A Natural Curiosity

by Margaret Drabble

  Paul cannot remember his twin sister, however hard he tries. He can conjure up her photograph, framed on the mantelpiece, but he cannot remember her. He cannot recall that his mother ever spoke of her. So what has she got to do with it? Alix seems in some way to be blaming the death of the baby twin sister for the death of the dogs and the death of Jilly Fox. He cannot see the connection. He cannot follow the explanation. There seem to be too many explanations. Explanations recede and recede, down endless dark smelling corridors, down staircases and along walkways and round corners where victims lie in wait for him, up and on and down and round, round his confused brain and jumbled memory, walled in by grills and barbed wire and spiked barriers and iron gates, an endless prison of circularity.

  Alix tells him that she will come to see him as soon as she gets back from Italy. Alix is a small light burning. She has not abandoned him. She forgives him. She loves him. His mother is mad and cannot forgive him and cannot love him, but Alix has been faithful to him. See, she signs herself, ‘Love, Alix’. Would she write so if she did not love him? No, she would not. Paul touches her letter tenderly, then refolds it and puts it in its envelope. He will cherish it.

  He puts the letter away in his drawer, with his other sparse possessions, and returns to his self-appointed task. He has taken up botany. He has not abandoned the Celts and the Druids, but has been finding them confusing of late. Did his favourite people really inhabit, as a recent source has told him, ‘a world of gross meat-eaters, feasting round an open hearth, raising up whole limbs in both hands and biting off the meat’? A world of firedogs and roasting spits and great cauldrons and burning stewing flesh? He has turned to botany for comfort. He is drawing a cross-section of the stem of a woody plant. With care, he copies from the textbook. He is not allowed a real specimen. He is not allowed a razor blade for dissection. He labels the parts, in green fine-point pen, and then moves on to a cross-section of the globular capsule of a com poppy.

  Paul had always been fascinated by cross-sections. To slice through the meeting place, the joining point, the node itself, through the conductor, the connector, the conveyor of current. Through the many coloured wiring of life. If one slices neatly across the current, with Occam’s razor, one will catch the mystery as it flows. This is a pure activity, clean, clinical, inquiring. Thus will he find the source of power.

  Paul draws a circle. His method of drawing circles is curious. It is one he has used since primary school. He evolved it for himself. First of all, he draws a square, using a ruler, a lightly pencilled square. Then, within the square, he draws a circle. Then he rubs out the supporting framework. Thus he squares the circle. He has always thought this a good way of drawing circles. He draws, rubs, labels, perseveres. Like Alix, he perseveres. The poppy capsule is neatly divided, segmented into little compartments. Little pepper-pot compartments of oblivion. Botany is a pleasant pastime. Poppies are silk and scarlet, but this drawing is white and grey and flat.

  It is Sunday in Northam, and Clive Enderby finds himself taking William and Victoria to the Hansborough Wildlife Park. Susie has vanished. He does not know where she is. She said she was going to see an old schoolfriend in Bradford, but he does not believe her. She does not expect him to believe her. When Susie and Clive look at one another these days, they stare, ashen, in disbelief. This is not possible, they silently agree, as they stagger on from terrible day to terrible day. They are nice people. This is not possible.

  The wildlife park is a plot of derelict land, rescued from the demolition of the Pitts & Harley works. It is not Clive’s kind of place at all, but the children begged to be taken, they had been once with their primary school, they had liked it there. To Clive’s eye it is small, scruffy, shabby, overgrown with weeds. It is a mockery of his grandiose vision of green hills. Those who run it are grotesquely proud of it. A keen young woman in World War II landgirl’s dungarees points out features of interest and gives the children lists to tick. Sparrows, robins, starlings, magpies, kestrels, wrens, thrushes, mice, groundsel, dog’s mercury, rocket, common mouse-ear, dandelions . . . weeds, nothing but vermin and weeds. A wooden hut houses more charts, diagrams, botanical information and cardboard cups of tea. Clive is bored out of his mind. The young woman explains that small is beautiful, and talks about the lungs of the city, the small breathing spaces that a city needs.

  Clive watches the eager faces of William and Victoria. No, perhaps he is not exactly bored. It is more that he is in torment. He would like to believe that this small rescued space means something. But he cannot believe. Nor can he believe that he will go home, alone, with these children, at Sunday lunch time, and try to assemble for them a fun meal of baked beans, sausages, tomatoes, toast.

