Wicked Women (23 page)

“They touch one another so much,” said Josie aloud, and the sound bounced strangely off window and walls. She was accustomed to headphones. “All the time they fondle and embrace, push or hit or hug. Kiss and copulate. Flesh touches flesh.” There was no one to answer her. Josie remembered that eight decades or so back, she had actually given birth, had shared a living space with a man. They’d slept touching, side by side. It seemed a strange thing to have done, let alone enjoyed. Her son, one of a generation of men who had declined to take up the Heaven-on-Earth project, being reluctant to give up their masculinity, had died of old age one decade back. She did not want to think about that. She went back to the console, readjusted her medication and changed the colours on all the screens for the fun of it.

Again Zelda’s face appeared unsummoned on the screen. “Josie,” she said, and her voice sounded cracked and strange, “I know you are troubled. Let’s talk about it, dear. Together we’ll work on it.”

But Zelda’s lips and nostrils were blurring. She was hideous. Zelda dissolved and vanished in a scramble of snow. Josie pressed the alarm for the emergency technician. “Your fault has been automatically recorded,” the stand-by screen flashed. “Please do not block emergency lines, OK?” Josie clicked on OK, although it was far from okay. But what could you do? If you didn’t acknowledge OK, the screen pinged back at you interminably. She tried to click to No-Sound, but couldn’t. Was this what life was going to be like under Nex Control? It was intolerable. Perhaps 132 years of life was intolerable, full stop.

The whole point of age was the acquisition of wisdom; she could impart it, in haiku form, or in advice to the likes of Mandy Miller. But if Mandy Miller didn’t turn up, what use was Josie Toothpad? A silly name, given to her by a computer. Anyway, she’d gone off haikus: recently she’d developed a liking for romantic verse. She wanted to be in love again. If she couldn’t be in love she’d rather be dead. Right back in the beginning, she’d never wanted to live to be more than thirty. She’d outstayed her welcome by one hundred and two years.

How long since she’d ordered her doughnut? Six minutes? Delivery was meant to be within four. She’d complain, although that was a breach of good manners. The more reprehensible complaining was, the theory went, the more others would struggle to ensure no grounds for complaint existed. But Josie was allowed her eccentricities, as an original. “Your comment has been recorded,” said the screen. “Please be patient. OK?” Okay, she clicked, lying in her teeth.

The Friendship Screen bleeped. It was Honour, her friend. These days Honour seldom called. Honour had got caught up in the Occult ’n’ Oracle network; Josie had denied the existence of the paranormal. Honour and Josie had quarrelled. Zelda had advised them against patching it up. The two friends, she said, had outworn each other. It happened to Heaven-on-Earthers as the birthdays mounted up. There was always Zelda, for companionship and consolation. Zelda never fretted; Zelda always
knew.

Honour looked lovely; about fourteen years old. Red hair tumbled round perfect features. Before you enrolled as a Heaven-on-Earther, you had cosmetic surgery to perfect any flaws blind Mother Nature had inflicted upon you. Not for the sake of attracting men—there weren’t many around these days anyway; most who started male had foetal micro-surgery and a dose of oestrogen three weeks into conception and ended up female, or roughly so—but for the sake of self-esteem, self-image. You had to be comfortable with yourself.

Josie squealed and all but leapt up and down to see her friend. Her feet, oddly, had some difficulty reaching the ground. Josie thought, “But I’ve shrunk.” Nor was there much life in her legs, for all the voltage she’d put through her muscles over the years. She didn’t think she could get to the door. She just knew she didn’t want to stay in her chair, though the chair it was which wrapped her, soothed her, stroked her, made love to her, sung to her—all of a sudden Josie just wanted not to be in it, couldn’t bear to sit still a moment longer.

“Josie, what am I going to do?” asked Honour. “All my screens are on the blink, and Zelda’s gone mad. She keeps giving me advice I haven’t asked for. And my doughnut hasn’t turned up.”

“Mine either,” said Josie. “But I know who I am and I’m perfect.” It was their mantra from way back. “You look about twelve,” said Honour to Josie. “And I’m not much better. I guess what they’re saying is true.”

“Go on, tell,” said Josie. “What are they saying?”

