Big Women

And she went to sleep dreaming of fish and bicycles. Brian dreamed he was on a ship, slipping further and further into cloud, waving to someone on the sunlit pier, who was Nancy.

Over in Primrose Hill, in the boys’ room, the TV mouthed its way silently on. The boys had turned off the sound and climbed into their beds, still fully clothed. They sucked their thumbs, like babies, in their unwashed, unkempt, unfed sleep.

Downstairs music was playing. The night was hot. The window had been opened. Layla had taken off her T-shirt. She wore a white bra. Now she was taking off her jeans, sitting on the sofa, easing the fabric off one leg with the foot of the other.

‘But the fact is,’ said Zoe, ‘there isn’t any great female literature. All the best stuff is written by men.’

‘Not if we define what’s great and good,’ said Layla. ‘Not any more. I’m in charge round here. You’re such a wet blanket, Zoe. I don’t want you anywhere near our publishing house, ever.’

‘I wouldn’t dare join you,’ said Zoe. ‘I’d just like to be asked. I can feel Bull’s anger. I can feel it. Male anger shakes the world.’

And it certainly did if wishing made it so. Half a mile away, Bullivant, aware of his wife and child’s absence, suspecting their whereabouts, left the marital home, a substantial house in then unfashionable Belsize Park. Bull was thin, tall, and personable; an angry ectomorph.

‘Men use their anger as a way of controlling women,’ said Alice. ‘As they see us uniting, their rage seems to know no bounds, but in truth they are frightened, scared out of their wits. What we do seems to them unnatural, dangerous, powerful enough to put out the sun, stop the planets in their revolutions. Man has the race memory of Orpheus imprinted in his being, Orpheus the poet, pursued and torn to pieces by the Maenads, the mad women who in religious ecstasy hunted down and destroyed men. Orpheus looked back to see his love, to make sure that Eurydice followed him out of hell. In other words, in rescuing her, his lover, from the dark place, he tried to understand her – and thus he lost her. Not only that, the women had their revenge. Orpheus was destroyed. Women won’t rest till they have victory; they want triumph. In their hearts they want not just equality but the death of man: they cry out for vengeance for past wrongs. This is what men fear. That the oppressed in turn will become the oppressor. So man fights now for his own survival. Becoming conscious of female anger, he ups the ante; now he can hardly endure his own rage.’

The music was loud: they weren’t really listening; and Alice scarcely understood herself, as often happens to oracles, what she was saying. Meaning flows from the Maker through the minds and mouths of Prophet or Priestess, but has only an imperfect human vessel to work through. Listening to her own words Alice felt garish and vulgar as a seaside spiritualist, and downed some more wine.

‘Maenad,’ Layla was saying. ‘We’ll call our publishing house Maenad. Let men tremble.’

‘We’ll have the suffragette colours on the spine,’ said Stephanie. ‘Purple and green.’

‘We’ll have no such thing,’ said Layla. ‘Far too murky. You have no taste, Stephanie. Leave such things to those who have.’

‘We can’t possibly be called Maenad,’ said Stephanie. ‘It’s far too threatening. We don’t want to intimidate men before we even begin.’

‘I don’t see why not,’ said Zoe.

‘Because no one would take us seriously,’ said Stephanie.

‘Money makes everything serious,’ said Layla. ‘Even women. I want angry women to buy our books. You want victim women to read them. I want women to glow with confidence and be as glossy as men: you want their moans to get a hearing.’

‘It is not so,’ said Stephanie. ‘I’m just saying I will not be involved with a publishing house called Maenad.’

‘Then what?’ asked Layla.

‘Artemis,’ said Alice. ‘Let her be called Artemis. The hunter, not the hunted: Diana of the chase, cool and fair. Lucina is her other name.’

‘Artemis is dull,’ said Layla. ‘If we can’t have Maenad, I’ll settle for Medusa. One look at her face and men turn to stone. You’re such a fucking stuffy, Stephie.’

‘And you’re so foul-mouthed, Layla, and a bully,’ said Stephanie.

‘I hate confrontation,’ said Zoe. ‘And why have you taken off all your clothes?’

Stephanie, seeing Layla all but naked, was beginning to take off her own clothes. Remember it was a warm night, the music rocked, they had all been drinking and the spirit of the Muse was upon them, and the exhilaration which came with her.

