Wise Children

by Angela Carter

  I picked a cushion off one of the gilt chairs and shook it. Broken glass fell out. They were all ignoring us with elaborate politeness, except for Nora, who winked, so nobody was looking when I plumped up that cushion and set that old crown nicely out upon it. Where were the baroque trumpeters now that I needed a fanfare? But when I said:

  ‘Father, look what I’ve found!’ and processed towards him bearing aloft my cushion, Perry began to imitate a drumroll to perfection: ‘Rub-a-dub-a-dub-a-dub.’ Nora, sitting on his knee, looked sentimental. Daisy smacked away the wandering hand her aged husband had, from force of habit, placed in her bosom and adopted a reverential air. Everybody sat with drumsticks suspended halfway to their mouths as Perry brought the imaginary drumroll to a magnificent conclusion and said, in a round, rich, mahogany-coloured voice well-suited to the occasion:

  ‘Prince of players! Reclaim your crown!’

  I stood up on tiptoe. I placed the crown on his long, grey hair. Sometimes you know it’s sentimental and sometimes you just don’t care. I was a touch long in the tooth for Cordelia but there you are.

  ‘My princesses,’ he said. ‘My two dancing princesses.’ No, he did. Really! If only our mother could have been there to see. But – which mother? Pretty Kitty? Grandma? That’s a problem. I don’t know what Pretty Kitty might have said, but Grandma would have managed something acid. The Lady A. looked pleased. My Lady Margarine looked pissed off. The darling buds looked chastened.

  Yet Nora and I were well content. We’d finally wormed our way into the heart of the family we’d always wanted to be part of. They’d asked us on the stage and let us join in, legit. at last. There was a house we all had in common and it was called, the past, even though we’d lived in different rooms. Then Perry, wearing his conjuring smile, said:

  ‘Look in my pocket, Nora.’

  Her lipstick was all over the place because she’d been at the chicken, her hair was coming down, she looked ribald. I daresay I did, too.

  ‘In your pocket, eh?’ she said, richly. She had a feel. Then her face changed. I’d never seen her look like that before, not in all the years we’ve been together. She looked as if she were about to fall in love, was teetering on the brink – but more so. As if about to fall in love terminally, once and for all, as if she’d met the perfect stranger.

  ‘Oh, Perry!’ She expelled a sigh and pulled it out.

  Brown as a quail, round as an egg, sleepy as a pear. I’ll never know how he got it in his pocket.

  ‘Look in the other one, Dora.’

  One each. They were twins, of course, three months old, by the look of them.

  ‘Oooh, Perry!’ said Nora. ‘Just what I always wanted.’

  ‘Gareth’s,’ said Peregrine to Melchior. So it turned out the Hazard dynasty wasn’t at its last gasp at all but was bursting out in every direction and, to add to the hypothetical, disputed, absent father that was such a feature of our history, now you could add a holy father, too. Put it down to liberation theology.

  Margarine grabbed hold of Perry: have you seen him? How is he? Who is the mother? Where is she?

  But who she was or where they both were do not belong to the world of comedy. Perry told us, of course, because we were family, but I don’t propose to tell you, not now, when the barren heath was bloomed, the fire that was almost out sprung back to life and Nora a mother at last at seventy-five years old and all laughter, forgiveness, generosity, reconciliation.

  Yes.

  Hard to swallow, huh?

  Well, you might have known what you were about to let yourself in for when you let Dora Chance in her ratty old fur and poster paint, her orange (Persian Melon) toenails sticking out of her snakeskin peep-toes, reeking of liquor, accost you in the Coach and Horses and let her tell you a tale.

  I’ve got a tale and a half to tell, all right!

  But, truthfully, these glorious pauses do, sometimes, occur in the discordant but complementary narratives of our lives and if you choose to stop the story there, at such a pause, and refuse to take it any further, then you can call it a happy ending.

