The Rules of Life by Fay Weldon Read Free Book Online Page B

should never trust it. Never believe that it’s kind, or it will eat you alive!
    ‘So: Aldred and I lived hand in hand in our cosy cottage, and we had a fine brass bed which took up almost the entire front bedroom. My dear Aldred went out to Dr Lovell’s surgery every morning to cure the blind, the halt, the lame and so forth, and I would curl my hair, read books, write verse, press flowers and the like, waiting for his return. It was at this time of my life that Frieda Martock, who lived locally, first started sewing for me: she made a particularly pretty nightdress, I remember, from a cream-coloured muslin, caught under the bosom with a lilac ribbon. At sixteen I had altogether too plump a chest for any hope of elegance, but Aldred was happy enough—more than happy—with me as I was, and Frieda Martock’s dressmaking skills were good, so that if I caught sight of myself sideways on I was not necessarily reduced to tears. I wore the nightdress, of course, mostly for the pleasure of having Aldred take it off.
    ‘Coloured muslin requires very delicate treatment, and the nightdress finally came to grief some fourteen years later (having stood up to Aldred well enough, and one or two others besides) at the brutal hands of one of Julia Tovey’s maids, who soaked the poor thing overnight along with the heavy wash and (what is more) gaily splashed soda into the tub, so that by morning the garment was scarcely cream at all but a dreary greyish-white. It should of course have been washed separately, and quickly, then rinsed in softened water, in which common salt had been dissolved—in the mild proportion of a handful to three or four gallons—and wrung gently as soon as rinsed, with as little twisting as possible, before being immediately hung out to dry.
    ‘When the Tovey maid had the face to hand me back, ironed and folded and flattened, the poor, ruined, de-natured garment, I did not bother to reproach her. I simply went straight to Julia and said:
    ‘“Lady Tovey, I am at a loss to understand why you worry so much about your son’s association with me. Nothing as lamentable as this would ever happen in a household over which I had control.”
    ‘I left her dribbling and boggling—she had a heavy jaw, which always seemed to me oddly loose—and made Timothy choose between me and her. He chose me, as I knew he would. I had hoped not to have forced the issue—there is nothing so dreary or repetitive as the conversation of a man torn by guilt—but I took the destruction of my nightdress (wilful or otherwise) as an omen. That is another of the rules. Little things are sent to warn us . A car which won’t start, or a log fire which sends smoke back into the room, milk souring in a jug, scrambled eggs burned—any trivial event which comes between the pleasure of two lovers foreshadows the wider breach. Nothing is without meaning. We whirl through our galaxy, matter and spirit hopelessly confused; a ball shot through with lightning streaks of good and bad, strands forever flying out from the central mass, then drifting back in towards it, trapped by the sheer gravity of animation; by the very energy of this great tumbling globe of being.’
    I longed to ask Miss Sumpter more about the nature of the ‘central mass’, but if the pinner priests have solved the secret of direct communication with the departed they are keeping it to themselves. I could listen but I could not, as I suspect they can, enquire. It is, I grant, important and sensible for the priests of any religion to maintain a body of arcane knowledge, and when the Revised Great New Fictional Religion takes over I daresay we will have our secrets too; that is only prudent. As it happened, Miss Sumpter seemed to sense my enquiry. When she spoke next I had the clear sensation that she was addressing her remarks directly to me.
    ‘I can only compare the central globe to that pile of tangled threads to be found at the bottom of a neglected sewing box, but