A Natural Curiosity

by Margaret Drabble

  After the disaster, Fanny Kettle’s party broke up quite quickly. Even Janice Enderby fell silent and agreed to be led away. Alix burst into tears of shame, and cried all the way home, saying she had let down both Liz and Beaver, that it was all her fault for letting Beaver go to the party, for letting him have too much to drink, for not forcing him to leave earlier. She cried so much that Brian told her to shut up, which made her cry all the more bitterly. They were parking the car before they remembered they’d forgotten Sam: where the hell had he got to? Neither of them could remember having seen him for hours, not since the early pink phase of the party, and they were wondering whether to go back and look for him when he opened the front door and welcomed them home. Relief at finding him there cheered Alix, and they all sat down with a cup of tea to what they feared might prove to be literally a post mortem. ‘But after all,’ said Alix, recovering her spirits, ‘he is over eighty. He’s had a good innings. There’ll be some good obituaries.’ Then her face suddenly fell. ‘Oh God,’ she said. ‘I’ve just remembered. He said he’d made me his literary executor. Let’s all pray for a full recovery.’

  Back at the house-warming, Ian Kettle wandered from room to room, collecting cold plates smeared with mayonnaise and ash and cream, salvaging cigarette butts from pot plants and bookshelves, retrieving half-empty wine bottles from behind armchairs. Beaver, in his falling, had brought down a small table and some glasses: the new beige carpet was stained wine-red. He dabbed at it, and gave up. He collected a pink plastic earring, a small red leather lady’s evening bag, an address book, a cigarette lighter, and put them carefully on the mahogany sideboard. Pausing at the conservatory door, gazing into the darkness, he saw a faint white gleam on the paved floor: a lace handkerchief. He added it to his collection. Small, female, perishable relics. Party relics. Fanny would be in bed, fast asleep, dead to the world. The warmed house grew cold and quiet, it ticked quietly, and Ian Kettle quietly paced, thinking of rites and rituals, of ceremonies and drinking customs. Ian Kettle had been, was, a serious archaeologist, but he had been seduced by the television cameras, he had been talked into popularizing his mysteries. Was this wrong? He stooped, picked up the thin brown filter of a thin menthol cigarillo, sniffed it cautiously, and paced on. Howard Beaver had achieved eminence. Lasting eminence. Immortality, against all the odds. Dead or alive, he would live on. How had he managed that?

  Up the stairs goes Ian Kettle, but when he opens his bedroom door, he sees that the bed is already fully occupied. A pair of black lace knickers hangs from one of the four poster’s brass knobs, there are clothes strewn all over the floor, and the bedside light is still on, though the couple occupying the bed is fast asleep, way, way out, dead to the world. He smiles, slightly, a little ruefully, and makes his way, as he has done many times before, to the narrow bed in the study.

  At home in Hansborough, Susie Enderby took off her new shoes, and gazed at the bright wet well of blood.

  Liz and Marcia sat up through the night, in a dim waiting-room, waiting for news of Howard Beaver. He had had a stroke, he was in a deep coma, he might or might not recover. But for Liz’s prompt action, he would have been dead. If he were to recover, Liz could foresee all sorts of difficulties for Alix, but these were not the matters that she and Marcia discussed.

  They resumed the conversation of the two-seater settee. They had a lot of ground to cover, and they covered it fast.

  Marcia was, and indeed always had been, the oldest daughter of Rita Ablewhite, born out of wedlock a year before Liz herself was born. Marcia had been adopted as a baby, and had always known she was adopted. Her parents ran theatrical digs in Sheffield, and it was only when her mother died that Marcia thought of tracing her ‘real’ parents. ‘It seemed a bit disloyal when she was alive,’ said Marcia, ‘but I knew Dad wouldn’t mind, he isn’t the sort, and then that Bill was passed, you know, making it legal, and my psychotherapist said it would do no harm to ask. So I asked. And here I am.’

  She laid a plump jewelled hand once more on Liz’s.

  ‘But this is too strange,’ repeated Liz, peering at her half-sister’s cheerful dimpled face. ‘Whatever were you having psychotherapy for?’

  Marcia shrugged her shoulders, spread her hands wide. ‘Oh, an identity crisis, I suppose. Something along those lines. Depression caused by change of career, divorce, and Ma’s death. Nothing much.’

