Wicked Women (34 page)

Why could it not be mine? Well, good heavens—I had given love up, Miss Jacobs, as a bad job. I sacrificed my virginity on the altar of my father’s welfare. Are you crying or laughing? Crying? Good God! You’re easily moved. I suppose in a way it is sad. I am like one of those walnuts, you know. Tough as anything: impermeably sealed; then finally you break in, and what do you find? That the nut inside is shrivelled, inedible. All potential but destined never to grow. A walnut withered in its shell, that’s me.

At breakfast Franklin was a disgusting sight. All crimson lumps and bumps on a white skin, disfigured, despairing, driven mad by his itching parts, one eye half closed, mouth so swollen he could hardly talk, let alone protest his innocence while I wept into my cornflakes and confessed what had happened between Franklin and myself. What Franklin had done to me. Seduced me, abused my innocence, taken advantage of my father’s trust.

My father was sickened. When Bo called through to him later that morning, on my suggestion, the car was on its way to take us away, to the evident relief of Management. We were leaving for London: Franklin was being sent home forthwith to California, paid off; my father and I would summer in Venice. Where of course Bo joined us.

Why do you think I can’t sleep, Miss Jacobs? Is it so wrong to interfere in another’s life? To tell lies to a good end? To pretend love while practising betrayal? Was I not balancing Evil by creating Good? Isn’t that what one’s supposed to do? Was I not justifying my mother’s disappointment, by keeping my father with Bo, making the trauma she endured worthwhile, if only in cosmic terms? When my mother ran from the house, so impetuously, it was because I had accused her of being ruthless and tried to press her to tell me about my father; and she was hurt. I hurt, she dies, he turns up. What’s a mosquito bite or so on Franklin’s white skin, a false accusation of rape, in comparison to that? So many questions! You can’t be expected to answer them: don’t try.

But that’s why I am a dancer, and will stay so all my life. No longer a virgin but that’s about as far as my interest in sex will ever go. Work’s a pushover compared to family life. I want no more of it.

Now that is settled, thank you and goodbye. Send the bill to my father. I will sleep well tonight.

Novelist, playwright, and screenwriter Fay Weldon was born in England, brought up in New Zealand, and returned to the United Kingdom when she was fifteen. She studied economics and psychology at the University of St Andrews in Scotland. She worked briefly for the Foreign Office in London, then as a journalist, and then as an advertising copywriter. She later gave up her career in advertising, and began to write fulltime. Her first novel,
The Fat Woman’s Joke
, was published in 1967. She was chair of the judges for the Booker Prize for fiction in 1983, and received an honorary doctorate from the University of St Andrews in 1990. In 2001, she was named a Commander of the British Empire.

Weldon’s work includes more than twenty novels, five collections of short stories, several children’s books, nonfiction books, magazine articles, and a number of plays written for television, radio, and the stage, including the pilot episode for the television series
Upstairs Downstairs. She-Devil
, the film adaption of her 1983 novel
The Life and Loves of a She-Devil
, starred Meryl Streep in a Golden Globe–winning role.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook onscreen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 1972, 1978, 1982, 1984, 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994, 1995, 1997 by Fay Weldon

“Run and Ask Daddy If He Has Any More Money” originally appeared in
Radio Times
, 1993, Hodder & Stoughton, 1994.

“Not Even a Blood Relation” originally appeared in
Dempsters
, in German
Marie Claire
, and in
Heat Haze
, a short story collection published in the U.K. by Orion Books limited.

“Wasted Lives” originally appeared in
The New Yorker
and in South African
Cosmopolitan
.

“Love Amongst the Artists” originally appeared in
The Times
(London), 1991.

“Tale of Timothy Bagshott” originally appeared in
British Council Anthology
, 1992.

“Through a Dustbin, Darkly” originally appeared in
Options,
1992.

“Web Central” originally appeared in
The Big Issue
.

“A Good Sound Marriage” originally appeared in
US Journal
, 1991.

“Pains” originally appeared in
Cosmopolitan
, 1994.

“A Question of Timing” was donated to Teenage Trust, 1993.

“Red on Black” originally appeared in
British Council New Writing 4
, 1994.

“Santa Claus’s New Clothes” originally appeared in
The Observer
, 1993

“The Pardoner” originally appeared in
Literary Review
, 1994.

“Heat Haze” originally appeared in
Heat Haze
.

Cover design by Connie Gabbert

978-1-4804-1245-3

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