Possession

by A. S. Byatt

  “It must be love.”

  “That doesn’t explain Ariane Le Minier.”

  “It sure doesn’t. What a turn-up. Not only a lesbian but a Fallen Woman and Unmarried Mother. Every archetype. I guess this is the hotel. Where they seemed to be staying. Maybe they’re back now.”

  She began to turn into the hotel car park, only to find her way blocked by the Mercedes, which appeared to be backing awkwardly across the gateposts.

  “Fuck off,” said Leonora. “Fuck off, asshole.”

  “Oh dear,” said Blackadder. “That’s Cropper.”

  “Well, he’ll have to fuck off. He’s obstructing the gateway,” said Leonora magisterially, honking several times with great vigour. The Mercedes went backwards and forwards, part of a series of precise adjustments designed to insert it into a parking-space that would just, but barely, contain it. Leonora rolled down the window and cried out, “Listen, you bastard. I don’t have all night. I’ll be through in a second. Just hold off, can you?”

  The Mercedes advanced and retreated.

  Leonora advanced into the gateway.

  The Mercedes pulled across it.

  “For Chrissake, clear the entrance, you prick,” shouted Leonora.

  The Mercedes retreated a little, slanting itself further.

  Leonora put her foot firmly on the accelerator. Blackadder heard a reverberating clang and felt a jar along his spine. Leonora swore again and put the Renault into reverse. There was a sound and a sensation of tearing metal. The bumpers were locked and the two cars, like two bulls with crumpled horns, locked together. Leonora continued to reverse. Blackadder said nervously, “No, stop.” The sound of the Mercedes’ angry purr ceased abruptly. The dark window rolled down and Cropper put out his head. He said, “Arrêtez s’il vous plaît. Nous nous abîmons. Veuillez croire que je n’ai jamais rencontré de pires façons sur les routes françaises. Une telle manque de politesse—”

  Leonora swung open her door and shot out a naked leg.

  “We speak good American,” she said. “You arrogant pig. I remember you from Lincoln. You nearly killed me in Lincoln.”

  “Hello, Mort,” said Blackadder.

  “Ah,” said Cropper. “James. You have damaged my car.”

  “I damaged it,” said Leonora. “Owing to your bad manners and lack of signals.”

  “This is Professor Stern, Mortimer,” said Blackadder. “From Tallahassee. The editor of Christabel LaMotte.”

  “In search of Bailey and Michell.”

  “Exactly.”

  “They’ve checked out. Three hours back. No one knows what they did here. Or where they went.”

  Blackadder said, “If you put your back to your bumper, Mortimer, and I sit on ours, we might disengage them by joggling and swaying.”

  “It will never be the same,” said Cropper.

  “Are you staying here?” said Leonora. “We could discuss it over a drink. I don’t know what the insurance on this car hire runs to.”

  It was not a pleasant dinner. Cropper was more put out than Blackadder had seen him, by the damage to his car, or by the flight of Roland and Maud, or by the presence of Leonora. He ordered lavishly, a huge platter of fruits de mer to start with, a mound of shells and whiskers and stony carapaces, surrounded by seaweed on a metal pedestal, followed by a huge boiled sea-spider or araignée, a hot angry scarlet, crusted with bumps and armoured crestings, waving a multiplication of feelers. He was provided with an armoury of implements for this feast, like a mediaeval torture chamber, pincers and grippers, prods and corkscrew skewers.

  Blackadder ate hake abstemiously. Leonora ate lobster and talked about Kernemet.

  “So sad, only the foundations and the orchard wall, nothing left. The menhir’s still there but the house is quite gone. Do you know what happened to LaMotte after she came here, Professor Cropper?”

  “No. There are some letters in America in my possession, which describe her whereabouts in 1861. But about the time you speak of, the end of 1860, no. But I shall find out.”

  He wielded a claw-cracker and a serpent-tongued pick. The heap of debris on his plate was higher than the original creatures had been, every sweet white morsel extracted.

  “I intend to have those letters if I can,” he said. “And I intend to find out the rest.”

