Wise Children

by Angela Carter

  I saw my German tutor, who’d gate-crashed, looking starved, as usual. He’d got some front-office type by the arm and was haranguing him. Puck passed by and goosed me. The noise, the smoke, the smell of garlic, the blaring lights were beginning to discompose me. Not to mention the liquor. Nora waltzed by with Tony, clinging close; her eyes were closed, a dreamy smile upon her lips. I’m going to throw up, I thought. Influence of Irish. Never thrown up at a party before.

  I sat in the cool, white bathroom for a while, listening to the gently plashing gurgling water in the cistern, which soothed me. I looked at myself in the mirror and saw my eyes were bright as if I were on drugs, bright as the diamond for which, to tell the truth, I’d sold myself. My heart went thump, thump, and I felt shuddery. A cluster of retching pixies broke in upon my troubled solitude but I wasn’t fit to go back to the party and face Genghis’s damp hands, my father’s empty triumph, my sister’s mindless bliss, Irish’s contempt and the cynicism of my German tutor, which he called common sense, and though I knew in my heart he, out of all of them, knew about life, I was only a girl and did not want to believe him. I never listened to the news, in those days.

  I was feeling sorry for myself, I can tell you, so I picked about a bit in those dense, artificial woods, and the music and the voices filtered, altered, through the weird shadows and everything started to go strange. I knocked my knee on a dewdrop and as I rubbed the bruise, the foliage parted.

  I thought I’d gone mad.

  I saw my double. I saw myself, me, in my Peaseblossom costume, large as life, like looking in a mirror.

  First off, I thought it was Nora, up to something, but it put its finger to its lips, to shush me, and I got a whiff of Mitsouko and then I saw it was a replica. A hand-made, custom-built replica, a wonder of the plastic surgeon’s art.

  The trouble she’d gone to! She’d had her nose bobbed, her tits pruned, her bum elevated, she’d starved and grieved away her middle-age spread. She’d had her back molars out, giving the illusion of cheekbones. Her face was lifted up so far her ears had ended up on top of her head but, happily, the wig hid them. And after all that she looked very lifelike, I must say, if not, when I looked more closely, not all that much like me, more like a blurred photocopy or an artist’s impression, and, poor cow, you could still see the bruises under the Max Factor Pan Stik, however thickly she applied it, and the scars round where the ears should be. Ooh, it must have hurt! It was a good job for her we were about the same height, Daisy was a real shortarse.

  Before me stood the exed Mrs Khan, who loved her man so much she was prepared to turn herself into a rough copy of his beloved for his sake.

  ‘How much do you want?’ she said. I’d heard that voice so often, breathing brokenheartedly down the telephone. I was quite moved to hear it speak.

  ‘How much do I want for what?’

  ‘My husband back again.’ Her lip quivered, her eyelids fluttered. Fancy taking so much trouble over a man. My sentimental heart went right out to the old bag. Would you believe it, she really loved him.

  Then came a great noise, drowning out the party sounds – Genghis, on the megaphone, and he was paging me.

  ‘Dora! DORA!!’

  All the lutes began to play at once and, oh, my God! they played the Wedding March. If her face could have crumpled, it would have, but it was too tightly stretched.

  ‘I thought it was an engagement party,’ she wailed. ‘Not a wedding party!’

  ‘So did I!’ I said. I panicked. I didn’t think twice, I offed that diamond bruiser as if it were a burning coal. ‘Here. Shove it on your finger. You go and marry him. Go on. You’ve done it before, haven’t you? But I should get a veil on, sharpish, if I were you.’

  I don’t think she believed it, at first. She kept on turning the ring round and round in her hands, which were wrinkled and freckled on the backs, they can’t do a thing with hands, cosmetically, but there was no time to find her some gloves, let’s hope he doesn’t look until too late. She stared at me in the strangest way; I couldn’t make it out, at first, but, then, she couldn’t call her face her own, could she, and after a bit I realised she was giving me a smile.

  ‘DORA!!!’

  All around us, crystal dewdrops shook and tinkled, such was the decibellage of his cry. She gave me a quick little peck on the cheek. Then she showed a clean pair of heels, never saw a woman move so fast, not a thank-you or a backward glance – off, before I changed my mind. And that was the nearest I ever got to wedded bliss, thank you very much.