  William is asking the name of a small purple flower growing in the scrubby verge. He has begun to develop a stammer, over the last few weeks. Clive’s heart stands still whenever he hears it.

  It is ground ivy, says the young woman. She shows him a picture in her book. William had guessed wrong from his chart, he had guessed self-heal. She explains the difference between the two plants, plants that look identical to Clive’s impatient eye. It is a little too early in the year, anyway, she says, for self-heal.

  Can one make oneself interested in such small things? For the sake of the children, perhaps?

  ‘Now here,’ says the young woman, ‘is a real rarity.’ Clive follows her pointing finger, as she indicates something that to his eye looks very like common-or-garden chickweed. But no, she explains, if you look carefully, you can see that it is an unusual variety of wood chickweed, which has no right to be growing here at all. She offers the children the use of her botanical lens. Then she offers the lens to Clive, and he finds himself gazing at the quiet unassuming little plant with something that almost approaches curiosity.

  It is Sunday in London. Carla Davis waits for dusk, which comes late at this time of year. She walks over from Kentish Town to St John’s Wood, muttering angrily to herself. There is Liz’s house, next to the clinic. Its small front garden is in full bloom. A white magnolia, a pink cherry, a flowering currant. The colour’s are deep in the early evening. The lights are on, the curtains have not been drawn, she can see in. She sits on the crumbling garden wall, and stares at them. There they are, the Headleands: Liz and Charles, Aaron and Alan, and one of the girls, she does not know which. Charles is holding an open atlas, and they are all laughing. She cannot hear what they are saying, but they are laughing and laughing. Charles points at the atlas, speaks, and they all shake their heads and laugh the more. Charles looks puzzled, amused, bewildered. They are teasing him, he is taking it well.

  Carla takes a lipstick from her bag, and draws a swastika on Liz’s gate. She walks off, a little unsteadily, thinks better of it, returns, loosens a piece of mortar from the wall, and hurls it at the window. She knows they cannot see her, but she sees their astonished faces, silenced for a moment, as they swing grotesquely, in unison, towards the crash. The window does not break, but it splinters. She has a small amount of triumph. But then, bizarrely, they start to laugh again, and after a moment Aaron flings open the door and calls, ‘Who’s there?’ His words echo into the dark street, He shrugs his shoulders. ‘Be like that, then,’ he calls, to nobody, and goes in and shuts the door.

  Now the Headleands draw the curtains against the night, as Carla makes her way back to Kentish Town and the second half of the bottle.

  It is Sunday in New Zealand, and as the Headleands draw the curtains in St John’s Wood, Stella Headleand walks along a bright morning beach of black sand. The wind is in her hair, the sea crashes, the gulls swoop above her, the air is cold, crisp, pure. It is early morning and late autumn in New Zealand. Stella is happy. She has got away. She has gone to the other side of the world. She could go no further. She is free. She walks along the beach, in baggy trousers, in shapeless sweatshirt, with her hair loose and her feet bare, shedding weight, shedding history, shedding family. A rocky island rides the horizon, an empty island. There is no
one here but the birds, but behind her, in the little town perching in the valley, she has friends, friends who have never heard of Liz and Charles Headleand, and a job teaching small children who have never been to England, and who look towards the shining Pacific.

  Late May 1987

  Esther, Liz and Alix sit at a little table beneath a vine trellis. They tell one another stories, as they watch the little boats put out upon the lake. It is mid-afternoon, and the day is just beginning to revive from its noontide swoon. Esther, Liz and Alix have lunched well. They have devoured varying kinds of pasta, and little mixed fried fishes of the lake and a sublime Gorgonzola, and a salad of green grasses, and they have drunk a litre of Bardolino and a litre or two of fizzy water. The wine was undated, but the water had been bottled in June 1986, the first anniversary of Esther’s birthday picnic in Somerset, and the birth month of young Cornelia Headleand. They have commented on these not very near coincidences. Now they are sipping black coffee and deep-yellow Strega. The restaurant does not hurry them. There is no hurry here. They can sit here if they wish until night falls. They gaze across the mild dancing water, through a haze of midges, at a little island with a ruined tower, and at the far mountains with their snowy peaks. They are in a bowl of mountains. That evening, they have an appointment with Beaver’s mistress in Pallanza. She has invited them for a drink. Meanwhile, they talk and talk. They all have so much to say, they do not know who should speak first, so their stories intermingle, as they have done for the last two days of their little Italian holiday.

