Possession

by A. S. Byatt

  Consider this. Arts have their Medium—

  Coloratura, tempera, or stone.

  Through medium of paint the Ideal Form

  Of the Eternal Mother shows herself

  (Though modelled maybe on some worthless wench

  No better than she should be, we may guess).

  Through medium of language the great Poets

  Keep constant the Ideal, as Beatrice

  Speaks still to us, though Dante’s flesh is dust.

  So through the Medium of this poor flesh

  With sweats and groanings, nauseas and cries

  Of animal anguish, the sublimest Souls

  Make themselves known to those who sit and wait.

  And through this self-same flesh, they urge the skills

  That light the phosphor-matches, knot the threads

  Or lift the heavy chair from off the rug.

  The spirits weave them flesh and robes of air,

  Of air and matter of my grosser breath

  Whose warmth brushes thy brow in this my kiss—

  And if one night they neither come nor weave—

  Why you and I may make their motions felt

  With subtle fingers and the self-same breath

  Lifting the more corporeal veils of flesh …

  You catch my meaning?

  One night the flute is filled with spirit breath

  Swooningly sweet. The next, my breath, or thine,

  Tutored by them, must body forth their sound

  Since they neglect to whistle, but the notes

  The self-same notes breathe still the self-same sigh

  Of sweet regret and sweeter hope to come—

  Art tells a truth, sweet girl, though all her tales

  Are lies i’the law-court, or the chemist’s phial—

  We must be artful for the spirit’s truth

  In which we’re tutored by them, d’you see?

  You must not stare at me with fair large eyes

  Full of a question and a glittering tear.

  Drink up this cordial glass of wildflower wine—

  ’Twill settle you—come near—compose yourself

  And fix your eyes on mine, your hand in mine,

  And feel us breathe together. So. When first

  I mesmerised you, and your youthful soul

  Opened itself to mine, as morning flowers

  Open their cups to the warm Sun, I knew

  You were a being set apart, a Soul

  Responsive to my powers, and ductile too.

  Look up into my eyes, I say. You see

  The love of a good woman there, whate’er

  The spirit lords may else reveal, my dear.

  Draw in the influence fearlessly. Now drowse

  And calm your pulses, whilst my stronger arm

  Supports your softnesses. Here, Geraldine.

  My love is merciless to do you good.

  Know you not that we Women have no Power

  In the cold world of objects Reason rules,

  Where all is measured and mechanical?

  There we are chattels, baubles, property,

  Flowers pent in vases with our roots sliced off,

  To shine a day and perish. But you see,

  Here in this secret room, all curtained round

  With vaguest softness, all dimly lit

  With flickerings and twinklings, where all shapes

  Are indistinct, all sounds ambiguous,

  Here we have Power, here the Irrational,

  The Intuition of the Unseen Powers

  Speaks to our women’s nerves, galvanic threads

  Which gather up, interpret and transmit

  The unseen Powers and their hidden Will.

  This is our negative world, where the Unseen,

  Unheard, Impalpable, and Unconfined

  Speak to and through us—it is we who hear,

  Our natures that receive their thrilling force.

  Come into this reversed world, Geraldine,

  Where power flows upwards, as in the glass ball,

  Where left is right, and clocks go widdershins,

  And women sit enthroned and wear the robes,

  The wreaths of scented roses and the crowns,

  The jewels in our hair, the sardonyx,

  The moonstones and the rubies and the pearls,

  The royal stones, where we are priestesses

  And powerful Queens, and all swims with our Will.

  All mages have been tricksters. We are no

  More and no less than all High Priests have been

  Holding the masses to the faith with shows

  Of firework and magic to impress

  With symbols of Heaven’s brightness those dull eyes

  Which won’t conceive our meanings from our speech.

  You are calmer now. That’s good. That’s good. I stroke

  The blue veins in your arms with my ringed hands

  And power flows from me to you. You feel

  The benefit of it. You are calm. Quite calm.

  You call yourself my Slave. Not so, my dear.

  Avoid extravagance of phrase or tone

  If you would taste success in this new Sphere.

