Jane, Julie, Gina, Alice.
In the lives of the clones of Joanna May something stirred, some instinct of self-preservation was awakened, and not in that fact itself (for what woman does not wake in the morning once or twice in her life saying ‘this can’t go on a moment longer’) but in the timing of that fact, lay whatever strangeness there might be to find. As Joanna May, Empress of inner space, fought for once to control her life, so too did the four Queens – Wands, Pentacles, Swords and Cups (rulers of the provinces, as it were), fight to control theirs, not quite sure what had moved them to action, groping for understanding of their own behaviour, and not quite finding it, so looking for justification instead.
Jane received three letters by the same post. One was from her employers to announce the appointment of the new head of the London office: and it was not Jane but a snip of a girl of twenty-three, without a degree to her name, who got it. Too old at thirty! If you hadn’t made it by thirty in the film world, you’d had it. The next was from someone she’d never heard of, a woman called Anne, written on thin blue paper in what looked like a drunken scrawl, saying she, Jane, should take her claws out of Tom and let him get on with his life, or she, Anne, would come round and personally strangle her, and the third was from the ground rent landlords, asking her for her £8000 contribution towards repairing the roof, a matter she’d never heard of until that moment.
She rang HBO and offered her resignation, which was accepted with an alacrity she found humiliating. She rang Tom and asked him who Anne was, or rather screamed at him about her, and Tom said she was just a friend: he’d come round. She rang the landlords and said it was monstrous, and they agreed, but nevertheless, there it was. If she did not hand over £8000 forthwith they could, if it came to it, foreclose on her mortgage and resell to raise the necessary funds. She rang her father, Jeremy, who said he feared she hadn’t read the small print of her tenancy, and she said, ‘Why couldn’t you read it for me? Why have you never helped me?’ and he said, ‘Jane, you were always so self-sufficient, even from a baby: it came more easily to admire you than help you,’ and for some reason this made her weep and weep more than did any of the other sudden and unexpected blows from fate.
Tom came round and showed her photographs of Anne, who was blowsy and uneducated and had a daughter called Roma, aged eleven. Anne was his landlady. Yes, he spent nights with Anne sometimes. Why not? Why had he never told her? It didn’t seem anything to do with her, that was why: Jane only wanted half of him, so she could have half. She couldn’t own him: they didn’t have a child. Jane knew he wanted a child. Little Roma needed him. She didn’t have a father of her own.
‘You’re not fair, you’re not fair,’ wept Jane. Once men, according to Madge, said if you don’t sleep with me I’ll find someone who will. Now the threat had changed, gotten worse: now it was if you don’t have my baby other women will be only too glad.
Anne didn’t have a degree: she worked down the council baths: she had a council house: she acted as his model: yes, he was painting nudes. No, he didn’t want Jane as a model, she was too twitchy. She couldn’t relax. He thought he would have an exhibition soon. He was sorry about her job, her roof, her father. But her job made her hard and smart and cynical; it was a good thing she’d lost it: if she sold her car she could pay for the roof: and she’d always been hopelessly in love with her father and how could he, Tom, compete: and yes of course he loved her, what was all this talk about love all of a sudden; if he moved in with her and she settled down and they had a baby he would finish with Anne though of course he’d have to go on seeing Roma, she was only a child.
‘You go back to Anne,’ said Jane. ‘That’s the end, I don’t need you, I don’t want you, I don’t want to see you ever again.’
So he went, and she wondered why it all felt so familiar. She began talking to friends and colleagues about possible openings not just in films, but in journalism, put her solicitors on to the matter of the roof, went round to the doctor and demanded a sterilization, which was refused. She did not argue, however.
For it seemed to her, as she advanced reasons, both laudable and derisory, in favour of her sterilization – her career, her freedom, her revulsion, her dislike of baby mess and smells, her figure, her need of sleep – that there was another one she was only just now beginning to put her finger on. She didn’t want a boy; but who would understand that? If she had a boy it would be homosexual. It would have to be. Because how could she, being female, give birth to something male? Her little twelve-week foetus, which they’d said was male, had looked a real mess to her, and she wasn’t surprised. She could understand how her body could somehow spit out a daughter, a replica: but the female was less than the male: how could the lesser give birth to the greater? How could she tell Tom a thing like that? Better forget the whole thing: just not have babies: just be in some other more rational arena, where life was for living not passing on. Nevertheless, when refused, she was remotely, somewhere, somehow, pleased. She had a coil put in, instead.
