Wicked Women (25 page)

When Philippa met Paul she had been working for the Avon Philharmonic for eight years. She was thirty-three. At an astoundingly young age, she had seized the languid orchestra by its vocal chords, as it were, and shaken it into life. Philippa, the young tyro, the bringer of life and energy, her name in all the papers. This was the role she was accustomed to: now she was the wet blanket, the damper down of creative fires; the one who had to flush the drugs down the loo, empty the whisky into the hotel pot plants.

None of it had been of her desiring, she now realised. Perhaps the timing had been wrong, had pushed her into this situation or that. Marriage to Paul, a first child within the year; handing in her notice when Paul, a consultant architect, got moved on to the Board of Entier Enterprises; thinking it would all work out. Then pregnant again: one baby she could have coped with; two she couldn’t. Entier Enterprises went down the tubes, and where was the family income then? The timing had indeed been always wrong. Not very wrong, but wrong enough.

And the “if onlys.” If only Philippa had hung on to her job just a month longer, which she could have if baby Pauline hadn’t been born six weeks early; if Entier Enterprises had only gone bust three months earlier than it did, so that Paul hadn’t had to go to law disclaiming liability for the company’s debts. If only she and Paul had met six months later, so his first wife hadn’t sued for divorce: if only, if only, if only, and all of it to do with faulty timing. If only Philippa hadn’t stopped breastfeeding in order to get back to organise the Avon Phil’s French tour, she wouldn’t have got pregnant with Peter. Peter might have been an easier baby if he’d had a different set of genes. And he could have. Everything was chance and timing, and the two-second pause as their voices bounced across the world confirmed this fact. Apart they were lucky: together they were unlucky. If Philippa had called the Agency a day earlier she’d have got the Ardeche Quartet’s tour in Northern Europe in January: as it was, the Boondock Boys’ Christmas tour of Australia and New Zealand was the only opening left. How could she refuse? Together they needed the money. Paul Would house-husband. Philippa would earn. They were lucky to be able to do it. There were many they knew who couldn’t—who’d lost jobs or outlets and slid down the ranks from earning, intellectual, productive artist to non-employed, over-educated dole-taker in three months flat. Women she knew who’d been stay-at-home wives with Volvos were now taking nursing or teaching courses and setting about earning the family’s living, or had gone home to mother while their husbands fell into depressions, left with mistresses, did voluntary work; who spent their time boringly nurturing any redundancy money that was about, working out which was cheaper, split peas or lentils. The Recession of the early nineties had hit the educated classes as none other had.

If it took the Boondock Boys’ Christmas tour, it did, and that was that. Forget Christmas. If only one could. By rights, at this time of year the days were short, and Yuletide hysteria was mounting; but here yachts just scudded about on the harbour and people with black sweatsuit bottoms with a single white stripe up the outside of each leg jogged along special running tracks, and what gender they were seemed unimportant and what they were spending on Christmas worried no one. Philippa was homesick and jet-lagged and wanted to cry, but the timing was wrong.

“Pauline’s running a bit of a temperature,” Paul was saying, “but I’m sure it’s okay. She’s just missing you. And Peter got sent home from nursery for biting but it’s the end of term anyway. They couldn’t miss a trick of course; they’re using it as an excuse to say he’s not mature enough to be at nursery. I explained that you were away and they condescended to accept his biting as a temporary behavioural problem due to maternal deprivation.” Pause, two, three, four.

“Paul,” said Philippa from the other side of the world, “if Pauline has a fever, you ought to call the doctor.” Pause, two, three, four.

“You have to take the fever to the doctor these days,” said Paul.

“The doctor won’t come to the child. Don’t worry. I asked Rosa-next-door to take a look at her. She said she thought it was just the kind of thing children got.” Pause, two, three, four.

“I thought Rosa-next-door was seeing her family in the U.S.,” said Philippa, as Paul said, “Rosa came back early from seeing her mother in the States; she got there and found no mother, because her mother had run off with a truck driver, a leading member of the Teamsters Union. Here, speak to Rosa. Rosa, come and speak to Philippa and tell her all about it.”

Rosa Wheelwright had found Paul and Philippa their apartment. It just so happened to be next door to her own. Once she’d been Paul’s assistant. It just so happened: everything just so happens, thought Philippa, and failed to wait for the sound to bounce.