  I thought I’d better slip into something inconspicuous, for the nonce, as it wouldn’t do to have three Chance sisters walking round, under the circumstances, so I was making for the exit when I tripped over Bottom, right over, fell flat on my face.

  Bottom was dead to the world, feeling no pain, forgetful at last of the miseries and humiliations of the last few months, and wouldn’t be needing his ass’s head. I got off his plus-fours, too, and his jacket, and so I inadvertently exposed the British Empire, all that pink on his torso, not to mention the lesser breeds without the law. I didn’t want our nation’s shame out in the open for all to see so I rolled him under an imitation bush, picked off a handful of imitation leaves and covered him up. It felt like the end of something, when I did that, but there was no time to ponder as to the end of what.

  I’ve done many a quick change, in the wings, in panto, in revue, but never one as quick as this. And so it came to pass that it was as Bottom the Weaver, in plus-fours and an ass’s head, that I went to my own wedding. I was beginning to see the funny side. It isn’t every day you see yourself get married.

  It was a strange night, that night, and stranger still because I always misremember. It never seems the same, twice, each time that I remember it. I distort. Remember, though I was on my feet and compos mentis, I was still half tight, if not more so; everything seemed disembodied, distant, peculiar. The tin roof over our heads seemed to have cracked open and disappeared, somehow, because there was real, black sky above us, although the crescent moon was made of painted plywood and swung backwards and forwards with Puck perched on it, looking perky. The swing band was pizzicatoing away and Puck was vocalising with them, in that high soprano that made you think you’d died and gone to heaven:

  ‘It’s only a paper moon, sailing over a cardboard sea.

  But it wouldn’t be make-believe, if you’d believe in me . . .’

  A brisk wind made the stiff twigs rattle yet I doubt that wind came from a machine because it blew all the sweet wet dewiness of the California night through the set.

  And I no longer remember that set as a set but as a real wood, dangerous, uncomfortable, with real, steel spines on the conkers and thorns on the bushes, but looking as if it were unreal and painted, and the bewildering moonlight spilled like milk in this wood, as if Hollywood were the name of the enchanted forest where you lose yourself and find yourself, again; the wood that changes you; the wood where you go mad; the wood where the shadows live longer than you do.

  These days, half a century and more later, I might think I did not live but dreamed that night, if it wasn’t for the photos, see? This one of Bottom, being hugged by –

  There I go again! Can’t keep a story going in a straight line, can I? Drunk in charge of a narrative.

  Where was I?

  There I was, one of the crowd, among the fairies, goblins, spirits, mice, rabbits, badgers, etc. etc. etc. crowding around the brides, who all three seemed somewhat taken aback, even put out, by the spontaneous nature of the unexpected marriage ceremony and were babbling agitatedly to one another whilst minions scurried hither and thither, pushing aside the undergrowth to create more of a chapel-like atmosphere and bringing in stands of calla lilies, baby’s breath and satin bows. Some girls from wardrobe sprinted in with wedding veils and orange blossom wreaths so there was a bit of trying on of those while the three grooms consorted together in a male huddle, clearing their throats, pulling on ciggies and looking anxious.
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  Then came a diversion. A little old lady that I’d never seen before popped up out of nowhere, maybe up through a trap in the floor, as if in a thunderclap. Tony looked quite post-operative with shock. She’d got on a long black overcoat and a big black veil and she flung her arms round Tony’s neck and burst into floods of tears and Italian exclamations and so did he. The old lady came out of the clinch long enough to look daggers at Nora and then she and Tony were at it again, so that Nora blushed and cowered behind her veil. Then Tony’s Mamma – for it was she, freshly arrived from Little Italy on the train – disengaged and commenced haranguing him. Daisy, meanwhile, was taking a surreptitious swig from a silver flask while the substitute Dora had cannily covered herself up with the thickest veil and now perched upon a dewdrop, biding her time.

  Then the lutes began to play, of all things, ‘Home on the Range’.

  Clip-clop, clip-clop, clip-clop.

