thirteen years of marriage Madeleine has all but forgotten what the word means. Jarvis, of course, has not. Sex is good enough for Madeleine, not for Jarvis. Jarvis falls in love with Lily. Who’s to blame him? His solicitors hurried the divorce through three months before the Married Woman’s Property Act came into effect. (Madeleine’s solicitors, of course, had not even heard of it.)
Who will take responsibility for Madeleine’s situation?
No one.
Madeleine must shoulder it herself. Madeleine means to do so. Something in Madeleine, something somewhere, perhaps her sleeping, not her waking self, doesn’t give up: intends eventually to return—perhaps after the menopause, when she can be her wombless, uncyclical self again—to the glory and cheerfulness of her youth.
Madeleine should get a move on, if that’s the case.
‘Be careful,’ says Madeleine to Margot now, ‘it could happen to you.’
Margot smiles, embarrassed. She feels threatened. Philip fall in love, run off, leave, abandon her? Is this what Madeleine is wishing on her, in return for that passing complicity? One should leave misfortune alone: stand well clear. Bad luck is as catching as the measles.
‘You may think I’m a neurotic bore,’ says Madeleine, ‘but it seems to me to be the least I can do for my sex to set myself up an object lesson. The world being what it is (not to mention me). I’m not the kind of person of whom people say, what a lot of friends she has, how truly gay and popular—using gay in either sense, though I’ve tried that too—and the upshot being, I’m all Hilary has. That’s where it all leads one. Mother and daughter. How it starts, how it ends.’
‘She has her father,’ says Margot.
‘Jarvis? He’s no kind of father to her. And what kind of man is he? A nothing. Jarvis had a little talent once: but he was too trivial to sustain it. He drank it all away. And then, of course, Lily got hold of him. All he’s got left is his business and that’s failing, and of course his cock, but who could sustain an interest in that? I couldn’t, I’m sure.’
Jarvis’s cock. Margot shivers not just at the crudity of the words, but at the shame of the memory.
The sense of complicity has gone. Margot is alienated, as perhaps Madeleine intended. But the complicity was there, for long enough. Some connection has been made; some fragile cogs have interlinked. Malice is a powerful force. Margot’s malice, unacknowledged, welling up, spilling over, perhaps more powerful than most. The flicker of an unkind smile, returned: the sly look, amusingly exchanged, and more travels between two people than you might suppose; the very devil floating, as you might say, on the beam of interpersonal communication.
10
B E BOLD!
Madeleine, returning home, finds a letter from a computer-dating firm, giving the name and telephone number of a Mr Arthur Quincey of Cambridge as a possible marital contact. (See how Madeleine, clinging to the past, still scrabbles for a future?) Mr Quincey is described in the letter as being forty-three years old, tall, slim, dark, Anglo-Saxon, well-educated, owning own house and having no objection to slim dark lady under forty with own child. Madeleine rings the Cambridge number: a landlady fetches Mr Quincey; Madeleine finds she has agreed to be in Cambridge, yes, Cambridge, at seven thirty that evening in order to be taken to the pictures. Mr Quincey’s voice has a quiet, wheedling insistence; she recognises it as the voice of the male in the grip of sexual desperation, whose determination it is to bring fantasy down to the realms of reality. It is hard to resist.
‘It’s like being a girl again,’ she complains to Renee, who lives above Madeleine, on the ground floor. Renee has left her husband, and had her children taken from her. It is a house full of women without men, and children without fathers. As you begin, so you end. ‘To-ing and fro-ing to the snap of male fingers. Only in the old
Who will take responsibility for Madeleine’s situation?
No one.
Madeleine must shoulder it herself. Madeleine means to do so. Something in Madeleine, something somewhere, perhaps her sleeping, not her waking self, doesn’t give up: intends eventually to return—perhaps after the menopause, when she can be her wombless, uncyclical self again—to the glory and cheerfulness of her youth.
Madeleine should get a move on, if that’s the case.
‘Be careful,’ says Madeleine to Margot now, ‘it could happen to you.’
Margot smiles, embarrassed. She feels threatened. Philip fall in love, run off, leave, abandon her? Is this what Madeleine is wishing on her, in return for that passing complicity? One should leave misfortune alone: stand well clear. Bad luck is as catching as the measles.
‘You may think I’m a neurotic bore,’ says Madeleine, ‘but it seems to me to be the least I can do for my sex to set myself up an object lesson. The world being what it is (not to mention me). I’m not the kind of person of whom people say, what a lot of friends she has, how truly gay and popular—using gay in either sense, though I’ve tried that too—and the upshot being, I’m all Hilary has. That’s where it all leads one. Mother and daughter. How it starts, how it ends.’
‘She has her father,’ says Margot.
‘Jarvis? He’s no kind of father to her. And what kind of man is he? A nothing. Jarvis had a little talent once: but he was too trivial to sustain it. He drank it all away. And then, of course, Lily got hold of him. All he’s got left is his business and that’s failing, and of course his cock, but who could sustain an interest in that? I couldn’t, I’m sure.’
Jarvis’s cock. Margot shivers not just at the crudity of the words, but at the shame of the memory.
The sense of complicity has gone. Margot is alienated, as perhaps Madeleine intended. But the complicity was there, for long enough. Some connection has been made; some fragile cogs have interlinked. Malice is a powerful force. Margot’s malice, unacknowledged, welling up, spilling over, perhaps more powerful than most. The flicker of an unkind smile, returned: the sly look, amusingly exchanged, and more travels between two people than you might suppose; the very devil floating, as you might say, on the beam of interpersonal communication.
10
B E BOLD!
Madeleine, returning home, finds a letter from a computer-dating firm, giving the name and telephone number of a Mr Arthur Quincey of Cambridge as a possible marital contact. (See how Madeleine, clinging to the past, still scrabbles for a future?) Mr Quincey is described in the letter as being forty-three years old, tall, slim, dark, Anglo-Saxon, well-educated, owning own house and having no objection to slim dark lady under forty with own child. Madeleine rings the Cambridge number: a landlady fetches Mr Quincey; Madeleine finds she has agreed to be in Cambridge, yes, Cambridge, at seven thirty that evening in order to be taken to the pictures. Mr Quincey’s voice has a quiet, wheedling insistence; she recognises it as the voice of the male in the grip of sexual desperation, whose determination it is to bring fantasy down to the realms of reality. It is hard to resist.
‘It’s like being a girl again,’ she complains to Renee, who lives above Madeleine, on the ground floor. Renee has left her husband, and had her children taken from her. It is a house full of women without men, and children without fathers. As you begin, so you end. ‘To-ing and fro-ing to the snap of male fingers. Only in the old
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