King of the World (2 page)

I first met Celia Fremlin at the end of 1969. I was newly arrived in London, a recent graduate from Swansea University, working for a publisher and aspiring to be a writer. Celia was a leading light in the North West London Writers’ Group and the first meeting I attended was in her house in South Hill Park, Hampstead. (Already I had reason to be grateful to her, because she had judged a Mensa short-story competition and awarded me second prize.)

My first experience of Celia’s writing was, I think, her reading of the first chapter of
Appointment with Yesterday
, sometime during 1970. I was transfixed: certainly it was the most vivid thing I ever heard in my attendance at the group. Celia was writing about people who seemed completely real, whose experiences could happen to anyone. The shock of recognition was extreme. Here were women in their own homes, with noise and kindness and fear and desperation all astonishingly true to life. And there was wit – we always laughed when Celia read to us.

Four decades would pass before I could understand something of what was really happening in Celia’s life at the time we met. It was an unpublished memoir by her daughter Geraldine that finally enlightened me. But at those meetings there was never any mention – at least in my hearing – of Celia’s daughter Sylvia or her husband Elia, both of whom had died by their own hand the previous year. It was as if these were, understandably, taboo subjects. Celia’s son, Nick, lived in the same house, with his wife Fran and little son. Their second baby, Lancelot, was born during those years when we often met at South Hill Park. (In due course Nick would publish a novel of his own,
Tomorrow’s Silence
, in 1979.)

I have always resisted attempts to connect a writer’s life directly with his or her work: to do so can often diminish the power and value of the imagination. But in Celia’s case, I have always believed that her novel
With No Crying
would never have been written if Sylvia hadn’t died. The novel is, essentially, about the deprivation and grief that the wider family experiences when a child is lost. It is very well plotted – perhaps the best of all her work. The ‘message’ at the end is honest and wise and sad. It was not published until 1980, and – I believe – not written until a year or so before that, which was over ten years after the agonising events of 1968.

Celia’s short stories are perhaps more telling in some ways. They are certainly unforgettably good. Those in her first collection,
Don’t Go To Sleep in the Dark
, are the ones I especially remember. Many of her stories involve sunlit beaches, couples on holiday, people out in the open air. This contrasts with her novels, which are usually set indoors, often in the winter or at night. Darkness and light is a strong theme in all her work.

I was lavishly praised and encouraged by Celia in my early writing endeavours and I’m in no doubt that she was a real influence on me, if mostly subliminally. She was also very affectionate with my two baby boys, when they arrived in the mid-1970s. When we moved out of London, she came to visit us several times with her second husband, Leslie. She read my first published novel and wrote an endorsement for it. I last saw her in 1999, shortly before Leslie died.

I am highly delighted that Celia’s books are being reissued. Her ability to capture the combination of ordinariness and individuality in her characters and their relationships, which readers find so compelling, is something I have tried to emulate. I have no doubt that these books will find a large audience of new readers, who will wonder why they hadn’t heard of her before.

Rebecca Tope

Rebecca Tope is a crime novelist and journalist whose novels are published in the UK by Allison & Busby. Her official website is www.rebeccatope.com.

“Penny for the guy, Miss!” shrieked the importunate urchin, detaching himself from his companions and bouncing across Bridget’s path. He shook at her a battered yoghourt pot, already rattling with coins. “Penny for the guy!”

He couldn’t have been more than six years old, though his face, screwed up with aggressive purpose, looked almost adult under the harsh street lighting; a tiny cynical businessman, world-weary before his time.

Bridget shook her head. This was the third lot she’d encountered since getting off the bus, though it wasn’t even November yet. Besides, her purse was deep in the bottom of her shoulder-bag, buried beneath her library book, her set of office keys, her translation notes, and a half-finished letter to her mother. The very thought of fishing for it with gloved hands was mildly exhausting.

