Poor Things

by Alasdair Gray

  Did you see at the Theatre Royal two years ago Beerbohm-Tree’s production of She Stoops to Conquer by that greatest of Irishmen, Oliver Goldsmith? The hero is a bright clever handsome gentleman, liked by his companions, favoured by the elderly, attractive to women. He has but one defect. He is only at ease with women of the servant class. Respectable women of his own income group make him feel frigid and formal, and the more beautiful and pleasant they are the more awkward and incapable of loving them he feels. My case entirely! As a child I took it for granted that only women who worked with their hands would not find the natural Duncan Wedderburn a disgusting creature, and the result of this was that working women became the only class of female who attract me. As an adolescent I thought this proved me a kind of monster. Will you believe me when I say, that on entering University I discovered that TWO-THIRDS of the students felt exactly as I did? Most of them conquered this instinct to the extent of marrying respectable women and getting children by them, but I doubt if they are truly happy. My instincts were too strong for that, or perhaps I was too honest to live a lie. Goldsmith’s hero is eventually saved by a beautiful heiress of his own class who wins him by dressing up and talking like her maid. Alas, no such happy ending is possible for a Glasgow solicitor in the nineteenth century. My love life was below the stairs and behind the scenes of my professional life, and in these cramped surroundings I enjoyed the ecstasies and obeyed the moral code enjoyed, preached and practised by Scotland’s National Bard, Rabbie Burns. As I told each panting fair one I would love her for ever I was perfectly sincere, and indeed, I would have married every one of them had the social gulf between us not forbade this. My few poor bastard bairns (excuse the Scotticism, but to my ear the word bairns has a truer human warmth than babies or children) my few poor bastard bairns (fewer than the number of your fingers, Mr. Baxter, for my precautions prevented a great many) my few poor bastard bairns were never uncared for. Every one went into the charitable institution of my friend Quarrier. You know (if you read The Glasgow Herald) how that great philanthropist fosters such tender unfortunates, then ships them to Canada where they are put to good domestic agricultural use on the expanding frontier of our Empire in the North. Nor did their mothers suffer. No delicious scullions, tempting laundry manglers, luscious latrine scrubbers ever lost a day’s work by dallying with Duncan Wedderburn, though the shortness and irregularity of their free time meant I had to court several at once. Basically innocent despite my wicked ways—fundamentally honest underneath my superficial hypocrisies—such was the man you introduced to your so-called niece, Mr. Baxter.

  AT FIRST SIGHT I knew this was a woman to whom class distinctions were meaningless. Though beautifully dressed in the height of fashion she looked at me as gladly and frankly as a housemaid who has been tipped half a crown and chucked under the chin behind her mistress’s back. I knew she was seeing and welcoming the natural Wedderburn inside the solicitor. I hid my confusion under a chilly mask which may have struck you as bad manners, but my heart beat so hard that I feared you might hear the pounding. In matters of the heart it is best to be direct. When left with her I said, “May I see you again, soon, without anyone else knowing?”

  She looked startled, but nodded. I said, “Is your bedroom at the back of the house?”

  She smiled and nodded. I said, “Will you put a lit candle on the sill tonight when everyone else here is in bed. I will bring a ladder.”

  She laughed and nodded. I said, “I love you.”

  She said, “I’ve got another lad who does that,” and was prattling about her fiancé when you returned, Mr. Baxter. Her guile astonished and excited me. To this day I can hardly believe it.

  But though I foolishly believed I had deceived you, I never tried to deceive her. I exposed all my past iniquities more frankly and fully than I have courage and space to do here

  (“Thank goodness for that!” muttered Godwin fervently.)