  They both laughed. Marcia had a low, musical, pleasant familiar laugh. Liz felt she had heard it many times before, as indeed she had, for Marcia had revealed herself to be a radio actress, whose voice and laugh were familiar to many. She had been, she now told Liz, a stage actress, but middle age and weight had put her out of the running for the ingénue parts in which she had anyway not been doing very well: she’d drifted towards radio, and was now regularly, comfortably employed. BBC rep you know, said Marcia.

  ‘But how,’ Liz asked, ‘did you ever track me down?’ Marcia made everything sound so normal, so unsurprising: and indeed her explanations continued in the same matter-of-fact vein.

  ‘Oh, it was easy,’ said Marcia. ‘I asked my father, and he came clean. He knew it all, he’d got all the records, your mother—well, our mother’s address, birth certificates, letters from the adoption agency, everything. But now I’ll tell you something that really is odd, or at least I thought it was really odd when I found out about it, but now I see that it isn’t—well, is anything really odd, I wonder?—when I first thought of going into therapy, guess who was recommended?’

  Liz thought for a moment.

  ‘Well, me, of course, I suppose,’ she said.

  ‘Quite right, my dear, quite right.’ Marcia laughed, happily. ‘I was told it was quite your line of business. And guess who told me?’

  Liz frowned, puzzled, gave up.

  ‘I’m not good at guessing games,’ she said.

  ‘Well, it was your old friend and my old friend, Hilda Stark.’

  ‘Oh yes. Of course,’ said Liz. ‘Of course. And why didn’t you come to me?’

  ‘I don’t know, really. I think I wanted to talk to a man. I don’t know why. So I went to Jay Spenser.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘But you can imagine how intrigued I was, when I found the path led back to you anyway. Fascinating, isn’t it?’

  ‘Did you tell Jay about me?’ asked Liz, suddenly worried on some trivial level about her professional reputation amongst her colleagues.

  “What could I tell about you? He knows you much better than I do. I’ve only just met you.’

  ‘But you . . . ’ Liz shivered slightly, looked around the dim room, listened to a strange institutional hospital clicking that filled the silence, ‘but you know all sorts of things about me that I don’t know. That you exist, for example. I didn’t know you existed until an hour ago.’

  ‘Well, I certainly wasn’t expecting to see you at that funny party,’ said Marcia. ‘I hope you didn’t mind my coming up to you like that? A bit indiscreet of me, I mean you might have fainted with shock or turned on your heel and refused to speak, (good phrase that, “turned on your heel”, isn’t it?). But I took a risk. It seemed to be meant. That we were both there. And frankly, the drink may have had something to do with it. Strong stuff, that pink, wasn’t it?’

  ‘So we were both at that party by accident,’ said Liz.

  ‘Uninvited guests,’ said Marcia.

  ‘And seriously,’ pursued Marcia, ‘you really had no idea I existed?’

  ‘Well, no. I didn’t. It seems now as though I’d known it all my life. But I hadn’t. I thought there might be something odd in my mother—our mother’s—early life, but I didn’t dare look into it. How did you have the courage to make inquiries? You might have found anything.’

  ‘Well, I couldn’t see I’d anything to lose. And my father was quite an interesting old boy, you know. Old Percy Hestercombe. Not a bad chap, in his own ghastly way. There’s blue blood in my veins, you know. The blood of Stocklinch. Pity he died before I cou
ld put in my claim.’

  ‘And you went and made yourself known to Joanna Hestercombe? Just like that? Out of the blue?’

  ‘Well, why not? She is my half-sister, after all. She didn’t mind at all. We get on fine, Joanna and me. She’s a dry old stick, but she’s got a sense of humour. And she knows I’m not after her money. So why should she worry? As a matter of fact,’ said Marcia, dropping her voice to a huskier, more conspiratorial tone, ‘I’m not the only one, you know. There’s another girl in Glasgow, and goodness knows, there might be dozens more all over the country. The aristocracy didn’t worry about that kind of thing, you know, and Percy was a devil with the ladies. She’s a nice girl, that girl in Glasgow. Married, two kids, keen on ballroom dancing. I didn’t tell Joanna about her. I thought I’d gone far enough. Joanna’s the only legitimate child, you know.’

  Liz leaned her head back against the polystyrene-lined wall. She felt quite dizzy.

  ‘Have a coffee,’ said Marcia, solicitously, and jumped up and went over to the machine in the corner. KWIKDRINK, it said, and you could choose, she told Liz, between coffee with, coffee without, tea with, tea without, hot chocolate or hot orange.