And on top of all this, she would have to decide how much to give them. What did they actually have in mind when this obsolete word “penny” slid so effortlessly from their baby mouths? Even Bridget herself, at twenty-eight, could only just remember the upheaval and consternation when the old currency had disappeared for ever, and the familiar chant of “Twelve pence one shilling, twenty shillings one pound” was
to be heard no more in the classrooms of the land. She remembered her father waxing indignant over the hidden price-rises involved. “Everything that cost a penny last week is now twopence-halfpenny!” he’d blustered; while her mother wrestled unhappily and in silence with the embarrassment of having to use the word “pee” when out shopping.

She walked briskly on through the damp evening, averting her face from the huddled little group who stood watching her with wary, judgmental eyes.

It was a rotten guy anyway, just a tattered oblong of school drawing-paper with a couple of round eyes scrawled on it in yellow crayon, amid a row of jagged teeth. No trouble had been taken over it at all.
However
poor you are, you could always take trouble, she reflected. Surely you could? Bridget herself had always taken trouble over everything. Not that she had ever been poor, but then poverty is only one of the obstacles that Life can put in a person’s path. Such obstacles as Bridget had encountered she had overcome by her own efforts – or so she flattered herself.

“If it’s worth doing at all it’s worth doing properly” her father used to admonish her – quite unnecessarily, as it happened, for Bridget had been the sort of child who always did things properly. She never left her dolls’ house without first tucking the plastic children up in their beds and propping the mother alongside the toy cooker in her blue-and-white check apron. Finally she would settle the black-trousered Daddy in his armchair (luckily his legs were flexible, he could both stand and sit) in front of the miniature television set, into which she would slot minuscule advertisements for
soap-powder
or ChocoFlakes, or something of the sort.

It was the same with school work. By the time she was in the Sixth Form she had built a reputation for being “brilliant” – “A high-flyer”, which naturally she found very pleasing; though even at the time she had
sometimes
wondered whether she was
really
so brilliant? Or did she just work harder than anybody else?

Did it matter? Whatever it was, it had worked. It got her into Cambridge to read modern languages. It got her a first-class degree, followed by a well-paid job in an import export firm.

From then on, Bridget had gone from strength to strength, and had already achieved her original
ambition
. She was now a freelance interpreter and
simultaneous
translator, greatly in demand at international conferences both in Britain and abroad.

Reaching her own road, Bridget turned her thoughts to the evening ahead. Her flatmate would be in by now, and would already have taken from the Ansaphone the replies – if any – to their advertisement. In a way, Bridget hoped there wouldn’t be any. It was true that the flat she and Diana were sharing was a good deal larger than they needed for just the two of them, even when you included the increasingly frequent and increasingly prolonged visits of Diana’s boy-friend, Alistair. The flat had three good bedrooms as well as a large and elegantly proportioned sitting-room, with glass doors opening onto a south-facing balcony. The idea of taking in a third tenant was eminently sensible. There really was plenty of room, and the financial advantages of such an arrangement were too obvious to need much discussion.

But she and Diana were getting on so well as they were. Bridget had been afraid, when they first set up
house together, that Diana’s age – nearly ten years older than herself – would create some sort of a barrier to easy, day-to-day companionship. She had feared that the older woman might want to establish some sort of fixed routine for their life together; and this would not have suited Bridget’s irregular life-style at all.

In the event, though, it was a non-problem. Diana also had a demanding job with irregular hours, and so they quickly fell into the habit of sharing meals only occasionally, when both happened to be at home, and of doing bits of housework whenever one or the other of them found the time. Thus an amiable, do-it-yourself regime was quickly established which suited them both. And as to Bridget’s other fear – that the decade’s difference in age might prove a barrier to companionship – this too proved unfounded. In fact, on the odd occasion – mostly late at night – when they were both at home and with time to chat, Bridget was constantly made aware that it was she, not Diana, who seemed to be taking the rôle of the wise older woman. Largely, she began to realise, this was thanks to Alistair; because, whatever the initial subject of their conversation, it always worked swiftly round to Diana’s love-life. It was this that cancelled out – and indeed reversed – the age-gap; for it is a universal rule in these sort of heart-to-heart conversations that the one whose boy-friend it isn’t inevitably finds herself in the rôle of comforter and counsellor to the one whose boy-friend it is.

