Fay Weldon - The President’s Child

Something. Jason? No. If she listened hard, as now she did, she could hear the rhythmic change in the stillness which meant that Jason too slept soundly in the room above.

Nothing unusual was happening outside in Wincaster Row. It was half-past six, too early for the milkman, the paperboy or the postman: those ritual early callers who come like the sun, to remind each household that it is not alone but owes a living, perforce, to the rest, and must soon get up and make it. Well, time enough.

The fright that woke Isabel did not diminish with the discovery that there was no cause for it; rather it intensified into a profounder apprehension: the feeling that something terrible was about to happen.

Work? But what could happen there? She had so far presented four late-night programmes for the BBC: they had gone successfully; she had a new two-year contract; the work was comparatively easy. True, it involved the professionalisation of the self, every Monday night, the handing over of the persona for consumption by millions; but that came easily enough, and was forgotten by Tuesday afternoon. Even if her contract was cancelled, and she was ignominiously dismissed, she would not see that as disastrous but as a practical problem. This sudden new fear, now so powerful that it made her catch her breath and hug her chest, had nothing to do with practicalities.

Jason’s birthday? In the afternoon he was to have an outing to the cinema with five school friends. That, although nothing to look forward to, was surely nothing to fear. In fact Homer was to return early from the office and take them to the cinema, while she would stay home and ice the cake and cut little sandwiches into animal shapes. The division of labour was fair, and had been accomplished, as usual, without acrimony.

‘It’s true I’ll get to see the film,’ said Homer, ‘and you won’t. But watching Superman II with five six-year-olds is a dubious pleasure. You’re sure you don’t want to do it the other way round?’

‘No,’ said Isabel. ‘Besides, you’d make the sandwiches with brown bread in spite of it being Jason’s birthday.’

‘Jason’s digestion doesn’t know it’s his birthday,’ said Homer.

Nothing there, surely, to have her sitting up in alarm in her lacy white bed, in the safety of the dark, green-papered walls, the gilt mirrors on the walls throwing back images only of what was familiar and loved.

Isabel got out of bed and went upstairs to Jason’s bedroom. She, who once slept in the nude, now slept in a nightie – as do the mothers of wakeful children – which served as dressing gown as well.

Jason slept on his back, arms outflung, an expression of benign calm on his face. At the foot of his bed were stacked presents, wrapped by Homer and herself the night before.

Jason’s American grandparents had sent a cowboy suit in real leather, with silver-plated holsters and guns.

‘Should we?’ said Homer. ‘Guns?’

‘It’s his birthday,’ said Isabel. ‘And everyone else does. And research shows that children deprived of the formalised expression of aggression via fantasy perform more aggressive acts than children not so deprived.’

‘How convenient,’ said Homer. But the guns were beautifully made, light, delicately filigreed, and Jason would be proud of them. So Homer sighed and added them to the pile.

There was no present from Harriet in Australia. There never was.

‘I don’t think my mother is a woman at all,’ Isabel had said to Homer the night before. ‘Not now. Once she was, but now she’s turned herself into the trunk of an old gum tree, and the sand has silted her up.’ Homer had kissed Isabel and held her hand and said nothing, for there was nothing to be said.

Harriet! Of course, that was it. Something wrong! Isabel went downstairs to the living room – the two ground floor rooms made into one – where the blinds were still down, and the two companionable glasses still stood from the night before, and three half-smoked cigarettes, evidence of Homer’s attempts to give up smoking by the idiosyncratic and expensive method of smoking less and less of each cigarette he lit. She telephoned Australia. She could dial direct now: she did not need the intermediary of a telephonist. Twelve numbers, and there was her mother, and her past.

The telephone rang and rang in her mother’s house, unanswered. The instrument stood in the window sill by the front porch, and whenever it rang grains of sand would jump and bounce around its base in a dance of amazement. Isabel had watched them, many times. Perhaps my mother is lying there on the kitchen floor, she thought, on the other side of the fly screen, and that’s why she doesn’t answer. She’s dead, or had a stroke, or a heart attack; or she’s been raped and robbed; or perhaps she has a boyfriend at last and stays out nights.

A tune rang through her head. A folk singer had sung it on last week’s show:

‘Bad news is come to town, Bad news is carried, Some say my love is dead, Some say he’s married.’

Or perhaps she no longer answers the phone. Eight years since I last saw her. She has sunk finally back into herself; allows me to live her life for her.

The ringing stopped. Her mother said hello.

‘Hello, Mother.’

‘Oh, it’s you, Isabel. How are you, chicken?’

‘I’m fine.’

‘Everything OK? Husband, kid and so on?’

‘Yes, they’re fine.’

Silence. Then:

‘It’s very late at night. I was in bed.’

‘I’m sorry, Mum. I just wanted to make sure you were all right.’

‘Why shouldn’t I be? Nothing ever changes here. How about your end?’

‘I have my own TV show. Once a week. It’s only a chat show, but it’s a start.’

‘Good on you, chicken. Given up journalism, have you? Or did it give you up?’

‘It’s the same thing, really.’

‘Is it? I don’t watch much TV; I wouldn’t know. It all seems rather crude to me. But this is Australia, isn’t it. Down under, here. Enjoy it, do you?’

‘Yes.’

‘That’s the main thing. Homer doesn’t mind?’

‘No. Why should he?’

‘You know what men are. What suits you never suits them. Listen, chicken, I hate to do this to you, but there’s some sort of goddamned hornet got through the hole in the fly door. This place is rusting to pieces. I’ve got to go.’

‘Of course, Mother. Is it big?’

‘Very.’

‘It’s Jason’s birthday today.’

‘Jason? Oh, the little boy. He must be – what? Four, five? Give him my love. I’m not much use as a granny, but at least I exist.’

‘At least you exist. Bye, Mum.’

‘Why don’t you just call me Harriet? Bye, sweetheart.’

Isabel crept back into bed, dry-mouthed, tasting dust and ashes. Everything was possible, yet everything was impossible. She could wring what she wanted out of the world – success and wealth and personal happiness – and it would do her no good. Her mother would always stand somewhere at the periphery of her vision, out of touch but never quite out of sight, watching her efforts and smiling, passing on the knowledge that the old would do better to keep to themselves – that in the end all goods must be pointless and all sweets tasteless. Better be deaf, and lame, and blind, than know these things too young.

Homer turned towards her in the bed. ‘What’s the matter?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘What’s the time?’

‘Early.’

‘Where have you been?’

‘Ringing my mother.’

‘Christ, why?’

‘It’s Jason’s birthday.’

‘What did she say?’

‘Not what I wanted her to say.’

‘What was that?’

‘Well done. Congratulations. I miss you. Why don’t you fly out and see me. The things your mother says to you.’