Once again the acclaimed British author of Rhode Island Blues and Big Girls Don't Cry draws us into an unmistakably wild, rollicking tale full of her trademark satirical wit and sharp observation. Grace McNab Salt is the recently divorced wife of the millionaire Barley Salt, who has married Doris Dubois, the sexy, young host of TV's Artsworld Extra. The novel opens with Grace emerging from jail where she was sent for trying to run Doris over with her Jaguar in a supermarket parking lot in an act of revenge. All three attend a London charity ball, and in typical Weldon fashion the meeting turns everyone's lives upside down. Weldon's world is one of relationships: torrid affairs, lovers' spite, and revenge. Full of clever women, breathless romance, insistent desires, and even a dose of the supernatural, The Bulgari Connection is a boisterously witty and stylish novel. The publication of The Bulgari Connection created a whirl of controversy when a front-page New York Times article revealed that Weldon received an undisclosed sum of money from the famous Italian jeweler for a prominent place in her novel. The debate about the legitimacy of commercially sponsored literature has been heating up ever since.
Excerpt
?1?
Doris Dubois is twenty-three years younger than I am. She is slimmerthan I am, and more clever. She has a degree in economics,and hosts a TV arts programme. She lives in a big house with aswimming pool at the end of a country lane. It used to be mine.She has servants and a metal security gate which glides open whenher little Mercedes draws near. I tried to kill her once, but failed.
When Doris Dubois comes into a room all heads turn: she has asunny disposition and perfect teeth. She smiles a lot and mostpeople find themselves returning the smile. If I did not hate herI expect I would quite like her. She is, after all, the nation's sweetheart.My husband loves her, and can see no fault in her. He buysher jewels.
The swimming pool is covered, warmed, and flanked by marbletiles and can be used summer and winter. Trees and shrubs incontainers have been placed all around the pool area. In photographs? and the press come often to see how Doris Duboislives ? the pool seems to exist in a mountain grotto. The waterhas to be cleaned of leaves more often than any pool of mine everdid. But who's counting cost?
Doris Dubois swims in her pool every morning, and twice aweek my ex-husband Barley dives in to swim beside her. I havehad them watched by detectives. After their swim servants comeand offer warmed white towels into which they snuggle with littlecries of joy. I have heard these cries on tape, as well as othermore important, more profound, less social cries, those noisesmen and woman make when they abandon rationality and throwin their lot with nature. ?Cris dejouissance?, the French call them.Défense d'émettre des cris dejouissance, I read once on a bedroomwall in a French hotel when Barley and I were in our heyday, andwent on our humble holidays so happily together. In the dayswhen we thought love would last forever, when we were poor,when joy was on the agenda.
Défense d'émettre des cris de jouissance. They had a hope!
Barley has aged better than I have. I smoked and drank and lay inthe sun during the years of our happiness, on this Riviera andthat, and my skin has dried out dreadfully and the doctor will notlet me take what he calls artificial hormones. I get them throughthe Internet but do not tell either my doctor or my psychoanalystthis. The former would warn me against them and the latterwould tell me to find my inner self before attending to the outer.Sometimes I worry about the dosage I take, but not often. I haveother things to worry about.
?2?
"It's too bad," said Doris to Barley as they lay beside oneanother in a tumbled pile of white cotton and lace bedclothes,in a vast bed whose elegant top and tail had beendesigned, even though not made, by the great Giacomettihimself, "that that murderess should still be using yourname."
"Murderess might be too strong," said Barley amiably,
"Murderous, was how the judge described her"
"The difference is only marginal," said Doris. "The fact that I amstill alive is due to me and not to her. My foot still hurts. I thinkyou should get your lawyers on to it. It's absurd that after divorcewomen should be allowed to keep their husband's name. Theyshould revert to the one they had before they married: theyshould cut their losses and start over. Otherwise the mistakes ofone's youth ? like marriage to the wrong person ? can hangaround to haunt you forever. I speak for her sake, as well as myown, and indeed yours. While she calls herself Salt she is boundto attract headlines."
"It seems a little hard to take away Gracie's name" said Barley. "Iwas the only claim to fame she ever had. She was a schoolgirlwhen I met her: a schoolgirl she remained, at heart. A man suchas myself needs a little sophistication in his partner."
