Dangerous Relations in High Places

...This is just incidental scatter-shot Praxis (1980), a big gun all through, is almost too fratricidal to be funny Almost, not quite In one's howls of anguished recognition laughter mingles with the outrage and the pain Even in the indelible short story "Weekend," Weldon, by listing with apparent innocence the tasks that fall to Martha (wife, mother, hostess) before and during two days in the country, can drive inexorably to an ending that is so natural as to be shocking, and cosmically feminist Weldon never presents her female characters as angelic martyrs They are seldom perfect physical specimens, and their spiritual faults are often disastrous, deeply as we come to care about them Weldon's accusations can be serious Gemma, giving one of the stylized speeches that illuminate Words of Advice, tells Elsa (who, by the way, she wants her own husband to impregnate) "Wives bring cups of tea to torturers, chiefs of police, army generals and advertising executives It is expected of them, in the name of marriage, to pass no moral judgments, let alone take any positive action to dissociate themselves from behavior which in any other man but a husband would appear monstrous " Then, though, Weldon cracks her feminist whip "Mind you, they usually starve if they open their mouths -and the children too ". While a character in The President's Child does concede that women "no doubt stood oaklike in front of men's doors, similarly blotting out light," the substance of the story supports Weldon's persistent warning that women tend to be victims because of their need to let their destiny depend on men Reminded of the sudden death of Indonesian President Sukarno's mistress and her child, Isabel concludes "that when male power and prestige are at stake the lives and happiness of women and children are immaterial ". The most disturbing change brought about by Weldon's new novel is the non-literary response it evokes Instead of an awed search for the secrets of her genius, our first demand is for political secrets Fearfully, we ask whether this or anything like it really happened...

...It goes on to report the waking process of a group of neighbors, including comments such as "Good Lily'" A little later the writer asks, "Does this jowly man, this husband, this Jarvis with his stubby fingers and powdery nails (he draws with charcoal, she cannot stop him art triumphs here, as art must), his reddish, loose and freckly skin, his full lax mouth breathing indigestion-does this Jarvis, erect, rouse this pale, stiff, lovely Lily to passion, flush her cool skin with intemperate desire''" The next paragraph succinctly answers, "Ah yes, he does ". The President's Child is narrated in three ways First, it is framed by the observations of a woman who has lost her eyesight in an accident her hearing, now supernormal, can distinguish among the sounds of her neighbors' lovemaking "Well Cris dejoie 'Defense d'emitter cris de joie' as the French sometimes command, on little notices in hotel bedrooms up and down the land Isabel's cries, with Homer, were gentle and polite ". The omniscient author, taking over, tells of Isabel's beginnings in Australia with her uncaring mother Then Isabel herself, in several chapters, reveals her dangerous erotic secrets to the psychiatrist, who assures her it is all a fantasy...

...Or, to date, no sensational paternity claims...

...These questions may seem unfair to an author so talented and uncompromising Yet when a serious writer-based in England, moreover-feels impelled to depart so far from her intense concern with the lives of ordinary people, our curiosity takes on a patriotic legitimacy If villainy on that level goes on, we have a right to ask questions And this novel, while maintaining if not greatly enhancing Weldon's literary stature, may in the end bring out important political answers...

...their judgment as to methods, conclude that she is about to "break " They decide to act By November they are closing in, having chosen according to their own tastes among possible methods of producing silence Their operation has already begun on the day of the President's death...

...Dangerous Relations in High Places The President's Child By Fay Weldon Doubleday 240pp $14 95 Reviewed by Hope Hale Davis Mary Ingraham Bunting Fellow, Radcliffe Suppose a far from improbable scandal threatened Camelot in the year 1963 Suppose a small boy appeared who not only was the image of our President but quite unconsciously and habitually used his well-known gestures and mannerisms Would anybody notice (you may ask) aside from the mother, already safely married to a dutifully co-parenting husband7 The answer is Yes, if she is part of the communications world...

