The Heart of the Country (23 page)
Read The Heart of the Country Online
Authors: Fay Weldon
‘Wash the windows, Henry,’ she’d say. He’d wash them. She’d inspect the blemishes and complain. He’d do them again. Where had Henry come from? She began to believe he was some kind of poor relative, wounded in the war, now having to be looked after, out of charity. The odd-job man, with his hobby, his photography. His little shop on the sea-front. No, not a trade.
A hobby.
The money that Henry brought home from his now prosperous business kept the household going. He slept, occasionally, with
Judith; it was both their revenge upon Lucy, rather than any overwhelming desire on his part, or hers.
‘I’m not a servant: not, not, not,’ he’d say, like a naughty child, keeping time, as in some clapping street game, with his strokes inside Judith; or vaguely inside; or at any rate round and about.
‘Who does she think she is?’ Judith would respond, staring up at him, unmoved. ‘Who’s she to give herself airs? She’s nobody. Rubbish!’
She was like some piece of wood, he thought, which ought to sprout with leafy branches in the spring, but wouldn’t. Obstinate. He was reassured by her placidity, her lack of response. He could do what he liked: if he was weak, or barely roused, she did not seem to mind. He would rub himself against her, gaining such pleasure as he could: his excitement, like hers, springing from his indignation with Lucy, not from Judith’s hot stolid body. Active women frightened him. He’d been with a French girl once, on leave. She’d seemed to explode, as a man might. It had frightened him; sudden explosions in the trenches killed and maimed; explosions in the head, in the loins – all much of a muchness – were surely something to be feared.
‘Anyway, she’s a Jew,’ said Judith. ‘Dirty Jews. Everything’s their fault.’
There was a general feeling about, though seldom so vehemently expressed, that all social evils were the fault of the Jews. Unemployment, low wages, bad housing, depression – both national and personal – it was all due to the Jews. Few had actually ever met one: but they had heard.
Lucy was quite relieved that Benjamin was dead, and that Butt and Sons, Solicitors, had such a Christian name.
‘What did Father die of?’ Praxis asked Hypatia, presently.
‘Ask mother,’ said Hypatia, safe these days in the knowledge that Praxis would not. Nor did she.
Praxis liked school. The building was Gothic Victorian; it smelt of cabbage, stale urine, and hot damp bodies. She loved to play and giggle and compete. The teachers were kind and complimentary. No one hid anything. Everything was open, mucky and honest. There was a separate entrance for boys and girls, and separate playgrounds, but they shared lessons. Boys sat on the side nearest the door, girls nearest the wall. It was customary. Hypatia liked school less. She was more responsive than Praxis to her mother’s inference that the family was different, raised above the common herd. Though there were no more references to King David, Lucy found figures to be proud of in her own family background: a titled great-aunt, a great-great-uncle who had invented the steam turbine. She wrote to her mother: but her mother did not reply. Why? Had she died, gone away, moved house? Lucy did not know. Presently it seemed to her that she was an orphan, and always had been.
‘My poor mother,’ she’d sometimes say. ‘My poor dead mother.’
Praxis got nits in her hair. Lucy had hysterics. Praxis’ hair was cut very short and she went to school in a scarf, along with half a dozen others. Dirty children. Lucy wrote to Butt and Sons asking if the girls could have their fees paid at a private school. No, said the Butts, conscious of their duty to the Duveen family finances, now much depleted. Much of the family money had to go towards the rescuing of obscure cousins from Hitler’s Germany.
Lucy next wrote to Butt and Sons asking whether the girls’ secondary education could not, perhaps, be paid for by their father’s family.
No, replied Butt Senior, and was the children’s mother aware that when the younger reached sixteen, all support and maintenance would stop? In the meantime, had she considered enrolling her daughters in a state sponsored school for domestic training? The girls must expect to support themselves, and in these days of the servant problem, no girl with such a training need go short of a job.
The letter, as were all letters from Butt and Sons, was addressed to Miss Parker. ‘It’s because I’m a widow,’ she explained to the postman: ‘They want to save my feelings.’ She believed it, but he did not.
Lucy had not been aware that maintenance could stop. She had envisaged it continuing for ever. She asked Henry back to the dining-room for meals, and he accepted her invitation. Judith crashed and banged about the house: Lucy could not understand why.
Hypatia won a scholarship to the grammar school; Lucy was triumphant and wrote to tell Butt and Sons of her triumph. Would they, she added, pass on the good news to the Duveen family?
‘She’s not going to be a nuisance, I hope,’ said Senior Butt to Junior Butt, holding the scented scrawl some distance from himself the better to focus. Lucy had in fact rewritten the letter seven times in order to get grammar, spelling and presentation correct.
‘You went too far,’ said the younger Butt, ‘in your earlier letter. I told you she’d respond badly to pressure. She’s a real hard egg. She tried to trap the son into marriage, and now that’s well and truly failed, and young Benjamin is out of her clutches, she’s going to try blackmailing his unfortunate family.’
‘She does have his two children,’ demurred the elder Butt.
‘That’s her story,’ said Butt Junior. ‘How could one ever be sure?’
Nevertheless Butt Senior wrote back to Lucy saying how pleased he was to hear of Hypatia’s success; hoping that Praxis might follow suit: and adding that the matters of rent and allowance and maintenance could be deferred until Praxis’ eighteenth birthday and possibly even longer.
Lucy felt bolder and returned Henry to the kitchen. The coarse hair of his nostrils repelled her: so did the pallid trembling of his hands. She was glad when he went.
On the first day at the girls’ grammar school the form mistress read out the register, while the girls murmured their presence. ‘Hilda Duveen,’ she said.
Silence.
‘When I say your name, Hilda,’ said the form mistress to Hypatia, ‘you say present. Shall we try again? Hilda Duveen?’
‘Present,’ said Hypatia. It was her mother’s doing. Lucy had never liked her children’s names, and the Reverend Allbright had undertaken to talk to the grammar school head-mistress about changing them. The news had been late in reaching Hypatia, that was all. When it was Praxis’ turn to move on to the grammar school she found that her name was now Patricia.
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