  There was a full moon out over Regent’s Park when we piled into Saskia’s van, that she’d brought the food in; the inside still smelled of rosemary. Such was the power of Peregrine’s personality that nobody, not even Margarine, the official grandmother, nor better yet, Old Nanny, dreamed for one moment of contesting Nora’s possession of the newest Hazard twins who, as she found out when she changed their nappies, she let out a squawk – were boy and girl, a new thing in our family.

  Not only that. Margarine went personally up to the attic to fetch us a double pram, the one that Tristram and Gareth had when they were babies, so our babies would ride home like royalty, and we planned to stop off at the all-night Boots in Piccadilly for formula and bottles.

  Perry took Tristram to one side and asked him, did he want to go back to South America with him to help look for Gareth. Tristram took a big gulp and said, ‘Yes.’ So that’s what’s going to become of Tristram. Perhaps he will come back fit to be a father and take up his responsibilities; and perhaps not. Margarine and Melchior looked scared and proud; they loved him. I am not sure if this is a happy ending. I cross my fingers.

  The chauffeur came and Daisy and he between them carried Puck down to Daisy’s limo, he was well away, borne up and elsewhere on the lovely wind of his own voice.

  While teeing off a game of golf

  I may make a play for the caddy –

  Off he went downstairs; when I went to open the window to let the fug out, they were loading him into the car and he was still singing:

  ‘. . . but my heart belongs to daddy.’

  ‘Oh, very apt,’ said Nora, but I thought it was bad taste.

  The Lady A. nodded off in her wheelchair while we were fixing up the pram business because she was getting very frail, poor old thing, and the evening had tired her out, no wonder, so Perry carried her up to the spare room in his arms, a very touching sight to see. Saskia said, did we need a lift and I was sufficiently overcome by the prevailing spirit of goodwill that I said, take us as far as the Elephant, we’ll walk from there, because it’s a lovely night and we could do with a walk, clear our heads.

  Margarine was going round snuffing out the candles when we bade them our farewells and she kissed the babies and made as if about to kiss us, too, but thought better of it and backed off. The jury is still out on the question of her boys’ paternity. But in my heart I think, not. Not her and Perry. No way. He must have known someone else in Gunter Grove. Melchior with his crown still on, though much askew by now, came to the window to wave and then we got into the back of the van along with several plastic vats of salad which Saskia had forgotten to serve up, so much had been going on.

  Tristram was staying in his own old room for the night, to his mother’s soft, glowing satisfaction, and Saskia had sufficient savvy to know when not to press him but I could tell by the look in her eyes that if we all stopped short at this point it wouldn’t be a happy ending for her, no, sir! She hadn’t finished with the boy, by any means, so I thought, the sooner he gets off to Amazonia, the better.

  Yet, no matter how fragile or brief it might be, there was a truce that night between the Chance girls and the Hazard sisters. We never said one word about the past, the taunts, the farmhouse, the chicanery, the staircase. Imogen sat in the front, next to Saskia, with the fishbowl on her knee. She looked content enough but she was always a strange one. Now and then she did those goldfish movements with her mouth.

  ‘What are you saying?’ Saskia asked her.

  ‘Goldie say: “Goodnight! God bless!”’ she said. I felt nauseous. Truce! I reminded myself. Truce!

  Nora pushed the pram. I carried the Boots’ bag. Gawd, it was heavy. A heart-shaped glow appeared to surround our Nora in the night but you mustn’t go away thinking I wasn’t pleased about our babies, too.

  But coming so late in our lives and so unexpectedly . . .

  ‘What shall we do about
the cats, Nora?’

  ‘I thought we might clear out Grandma’s old room for a nursery,’ said Nora, ignoring my question. ‘Get rid of all that junk. Get a bloke in to paint it all white, with maybe a Beatrix Potter frieze. What do you think?’

  ‘We won’t be able to go out in the evenings, Nora.’

  ‘You can go out, dear,’ she said magnanimously. ‘I’ll be perfectly content to stay at home with these little cherubs.’

  She must have thought she heard a coo, because she bent down over the pram to peer under the hoods.

  ‘Babies!’ she said, and cackled with glee.

  ‘No fun, going out without you,’ I said.

  ‘Come off it, Dora. Grow up.’