  because (blind fool that I was) I believed we would soon be man and wife! I had never before heard of a man-loving middle-class woman in her twenties who did NOT want marriage, especially to the man she eloped with. I was so sure Bella would soon be my bride that, by a piece of harmless chicanery, I obtained a passport on which we were named as husband and wife. This was to facilitate our honeymoon on the continent which I meant to start as soon as the civil contract was signed. And I swear with hand on heart that monetary gain had no part in my determination to turn Bella Baxter into Bella Wedderburn. I admit that your manner when ordering your will made me feel that you were perhaps not long for this world, but I was sure you would at least live long enough to see us return from our honeymoon. The most I expected from you sir, in the financial line, was a small steady allowance enabling me to support Bella in the style she enjoyed with you. A few thousand per annum would easily have done it, and Bella’s way of talking suggested there was no limit to your generosity where she—the woman you pretend to be your niece—is concerned. You must both be laughing heartily at how cunningly you have duped me! For when we boarded the London train on that soft summer evening I had arranged to break our journey at Kilmarnock13 where I had persuaded a local registrar to wait up for us, receive us in his home and unite us. Imagine my consternation when before we reached Crossmyloof she declared she COULD NOT MARRY ME BECAUSE SHE WAS ENGAGED TO ANOTHER!!!! I said, “Surely that is in the past?”

  She said, “No—in the future.”

  I said, “Where does that leave me?”

  She said, “Here and now, Wedder,” and embraced me. She was a Houri, a Mahomet’s paradise. I bribed the guard to give us a complete first-class carriage to ourselves. It was not an express train, so it MUST have stopped at Kilmarnock, Dumfries, Carlisle, Leeds and all stations north of Watford Junction, but I knew only the motion and brief pauses in our pilgrimage of passion. I was man enough for her, but the pace was terrific.

  “Is this causing you pain, McCandless?” asked Baxter.

  “Go on!” I told him, hiding my face in my hands, “Go on!”

  “Then I will, but remember he is exaggerating.”

  At last the rattle of points, shriek of whistles and decreasing rhythm of the wheels showed that our coal-fired steed was panting to a halt in the southern terminus of the Midland line. As we adjusted our clothing she said, “I can’t wait to do that all over again in a proper bed.”

  Feeling sure our Acts of Union had obliterated all feeling for the other man I again asked her to marry me. She said in a surprised way, “Don’t you remember my answer to that one? Let us go to the station hotel and order a huge breakfast. I want porridge and bacon and eggs and sausages and kippers and heaps of buttered toast and pints of sweet hot milky tea. And you must eat a lot too!”

  I needed the hotel. The previous day had been a strenuous one and I had now not slept for twenty-four hours. Bella seemed as fresh as when we left Glasgow. As we approached the reception desk I stumbled, clung to her arm for support and heard her say, “My poor man is exhausted. We shall need to have breakfast served in our room.”

  And so it befell that while Bella ate her huge breakfast I removed my coat, shoes, collar and lay down for a brief nap on top of the bed. I had many dreams, but the only one I remember is entering a barber’s shop to be shaved by Mary Queen of Scots. She coated my face and throat with warm soapy lather and had just begun removing it when I woke to find I was really being shaved by Bella. I lay naked in bed, my shoulders and head supported by pillows with a towel spread over them. Bella, wearing a silk négligé, was stroking my cheeks with the honed edge of my razor. She laughed aloud to see how wide I opened my eyes.

  She said, “I’m taking your bristles off to make you as smooth and sweet and handsome as you were last night, Wedder, because it is almost night again. Don’t look so terrified, I’m not going to slash you! I’ve shaved off a lot of hair around wounds and suppurations in the carcasses of dogs, cats and an old mongoose. What a sound sleeper you are! You never opened your eyes this morning when I undress
ed you and slid you between the sheets. Guess where I’ve been today! Westminster Abbey and Madame Tussaud’s and a matinée performance of Hamlet. How wonderful to hear ordinary soldiers and princes and grave-diggers talking poetry! I wish that I talked poetry all the time. I also saw a lot of ragged little children and I gave them some of the money I took from your pockets before I went out. Now I’ll wipe your face with these soft warm cloths, and help you into your nice quilted dressing-gown, and you can sit up for half an hour before bedtime and eat the tasty supper I have ordered, for we must maintain your strength, Wedder.”

  I arose in that dazed state felt by all who oversleep from exhaustion and waken when they usually retire. The supper was a collation of cold meats, pickles and salad with an apple tart and two bottles of India Export Ale. There was coffee from a pot kept hot on a trivet by the fire. Growing livelier and more alert I glanced at my Fate who had curled herself snakelike in the easy chair across the table from me. She gazed upon me with a smile of such peculiar meaning that I shuddered with awe, dread and intense desire. Her naked shoulders were white against the dishevelled black cloak of her hair, her softly heaving . . .

