The Fat Woman's Joke (12 page)

“My time is valuable. And I have told you what to do. Stop sickening yourself. If you won't do anything about it, it is hardly my fault. You are a very self-destructive person. I am sorry for your family.”

“I have no family.” She took out her checkbook and wrote out a check for £3, hoping to shame him. “Fortunately for you, I have some money left.”

“Left?”

“People took what they could.”

“Greed, aggression and obesity. They go together.”

“I am not aggressive. I am a very amiable, generous and easy-going person,” she said, wondering whether or not to strike him with his marble lamp.

He took the check, unashamed.

“Should you decide to get thin, please come and see me again.” With her money in his hand he appeared more friendly.

She wandered around the show-biz pictures—the cropped noses, the lifted faces, the enlarged or diminished breasts.

“Why do they do it?” she asked.

“To please men,” he said. “All men, if they're in show-biz. One man, if they're not, like your friend Mrs. Frazer.”

“And you take money for doing it? You make your living like this? Don't you feel it is degrading?”

“The thing is,” he said, “her husband does appear to fancy her more big-breasted. So I have added to the sum of human happiness.”

“Of human sensation, perhaps. Of human happiness, no.”

“Don't delude yourself. They are the same thing.”

“It is true that Gerry Frazer likes large women,” said Esther. “Or says so. I wonder why he married a person so skinny as Phyllis?”

“Because, at a guess, he was thin then and he's fat now. He does not wish to court criticism.”

“You are really quite acute,” she said, “in a dismal kind of way.”

“I make a study of the obese,” he said, and she wished she had never left her basement.

Phyllis rang Alan's office and was told he was in bed with flu. She called to see him, and sat by his bed.

“Poor darling Alan,” she said, “I had to come. All alone with no one to look after you. Now tell me, what can I do?”

“You can leave me alone,” he said, but he was grateful to see her.

“You and Esther, you're as grumpy as a pair of pigs. You just can't get on without each other.”

“You've seen Esther?”

“Yes. Yesterday. No thanks to you, hiding her address like that. What are you trying to do to her? She's in trouble, and she needs all the help she can get. Don't you care what happens to her?”

“No.”

“You only say that. When you've been married as long as you two have, of course you care.”

“Caring may be a habit, but it is not necessarily a good habit.”

“You've behaved very badly, Alan; she's very hurt and upset. I know how terribly bad I'd feel if Gerry got involved with his secretary.”

He raised his eyebrows at her.

“Marriage is a very hurtful business, I know,” she said in a small voice. “At least it is for me, but there's no reason for you and Esther to fight. And I know you think I've got a nerve, interfering, but I do honestly want to see you both happy again. I admire Esther so much. She's everything I'm not. She's clever, and she's grown up. And it breaks my heart to see her like this.”

“I give you credit for your good intentions. I am afraid I am somewhat rude. Times have been troublesome lately. Quite apart from anything else, the office bores me to hell, and Peter irritates me beyond belief. He has no idea of the seriousness of life: he is basically and deeply frivolous. It is Esther's fault. She bred cynicism in him. Wherever I look, I see nothing whatever to brighten my life.”

“There's your writing. That's a wonderful hobby to have. I wish Gerry was as clever as you.”

“Oh, yes,” he said with profound gloom, “the novel.” He sank back into his pillows, as if struck by sudden feebleness. “A hobby. Yes, I suppose that is what it was. How strange that I should have thought it to be the shaft of light which would illumine my whole life and give it meaning, and that in truth it is on a par with stamp-collecting and pigeon-fancying. There was a certain amount of confusion about the novel, to be frank. The agent attributed the wrong manuscript to me—the one he liked so much was written by a lady in Eccles. Mine, it turned out, he didn't like. It frightened him. He said it was cold and cruel and improper. Pornographic, even. I thought myself it was warm and friendly. How little one knows of oneself. Oh, Phyllis, there must be something else in life than this?” She was alarmed at such a question.

