What Makes Women Happy. Fay Weldon

conform to current practices, no matter what instinct says. ‘Under 16? Too bad!’ ‘Your pupil? Bad luck!’ Nature says, ‘Kill the robber, the interloper.’ Nurture says, ‘No, call the police.’ The sanction, the disapproval of the tribe, is very powerful. Exile is the worst fate of all. Without the protection of the tribe, you die.

      Creatures of the Tribe

      We do not define ourselves by our animal nature. We are more than creatures of a certain species. We are moral beings. We are ingenious and inquisitive, have intelligence, self-control and spirituality. We understand health and hormones. We develop technology to make our lives easier. We live far longer, thanks to medical science, than nature, left to its own devices, would have us do. We build complicated societies. Many of us choose not have babies, despite our bodies’ instinctive craving for them. We socialize men not to desert us; we also, these days, socialize ourselves not to need them.

      

      ‘I don’t dress to attract men,’ women will say. ‘I dress to please myself.’ But the pleasure women have in the candlelit bath before the party, the arranging and rearranging of the hair, the elbowing of other women at the half-price sale, is instinctive. It’s an overflow from courting behaviour. It’s also competitive, whether we admit it or not. ‘I am going to get the best man. Watch out, keep off!’

      To make friends is instinctive. We stick to our age groups. We cluster with the like-minded. That way lies the survival of the tribe. A woman needs friends to help her deliver the baby, to stand watch when the man’s away. But she must also be careful: other women can steal your alpha male and leave you with a beta.

      

      See in shopping, source of such pleasure, also the intimidation of rivals. ‘My Prada handbag so outdoes yours – crawl away!’ And she will, snarling.

      And if her man’s genes seem a better bet than your man’s, nab him. Nature has no morality.

      

      Any good feminist would dismiss all this as ‘biologism’ – the suggestion that women are helpless in the face of their physiology. Of course we are not, but there’s no use denying it’s at the root of a great deal of our behaviour, and indeed of our miseries. When instincts conflict with each other, when instinct conflicts with socialization, when nature and nurture pull us different ways, that’s when the trouble starts.

      

      ‘I want another éclair.’

      Agony.

      

      Well, take the easy way out. Say to yourself, ‘One’s fine, two’s not.’ No one’s asking for perfection. And anxiety is inevitable.

      A parable.

      

      Once Bitten, Twice Shy

      Picture the scene. It’s Friday night. David and Letty are round at Henry and Mara’s place, as is often the case, sharing a meal. They’re all young professionals in their late twenties, good-looking and lively as such people are. They’ve unfrozen the fish cakes, thawed the block of spinach and cream, and Henry has actually cleaned and boiled organic potatoes. After that it’s cheese, biscuits and grapes. Nothing nicer. And Mara has recently bought a proper dinner set so the plates all match.

      

      They all met at college. Now they live near each other. They’re not married, they’re partnered. But they expect and have so far received fidelity. They have all even made quasi-nuptial contracts with their partner, so should there be a split the property can be justly and fairly assigned. All agree the secret of successful relationships is total honesty.

      

      After graduation Henry and Mara took jobs with the same city firm so as to be together. Mara is turning out to be quite a highflyer. She earns more than Henry does. That’s okay. She’s bought herself a little Porsche, buzzes around. That’s fine.

      

      ‘Now I can junk up the Fiesta with auto mags, gum wrappers and Coke tins without Mara interfering,’ says Henry.

      

      Letty and David work for the same NHS hospital. She’s a radiographer; he is a medical statistician. Letty is likely to stay in her job, or one like it, until retirement, gradually working her way up the promotional ladder, such is her temperament. David is more flamboyant. He’s been offered a job at New Scientist. He’ll probably take it.

      Letty would like to get pregnant, but they’re having difficulty and Letty thinks perhaps David doesn’t really want a baby, which is why it isn’t happening.

      

      Letty does have a small secret from David. She consults a psychic, Leah, on Friday afternoons when she leaves work an hour earlier than on other days. She doesn’t tell David because she thinks he’d laugh.

      

      ‘I see you surrounded by babies,’ says Leah one day, after a leisurely gaze into her crystal ball.

      

      ‘Fat chance,’ says Letty.

      

      ‘Is your husband a tall fair man?’ asks Leah.

      

      ‘He isn’t my husband, he’s my partner,’ says Letty crossly, ‘and actually he’s rather short and dark.’

      

      Leah looks puzzled and changes the subject.

      

      But that was a couple of weeks back. This is now. Two bottles of Chilean wine with the dinner, a twist of weed which someone gave Mara for a birthday present…and which they’re not sure they’ll use. They’re happy enough as they are. Medical statisticians, in any case, do not favour the use of marijuana.

      Henry owns a single e, which someone for reasons unknown gave him when Mara bought the Porsche, saying happiness is e-shaped. He keeps it in his wallet as a kind of curiosity, a challenge to fate.

      

      ‘You’re crazy,’ says Letty, when he brings it out to show them. ‘Suppose the police stopped you? You could go to prison.’

      

      ‘I don’t think it’s illegal to possess a single tablet,’ says David. ‘Only to sell them.’

      

      He is probably right. Nobody knows for sure. Henry puts it away. It’s gone kind of greyish and dusty from too much handling, anyway, and so much observation. Ecstasy is what other people do.

      

      Mara’s mobile sings ‘Il Toreador’. Mara’s mother has been taken ill at home in Cheshire. It sounds as if she might have had a stroke. She’s only 58. The ambulance is on its way. Mara, who loves her mother dearly, decides she must drive north to be there for her. No, Mara insists, Henry isn’t to come with her. He must stay behind to hold the fort, clear the dinner, make apologies at work on Monday if it’s bad and Mara can’t get in. ‘You’d only be in the way,’ she adds. ‘You know what men are like in hospitals.’ That’s how Mara is: decisive. And now she’s on her way, thrum, thrum, out of their lives, in the Porsche.

      

      Now there are only Henry, David and Letty to finish the second bottle. David’s phone sings ‘Ode to Beauty’ as the last drop is drained. To open another bottle or not to open another bottle – that’s the discussion. Henry opens it, thus solving the problem. It’s David’s father. There’s been a break-in at the family home in Cardiff, the robbers were disturbed and now the police are there. The digital camera has gone and 180 photos of sentimental value and some jewellery and a handbag. David’s mother is traumatized and can David make it to Cardiff for the weekend?