by Weldon, Fay
9
Over dinner, it seems, Gabriella’s father taunted the young philosopher, accused him not just of literal virginity, but worse, of financial innocence as well, and dared him to gamble the three weeks’ missing wages against Covert Hall plus contents. The young man accepted the bet. He wagered on the number of potatoes used by Gabriella to make the soup. Gabriella was to write the number on a folded piece of paper. This she did. She wrote the number twelve, although in fact she had used merely eight potatoes – four large wormy ones and four that were small, withered and sprouting – and then cheated, making more of the soup by thickening with a flour and water paste. This, of course, she could not admit to. She hated peeling potatoes, especially when they were not in the best of condition. And in this I don’t blame her. Even Honor never peels potatoes if she can help it.
‘Eight,’ said her father.
‘Twelve,’ said Walter James.
And in this manner Walter James won his wager.
Sir Lacey-Sumpter bit his lip.
‘How many peas in a Birds Eye Jumbo packet?’ he demanded, harshly.
‘The matter is irrelevant,’ said Walter James, loftily, ‘since you have nothing left to wager.’
‘A man has always something left to wager; you are young in the ways of gambling if you believe otherwise.’
‘But nothing that I want, now I have everything.’
Sir Lacey-Sumpter smiled.
‘My daughter,’ said Sir Lacey-Sumpter. ‘What about my daughter? My daughter against the return of Covert Hall. Have everything, young man, or nothing.’
‘Gabriella?’ Walter James was quite pale. ‘Gamble Gabriella?’
‘Gabriella,’ said his lordship, firmly.
‘You’re on,’ said Walter.
Gabriella stopped weeping. She counted out the peas. There were 748. She wrote the number down, accurately this time.
‘730,’ said Walter.
‘768’ said Sir Lacey-Sumpter. And so Walter, being the nearest by two peas, won Gabriella as well as Covert Hall. Gabriella was overwhelmed by joy. Not only was she relieved of the responsibility of her own life but might have Walter James as well, guiltlessly.
But now his lordship took off his shirt.
‘No,’ said Walter, ‘this is where we stop. I do not want your shirt.’
‘My shirt against Covert Hall. You have Gabriella, but I have nowhere to live. I might, for once, have gone too far! As for you, Mr James, you need a clean shirt more than anything!’ (Though, indeed, his was in no better state than Walter’s. But when does a man look closely at the stains on his own shirt?)
‘I daresay I have nothing to lose,’ said Walter, ‘tonight luck is with me!’ and over the comparative speed of two raindrops coursing down the window-pane he there and then lost Covert Hall. The upkeep of the place, for any responsible person, would have been formidable, and perhaps Walter James knew it.
Thus Gabriella Sumpter became the victim of her father’s mania for gambling.
‘How could you, father!’ she wept, as the young man led her away. She felt some protest was necessary.
‘My dear,’ her father said, ‘be reasonable. The young man is certainly owed something. He has done an excellent job on the library. Your dear mother, God rest her soul, would agree that it is a daughter’s duty to honour her father’s debts.’ Somewhat embarrassed, Sir Lacey-Sumpter took to inspecting the Gainsborough for possible damage, humming and hah-ing the while – a flake of paint missing here, a minute scratch there? His daughter virgin no more, but a woman of the world – a consummation devoutly to be wished! Some men, observes Miss Sumpter, see virginity in women, even in their own daughters, as an affront to the whole male sex.
I should, I suppose, let Miss Sumpter now take up her own account, but I feel obliged to clip and censor just a little. I will let her resume presently – not yet. I am no prude, but this piece of incest-by-proxy can only increase the sum of prurience presently adrift in the world. Too much permissiveness spoils the story! And how indeed it has spoilt the world. There is, we must always remember, a two-way process between the creator and the created – the latter can, by effort and example, teach the GSWITS a thing or two, cure the perpetual drift towards explicitness. Pornography is a cheap and nasty way of making a quick effect: we know Our Writer is capable of better things: or always try to believe this is the case.
