Fay Weldon - Novel 23 Read Online Free PDF Page A

almost a
year of pre-production, which was okay, since it was a kind of time travel film
backwards and forwards through Leo and Olivia’s relationship: the Forever had crept in towards the end of
filming and suited the posters, so it had stayed) and showbiz gets all
privileges going. Do you see how difficult it is to get these fictional
exercises out of my mind? Now I’m giving you the plot of Tomorrow Forever , which I have stopped myself doing so far.
                 It
was an easy flight: I can never sleep on aircraft, and so watched a video or so on the little personal TV provided with every expensive
seat. I miss the general screen now available only at the cheap back of the
plane, where you share your viewing pleasure with others, but I would, wouldn’t
I? Films are meant to be watched with other people: compared to the big screen
videos are poor pathetic things, solitary vice.
                 Boston is one of the easiest airports through
which to enter the US as an alien. Immigration’s fast. I took a
short internal flight to Hartford , the Yankee city, these days national home of the insurance business. So far so good. But at Hartford , alas, I was met by Felicity’s friend and
neighbour Joy, determined to drive me the fifteen miles to Passmore, at 1006 Divine Road . Joy lived in Windspit, number 1004. If
flying doesn’t make me nervous, other people’s driving does, especially when
the driver is both near-sighted and deaf, and shouts very loud as if to make
sure the world is very sure of her, even though she is not very sure of it.
                 ‘I’m
seventy-nine, you wouldn’t think it, would you,’ Joy shrieked at me, summoning
a porter to take my bag to her Volvo. Her face was gaunt and white, her hair
was wild, blonde and curly, her mouth opened wide in a gummy smile. She was
dressed more like a Florida golfing wife, in emerald green velvet jump suit, than the decorous
widow my grandmother had described. She was wonderfully good-hearted, or
believed she was, just noisy. The Volvo was dented here and there and the wing
mirror hung at an angle.
                 ‘Not
for a moment,’ I said. I did not want to worry or upset her. There was no way
of getting to my destination without her help. The wooded roads were gathering
dusk. Joy would put her foot on the brake instead of the accelerator, or vice versa,
or both together, and when the Volvo stopped with a shudder she’d decide she
had run over some dumb creature and we’d stop and get out and search for the
victim with a torch she kept handy for the purpose. She did not pull the car
over to the side of the road before doing so, either. Luckily at this time of
night the back roads were more or less deserted. No Indian tracker she: she
made so much noise any wounded animal with the strength to flee would have left
long ago.
                 ‘I’m
not like you English, I don’t beat about the bush. I’m
an upfront kind of person,’ she shouted as we climbed back into the car after
vain pursuit of a non-existent limping skunk. ‘ I can’t be left to be
responsible for your grandmother any more. It isn’t fair on me. She must go into
a congregate community, with others her own age.’ I agreed that she should,
though the term was unfamiliar to me.
                 ‘ It
would be okay if Felicity would do as she’s told, but she won’t,’ roared Joy
later, by way of explanation. I agreed that it was difficult to get Felicity to
do as she was told.
                 ‘Now
that that bullying bastard of a husband has died and left her in peace poor
Felicity deserves something for herself.’
                 I
had met Exon (like the oil disaster, minus the extra ‘ x’) and he had
never struck me as a bullying bastard, just a rather dull nice pompous man, a
Professor of Law at the University of Connecticut, who had died four years
back, and who had had a lot to put up with