Free Fay Weldon - Novel 23 by Rhode Island Blues (v1.1) Page A

poor trying to pick up a bargain, and still they
think well of themselves. They’ll have to wake up when the new Boston to Providence Interstate cuts through.
Forget all those woods and falling-down grand houses, it’ll be just another
commuting suburb. Property prices will soar: the Golden Bowl will sell up and
what will Felicity do then?’
     
                 ‘She’ll go to the barn ,
                And
keep herself warm,
                And
hide her head under her wing.
                Poor
thing,’
     
                 I
murmured, and then was sorry because she had no idea what I was talking about.
How could she? When I was small my mother Angel would say the rhyme if I ever
worried about the future, and really it was no consolation at all.
     
                 ‘The north wind doth blow,
                And
we shall have snow.
                And
what will poor robin do then?
                Poor thing.’
     
                 ‘Things
looked kind of permanent, at the Golden Bowl,’ I corrected myself. ‘And they
seemed very responsible. They won’t just dump her.’
                 ‘That’s
what they want you to feel,’ said Joy. ‘But the marble is only veneer and that
terrible white stone is so cheap they can hardly give it away. Why can’t she go
somewhere more ordinary? Why does she have to be so special?’
                 ‘The Ching was very positive about the
Golden Bowl,’ said Felicity, when I came down with my bag, closing the book and
rewrapping it in the piece of dark-red silk kept for the purpose. I felt such
affectation to be annoying. ‘Though it seemed to see some
kind of lawsuit in the future. Thus
the kings of former times made firm the laws through the clearly defined
penalties. What do you think that means?’
                 ‘I
have no idea,’ I said, briskly. ‘I do not see how throwing three coins in the
air six times can affect anything.’
                 ‘Darling,’
said Felicity, ‘it isn’t a question of affecting, but reflecting. It’s Jung’s
theory of Synchronicity. But I know how you hate all this imaginative stuff.’
                 I
said I’d rather not talk about it. My mother Angel had kept a copy of the I Ching on her kitchen shelf. She had no
truck with silk wrappings or respect. The black-and-red book, with its white
Chinese ideograms, was battered and marked by put-down coffee cups. ‘What’s the
big deal,’ she would say, ‘it is only like consulting a favourite uncle, some
wise old man who knows how the world works. You don’t have to take any notice
of what he says.’ She would quote from Jung’s Foreword. ‘As to the thousands of questions, doubts, and
criticisms that this singular book stirs up - I cannot answer these. The I
Ching does not offer itself with proofs
and results, it does not vaunt itself, nor is it easy to approach. Like a part
of nature, it waits to be discovered .’
                 One
day when Angel had brought home bacon and sardines from the shop, rather than
the milk we needed, because she’d thrown the coins before leaving the house and
come up with something disparaging about pigs and fishes, I’d lost my cool and
protested. ‘Why do you have to throw those stupid coins, why can’t you make up
your own mind, then at least I could have some cereal! You are a terrible
mother!’ She’d slapped my face. I kicked her ankles. She seldom resorted to
violence. When she did I forgave her: she’d get us confused: it was hard for
her to tell the difference between her and me. To rebuke me was to rebuke herself . The sudden violence meant, all the same, that the
downward slide into unreason was beginning again, and I knew it, and dreaded
the weeks to come. My violence, in retaliation, was childish, but that was okay
inasmuch as I was a child; I must have been about ten. Her white