...Scandals usually surface, sooner or later Handsome, silver-haired Warren Harding was hardly cool in his grave before a confessional narrative appeared in which Nan Britton came out of the closet-a White House closet, to be specific, where her child, she said, had been conceived Her book's title was The President's Daughter...

...The earlier books, too, were more pointedly feminist In Weldon's 1967 novella, The Fat Woman's Joke (republished with 11 short stories in her 1981 collection, Watching Me, Watching You) a character reflects that "you have to devote a whole day to making a true curry It is all a great waste of time and energy, but it keeps women occupied, and that' s important If they had as pare hour or two they might look at their husbands and laugh, mightn't they...

...Not likely Then-and here the breath quickens-could one or more of the women have been silenced by some such method as was put in operation in the novel...

...Not that The President's Child is unfrightening But the fright is inherent in the thriller plot Thriller readers can assume that the fictional events involve exceptional people and take place in arenas far from their own firesides Not so in a typical Weldon story She has menaced us with the mediocre, chilled us slowly with the suspicion that all roads, especially the most traveled ones, lead to the abyss Down Among the Women, back in 1972, followed six quite ordinary female lives Audrey, the most likely to succeed, gives up her heady climb in her j ob to marry Paul, an idealistic potter, and live in the country A few years later Sylvia (six months pregnant, her lover gone to play rugby on the Continent) visits them She learns that Paul somehow overheated his kiln shortly after discovering that Audrey was better at ceramics They have now turned to raising chickens, at present diseased "Meanwhile the rain pours down outside, and in through broken tiles inside, the children draw on the walls with chalks and press plasticine into their hair, Paul sits in the study writing poetry, Sylvia chops fresh vegetables on the dining-room table with a patent Victorian vegetable chopper (soon the vegetable water will boil brownish pink from traces of old varnish from the table's surface...

...In Fay Weldon's novel the illicit father is not named Kennedy He is a Senator from Maryland, the Democratic Presidential candidate of some future year when JFK can be referred to in the past The references imply the similarity The candidate is relatively young, notably charismatic, projecting and inspiring idealism, vigorous seeming yet with certain physical problems and also insatiable carnal appetites kept secret from the public The story sets you wondering For this and other reasons the difference between The President's Child and Weldon's previous novels-the comic, shrewd, wickedly feminist tales that began in 1976-is both stunning and disturbing...

...Were the girls JFK pursued-and there was a wide range of types-all public-spirited, prudent, sober, selfless, unfailing takers of the pill...

...Why, we ask, after all we've heard about Kennedy's impulsive nighttime roaming, were there no public scandals in his lifetime...

...Besides the inventive structure, there are other Weldon traits When Isabel sees her marriage collapsing she has an idyllic daydream of life alone with her little son, watching him in a sunny garden She checks this abruptly "Nor was child's play a matter of laughter and peace, but the testing out of the most elaborate and often disagreeable of rituals ' Weldon comes close here to direct expression of the dark view that pervades and even forms the comedy of her earlier novels, making them, paradoxically, far more frightening...

...True, the author's hallmarks are there Weldon has always enjoyed experimenting with structure Her 1979 novel, Words of Advice, whose crisp, often cruel sentences echo Ivy Compton-Burnett, is shaped in short paragraphs separated by urgent, exclamatory pleas from one character to another Remember Me, 1976, opens with "Monday morning six o'clock Who's asleep...

...Now suppose this mother has achieved such prominence that she has her own weekly TV program Her friends are both sharp-eyed and by nature and occupation troublemakers A magazine is published in which the President's portrait happens to be followed by the first of a series called "Media Families," with a full-page picture of the mother, her husband and little boy She begins to feel overwrought, tells her psychiatrist the whole story Paranoiac, she thinks people everywhere are watching her, that she is being followed And in fact she is The President's undercover protectors, bully boys allowed to use...

...What does Weldon know...

...and outside a hundred and seventy-seven hens have not even the energy to seek shelter " (Do the hens represent down beaten wives...