by A. S. Byatt
Alexander nodded, speechless. Frederica stared at Stephanie and wondered why she had failed to notice what was there to be seen. Elinor Poole fumbled in her handbag for a handkerchief and when Thomas put his arm round her shoulder Anthea began to make respectable little gulping noises in her throat. Geoffrey Parry took his son, and sat down on the cloister wall on the other side of Pallas Athene. The boy rested his head in the curve of the man’s shoulder. Mrs Thone moved round and sat down next to them.
Frederica could not quite think where to go, and could not stay to meet her mother’s eye, so wandered off towards Stephanie. The school waitresses were taking away teacups and replacing them with glasses of bubbling wine. Alexander watched Frederica’s relentless back, caught Thomas Poole’s tragic stare, and turned with graceful solicitude to Anthea Warburton, whom he wished the earth would open and swallow, asking her whether she felt quite well, whether he could get her a glass of water or wine, whether she would like to come further into the shade. She came, to his relief, thus making it possible for Thomas Poole to find his wife’s handkerchief for her, and for Alexander to drift, temporarily he was aware, away from Jenny. Jenny, driven by some domestic female demon of wrath, then marched over to Bill, who was clearing his throat for the congratulatory speech he had prepared, with quotations from Ascham’s praises of the learning of the young princess. She congratulated Bill, as she had his family, on the approaching happy event, aware herself by now, as she had not previously been, that the Potters were ignorant of Stephanie’s state. Bill, half-listening, half-coughing, suddenly caught the import of what she was saying, and Winifred, hurrying uselessly up, was in time to see him meet Daniel’s eye with a look of such concentrated and disproportionate loathing that she thought for a moment that he had gone truly mad, and was about to hurl bottles, or silver salvers, at his sturdy black son-in-law.
Daniel informed Stephanie that som’at was up, he was afraid.
Bill began to talk, much too fast and somewhat disjointedly, not about Roger Ascham, but about the eternity of the work of thought, or art, and about Areopagitica. “For Books are not absolutely dead things, but do contain a potency of life in them to be as active as that soul whose progeny they are; … As good almost kill a Man, as kill a good Book: who kills a man, kills a reasonable creature, Gods Image; but hee who destroyes a good Booke, kills reason it selfe, kills the Image of God, as it were in the eye. Many a man lives a burden to the Earth,” Bill said, glowering furiously at Daniel, “but a good Booke is the pretious life-blood of a master-spirit …”
“A burden to the earth is what he certainly thinks I am,” said Daniel, roundly and comfortably.
“What is he on about?” asked Stephanie, who had missed, in a dreamy daze, most of the earlier happenings.
“He’s telling you books are better than babies,” said Daniel. Bill was now roaring convolutedly about how he had always been a strong supporter of the equal education of women, and about the goodness of Alexander’s play, and the education of its heroine.
“Oh God,” said Stephanie. “He’s found out. He’s mad.”
“I think he thought I could be got rid of, or something,” said Daniel cheerfully, “but this makes it all a bit too solid, you could say.”
“You don’t need to look so calm about it.”
“I don’t see why not It doesn’t matter to me. I’ll take better care of my son than he has of his.”
“It might be a daughter.”
“Or my daughter,” said Daniel, who was no prophet.
Bill was uttering some uncannily wrathful hopes that Frederica would make a better use of her talents, her many talents, than he was afraid to say he had of such as he had been endowed with. A man’s child was his future, unless he was rare or gifted enough to be a master-spirit, and so his own future …
There was a car starting up in the background. It came out under the archway between the towers on two wheels and cut screaming across a half-moon of the lawn. Basil Thone stepped onto the lawn in protest. Marcus Potter ran out, after it, out of some more complex urge, waving frantically but voicelessly.
“Simmonds,” said Alexander to Anthea Warburton, and abandoned her unceremoniously. Marcus was still running, although Simmonds and his beetle-car, having demolished a few parterres and a fine verge, were now out of sight, leaving a screech, a hum, and a burning smell hanging in the air. Alexander began to run after Marcus. Daniel, patting Stephanie on the shoulder, began to lumber after Alexander. Bill stopped talking. Frederica bit her lip and put her head in the air.
