Fay Weldon - Novel 23 by Rhode Island Blues (v1.1) Page B

had, and the newcomer entered at the lower rate. Golden Bowlers
were encouraged to see the Golden Bowl as home, and
their fellow guests as family: it was hoped that little by little they would
loosen close ties with their birth families. It was easier for everyone that
way, as it was seen to be for nuns and monks. And after eighty that was more or
less what guests amounted to: sex being hardly a motivating force in their
lives any longer, they could focus on their spirituality. Family and friends
were of course allowed to visit, but were never quite welcomed. News from outside too often upset. Relatives would turn up
merely to pass on bad news that the resident was helpless to do anything about.
Someone had died, someone else gone to prison, been divorced,
great-greatgrandchildren were on Ritalin.
                 By
and large, or so it was concluded at the Golden Bowl, the relatives you ended
up with were a disappointment: not at all what one had dreamed of when young.
They were usually a great deal plainer than one had hoped: the good genes were
so easily diluted, while the bad ran riot. The bride’s handsome husband turned
out to be an anomaly in a family as plain as the back of a bus, and it was only
apparent at the wedding. Took only one son to marry a dim
girl with big teeth in a small jaw and you’d produce a whole race of
descendants in need of orthodontics but not the wit or will to afford them. If the boy hadn’t gone to that particular party on that particular night - and
fallen for an ambitious girl with small teeth in a big jaw - how different the
room full of descendants would look: how much greater the sum of their income.
The old easily grew sulky, seeing how much of life was chance, how little due
to intent. Unfair, unfair! It’s the familiar cry of the small child, too; only
between the extremes of age do we have the impression there’s anything we can
do about anything.
                 The
decorators were packing up in Dr Rosebloom’s suite. Nurse Dawn was pleased with
the work they had done, but did not tell them so. Rather she chose to find
flaws in a section of the pink striped wallpaper where the edges were
admittedly slightly mismatched. The decorators were duly apologetic and
agreed, after a short brisk discussion, to accept a lesser fee. Nurse Dawn also
got a percentage of any savings she could make on the annual maintenance
budget, in the management of which she had lately found serious shortcomings.
                In Nurse Dawn’s opinion praise
should be used sparingly, since it only served to make those who received it
complacent. Her children, had she had any, would have
grown up to be neurotic high-achievers: come home proudly with news of a silver
medal, and be scolded for not getting the gold. The decorators slunk away, disgraced.
Nurse Dawn strolled around the suite, observing detail, trying to envisage its
next occupant. That was how she made her choices: in much the same way as she
chose numbers for the lottery, willing good fortune to come her way, envisaging
the numbers as they shot up on the screen.
                 The
bathroom had been pleasingly redone with marble veneer tiles that could have
passed for the real thing, and gold stucco angels surrounded the new bathroom
cabinet. Nurse Dawn’s fallback position, she decided, would be the
eighty-year-old female applicant, the Pulitzer Prize winner, who smoked. She
would be given the suite on condition she gave up smoking. This she would
promise to do: this she would fail to do: and Nurse Dawn would be at a
psychological advantage from the outset. There wasn’t actually much to be
feared from lung cancer: if you were a smoker and it hadn’t got you by eighty
it was unlikely to do so at all: nor would other forms of cancer be likely to
surface. Death would be by stroke or heart attack or simply the incompetence
of being which afflicted the individual as the hundredth year approached. The
Pulitzer