“Well, I don't know what you're complaining about. You've got this divine home, and a clever wife who's a good cook, and a handsome clever son, and a good job and enough money, and why you suddenly want to spoil it all by taking up with a silly young girl who's just kinky for authors—”

“Who said so?”

“Esther.”

“Esther knows nothing about it.” He was cross.

“—because it's bound to upset everyone, isn't it? You should value what you've got and not go looking for something else all of a sudden. It's very immature of you. It's the way Gerry goes on, only he's like that all of the time, not just all of a sudden. And I can see you're upset about your novel, but people never do appreciate what's good, do they? The first thing you should do is go and ask Esther to come back. Then you can settle down again.”

“Why should I ask her back? She doesn't want to be here, or she wouldn't have gone.”

“She's your wife.”

“You have this mystic faith in titles, Phyllis. It does you credit. No, the home's broken up. Peter's gone. He lives during the week with crop-haired Stephanie. He's totally irresponsible, and he expects me to pay his rent. He comes home at weekends and sits doing his homework, and when he takes out his fountain pen, packets of contraceptives fall out. He buys them with his pocket money. From a slot machine.”

“That's not irresponsible. That's responsible. He's a big boy now. He's a grown man. He's eighteen. It's not his fault if he's still at school. I expect he only does it to annoy you, anyway.”

“Perhaps he's not my son at all. How am I to know? I wasn't like that when I was his age. Only in my fantasies, not in real life.”

“Now you're being ridiculous.”

“Oh no, I'm not. You don't know the half of it. There was a time in her life when Esther went mad. She cropped her hair, ate nothing but apples and went on the streets.”

“I don't believe you.”

“Well, not quite the streets, but the number of men visitors coming and going in her flat, it might as well have been the common pavement, and she lying in the gutter having it off with all and sundry.”

“Don't talk like that.”

“I'm sorry. Anyway, she calmed down and I accepted her back. But nothing she does surprises me any more. And why she should get in such a state because I like talking to my secretary and should so bitterly resent my feeble attempts to have a rewarding and pleasant relationship with another woman—it's not reasonable of her.”

“It didn't sound very platonic, the way Esther described it.”

“I never said it was platonic. But that was beside the point. Esther needed her freedom. When she got tired of it, I had her back. I would have thought she could have afforded me the same courtesy and not left me here to die of influenza. I'll tell you another thing. Susan admired me. Esther never, in all her life, admired me. Esther is incapable of admiring a man.”

“She is so unhappy down there in her basement she would be ready to admire anyone.” Phyllis took off her little flowered hat and shook her curly hair free. “And I'm sure she does admire you, Alan. How could anyone not? You're so clever and so good-looking. You have this kind of fine-boned sensitive face, and such deep eyes I think a woman could lose herself in them utterly. And you are so good at taking control of things. I do admire that in a man.”

“I suspect you,” said Alan. “Why do you want Esther back here? Because of Gerry?”

She looked startled, and was too confused to reply.

“I know nothing about her and Gerry, mind you,” he went on, “except I think Gerry must be out of his mind. Why can't he be happy with you? You're a proper feminine woman. I think the only one left in the entire world. You must excuse me. I feel weak. I have felt weak for a long time now. First it was lack of food, then it was lust, then it was literature, then it was Esther's hysteria, then Susan's neurotics, now it's flu. If it's not one thing it's another and it's a bit much. Everything suddenly boils over all at once. Phyllis, I am very weak and you are taking advantage of me.”

“Alan, what happened between Gerry and Esther?”

“So that's why you came to see me. Not because I was ill and not because you liked me but to get something out of me. I might have known. What difference does it make, Gerry and Esther, or Gerry and a dozen other women? None of it means a thing to me. One body or another, it's all the same.”

“Because Esther's my friend.”

“A fine friend. She'd sell you down the river a hundred times, the way she sold me. Why do you put up with Gerry? It's cold outside, Phyllis. Come into bed.”

Phyllis took off her flowered little-girl smock, and stood in her lacy stockings, her red brassiere and red suspender belt by the bed. She had put on her best underwear for the visit. Alan, his eyes bright and his brow fevered, lay back on the pillows and watched.