  Picking its way delicately among the detritus on the floor now entered the scene the biggest white horse I ever saw and, on top of it, the biggest cowpoke, in the biggest goddamned white hat and a chequered shirt with a silver star on the lapel. Genghis Khan hugged himself, he was so pleased to see the cowboy, but Melchior looked quite green. Tony’s Mamma was now upbraiding him so fiercely he did not even give the cowboy a glance, but everybody else laughed, cheered and clapped so I brayed, too, and stamped my hooves.

  Genghis Khan looked proud and shy. This impromptu cowboy wedding was his brilliant idea, it seemed. Clip-clop, went the horse, and stopped. The cowboy twanged out in a broad drawl that halted just this side of self-parody:

  ‘Which of you goshdarned sinners is the best man?’

  Puck leapt gracefully off his half-moon, assisted by a wire, and, dangling three feet in the air above us, squeaked: ‘I am!’

  ‘Got the goshdarned rings, sonny?’

  A monstrous suspicion awoke within me. I knew that voice. I knew that bulk.

  Puck displayed a handful of gold.

  ‘Let’s get the ball rolling!’

  Everything was hurting my eyes, the glitter, the bright, white light, but I knew who it was, all right, on that white horse. It was –

  ‘Let it be known to all present,’ sang out the cowboy, ‘that by the powers invested in me as sheriff of the county of Hazard, Texas, I now pronounce you men – and wives.’

  Tony’s Mamma let out a shrill scream of outrage. Too late. Three rings slipped on to three fingers. Three women pushed back three veils. I couldn’t help it, I started crying. I made a lovely bride. I looked quite radiant. I wept buckets, inside that ass’s head.

  Then Tony’s Mamma, gibbering with fury, heaved up a vat of marinara sauce and – emptied it all over Nora.

  Blood on the bridal veil! All those tomatoes, it looked like a massacre. Mamma fell backwards, clutching her heart. A coronary? Tony cried out and flung himself down beside her. Then – bang! bang! bang! Machine-gun fire? No, only a barrage of champagne corks from the buffet timed to blast off in unison as soon as the knot was tied but we only found that out afterwards, it was panic stations, at the time. All present flung themselves down on their bellies. The white horse took fright and reared up. The cowboy’s hat fell off. Red hair. I’d known it was Peregrine from the very first moment but Melchior’s jaw dropped and Daisy creased up. Then, pandemonium.

  The iris closes.

  Everything went blank.

  I knew I should have gone to comfort Nora but I couldn’t take any more, I was punch-drunk. I clawed my way out through the nightmare party into the cool, dark outdoors and blundered straight into, was almost winded by –

  ‘I say, steady on,’ she said.

  My nostrils filled with the aroma I loved best in all the world, surpassing all others – that consummate blend of gin, cabbage, stale undergarments, mothballs.

  ‘Grandma!’

  Flash! A passing paparazzo took a picture of an old lady who looked like St Pancras Station, monumental, grimy, full of Gothic detail, startled in the arms of a half-man, half-donkey.

  ‘Who the fuck are you?’ she said.

  She seemed to fill up all the space available, so there wasn’t any room left in the whole of southern California for insecurity. She had her oilcloth carrier with her, evidently her only luggage. Daisy’s white cat, who had been sleeping peacefully on a bank of wild thyme the while, now made its appearance like a cork from a bottle out of that madhouse behind us. It stopped short when it saw Grandma. It rubbed its head against her knee and started to purr. She bent down and picked it up.

  ‘I feel the need of something to cuddle,’ she said.

  She’d flown, as it turned out, the intrepid old cow. She’d pawned the grandfather clock and flown. Not all the way, of course, only from New York, but it got her here in half the time. As soon as she’d got our telegrams, she’d gone to Thomas Cook’s in Piccadilly. ‘Get me to Hollywood toot sweet.’

  We took the white cat to Brixton with us, in the end. It didn’t have any time for Daisy any more. It never showed much sign of either sex while it lived with Daisy but it turned out she never got pregnant because Daisy would lock her in a wardrobe when she came on heat and as soon as that cat arrived at Bard Road, it turned into a breeding machine. The founding mother of the Chance cat dynasty. We had her all through the blitz. Six kittens twice a year, regular, until the cat flu took her off in ’51. She was our only souvenir of Hollywood unless you count our silver-fox trenches, about which the less said the better, and a few signatures in a few books.