  ‘I’ll have black coffee,’ said Liz. Marcia peered, punched, pulled and finally managed to make the machine give up some hot dark water into a couple of cardboard cups. Marcia settled herself, delved in her large handbag.

  ‘Here, Lizzy,’ she said, ‘have a drop of this,’ and produced, with a discreet flourish, a silver hip flask of whisky. She topped up the coffees, and they sat for a moment in silence, sipping the fortified mixture.

  ‘Never travel without,’ said Marcia. ‘Not even to a party. Golden rule.’

  The room hummed.

  ‘Can you hear that odd crackling?’ said Liz.

  A strange, prickling, electrical whine charged the air, irregularly.

  ‘It’s static, from this funny material,’ said Marcia, stroking the shiny chair seat. ‘Or people’s souls passing. You say our mother died in here?’

  Liz nodded.

  ‘Poor old thing,’ said Marcia, ‘I saw her once, you know. After Dad gave me her address, I came along to have a look. I didn’t want to get in touch, Dad said she’d gone a bit loopy, by all accounts, but I just wanted to see where she lived and all. So I walked down Abercom Avenue one day and peeped in. There didn’t seem much point in knocking. She wouldn’t have wanted to know.’

  And did you see her?’

  ‘Yes, I saw her. Through the window. Poor old thing. Sitting in that front-room. Didn’t have much of a life, did she? All my fault, I suppose. Must have hung over her. The disgrace. The fatal error. That was me!’

  ‘Oh, there was more to it than that,’ said Liz.

  ‘Was there? Well, I don’t feel too bad about it, I mean there wasn’t much I could do about it, was there?’

  ‘No, not really. There wasn’t much anyone could do.’

  ‘Poor old thing,’ said Marcia, again, piously, lightly.

  ‘So you’re staying with Joanna Hestercombe, are you?’ said Liz. ‘And you get on with her well, you say?’

  ‘Oh yes. Very well.’

  ‘Why did you contact her before contacting me?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ Marcia bridled, slightly. ‘I was more afraid of you. Because of your reputation. And because you knew Jay Spenser. But I was going to ask if I could see you. Eventually. Truly. I promise. I was going to write to you. You’re not jealous, are you?’

  ‘I think Joanna Hestercombe looks terrifying,’ said Liz. She sipped at her drink, puzzled, frowning. ‘I can’t work it out. Does this mean that I’m somehow related to my ex-husband Charles’s ex-wife Henrietta? She was a Hestercombe, before she married Latchett.’

  ‘No, it means that I am,’ said Marcia. ‘You aren’t related to any of those people, I’m afraid. You’re just related to me. I’m related to that lot. Though not officially, of course.’

  Liz shook her head. ‘I don’t get it,’ she said. ‘I can’t follow it. Are you related to my sister Shirley?’

  ‘Yes, of course I am. She’s just as much my half-sister as you are. I know all about Shirley Harper.’

  ‘I bet you don’t,’ said Liz. ‘Nobody does.’

  And as they were beginning to dispute rights of possession over Shirley, and to disentangle Liz and Shirley’s relationship with Marcia’s daughters, a woman in a white coat came in and announced that Howard Beaver was dead.

  Tony Kettle awoke the morning after the party with the worst hangover of his short life. He lay in bed as he touched consciousness, suffering simultaneously from the deepest instant depression, from a thumping headache, from confusion, from anxiety, and from a raging thirst. He lay there for some moments, gradually becoming aware of the fact that he was naked, and that he was in a strange bed, and that another naked person was in this strange bed with him.

  Horror fills him. He remembers nothing. He dares not open his eyes. He hardly dares to breathe. Bacchanalian images of the night before float into his mind. Where is he? What has happened? Gradually he prises open his gummy lids, and notes that he is in his mother’s bedroom, indeed he is in her bed. His heart stands still. He shuts his eyes, then peeps again. Some black lace knickers hang from the bed knob. A bottle of wine stands empty on the dressing-table. A heap of clothes lies on the floor.

  The figure by his side is covered with the crumpled sheet. It is breathing, heavily. Despite his appalling physical condition and his state of mortal terror, Tony feels his flesh stir. He lies there, wishing he were dead.

  Who is this by his side? Whose knickers are those? How did they get there? Whose idea of a joke was that!

