averted from the gilt-framed mirror.
On the day she had first moved in she’d thought she’d glimpsed the face of an elderly man looking out at her from the glass. The image had been brief but vivid. She’d told herself that she was overtired but hadn’t quite convinced herself. Vision it had been. Well, these things happened from time to time in one’s life and were overlooked in the name of sanity. She could only hope the vision was not prophetic: that she was looking at herself in ten years’ time. It was sadly true that as one got older the distinction between a male face and a female one lessened, but hardly to so whiskery and rheumy a degree as this. Surely there would never come a time when she, Felicity, would cease to tweeze the hairs from her nose and chin? Or perhaps some kind of ghost looked back at her? Felicity had once owned a cat who continued to haunt the house for a few weeks after its death at the age of ten, under a car: just a flick of a tail out of the corner of the eye: the sound of purring where no purring should be, the feel of fur rubbing up affectionately against her shin: these things happened. She knew well enough that the Atlantic Suite had fallen vacant upon the death of the previous occupant: why else the new bed, the frantic redecoration? If the one she replaced now appeared to her, was it in welcome or in warning?
The apparition had appeared only briefly: she had looked away at once, in shock, and forcing herself to look again, had seen only herself. That of course was bad enough. You looked into a mirror as a young woman and your reflection looked out at you as one who was old. So what, honestly, was the big deal if the one looking out had changed sex as well? The shock of the stranger in the mirror was with you every time you looked into one. So why worry?
She didn’t mention the matter to the management. As you grew older you had to be careful not to give anyone an inkling that you were not in your right mind. Incarcerated as she had once been, though briefly, during the course of a divorce, in a mental home, she had been much impressed by the difficulty of proving you were sane. If you wept because you were locked up and miserable, you were diagnosed as clinically depressed and unfit to leave. If you didn’t weep someone else would decide you were sociopathic, and a danger to the public. Those who ran institutions tended to register criticism as ingratitude at best and insanity at worst, and though the Golden Bowl was not an institution in the locking-up sense, the mere fact of being old made you vulnerable to those who might decide you and your $5,000,000 needed to be protected for your own and its good.
Better to conclude that the unexpected face in the mirror was a projection of one’s own fears rather than some occult phenomenon, and shut up about it. Miss Felicity lived in hope that death would be the final closing down of all experience: she wanted an end rather than a new beginning. All the same, throwing away Nurse Dawn’s over-sweet milk, she tried not to look in the mirror. It was too late, she was tired, she had no appetite for either shock or speculation.
Once settled in, she was sleepless. She called her granddaughter Sophia in London. Midnight here meant sevenish there. Of course she had it the wrong way round.
Sophia answered from sleep, alert at once to her grandmother’s voice. ‘Felicity? Is everything okay?’
‘Why are you always so sure something has gone wrong?’
‘Because with most people when they call you at five in the morning it’s some kind of emergency.’ Sophia whispered, up to the satellite, bounce, and down over-sibilant on the other side of the Atlantic. ‘Hang on a moment. I’m going to the other phone.’
‘Why?’ asked Felicity. ‘Is there someone with you?’
‘Don’t be absurd,’ said Sophia.
Krassner was there, of course, lank hair on the striped pillow, which coincidentally matched Felicity’s pink and white décor. Holly had declined to come over to England to be with him. Forever Tomorrow had come and gone within a couple of months: had some critical acclaim, did well in the central cities though not so well out of town, and in general was expected to earn its keep. The film was to go sooner than hoped on to video and would no doubt make up any lost ground in the fireside medium. Krassner’s reputation hadn’t exactly soared but neither had it been knocked back. He was still in a position to pick and choose his next project. He didn’t like hotels: Sophia’s apartment was within walking distance of most places he was expected to be. He loathed London taxis: they had no springs and you had to get out before you paid the driver, or they complained of back pain. Sophia found herself without the will to make any objection: his convenience had to be suited: he appreciated her, and was courteous and did not play emotional games. She knew he would not stay long. He was childishly and neatly domestic. He brought her aspirin if she had a headache, found her lost gloves, bought fruit and food from the Soho delicatessen and laid it before her; the sex was both peremptory and pleasant, though he always seemed to be thinking of something else. Her friends envied her. Harry Krassner the great director! She was between films. She was happy, poised between a current fantastic reality, and a new film fantasy to begin. Harry understood these things. He said he’d hang about until March, when she went back into the editing suite. Then he’d be going back to LA anyway. Holly was on location till then.
It was not so unusual, these days, thus to fit in the personal between the professional. Everyone she knew did it.
I took one of the duvets from the bed and crept into the living room the better to talk undisturbed. Harry, deprived of the extra weight, pulled the remaining cover around him more closely, but did not wake.
‘It’s time you did have someone with you,’ said Felicity. ‘I’m beginning to feel out on a limb. One grandchild is pathetic. There are people in this place with up to twenty descendants.’
‘I don’t think that’s a very good reason for having children,’ I replied. It occurred to me that if I set out to I could have a baby by Harry Krassner. I could simply steal one. And what with today’s new DNA tests I could ensure that he supported it for ever. Did one dare? No. Forces too large for the likes of me to cope with would be involved. Ordinary mortals should not try it on with the gods down from Mount Olympus. Such a baby would be some large hairy thing, hardly a baby at all: it would spring fully formed into the world, with nothing in it of me whatsoever. The subject of offspring of the union had not been mentioned. It was assumed I was a sensible, rational, working adult in the business. Naturally I would be taking contraceptive precautions. As naturally I was.
‘Mind you,’ said Miss Felicity, ‘I can see there’s an argument for quality rather than quantity. The more offspring there are, the plainer and duller they get, generation by generation. Virtues get diluted: things like receding jaws get magnified. And I daresay it’s as well if you don’t have children, Sophia. Our family genes are not the best.’
Oh, thank you very much, Felicity! Schizophrenia may have a strong hereditary component: it may well run in the blood, though some deny it and I would certainly like to. I did not thank Felicity for reminding me. But nor did I want
