Weldon, Fay - Novel 07 (4 page)

 
          
Liffey was off the pill.

 
          
Liffey’s
pituitary gland was once more its own master and stimulated the production of
oestrogen and progesterone as it saw fit, no longer by its inactivity, hoodwinking
her body into believing it was pregnant. Liffey became a little thinner, her breasts
a little smaller,
her
temperament a little more
volatile. She was conscious of an increase in sexual desire, although she was
still obliged to pretend for Richard’s sake and in the interest of her own
self-esteem to have orgasms. Not that this affected her fertility, for orgasm
and ovulation in the human female are not connected, as in other species they
sometimes are. And although sexual desire itself can on occasion prompt
ovulation, overriding the pituitary’s clock-work timing, the element of
surprise that brings this rare phenomenon about (and much distress to rape
victims and deflowered virgins) was not present in Richard’s love-making with
Liffey.

 
          
Liffey’s
menstrual cycle was thus quickly restored to its normal rhythm. Liffey, all
the same, did not become pregnant.

 
          
Two
more lunar months went by. Two more ova dropped, decayed and were disposed of.

 
          
Liffey’s
chance of becoming pregnant, which was 95 per cent when she was a teenager, was
by now down by some 6 per cent, and would continue to diminish slightly year by
year, as would Richard’s, until at the time he was sixty his fertility rate
would be down by 90 per cent, and hers of course would be nil.

 
          
In
their favour, both were still young: intercourse occurred at least four times a
week, and Richard’s sperms were almost always present in the outer part of
Liffey’s Fallopian tubes, waiting for ovulation to occur. Against them was the
fact that Richard had flu in November and his sperm count was perhaps
temporarily rather low, and Liffey had only just come off the pill. There were
the many other statistical probabilities of conception to take into account.
Had Liffey known all this, she would perhaps not have lain awake at night
fearing—for although she did not want a baby, she certainly did not want to be
infertile—that she was barren and that some cosmic punishment had been visited
upon her.

 
          
It
was a matter of time, nothing else, before she conceived.

 
          
Liffey’s mother,
Madge,
was a lean, hard-drinking, prematurely white-haired teacher of chemistry in a
girls’ school in
East Anglia
. She had never married, or wished to marry,
and Liffey was not so much a love child as a gesture of defiance to a
straitlaced world. Madge had thought to bear a warrior son but had given birth
to Liffey instead, and Liffey had compounded the error by attempting
throughout her childhood to chirrup and charm her way into Madge’s affections.

 
          
Madge, hearing that Liffey was trying to have a baby, commented
then to a friend, “Silence for six months and then this.
Not that she’s
pregnant, not that she’s miscarried—-just that she’s
trying
to have a baby. How’s that for a piece of non-news?” “I
expect she thought it would please you,” said the friend, who was there only
for the whisky.

           
“It doesn’t,” said Madge. “Liffey is
an only child and an only grandchild. Nature is clearly trying to breed the
line out.
Trust Liffey to interfere with the proper course of
things.”

 
          
Madge
did not want Liffey to be pregnant. She did not want to think of herself
diluting down through the generations. She craved mortality.

 
          
Richard’s
father, on the other hand, living in early retirement in a fisherman’s cottage
in
Cornwall
, was glad to think that his line might well
continue now that Liffey was off the pill. Richard’s mother was made nervous by
the news—as if some trouble, pacing for years behind at a steady distance, had
suddenly broken into a jog and overtaken her. She started knitting at once,
but there was
a tenseness
in her hands and the nylon
wool cut into her fingers.

 
          
The
Lee-Foxes looked a placid enough couple—well-heeled, grey-haired, conventional
and companionable—but the effort to appear so cost them a good deal in nervous
energy.

           
He had ulcers,
she
migraines.

 
          
“It’s
too early to start knitting,” said Mr. Lee-Fox. “She’s not even pregnant,
they’re just trying.”

 
          
“Richard
always does what he sets out to do,” said Mrs. Lee- Fox loyally.

 
          
“Your
fingers are bleeding,” said Mr. Lee-Fox. “Whatever is the matter?”

 
          
She
wept for answer.

 
          
“Little
garments,” said Mr. Lee-Fox in wonder, “stained by blood and tears!”

 
          
Mr.
Lee-Fox could not understand, why, having worked hard to achieve a reasonable
home and a happy life and having done so at last, troubles should still keep
occurring. It was his wife’s fault, he concluded. She was discontented by
nature. He hoped, for his son Richard’s sake, that Liffey was not the same.

 
          
“You
mustn’t worry,” he said. “Liffey will come through with flying colours. Wait
and see.”

 
          
Liffey
was at the time extremely discontented, which made her more loving and lively
than ever. Chirruping and charming. Sometimes, when she woke up in the
apartment, opening her eyes to the concrete wall of the house next door and
hearing the sound of traffic instead of the sound of birds, she thought she
was a child again and in her mother’s house.

 
          
The
trouble was that Richard, telephoning Dick Hubbard, the estate agent, about
Honeycomb Cottage, had been told that the cottage was for sale, and not to
rent, and Richard had said they could not afford it.

 
          
“We
could spend some of my money,” said Liffey.

 
          
“No,
we couldn’t,” said Richard firmly. “I’m not going to live off you. What kind of
man would that make me?”

 
          
By
mutual consent, throughout their marriage, Liffey’s money had been used to buy
small things, not large things. Confiserie, as it were, but not the matrimonial
home.

 
          
“Then
let’s sell this place and buy that.”

 
          
“No.
It isn’t ours to sell.”