What happened was that Walter James, having made Gabriella Sumpter feel as guilty as he could and after removing her clothes, attempted to take her virginity. Only he was unable to do so. His manhood, faced with the reality of the young woman, quite deserted him. Enraged because, having thrown away the house, he could not properly possess the daughter of the house, he strode into Sir Lacey-Sumpter’s bedroom in the middle of the night and demanded that they renegotiate their wager.
‘Never!’ cried Sir Lacey-Sumpter, sitting up naked in the chilly room. He seldom wore night clothes, which gave Gabriella an unwelcome and extra task when it came to washing the sheets. As Honor keeps reminding our children, pyjamas are there to save the sheets, quilt covers to save the quilts. Use them!
‘At least give me my three weeks’ wages!’ the young man demanded, beside himself with rage, but the older man refused even that. He merely abandoned all hope of sleep, pulled on his shirt and went downstairs, followed by the furious Walter and the pleading Gabriella, opened another bottle of claret, poured himself a glass, and drank without offering the young man so much as a drop. But his hand trembled in his displeasure so that he spilled wine down his chin and staining drops fell upon his already discoloured shirt, and onto the white chest hairs which buttons broken by too harsh a wash revealed.
‘You had your chance and blew it,’ Sir Lacey-Sumpter said to the young man, who promptly left the house, threatening revenge. Gabriella, doubly betrayed, insulted, humiliated and found wanting (or so she felt) by the man she loved (or thought she loved) was sent sobbing off to bed.
‘I shouldn’t have done it,’ she admits on the tapes. ‘I should have stayed and seen to both men’s shirts. White wine spotted over red, then well washed, will often do the trick!’
She weeps here. The tape shivers. The voice falters. We are at the moment of trauma.
Gabriella was roused in the night by the crackle of burning timbers and the acrid smell of smoke – Walter James had set fire to the house, or such was the assumption that must be made, although his act of arson was never proved. Gabriella, wrapped in a sheet and with white furry mules upon her little feet, escaped into the grounds. Her father, going back into the house to rescue the Gainsborough, was crushed beneath a falling beam even as he dragged the picture to safety – the frame survived, although the painting itself was scorched beyond repair. The insurance on the house had, of course, run out and not been renewed. Gabriella was left, within the space of an hour, orphaned, homeless and penniless: she owned nothing but the sheet in which she was wrapped and the little white fluffy mules upon her feet – and these were now badly grass-stained, for the water from the firemen’s hoses and the trampling of male feet had churned up the once smooth lawn on which she stood.
Gabriella was taken in by a certain Dr Aldred Ray, the quiet, brilliant assistant to the local physician, who comforted her, fed her, nurtured her, clothed her, unclothed her, took her into his narrow bachelor bed and found her not in the least wanting. Miss Sumpter goes quite thoroughly into the detail of this new seduction, but I shall refrain from so doing, for reasons already given.
‘As one house is razed to the ground,’ suffice it for Miss Sumpter to say, ‘another one opens its doors. Life casts you down then lifts you up. One lover departs, another waits on the doorstep. I thought at the time,’ she adds, ‘that I would never find a lover better than Dr Aldred Ray; that such a one could hardly exist. But of course I was wrong! One of the great rewards of my life has been the discovery that there is always a better lover than the last.’
Oh Miss Sumpter, shame! And here indeed the tape c
rackles again. Again the tears, then a pause and a gasp. Miss Sumpter weeps, steadies, speaks again. But she is not, when it comes to it, lamenting the frivolity of her life.
‘Why I weep now’, says Miss Sumpter, ‘is simply because I did not weep at the time. I was too happy with Dr Ray to pay proper attention to my father’s death, either to grieve or to consider the great insult he had done me by gambling me away, or the manner in which he had, all but directly, been responsible for my mother’s death. I, who in life recalled little, who when asked about my childhood described it unthinkingly as a time of bliss, remember all too much in death. Perhaps this post mortem paradise is not so nicely sharp-edged and contained as I had thought, but dim around the edges, as memories crowd in. They make a veritable fog: I must find my way through, I must make sense of my life. I grope, I ache, I yearn! It is painful, all so painful,’ weeps Miss Sumpter.