Alexander caught Marcus some way along the road up into the moors. The boy had his head down, and was running, pathetically wambling, catching his breath in great gulps. Alexander was not in very good condition himself, but he put on a sprint and tried to gasp to the boy to stop; Marcus rolled on, paying no attention. For several minutes Alexander trotted ludicrously on beside him, saying things like “… do no good … told you better not … have some sense.” He heard the thunder of Daniel’s feet getting closer, and flung himself desperately at Marcus in a sort of rugger tackle, as though it was a matter of male pride to bring down the quarry himself and not have Daniel do it. They tumbled together on the road, and Marcus fought like an animal, who had seemed so bodiless, biting and scratching and occasionally landing a weak blow. “… trying to help …” sobbed Alexander.
“He was my friend,” said Marcus, in the past tense, as though Lucas Simmonds was already dead.
Daniel came up, planted his feet in the dust, and stared down on them.
“Stop it,” he said. “Don’t be daft. There’s no point at all in all this, the man’s miles away now. Come home, Marcus.”
“No.”
“Well, what shall you do, then?”
“I –” said Marcus. He fought for air. He had the thought that he might die, there in the road. It was not a bad thought. “I –” he said again, his lungs in spasm. His eyes rolled up and he passed out.
Daniel proved to be good at artificial respiration, which proved to be needed. Alexander knelt uselessly in the dust, watching this efficiency, and then, when the boy was breathing in a fluttering way, helped Daniel to carry him slowly back to the school. Bill met them, white now and tentative. Daniel, who had his second breath, ordered him to see that the boy was taken up to the Nursery and a doctor found immediately. Alexander, who had not got his second breath, clung to a pillar, air tearing his lungs, his eyes blurring. His face was clawed and his clothes begrimed; his lovely hair was every which way. Through hot tears he saw Frederica striding away into the distance, furious, her party and her dignity spoiled. The Parrys, on the other hand, were coming towards him. He looked for Poole, but could not see him.
“If you have a moment, Alexander,” said Jenny, “I want to talk to you.” She summoned up the trailing remainder of the family. “Geoffrey can hear what I have to say, we’ve talked it over already.”
Alexander began to envisage a scene not unlike one he had already been put through before, where the lady assured him graciously that it had all been a mistake, that she had really loved her husband, all this time. Such scenes were a price he paid for the kind of delicate love-life he led.
“I told Geoffrey what happened.”
“Oh?”
“Exactly what happened,” said Jenny, on an unnecessarily minatory note.
“What did?” said Alexander, foolishly.
“We went to bed together. Twice. I told Geoffrey. Geoffrey is going to divorce me for adultery.”
“But –”
“As for Thomas, Geoffrey doesn’t want to part with Thomas, but –” here she became tearful, a little, “neither do I. I really don’t, whatever I’ve said about him. I love him. I love you. As I told Geoffrey. Geoffrey says we must all sit down and talk it over sensibly, what happens to Thomas.”
Alexander looked helplessly at Geoffrey, willing Geoffrey to say something for himself, or perhaps to take a swing at his own face, which he felt would have been certain
ly proper and with any luck final. Geoffrey, he saw to his horror, was amused. Geoffrey was at least partly pleased by the way things were turning out. Geoffrey, he surmised, already envisaged a life with an attractive au pair girl and long hours in the library with Thomas Mann. He thought of saying, “Geoffrey, your wife is untouched by me, I couldn’t get my end up.” Not the sort of sentence he could utter. He thought, more Machiavellian, of assuring Geoffrey that he loved Thomas himself, that he couldn’t think of separating Thomas from his mother, for Geoffrey, he saw, would fight for Thomas however little he cared what Jenny now did. But such assurances stuck in his craw. For one thing, he was by no means ready to assure either Geoffrey or Jenny that he would take on Jenny herself. How the hell, he thought, crossly, could she contemplate going off with a chap who couldn’t even get his end up?