  ‘It’s all very well for you, Nora. You always wanted kids. Now you’ve got them.’

  She cackled again.

  ‘We’re both of us mothers and both of us fathers,’ she said. ‘They’ll be wise children, all right.’

  She peered in at the babies, again; they slept on undisturbed. No sound but the whirring of the rubber wheels and a cat, somewhere, giving a mating call. I told Nora what was on my mind.

  ‘Here, Nora . . .’

  She cocked her head.

  ‘Nora . . . don’t you think our father looked two-dimensional, tonight?’

  She gave me a look that said, tell me more.

  ‘Too kind, too handsome, too repentant. After all those years without a word. Remember that terrible bank holiday when he pretended to our faces that he thought we were Perry’s? And tonight, he had an imitation look, even when he was crying, especially when he was crying, like one of those great, big, papier-mâché heads they have in the Notting Hill parade, larger than life, but not lifelike.’

  Nora sunk in thought for a hundred yards.

  ‘D’you know, I sometimes wonder if we haven’t been making him up all along,’ she said. ‘If he isn’t just a collection of our hopes and dreams and wishful thinking in the afternoons. Something to set our lives by, like the old clock in the hall, which is real enough, in itself, but which we’ve got to wind up to make it go.’

  ‘Oh, very profound. Very deep.’

  ‘Think about it,’ she said. ‘We can tell these little darlings here whatever we like about their mum and dad if Perry doesn’t find them but whatever we tell them, they’ll make up their own romance out of it.’

  But thinking of the twins put me in mind of something more pressing than family romances.

  ‘Here, Nora . . . if we’ve got those twins to look out for, we can’t afford to die for a least another twenty years.’

  ‘Thank goodness we’re a long-lived family.’ She’d thought of that herself.

  We went past the Oval; we were doomed to a century. Just when I’d been thinking it was high time for the final curtain. Which only goes to show, you never know in the morning what the night will bring and I’d had a little bonus of my own, hadn’t I, but Nora never pried because twins we may be but we respect each other’s secrets. So we turned into Bard Road, at last, when there came a wee stirring from the depths of the pram.

  ‘What’s up, small fry?’

  They mewed and rustled.

  ‘I say, Dora, let’s give them a song. After all we’re song-and-dance girls, aren’t we?’

  ‘We’re dancing princesses,’ said Nora. ‘What an old fraud he is!’

  ‘You wouldn’t want him any different.’

  ‘I used to want him dead.’

  We put our handbags in the pram, for safety’s sake. Then and there, we couldn’t wait, we broke into harmony, we serenaded the new arrivals:

  ‘We can’t give you anything but love, babies,

  That’s the only thing we’ve plenty of, babies –’

  The window on the second-floor front window of 41 Bard Road went up, a head came out. Dreadlocks. That Rastafarian.

  ‘You two, again,’ he said.

  ‘Have a heart!’ we said. ‘We’ve got something to celebrate, tonight!’

  ‘Well, you just watch it, in case a squad car comes by,’ he said. ‘Drunk in charge of a baby carriage, at your age.’

  We’d got so many songs to sing to our babies, all our old songs, that we didn’t pay him any attention. ‘Gee, we’d like to see you looking swell, babies!’ and the Hazard theme song, ‘Is You Is or Is You Ain’t’. Then there were songs from the show that nobody else remembers. ‘2b or not 2b’, ‘Hey nonny bloody no’, ‘Mistress Mine’, and Broadway tunes, and paper moons, and lilacs in the spring, again. We went on dancing and singing. ‘Diamond bracelets Woolworths doesn’t sell.’ Besides, it was our birthday, wasn’t it, we’d got to sing them the silly old song about Charlie Chaplin and his comedy boots all the little kids were singing and dancing in the street the day we were born. There was dancing and singing all along Bard Road that day and we’ll go on singing and dancing until we drop in our tracks, won’t we, kids.

  What a joy it is to dance and sing!