By now, Bridget had arrived at Acorn House, the converted Victorian mansion in which she and Diana had made their home. As she mounted the wide front steps, slippery with fallen leaves, Bridget extracted her
key, and found herself hoping quite desperately that Alistair wouldn’t be there. A prospective tenant – or maybe several of them might have left messages on the Ansaphone. Appointments would then have to be made, maybe decisions reached this very evening, and she knew already exactly what Alistair’s contribution to the decision-making would be. Spread-eagled against the sofa-back, his long legs stretched out to an amazing distance across the carpet, he would be relaxing, eyes closed, in an attitude of cosmic boredom, far above such mundane trivialities. Now and again he would half-open those heavy-lidded eyes and throw out such contributions as: “It’ll be all the same in a hundred years” Or “You’ll die if you worry, you’ll die if you don’t, so why-y-y worry!”

She prayed, so far as a godless person can pray, that he wouldn’t be there.

He was, though. Standing in the doorway of the
sitting-room
, still in her anorak and head-scarf, Bridget took in first those absurdly extended legs, ending in a pair of shapeless socks that someone must have knitted for him (not Diana, for God’s sake?). Then, following the line from his shoeless feet upwards, she noted that his eyes were closed (as they usually were in company), and round his mouth hovered that utterly relaxed, utterly self-absorbed smile: the smile of a man enjoying some secret joke inside his head, a joke far too subtle and precious to be wasted on anyone of less rarefied sensibilities than his own.

“Hiya, beautiful!” he remarked, still not opening his eyes. “How’s tricks? Howya doing?”

If she just crept away without answering, would he notice? Or would he go on murmuring Americanised platitudes into empty space while she disappeared into the kitchen and concocted something for her supper? It looked as if this was not, after all, to be an evening when she and Diana would be eating together. Bridget had no intention of preparing a meal for the three of them – why should she? Let Diana cope with him; he was hers, wasn’t he?

Where
was
Diana anyway? They’d planned to spend
this evening together, going through the messages on the Ansaphone and deciding which applicants were worth following up. A third “Person” was what they’d specified in their advertisement, but that was only because they’d had a vague idea that “Third Woman” might lay them open to a charge of sexual
discrimination
, especially as the paper in which they’d inserted the advertisement was of a vaguely Left-wing slant. They’d agreed, though, between themselves, that only applications from females would be considered. Women were less trouble in every way: tidier, more anxious to conform, and a good deal less time-consuming. Though a very
young
man might be all right – a student, perhaps, spending his days on campus, and away for vacations. Someone not a day over twenty, anyway: the prospect of yet
another
large, ubiquitous, space-consuming
middle-aged
male about the place was daunting to both of them, though neither actually put this into words.

Above all, whoever came would have to be a
busy
person; out all day at some demanding job, and with lots of outside activities to fill her evenings. For any sort of shared life to be successful, from marriage downwards, the most important factor had nothing to do with shared interests, thought Bridget, nor even with shared values; it was a matter of being equally busy. If one member of the partnership had a great deal more leisure than the other, disaster loomed: the leisured one would feel neglected; the busy one, intolerably pressured.

Thinking about it now, Bridget reflected that it was this which had so far held her relatively aloof from the idea of marriage. Her job, which she loved, was a demanding one, and likely to become more so as success bred more success. Already she was feeling her
rare leisure hours to be precious beyond all calculation. Now and again, she’d tried to explain this to her mother, whose increasingly anxious hints about Bridget’s
still-single
state were beginning to eat into their relatively pleasant relationship. “No, it’s not that I hate men,” Bridget had assured her mother. “Nothing like that at all. And I’d quite like to have children, later on. It’s just …” and she remembered trying to choose the right words: “It’s just – well – it’s the unwritten part of the marriage service that puts me off: ‘With all my leisure time I thee endow.’ That’s the bit I can’t take.”

