The Rules of Life by Fay Weldon Read Free Book Online

insurance on the house had, of course, run out and not been renewed. Gabriella was left, within the space of an hour, orphaned, homeless and penniless: she owned nothing but the sheet in which she was wrapped and the little white fluffy mules upon her feet—and these were now badly grass-stained, for the water from the firemen’s hoses and the trampling of male feet had churned up the once smooth lawn on which she stood.
    Gabriella was taken in by a certain Dr Aldred Ray, the quiet, brilliant assistant to the local physician, who comforted her, fed her, nurtured her, clothed her, unclothed her, took her into his narrow bachelor bed and found her not in the least wanting. Miss Sumpter goes quite thoroughly into the detail of this new seduction, but I shall refrain from so doing, for reasons already given.
    ‘As one house is razed to the ground,’ suffice it for Miss Sumpter to say, ‘another one opens its doors. Life casts you down then lifts you up. One lover departs, another waits on the doorstep. I thought at the time,’ she adds, ‘that I would never find a lover better than Dr Aldred Ray; that such a one could hardly exist. But of course I was wrong! One of the great rewards of my life has been the discovery that there is always a better lover than the last.’
    Oh Miss Sumpter, shame! And here indeed the tape crackles again. Again the tears, then a pause and a gasp. Miss Sumpter weeps, steadies, speaks again. But she is not, when it comes to it, lamenting the frivolity of her life.
    ‘Why I weep now’, says Miss Sumpter, ‘is simply because I did not weep at the time. I was too happy with Dr Ray to pay proper attention to my father’s death, either to grieve or to consider the great insult he had done me by gambling me away, or the manner in which he had, all but directly, been responsible for my mother’s death. I, who in life recalled little, who when asked about my childhood described it unthinkingly as a time of bliss, remember all too much in death. Perhaps this post mortem paradise is not so nicely sharp-edged and contained as I had thought, but dim around the edges, as memories crowd in. They make a veritable fog: I must find my way through, I must make sense of my life. I grope, I ache, I yearn! It is painful, all so painful,’ weeps Miss Sumpter.
    And as the voice wails on in the agony of recollection, at feelings long unfelt now felt at last, I wish more than ever that the pinner priests had not disturbed this poor, troubled woman, but had simply let her be. Our self esteem is so hardly won! Must we understand and acknowledge everything; must the very ground beneath our feet be forever churned up and trampled? But just when I am raising up my own voice in grief, sorrow and protest, Miss Sumpter’s voice resumes again, quite calm, bright and light, cured, untouched by self-knowledge.
    ‘To remove grass stains from fur,’ Miss Sumpter is saying, ‘proceed in the same way as for removing scorch stains from linen sheets. With a mixture of vinegar, water and fowl dung.’
    I feel in myself the dawn of an emotion: soon, if I am not careful, it will dazzle and blind, it will become the brightest, hottest day imaginable: the name of the day would be love. I will have to explain to Honor: I’m sure she won’t mind. This tiny little seed—which I will take good care not to water—can be no threat to my secure and happy earthly union with her dear good self. In love with a re-wind, a voice from the grave? Absurd! Honor will tell me it’s absurd, and the uneasiness will be swept away in a gale of commonsense. Am I mixing my metaphors? I fear I am. See, I am already under Miss Sumpter’s influence! Too late!
    And think again! Does the GNFR not tell us that no seed should be left unwatered, no cake uncooked, no telephone call unanswered? Does it not insist that all experience must be savoured, all emotion fully acknowledged? That it is only the outcome of sexual attraction, that is to say its