The Heart of the Country by Fay Weldon Read Free Book Online Page A

from a garage to say he’d broken down on the motorway. No one believed her, but no one said they didn’t. There wasn’t enough smoked salmon. It was impossible to squeeze the lemon. The chickens had dried out. Jean refused the chocolate mousse on account of the cholesterol it contained. Natalie nearly said it came from a packet and was a special low-calorie brand, favoured by Harry, but stopped herself in time. Jane looked as if she were about to burst into tears. The only thing of interest that happened – apart from the negative fact of Harry’s absence – was that Angus admired Natalie’s hoop earrings; it occurred to him that she was just the sort of woman who would enjoy ten minutes’ sex while changing for dinner, or even twenty minutes, and if she saw something in Arthur she might see even more in him, Angus. What’s more, if Harry had gone missing, he, Angus, might be able to help her out.
    Angus pinched Natalie’s bottom in the kitchen, going out to help her fetch another bottle of wine – she’d kept the red in the fridge, and taken out the white to warm: well, she was distracted – and she slapped his hand away. Had the instinct for self-preservation been predominant in her mind, she would have welcomed the bruise left by those powerful and monied and possibly helpful fingers. As it was, he was hurt, and never quite forgave her, not in all that came after. Natalie carried some kind of female aura around with her; she carried it like a suitcase: it was fixed to her and yet not part of her, a burden and a delight. It was impersonal and it made men want her to smile at them, and rendered them very irritable if she didn’t.
    It wasn’t only men Natalie affected like this: it was women too. Look how I cursed her when she splashed me, driving by like Lady Muck: she with the debts and the runaway husband and not a true friend to her name, only the kind of business acquaintance who’d come to dinner and gossip about her behind her back, and fuck her out of turn, or try to. For love read hate. I brought it all down on her: or the demons in my head did. They feed on love and spew out hate. The more hope there is, the stronger they get. Flat depression, flat despair, is easier. Take my word for it.
    Our dinner that night up at the housing estate consisted of kale and potatoes with a few scraps of sausage stirred in. Teresa, Bess and Edwina ate it without argument and afterwards we all watched Top of the Pops. When I look back on that time itseems happy enough – compared at any rate to now. I blame Natalie for what happened.
    My shrink says I am prepared to blame everyone except myself for my fate. If I practised understanding and sympathy more, he says, I might blame less, and be the happier for it. More brutally, if I learned not to hate myself, I might not hate others, and then he might even let me out of the madhouse. He is ever hopeful! He thinks arson (one of my crimes, or madnesses) is a declaration of hate. I think arson is a pretty fine idea, one way and another. Fire is beautiful. What it burns is dross, rubbish; it eats up ugliness: it devours the debris of lost hope: it obliterates the imperfect. The ashes from a really good fire are soft, young and fine. I loved Natalie. I didn’t wish her any harm. When her troubles came upon her, how the vultures moved in! Then for a time, I was her only friend. It was she who betrayed me, not the other way round. If to want happiness for yourself is to be guilty, then, yes, I am guilty. But I am not full of hate and rage, on the contrary. I wish I was – then I could see a way out of this dismal place.
    Shuffling ladies in shapeless cardigans are forever bringing me cups of over-sugared tea, which it would seem churlish to refuse. They ask me why I write instead of joining in their singsongs, and I just nod and smile and they seem not to notice that I haven’t answered. Someone didonce ask what I was writing and I replied ‘Just therapy’ and she said