 
          
The
apartment had been a wedding gift from Mr. and Mrs. Lee-Fox. Disapproving of
Liffey as a bride for Richard, they had sacrificed their own comfort and
security and spent an inordinate amount on the present. Thus they hoped both to
disguise their feelings and remain securely sealed in the ranks of the happy
and blessed.

 
          
When
Richard came home from his boarding school bruised and stunned, victim of
bullying, they would seem not to notice. “Such a wonderful school,” they’d say
to friends. “He’s so happy there.”

 
          
Liffey
searched the newspapers for cottages to rent but found nothing. Another month
passed, another egg dropped and failed. Liffey bled; Richard frowned,
perplexed.

 
          
Liffey
took a temporary job in a solicitor’s office. The quality of her cooking
deteriorated. She served Richard burnt food, and tossed and turned all night,
keeping him awake. She did not know she did it, but do it she did. She had come
off the pill, after all, and still they lived in
London
.

 
          
“If
Liffey can’t have children,” asked Annie, Richard’s secretary, “would you
stick by her?”

 
          
“Of
course,” said Richard immediately and stoutly. But the question increased his
anxiety.

 
          
Annie
read cookery books in her lunch hour, propping them in her electric typewriter.
She took an easy and familiar approach to her job and felt no deference
towards anyone. She had spent a year working in the States and had lost—or so
it seemed to Richard—her sense of the nuances of respect owing between man and
woman, powerful and humble, employer and employed.

 
          
Her
fair hair hung over the typewriter like a veil. She had a boyfriend who was a
diamond merchant and one-time bodyguard to General Dayan. She had wide blue
eyes and a rounded figure. Liffey had never seen her. Once she asked Richard
what Annie looked like—tentatively, because she did not want to sound
possessive or
jealous.

 
          
“Fat,”
said Richard.

 
          
And
because Annie had a flat nasal telephone voice, Liffey had assumed she was one
of the plain, efficient girls whom large organisations are obliged to employ to
make up for the pretty ones they like to keep up front.

 
          
Besides.

 
          
When
Richard and Liffey married they had agreed to tell each other at once if some
new emotional or physical involvement seemed likely, and Liffey believed the
agreement still held.

 
          
Christmas
approached, and Liffey stopped work in order to concentrate upon it and
decorate the Christmas tree properly. She had her gifts bought by the second
week in December and then spent another week wrapping and adorning. She was
asked to Richard’s office party but didn’t go. She did not like office parties.
Everyone looked so ugly, except Richard, and everyone got drunk.

 
          
Liffey
arranged to meet Richard at a restaurant after the party. She expected him at
nine. By ten he had not arrived, so she went round to the office, in case he
had had too much to drink or there had been an accident. In no sense, as she
explained and explained afterwards, was she spying on him.

 
          
The
office was a massive new concrete block, with a marble- lined lobby and
decorative lifts. Richard’s employers were an international company, recently
diversified from oil into films and food products—the latter being Richard’s
diversion, and he a junior assistant brand manager. If it were not for Liffey’s
private income, she would certainly have had to work and earn, or else live
very poorly indeed. As it was, lack of financial anxiety made Richard bold in
his decisions and confident in his approach to his superiors, which was duly
noted and appreciated and boded well for his future.

 
          
Liffey
went up in the lift to Richard’s office, walking through empty corridors still
rich with the after-party haze of cigarette smoke and the aroma from a hundred
half-empty glasses. From behind the occasional closed door came a cry or a
giggle or a moan. Liffey found Richard behind his desk, on the floor with
Annie, who was not one of the plain ones after all, just plump and luscious,
and all but naked, except for veils of hair. So was Richard.

 
          
Liffey
went home by taxi. Richard followed after. He was maudlin drunk, sick on the
step, and passed out in the hall. Liffey dragged him to bed, undressed his
stubborn body and left him alone. She sat at the window staring out at the
street.

 
          
She
felt that she was destroyed. Everything was finished— love, trust, marriage,
happiness.
All over.

 
          
But
of course it was not. Richard’s contrition was wonderful to behold. He begged
forgiveness, he held Liffey’s hand. He pleaded, with some justification, total
amnesia of the event. Someone had poured vodka into the fruit cup. It was
Annie’s fault, if anyone’s. Richard Loved Liffey, only Liffey. Love flowed
between them again, lubricating Liffey’s passages, promoting spermatogenesis
in Richard’s testes, encouraging the easy flow of seminal fluid from seminal
vesicles and prostate to the entrance of the urethra, and thence, by a series
of rhythmic muscular contractions, into Liffey.

 
          
Love, and none the worse for all that, but earthly love.
Spiritual love, the love of God for man and man for God, cannot be debased, as
can earthly love, by such description.

 
          
Still
Liffey did not get pregnant.

 
          
Annie
was transferred to another office. After the annual Christmas party there was a
general shifting round of secretarial staff. A stolid and respectful girl,
Miss Martin, took Annie’s place. Her plumpness was not soft and natural, as was
Annie’s, but solid and unwelcoming and encased by elasticised garments. Her
face was impassive and her manner was prim; Richard was not attracted to her at
all, and was relieved to find he was not. He had lately been having trouble
with sudden upsurges of sexual interest in the most inappropriate people. He
confided as much to Bella.

 
          
“For
heaven’s sake,” said Bella, “you can’t be expected to stay faithful to one
person all your life just because you married them.” Richard quite disliked
Bella for a time for giving voice to what he saw as cheap and easy cynicism. He
still believed in romantic love and was ashamed of his lapse with Annie, his
sudden succumbing to animal lust. He decided that Liffey and he would see less
of Bella and Ray.