‘Because I’m a woman and not ashamed of it,’ said Layla. ‘And not afraid either. Nor should any woman be. Naked, free, unashamed. For God’s sake, Zoe, take off some clothes. Let me see what you’re made of. Is your nakedness meant for Bull alone, is that your problem? Throw off the shackles of clothing and with it the shackles of wifedom. Alice, I need to know you have a physical existence and you’re not mind alone. I have to see you before I can believe you. And let’s have Saffron naked too. Don’t you want her to grow up proud, free and female? Isn’t it for her that we do all this? I can almost see the point of having children. Daughters, anyway.’

She alarmed them, but the music was loud, and she danced, and soon they were all naked and dancing about the room, regardless of who could see their cavortings, that is to say a little cluster of neighbours and passers-by, outside, gazing in, growing every minute, whom Bull sent flying as he strode by them and up to Hamish’s front door. He too saw, and expecting no better was a little mollified to have his worst fears realised. Being right can work wonders for anyone. Outrage justified is outrage halved. Nevertheless, how he banged upon the door.

Upstairs in the bedroom Daffy and Hamish contemplated a new relationship. The lesson of the sixties was that on average one in ten of the one-night stands (or compacted relationships) so prevalent at the time would result in something that lasted. If only the humiliations inherent in a ninety per cent rejection rate, for this was what it amounted to, could be endured, true love would in the end be found, and claimed.

‘Stephie will never forgive me,’ said Daffy. ‘Because what I have done is unforgivable.’

‘My plan is’, confessed Hamish, ‘to behave so badly that Stephie will finally get the message and go. In giving her cause to hate me, I am doing her a kindness.’

‘I’m not sure it works like that, Hamish,’ said Daffy, ‘but I admire you for trying. And I never liked her anyway.’

They stopped to listen to the music down below. The base notes seemed to travel through the very fabric of the house. Thump, thump, thump – and now an extra banging noise, Bull striking the front door again and again.

And now Alice turns up the music. In the front room they do not at first realise that Bull is at the door, though they are aware of the watchers, and careless of their existence. ‘Let everyone see,’ cries Layla. ‘Tits, bum, teeth, in the privacy of our own home. Do we ask for an audience? No, we don’t. Is prurience in our hearts? No, it is not. Is it in theirs? Yes, it is. Too bad!’

Zoe danced, but with one hand over her crotch and the other arm clasping Saffron, so her breasts didn’t show.

‘What are you ashamed of, Zoe?’ demanded Layla.

‘Nothing,’ said Zoe, bravely, lying.

Bull had once casually told Zoe her breasts hung too low. For breast read essay. The man downgrades but the woman downgrades more. And the insecure man of the sixties free to talk about such things, as his forebears forbore, made a habit of publicly complaining about the form, shape and size of the bosom which bobbed along with such docility by his side. As a criticism it was unanswerable, there being no set standard of excellence, no norm, and nothing a woman could do about it anyway.

‘We’re going ahead with this, Stuffy Stephie,’ said Layla, ‘and Academic Alice. We’re going ahead with Medusa.’

‘We are,’ said Stephanie, ‘but who’s in charge?’

Stephanie’s bosom was generous and bounced. Layla’s smaller, neater, higher. Alice had almost no breasts at all.

‘All are in charge,’ said Alice, as she lumbered by, little white arms stretching, curvy as a leaping salmon.

‘Hierarchical is male,’ she chanted.

‘former structures stale

Women are not fools

So group decision rules.’

‘Supposing we make money?’ Layla enquired. ‘Who takes it?’

‘Sisters care, so sisters share,’ came back the answer.

‘Plough profits in, and reap the wind.’

‘What an uphill struggle this is going to be,’ said Layla, but she acquiesced. ‘Mount Medusa like Mount Ararat, towering above the floods of Babel.’

Layla too spoke with tongues. Saffron babbled for all of them, now wandering naked in search of her clothes. Saffron preferred to be clothed; it felt safer. There seemed to her to be at least a dozen unclothed dancing women in the room. The bang, bang, bang of male wrath was upon the door, so loud now they had to take notice. Zoe looks out of the window and shrieks.

‘It’s Bull, I told you so!’

‘Too late!’ cries Stephie.