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Weldon, Fay - Novel 07
Puffball
FAY WELDON
Fay
Weldons reputation is growing all the time, and in
England
her new novel,
Puffball
, is her most successful book to date. Readers of Fay
Weldon know that you can always count on her for surprise, and in
Puffball
she is at her ironic and
outrageous best as she tells us a tale of witchcraft and childbirth.
Liffey
and Richard move from their chic
London
apartment to a quaint rose-covered cottage
because Liffey insists. Their neighbors, Mabs and Tucker, are delighted when
Richard petulantly abandons Liffey to pursue his career in
London
and they set out with energetic spite to
teach their city friend a lesson. Whether Liffey becomes pregnant from that
lesson or by Richard remains to be seen, but Mabs believes that the baby in
(
continued
on back
flap)
Also by Fay Weldon
Praxis
And
the Wife Ran Away
Down
Among
the
Women
Female Friends
Remember Me
Words of Advice
PUFFBALL
a
novel by
Fay Weldon
SUMMIT
BOOKS
NEW YORK
Copyright
© 1980 by Fay Weldon All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in
whole or in part in any form Published by
Summit
Books
A
Simon
&
Schuster Division of Gulf
8c
Western Corporation
Simon
&
Schuster
Building
Rockefeller
Center
1230
Avenue of the
Americas
New York
,
New York
10020
SUMMIT
BOOKS and colophon are trademarks of Simon
&
Schuster Designed by Dianne Pinkowitz Manufactured in the United States of
America Printed and bound by Fairfield Graphics, Inc.
123456789 10
Library
of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Weldon,
Fay.
Puffball.
I.
Title.
PZ4.W444PU
1980
[PR6073.E374]
823'-9i4 80-14585
ISBN
0-671-44809-9
Contents
In the Beginning
Many people dream
of country cottages.
Liffey dreamed for many years, and saw the dream come true one hot Sunday
afternoon, in
Somerset
, in September. Bees droned, sky glazed, flowers glowed, and the name
carved above the lintel, halfhidden by rich red roses, was Honeycomb Cottage,
and Liffey knew that she must have it.
The
getting of the country cottage, not the wanting—that was the trap. It was a
snare baited by Liffey’s submerged desires and unrealised passions, triggered
by nostalgia for lost happiness, and set off by fear of a changing future. But
how was Liffey, who believed that she was perfectly happy and perfectly
ordinary, to know a thing like that? Liffey saw smooth green lawns”where others
saw long tangled grass, and
was
not looking out for
snares.
Besides,
as Liffey’s mother, Madge, once observed, “Liffey wants what she wants and gets
cross with those who stand in her way.”
Richard
stood in Liffey’s way that hot September afternoon, and Liffey was cross with
him. Richard had been married to Liffey for seven years and responded, as
spouses will, to the message behind the words and not the words themselves.
“I
want to live in the country,” said Liffey, remarkably enough, for she did not
often put her wants and wishes so straightforwardly into words.
“We
can’t,” said Richard, “because I have to earn a living,” and it was unlike him
to disappoint her so directly and so brutally.
Liffey
and Richard seldom had rows and were nearly always polite to each other, which
made them believe they were ideally suited and happily married. She was small
and bright and pretty, and he was large, handsome and responsible. She was
twenty-eight and he thirty-two. Madge was relieved that Liffey was, so far,
childless; but Richard’s mother, although an Anglican, had already lit a
candle to the Virgin Mary and prayed for the grandchild she could reasonably
have expected five years earlier. They had been married for seven years, after
all.
“But
we could be so happy here,” said Liffey. The cottage stood on rising ground at
a point where smooth fields met wooded hillside. It looked across the plains to
Glastonbury Tor, that hummocky hill that rises out of the flat
Somerset
levels and is a nexus of spiritual power,
attracting UFOs and tourists and pop festivals and hippies and the drug squad.
The cottage was empty. Spiderwebs clouded the latticed windows.
