Fay Weldon - The Fat Woman’s Joke

‘I hope we’re not early,’ said Esther. ‘We had to come by taxi. We have this new car, you see.’ She was kissed first by Phyllis and then by Gerry, who took longer over the embrace than was necessary. Alan pecked Phyllis discreetly, and not without embarrassment, and shook hands with Gerry. When they sat down for their pre-dinner drinks Gerry could see the flesh of Esther’s thighs swelling over the tops of her stockings. Esther was aware of this but did nothing about it. She looked, this evening, both monumental and magnificent. Her bright eyes flashed and her pale, large face was animated. Beside her, Alan appeared insignificant, although when he was away from her he stood out as a reasonably sized, reasonably endowed man. He had a thin, clever, craggy face and an urbane manner. His paunch sat uneasily on a frame not designed for it. He had worked in the same advertising agency for fifteen years, and was now in a position of trust and accorded much automatic respect. His title was ‘Executive Creative Controller’.

‘I know nothing about the insides of cars,’ he now said, ‘except that whenever I buy a new one it goes for a day and then stops. After that it’s garages and guarantees and trouble until I wish I had bought a bicycle instead. I don’t even know why I buy cars. It just seems to happen. I think perhaps I was sold this one by one of my own advertisements. I am a suggestible person.’

‘You take things calmly,’ said Gerry. ‘If I bought a car which so much as faltered somebody’s head would roll.’

‘But you are a man of passions. I am a cerebral creature.’

‘It’s the British workman,’ said Gerry. ‘No amount of good design these days can counteract the criminal imbecility of the average British worker.’

‘Oh please Gerry darling,’ cried his wife. ‘No! My heart sinks when I hear those terrible words “these days” and “British workman”. I know it is going on for a full hour.’

‘A man buys a new car. It costs a lot of money. If it breaks down it is only courtesy to give the matter a little attention, Phyllis.’

He was pouring everyone extremely large drinks – everyone, that is, except his wife.

‘What about me?’ she piped, trembling. ‘I’se dry.’

Grudgingly he poured her a small drink, as a husband might pour one for an alcoholic wife. Phyllis very rarely drank to excess. For every bottle of Scotch her husband drank she would sip an inch or so of gin, on the principle that it would make her monthly period, which frequently bothered her, easier.

‘All this talk of cars,’ she said, emboldened by his kindness to her, ‘I hate it. Don’t you Esther? It’s such a bore.’

‘If you spend enough money on something, you can’t afford to think it’s a bore.’

‘Your wife,’ said Gerry, with a disparaging look towards his own, ‘is a highly intelligent woman.’

Esther wriggled, showing a little more thigh for his benefit. They all drank rather deeply.

‘Sometimes,’ said Alan, ‘I am afraid that Esther knows everything. At other times I am afraid she doesn’t.’

‘Why? Are you hiding something from her?’ asked Phyllis.

‘I have nothing to hide from my Esther.’

‘You hide your writing from me. Or try to. You lock it away.’

‘Writing?’ they cried. ‘Writing?’

‘Alan has been writing a novel in secret. He sent it off to an agent last week. Now we wait. It makes him bad-tempered. Don’t ask me what it’s about.’

‘What’s it like? Are we in it?’

‘No,’ said Alan shortly. ‘You are not.’

‘He’s the only one who’s in it,’ said Esther.

‘How do you know?’ he turned on her, fiercely.

‘I was only guessing,’ she said. ‘Or working from first principles. Why? Are you?’

He did not reply, and presently they lost interest. Phyllis enquired brightly about Peter.

‘He can’t concentrate on his school work,’ said Esther. ‘His sex life is too complicated. But I don’t think it makes any difference. He was born to pass exams and captain cricket teams. Failure is simply not in his nature.’

‘Peter sails unafraid and uncomplicated through life,’ said Alan. ‘We take little notice of him, and he takes none of us.’

‘Shall we eat,’ said Phyllis, who appreciated Peter as a boy but not as a son.

‘We’re still drinking,’ said her husband. ‘Give us a moment’s peace.’

‘I’m afraid the beef will be overcooked.’

‘Beef is sacred,’ said Alan, so they went in to the dining-room, where the William Morris wallpaper contrasted prettily with the plain black of the tablecloth and the white of the Rosenthal china.

They sat around the table.

‘Alan can’t stand grey beef. He likes it to be red and bloody in the middle. He goes rather far, I think, towards the naked, unashamed flesh. But there we are. Beef is a matter of taste, not absolute values. At least I hope so.’

‘Anyway, Gerry thinks if I cook something it is awful, and if you cook something it’s lovely, Esther, so why bother.’

‘I think you are a superb cook, Phyllis,’ lied Esther.

‘Or we wouldn’t come here,’ said Alan.

‘Personally, in this house I would rather drink than eat any day,’ said Gerry.

‘I wish you would stop being horrid to your wife, Gerry,’ said Esther, finally coming down on Phyllis’s side. ‘It makes her cross and everyone’s gastric juices go sour. Why don’t you just appreciate her?’

‘She’s quite right,’ said Alan. ‘Women are what their husbands expect them to be; no more and no less. The more you flatter them the more they thrive.’

‘On lies?’ enquired Gerry.

‘If need be.’

Esther was disturbed. ‘You are horrible,’ she said. ‘Can’t we just get on with dinner?’

Phyllis passed the mayonnaise, where artichoke hearts, flaked fish, olives and eggs lay immersed. The mayonnaise was perhaps too thin and too salty. They helped themselves, with all the appearance of enthusiasm.

‘It has been a hard day,’ said Gerry mournfully.

‘But rewarding?’

‘A new office block to do, if I’m lucky. A new world to conquer.’

‘And a new secretary,’ said his wife. ‘A luscious child, at least eighteen, and nubile for the last five years. Plump, biteable and ripe.’

‘Alan has a new secretary,’ said Esther. ‘I don’t know what she looks like. What does she look like, Alan? There she sits, day after day, part of your life but not of mine.’ Her voice was wistful.

‘She is slim like a willow. But she has curves here and there.’ The appreciation in her husband’s voice was not at all what Esther had bargained for.

‘Oh dear. And I’m so fat. No thanks, Phyllis darling, no more.’

‘I like you fat. I accept you fat. You are fat.’

‘Not too fat?’

‘Well perhaps,’ said Alan, ‘just a little too fat.’

‘Oh,’ moaned Esther, taken aback.

‘What’s the matter now?’

‘You’ve never said that to me before.’

‘You’ve never been as fat as this before.’

‘I’m so thin,’ complained Phyllis politely, ‘I can’t get fat. Do you like garlic bread?’

‘Superb.’

‘Well you can’t spoil that, at least,’ said Gerry.

‘More, Alan?’

‘Thank you.’

‘Do you think you should?’ asked Esther. ‘Every time I sew your jacket buttons on I have to use stronger and stronger thread.’

‘I admit your point. I am fat too. We are a horrid gross lot.’

‘Eat, drink and fornicate,’ boomed their host. ‘There is too much abstinence going on.’ His wife made apologetic faces at the guests.

‘If you are fat you die sooner,’ said Alan.

‘Who cares?’ asked his wife, but no one took any notice, so she said, ‘Tell me about your secretary, Alan. Besides being so slim, but curvacious with it, what is she like? Perhaps you wish she was me?’