  Dramatis Personae (in order of appearance)

  Dora Chance and Nora Chance identical twins, illegitimate daughters of Melchior Hazard but officially known as the daughters of Peregrine Hazard

  Tiffany their goddaughter

  (Sir) Melchior Hazard and Peregrine Hazard fraternal twins, sons of the marriage of Estella and Ranulph Hazard q.v.

  Lady Atalanta Hazard, née Lynde first wife of Melchior Hazard, mother of Saskia and Imogen

  Delia Delaney, née Daisy Duck second wife of Melchior Hazard, previously second wife of ‘Genghis Khan’ q.v.

  Saskia Hazard and Imogen Hazard identical twins, legally daughters of Melchior Hazard, biologically daughters of Peregrine Hazard

  Tristram Hazard and Gareth Hazard fraternal twins, sons of Melchior Hazard’s third marriage

  ‘My Lady Margarine’ third wife of Melchior Hazard, mother of Tristram and Gareth

  ‘Grandma’ Chance guardian of Nora and Dora Chance

  Estella ‘A Star Danced’ Hazard mother of Melchior and Peregrine Hazard

  ‘Lewis Carroll’ a photographer of children

  Ranulph Hazard husband of Estella Hazard

  Cassius Booth boyfriend of Estella Hazard

  ‘Pretty Kitty’ a foundling, mother of Nora and Dora Chance

  ‘Our Cyn’ a foundling, mother of Mavis, grandmother of Brenda, great-grandmother of Tiffany

  Miss Worthington a dance teacher

  Mrs Worthington her mother, an accompanist

  Gorgeous George comedian and patriot

  ‘Pantomime Goose’ Nora Chance’s first boyfriend

  Principal boy wife of Pantomime Goose

  Blond tenor with unmemorable name Dora Chance’s first boyfriend

  ‘Mr Piano Man’ musician, composer, boyfriend of Dora Chance

  ‘Genghis Khan’ a film producer

  His first wife a jealous woman

  Tony an Italian American, fiancé of Nora Chance

  Ross ‘Irish’ O’Flaherty American writer, boyfriend of Dora Chance

  Unnamed radical German exile in Hollywood boyfriend of Dora Chance

  ‘Puck’ male soprano, third husband of Delia Delaney

  Brenda granddaughter of ‘Our Cyn,’ mother of Tiffany

  Leroy her husband

  In no particular order of appearance: rough children, cats, chorus girls, chorus boys, nudes, spear-carriers, comics, fans, Free French, Free Poles, Free Norwegians, soldiers, sailors, airmen of all nations, media personalities, television crews, market traders, pupils of the Italia Conte School, Amazonian tribesmen, photographers, film buffs, the public, extras.

  Notes

  Introduction

  1. Angela Carter, Shaking a Leg: Selected Journalism and Writings (London: Chatto & Windus, 1997), p. 37.

  2. Ibid., p. 40.

  3. ‘Omnibus: Angela Carter’s Curious Room’, BBC transmission script, 15 September 1992, p. 24.

  4. Entry on Angela Carter, The Cambridge Guide to Women’s Writing in English, ed. Lorna Sage (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ
ersity Press, 1999), p. 116.

  5. ‘The Third Ear’, Interview with Paul Bailey, BBC Radio 4, June 1991. (I use this interview, in which Carter talks a great deal about Wise Children, which had just been published, throughout this introduction, and am much indebted to Paul Bailey for finding me a copy.)

  6. Shaking a Leg, pp. 520-1.

  7. Angela Carter, The Sadeian Woman: An Exercise in Cultural History, (London: Virago Press, 1979) pp. 4–5.

  8. Shaking a Leg, p. 604.

  9. Lorna Sage, Good As Her Word: Selected Journalism, (London: Fourth Estate, 2003), p. 75.

  10. ‘The Third Ear’, Interview with Paul Bailey.

  11. Ibid.

  12. Shaking a Leg, p. 525.

  13. Ibid., p. 351.

  14. ‘The Third Ear’, Interview with Paul Bailey.

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  Brush up your Shakespeare.

  COLE PORTER

  It’s a wise child that knows its own father.

  OLD SAW

  How many times Shakespeare draws fathers and