  You are my Pupil and my dear, dear friend,

  You are, who knows, the next Sybilla Silt,

  But now you must be decorous and show

  Deference to the ladies, gentle tact

  To the rough male-folk, bring them cups of tea

  And smile, and listen, for we need to know

  All that their innocent gossiping reveals.

  Here, as you see, the gauze lies hid, and here,

  The flowers to let fall, and here the gloves

  Ready to make the airy passes with.

  I need your help with Lady Claregrove’s son.

  She is almost mad to feel his touch, and grasp

  The tiny fingers. If the room is dark—

  And you creep—so—and rest your elbow—so—

  Briefly—and touch her cheek—your fingers are

  Most exquisitely dimpling and fine.

  What’s that you say? How can it do her hurt?

  Her will to Faith’s a good, and our small tricks

  Our genial deceptions, strengthen that,

  And so are good too, in their harmless way.

  Here is a lock of hair—the housemaid’s hair—

  As golden as her son’s, and just as fine—

  Which at some aptest moment you let fall

  You understand me—in her lap—or on

  Her clutching fingers—that will do such good—

  Will give such Happiness that you and I

  May grow and prosper in its lovely warmth.

  We shall have gifts and she her moment’s hope,

  Nay more, her certainty …

  Caetera desunt

  22

  Val was in the stand at Newmarket, watching the empty track, straining her ears for the sound of the hooves, seeing the small bunch of dust and regular surging turn into a stream of shining muscle and brilliant silk, and then come past in a flash, bay, grey, chestnut, bay, so much waiting for so short a time of thundering life. And then the release of tension, the sweat-streaked beasts with flaring nostrils, the people congratulating or shrugging.

  “Who won?” she said to Euan MacIntyre. “It was so quick, I didn’t see.” Though she had cried out with the rest.

  “We won,” said Euan. “He won, The Reverberator. He was great.”

  Val flung her arms around Euan’s neck.

  “We can have a celebration,” said Euan. “Twenty-five to one, not bad, we knew he would come good.”

  “I bet on him,” said Val. “To win. I put some money on White Nights, each way, because its name was nice, but I bet on him to win.”

  “There,” said Euan. “You see I’ve cheered you up. Nothing like a gamble and a bit of action.”

  “You didn’t tell me it was so beautiful,” said Val.

  It wa
s a good day, an English day, palely sunny, with patches of mist out at the edges of vision, out at the invisible end of the track, where the horses gathered.

  Val had had the idea that racecourses were like the betting shops of her childhood, smelling of beer and fag ends and, it seemed to her, sawdust and male piss.

  And this was grass and clean air and a sense of cheerfulness, and the dancing lovely creatures.

  “I don’t know if the others are here,” said Euan. “Want to look?”

  Euan was part of a syndicate, two solicitors, two stockbrokers, who each owned a part of The Reverberator.

  They made their way round to the winner’s enclosure, where the horse stood and quivered under his rug, a bright bay with white stockings, streaked black with sweat, which rose from him in steam and joined the mist. He smelled marvelous, Val thought, he smelled of hay and health and effort which was—loose, which was free, was natural. She breathed his smell and he ruffled his nostrils and tossed his head.

  Euan had talked to the jockey and trainer. He came back to Val with another young man, whom he introduced to her as Toby Byng, one of the partners. Toby Byng was thinner than Euan, with a freckled face and a small amount of curly fair hair, over his ears only. His bald patch was like a pink tonsure. He wore cavalry twill and affected an elegant waistcoat, a flash of dandified peacock under his town-and-country tweed jacket. He had a soft smile, briefly incoherent with pleasure, because of the horse.

  “I’ll buy you dinner,” he said to Euan.

  “No, no, I’ll buy you. Or at least, could we crack a bottle of champagne, now, because I’ve got other plans for tonight.”

  The three of them wandered off, amiably, and bought champagne, and smoked salmon, and lobster salad. Val had not done anything that was simply designed for pleasure, she thought, since she could remember, unless you counted a film, or a pub-evening.

  She looked at her programme.

  “The horses’ names are jokes. White Nights, by Dostoevsky out of Carroll’s Alice.”

  “We are literate,” said Euan. “Whatever your sort might think. Look at The Reverberator. His sire was James the Scot, and his dam was Rock Drill—I think the idea was that drills reverberate and Henry James, the American, wrote a story or something called The Reverberator. A horse’s name has to contain an allusion to the names of both its parents.”