  Liz has told Esther the extraordinary story of the appearance of Marcia Campbell, and has updated Alix on the extraordinary rapport which has sprung up between Shirley and Marcia.

  ‘I don’t know,’ says Liz, reverting to this theme, ‘it seems to me to be nothing short of miraculous, the way those two get on. Well, what’s really miraculous is the way Marcia gets on with everybody. She has this—this amazing easiness. She seems to find everything so easy. I don’t understand it. Her parents must have been a remarkable couple. Well, they were, she says so. And Shirley and I always found things so—so hard. You should meet this man Oliver. I love him. He’s perfect. Wherever did she find such a man? He’s the most laid-back man in the Western world. How can they both be so nice to everybody?’

  ‘She’s an actress, you say,’ says Esther.

  ‘But it’s not like that at all,’ says Liz, shaking her head slowly. ‘I mean, she does call people darling, and things like that. But that’s not the point. There’s more to it than that.’

  Liz pauses, and watches a blue butterfly land upon the red check tablecloth.

  ‘She calls me Lizzie,’ says Liz, wonderingly.

  She speaks of Joanna Hestercombe and her chestnut mare, and of Charles’s response to the Marcia story.

  ‘He tries to pretend he knew it all along, but if he did, why didn’t he tell me?’ says Liz.

  ‘And what does Charles make of Marcia?’ asks Alix.

  ‘Oh, he loves her, of course,’ says Liz. ‘He thinks she’s wonderful.’

  And they discuss Charles, and his unfitness for the post he has of course accepted, and his abandoning of Carla Davis and her cause, and his new interest in playing the fatherly role. ‘He’s become positively patriarchal,’ says Liz, ‘it’s amazing, he’s always trying to organize little family evenings, he’s bought Alan a new car, he’s threatened to buy Aaron a piano, he takes Sally and her friend Jo to the theatre, he keeps on ringing Stella in New Zealand, he even came round to St John’s Wood the other evening with a bunch of flowers. He’s a changed man. He keeps talking about his responsibilities. He hasn’t mentioned satellites for weeks. I don’t know what’s got into him.’

  ‘Loneliness,’ said Esther. That’s what got into him. Loneliness in Baldai.’

  The mention of loneliness brings them to Alix’s murderer. Alix believes that she had unknotted and unravelled the strands of her murderer, that she has seen into him and known him. She presents Liz and Esther with her version of the murderer, and they have, by and large, accepted it. Yes, they concede, Paul Whitmore has clearly been unhinged by maternal neglect, by maternal hatred, by punitive discrimination in his early years. An abused child. Liz does not like to point out that by Alix’s account, Paul’s father is a perfectly normal, indeed quite kind-hearted chap, and that many children grow up fairly normal without any parental kindness at all. At least they do not grow up into mass murderers. She does not raise this objection as Alix is pleased with her explanation, and anyway, Liz has no better explanation to offer. She does not claim to understand the pathology of Paul Whitmore. Like Alix, she tends not to believe in evil. So Alix’s version is as good as any, and it is certainly based on more information than anyone else has yet assembled about the poor Horror.

  Alix has established, through more consultation with Paul’s father, that Paul had a twin sister who died in infancy.

  ‘I don’t know how I missed it,’ she repeats. There were the photos, on the mantelpiece. I can see them now, but I didn’t see them then. She died when she was eight months old. A cot death. No explanation, no reason.’

  ‘And Angela blamed Paul?’

  ‘So the old man says. He says she used to rant at him when he was a baby, saying he’d be better dead too, saying her life was over, saying she hated him for surviving. Paul can’t remember any of this. Or so he says. But he must have been affected. How could one not be affected?’

  ‘So,’ said Esther. ‘So, one feels sorry for Angela.’

  ‘Well, sort of,’ said Alix. She frowned. ‘But it is oddf isn’t it? she repeats. ‘That Paul should have turned out to fit so neatly the sort of explanation that I might be expected to find for him? Don’t you think it’s odd?’