  “I am going to omit several sentences here, McCandless,” said Baxter, “for they are hideously over-written, even by Wedderburn’s standards. All they tell us is that he and our Bella spent the night as they had spent it on the train, except that shortly before 7 a.m. he begged her to let him sleep. I will read on from that point.”

  “Why?” she asked. “You can sleep all you like after breakfast. I’ve told the management here that you are an invalid, and they’re very sympathetic.”

  “I don’t want to spend my whole honeymoon in the Midland railway terminal hotel,” I sobbed, forgetting in my anguish that we had never married, “I had meant us to go abroad.”

  “Whoopee!” she said, “I love abroad. Which bit of it first?”

  In Glasgow (which now seemed years ago) I had planned to enjoy her in some quiet little inn of a lonely Breton fishing village, but now the thought of being in a lonely place with Bella chilled me to the soul. I muttered, “Amsterdam,” and fell asleep.

  She woke me at ten, having gone to the Thomas Cook agency with my wallet, arranged for us to catch an afternoon boat to the Hague, paid our hotel bill, packed our bags and taken them to the foyer. Only my dressing-case and a fresh suit of clothes remained.

  “I’m hungry and sleepy! I want my breakfast in bed!” I cried.

  “Don’t worry poor lad,” she said soothingly. “Breakfast will be downstairs for us in another ten minutes, then you can sleep all you like on the cab, the train, the boat, the other train and the other cab.”

  Now you know the pattern of my existence as we fled across Europe and round the Mediterranean. My strenuous waking hours were all at night in bed with a woman who never slept, so during the day I was either dozing or being guided about in a daze. I foresaw this likelihood before leaving London, and on the boat to the Hague decided to prevent it by EXHAUSTING Bella! I can almost hear the yells of fiendish laughter erupting from your hideous throat at the folly of the idea. By an iron exertion of will-power and continual cups of strong black coffee I rushed her daily by train, riverboat and cab to and in and out of the most tumultuous hotels, theatres, museums, racecourses and alas alas gambling casinos on the Continent, covering four nations in a single week. She enjoyed every minute of it, and with bright glances and light caresses promised she would soon show her gratitude in private acts of love. My one hope became this: that though the public transports and giddy whirl of the day did not reduce her to unconsciousness when she got to bed, they might do it for me. Vain hope! Between Bella and the natural Wedderburn—the lowest part of Wedderburn—was a sympathetic bond which my poor tortured brain COULD NOT stupefy or resist. Again and again I fell into bed as into the sleep of death and woke soon after to find I was pleasuring her. Like a victim of vertigo flinging himself FORWARD over a precipice instead of backward away from it, I CONSCIOUSLY embraced the dance of love with groans of ecstasy and despair until gleams of light through the shutters showed I was entering the purgatory of yet another day. In Venice I collapsed, rolled down the steps of San Giorgio Maggiore into the lagoon, thought I was drowning and thanked God for it. I woke up in bed with Bella again. I was seasick. We were in a first-class cabin of a ship cruising the Mediterranean.

  “Poor Wedder, you have been forcing the pace!” she said. “No more casinos and café dansants for you! I am your doctor now and I order complete rest, except when we are cosy together, like now.”

  From then on until the day I escaped I was a man of straw and her helpless plaything. But by staying prone whenever possible during daytime I at last began to slowly recover some strength.

  Yet I still thought her kind! GUFFAW! GUFFAW!! GUFFAW!!! Yes, you damnable Baxter, let the violence of your laughter split your damnable sides! I still believed my Angelic Fiend was kind! When she raised my head with her arm to put forkfuls of food into my mouth, tears of gratitude rolled down my cheeks. When she steered me into British banks in the ports we touched, told the clerk that her poor man was not very well and steered my hand to sign a cheque or money order, tears of gratitude rolled down my cheeks. One glittering blue day we two lay side by side and hand in hand on deck-chairs, steaming down the Bosphorus with all Asia to port of us and Europe to starboard, or vice versa.

  “You are only good for one thing, Wedder,” she said thoughtfully, “but you are very good at it indeed, a true grandee monarch magnifico excellency emperor lord-high-paramount president principal provost bobby-dazzler and boss at it.”