“I told Geoffrey about all those application forms,” she went on, remorselessly. “It would be easier, of course, if you are thinking of going.”
“Geoffrey –” said Alexander.
“I’ve nothing to add to what Jenny’s said,” said Geoffrey, the amusement broader on his face.
“There are things she hasn’t told you.”
“Nothing, I’m sure, that could change what I want now,” said Geoffrey Parry, who had totally lost the strained look of the pram episode and seemed his old scholarly self.
“We’ll talk again after the last night,” said Jenny, kindly. “That is, the last night of your play.”
The Parrys walked away, an apparently harmonious family group, whilst Alexander climbed slowly to his tower.
40. Last Night
Perhaps there had been too many parties. Perhaps there was too much sense of threat and thunder in the air. In any event, the Last Night of the play ended, if not with a whimper, at most with a melodious twang. Alexander sat and watched it through with feelings compounded of such desire and terror that he would not, earlier, have imagined this possible. One paradoxical effect of Jenny’s ultimatum, and of Frederica’s party in general, was to give a unique and savage sense of urgency to his desire to possess, make, have, make love to, fuck Frederica Potter. None of these words were part of his usual vocabulary. He did not say to himself “deflower” because he supposed that had already been done. He also wanted for the first time, although he was usually lazily incurious in such matters, to know just when, and by whom, the defloration had been performed. Under his nose in his play? Or earlier? Outdoors or indoors? By Crowe, Wilkie, or some unknown acneous youth from Blesford Ride? God knew there were enough of them. He felt extremely sour towards Thomas Poole, who had put his end away with such signal, if inconvenient success, and he felt a distinct distaste for the fleshy and complacent Daniel Orton, whose success turned out not to have been even inconvenient. He was horrified by his own emotions during the scissor-slitting scene which took place in less light than in earlier halcyon weeks, and even under a few ominous drops of rain. The muscle-bound Frederica of the early summer wriggled and arched her pelvis, waved a sinewy ankle in the air and exposed most of her slight breast in a way he considered tiresomely excessive, and which produced an inconvenient erection. It was funny, he thought, how he had not minded Wilkie’s excavations in Jenny’s décolletage. It was abhorrent. He, he himself, had made a fool of him, him himself. At least, at the least he should have, in recompense, what he now knew he wanted. That bloody girl. No, not bloody. When she ran off, in her torn petticoats, he sat still and waited for her to return for her Tower speech which she did, surpassing herself, hysterical and chill. Ego flos campi. Stone women do not bleed. I will not bleed. Alexander felt his own hard intentions set like stone.
In the interval he had meant to speak to her but was waylaid by Thomas Poole, whose confidences he no longer wanted. Poole said that if only Alexander would stand being the Wedding Guest for ten minutes longer he’d be eternally grateful, and Alexander said, nastily for Alexander, that Poole had got the wrong poet, hadn’t he, he was meant to be Edmund Spenser, sweet poet of sweeter married love, the great shift in sensibility in the amatory epic if C. S. Lewis was to be believed, and that if he, Alexander, was him, Poole, which thank God he was not, he’d retreat into married love pronto. Poole did not seem to notice Alexander’s nastiness, or clumsy jocularity, but went on to explain solemnly that he had now found a doctor, through, guess who? Marina Yeo herself. Who had said that her career in the past had depended on knowing reliable doctors with reliable nursing homes, and that she considered it a public service to pass these names on. The problem remained of persuading Anthea, of getting Anthea organised, all of which was highly distasteful, and of finding the money, which on his salary was no joke. Marina Yeo moved in the best circles, gynaecological as well as in other ways. Alexander said please draw on himself for money, as this play seemed to be making quite a lot. And as for Anthea, if she was scared, that was only to be understood …
Poole said no, she was not scared. She was mad about missing a projected holiday in Juan-les-Pins. And she didn’t like having doctors fingering her, she said. Alexander said that could be a euphemism for worse terrors, and Poole said he wished he could think so. They both had a stiff whisky, on this.