  Painfully, he once more opens his eyes, and carefully twitches at the corner of the sheet. Tousled hair, a bare shoulder, a naked breast. Dear God, thank God, of course it is Alice Enderby, sleeping heavily like a child. Dear God, thank God, of course those are Alice’s knickers. He would know them anywhere. He remembers, now, hanging them there himself. They are old friends, those black knickers. He gazes from them to the sleeping Alice. His head begins to clear. He is reprieved. Her skin is soft, hot, smooth, cream, unblemished. He touches her hot shoulder. She mutters, and turns towards him. He takes her in his arms. He silently vows never to touch alcohol again.

  Fanny Kettle wakes in Tony Kettle’s bed, and also wonders how she got there. She yawns, stretches, shakes her head, and it all comes back. Of course. She’d found Tony and Alice Enderby asleep in her bed, like the babes in the wood. Well, passed out rather than asleep, more like. But they were young, they’d recover. She didn’t grudge them a double bed. And Tony’s bed is quite comfortable, although it’s certainly time that somebody changed his sheets. He is a growing boy. A grown boy. And I am a grown woman, thinks Fanny, ungrudgingly. In the old days at Eastwold, she’d never have ended up after a party alone in a single bed. Does she mind? No, not really. She’d had half an eye on Len Wincobank, but had somehow forgotten all about him in the excitement.

  Her mind roams back over the evening. How had it all gone? Quite zingingly, she thinks. Everybody seemed to have enjoyed themselves, except that poor old chap who died. And he was enjoying it until he snuffed it. There are worse ways to go, reflects Fanny, as she reaches for Tony’s check dressing-gown and his down-at-heel schoolboy slippers, and prepares to shuffle down to the kitchen to make a pot of tea.

  Edward and Janice Enderby greet the day with less fortitude. Each blames the other for having forgotten to bring Alice home. Each accuses the other of having been drunk. Edward accuses Janice of flirting with Len Wincobank. Janice accuses Edward of boring the Lady Joanna. They both revile Fanny Kettle for having had a party in the first place, and then accuse Howard Beaver of having ruined it by dying. They wrangle about when and whether to ring up the Kettles about Alice. They are still wrangling when Alice rings and tells them not to worry, she spent the night at a friend’s. She does not say which friend. They shout at Alice for causing them so much anxiety, and then cont
inue to shout at one another, as they will do for the rest of the morning, and intermittently for the rest of their lives. When Edward finally storms out of the house in a rage, saying he is going to buy a new giant Maccabee rhododendron at the garden centre (Janice loathes rhododendrons), Janice in revenge gets on the phone to Tony and Val Troughton, and asks them to dinner for Saturday week. Tony and Val are slightly under the weather from Fanny’s party, and cannot think of an excuse, so they accept, unwillingly, although they are resentfully sure it’s their turn to ask the Enderbys.

  When Susie Enderby wakes up in the morning, she knows that her world has changed for ever. There will be no return. She is doomed to wait for the telephone, to sigh, to languish, to grieve, to lie, to sin. She is doomed to infidelity and joy. Is this what Fanny Kettle intended? No, it is far worse, far more serious than anything Fanny Kettle intended. Fanny had been playing. This is real.

  Liz Headleand also woke to a new world, a shining, guiltless world. Howard Beaver was dead, but she was reborn. New waves of energy poured into her, her brain fizzed, her body leapt into action. The apparition of Marcia Campbell had had an extraordinarily exhilarating effect on Liz.

  From the moment of revelation, she began to lose weight and to gain strength. It was as though she had emerged overnight, purged, from a long torpor. She was released into action. That morning she descended upon Shirley, forced her way into the barricaded house, and demanded to know what Shirley had done with the wine cooler from Abercom Avenue, the wine cooler with its entwined monogram of Hestercombe, Oxenholme and Stocklinch. She assaulted Shirley with news of Marcia. The next day she rang Robert Holland and harangued him about Shirley. She accompanied Shirley, Steve and Dora to Cliff’s inquest, and admired Shirley’s brief cool performance in what she, perhaps rightly, thought of as the dock. (Took his own life while of unsound mind, said the fatherly coroner: possible cancer phobia was mentioned as a cause.) She drove up and down the Ml, composing in her head a brilliantly original treatise on Medusa: Our Hidden Knowledge. She accepted, but then had to postpone, an invitation to tea with Joanna Hestercombe. She accused Clive Enderby of knowing more than he had let on. (Clive agreed that this was so.)