  “The rest?”

  “What became of their child. What they concealed from us. I intend to know.”

  “It may lie concealed forever in the grave,” said Blackadder, raising his glass to the fierce and melancholy face across the table. “May I propose a toast? Randolph Henry Ash and Christabel LaMotte. May they rest in peace.”

  Cropper raised his glass.

  “I’ll drink to that. But I shall find out.”

  They parted at the foot of the stairs. Cropper bowed to Blackadder and Leonora and took himself off. Leonora put a hand on Blackadder’s arm.

  “He’s kinda scarey, so intense, he takes it all personally. As though they did it to deceive him. Personally.”

  “So they probably did. Among others. Shakespeare foresaw him, writing that curse.”

  “I’m glad I scraped his great hearse. Do you want to come up with me? I feel all sad, we could comfort each other. It makes me sentimental, the sea and the sun.”

  “It’s nice of you, but no thank you. I’m touched and grateful and glad you brought me here—I shall probably regret it forever—but better not. I’m not—” he wanted to say “up to it” or “in your class” or simply “strong enough,” but all those sounded vaguely insulting.

  “Not to worry. Pity to complicate a good working relationship, hunh?”

  She kissed him good night, with considerable force, and strode away.

  The next day, they were driving quietly along a side road, having decided to make a small detour and take in the chapel with Gauguin’s wooden Christ, when they heard behind them a strange and fearsome sound. It combined a cough with a regular rhythmic thump followed by a scraping wheeze. It was like a beast in pain, or a creaking cart with an uneven wheel. It was the Mercedes with a crushed mudguard and an obviously damaged fan-belt, which overtook them, grinding, at the next junction. Its driver was again invisible, its wound painfully prominent.

  “Horrid,” said Leonora. “Sinister.”

  “Cropper is the Ankou,” said Blackadder, with sudden wit.

  “Of course he is,” said Leonora. “We should have known that.”

  “He won’t catch Bailey and Michell at that rate.”

  “Nor shall we.”

  “There isn’t much point to catching them, I suppose, really. We could have a picnic.”

  “Let’s do that.”

  24

  Maud sat at her desk in Lincoln and copied out a useful passage of Freud for her paper on metaphor:

  It is only when a person is completely in love that the main quota of libido is transferred on to the object and the object to some extent takes the place of the ego.

  She wrote: “Of course ego, id and super-ego, indeed the libido itself, are metaphorical hypostasisations of what must be seen as”

  She crossed out “seen” and wrote “could be felt as.”

  Both were metaphors. She wrote: “could be explained as events in an undifferentiated body of experience.”

  Body was a metaphor. She had written “experience” twice, which was ugly. “Event” was possibly a metaphor, too.

  She was wholly aware of Roland, sitting behind her on the floor, wearing a white towelling dressing-gown, leaning up against the white sofa on which he had slept during his first visit, and on which he slept now. She felt the fuzz of his soft black hair, starting up above his brow, with imaginary fingers. She felt his frown between her eyes. He felt his occupation was gone; she felt his feeling. He felt he was lurking.

  If he went out of the room it would be grey and empty.

  If he did not go out of it, how could she concentrate?

  It was October. Her term had begun. He had not gone back t
o Blackadder. He had not gone back to his own flat, except once, after repeated telephone calls that failed to rouse Val, to make sure she was not dead. There had been a large notice, propped against an empty milk bottle: GONE AWAY FOR SOME DAYS.

  He was writing lists of words. He was writing lists of words that resisted arrangement into the sentences of literary criticism or theory. He had hopes—more, intimations of imminence—of writing poems, but so far had got no further than lists. These were, however, compulsive and desperately important. He didn’t know whether Maud understood—saw—their importance, or thought they were silly. He was wholly aware of Maud. He could feel her feeling that he felt his occupation was gone, and that he was lurking.

  He wrote: blood, clay, terracotta, carnation.

  He wrote: blond, burning bush, scattering.

  He annotated this, “scattering as in Donne, ‘extreme and scattering bright,’ nothing to do with scattergraphs.”

