Fay Weldon - Puffball

Her fair hair hung over the typewriter like a veil. She had a boyfriend who was a diamond merchant and one-time bodyguard to General Dayan. She had wide blue eyes, and a rounded figure. Liffey had never seen her. Once she asked Richard what Annie looked like—tentatively, because she did not want to sound possessive or jealous.

‘Fat,’ said Richard.

And because Annie had a flat, nasal telephone voice Liffey had assumed she was one of the plain, efficient girls whom large organisations are obliged to employ to make up for the pretty ones they like to keep up front.

Besides.

When Richard and Liffey married they had agreed to tell one another at once if some new emotional or physical involvement seemed likely, and Liffey believed the agreement still held.

Christmas approached, and Liffey stopped work in order to concentrate upon it, and decorate the Christmas tree properly. She had her gifts bought by the second week in December, and then spent another week wrapping and adorning. She was asked to Richard’s office party but didn’t go. She did not like his office parties. Everyone looked so ugly, except Richard, and everyone got drunk.

Liffey arranged to meet Richard at a restaurant after the party. She expected him at nine. By ten he had not arrived, so she went round to the office, in case he had had too much to drink or there had been an accident. In no sense, as she explained and explained afterwards, was she spying on him.

The office was a massive new concrete block, with a marble-lined lobby and decorative lifts. Richard’s employers were an international company, recently diversified from oil into films and food products—the latter being Richard’s division, and he a Junior Assistant Brand Manager. If it were not for Liffey’s private income, she would have had to work and earn, or else live very poorly indeed. As it was, lack of financial anxiety made Richard bold in his decisions and confident in his approach to his superiors, which was duly noted and appreciated, and boded well for his future.

Liffey went up in the lift to Richard’s office, walking through empty corridors, still rich with the after-party haze of cigarette smoke and the aroma from a hundred half-empty glasses. From behind the occasional closed door came a cry, or a giggle or a moan. Liffey found Richard behind his desk, on the floor with Annie, who was not one of the plain ones after all, just plump and luscious, and all but naked, except for veils of hair. So was Richard. Liffey went home by taxi. Richard followed after. He was maudlin drunk, sick on the step, and passed out in the hall. Liffey dragged him to bed, undressed his stubborn body and left him alone. She sat at the window staring out at the street.

She felt that she was destroyed. Everything was finished—love, trust, marriage, happiness. All over.

But of course it was not. Richard’s contrition was wonderful to behold. He begged forgiveness: he held Liffey’s hand. He pleaded, with some justification, total amnesia of the event. Someone had poured vodka into the fruit cup. It was Annie’s fault, if anyone’s. Richard loved Liffey, only Liffey. Love flowed between them again, lubricating Liffey’s passages, promoting spermatogenesis in Richard’s testes, encouraging the easy flow of seminal fluid from seminal vesicles and prostate to the entrance of the urethra, and thence, by a series of rhythmic muscular contractions, into Liffey.

Love, and none the worse for all that: but earthly love. Spiritual love, the love of God for man, and man for God, cannot be debased, as can earthly love, by such description.

Still Liffey did not get pregnant.

Annie was transferred to another office. After the annual Christmas party there was a general shifting round of secretarial staff. A stolid and respectful girl, Miss Martin, took Annie’s place. Her plumpness was not soft and natural, as was Annie’s, but solid and unwelcoming, and encased by elasticated garments. Her face was impassive, and her manner was prim; Richard was not attracted to her at all, and was relieved to find he was not. He had lately been having trouble with sudden upsurges of sexual interest in the most inappropriate people. He confided as much in Bella.

‘For heaven’s sake,’ said Bella, ‘you can’t be expected to stay faithful to one person all your life, just because you married them.’ Richard quite disliked Bella for a time, for giving voice to what he saw as cheap and easy cynicism. He still believed in romantic love, and was ashamed of his lapse with Annie: his sudden succumbing to animal lust. He decided that Liffey and he would see less of Bella and Ray.

Liffey’s birthday was on Christmas Day, a fact which annoyed Madge, who was a proselytising atheist.

They were to spend Christmas with Richard’s parents. They journeyed down to Cornwall on the night of Christmas Eve: there was a hard frost. The night landscape sparkled under the moon. Richard and Liffey were drunk with love and Richard’s remorse. The back of the car was piled high with presents, beautifully wrapped and ribboned. They took with them a Thermos of good real coffee, laced with brandy, and chicken sandwiches. They went by the A 303, down past Windsor, on to the motorway, leaving at the Hungerford exit, and down through Berkshire and Wiltshire, crossing Salisbury Plain, where Stonehenge stood in the moonlight, ominous and amazing, dwarfing its wire palisade. Then on into Somerset, past Glastonbury Tor, into Devon and finally over the Tamar Bridge into Cornwall.

Liffey loved Richard too much to even mention Honeycomb Cottage, although they passed within five miles of it.

Christmas Day was bright, cold, and wild. Mr and Mrs Lee-Fox’s cottage was set into the Cornish cliffs. A storm arose, and sea spray dashed against the double glazing but all was safe and warm and hospitable within. The roast turkey was magnificent, the Christmas tree charming, and Liffey’s presents proved most acceptable—two hand-made patchwork quilts, one for each twin bed. Liffey loved giving. Her mother, Madge, did not. They had once spent Christmas with Madge, rather than with Richard’s parents, and had a chilly bleak time of it. Madge liked to be working, not rejoicing.

Mr and Mrs Lee-Fox agreed, under their quilts on Christmas night, that at least Liffey kept Richard happy and lively, and at least this year had worn a T-shirt thick enough to hide her nipples.

On their way back to London they made a detour out of Glastonbury and into Crossley, and passed Dick Hubbard’s estate agency. There was room to park outside, for the Christmas holiday, stretching further and further forward to grab in the New Year, kept most of the shops and offices closed. And Dick Hubbard’s door was open. Richard stopped.

‘Townspeople,’ said Dick Hubbard, looking down from his private office on the first floor. ‘Back from the Christmas holidays, and looking for a country cottage to rent, for twopence halfpenny a week. They’re out of luck.’

He was a large, fleshy man in his late forties, at home in pubs, virile in bed; indolent. His wife had died in a riding accident shortly after his liaison with Carol had begun. Carol was smaller and slighter than her sister Mabs, but just as determined.

‘There’s Honeycomb Cottage,’ said Carol.

‘That’s for sale, not for rent. I’m holding on until prices stop rising.’

‘Then you’ll hold on for ever,’ said Carol. ‘And in the meanwhile it will all fall down. Mabs says it’s already an eyesore. She’s quite put out about it.’

‘Mabs had better not start interfering,’ said Dick, ‘or she’ll lose her grazing.’ But no one in Crossley, not even Dick Hubbard, liked to think of Mabs being put out, and when Richard and Liffey enquired about Honeycomb Cottage, they were told it was to rent on a full repairing lease for twenty pounds a week.