“We
are happy where we are,” said Richard. Adding, “Aren’t we?” in a
half-threatening, half-pleading tone of voice, so she was obliged to forget his
crossness and kiss him and say yes. And indeed their city apartment was small
but convenient and comfortable, and Liffey had never before complained about
it, nor had any real reason to. If she gave voice to worries, they were not so
much personal as ecological and were about the way the earth’s natural
resources were being eaten up, and what was happening to the blue whale, and
baby seals, and butterflies, and what deforestation did to the ozone layer
above
Brazil
. Richard, who knew that new developments in nuclear, chemical, and
silicone-chip technology would soon solve all such problems, laughed gently and
comfortingly at her worries and loved her for worrying. He liked to look after
her, or thought he did.
After
they kissed he took Liffey round to the back of the cottage, through hollyhocks
and wallflowers, and there, in the long grasses down by the stream, made love
to her. It was a decorous event, characteristic of their particular mating
behaviour. Liffey
lay
still and quiet, and Richard
was quick and dutiful.
“Isn’t
she skinny,” said Mabs, watching through field glasses from the bedroom of
Cadbury Farm. Her husband, Tucker, took the glasses.
“They
grow them like that in the city,” he said.
They
both spoke in the gentle, caressing drawl of the West Country, mocking the
universe, defying its harshness.
“You
don’t know they’re from the city,” Mabs objected.
“They’re
not from round here,” said Tucker. “No one round here does it in public.”
Cadbury
Farm was made of stone and was so long and low and old it all but vanished into
the fold of the hill above the cottage. Liffey and Richard certainly had not
noticed it was there. Tucker’s family had lived at Cadbury Farm, or on its
site, for a thousand years or so. When Tucker moved about his fields he seemed
so much part of them he could hardly be seen. Mabs was more noticeable. She was
reckoned a foreigner: she came from Crossley, five miles away. She was a large,
slow, powerful woman, and Tucker was a small, lithe man. So had her Norman
ancestors been, ousting the small dark Celts, from whom Tucker took his
colouring and nature.
“Richard,”
said Liffey, “you don’t think we can be seen?”
“Of
course not,” said Richard. “Why are you always so guilty? There’s nothing wrong
with sex. Everyone does it.”
“My
mother didn’t,” said Liffey, contradicting because the feeling of crossness had
returned. Sexual activity can sweep away
many resentments
and anxieties, but not those that are bred of obsession and compulsion. “Or
only when she had me,” she amended.
“More
fool
she
,” said Richard, who didn’t want to talk about
Liffey’s mother. Richard’s parents had described Liffey’s mother, after the
wedding, as wonderfully clever and eccentric, and Richard had watched Liffey
carefully since, in case she seemed to be going the same way.
“If
we lived in the country,” persisted Liffey, “and had a bit of peace and quiet,
I could really get down to writing my novel.” Liffey had secretarial training
and did temporary work in offices from time to time, when it didn’t interfere
with her looking after Richard, but felt that such work could hardly, as she
put it, fulfil her. So she wrote, in her spare time, poems and paragraphs and
ideas, and even short stories. She showed what she wrote to nobody, not even to
Richard, but felt a certain sense of progress and achievement for having done
it.
“You’d
be bored to death,” said Richard, meaning that he feared that he would be.
“You
have your career and your fulfilment,” persisted Liffey, “and what do I have?
Why should your wishes be more important than mine?”
Why
indeed? Richard could not even cite his money-earning capacity in his defence,
since Liffey had a small fortune of her own, left to her by a grandfather. And
he had of late become very conscious of the communal guilt that the male sex
appears to bear in relation to women. All the same, Liffey’s words rang
fashionable and hollow in the silence he allowed to follow them.
He
made love to her again. Moral confusion excited him sexually, or at any rate
presented itself as a way out of difficulty, giving him time to think, and a
generally agreeable time at that.
“She’s
just a farmyard animal like any other,” said Tucker, handing over the glasses
to Mabs.
