The Peppered Moth

by Margaret Drabble

  Her unnatural advantages were considerable. She was very rich. And she was an only child. She was also far from stupid, though she often seemed stupid. In her social world, it was often safer to seem stupid. And she did not need to pass examinations.

  She wanted to be good and to do good. Whether this was an advantage or a disadvantage was not dear.

  Her father, Joel Heathcote Wadsworth, owned Bednerby Main and all the coal that came from it. It was on his behalf that the colliers, rope boys, pit boys, stokers, pit sinkers and pony drivers trooped forth each morning at dawn to work all day below the earth. (Some of them worked night shifts: production had to be kept moving.) He was an extraordinarily disagreeable old man, foul of mouth and foul of temper. Nobody liked him. His colliery managers hated him. His estate workers hated him. His wife hated him, and took her revenge on him by paring away bits of her body until there was nothing much left for him to abuse. His daughter Gertrude hated him, because he was cruel and rude to her, and mocked her height and girth and features. Joel Heathcote Wadsworth had no class. He spoke broad Yorkshire, pitilessly, like the farmer’s son he was, and he played the tyrant and the bully. But now, in nineteen twenty-something, his wife was dead—an operation too far, on a perfectly healthy organ, had finished her off, to her own weak surprise—and he himself had been semiparalysed by a stroke. The stroke had served him right, in the view of his servants. He was not intemperate in his drinking habits, but he ate far too much, weighed twenty stone, and was intemperate in all other ways available to him, working himself up into a red-faced apoplectic rage at least twice a day about matters of utter triviality. And now he was confined to a spinal chair, and at their mercy. They were not very kind to him. It was their turn now. They were the masters now.

  For Gertrude Wadsworth, this was liberation. She had not been disinherited, as far as she knew, and the rest of her life was before her. She was only thirty-five. She would never marry. But she could enjoy herself, and help others to enjoy themselves. She could try to have some fun.

  Highcross House was not designed for fun. It had no tradition of fun. Nevertheless, once or twice a year Gertrude left her bijou little London house in Trevor Square and travelled north to see what was going on amongst the old slag heaps. She tried to import festivity. This was good of her, as her acquaintances acknowledged. Miss Heald was one of these acquaintances.

  Sylvia Heald and Gertrude Wadsworth had met at a charity concert given by the Operatic Society at the Breaseborough Hippodrome, in aid of the Miners’ Welfare Fund, and had taken to one another through a shared dislike of the principal soprano’s striking air of misplaced self-satisfaction. A wincing look of cultured despair had passed between them, involuntarily, and they had fallen into conversation over the ices. Miss Heald had subsequently prevailed upon Miss Wadsworth to present the prizes at the school speech day, a considerable coup, as Miss Wadsworth, through a mixture of guilt and shyness, ignored most local activities. Miss Wadsworth had been impressed by Breaseborough Secondary School, which seemed to compare not unfavourably with Cheltenham Ladies’, and the friendship had mildly prospered. Miss Wadsworth had been agreeably surprised to find Miss Heald and her companion Miss Haworth so well read, though she was too polite to show her surprise. She pleased herself and them by sending them books and magazines from London. (It was through Gertrude that Miss Heald had first discovered the poetry of T. S. Eliot and Edith Sitwell.) Of the visual arts, Gertrude noted, the Misses H. knew nothing—but then, how could they, up there in that ugly wilderness? She herself had hardly looked at a painting until she was twenty. There were no paintings in South Yorkshire.

