Big Women. Fay Weldon
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‘Because I’m a woman and not ashamed of it,’ said Layla. ‘And not afraid either. Nor should any woman be. Naked, free, unashamed. For God’s sake, Zoe, take off some clothes. Let me see what you’re made of. Is your nakedness meant for Bull alone, is that your problem? Throw off the shackles of clothing and with it the shackles of wifedom. Alice, I need to know you have a physical existence and you’re not mind alone. I have to see you before I can believe you. And let’s have Saffron naked too. Don’t you want her to grow up proud, free and female? Isn’t it for her that we do all this? I can almost see the point of having children. Daughters, anyway.’
She alarmed them, but the music was loud, and she danced, and soon they were all naked and dancing about the room, regardless of who could see their cavortings, that is to say a little cluster of neighbours and passers-by, outside, gazing in, growing every minute, whom Bull sent flying as he strode by them and up to Hamish’s front door. He too saw, and expecting no better was a little mollified to have his worst fears realised. Being right can work wonders for anyone. Outrage justified is outrage halved. Nevertheless, how he banged upon the door.
Upstairs in the bedroom Daffy and Hamish contemplated a new relationship. The lesson of the sixties was that on average one in ten of the one-night stands (or compacted relationships) so prevalent at the time would result in something that lasted. If only the humiliations inherent in a ninety per cent rejection rate, for this was what it amounted to, could be endured, true love would in the end be found, and claimed.
‘Stephie will never forgive me,’ said Daffy. ‘Because what I have done is unforgivable.’
‘My plan is’, confessed Hamish, ‘to behave so badly that Stephie will finally get the message and go. In giving her cause to hate me, I am doing her a kindness.’
‘I’m not sure it works like that, Hamish,’ said Daffy, ‘but I admire you for trying. And I never liked her anyway.’
They stopped to listen to the music down below. The base notes seemed to travel through the very fabric of the house. Thump, thump, thump – and now an extra banging noise, Bull striking the front door again and again.
And now Alice turns up the music. In the front room they do not at first realise that Bull is at the door, though they are aware of the watchers, and careless of their existence. ‘Let everyone see,’ cries Layla. ‘Tits, bum, teeth, in the privacy of our own home. Do we ask for an audience? No, we don’t. Is prurience in our hearts? No, it is not. Is it in theirs? Yes, it is. Too bad!’
Zoe danced, but with one hand over her crotch and the other arm clasping Saffron, so her breasts didn’t show.
‘What are you ashamed of, Zoe?’ demanded Layla.
‘Nothing,’ said Zoe, bravely, lying.
Bull had once casually told Zoe her breasts hung too low. For breast read essay. The man downgrades but the woman downgrades more. And the insecure man of the sixties free to talk about such things, as his forebears forbore, made a habit of publicly complaining about the form, shape and size of the bosom which bobbed along with such docility by his side. As a criticism it was unanswerable, there being no set standard of excellence, no norm, and nothing a woman could do about it anyway.
‘We’re going ahead with this, Stuffy Stephie,’ said Layla, ‘and Academic Alice. We’re going ahead with Medusa.’
‘We are,’ said Stephanie, ‘but who’s in charge?’
Stephanie’s bosom was generous and bounced. Layla’s smaller, neater, higher. Alice had almost no breasts at all.
‘All are in charge,’ said Alice, as she lumbered by, little white arms stretching, curvy as a leaping salmon.
‘Hierarchical is male,’ she chanted.
‘former structures stale
Women are not fools
So group decision rules.’
‘Supposing we make money?’ Layla enquired. ‘Who takes it?’
‘Sisters care, so sisters share,’ came back the answer.
‘Plough profits in, and reap the wind.’
‘What an uphill struggle this is going to be,’ said Layla, but she acquiesced. ‘Mount Medusa like Mount Ararat, towering above the floods of Babel.’
Layla too spoke with tongues. Saffron babbled for all of them, now wandering naked in search of her clothes. Saffron preferred to be clothed; it felt safer. There seemed to her to be at least a dozen unclothed dancing women in the room. The bang, bang, bang of male wrath was upon the door, so loud now they had to take notice. Zoe looks out of the window and shrieks.
‘It’s Bull, I told you so!’
‘Too late!’ cries Stephie.
‘Too late!’ cries Layla.
‘The moment of Praxis,’ cries Alice. ‘Dance on. What happens will. The fates are here amongst us.’
And such was the nature of the dance, indeed, it seemed to be true. The muses danced gracefully in their languid threesome, the Maenads wailed, the furies shrieked.
Hamish meanwhile, an ethnic gown flung on for modesty, was at the door to let Bull in. Daffy wandered down, wrapped in a towel. Rafe and Roland, woken, dishevelled, sat on the landing to watch whatever drama was about to unfold. If sometimes they could not tell TV from real life, who could blame them?
‘Where’s my wife?’ yelled Bull. ‘Where’s my child?’
‘In the front room with the others, I daresay,’ said Hamish.
‘It’s a woman’s meeting. Go on in. Be my guest.’
Bull charges past Hamish and slams open the door of the front room: he is met by a waft of wine, a blast of music, overheated breath. The room, which for the first instant seemed crowded, contains his naked wife, already searching in a pile of discarded clothes for hers, and his child, Saffron, in vest and pants, pulling on her socks. She’s a competent little creature. Hamish walks in and takes off the music.
‘Nice dancing, Daddy?’ asks Saffron, anxiously. ‘Mummy, put your clothes on.’
‘Disgusting dancing, darling,’ says Bull.
‘Sorry, Bull,’ says Zoe, but she seems oddly unmoved, merely placatory. It occurs to the others she had expected him to come after her, is not sorry to be caught.
‘What the fuck are you sorry for?’ enquires Layla. ‘What’s to apologise?’
‘Foul-mouthed bitch,’ says Bull to Layla. ‘Leave my wife alone. If you come near her again, if she speaks to you harpies ever, it’s the end of our marriage. I keep the house, I keep the child, she’s out on the streets.’
‘That’s going a bit far, Bull,’ says Stephie. ‘That’s a little Victorian.’
‘It may be Victorian,’ says Bull. ‘But it’s the law. She’s a lesbian, she’s an unfit mother. She has already exposed my daughter to moral danger.’ He turns on Layla, fist raised.
‘Don’t be cross with Layla,’ says Zoe, in a voice which has turned soft and wheedling, and which they haven’t heard before. She has jeans and T-shirt back on by now. She strokes Bull’s raised arm. He lowers it. ‘It’s just Layla’s way. We weren’t doing anything wrong. It’s just so hot and we felt like dancing. We’re not lesbians, honestly.’
Alice is already zipped back into her boiler suit. Layla’s all but clothed again. Someone shuts the window, pulls the curtain. The crowd of watchers dissolves.
‘Moment of choice, Zoe,’ says Layla. ‘Go with him or stay with us. Be a man’s woman or join Medusa.’
‘I have to go home,’ says Zoe. ‘Bull needs me. And