Remember Me. Fay Weldon

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       6

      Breakfast time! Bon appétit! If you can manage it.

      Jarvis and Lily can. They breakfast in companionable silence. At ten Jarvis will go to his office. He wears a Chairman-Mao blue jacket, bought for him by Lily from an expensive shop. Jarvis would prefer to wear a shirt, tie and jacket, but Lily plans otherwise; and she is, he acknowledges, quite right to do so. Those now leapfrogging over his talented head towards senior partnerships wear jeans, beards, and show their navels on hot days.

      At ten to ten, Jarvis puts down The Times and smiles at his wife. Jonathon, wiped and cleaned, has already been set in his playpen to play with his educational toys; which, obligingly enough, he seems prepared to do: posting bright plastic shapes into a plastic letter box with supercilious ease. He is an advanced child, and seems to know it. He begins to sing tunelessly to himself, moved by a spirit of self-congratulation. Lily, observing him, cannot understand how it is that she, being so feminine, has produced so male a child. Is his dexterity, his musical sense, perhaps symptomatic of homosexuality? She feels restless, agitated. Jarvis and Lily speak. Few riddles in this household, which is barely three years old, and contains one non-speaking member, but let us examine such as there are, and note how quickly pleasantries, before morning coffee, can degenerate into animosity.

      1 LILY: Margot Bailey is late. She’s always late. I shall have to speak to her.

      2 JARVIS: She’s not the maid. She’s our doctor’s wife.

      3 LILY: She’s an employee during office hours. It’s what was agreed.

      4 JARVIS: Yes. But we have to be tactful.

      5 LILY: She knows I’ve got people coming tonight; I need her to take Jonathon to playgroup. She’s late on purpose.

      6 JARVIS: Margot is supposed to be looking after my office, not your child.

      7 LILY: Our child. And if, as you claim, your business is twenty per cent down this year, then presumably the doctor’s wife has twenty per cent more time on her hands. I want to take Hilary to the hairdresser to get her hair cut. I can’t possibly take Jonathon. He swarms over everything.

      8 JARVIS: Does it need cutting? It always seems the only good thing about her. Still, I suppose you know best. Is it all right with Madeleine?

      9 LILY: Nothing is ever right with Madeleine. But I can’t even get a comb through Hilary’s hair, and I am paying, and it’s a very good hairdresser. Today’s the only day I could get an appointment.

      10 JARVIS: Expensive?

      11 LILY: I hope you don’t grudge your own daughter a haircut.

      12 JARVIS: Couldn’t you do it?

      13 LILY: If you worry so much about money, why not spend less on whisky?

      Which being translated is:

      1 LILY: Am I to be left all alone with this child? I cannot take the responsibility.

      2 JARVIS: Other wives can cope, why not you?

      3 LILY: Because I enjoy a superior social status in the world, and deserve to do so.

      4 JARVIS: In this household, I am the one with tact.

      5 LILY: Everyone’s against me.

      6 JARVIS: My needs are more vital than yours.

      7 LILY: You’re twenty per cent less important than when I married you. However, I love you and am even looking after your daughter by your first marriage.

      8 JARVIS: I did not intend to deny Madeleine altogether.

      9 LILY: Your first marriage spoils my life. I have to make the best of what’s left.

      10 JARVIS: You’re extravagant with my money.

      11 LILY: You’re mean.

      12 JARVIS: You’re not earning your keep.

      13 JARVIS: You’re a drunk.

      At which Jarvis kisses his wife, hastily, before worse befalls and does a quick farewell soft-shoe shuffle for Jonathon, who half-sneers, half-smiles in response, and departs for the office.

      And the day begins.