Frederica, prowling in the bushes at the beginning of the second act, unwilling to put off the lovely dress for the last time, met Anthea, in her white diaphane, tinsel crown, and silver-dipped laces, vomiting amongst the laurels.
“Are you O.K.?”
“You can see I’m not. It comes in these awful waves. If I get it over now I can go on and wave my sword and corn-sheaf without feeling dizzy. Have I got trails of gunge on these frills?”
“Only the slightest.”
Frederica licked her handkerchief and rubbed. There was a small slimy trail on the pointed end of one layer of frilling.
“I suppose you guessed I’m preggers.”
“What will you do?”
“Get rid of it. I’ve got to convince Mummy and Daddy I’ve got a good reason for going up to London for a week or two. Marina will have to help.”
“Why should she?”
“Well, she found the medic, and the nursing-home, and all that. She’ll see it through.”
“Do you feel awful?”
Anthea-Astraea stared white as marble in the thickening light at Frederica’s gingery, questing face.
“I feel green. I feel green all the bloody time. I don’t enjoy anything. Not sex, or champagne, or strawberries, or people clapping, or clothes either, because they don’t fit, or anything at all, if you want to know. I feel really cross. I thought nice people could be trusted to take proper precautions. I shall have to look after myself better. And if you think I’m as hard as nails, Frederica Potter, ask yourself how else I could be?”
She tripped off, a light fantastic figure, to take her place in the final presentation of the Masque. Redit et virgo. Redeunt Saturnia regna. So Thomas Poole anachronistically intoned, and the corn-sheaf of fecundity and the sword of justice wavered only slightly from their statuesque immobility.
Frederica found Wilkie. She was nearly in tears. He got hold of her arm – he had just come off after his final rape of Bess Throckmorton – and said, “Hey, steady, what’s up?”
“I don’t know. It’s Anthea. She’s ill. It’s upsetting.”
“Not ill, preggers. Soon mended. Marina says so.”
“Mended is the wrong word.”
“I suppose so. I do agree, prevention is better than cure. Perhaps passion overtook prevention. Tut. I trust to continue to manage my own affairs better. How are yours?”
“I don’t know. I can’t. I’m scared.”
“You’re a cock-teaser.”
“Oh, is that what it’s called? I didn’t know that word. No I’m not, and you know I’m not, I just don’t know what to do. I lied, and now there’ll be all blood, at best, and I’m ignorant about – taking care – and he doesn’t know I am – and I simply don’t know what to do or how to do it, and he thinks I does, do, and I’m scared.”
&n
bsp; “I’m told the blood is usually a myth.”
“Is it? Well, most myths have got some sort of basis in reality, some people must bleed somewhere, sometimes, and why not me? Please stop quibbling. I’m not a cock-teaser, and I’m not like that girl, hard as nails, she said, either. I mean, I couldn’t be, look at Stephanie, all creamy, you have to think of the other possibilities, Wilkie, like that babies are marvellous, or are people, or something. Though I can’t imagine myself ever wanting one I must say. I expect Steph’s was just as much a case of passion overtaking prevention, only Steph’s got more guts, if that’s what I mean. Either way, not a good example for me. What am I going to do?”
“Well –” said Wilkie, “my own plans have gone a bit wonky, to tell the truth. I’d planned a lovely two or three days’ trip up the coast on the bike after this, with my girl, and now she tells me she’s detained in Cambridge and won’t come. Do you want to? Just for the ride?”
“I can’t. What with Daddy and Mummy and Marcus and Alexander and Alexander and Alexander. You know I can’t.”
“Solve a lot of problems. We’d have fun.”
Frederica smiled grimly. “You don’t care about your cock being teased?”
“It wouldn’t be. That is, no, I don’t care, so it wouldn’t be, and then, moreover, there’s no reason for you to be scared of me, because you don’t love me in this daft way, and you haven’t lied to me. So it wouldn’t be – teased – for that reason, either. So why don’t you come? We’d have fun.”