  He wrote: anemone, coral, coal, hair, hairs, nail, nails, fur, owl, isinglass, scarab.

  He rejected wooden, point, link, and other ambivalent words, also blot and blank, though all these sprang (another word he hesitated over) to mind. He was uncertain about the place of verbs in this primitive language. Spring, springs, springes, sprung, sprang.

  Arrow, bough (not branch, not root), leaf-mould, water, sky.

  Vocabularies are crossing circles and loops. We are defined by the lines we choose to cross or to be confined by.

  He said, “I’ll go out, so you can think.”

  “No need.”

  “I’d better. Can I buy anything?”

  “No. It’s seen to.”

  “I could get a job, a job in a bar or a hospital or something.”

  “Take time to think.”

  “There isn’t much time.”

  “One can make time.”

  “I feel I’m simply lurking.”

  “I know. Things will change.”

  “I don’t know.”

  The telephone rang.

  “Is that Dr Bailey?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is Roland Michell there?”

  “It’s for you.”

  “Who?”

  “Young, male and well-bred. Who is that, please?”

  “You won’t know me. My name is Euan MacIntyre. I’m a solicitor. I wanted to talk to you—not to Roland—or at least Roland will be very welcome, I’ve got things to say to him, too. But I’ve got something interesting to communicate to you.”

  Maud covered the mouthpiece and communicated this to Roland.

  “How about dinner in the White Hart at say seven-thirty tonight? Both of you.”

  “We’d better,” said Roland.

  “Thank you very much,” said Maud. “We’d love to.”

  “I don’t know about love,” said Roland.

  They went into the bar in the White Hart that evening with some apprehension. It was the first time they had gone out publicly as a couple, if that was what they were. Maud was dressed in bluebell blue, her hair well-anchored, gleaming. Roland looked at her with love and despair. He had nothing in the world but Maud—no home, no job, no future—and these very negatives made it impossible that Maud would long go on taking him seriously or desiring his presence.

  Three people were waiting for them. Euan MacIntyre in a charcoal suit and a golden shirt; Val, shining in a putty-coloured glossy suit over a plum-colored shirt; and a third person, tweedy and fluffy-haired about his bald patch, whom Euan introduced as “Toby Byng. We both own a leg of a horse. He’s a solicitor.”

  “I know,” said Maud. “Sir George’s solicitor.”

  “That’s not why he’s here, or not exactly why.”

  Roland stared at sleek Val, who had the shine of really expensive and well-made clothes, and more important and unmistakable, the glistening self-pleasure of sexual happiness. She had had her hair done in a new way—short, soft, shaped, rising when she tossed her head and settling back to perfection. She was all muted violets and shot-silk dove-colours, all balanced and pretty, stockings, high shoes, padded shoulders, painted mouth. He said, instinctively, “You look happy, Val.”

  “I decided I could be.”

  “I’ve been looking for you. I rang and rang. To see if you were all right.”

  “It wasn’t necessary. I thought if you could vanish, I could. So I did.”

  “I’m glad.”

  “I’m going to marry Euan.”

  “I’m glad.”

  “I hope not altogether glad.”

  “Of course not. But you look—”

  “And you. Are you happy?”

  “In some ways. In others, I’m in a mess.”

  “The rent’s paid until the first week in October. This week, that is.”

  “Not that sort of mess. At least—”

  “Euan has had an idea about the real mess, about Randolph and Christabel.”

  They sat at a corner-table with a pink cloth and stiff pink napkins, in a large dining-room, with glittering crystal chandeliers and panelled walls. There was an autumn posy on the table: dusty pink asters, mauve chrysanthemums, a few freesias. Euan ordered champagne and they settled down to smoked salmon, pheasant with trimmings, Stilton and lemon soufflé. Roland found his pheasant tough. The bread sauce reminded him of his mother’s Christmas cooking. They talked about the weather in an English way and little currents of sexual anxiety ran round the table, also in an English way. Roland could see Val summing up Maud as beautiful and cold; he could see Maud studying Val, and judging himself in relation to Val, but he had no idea what judgment she had formed. He could see that both women responded to Euan’s friendliness and enthusiasm. Euan made everyone laugh and Val gleamed with pride and happiness and Maud relaxed into a smile. They drank good burgundy, and laughed more freely. Maud and Toby Byng turned out to have childhood friends in common. Euan and Maud talked about hunting. Roland felt peripheral, a watcher. He asked Toby Byng how Joan Bailey was, and was told that she’d had a long spell in hospital but was now out.

