Fay Weldon - The Fat Woman’s Joke

‘I am really very sorry –’

‘Oh my God, what have you done now?’ He spoke amiably, as well may a man who has just achieved, he thinks, a lifelong ambition.

‘It’s just that I forgot about your biscuits again. I took the milk chocolate, not the plain. My gentleman friend always prefers milk, and I become confused.’

‘Your gentleman friend?’

‘How else would you have me describe him? My quasi-husband, my seducer, my lover, my fiancé? Take your pick. He is a poet.’

‘It is too unsettled a relationship that you describe,’ said Alan, ‘for my peace of mind. Secretaries, however temporary, should maintain the illusion of being either virgins or well-married. Otherwise the mind begins to envisage possibilities. The girl takes on flesh and blood. You are a bad secretary.’

‘I’m sorry about the biscuits.’

‘I was not talking about the biscuits, and well you know it. It does not matter about the biscuits. I am not eating the biscuits.’

‘Not eating the biscuits?’

‘No. And no sugar in the coffee.’

‘No sugar in the coffee?’

‘Stop playing the little girl. You are a grown woman. I am on a diet.’

‘Oh no!’

‘Why not? I’m too fat.’

‘People on diets become cross, bad-tempered. And desire fails. You are not too fat. Why do you want to be thin?’

‘I want to be young again.’

‘Why?’

‘Because when I was young I had hopes and aspirations and I liked the feeling.’

‘I think you are foolish. You don’t have to be young to achieve things. I like an older man myself.’

‘You do?’

‘Oh yes.’

‘All the same, take the biscuits away.’

‘I will keep them for William.’

‘The poet? I would rather you didn’t.’

‘Why not?’ She took off her glasses to see him better.

‘The thought confuses me. It is a relief your glasses have gone. Now I can see your face.’

‘It is just a face like any other.’

‘It is not. It is a remarkable face. I would like to paint it.’

‘I do self-portraits, sometimes.’

‘Do you paint?’

‘Yes.’

‘You’re not really a secretary?’

‘No.’

‘They never are,’ he said. ‘They never are. All summer in the temporary season, they never are. That’s why the typing is so bad. Get on with it.’

Routed, she sat and typed. He sat and read marketing reports and wondered whether to ring Esther and tell her his agent liked the novel. He decided against it. He feared she might prick the bubble of his self-esteem too soon.

‘I am not a foolish girl,’ said his secretary presently. ‘You lead me on in order to make me look silly, but that is easy to do. It’s rather cheap of you.’

‘Oh good heavens,’ Alan said. ‘This is an office not a –’

‘Not a what?’

‘You go too far. You talk like a wife, full of reproaches. I warn you. You are a fantastic creature but you go too far.’

‘Fantastic?’ Her eyes were bright.

‘You are very beautiful, or look so to me this morning.’ He came to look over her shoulder, as if to see what she was typing. ‘What scent are you wearing?’

‘Madam Rochas. It’s not too much?’

‘Not at all. It is nourishing. Do you know what I had for breakfast? Two boiled eggs and some black coffee. Do you know what I shall have for lunch? Two boiled eggs and a grapefruit. And for dinner an omelette, and some black coffee, and guess what. A tomato.’

‘Oh big deal!’ she said. ‘Do you expect me to be sorry for you?’

‘No.’ His hands trembling, slid over her breasts. ‘I am only explaining that I am light-headed and cannot be held responsible for my actions.’

The telephone rang. It was Esther. Did he want a herb omelet and a tomato, separate, or the tomato cooked in with the omelette? The former, he thought.

‘She has a pretty voice,’ said Susan. ‘Is she pretty?’

But Alan was back at his desk. He seemed to have forgotten the past few minutes entirely. He was formal, brisk and cold.

‘Get Andrew to come and see me,’ he said, studying a folder of layouts launching a change in the formula of a dandruff shampoo. ‘I don’t know what is happening to Andrew’s judgement.’ Susan rang through and presently Andrew, a thin, well-born young man with a double first, came in to be chided. He reminded Alan of himself when young. Susan sulked and plotted.

‘It was quite true,’ said Susan to Brenda in the pub. ‘He was already light-headed, otherwise I might never have got him to the point of touching me, from which all else stemmed. He was used at that hour of the morning to having a stomach full of cereal, eggs and bacon, toast and marmalade, tea, topped up by coffee and biscuits. And all of a sudden there was nothing inside him – only the vision of me, and the words I spun around him. If I spoke boldly, it was because that was what he responded to. He would never seduce, he would have to be seduced. But I trembled inside; it took every ounce of courage I had to speak to him the way I did. And when he touched me –’

‘Lightning? You fell back upon the bed?’

‘I was in an office, idiot. Had there been a bed, I would have. But he was not quite ready yet to fall on top of me, of course. I had further work to do.’

‘I think you’re making it all up, talking as if you did it all on purpose. Anyway men aren’t manipulated like that. They either feel things for you or they don’t. It’s men who take the initiative. You keep talking about men the way men talk about women. It’s rather disgusting.’

‘You put things into their heads,’ Susan insisted. ‘You put beddish visions before their eyes.’

‘I think that’s a very old-fashioned view,’ said Brenda. ‘All this talk of seducing and being seduced. It’s not like that at all. Everyone knows exactly what they’re doing these days.’

‘Well he didn’t. He really didn’t. He was too hungry for one thing.’

‘You’re older than me, almost of another generation. I expect that’s why you take such an old-fashioned view.’

‘You’re drunk and you’re jealous,’ said Susan correctly. ‘Let’s go home.’

They rose to go. The man who came from the East rose too and followed them out into the street. He was following Brenda, not Susan.

‘That morning when I rang and asked about the omelette,’ said Esther to Phyllis in the basement, ‘his voice sounded odd, and I had this sudden vision of his temporary secretary sitting there exhibiting her legs to him under the desk. He had described her the evening before at your place in altogether too detailed terms for my peace of mind. I was hungry and faint – what with the hangover and the black coffee – quarts of it – and cigarette after cigarette, and I was just standing looking out of the window, which was foolish because Juliet – that’s the daily help – was polishing the floor and one shouldn’t stand about being idle when other people are working hard. Especially when they’re Juliet. Day One of the diet was a horrible day for me; although no doubt it was a delight to my husband.’

Esther’s living-room was filled to the point of obsession with Victoriana. Sofas and chairs were buttoned and plump; walls were covered with pictures from ceiling to floor; occasional tables were almost hidden by lamps, clocks, figurines and vases. There was an embroidery frame where it was Esther’s habit to sit in the evening, working minute stitches with her puffy hands. Everything in the room was dusted, polished and neat; but this was no thanks to Juliet, who this morning wildly and inefficiently polished the floor. Esther moved away from the window, steering her bulk with grace through the fragile bric-à-brac.

‘Juliet,’ said Esther, ‘you’ll never get a good shine if you don’t sweep properly first. You’ll just rub the dirt in and ruin the surface.’