The President’s Child. Fay Weldon

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      On Sunday afternoons, when the world pauses and waits for the next great event, when the streets are empty and unnaturally still and the weight of obligation hangs over the land, the residents of Wincaster Row come calling on me. They come out of kindness because I am blind; and out of kindness to them, in the desolation of Sunday afternoon, I gather past and present together and tell them stories.

      Today I tell them about Isabel, who fell in love, and in so doing made the whole world falter and take a different turning.

      Pit-pat, spitter-spat. Listen! How the rain blows against the window-pane. Easy to feel, on such a day and in such a place, that great events are nothing to do with us, that we are cut off from sources of worldly energy, that people and politics are entirely separate; that the mainstream of life is, in fact, a long way off.

      ‘It isn’t so,’ I tell them. ‘Isabel lived next door. The river flows at the end of the garden; what’s more, it’s deep, wide, muddy and tricky: not the tranquil flowing stream you might hope for. Isabel almost drowned!’

      Pit-pat, spitter-spat. In the end we will all know more than we did before. Shouldn’t that be enough to base a life upon?

      The women of Wincaster Row don’t agree, of course. The pursuit of knowledge clearly isn’t enough for them. They want happiness, love, sex, good dinners, money, consumer durables, admiration, laughing children and goodness knows what else besides. They still live in the real world, and not in their heads.

      We are all women today. Oliver the architect from No. 13 couldn’t come, nor Ivor the alcoholic from No. 17. They had domestic commitments. So we have earth-mother Jennifer from No. 9, who is pregnant yet again; and cross Hilary, in serviceable jeans and clumpy boots, from No. 11; and pretty, clever little Hope from No. 25, fidgety for lack of sexual excitement, which she needs, or so Hilary complains, as a heroin addict needs a fix.

      There are no even numbers in Wincaster Row. The demolition men got to that side of the street before the conservation society were able to step in – or rather lie down in the path of bulldozers. Hilary still limps, on a wet day, and now, listening to me, she rubs her

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