"I hate it when you call her Gracie," said Doris. "I want you onlyever to refer to her as your ex-wife."
Grace Salt had started life as Dorothy Grace McNab, but Barleyhad preferred Grace to Dorothy, Dorothy reminding him of JudyGarland in The Wizard of Oz, so Grace she had become.
Doris had not started life as Doris Dubois but as Doris Zoac, rightdown there at the end of the alphabet where no-one looks exceptthe taxman, and had changed it by deed-poll the better to furtherher media ambitions. She had never got round to telling Barleythis, and the longer she put it off the harder it got to say.
"It seems a little hard to take my ex-wife's name away," saidBarley, obediently. He, who exercised power over so many, tookparticular pleasure in being bossed around by Doris. They bothgiggled a little, from the sheer naughtiness of it all, of being happy.
Doris Dubois wore her jewellery to bed, for Barley. He lovedthat. He loved not just the sight of it, white gold and pavé diamonds,cold metal intricately, beautifully worked, lain heavilyagainst the cool, moist flesh of wrist and throat, but he lovedthe feel of it. Last night as his hand had strayed over herbreasts, their nipples peaked in reassuring response, and up tofeel the tenderness of her mouth, his fingers had encounteredthe smooth, hard edge of metal, and his whole body had beenstartled into instant response. Sometimes Barley was mildlyworried by the people who said to him, vulgarly, "Oh well,what does age matter, there's always Viagra when the newnesswears off," but eighteen months on there was no sign of itdoing so. Doris kept Barley young: and the gifts he gave herwere by the very nature of their giving returned ? not by wayof bribe or payment, but as tokens of simple adoration. Barleywas fifty-eight years old, and Doris was thirty-two.
?3?
I must face the truth about Doris Dubois. She reflects fame andstatus on my husband, as he does on her, and he cannot resist it.What chance have I? She is the darling of the media: now they arean item Barley has his picture in Hello! and Harper's and Queen,and a fine handsome couple they make. She with her bosomhanging out of Versace and her throat so white and elegant,ringed with bright jewels: he with his thick grey hair, broadshoulders and strong industrial jaw. When Barley was with me henever rose above The Developers' and Builders' Bulletin, althoughonce he did make the cover. But he is ambitious: it was notenough for him: he can't stay still. It was Hello! or bust.
Barley is one of those well-built men with graven features whorise to positions of great power: his jaw has grown squarerthrough the years. Even his hair has stayed thick as it greys. He isa master of men, and it shows. If the world is ever to see thecloning of humans, these are the pair that should be chosen tomake it a better place. I said as much to my psychotherapist, DrJamie Doom, the other day and he congratulated me on myinsight.
Twelve months after our parting, six months after our divorce, Ihave stopped trying to convince myself and others that in losingBarley I have lost nothing of value. I no longer describe him toothers, after the vulgar manner of so many deserted spouses, asselfish, bullying, mean, unreasonable, hopelessly neurotic, eveninsane. He is none of these things. Barley, like Doris, is kind, goodand perceptive, clever and handsome, and capable of great love.It's just that he gives it to her, not me.
?4?
"The fact is that your ex-wife does not deserve your name," saidDoris after breakfast. Once she got an idea into her head it tendedto stay there. "She is violent and aggressive and full of hate andspite."
They ate on the terrace, in the early sun. Doris had to be at thestudio by ten, and Barley at a meeting of the Confederation ofBritish Industry likewise. Doris's Philippine maid Maria serveddecaff and fruit, calories carefully weighed and counted byDoris's nutritionist. Barley's chauffeur Ross would have a flaskof real coffee and a bacon sandwich ready in the back of the carwhen he turned up to collect Barley.
"I hear you" said Barley, whose lawyer had told him it would lookbetter in the divorce courts if he could claim to have seen a counsellor.The law these days favoured those who put in an appearanceof wanting to save their marriages, and the suggestion of a basicincompatibility with Grace would be more helpful to his case thanthe simple wanting to go off with Doris Dubois, a younger woman.As ever, Barley had turned time otherwise wasted to good account,and was now adept at the language of understanding and compassion."Best to let it out. And I feel for your distress. But you didemerge from the incident more or less undamaged."
