Read Fay Weldon - Novel 23 for Free Online

I had always objected to about marriage:
the way partners whittle themselves down to the level of the other without even
noticing.
                It is all dumbing down and lowest
common denominator stuff and not annoying the other. It has to be if you want
to get on. And lying stretched out nightly alongside another human being,
comforting though it may be, is as likely to drain the
essential psyche as to top it up.
                 ‘It
was very annoying of Exon to die on me,’ she said. ‘I was much fonder of him
than I thought. I never loved him, of course. I never loved anyone I was
married to. I tried but I couldn’t.’ And she looked so wretched as she said this that I forgot London , I forgot films, I forgot floppy-haired,
sweaty, exhausted Director Krassner and everything but Felicity. I put my hand
on hers, old and withered as it was compared to mine, and to my horror tears
rolled out of her eyes. She was like me, offer me a word of sympathy and I am
overwhelmed with self-pity.
                 ‘It’s
the painkillers,’ she apologized. ‘They make me tearful. Take no notice. I
bullied you into coming. It was bad of me. The fall made me feel older than
usual and in need of advice. But I’m okay. I can manage. You can go home now if
you like. I won’t object.’ ‘Oh, charming,’ I thought, and said, ‘But I don’t
know anything about life in these parts. I know nothing about gated living, or
congregate living, or any of the things you have this side of the Atlantic . We just have dismal old people’s homes.
Why can’t you just stay where you are in this house and have someone live in?’
‘It would be worse than being married,’ she said. ‘There wouldn’t be any sex to
make up for being so overlooked.’
                 I
said I supposed she’d just have to ask around and do whatever it was her
friends did in similar situations. She looked scornful. I could see how she got
up their noses. ‘They’re not friends,’ she said. ‘They’re people I happen to
know. I tried to stop Joy meeting you at the airport, but she will have her
way. I worried every moment.’
                 She
wanted me to go for a walk with her after breakfast but I declined. I did not
trust the Lyme tick to keep to the woods. There didn’t seem much to see,
either. Just this long wide Divine Road with curiously spaced new-old houses every
now and then at more than decent intervals. Here, Felicity said, lived
interchangeable people of infinite respectability. She explained that the
greater the separation, the bigger the lot, the more prestigious the life.
Money in the US was spent keeping others at a distance, which was strange, since there
was so much space, but she supposed the point was to avoid any sense of huddling , which the poor of Europe , in their flight to the Promised Land, had
so wanted to escape. Strung out along these roads lived men who’d done well in
the insurance business or in computers, and mostly taken early retirement,
with wives who had part-time jobs in real estate, or in alternative health
clinics, or did good works: and a slightly younger but no wilder lot from the
university - but no-one of her kind. She
hadn’t lived with her own kind, said Miss Felicity (Exon had liked to call her
this and it had stuck) for forty-five years. What had happened to Miss
Felicity, I wondered, when she was in her late thirties? That would have been
around the time of her second and most sensible American marriage, to a wealthy
homosexual in Savannah . The end of that marriage had brought her the Utrillo - white period,
Parisian scene with branch of tree: very pretty - which now hung in state in
the bleak, high Passmore lounge which no-one used, to the right of the gracious
hall with its curving staircase and unlocked front door. The second night of my
stay - the first night I was too exhausted to care -1 crept out after Felicity
had gone to bed and locked it.