Gazing now at the limply spreading figure of Alistair, she wondered whether Diana would be able to take it either, when it came to the point? If this long-drawn-out, low-key relationship were ever to to culminate in the conventional happy ending, wouldn’t Diana feel exactly as Bridget about the sacrifices involved?

Must talk the thing through some time, she reflected. Not tonight, obviously.

“Where’s Diana?” she asked sharply; and at this, signs of life began to quiver through the somnolent form before her. The eyes opened, a nondescript greeny-grey under the heavy lids, and the long supine figure coiled itself reluctantly into a sitting position.

“Where indeed?” he remarked pleasantly. “I’ve been waiting here for hours, and not a dicky-bird! No one tells me anything!”

“Was she expecting you?” interjected Bridget, as ungraciously as she dared. “We’d planned to have this evening on our own, you know.”

“Ah well. The best laid plans of mice and men …!” He sighed and Bridget wondered, not for the first time, if he actually
wanted
her to throw something at
him. Or did he really think that these remarks were funny?

Whichever it was, she didn’t have to put up with it. He wasn’t hers.

“Hasn’t she rung or anything?” she snapped? “Something must have happened, because I know she meant …”

“My darling,
of
course
something’s happened. Things are happening all the time. All over the world. Didn’t you know?

“
Alistair
!” Bridget was almost shrieking now in her impatience. “
Has
Diana telephoned to say what she’s doing? Or hasn’t she?”

“Yes
and
no, actually,” he responded thoughtfully. “As is so often the case in human affairs … All right, sweetie, don’t get so worked up! The answer is, yes, she did ring up; but no, she didn’t say what she was doing. Or rather –” here he paused, perhaps to collect his thoughts, perhaps merely to annoy – “She didn’t explain it so that anyone could understand. She seems to have been held up somewhere. Like at work. Or maybe at the hospital? Take your choice.”

“
Hospital
?” For a moment Bridget was quite scared. Then she remembered: Diana had been due for one of her check-ups at the Infertility Clinic this afternoon. This was something else they were going to have to talk about before long. Her friend’s notion that she would be able to carry on with her demanding job, as well as being a single parent, seemed to Bridget pure fantasy. And in any case, fancy
wanting
to have Alistair’s baby! And not merely wanting it, but wanting it so passionately as to be undergoing weeks of poking and prodding, hormones, special diets and the rest.

Oh, well. At least it didn’t seem to be working. Not so far.

But now Alistair was actually volunteering some information, unasked.

“Not to worry, my pet,” he was saying, “She’ll be back in her own good time, as always. And meantime,
I’ve
been holding the fort. I’ve been taking no end of messages from gibbering applicants for a share in this grotty flat of yours. No, dearie, I did
not
say “grotty” to them – as if I would! On the contrary, I made it sound like a cross between Buckingham Palace and a colour-spread in
Homes
and
Gardens,
They’ll be along in droves. Any minute, I wouldn’t be surprised.” Here he yawned, stretched himself out into his former lounging position, and continued: “Actually, one little lady has been round already. I’ve interviewed her myself, isn’t it lucky I don’t make a charge for this sort of service?” Here he yawned again, and Bridget moved further into the room, tossing her scarf over the back of a chair and shaking loose her damp hair.

“Go on,” she said. “Who was it? What’s her name? What’s she like?”

“Like? Well, the first impression I got was that she’d be just what the doctor ordered. Self-effacing to the point of non-existence. Pathologically anxious to please. Anxious altogether, I’d say – a genetically-programmed worry-guts. But that’ll make her all the more malleable, won’t it? And malleable she’ll need to be, won’t she, with you two harridans pushing her around?”

“How old? Oh, the sort of age women usually are these days –
you
know. What does she look like?” he paused, giving the thing careful consideration. “Well, like an earwig, really. Small, and scuttling, and giving
you the feeling that it might be kinder to tread on her straight away and put her out of her misery. Ideal, I’d say, for a pair of heavy-hoofed ungulants like you two.”

“‘Ungulates’, I think you mean,” said Bridget icily. ‘Ungulant’, if there was such a word, would be the participle, not the noun …”

She stopped. There was something about Alistair which somehow forced her to talk like a tetchy
schoolmistress
, and she didn’t like it; so she changed the subject.