And as the voice wails on in the agony of recollection, at feelings long unfelt now felt at last, I wish more than ever that the pinner priests had not disturbed this poor, troubled woman, but had simply let her be. Our self-esteem is so hardly won! Must we understand and acknowledge everything; must the very ground beneath our feet be forever churned up and trampled? But just when I am raising up my own voice in grief, sorrow and protest, Miss Sumpter’s voice resumes again, quite calm, bright and light, cured, untouched by self-knowledge.
‘To remove grass stains from fur,’ Miss Sumpter is saying, ‘proceed in the same way as for removing scorch stains from linen sheets. With a mixture of vinegar, water and fowl dung.’
I feel in myself the dawn of an emotion: soon, if I am not careful, it will dazzle and blind, it will become the brightest, hottest day imaginable: the name of the day would be love. I will have to explain to Honor: I’m sure she won’t mind. This tiny little seed – which I will take good care not to water – can be no threat to my secure and happy earthly union with her dear good self. In love with a re-wind, a voice from the grave? Absurd! Honor will tell me it’s absurd, and the uneasiness will be swept away in a gale of commonsense. Am I mixing my metaphors? I fear I am. See, I am already under Miss Sumpter’s influence! Too late!
And think again! Does the GNFR not tell us that no seed should be left unwatered, no cake uncooked, no telephone call unanswered? Does it not insist that all experience must be savoured, all emotion fully acknowledged? That it is only the outcome of sexual attraction, that is to say its fulfilment, which is to be cautiously approached, lest it lead to the premature end of the story and not its lengthy continuation? Do they not hold that an unspoken, secret love is the best love of all? Gratifying to him or her who nurtures it, causing no trouble to anyone around? Indeed it does! So I shall allow myself to love secretly. Yes. I shan’t tell Honor; I shall simply let love gnaw away like a worm in the bud. It’s quite safe. Time stands between Gabriella Sumpter and myself – the steady tick, tick, tick of the falling decades intervenes. Gabriella lives, weeps, feels, and yet is dead and buried. I cannot touch her, cannot have more than an inner corporeal reaching, body to soul, soul to body; her voice lives in my head, not hers. Gabriella, my love.
There, it’s said! GSWITS, have mercy upon us, even as we have mercy upon you! So goes our prayer. Forgive us as we forgive you. Learn from us as we learn from you. Accept me as I strive to accept you, forgiving you for the fault of making me ill-favoured, humourless and self-righteous. Gabriella, my love!
‘Well,’ says Miss Sumpter, ‘what happened just then? I seemed almost to pass out: I heard again the strange silence that descends when mere physical attraction passes into love: the blotting out of the physical world, the approach of the real one. Aldred told me this was probably the effect of phenylalanine, the hormone which is secreted in extra quantity in the brain of those who fall in love – that same hormone which disturbs appetite, makes the eye shine, the skin glow, the whole body receptive to sexual activity, and is as addictive as heroin. (It is a substance found in chocolate, incidentally, which is why, they say, chocolates are the favourite gift of suitors. Only taste this, and you will love me!) It is quite possible, said Aldred, that with the first surge of phenylalanine the hearing areas of the brain are affected, and that this, and nothing more, is what the nuministic sense of quiet, as of the God descending, is all about. He may be right. It does not worry me one way or another. I do not think the effect is one whit diminished because the cause can be understood. And I have no brain any more, no body, and still I hear it. It outlasts even death.
‘How happy Aldred and I were in our country cottage. I look back upon those days with pleasure. Roses grew around the door, and there was money enough for proper household help. Our house was small, and seemed smaller to me because I was accustomed to moving about in the grand if neglected rooms of Covert Hall. After my mother died, the place had been let go to rack and ruin. The staff never stayed – my father was always reluctant to pay them wages. Either they were, he said, too ugly to deserve any, or, if they were not, then he had slept with them and so felt they should clean up for nothing, as wives do. So, of course, one by one, they left. And I was taken out of school – the headmistress had married and I daresay did not want me about as a constant reminder of her past weakness. Besides, the issue of the owing school fees became, in the end, as money matters do, impossible to fudge – and my father’s assumption was that if his wife was dead, and the servants gone – why, then his daughter would see that his meals were on the table, and that there were always clean clothes to put on. A hungry man in a gravy-stained suit may be a fine poker player, but where will he find proper opponents to play against, or any with money worth losing?
