Fay Weldon Omnibus: Collected Works of Fay Weldon by Weldon Fay

Author:Weldon, Fay [Weldon, Fay]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781784081874
Publisher: Head of Zeus

Delights of France or Horrors of the Road

Miss Jacobs, I don’t believe in psychotherapy. I really do think it’s a lot of nonsense. Now it’s taken me considerable nerve to say that – I’m a rather mild person and hate to be thought rude. I just wouldn’t want to be here under false pretences: it wouldn’t be fair to you, would it?

But Piers wants me to come and see you, so of course I will. He’s waiting outside in your pretty drawing room: I said he should go, and come back when the session was up: that I’d be perfectly all right but he likes to be at hand in case anything happens. Just sometimes I do fall forward, out of my chair – so far I haven’t hurt myself. Once it was face-first into a feather sofa; the second was trickier – I was with Martin – he’s my little grandchild, you know, David’s boy, the only one so far – at the sandpit in the park and I just pitched forward into the sand. Someone sent for an ambulance but it wasn’t really necessary – I was perfectly all right, instantly. Well, except for this one big permanent fact that my legs don’t work.

I’m a great mystery to the doctors. Piers has taken me everywhere – Paris, New York, Tokyo – but the verdict seems to be the same: it’s all in my head. It is a hysterical paralysis. I find this humiliating: as if I’d done it on purpose just to be a nuisance. I’m the last person in the world to be a nuisance!

Did you see Piers? Isn’t he handsome? He’s in his mid-fifties, you know, but so good-looking. Of course he has an amazing brain – well, the whole world knows that – and I think that helps to keep people looking young. I have a degree in Economics myself – unusual for a housewife of my age – but of course I stayed home to devote myself to Piers and the children. I think, on the whole, women should do that. Don’t you? Why don’t you answer my questions? Isn’t that what you’re supposed to do? Explain me to myself? No?

I must explain myself to myself! Oh.

Behind every great man stands a woman. I believe that. Piers is a Nobel Prize winner. Would he have done it without me? I expect so. He just wouldn’t have had me, would he, or the four children? They’re all doing very well. Piers was away quite a lot when the children were young – he’s a particle physicist, as I’m sure you know. He had to be away. They don’t keep cyclotrons in suitably domestic places, and the money had to be earned somehow. But we all always had these holidays together, in France. How we loved France. How well we knew it. Piers would drive; I’d navigate; the four children piled in the back! Of course these days we fly. There’s just Piers and me. It’s glamorous and exciting, and people know who he is so the service is good.

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