“Everyone else does,” said Phyllis miserably, “why shouldn't I?”

“Quite so,” said Alan. “Those are my feelings exactly.” She took off what remained of her clothes and climbed into bed, where she lay inert and shivering.

“You are very cold,” he said. “It's rather refreshing to encounter a woman like you.”

“You are very warm,” she said. “I wish I wasn't so miserable. Why does Gerry get so much pleasure from going to bed with other women? If you don't feel affectionately toward someone, there's no pleasure in it, is there? At least that's what the books say. How lucky he is! Perhaps he just manages to feel affectionate toward lots and lots of people. I've never been to bed with anyone in my entire life except Gerry and I don't understand what all the fuss is about. I am a frigid woman, you see. Unless it is that I have never met the right man. You are welcome to any comfort I can give you,” she added, lying more stiffly than ever.

“Please, please feel affectionately toward me,” he moaned. “Someone has to.”

She did indeed, at that, feel a flicker of affection.

“You said I was a proper feminine woman. What did you mean by that?”

“You are gentle and docile and slim and pretty and neat, like a doll. You endure things. You don't try to be anything, ever, except what you are. You have pretty little eyes that never see more than they should. You are not in the least clever and you never say anything devastating. I should have married you.”

She began to feel quite cheerful.

“I even think I could make you happy,” he said, at which such feeling overwhelmed her that she turned toward him, and he clasped her, or rather clutched her, as if he was a drowning man and she the straw he sought for. She shut her eyes and pretended he was Gerry. There was very little difference between them, if she put her mind to believing it. She was pleased, anyway, to be the means of his pleasure, being grateful to him for his kind words. Afterwards, a terrible thought occurred to her.

“You never actually
said
that Gerry and Esther made love.”

“No, I don't suppose I did.”

“Did they?”

“I don't know and I don't care. Do you?”

“You led me to believe they had. I think you were plotting to get me into bed with you.”

He considered. “It's possible.”

“That was despicable of you.” She pulled away from him so that she no longer touched him, and immediately felt bereft. She hoped he would move nearer to her, but he did not do so.

“I think it would be despicable of you to make love to me simply because you wanted to be revenged on your husband.”

“It's not much revenge,” she said, and sounded disappointed. “It doesn't add up to much, does it? People talk and talk about it, but in itself it's such an unimportant thing.”

He felt his temperature rising. He began to shiver.

“You bloody women,” he said, “you're all the same. You're never satisfied.”

She got out of bed and dressed. He did not watch her. His head ached.

“It's not your fault,” she said, charitably, when she felt respectable again and had sprayed herself with scent. “It's me. I'm frigid, you see. I was only trying to help you, and cheer you up. And really I enjoyed it very much.”

“I'm not a cream tea,” he groaned.

“We shouldn't really have done it,” she went on. “How can I look Esther in the eye? I'll never be able to see her again, and I'm supposed to be calling this afternoon. Oh, what will I do? What have I done?”

“Next time,” was all he said, “please choose another man to inflict your frigidity upon.”

She cried, and said, “I thought love was meant to make people happy. I was only trying to help.”

“O
F COURSE,” SAID PETER
to Susan, “Father is very upset. He is insanely jealous of me. It is often a problem when middle-aged men see their sons grow up and begin to have sex lives, and with Father the experience is proving quite traumatic. Apart from the length of your hair, you see, you are remarkably like Stephanie; who, again, is like my mother in her thinner moments. I think this was what attracted him to you in the first place. If I can sleep with Stephanie, why couldn't he sleep with you? It was unfortunate that Mother took it so seriously. If she had had any insight she would have understood him, and stayed, and waited for it to blow over. But again, when sons leave home, women tend to despair. What is there left for them? I am afraid the whole thing is my fault. Men have a menopause, too, did you know? I think Father is suffering from it. Why exactly did you feel you had to come to see me?” He was dressed in black from head to foot. He was doing his homework. His schoolbooks lay open on the purple velvet settee.