“Women
aren’t animals,” said Mabs.
“Yes,
they are,” said Tucker, “tamed for the convenience of men.” Mabs put down her
glasses and looked malevolently at her husband, frightening him into silence.
Then she turned back to Liffey and Richard and watched some more.
“They’re
very quick about it,” she complained to Tucker. “I thought city folks got up to
all kinds of tricks. Do you fancy her?”
“She’s too skinny for my taste,”
said Tucker.
“And
you can do a lot better than him,” said Mabs, returning the compliment.
“I
should hope so,” said Tucker, and did, pushing Mabs’s old grey skirt up and
reaching the oyster-coloured silk underwear beneath. She was fussy about what
she wore next to her skin. She had surprisingly long and slender legs. Her bulk
was contained in her middle parts. Tucker loved the way her sharp brown eyes,
in the act of love, turned soft and docile, large- irised, like those of his
cows. The image of Liffey stayed in his mind, as Mabs had intended it should,
and helped. Mabs made good use of everything that came her way, and Tucker did
too.
“If
you would have a baby,” said Richard to Liffey as they lay in the long grass,
the late sun striking low across the land, “there’d be some point in living in
the country.” Liffey did not want a baby, or at any rate not now. She might be
chronologically twenty-eight, but felt eighteen, and eighteen was too young to
have a baby.
Liffey
looked at Honeycomb Cottage. Generations of happy, healthy children, she
thought, had skipped in and out of the door, along the path, under roses and
between hollyhocks. There loving couples had grown old in peace and
tranquillity, at one with the rhythms of nature. Here she and Richard would be
safe, out of the city, which already had turned a few of his dark hairs grey
and was turning his interest away from her, and which threatened her daily with
its pollutants and violence —the city, where there was a rapist round every
corner and rudeness at every turn, and an artificiality of life and manners
that sickened her.
“All
right,” said Liffey, “let’s have a baby.”
Panic
rose in her throat, even as she spoke.
“All
right,” said Richard, “let’s live in the country.”
He
regretted it at once.
Mabs
was in the yard of Cadbury Farm as Richard and Liffey drove back towards the
main road along the bumpy track that passed both cottage and farm. Richard had
to stop the car while Tucker drove his cows in. Mangy dogs strained and barked
at the end of chains, and were yelled into silence by Mabs. She bent to give
them bones and her rump was broad.
“So long as you don’t ever let
yourself go,” added Richard, and then Mabs stood straight and smiled full at
Richard and Liffey. She was formless and shapeless in her old grey skirt and
her husband’s shirt. Her hair was ratty, she had unplucked whiskers on her
double chin, and she weighed all of thirteen stone. But she was tall and strong
and powerful, and her skin was creamy white.
“She
looks like a horse,” whispered Liffey. “Do you ever see me looking like a
horse?”
“You’d
better not,” said Richard, “or we’ll move straight back to town.”
Richard
did not believe that Liffey, if offered the country, would actually want to
live there. He believed he had called her bluff—which had begun to irritate
him—and brought her a little nearer to having a baby, and that was all. He was
realistic, where Liffey was romantic, and trained, as business executives ought
to be, in the arts of manipulation.
“Mind
you,” said Liffey, “horses are very friendly. There are worse things to be.”
Liffey,
as horse, came from the Viennese stables. She tossed her head and neighed and pranced,
precisely and correctly. She was well trained in the arts of child-wifedom.
Mabs, as horse, was a working dray; Tucker mounted her easily. She galloped and
galloped and sweated and brayed—and what price breeding then? Who needed it?
But how was Liffey to know a thing like that? Liffey never sweated, never
brayed. Liffey made a sweet little mewling sound, as soon as she possibly
could, yet still carried conviction—a dear and familiar sound to Richard, for
what their love-making might lack in quality was certainly made up for in
frequency. Liffey felt that the act of copulation was a strange way to
demonstrate the act of love but did her best with it.
