Read Fay Weldon - Novel 23 for Free Online Page B

‘There’s nothing whatsoever the matter with that
ankle,’ yelled Joy. ‘She just wanted you over here and she got her own way.’
                 The
seaside town of Mystic (population 3,216) lies a little to the north of where
the Quinebourg River splits and meets the Atlantic just before Connecticut
turns into Rhode Island. In the summer the place is full of holiday-makers and
gawpers: it is less fashionable and expensive than Cape Cod further up, or the
tail of Long Island opposite, but it has some good houses, some good wild
stretches of beach, and attracts admirers of the old 1860 wooden bridge, which
still rises and falls to let the shipping traffic through. Or so the brochures
said and so it proved to be. Joy insisted on coming with us on our tour of the
area: so we went in her new and so far undented Mercedes - obtained for her by
her brother-inlaw Jack, a retired car dealer - and I was allowed to drive.
                 Old
people do indeed seem to congregate around the town: the Mystic Office of
Commerce handed out brochures a-plenty. I could understand the charm of the
name, Mystic , tempting in the hope,
so needed as life draws to its inevitable end, that there is more to it than
meets the eye. A place close enough to nature to make sunsets and stormy
weather a matter of reflection, in which to develop a sense of oneness with the
universe, in which to lose, if only temporarily, the pressing consideration of
the shortness of our existence here on earth. A more benign
and tranquil version of nature than in most other places in the US . No hurricanes, no earthquakes, no wild
fluctuations of heat and cold to disturb old bones, only the Lyme tick which
no-one took any notice of, in spite of the fact that the illness is serious
enough to carry off the aged and delicate. Maybe Mystic’s convenient distance
from New York, not so near as to make popping in to see the old relative an
everyday affair, not so far as to make a fortnightly visit too difficult, was
the greater attraction. Or perhaps homes for the elderly were just these days a
fine growth market: this is trading country, as a British admiral once
observed, seeing the New England settlers trading with his fleet during the
War of Independence. For whatever reason there were more residential homes for
the aged up and down these ponds, these woods, these beaches, and these back
roads, than I’d have thought possible.
                 When
I asked what exactly we were looking for, Felicity said, ‘Somewhere with good
vibes’, at which Joy snorted and said she thought cleanliness, efficiency, good
food and a good deal was more to the point.
                 Good vibes! I thought Felicity would be
lucky to find them anywhere in New England .
Although a landscape may look stunningly pleasant and tranquil, the ferocious
energies of its past - and few landscapes are innocent - are never quite over.
The impulse to exterminate the enemy, to loot and plunder, to gain confidence
with false smiles before stabbing in the back, is hard to overcome: if it’s not
with us in the present it seeps through from the past. And these are dangerous
parts: the first coast of the New World to be colonized, three and a half hundred years back. Bad things have been able
to happen here for a long, long time. A massacre here, death by hunger there;
an early settlement vanished altogether over winter: no trace left at all when
the ships come creeping up the coast with the spring. And who in the world to
say what happened? We all await the great debriefing when everything will be
made known, the Day of Judgement which will never come.
                 Later
the plantation owners of the South made this coast their summering place: later
still the mob leaders from Chicago : then the Mafia. Of course they did. Like calls to
like. The strong colour of old wallpaper had ample time to show through
to the new, and they liked it. The edginess of