“Don’t bother, Paul,” said Philippa. “I know someone else is paying for the call, but even so. Whatever Rosa has to say can wait. I was only calling to see if everything was okay, and I’m glad it is.” Pause, two, three, four.

“Yes,” said Paul. “I’m okay, but I’m not happy without you,” and the “I’m okay” had an after-echo now, as if he were speaking to her from another universe, not just across the world, and she was left both consoled and forlorn as she heard her own answer, “Neither am I,” echo as well, so the mixture of their voices were saying, “I’m okay and neither are you,” which seemed to just about sum it all up.

“I
WILL NOT BE
defeated by a funeral,” said Maria to her mother. “I will not.”

But her mother just blinked and smiled and went on playing Patience, red on black, black on red, on the shiny mahogany table. Black the colour of death, red the colour of blood: that is to say life. Blood streamed monthly to prove your youth. Yellow sun shone on cream pile carpet; pink papered walls were lively with bursts of pale refracted light, as ocean waves beat against rocks below. The other side of the French windows, double-glazed to keep out the weather, the lawn which stretched to meet the sea cliff was acid Easter green.

My mother did not even hear me, thought Maria. Black on red. Red on black. The black Knave moved up to be on the red Queen. “I need a King,” said Maria’s mother. “An empty space, and no King. Please, St. Anthony, bring me a King!” And there the next card was, black King of Spades, St. Anthony’s doing. Up went the Queen, and a train of dependents of lesser moment after her.

Maria’s mother wore a dress splodged deep purple and bright mauve. Expensive imagined flowers clung to a body once slim, now bony. She’s nearly seventy-five, thought Maria. But even as the colours bleach out of this one life, see how they reassert themselves all around.

Maria pulled the chintzy curtains to dull the glare from outside. Maria’s mother went on playing cards. Maria was silent, sulking. “Who did you say had died?” asked Maria’s mother, eventually, when it became evident that this particular game would remain unresolved, and she’d swept up the cards, swiftly and certainly, the sooner to shuffle, deal, and begin again.

She will live out the rest of her life like this, thought Maria, proving to herself over and over again that resolution of any kind is a rare event indeed, and there is nothing to any of it other than luck. And if there is only luck, there can be no blame. Black on red, red on black, in a beautiful room by the edge of the sea.

“I didn’t say,” said Maria. “And put the black four on the red five,” said Maria, but her mother’s hand had already moved. “It was Bernard’s father who died. He was eighty-nine, and it was expected. It’s not so bad in itself. I saw him just a week ago. We parted on good terms. All the same it’s a shock and I don’t like funerals.”

Maria’s mother studied the cards, to make sure she’d missed nothing. “Little Maria!” she observed absently, not even looking up. “Always trying to see the best in everything. Your father could never look a fact in the face either.”

“I’m forty-two,” said Maria. “I think I have my own nature by now.”

“I expect so,” agreed Maria’s mother, and found the three she’d hoped for. Red on black, black on red. And there’s the Ace. Good luck, bad luck, which will it be? Three coins in a fountain. Which one will the waters bless? Mother, father, Maria? Mother, when it comes to it. The one who leaves, not the ones who are left.

Mother left Maria with her father when Maria was fifteen to run off with a rich, rich man so that, now widowed, she can play Patience for ever at the edge of a sea. Today the weather was wild and bright, which was why the walls were so lively with shifting patches of light. You could search for a pattern and not find one; the wind-whipped waves broke out of proper sequence against their cliffs. Maria’s car had been drenched in spray as she took the sea road up to her mother’s house. Maria hated driving. Maria’s car was cheap and old; Maria’s mother’s car was new and expensive and properly garaged, though seldom used. Maria was always constrained by money, by necessity, by proper feeling. Maria had to argue with her boss in order to take a couple of days off work to visit her mother, to go to a funeral. She had to go to her mother; her mother never came to her.

Maria had been exultant when her mother left home. It was the first and last illicit emotion she could remember. Sorry that Father was upset but exultant all the same, able at last to look after him. Mother gone! Now I can stop Father’s ears forever to the sound of bitchery and complaint; only nice things will sound through this house from now on; at last I am in charge. Why should the world be all discord, when it can be harmony? Mother gone, so what? If a man has a daughter who loves him, what can he need with a wife? All his wife did was deny and deride him. Now we, the proper people, father and daughter, can start again. This gentle, kindly man deserves no less.