  “Mortimer Cropper has led Sir George to believe that the proceeds from the sale of the correspondence—at least if it’s sold to him—will rebuild Seal Court and provide Lady Bailey with the latest technology.”

  “That’s good for someone,” said Roland, “at least.”

  Euan leaned across the table.

  “That was what we wanted to discuss. Good for whom?”

  He turned to Maud.

  “Who owns the copyright in Christabel LaMotte’s poems and stories?”

  “We do. My family. We think. The papers have been deposited in the Women’s Studies Resource Centre at Lincoln, where I work. That is, the manuscripts of Melusina, the City of Is, the two books of fairy tales and a lot of scattered lyrics. We don’t have many letters at all—we bought Blanche Glover’s journal in a Sotheby’s sale—quite secretly, no one realised its importance. There isn’t that much money in women’s studies yet. Of course, once the works are in print they go out of copyright after fifty years as anything else does.”

  “Has it occurred to you that you might be the owner of the copyright in Christabel’s half of the correspondence?”

  “It has, but I don’t think so. I don’t think there was a Will or anything. What happened was—when Christabel died in 1890 her sister Sophia sent a whole package to her daughter, May, who was my great-great-grandmother—she would have been about thirty, my great-grandfather was born in 1880 and May was married in 1878. There was some unpleasantness—the then Sir George didn’t believe in the marriage of first cousins, which this was. And the families didn’t get on. So Sophia sent these papers with a covering letter—I don’t remember it exactly, but something like ‘My dearest May, I have to convey some very sad news to you, which is that my dearest sister, Christabel, died very suddenly last night. She has often expressed the wish that you should have her papers and poems—you are my only daughter, and she believed strongly in the importance of handing things on through the
female line. So I have sent what I could find—I do not know how much value or lasting interest they may have—but hope you will keep them safely, as she at least believed and other authorities have said, that she was a better poet than has yet been generally acknowledged.’

  “She said that if she felt she could travel for the funeral her presence would be a comfort—but she (Sophia) knew that my great-great-grandmother had had trouble with the birth of her last child and was much preoccupied. There’s no evidence that she went. She kept the things but there’s no evidence that she took any interest in them.”

  “That has had to wait for you,” said Euan.

  “I suppose so. Yes. But as to the ownership—it’s even possible that what I have got might turn out to belong to Sir George if Christabel died intestate.… I can’t see Cropper and Co acknowledging any moral right I may have.”

  Euan said, “That’s more or less what I thought. I got Val to tell me what she knew—”

  “Not much,” said Val.

  “Enough, about Cropper and Co. So I got my good friend Toby to poke about in all the old deedboxes his firm holds. This worries him—he’s Sir George’s family solicitor. In fact, he can’t go any further in this matter. But he—we—found something we feel you should see—we shall—you will, but I hope you’ll consent to let me act for you—we shall have to think very carefully about how to proceed. But anyway, in my professional view, there is no doubt about whose the letters are. I’ve brought a Xerox. God bless the Xerox machine. I’ve verified the signature in your women’s studies place while you were away. What do you think?”

  Maud took the single Xerox sheet.

  Dictated to my sister, Sophia Bailey, May 1st 1890, I being too weak to write clearly. I wish Sophia to have my money, and my furniture and china. If Jane Summers from Richmond is alive she should have something to remember me by, and £60. All my books and papers, and my copyrights, to go to Maia Thomasine Bailey in the hope that in the fulness of time she may become interested in poetry. Signed Christabel LaMotte, in the presence of Lucy Tuck, lady’s maid, and William Marchmont, gardener.