“Nex Control upped our Ecstasy 3 last week and our age reversal is now irreversible,” said Honour. “We’re all growing younger exponentially. Give us another fifteen minutes and we’ll return to the womb and lapse into a coma; then we’ll drift into nothingness; we’ll be unconceived; we will not have existed. Funny thing is, I don’t mind one bit.”

Josie thought for a bit.

“Why would they do a thing like that?” asked Josie.

Curiosity survived, when little else did. Josie felt her chest and it was flat, flat, flat. She wailed a thin high wail. But cut it short for politeness’ sake. Politeness lasted too.

“To make space,” said Honour, “for themselves. The young want their turn too. The Underclass are tired of us.”

Josie’s central screen leapt into life. A girl of about seven looked out at her. “Hi, everyone,” she said. “I’m ever so sorry. Honestly, I did my best. I called the technicians, but they were just toddlers and pooing all over the place—it was disgusting. So I told them to go away. What was I meant to do?”

Her place was taken by an ugly young woman in her early twenties. “My name’s Mandy Miller,” she said. “I am the death you have all been expecting.”

Josie realised Mandy Miller wasn’t ugly at all, merely human; that she, Josie, was so accustomed to seeing perfection on her screens, she’d forgotten what human was like. “Nex Control has tried to make it easy for you,” said Mandy Miller, “given you time to adjust. For DONUT read ‘don’t,’ reverse Revo Efil and get Life Over. Not perfect, but the best I could do. Nex Control is an Underclass organisation. Time now for the young to march along your Highway, arm in arm, in glory.”

At least that was what Josie thought she heard. But how could she know? She only knew she was 132 because Zelda had said so, and perhaps Zelda had got the decimal point wrong and she was 13.2. Really, one knew very little about anything. Words had begun to make little sense; now there were only shapes and sounds. Josie was conscious of a divine brilliance all around, and of wanting to be in the shade; then there was a sudden welcoming dark at the end of a tunnel, and she travelled through it, quite suddenly, to warmth and peace, safety and silence.

P
AULA LIES AMAZED ON
the bed, like some poor butterfly with a pin driven through its middle. Can these be the contractions which indicate the beginning of labour? Or perhaps of false labour, or perhaps indeed, being more like pains than contractions, indigestion from the curry fetched in that evening by her kind, thoughtful and radically minded husband from the local take-away curry-in-a-hurry house. Who knows?

Paula, at the moment, feels she knows all too little. She does expect, however, soon to know more. The central heating has lately been repaired and there is a hole in the floor where the service engineers have carelessly removed a pipe. So Paula can now hear what is going on in the room below.

More has been going on down there, Paula suspects, than ought to have been.

At the moment her husband Deakey is opening the door to members of the local Women’s Liberation Group. Paula has had an upsetting day, as Deakey has told her at least eight times this evening, and, being eight and a half months pregnant, has sensibly agreed to miss the meeting and has taken to her bed.

Outside, the moon rises.

“We live in an odd part of London,” Paula and Deakey will explain at dinner parties. “Not exactly smart but it’s a solid Edwardian house, with good soil for rose growing. We like roses. Well, who doesn’t, but we especially like not those great modern, plastic-looking roses, but the little old-fashioned ones that smell. Yes, that kind of rose attracts greenfly, whitefly, aphids, slugs, and every invisible worm that ever flew in the night in the howling storm, but we think they do smell just wonderful.”

Paula and Deakey like everything together, think everything together, change their views together, spray pests together, feel together, are together. We believe this, they say: we do that, we have found out the other. In and out of each other’s apron pockets for a full seven years.

“Why shouldn’t a man wear an apron just like a woman!” cried Deakey only last night, home at seven as usual from the Civil Service, wielding the garlic crusher like a man, slavering the meat-free roast with garlic slime.

“Careful the baby doesn’t come out smelling of garlic,” said a friend. There are usually friends about. Paula and Deakey are a very pleasant couple. Anyone would like them. Paula’s contraceptive loop fell out one night, which is why she is pregnant. Paula and Deakey are not perfect, which makes them the more endearing.

The moon rises a little further and now shines in upon Paula. It is a full moon. Every full moon, regular as clockwork, Paula’s curse has come upon her; until eight months ago, that is; until the unplanned slipping of the loop and the consequent stoppage of blood. What is this? This rusty red stuff? Why now? Merely the body’s habit, thinks Paula, wriggling painfully on her contractual pin; what a wonderful thing the body is! It carries its own remembrances.