  ‘Well, not really,’ said Esther. ‘I mean, he’s not just any old sort of murderer, he’s your murderer. If he’d been a different kind of murderer, you’d have lost interest in him long ago. You only persevered because you knew he was going to turn out to be the kind of person he turns out to be. If he’d been a—’ Esther gropes, desperately, for types alien to Alix’s broad sympathies, ‘a football hooligan murderer, or a racist murderer, or a City-scandal murderer, or a drug-pushing murderer, you mightn’t have stuck with him. Or, come to that, he with you. Not all murderers are interested in Druids and Roman History and botany, you know.’

  ‘I suppose so,’ said Alix. ‘Yes, I suppose so.’ She is deep in thought. ‘Actually he was a bit of a drug pusher,’ she says, in parenthesis. ‘He swears he never touched the stuff, but he used to carry it. He says it was a way of making friends and meeting people.’ She reverts to her main theme. ‘Yes, I suppose you’re right,’ she says, to Esther. ‘So, I haven’t proved anything. I’ve just confirmed my own prejudices about human nature. I’ve been travelling around a closed circuit. A closed system. Me and my murderer together. It wasn’t a theorem, it was a circuit.’

  ‘I wouldn’t know,’ says Esther. ‘You’re the social scientist, not me.’

  Alix looks at Liz. Liz is polishing her sunglasses on a corner of her rather crumpled linen skirt, but after a moment she returns Alix’s inquiring gaze.

  ‘Put it this way,’ says Liz. ‘If you hadn’t been on the same circuit, you wouldn’t have been able to get anywhere with him at all. You’d never have been able to meet him at all.’

  ‘That’s not very satisfactory,’ says Alix.

  ‘No,’ says Liz. ‘One wants a theory that fits all occasions. A new theorem. But there isn’t one. And look at the circularity of my own life. All the roads leading back to Marcia. Although I never even knew she was there.’

  ‘Life sets us unfair puzzles,’ says Alix. ‘Puzzles with pieces missing. How I used to hate jigsaw puzzles with missing pieces. One got so far, and then could never finish them. Or not properly. Not quite properly.’

  A silence falls. A leaf drops from the vine.

  ‘And so,’ repeats Esther, ‘one feels sorry for Angela.’

  ‘I don�
�t feel guilty about Angela,’ said Alix. ‘Nor about the Doctor and the Colonel. It was time somebody got them. For something. And you should have seen those dogs. You should see our poor Bonzo.’

  ‘I never thought you’d ever have a dog, Alix,’ said Esther. ‘Let alone a bull mastiff.’

  ‘It’s a revolting dog,’ said Liz, severely.

  ‘No, he isn’t,’ said Alix, defensively. ‘He’s coming on quite nicely. He’s a very affectionate, intelligent dog. And anyway, Sam’s always wanted a dog.’

  ‘But not a bull mastiff,’ repeated Esther.

  ‘It can’t help being a bull mastiff,’ said Alix.

  ‘Why ever did you call it Bonzo?’ asked Esther.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Alix, watching the butterfly settle on the back of Esther’s small brown cameo-ringed hand. ‘I don’t know. I think it was Brian’s idea. It was a joke that stuck. Brian likes the dog. Brian’s finished his novel, you know. I thought he’d never write another.’

  Esther and Liz murmur congratulations. What will it be called, they ask. He hasn’t got a title yet, says Alix, suggestions would be welcome. He wants something to do with hope arising out of disaster. It’s a family chronicle of working-class life, a sort of celebration of tradition and change. It’s jolly good, says Alix, loyally, but I haven’t finished it yet. He says it ends in the year 2000, with a millenarian party on Houndsback Moor. And fireworks.

  A waiter brings more coffee, and they spend a pleasant half hour inventing titles for Brian’s novel. The Rainbow, Esther rather unkindly suggests. Bright Sparks, says Liz. The Crucible? The Roman Candle? The Catherine Wheel? The Bengal Light? says Alix, obscurely, her mind running on the first small feeble firework of the post-war years, a modest little coloured flame braving the end of black-out, celebrating the Beveridge Report and the Welfare State. A little coloured unspectacular glow.