

Chloe
No. I wish you’d be more responsible about Stanhope, that’s all.

Grace
Truth is truth, you’re always saying so. Actually, I have to agree with you. Patrick isn’t much cop as a father. I’d forgotten. His legs are in a dreadful state. His varicose veins have ulcerated. He’s drinking much too much, but at least it should lower his sperm count. Anyway I hope so. Tell Stanhope I made a mistake, or something. I’d got my months muddled up. Set him free to marry Kestrel.

Chloe
Why should he want to do that?

Grace
Well, you know what life is like. It’s the kind of thing that happens.

Chloe
You don’t want Stanhope to live with you?

Grace
Good God, no. I’m not fit. You’re always saying so. Anyway Sebastian’s on his way home. The beach was awash, he says. I wish he’d rung this morning, before I’d seen Patrick. Marjorie, Patrick says if the Frognal house is ever unlocked, can he move back in?

Marjorie
No.

Grace
He’s angry because you haven’t returned his washing. He thinks you’ve stolen it. He can’t go on living down there. He needs some help.

Marjorie
He won’t get it from me, any more. Life’s too short.

Grace
Why not? He’s been in such a state since Midge died.

Chloe
Good.

Grace
You think you’re a saint, Chloe, but really you’re a devil. If anyone’s to blame for Midge dying, it’s you.

Chloe
Me?

Grace
Yes. If you hadn’t said you’d look after the children, Midge couldn’t have done it. She’d be alive and grizzling today. You’re a very dangerous person, Chloe. People who stand about waiting for other people to fall to bits so they can pick up the pieces ought to be locked up. They encourage disintegration. It’s time you learned to enjoy yourself, Chloe; you’re too dangerous as a martyr.