  Tears of gratitude rolled down my cheeks. I was so dependent and dilapidated that I still kept begging her hopelessly to marry me. My eyes were not even opened by the events in Gibraltar.

  We left the ship and stayed there for a time while I arranged to sell my Scottish Widows and Orphans shares14, a transaction which could not be hurried. I remember a bank manager saying in an insistent way which made my head ache, “Are you sure you know what you are doing, Mr. Wedderburn?” so I looked at Bella who said simply, “We need money Wedder, and we are not the only ones.” I signed a document. She led me out of the bank and through the Alameda Gardens toward the South Bastion, where we had lodgings. Suddenly Bella was confronted by a stout, stately, well-dressed woman who said, “How astonishing to see you Lady Blessington, when did you arrive? Why did you not call on us at once? Do you not remember me? Surely we were introduced four years ago, at Cowes, on board the Prince of Wales’ yacht?”

  “How wonderful!” cried Bella. “But most folk call me Bell Baxter when I’m not with my Wedderburn.”

  “But surely—surely you are the wife of General Blessington who I met at Cowes?”

  “Oo I hope so! Though God says I was in South America four years ago. What is my husband like? Handsomer than droopy old Wedders here? Taller? Stronger? Richer?”

  “There is obviously some mistake,” said the lady coldly, “though your appearance and voice are remarkably similar.”

  She bowed and walked on.

  “I saw that woman bowling along in an open carriage yesterday,” said Bella broodingly, “and someone said she was the wife of an old admiral who governs this great big Rock. She never answered one of my questions. Can I crash in on her and ask them again? Why should I not have a spare military husband somewhere, and more than the few names I already have, and go for sails on royal yachts?”

  It was thus I learned that my Awful Mistress had no memories of her life before the shock which made that strangely regular crack which circles her skull under the hair—IF CRACK IT BE, Mr. Baxter! But YOU know, and I NOW KNOW what it REALLY is—

  “Baxter,” I groaned, “has Wedderburn deduced everything?”

  “Wedderburn has deduced nothing sensible, McCandless. His flimsy brain has never recovered from his breakdown in Venice. Listen.”

  YOU know, and I NOW KNOW what it REALLY is—a witch mark. Yes! The female equivalent of the mar
k of Cain, branding its owner as a lemur, vampire, succubus and thing unclean.

  “I will now skip six pages of superstitious drivel and resume on the second last page where he describes Bella bringing him to Paris by overnight train. They are again short of money so do not want to pay for a cab. They stroll through not-yet-crowded streets where the huge returning wagons of the night-soil collectors are the only vehicles. The sky is milky grey, the air fresh, sparrows audible. Bell gazes with eager pleasure at all she sees, though carrying their luggage in two heavy cases, one on each shoulder. Wedderburn carries nothing. He has recovered most of his physical strength but dare not admit it to Bella lest (I quote) she drain me once more of all manhood. Listen.”

  The Rue Huchette is a very narrow street near the river. Here we found a small rather noisy hotel, considering the hour. The waiter of a nearby café was setting out chairs and tables on the cobbles, so I sat while Bella went to investigate.

  She soon returned without the luggage and in high spirits. A room would be ready for us in an hour; also the manageress, though the widow of a Frenchman, had been born in London and spoke fluent Cockney. She had invited Bella to wait in her office, and as it was very small would I like to sit where I was? I could wait in a foyer if I preferred, but the foyers too were very small, many overnight customers were about to leave and might tumble over me. In a dolorous voice I said I would wait outside, hiding my delight at the first chance since our elopement to be without Bella in the open air. She smiled so brightly as she whisked back into the hotel that I nearly believed she was as glad to be rid of me.

  From the waiter I ordered coffee, a croissant and a cognac. These gave me courage. At last I felt strong enough to open and read the letter I had received in Gibraltar along with the money order from the Clydesdale and North of Scotland Bank. I knew that letter, addressed to me in my mother’s hand, would be full of bitter and just reproaches: reproaches I could never have faced without brandy in my guts and NO BELLA beside me, for Bella would never have left me in peace to stew in the remorse and misery I so richly deserved. Almost luxuriously I tore open the envelope and winced over its contents.