The Fat Woman’s Joke. Fay Weldon

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СКАЧАТЬ nibble biscuits and plan his canteen dockets and organise cold chicken and salad and wine for working lunches, and all day at home I would plan food, and buy food, and cook food, and serve food, and nibble and taste and stir and experiment and make sweeties and goodies and tasties for Alan to try out when he came home. I would feel cheated if we were asked out to dinner. I would spend the entire afternoon making myself as beautiful as my increasing age and girth would allow, but still I felt cheated.’

      ‘You were a wonderful cook. Gerry used to say you were the best cook in England. When you two came to dinner I would go mad with worry. It would take me the whole day just producing something I wouldn’t be ashamed of. And even then I usually was.’

      ‘People who can’t cook shouldn’t try. It is a gift which you are either born with or you aren’t. I used to quite enjoy coming to visit you two in spite of the food. You and Gerry would quarrel and bicker, and get at each other in subtle and not so subtle ways, and Alan and I would sit back, lulled by our full bellies into a sense of security, and really believe ourselves to be happy, content and well-matched. This day, four weeks ago, I really think I thought I was happy. There were little grey clouds, here and there, like Alan’s writing, which was distracting him from his job, and Peter’s precocity, and my boredom with the house and simply, I suppose growing older and fatter. In truth of course, they weren’t little clouds at all. They were raging bloody crashing thunderstorms. But there is none so blind as those who are too stuffed full of food to see.’

      ‘I don’t really know what you are talking about.’

      ‘You will come to understand, if you pay attention. You are sure you want me to go on with this story?’

      ‘Yes. Oh Esther, you can’t still be hungry!’ Esther was taking frozen fish fingers from their pack.

      ‘I have no intention, ever again, of doing without what I want. That was what Alan and I presumed to think we could do, that evening in your house when we decided to go on a diet.’

      

      Phyllis Frazer’s living-room was rich, uncluttered, pale, tidy and serene. Yet its tidiness, when the Sussmans arrived, seemed deceitful, and its serenity a fraud. And the Frazers, like their room, had an air of urbanity which was not quite believable. Phyllis’s cheeks were too pink and Gerry’s smile too wide. The doorbell, Esther assumed, had put a stop to a scene of either passion or rage. Gerry was a vigorous, noisy man, twice Phyllis’s size. He was a successful civil engineer.

      ‘I hope we’re not early,’ said Esther. ‘We had to come by taxi. We have this new car, you see.’ She was kissed first by Phyllis and then by Gerry, who took longer over the embrace than was necessary. Alan pecked Phyllis discreetly, and not without embarrassment, and shook hands with Gerry. When they sat down for their pre-dinner drinks Gerry could see the flesh of Esther’s thighs swelling over the tops of her stockings. Esther was aware of this but did nothing about it. She looked, this evening, both monumental and magnificent. Her bright eyes flashed and her pale, large face was animated. Beside her, Alan appeared insignificant, although when he was away from her he stood out as a reasonably sized, reasonably endowed man. He had a thin, clever, craggy face and an urbane manner. His paunch sat uneasily on a frame not designed for it. He had worked in the same advertising agency for fifteen years, and was now in a position of trust and accorded much automatic respect. His title was ‘Executive Creative Controller’.

      ‘I know nothing about the insides of cars,’ he now said, ‘except that whenever I buy a new one it goes for a day and then stops. After that it’s garages and guarantees and trouble until I wish I had bought a bicycle instead. I don’t even know why I buy cars. It just seems to happen. I think perhaps I was sold this one by one of my own advertisements. I am a suggestible person.’

      ‘You take things calmly,’ said Gerry. ‘If I bought a car which so much as faltered somebody’s head would roll.’

      ‘But you are a man of passions. I am a cerebral creature.’

      ‘It’s the British workman,’ said Gerry. ‘No amount of good design these days can counteract the criminal imbecility of the average British worker.’

      ‘Oh please Gerry darling,’ cried his wife. ‘No! My heart sinks when I hear those terrible words “these days” and “British workman”. I know it is going on for a full hour.’

      ‘A man buys a new car. It costs a lot of money. If it breaks down it is only courtesy to give the matter a little attention, Phyllis.’

      He was pouring everyone extremely large drinks – everyone, that is, except his wife.

      ‘What about me?’ she piped, trembling. ‘I’se dry.’

      Grudgingly he poured her a small drink, as a husband might pour one for an alcoholic wife. Phyllis very rarely drank to excess. For every bottle of Scotch her husband drank she would sip an inch or so of gin, on the principle that it would make her monthly period, which frequently bothered her, easier.

      ‘All this talk of cars,’ she said, emboldened by his kindness to her, ‘I hate it. Don’t you Esther? It’s such a bore.’

      ‘If you spend enough money on something, you can’t afford to think it’s a bore.’

      ‘Your wife,’ said Gerry, with a disparaging look towards his own, ‘is a highly intelligent woman.’

      Esther wriggled, showing a little more thigh for his benefit. They all drank rather deeply.

      ‘Sometimes,’ said Alan, ‘I am afraid that Esther knows everything. At other times I am afraid she doesn’t.’

      ‘Why? Are you hiding something from her?’ asked Phyllis.

      ‘I have nothing to hide from my Esther.’

      ‘You hide your writing from me. Or try to. You lock it away.’

      ‘Writing?’ they cried. ‘Writing?’

      ‘Alan has been writing a novel in secret. He sent it off to an agent last week. Now we wait. It makes him bad-tempered. Don’t ask me what it’s about.’

      ‘What’s it like? Are we in it?’

      ‘No,’ said Alan shortly. ‘You are not.’

      ‘He’s the only one who’s in it,’ said Esther.

      ‘How do you know?’ he turned on her, fiercely.

      ‘I was only guessing,’ she said. ‘Or working from first principles. Why? Are you?’

      He did not reply, and presently they lost interest. Phyllis enquired brightly about Peter.

      ‘He can’t concentrate on his school work,’ said Esther. ‘His sex life is too complicated. But I don’t think it makes any difference. He was born to pass exams and captain cricket teams. Failure is simply not in his nature.’

      ‘Peter sails unafraid and uncomplicated through life,’ said Alan. ‘We take little notice of him, and he takes none of us.’

      ‘Shall we eat,’ said Phyllis, who appreciated Peter as a boy but not as a son.

      ‘We’re still drinking,’ said her husband. ‘Give us a moment’s peace.’

      ‘I’m СКАЧАТЬ