Only within the year Maria’s father invited into his bed a woman called Eleanor; so Maria began to hear her mother’s voice in her own, mocking and dispirited, carping and mean, whenever she spoke to her father, and it was so disagreeable a sound Maria married Bernard rather than stay home a second longer than she need.

Maria’s mother came to Maria’s wedding with her new husband, Victor. Maria’s father came with his new wife, Eleanor. Eleanor had lent Maria a dress—Maria lived on a student grant, Maria’s father had no money to spare: talk of money distressed him—and Eleanor had posted off the invitations. Maria’s mother hadn’t helped at all: she just said Maria was too young to get married; she’d have nothing to do with any of it, and hadn’t. Eleanor had done everything, had been wonderful.

Except that at the wedding Maria’s mother said, “I left because of Eleanor. I found her suspender belt in the marital bed. And you, Maria, didn’t have the guts to stop her coming today. You want everything to be nice. You can never see why everyone shouldn’t just be happy. But they can’t be.” Maria had said, “You’re spoiling my wedding, please go away, like you did before,” and Maria’s mother had done just that. Walking away down the path through the bright green grass, in a beige shantung suit and a little blue hat, next to grey-suited, solid Victor. In those days Maria’s mother had dressed quietly.

“Never mind,” said Eleanor. “We did what we could. At least we invited her.”

“Good riddance,” said Maria’s father.

When family angels turn to demons, when the worm in the apple is healthier than the apple, what’s a girl to do? Except marry Bernard, forget the whole thing: quarrel with your mother, remember never to forgive her for abandoning you; make a friend of your stepmother, see her through a pregnancy more troubled than your own: gain a half-sister the day you gain a son. Watch Father wander through the house, in this marriage as in the last, but happier. Watch for and iron out the note in your own voice that reminds you of your mother: eradicate it. Make things good, as your mother made things bad. Get on with loving Bernard.

Red on black. Black on red. Maria’s mother is stuck on a nine. Not an eight anywhere in sight. Maria’s hungry. But not till a game comes out will Maria’s mother ring the bell, call the maid, ask her to serve lunch. When it comes it will be frugal.

Eleanor’s table was always extravagant. Stepmother came with a ready-made family: brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, cousins; peopling a world, filling it with conversation and event. Maria’s father gave up his job on a matter of principle. Eleanor’s earnings eventually kept everyone: even subsidised Bernard, Maria and little Maurice. Superwoman Eleanor! Bernard was getting a PhD. Maria tried to repay Eleanor by looking after little Winnie, her half-sister, when Eleanor’s child-care arrangements broke down.

Another game. Red on black, black on red. She’s polite, but she never really speaks to me. Can she really not forgive me because Eleanor asked her to my wedding, because on that one day I spoke out of turn? Eleanor, whose suspender belt had induced Maria’s mother to leave home. Except it wasn’t like that. Maria’s mother had been mercenary, after Victor’s money. That was the only reason she’d left home, abandoned everyone. It was because Maria’s mother had done such a dreadful thing that Maria’s father had needed the consolation of Eleanor. Everyone knew that. Maria’s mother was the villain of the piece.

Perhaps I can’t forgive my mother, thought Maria, not because she abandoned me, but because in leaving us she let me think my father could be mine, gave credence to my illicit fantasies. Didn’t I once hate Eleanor? I can hardly remember. Eleanor and my father, rising as one from the evening’s television, hand in hand, going off into the bedroom together, where he’d been with my mother since the beginning of time, that is to say the beginning of my life? Leaving me shut out and excluded, to listen out for the sounds of gasps and moans, not the plaintive rise and fall of marital reproaches. When did I stop hating Eleanor? I can’t remember that. Perhaps the day I married Bernard, and my mother saw Eleanor there, and I had to choose between Eleanor and her, and I chose Eleanor. Is not-hating-Eleanor the price I pay for not-hating my father?

“All you women,” Bernard would say, “squabbling over one poor man.” Such passions as we had, Bernard would reduce to nonsense.