‘But these matters were now in the past. I resolved to forget my father and my mother, who had both died so dramatically. There is a very pleasant man here, by the way, who died recently in Bengal: a gentle bird-watcher, who took great care, as I did, in life, never to tread on a worm, never to crush an ant or squash a fly. The poor soul was literally eaten by a tiger while pursuing a rare owl into the jungle. Ah, one may admire creation, but one should never trust it. Never believe that it’s kind, or it will eat you alive!
‘So: Aldred and I lived hand in hand in our cosy cottage, and we had a fine brass bed which took up almost the entire front bedroom. My dear Aldred went out to Dr Lovell’s surgery every morning to cure the blind, the halt, the lame and so forth, and I would curl my hair, read books, write verse, press flowers and the like, waiting for his return. It was at this time of my life that Frieda Martock, who lived locally, first started sewing for me: she made a particularly pretty nightdress, I remember, from a cream-coloured muslin, caught under the bosom with a lilac ribbon. At sixteen I had altogether too plump a chest for any hope of elegance, but Aldred was happy enough – more than happy – with me as I was, and Frieda Martock’s dressmaking skills were good, so that if I caught sight of myself sideways on I was not necessarily reduced to tears. I wore the nightdress, of course, mostly for the pleasure of having Aldred take it off.
‘Coloured muslin requires very delicate treatment, and the nightdress finally came to grief some fourteen years later (having stood up to Aldred well enough, and one or two others besides) at the brutal hands of one of Julia Tovey’s maids, who soaked the poor thing overnight along with the heavy wash and (what is more) gaily splashed soda into the tub, so that by morning the garment was scarcely cream at all but a dreary greyish-white. It should of course have been washed separately, and quickly, then rinsed in softened water, in which common salt had been dissolved – in the mild proportion of a handful to three or four gallons – and wrung gently as soon as rinsed, with as little twisting as possible, before being immediately hung out to dry.
‘When the Tovey maid had the face to hand me back, ironed and folded and flattened, the poor, ruined, de-natured garment, I did not bother to reproach her. I simply went straight to Julia and said: ‘“Lady Tovey, I am at a loss to understand why you worry so much about your son’s association with me. Nothing as lamentable as th
is would ever happen in a household over which I had control.”
‘I left her dribbling and boggling – she had a heavy jaw, which always seemed to me oddly loose – and made Timothy choose between me and her. He chose me, as I knew he would. I had hoped not to have forced the issue – there is nothing so dreary or repetitive as the conversation of a man torn by guilt – but I took the destruction of my nightdress (wilful or otherwise) as an omen. That is another of the rules. Little things are sent to warn us. A car which won’t start, or a log fire which sends smoke back into the room, milk souring in a jug, scrambled eggs burned – any trivial event which comes between the pleasure of two lovers foreshadows the wider breach. Nothing is without meaning. We whirl through our galaxy, matter and spirit hopelessly confused; a ball shot through with lightning streaks of good and bad, strands forever flying out from the central mass, then drifting back in towards it, trapped by the sheer gravity of animation; by the very energy of this great tumbling globe of being.’
I longed to ask Miss Sumpter more about the nature of the ‘central mass’, but if the pinner priests have the secret of direct communication with the departed solved they are keeping it to themselves. I could listen but I could not, as I suspect they can, enquire. It is, I grant, important and sensible for the priests of any religion to maintain a body of arcane knowledge, and when the Revised Great New Fictional Religion takes over I daresay we will have our secrets too; that is only prudent. As it happened, Miss Sumpter seemed to sense my enquiry. When she spoke next I had the clear sensation that she was addressing her remarks directly to me.
‘I can only compare the central globe to that pile of tangled threads to be found at the bottom of a neglected sewing box, but seized up, multiplied by infinity and sent spinning through the cosmos by an immense force. Amongst these tangles we spend our lives. Our task is the disentangling of the threads. They should never have got into this state in the first place.’