And indeed, Doris Dubois was the least damaged creature he hadever seen, let alone taken to bed: long lean tanned limbs; centredby the kind of full, well nippled bosom most skinny womenachieve only after implants, but for Doris a blessing of birth ? herbreasts still retaining the warm consoling texture of human flesh.Her mouth curved sweetly: she had wide blue eyes into whichBarley could stare without embarrassment. Doris had developedthe media art of paying attention to something else altogetherwhile looking and smiling and nodding; he could hold her eyewithout actually holding it, as it were, and he found that liberating.Intense love can so often have its own embarrassments. Shewas widely informed: he liked that. He had spent too much of hislife with Gracie, who never read a novel and whose idea of a conversationwas "yes, dear", and "what did you say, dear?" and "wherewere you last night?", who lay passively and compliantly on herback during sex. He had forgotten what the life of the mind waslike. Most women, he had noticed, whose looks assure them ofacceptance and approval from infancy, neglected their intelligenceand sensitivities, as did Grace ? but not so Doris: Doris could holdher own at any dinner party in the land. She was perhaps a littlehumourless, but like a Persian rug of great quality, there must besome flaw in the design, or else God will be offended.
"All that aside" observed Doris Dubois, "? and not that I want tomarry you, marriage being such an old-fashioned institution, and Iwould always rather be known as Doris Dubois, rather than DorisSalt, I couldn't bear to be so near the end of the alphabet ? nevertheless,if I were to be your legal married wife, and not just your partner,I would not want there to be another Mrs Salt around."
Barley Salt felt his heart contract with joy. He had done the besthe could with the cards dealt to him at birth ? but there were stilldinner tables at which he felt inadequate, at which he felt peoplelaughed at him, for the rude, crude fellow he had been born. Ifthe conversation turned to opera, or literature, or art, he felt at aloss. To be actually married to Doris Dubois, so at ease in all theseareas of life, would be triumph indeed. And she, for all her disclaimers,had brought the matter up, not he.
?5?
What is this? A letter through the post from Barley's solicitors? Hewants to deny me my name? He wants to rob me of my very self? Imust no longer be Grace Salt? Extra alimony offered ? £500 a week? if I revert to my maiden name? (At least he bribes, he doesn'tthreaten.) I must hurl myself back to my unmarried state and beseventeen again and that long lost creature Grace McNab? I can'tremember who she was. How can this be, what have I done, am Iso worthless that he can't endure me to have so much as a pastthat's linked with his? I must wink out of existence altogether?
Well, I can understand it. Look at me! Described as murderous bythe judge, labelled a would-be murderer: Barley must feel he isentitled to protect himself and her. Or course he wishes to obliterateme. What am I but an hysterical woman who once performeda senseless and gratuitous act of violence ? I quote the Judge ? anddeserve no better. A man may seek the authenticity of his feelings,as our one-time marriage counsellor described my husband's lovefor Doris Dubois, but a woman must not.
?Judge Rubs Salt into Grace's Wounds,? said the headlines. ?LovesickDrama of Fat-Cat Spouse,? and so on. ?TV Culture Queen Stole MyMan, alleges Salt Wife?. A hundred faces crowding in on me withphallic lenses and popping bulbs as they hurried me, distraughtand disgraced, blanket over my head, to the police cells. By thetime I emerged, greyer and fatter by a year and a quarter, themedia had lost interest; only a couple of film crews, some localjournalists, and a woman's group wanting a donation were waiting.The authorities kindly let me out the back entrance, so thateven my lawyer missed me, and I had to make my own wayhome. Or what I now was to call home: Tavington Court, a greatblock of apartments in Victorian red brick behind the BritishMuseum, where sad divorcees hide, and little old ladies gratefulfor the protection of the resident porter, and widows living theirleftover lives in genteel loneliness. It takes up a whole street andthose who have grandchildren to visit are lucky. I am not solucky. My son Carmichael is not likely to oblige.
All my conversations were with lawyers and accountants and allthey seemed to want me to think about was the prospect of ageand infirmity and death in the future.
I was victorious, but only to live my leftover life alone. And I didn'tsuppose Carmichael wanted me out in Sydney ? ?to be nearmy son? ? embarrassing him.