  “They are poems,” said Val, who felt increasingly full of pale gold goodwill and champagne.

  “Val is interested in literature,” said Euan to Toby, having patently tried to think of a way of explaining Val that didn’t include Roland.

  “I’m by way of being a literary solicitor,” said Toby. “Which isn’t my line at all, I don’t mind telling you. I’ve got involved in the most ferocious wrangle about a correspondence between dead poets that someone’s just discovered. The Americans have offered my client huge sums for the manuscripts. But the English have got onto it, and are trying to have the whole lot declared of national importance, and stop the export. They seem to hate each other. I’ve had them both in the office. The Englishman says it will change the face of international scholarship. They only get to see specimen letters one at a time—my client’s a cranky old sod, he’s not letting the whole collection out of his hands.… And now the Press have got onto it. I’ve had TV journalists and gossip columnists phoning in. The English professor’s gone to see the Minister for the Arts.”

  “Love-letters?” said Euan.

  “Oh yes. Complicated love-letters. They wrote a lot, in those days.”

  “Which poets?” said Val.

  “Randolph Henry Ash, whom we did at school, and I never made head nor tail of, and a woman I’d never heard of. Christabel LaMotte.”

  “In Lincolnshire,” said Val.

  “Oh yes. I live in Lincoln. You know about it?”

  “Dr Maud Bailey?”

  “Ah yes. They all want to see her. But she’s disappeared. On holiday, no doubt. It’s the summer vacation. Scholars do go away. She found them—”

  “I used to live with an Ash scholar,” said Val, and stopped, wholly disconcerted by her own automatic past tense.

  Euan put his hand over hers, and poured more champagne.

  He said, “If they are letters, there must be a complicated question of ownership and copyright.”

  “Professor Blackadder has called in Lord Ash. He seems to own the copyrights on most of the Ash papers. But the American—Professor Cropper—has got the manuscripts of almost all the letters in his library—and he’s the editor of the big edition of letters—so his claim makes sense. The Baileys seem to own the manuscripts themselves. Maud Bailey seems to have found them. Christabel was an old spinster who died in the room where the letters were found—hidden away in a doll’s cot or something—Our client is very sore that he wasn’t told—by Maud B—what they were worth—”

  “Perhaps she didn’t know.”

  “Perhaps. They’d be quite glad, all of them, if she came back.”

  “I shouldn’t think she will,” said Val, looking at Euan. “I should think she’s got reasons for staying away.”

  “All sorts of reasons,” said Euan.

  Val had never ascribed Roland’s sudden disappearance to anything other than a desire to be with Maud Bailey. She had, in a moment of rage, telephoned Maud’s flat, only to be told by a rich American voice that Maud was away. When asked where, the voice said with a mixture of amusement and rancour, “I am not privileged to know that.” Val had complained to Euan, who had said, “But you didn’t want him, did you, it was over?” Val had cried, “How do you know that?” and Euan had said, “Because I’ve been watching you and assessing the evidence for weeks now, it’s my job.”

  So here she was, staying with Euan, in the house by the stables. In the cool of the evening they walked round the yard, so well swept, so orderly, with the large-eyed long heads peering out over the stable doors, and inclining gracefully to accept apples, with wrinkling soft lips and huge, inoffensive, vegetarian teeth. The low brick house was covered with climbing roses and wistaria. It was the sort of house where breakfast was kidneys, bacon, mushrooms, or kedgeree in silver dishes. The bedroom was designed, and full of cream and rose-coloured chintz, frothing around solid old furniture. Val and Euan made love in a kind of cavern of rosy light, and looked out of the open window onto the dark shadows and subdued night-scent of real roses.

  Val looked down at the naked length of Euan MacIntyre. He was like his horse in reverse. All the central part of his body was pale—ranging from buff to very white. But his extremities were brown, as The Reverberator’s were white. And he had the same face. Val laughed.

  “ ‘O love, be fed with apples while you may,’ ” she said.

  “What?”

  “It’s a poem. It’s Robert Graves. I love Robert Graves. He stirs me up.”