The Bulgari Connection by Fay Weldon

her out.
    The last statement surprised him. What had Grace got to do with it? He had not imagined, especially after the murder attempt, that Doris felt even residual guilt about living in Grace’s old house. A lot of things had gone wrong, but when you considered the mountain tribesmen Doris insisted on employing, through an extremely dubious building firm who got its workers free through a government work experience scheme, for some reason to do with her social conscience and her reputation with the public, it didn’t require a curse from Grace to make things go wrong. Besides, he had reason to believe, from what Ross told him, that Grace was happy again. He was greatly relieved, if also surprised, to find himself acutely jealous. He had not expected this from himself.
    He could not give in to pointless emotions. Life was essentially simple. Women failed to get to the top not because of male prejudice but because they refused to treat it as simple. They looked for emotional complications, and found them. Any male executive of forty had a wife and children at home. His female equivalent seldom did. Why? She’d wasted too much time and energy being female, preening and combing in front of mirrors, talking about her feelings, and five days out of every twenty-eight grasping her stomach and groaning. How did they expect to get to the top, let alone stay there? Not their fault, and certainly not man’s: God’s, if anyone’s. Doris did not believe in God. We appeared on this earth, according to her, and then ran around a bit looking after oneself, and then winked out. And that was that. He, Barley, thought there was probably a bit more to it than that. Odd that Doris then had a concept of curses and he did not.
    In the meantime, he, Barley Salt, could not afford to give way to unreasonable emotions such as sexual jealousy, added to the conviction that this Walter Wells was after Grace’s money since he could not be after her body, Grace being past all that. Two mutually exclusive emotions. It would take up too much time trying to sort them out. He needed to focus his attention on the fact that Billyboy Justice and Co. were suddenly breathing down his neck over the Edinburgh site; they’d been caught mooting it about in government circles that it would do for some kind of chemical plant the government had to provide under international law, and quickly. Out of town, and on the estuary for contaminated shipping. He hadn’t liked the fact that Billyboy had been at the Randoms’. Sir Ron put it about that Billyboy fancied Juliet, and that his heart bled for Little Children, Everywhere, but there was probably more to it than that. Government attitudes these days switched with the latest poll: they’d been pretty much static on environment-friendly and anti-industry issues lately, and pro-development – big high-profile developments, at any rate – but they could easily swing back to pro-science-and-industry policies, and any incipient arts complex might get scuppered.
    The odds, once ninety-nine out of a hundred, were down to eighty. Not good at all. Not the kind of margin he felt safe with; he remembered the horrible meltdown when Carmichael was small and the house had had to go into Gracie’s name. She’d given it back without a murmur. He couldn’t quite see Doris doing that. Not that there was going to be much house left, the way things were going.
    In the meantime here was Doris quivering and moaning and weeping in his arms. He’d thrown in his life with Doris, he would see it through. That was that.
    â€˜It’s my birthday next week,’ she was moaning. ‘You know how I hate birthdays. Everything going downhill, I bet you haven’t even planned a celebration, not even a surprise party, why can’t this horrible building work ever be finished, it’s all Grace’s fault, she never looked after a thing and God knows she never had anything to