So much for the Queen of Wands.
As for the Queen of Pentacles, Julie, well, her husband Alec flew in, ate supper without tasting it, went to bed without noticing her new provocative nightgown, let alone her determined serious sweetness – she had parted for ever (or so she really and truly believed) with her lover, for the sake of the marriage – was too tired to make love, rose in the morning, grumbled at the state of his shirts – though they were perfect – and flew straight off to West Berlin.
‘This can’t go on,’ she said, and made an appointment to see a solicitor. Yet Alec had flown in and out, just so, a hundred times before.
Julie, Queen of Pentacles.
Gina, Queen of Swords, woke up to a usual kind of day and limped to the doctor’s, as she often did. But while she was sitting in his waiting room – and she had to wait for a full hour with coughing young women and spluttering old ones all around, trying to reassure Ben (who had stayed off school to help her) and pacify little Anthony, who sat grizzling on the floor dealing harshly with the few old toys brought in by passing benefactors – she said something strange, to no one in particular. ‘This can’t go on,’ she said.
‘What, Mum?’ asked Ben. ‘What did you say?’
Ben always listened out anxiously as if his life’s duty was to be on guard, waiting for something he could do nothing about, except watch for its coming.
‘Never you mind,’ she said. ‘But don’t worry. Things will get better,’ and she’d said that to him a hundred times before, and it hadn’t got better. But this time when she limped into the surgery – her knee stiffened and swelled with every hour that passed – and the doctor said grimly, ‘I suppose you fell downstairs again,’ she actually said, ‘No, I was pushed. Will you write it down, please. I’ll need some kind of record.’
The doctor wrote it down, with alacrity. The clones of Joanna May always found protectors: though it must be said that this particular clone seldom looked her best.
Gina, Queen of Swords.
And as for Alice, Queen of Cups, that morning Alice woke from a terrible dream in which she had been split into five from the waist up and four of them were eating alive, with fanged teeth, the one which was her, and when only one of her eyes was left and half her mouth, Alice woke screaming. She told the essence of her dream to the photographer who happened to be with her and he said well that’s you struggling for survival with your four big brothers, and having understood it, or thought she understood it, she felt better. Except that the one-eyed image continued to bother her, and instead of going back to sleep, she thought about it. One eyed, cock-eyed; something was wrong. She, usually so restrained, too controlled even to smile if she could possibly help it, suddenly kicked the sleeping photographer (his name was Radish; an absurd name) with a smooth, round muscular foot and shrieked, ‘I can’t stand it a moment longer. Go back to your wife’ – for of course Radish was married: her relationships usually were with married men, who could be relied upon to go away – so he did go back to her, poor man, startled, surprised and upset. That is to say, he walked the streets until ten the next morning, when he was due back home, believing Alice had thrown him out because he was married, and had the evening before explained how he couldn’t leave his wife, she being pregnant and relying upon him, and so forth. He could see it was all for the best: but it hurt, it hurt.
Alice had to take four sleeping pills before she could get back to sleep and as a consequence failed, for the first time in her life, to turn up for a 7.00 a.m. call. The studio had to send a taxi for her, and she arrived without her make-up box, and was, in fact, so thoroughly unprofessional all round they decided not to use her again. She was clearly paranoic. She claimed she was being followed by a young man carrying a child’s lunch box, that he was standing outside the studio even now, and if they looked out they’d see him – and they looked to placate her – but there was nothing unusual to be seen, just people standing about on street corners waiting for taxis, and workmen waiting for other workmen and so forth, but no one looking out for Alice. Who did she think she was? Really beautiful women are admired and loved but seldom liked. She could not afford to step out of line, and she had. Alice, Queen of Cups.