Perhaps Deakey should be with his Paula at this moment of their joint life? When the moon shines and her body aches? No, thinks Paula. No need for that: Deakey is with me in spirit anyway and, besides, someone has to answer the door. If Paula lies quiet and still the pains will stop. The quieter she lies, the better she will hear. The rest she can imagine. Marta is arriving. Marta is always the last to come, snorting and jeering. Now they’ll all be sitting down in the familiar conspiratorial ring.

“Male liberal,” Marta will be sneering at Deakey’s back as he goes to make coffee, and if she were black she would say, disparagingly, “White, white liberal!” and the others will be nodding their heads and appearing to agree, but thinking how nice to have a husband like Deakey; if only they had, instead of having to pacify their own, having to placate, lie, make coffee in advance, leave extra special dinners to warm up in the oven, if they want to be allowed out to attend. Well, a meeting such as this one is regarded as domestic treachery. Yes, it is treachery. Female complaints made public. All men do when they’re together, everyone knows, is drink, tell funny stories and contemplate exercising their rights: there is no treachery inherent in this. But women shouldn’t tell.

And what are the women doing now but telling? Do they not go fully conscious, hand in hand, where once they only went in dreams; one by one they return to that far back world of matriarchy and of Mother Right, and come back to tell the tale of it. Not so much a hen party, this, more a cosmic conspiracy. If it gets too powerful, delves too deep, the sun itself might go out. Don’t forget your key when you go out, wife—you might not get back in again. He’s serious.

Why hasn’t Paula sealed the hole in the bedroom floor? Because Paula needs to know what’s going on. Paula suspects that her husband Deakey sometimes has it off in the room below with Audrey, the woman next door. Audrey is married to an adulterous husband. For all anyone knows, the condition is catching. Who is to say what goes on when our eyes are closed and we sleep, as Paula would be sleeping now, if it were not that the Great Lasso-er in the sky keeps circling her round her middle and tugging tight, and has woken her. Listen now. Down below.

“That fact is,” bejewelled Rachel is saying, her knees held tight together, “and as Engels was the first to point out, the nuclear family is founded on the open or concealed domestic slavery of the wife. Within the family, man is the bourgeois and the wife the proletariat. I think we could usefully examine the implications.”

Oh Deakey. Deakey and Audrey. If it were true it would be more than mere adultery, it would be Treachery. Paula has said as much to Deakey. Deakey, however, maintains that if there is any treachery it lies in Paula’s own paranoia, albeit made more pronounced than usual by her advanced state of pregnancy. So Deakey and Paula looked up paranoia as it relates to pregnancy in their various books on childbirth and human response and discovered only one mildly related reference, namely that acute womb envy in the male can predispose to destructive promiscuity. “Nonsense!” cried Deakey, dismissing the author as Freudian orientated, and Paula was obliged to agree. Nonsense! All the same, she consulted the midwife, who said she’d never heard of destructive promiscuity but did remark that all men were the same and told a sorry tale of how she once delivered a sixteen-year-old junkie girl of twins. The mother lay on a double bed between two men who, when asked, declined to move over, but lay just where they were while the midwife worked over and round them. “Such a nicely spoken girl, too,” said the midwife. The midwife had taken the twins to hospital, she said, wrapped in her raincoat, but the girl never called to collect them.

What can Paula hear now? Is that Audrey’s voice amongst the others? It is. It is. Why is Audrey here? She doesn’t belong to the group. What is being plotted? A soft little female voice. Audrey’s.

“Deakey said come and I know Paula’s keen so I did, but I mean I
like
being a woman,” says Audrey. “I mean, what’s wrong with it? I mean, it’s all a bit ridiculous, isn’t it, all this bra-burning and why do they make themselves so
plain.
Present company excepted, of course. A woman has a duty to make herself look attractive. I’m happy as I am. I love being feminine and looked after by my husband.”

“Adulteress,” cries Paula in her heart. “Hypocrite!”

Whoosh
and
wheesh
and there’s water everywhere and the Abyssinian or wherever bedcover from Liberty’s, with an embroidered Tree of Life upon it, embedded with little pieces of mirror, is not just probably ruined but is rendered cold and uncomfortable to lie upon. What, is Paula now incontinent? Has rage made her thus? Was it like this when she was a little child?