Rhode Island Blues - Fay Weldon

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I’d just told him vaguely I was off to visit a sick relative: I then remembered that some of my conversation with Felicity had been through the answering machine. The bastard Krassner must have listened to what we said, and then put his people on to it. Film folk can do anything if they put their mind to it. They bribe phone operators and computer hackers and dig dirt on anyone they want. They are ruthless in defence of the people’s entertainment and their own profit, which comes to the same thing. Perhaps Krassner had stayed in my apartment for some time after he woke—how many days ago was it now, four? I had not envisaged that until now: I had simply assumed that being at the best of times in such a hurry, he would have woken, perhaps found some coffee, to which he was welcome, and left at once, back to work. If he had time to spare he would surely have more glamorous and rewarding women than me to pursue and persecute. I felt the less inclined to return and fish the team out of whatever trouble they were now in. I called the editing suite but no-one replied. No doubt they were too busy to so much as pick up the phone for a call they had not initiated.

      

      I had woken up a little. I liked the clear air and the woods and the deer ticks kept at a safe distance from the house, and Felicity was cheerful and Joy was funny and we’d spent a good morning at the Golden Bowl, and the world of downtown Soho seemed a long way away and not a place anyone would gladly return to, not even by way of Concorde and free gifts in best-quality leather which nobody ever wanted. Felicity had been enchanted by the Golden Bowl: we had been shown over its gracious Library, its sparkling clean kitchens, where only the best and freshest food was prepared, and not a sign of a Lite packet anywhere; its Refectory, where guests could sit and eat by themselves at little round one-person tables—though Nurse Dawn did not approve of this: the digestive processes apparently function better if eating is a social affair—its elegant community rooms, its nursing wing, empty of patients: we met Nurse Dawn’s team of nurse-attendants, all bright, cheerful and friendly: we met the Professor of Philosophy, though his eyes were dull and all he wanted to talk about was the state of the golf course. We were told that Felicity could bring her own furniture in if she required though most Golden Bowlers chose to abandon the material trophies of the past, the better to live in the present. She should live very much as she lived at home. Various amiable and reasonably intelligent persons passed us in the corridors, of whom only a small percentage had walking frames, and one or two of the elderly gentlemen gave Felicity a second look. That really pleased her. In the country of the blind the one-eyed man is king, and in a nation-state such as the Golden Bowl Felicity would have more people at hand to admire her than she would if she kept the company of those younger than herself. We looked in at a Psychic Nourishment session in the Conservatory—the soul needs nourishment as much as does the body, according to Dr Joseph Grepalli, whom we were privileged to actually meet in his very grand offices. He had the rooms above the Portico: the only suite to which stairs were required. His wide windows looked out over the long rectangle of the lily pool. There were learned books in his bookcase.

      

      ‘We are blessed by synchronicity, dear lady,’ said Dr Grepalli to Felicity. ‘Our brochure comes through your letter box the very day your granddaughter arrives from London: you make the decision to remake your life amongst others of like mind, and our new Atlantic Suite, now converted from one of the libraries to personal use, is ready for occupation. All these things are a good sign. As Nurse Dawn will have told you there is already a long list of people waiting to join our community, but if you would be good enough to fill in the questionnaire, we’ll see what we can do, and we will let you know within the next couple of weeks.’

      

      He was, even to me, an attractive man, broad-chinned, bright-eyed, on the jowly side. I like men a little fleshy, Kubricky. In fact, Dr Grepalli reminded me of the abominable Krassner. Thinking back, it seemed strange to me now that I had not joined the latter in my bed. My last sexual relationship had been over six months previously, and that had been fleeting. My grandmother Felicity was obviously impressed by Dr Grepalli. Her wrinkled eyelids drooped over her still large, clear eyes. She actually fluttered her lashes, and moistened her lips with her tongue and sat with her hands clasped behind her neck. She had not read as many books on body language as I had, or heard so many directors expound on it, or she would have desisted. She was in her mid-eighties, for God’s sake, and forty years older than he.

      

      To be seen from Dr Grepalli’s side window, at a little distance from the main villa, was a long, low building. Of this particular place we had not had a guided tour. As I looked an ambulance drew up and a couple of men went inside with a trolley, and a couple of nurses came out: the bleached, hard, noisy kind you tend to find in places other than the Golden Bowl. Dr Grepalli decided the sun was getting in our eyes and drew the net curtains between my eyeline and the building. I didn’t ask him what went on in there. But obviously some old people get Alzheimer’s: in the end some fall ill, some die. It can get depressing for others. There would be some form of segregation: there would have to be, to keep the fit in good cheer.

      

      I fought back my doubts. All this was too good to be true.

      

      Dr Grepalli and my grandmother were having a conversation about the I Ching. Let the living and lively respond to the living and lively, while they can. Joy gaped open-mouthed. I don’t think she really understood what was going on, perhaps because she was wearing her hearing aid again and unaccustomed sound came to her undifferentiated.

      ‘But some of those people were chanting,’ she protested on the way home. ‘They were all out of their minds. And did you see the potatoes in the kitchen? All different shapes and sizes with dirt on them.’

      ‘Potatoes come from the ground, Joy,’ said Felicity. ‘They are not born in the supermarket. That’s what vegetables look like in real life. I loved that place. All such a hoot. Now all I have to do is wait and see and pray.’

      ‘Oh they want you all right,’ shouted Joy. ‘They want your money.’

      

      But here was the limo come especially for me, here in my hand was the Concorde ticket, there was the thought of Kubricky-Krassner back home. There was the driver whose name was Charlie, and who looked like a mountain tribesman in The Three Feathers, dangerous and glittery-eyed, glancing with meaning at his watch. It would not do to cross him. ‘You go on back to London, Sophia,’ said Felicity. ‘There’s nothing more you can do here. I’m going to become a Golden Bowler. If I don’t do something I shall just fade away.’

      ‘I think you’re crazy,’ roared Joy. ‘And you’re selling this place far too cheap. I’m going to ask my deceased sister’s husband, Jack Epstein. He’s in car dealership in Boston.’

      

      I thought I could safely leave them to it. I had done what I had been summoned to do: endorse Felicity’s decisions. She seemed well and positive. She could look after herself okay without me. I decided not to thwart the mountain tribesman but simply to go home. Joy was not best pleased, but didn’t set up too many difficulties, impressed as she was to discover I was the kind of person for whom limos were sent from New York. She had assumed, I suppose, that I was someone’s PA. Or the make-up girl.

      

      Felicity finished asking advice of the I Ching while Joy helped me get my few things together. That is to say she banged and crashed about, and tripped over chairs and the edges of carpets and got in the way.

      ‘I’d have gone on looking after your grandmother if I could,’ she shouted. ‘But I’m too old for the responsibility.’

      ‘Don’t worry about it,’ I said. ‘I’m family. It’s up to me.’

      ‘The only family I have left is Jack,’ she said. ‘That’s my deceased sister Francine’s husband.’ Jack and the sister Francine came into her conversation rather frequently, I noticed. Something beyond her betrayal of my grandmother was bothering her.

      ‘You young things and your careers!’ she said. ‘I’ll help her pack up the house, of course. Someone’s got to. A lot can go in storage, I daresay.’

      ‘I

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