The media have lost interest in me altogether now. They arehappy for Barley and Doris's happiness. They were married lastweek. The wedding was in Hello!, and I hear put the circulationup no end. My plight becomes yesterday's fish and chip wrappings.As Doris would be the first to point out, how that datesme! Fish and chips are not eaten from newsprint now, the EECwould never allow it, but if sold at all, out of recyclable polyethylenecartons. I don't like eating alone in restaurants, sitting therewith my book, feeling the pity of others. It is quite astonishinghow few people I know. My married life revolved around Barley:the people we knew us as a couple. I was just the tag-along. Theyfeel sorry for me now and when the kind people, as I think ofthem, do ask me round, it is to lunch not dinner and we normallyeat in the kitchen. It is better than nothing.
I have lost the art of conversation. Once I was quite good at it,but after years of living with Barley who always waxed so noisyand indignant if ever I said anything more than yes dear, nodear, I learned the prudence of silence, and in the end he tookme for a fool. And there certainly wasn't much snappy dialoguein prison and for awhile after I came out I was struck quitedumb, and had to search for words with which to express mythoughts at all.
Doris Dubois is anything but dumb. I do not watch her show: itis too painful for me: but sometimes flicking through the channelsI forget and come across her, fronting her highly successfulArtsworld Extra. It's on twice a week. Nine o-clock peak timeThursdays. Late night repeat, Mondays. Her perfect figure, thebouncy, short cropped hair, her startling smile, the ease withwhich she handles ideas, the evident intelligence, the breadth ofinformation, the flying sound bites ? the worst you can say abouther is that she looks like a Captain of Hockey on speed. And why,unless you have special reason, should you say the worst of her?Even I have trouble doing so.
Doris Dubois now has Barley's name ? though I notice she doesn'teven bother to use it ? as well as his love, his time, his attentionand his money. I have the couple followed from time to timeby a detective, one Harry Bountiful. What a splendid name! Ichose him because of it, flicking through the Yellow Pages. Dorisand Barley will meet up in Aspreys in Bond Street, then drift overto Gucci's where Barley will perhaps buy a pair of loafers, the betterto walk through St. James's Park and feed the ducks. Thenperhaps they will call in at Apsley House, address No. 1, London,built for the Duke of Wellington, the one who defeatedNapoleon. There they will see the fine equestrian painting of theDuke by Goya. If they look hard they will see the faint shadow ofa tricolor hat beginning to show through the surface paint. Theportrait was originally of ?King? Joseph Bonaparte of Spain,Napoleon's brother. But the Duke and his victorious troops wereat the gates of the Madrid, the usurper had fled, so Goya prudentlypainted a new head on the body, and sold it to the Duke.An artist has to live. Why waste a perfectly good horse?
Or perhaps Barley and Doris, hand in hand, will drift off toBulgari in Sloane Street, to stare at some ruby imbedded steel circletfor her slim arm, wondering whether they will or whetherthey won't, but mostly that they will. Because she deserves it.Because she is her. They will stroll along to South Ken., and theVictoria and Albert Museum to study, say, the Sèvres dinner service(1848) that was once Queen Victoria's own, and Doris willexplain its fineness to him, and the curator will even let themhandle the settings. They are an important couple, and she hasfriends in high cultural places.
It is thanks to his new wife that Barley can now judge the qualityeven of the plates set before him, tell china from pottery, andunderstand how the two can never merge. He knows now wherecamp begins and crassness stops. Doris is Barley's living FineArts programme. They are in love; perhaps they give more timeand attention to each other than either can spare. Her ratingsdrop just a little: his dividends falter. Because meanwhile, asHarry Bountiful puts it, the real world goes on. But this couple,newly discovered to one another, is blessed. Strokes of good fortunecome their way. Last week Doris got five numbers in thelottery and won twelve hundred pounds. Barley's latest officeblock won an architectural prize. Perhaps Doris was close to oneof the judges.
I tried to explain to the Court that it was not that I hated Doris,just that I wanted Barley to realise the intensity of my distress anddesperation.
