Read Online Praxis by Fay Weldon - Free Book Online Page B

although it was indeed new.
    ‘Anyway,’ said Mrs. Allbright, ‘there’s nothing wrong with being a Jew. I’m sorry for them, that’s all, because Jehovah seems such a fierce God to have, compared to Jesus, but I don’t look down at them one bit. And I know you don’t, either, Stephen. You always wanted to have a Jewish quota at the golf-club; you thought healthy outdoor exercise would do them good, though I can’t say it seemed to help the one they did have, who ran off with the waitress.’
    ‘Hush,’ said Mr. Allbright, and added, ‘in any case it’s neither here nor there since the Army has now taken over the course and the tanks are ruining the greens altogether.’
    But it was no use. No one was listening.
    Mrs. Allbright had her pretty yellow-stained hand to her mouth.
    ‘My father,’ said Pattie, flatly. ‘You mean my father was a Jew and ran off with a waitress?’
    ‘Idiot,’ said Mr. Allbright to Mrs. Allbright. He was to say it to her many times in years to come, and she grew not only to believe him but not to mind him saying it. But this time tears sprang to her eyes. Mr. Allbright watched and marvelled. The first Mrs. Allbright had never wept; never had to. All the same she had died young. One tear fell into the dandelion wine, and he feared lest the addition of salt might interfere with the delicate fermentation process. ‘He married her according to the laws of his religion and the law of the land. He left your mother and yourselves provided for.’
    Pattie left.
    ‘She asked for bread and you gave her stones,’ said Mrs. Allbright, staring at her husband, pink-eyed, red-rimmed, flushed. Wisely, he poured what was left of the golden syrup over her to cheer her up, and the resultant stickiness of both of them was the cause of much joy and marital merriment. The Reverend Allbright felt he had regained his childhood, which the first time round had not been up to much, but now was rapturous, innocent and amazing. He was obliged, if only for cleanliness and comfort’s sake, and in a spirit of remorse, to suck the stickiness from her every crevice.
    ‘You can’t look after everyone in the world, I suppose,’ observed Mrs. Allbright, forgivingly, naked, splay-legged and golden on the floor. ‘Let alone half-mad, half-Jewish, half-grown parishioners who never even go to church.’ He blocked her mouth, astonishingly, before she could voice any more uncharitable thoughts and thus imperil her soul.
    Such acts were unthinkable, unimaginable; except they happened, and once they had happened could happen again, at any rate when imports of golden syrup allowed. The dandelion wine was excellent. Sweet and powerful, quite unharmed by Mrs. Allbright’s occasional tear, and popular with parishioners young and old.
    Pattie did not tell Hilda what she had found out. Perhaps, in any case, Hilda knew already. She hid the sharpest kitchen knives, however, away from Hilda, afraid of what she was not quite sure.
    Her mother’s madness, she now perceived, lay in her telling of the truth. But was it madness? If a mother shrieked Jewess, bastard, pervert at her own daughter, and all these things were true, then she might be accused of unmaternal conduct, but hardly madness.
    Pattie lay on her bed at night, and thought of kisses, mother’s, father’s, Louise Gaynor’s, anyone’s. She lay still, hands neatly folded over her smooth midriff. Pattie had a white, clear skin. Who will ever marry me, Pattie wondered. Who would ever want to? Jewess, bastard, pervert. Daughter of a mad mother: insanity in the blood, running strong. See it even in Hilda’s eyes: in her own now, reflected back from the Reverend Allbright’s.
    The American servicemen were in Brighton. Local girls came in from towns along the coast to meet them. They laughed, drank, cuddled and kissed; more, even, in the bushes at the bottom of 109 Holden Road where the garden abutted the pub alley. The fence palings were so rotted that a well-shod