  So we went home with Grandma, sadder and wiser girls. Tony’s Mamma prevailed, of course. What? Her son marry a born-again virgin? Not good enough for Little Italy! Nora was so angry she never shed a tear but broke his jaw when he came round to take back the engagement ring and went on packing. Meanwhile, Genghis Khan and the imitation Dora lived happily ever after, once he’d got over the shock, and if you believe that, you’ll believe anything, but I do know, for a fact, he never got together with Daisy again and though he tried to ruin her career, she didn’t give a damn. It finished Melchior in the movies, though. Kaput. The end.

  Furthermore, it turned out, after all that, that Daisy wasn’t pregnant, just a touch of dysmenorrhoea and a twinge of indigestion. She came on with a vengeance in the middle of the wedding night and by the end of the honeymoon they were fighting like terriers so Daisy went to Mexico again and Melchior came home to London, wifeless, childless, jobless, hopeless, quenched. Then war was declared in the nick of time; he joined up pronto and turned into a war hero. The Fleet Air Arm. No, really. Who’d have thought it?

  But Hollywood was a closed book to him, thereafter.

  Daisy still sends us a card at Christmas. Not a shred of malice in her. Turn on the telly, you’ll see her. She’s worn well. She never had the looks to lose and so she never lost them. Still blonde, still with that same rude joke of a mouth. She does the matriarchs in soaps, these days. She gives good décolleté, for an octogenarian.

  Still on the go. I was always fond of Daisy.

  Four

  ET OTHER PENS dwell on guilt and misery.’ A., for Austen, Jane. Mansfield Park. I do not wish to talk about the war. Suffice to say it was no carnival, not the hostilities. No carnival.

  Yes, indeed; I have my memories, but I prefer to keep them to myself, thank you very much. Though there are some things I never can forget. The cock that used to crow, early in the morning, in Bond Street. And I saw a zebra, once, he was galloping down Camden High Street, one night, about midnight, in the blackout – the moon was up, his stripes fluoresced. I was in some garret with a Free Norwegian. And the purple flowers that would pop up on the bomb-sites almost before the ruins stopped smoking, as if to say, life goes on, even if you don’t.

  We kept a patriotic pig in the back garden, fed him with swill – potato peelings, tea leaves. Grandma loved that pig and wouldn’t listen to one word about the slaughterhouse, of course, but it ended up the funeral baked meats after Grandma copped it. She’d have
created something shocking if she’d known we’d feasted off her beloved porker, nicely roasted, as soon as we’d cremated her, but what else could we have done for the funeral tea? People had come for miles, we couldn’t give them grated cabbage. Old Nanny brought up a bushel of apples for the sauce from the Lady A., who’d retreated to the sticks in a state of disarray. No flowers, by request; we stuck to Grandma’s principles on that score, at least.

  Cyn and her kids were there but not the cabby, he was in North Africa and there he stayed, poor chap, under the desert in a box. Cyn never got over it, she faded away, after that, until the Asian flu took her off in ’49. Ex-tenants by the score – geriatric adagio dancers, antique sopranos. Neighbours. The man who ran the salad stall in Brixton market. Publicans galore. Half the cast of What? You Will? came, plus the composer’s mother, in her new black coat. I half thought that blond tenor might have heard about it on the grapevine and turned up but no such luck.

  We missed Peregrine something shocking but he was off being heroic in the Secret Service. God knows what it was but they gave him a medal for it. God knows where he was, either; we put a notice in The Times and there was a knock at the door, a jeep, an army driver, a dozen crates of crème de menthe, a barrel of Guinness, so the mourners all went home with grease on their chins and strong drink on their breath and that was how Peregrine paid his respects to Grandma.

  Once we’d burned the bones – because that pig met its fate strictly on the q.t., it was a hanging matter, to slaughter your own meat in wartime – Nora and I sat down right here, in the breakfast room, in these very leather armchairs, and listened to the silence in that long, narrow house where we would live alone, in future, and had a good cry, just the two of us, for this was childhood’s end with a vengeance and we were truly on our own, now, good and proper.

  We hadn’t just lost Grandma, either. She was the only witness of the day our mother died when we were born, and she took with her the last living memory of that ghost without a face. All our childhood went with her into oblivion, so we were bereft both of her in person and of a good deal of ourselves, too, and when we remembered how we’d mocked her nakedness in her old age we were ashamed.