"You really thought" enquired Judge Tobias Longue, "that if youran down your husband's mistress in a carpark he would be sorryfor you? Then you have lived a long time and don't know menvery well. Good Lord, woman, he will have every excuse now forleaving you. You played into his hands." Tobias Longue was oneof those lawyers who write thrillers, and had only recently beenpromoted to the bench. He had an eye and an ear for drama. Hewas both on my side, and not. There had been no witnesses. Itwas Doris's word against mine. At the very worst, I told theCourt, Doris had wrenched her ankle as she leapt out of the wayof my Jaguar: but see how now she limped into court, pale andgrave and prattling forgiveness.
"She's not in her right mind" Doris told Judge Tobias Longue."I caught a glimpse of her face through the windscreen, her teethbared, her mad eyes staring, just as the wheel went over my foot,and I felt this terrible pain and passed out. My fear as I fell wasthat she'd reverse back over me and crush me to death beneaththat heavy car. She needs treatment, not punishment. She isunbalanced to the point of paranoia, an obsessive-compulsive.She suffers from pathological jealousy. I first met her husbandwhen he appeared on my cultural review show: we are involvedas colleagues in the setting up of a Cable TV company. But that'sall there is to it: good heavens, Barley Salt is a quarter of a centuryolder than I am, and I regard him as a father."
She spoke eloquently and persuasively, as was her trade. I stumbledthrough my few words. Of course she was believed.
Later she said to the Press, "Poor Mrs Salt. I'm afraid shebelongs to the past, one of those prurient women who assumethat if a man and a woman are alone in a room together, somethingsexual's bound to happen." The Press forgot conveniently,when writing up the wedding, that at the time of the trial Barleyand Doris vehemently denied any romantic involvement. Ofcourse there was, starting from the very beginning in the GreenRoom, after everyone else had gone home, after she'd had himon her show, talking about the necessity of sponsorship of thearts by big business. I had watched that interview as a proudwife should, and seen the way she looked at him, the way hisbody inclined towards hers. He didn't come home until earlymorning, and when he got into bed he smelt of TV studios, staticelectricity, sex and something else sickly and evil I couldn'tidentify.
The prosecution asked for five years, I got three and served onlyfifteen months. In the event the Judge was less vindictive thananyone else around. At least he acknowledged the provocation.
He said in his summing up it was a silly attempt with a car outsidea supermarket and that Doris had jumped easily enoughout of the way. And it's true, she has perfect knees, being onlythirty-three years old. At fifty-five, I already have one that isarthritic, though I didn't let it stand in my way when I put theaccelerator down. The pain in the heart is always worse than theone in the body.
It has taken me a year with Dr Jamie Doom the TV psychotherapist? he does take a few patients privately ? to be able to face thefacts of the matter. Doris Dubois is a superior human being tomyself in every way and no sane man would not prefer her to me, inbed or out of it, as wife, partner or mistress. I face myself in the mirror,I look at my fading eyes and know that they have seen too much,and that there is no brightening them. What ages us is experience:there can be no forgetfulness.
"But aren't you angry?" asks Dr Jamie Doom, "You must try to findyour anger." But I can't.
Perhaps God will reward me for having come to terms, as Dr Doomputs it, with my distress. I am sure no-one else will. This evening Iam going to a party given by a pair of the kind ones, Lady JulietRandom and her husband Sir Ronald. It's a charity auction in aid of?Lost Children Somewhere?. I am invited not just out of kindness butbecause I might be able to give a hundred pounds or so to LadyJuliet's cause. Nothing compared to the thousands others give ? I amonly fifth or sixth division wealth now that I live on alimony ? butno doubt still worth the champagne and canapés which I'll consume.At least I don't have to worry about meeting Doris and Barley at SirRonald's: they more in more elevated artistic and political circlesnow. The parties they go to are attended by Arts Ministries, LeisureGurus, Museum Moguls, Dotcom-Millionaires, Monarchs of theBBC and so forth. I tell you what, every now and then I could takeBarley by surprise and make him laugh. I think Doris can do everythingfor Barley but that. She is too intent on pleasuring herself andhim to have time for much mirth. But I daresay with age even mylaughter, which once Barley loved, will turn into a witch's cackle.
Continues...
Excerpted from The Bulgari Connectionby Fay Weldon Copyright © 2002 by Fay Weldon. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Copyright © 2002 Fay Weldon
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