Tessa Hadley - Everything Will Be All Right

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Joyce had been reading andrea dworkin’s pornography. she was arguing about it with Ray while she cooked him fillets of chicken in wine and cream for his supper; he sat listening at the kitchen table in a posture of suitable abjection, enjoying his preprandial whisky and smoke. Joyce had her hair pulled up high on her head in an assertive ponytail; under her apron she was wearing some sort of black cheesecloth dungarees, cinched in at the waist with a wide elastic belt.

— What she’s saying is that there isn’t one special thing called pornography, which is separate from the other ways that men see women. She’s saying that because of the whole system we exist inside, every time a man looks at a woman, the way he sees her is a part of this whole exploitative sex thing.

— But you can’t seriously believe that’s true, Ray said coaxingly. (He knew from experience that when Joyce was fired up in one of her rare but periodic ideological indignations, conciliation was a better tactic than outright contempt.) It’s just such a reductive travesty. I mean, what about all those wonderful complex portraits of women in books and paintings? Anna Karenina, for example; you love that, don’t you? But it’s written by a man.

— Oh, don’t make it too easy for me! exclaimed Joyce.

She used her spatula to flip over the fillets in a noisy spatter of hot butter; she poured in a carton of cream and salted and peppered it, then turned the heat down.

— Anna Karenina! Don’t try to tell me Tolstoy hasn’t got some sex thing twisted up in there. Why can’t he let it work out between her and Vronsky? Every time Tolstoy describes how desirable she is, he says how shamed and disgusted she ought to feel at herself.

— Anyway, how can you take seriously anyone with a name like Andrea Dworkin? I suppose she’s got to be American. I’d love to see if there’s an author photo. I can just imagine—

— You see there? You’re doing it! Exactly what she says!

It was at this point that the doorbell rang.

— Who on earth can that be? We’re going to eat in twenty minutes. You’ll have to send them away.

Ray loped downstairs to the front door. He had a hunch it was going to be a particular ex-student of his — male, luckily — who seemed to have developed a bit of a fixation on Ray’s work. He didn’t mind the bloke and quite enjoyed their late-night holdings-forth on art and philosophy, but Joyce couldn’t stand him; she said he was creepy and his feet smelled. If it was Morris he’d have to send him away; possibly he could suggest a meeting later in the Buffy. He mentally gauged the temperature of the marital waters. It would have to be quite a bit later, leaving time enough for him to help with the washing up, make coffee, be charming, bring Joyce round on this absurd pornography-Dworkin issue.

It wasn’t Morris.

— Your mother told me, Ray said, when he brought Zoe and Pearl upstairs into the kitchen after his own exclamations and greetings on the doorstep, that I had to send whoever it was away. It’s lucky for her that although I almost unvaryingly obey her every command, I made an exception this time.

He put down Zoe’s rucksack and bag with an impresario air.

Joyce let the lid of the potato pan fall with a loud clatter.

— Zoe! What are you doing here?

They were so startling: this young woman their daughter, so tall and thin and changed, with new adult marks of tiredness and strain on her face and her short boy’s hair, and round breasts for the first time; and her astonishing baby, who stared at them with unsmiling penetration from where she sat at home on Zoe’s hip.

— How wonderful! Zoe darling, this is marvelous!

— I know you won’t have a cot or anything, said Zoe, but we could make her up a bed in a drawer.

— Oh my God! She’s so beautiful! Ray, do you see her hair? We can borrow something. The Chanders have got grandchildren. We can phone them, Ray. Oh, I don’t believe her. Pearl? Hello, Pearl! Will she come to me? She won’t come to me; she doesn’t know me.

Pearl hid her face decidedly against Zoe.

— She just needs to get used to things. She’s so tired, said Zoe, kissing her scalp. She’s never been on trains before. She was so interested in everything that she’s hardly slept. And she’s got a stinking nappy. I didn’t know where to change her. Luckily she only pooed in the last hour. People who were sitting by us moved away. I ought to change her now.

— Upstairs in the bedroom. I’ll get out towels; I’ll find a bowl for warm water. Poor little thing, poor darling, poor little sore botty. And you had to hump all this stuff right across London to Paddington on your own, with the baby? Where’s Simon?

— I’ve left him, said Zoe. I’ve run away. I don’t know what I’m going to do, but I’m not going back. I don’t care.

— Zoe, what’s happened?

— What about this chicken, Joyce? Should I give it a stir?

— Turn it off, said Joyce impatiently. I’ll see to it later. It doesn’t matter.

— I just thought Zoe might be hungry.

— I am, very hungry.

— Then we can eat straightaway; she can have mine. Ray, get on the phone to the Chanders: Can we borrow everything they’ve got? Are you still feeding her yourself? What’s going on with you and Simon?

Joyce watched over the changing of the nappy incredulously as if she was present at some miracle, pained at the soreness of the baby’s bottom, distressed at the crying Zoe took no notice of. Then Zoe fed Pearl at the table while she ate, shoveling in chicken and creamed potatoes greedily, dropping peas on the baby’s head.

In a great torrent, all Zoe’s grievance poured out. She had never spoken about Simon to anyone for all the six years she had known him, except neutrally and transactionally or to speak for him, describing his work or his opinions. The relief of explaining now made her dizzy, mixed up with her hunger and exhaustion and the adrenaline that still flooded her from their rupture and her headlong escape.

— He sort of decides what the right position is for him to take, then scrupulously sticks to it. I mean, he didn’t want the baby, and it wasn’t even truly an accident, so that was my fault. Only, how come the fact I wanted it didn’t count for anything? And you know he never touched me — I mean, literally, even with his hand — except when he wanted to make love to me. This isn’t since the baby was born; I mean ever, in all this time. Then there was this old girlfriend of his. He took me to see her, I think he wanted to show me how to manage to be a better mother, but of course I worked out that there was something between them. For all I know he’s probably with her right now. He hates stupidity, so that you’re always afraid of saying something false, only you wonder whether it isn’t more false to think first about everything you say. He wasn’t with me when Pearl was born, he didn’t really come in the next day like I told you — he had to give his paper at the conference because of course that was more important — and then when he came in to the hospital eventually on the last day you could see he was disgusted, physically disgusted by the whole place, even the smell of it. I’ve come to see how he uses intellectual ideas and books like a sort of stronghold to separate himself off from ordinary people, so he doesn’t have to stumble around in a mess like they do. He was furious that I’d given her his surname; he said it was a conspiracy to try to implicate him.

Now she had her public and her jury in the palm of her hand. After the first tug, all this long-meditated treachery came away so fluently from inside her, rich and slick. So apt and so already persuaded were her audience that she could even seem to bend over backward to do Simon justice — to reiterate that he was only consistent with himself, that he had never actually physically hurt her — knowing that Ray and Joyce would supply the condemnation she withheld.