“What time was it …” she was beginning, but Alistair interrupted.

“Oh, and another thing: didn’t I say she was ideal? On top of everything else, she’s a Battered Wife. She’s on the run from one of those Refuges or something. Diana’s going to love it! Didn’t she say they’d be targeting Battered Wives for their next ‘Can you Help?’ programme? Madam Earwig should be God’s gift to anyone like our Di, trying to claw her way up in T.V.’s compassion racket.”

Alistair loved to make fun of Diana’s job, and indeed it was a job that was easy to make fun of if, like Alistair, you were that way inclined. She worked on a newly-established T.V. channel, where she set up documentaries relevant to one or another of today’s fashionable areas of concern: Hospital closures, abused children, dangerous dogs, satanic rituals, and, yes,
battered
wives. It wasn’t she who chose the subjects – in general, these were handed to her by the
programme-makers
– but it was Diana’s task to track down
individuals
who had suffered spectacularly from whatever happened to be the latest shock-horror cause of the day, and to prepare them for interview.

“What time was it when this woman …” Bridget was beginning, she stopped as she heard Diana’s key in the door.

It must have stopped raining by now, for Diana’s abundant bronze-gold hair fell in luxuriant waves to her shoulders without any hint of damp or dishevelment. It was a style perhaps a little too young for her thirty-seven years, but she was still just about getting away with it; probably would do for at least another two or three years. At the moment, she looked younger even than usual, her face flushed and eager, whipped into colour and freshness by the cold air outside.

“A drink!” she cried gaily, addressing her recumbent lover. “I’m dying for a drink, I’ve had a perfectly
awful
afternoon!” and now at last Alistair lumbered to his feet and set about making such a comfortable clink of bottles and glasses that even Bridget felt her irritable mood subsiding. Soon the little party were settled round the imitation coal fire (a very good imitation, as it
happened
) and Alistair was repeating, for Diana’s benefit, the news about the putative new tenant.

“A battered wife, Di!” he repeated gleefully. “Isn’t that what your coven of ghouls is working on right now? You’ll be able to fatten her for the slaughter and dish her up oven-ready for the cameras without even stepping outside your own front door.”

Diana laughed, happily. She always did when Alistair teased her, even when there was an edge to the teasing which some might have found hurtful.

“Good thinking,” she responded: “But you know, Ali, it doesn’t really work like that. You can’t really use someone you know personally in this job. It’s not ethical”.

Ethical
? Did that really bother these Media people? Alistair’s mouth had fallen open in genuine surprise, but before he could frame a question to this effect, Diana had continued:

“Not that she’ll be suitable, anyway, darling. Not as a tenant, I mean. A battered wife – she won’t have any money, will she? We need someone who can pay a proper rent – that’s the whole idea. No, it’s impossible.”

As she finished speaking, Alistair reached across from his low seat, caught Diana’s hand, and planted a languid kiss on it.

‘What a mercenary little maggot it is!” he chided her. “Anyone would think, watching these caring,
sharing
, soul-baring programmes of yours, that somewhere, deeply buried among the guff, there might be some idea of actually
helping
the victim you’ve got your claws into. Like, right now, if this earwig woman were to walk in, all bruised and bleeding from her latest set-to with hubby, and was to beg you on her bended knees for shelter – you know what you’d say? You’d say to her, “That’s fine, my dear, that’s absolutely great! Hold it! Don’t move, stay on your knees, just the way you are. The head, though … just a fraction more to the left, if you don’t mind. We want to see the blood running down your left cheek. Yes … that’s right … That’s absolutely fine … Hold it, dear …’ That’s how it would be, darling, wouldn’t it? Admit!”

Diana laughed again, a trifle uneasily; but before she could think of a suitably light-hearted and jokey come-back, they were startled into silence by a ring at the front door. A small, tentative sort of ring it was, as if the visitor were unsure if she had found the right address, or unsure, it might be, of her welcome.