  Gertrude was now a frequenter of Private Views and the Chelsea Arts Club. She was a member of the Sesame Club, where she liked to entertain. She was renowned for her generosity over drinks and dinners, and was kind, on principle, to many young artists. She was still not very sure of her taste, and relied on others to introduce her to the new, the shocking, the up to the minute. Arnold Bennett took her under his wing, as he took several gauche and serious young men and women, and explained to her the merits of Roderic O’Conor and Modigliani, two painters whom he seemed to think he had invented for himself. He introduced her to Roger Fry, who introduced her in turn to the Omega Workshops, where Gertrude spent a lot of money on furnishings for the house in Trevor Square. Would she, she wondered, when her father died, as he surely soon must, attempt to do over the décor of Highcross House? Get rid of the Victorian drapes, the Scottish baronial plaid, the dark reds, the plush, the meat-colours, the brawn textures, the gravy browning? And fill it with turquoise and lime, with shrimp and apricot and buttercup? Or should she just sell the pile for a song and move away and forget it and what it stood on and stood for?

  Such were the benevolent and artistic thoughts of Gertrude Wadsworth as she got herself up for her annual Easter bash. She had invited a hundred guests from all over the county, her highest score yet. Her father was confined to his quarters, and Otley and Bateman understood that they were not to bring him out whatever he said. Miss Wadsworth adjusted her flesh pink stockings and suspenders, heaving largely inside the supposed liberation of her supple newfangled buskless corset—‘light and airy and soft and lissom’, its label had declared, and, with its mere seven bonings, it was ‘to all intents and purposes non-existent’. So it had promised, but nevertheless Miss Wadsworth found it uncomfortably restricting. Why did one have to wear such things? And why was she such a bloody awful shape, as her father was never tired of remarking? When the fashion, now, was to look boyish? Gertrude Wadsworth might from some angles look mannish, but boyish, never. She groaned, sighed and bit the bullet, pulling on her eau-de-Nil low-waisted gown with its silvery beaded fringing. What did it matter if she looked a perfect fright? Nobody would care. She draped herself with long chains of pearl and paste diamond. They seemed to make matters even worse, so she took them off again. Her shoes, at least, were pretty. Her feet were not very large. Large, but not very large.

  A hundred guests, from all over the West Riding. A scattering of gentlefolk from farms and halls and manors. The colliery manager and his wife, and Captain Sligo, the moustached owner of Pottles Pit. The nice Methodist minister from Wath. (She had not invited any vicars. She disapproved of the Church of England.) The Misses Heald and Haworth. Mr and Mrs Farnsworth. Some local businessmen and manufacturers, glassmakers, confectioners, a wholesale potato dealer. A few doctors, a racing driver and a pianist. A painter and a poet. Some farmers, and a scion of the Wardale family. A professor from Northam University. An antiquary from Leeds, and a bookseller from Sheffield. And there was a handful of houseguests, her chums from London, who were occupying the damp and disused bedrooms, and who would add a cosmopolitan tone to the occasion. A heterogeneous mix, a crude but brave mingling. And into this tricky gathering, as yet unknown to Gertrude Wadsworth, would enter innocent, inexperienced little Bessie Bawtry, garlanded with academic laurels, yet naked of all other ornament. Bessie Bawtry had not even a string of artificial pearls to dangle round her neck.

  But did that matter, for a fresh girl of eighteen? Will not her natural grace and beauty glow and glimmer sweetly? ‘Full many a gem of purest ray serene, / The dark unfathomed caves of ocean bear’. ‘Whatever you are, be That: Whatever you say, be True’. Bessie Bawtry has many a humble motto to guide her, and she is much prettier than Gertrude Wadsworth has ever been, will ever be.

  It is natural, at Bessie’s age, that she should be paralysed with fear and apprehension. She has never been to so large a house in her life. Highcross House is far larger even than Breaseborough School, which is a sizeable stone-faced building grandly decorated with four grumpy cherubs. Highcross House is not as large as King’s College, or Trinity, or Newnham College, but to Bessie’s eye it is getting on that way. It is too large to be a home, and there is nothing homely about it. Above the gatepost in the cold spring evening loom two affronted stone figures, and the drive winds onwards and out of sight towards the Victorian mansion.
Bessie, sitting squashed between Miss Heald and Miss Haworth, in Phil Barron’s Austin, wishes she could jump out and run away into the night. But she knows she has to go through with this ordeal. She reminds herself that she is a pet, that she is clever, that she has a State and a County Major and a College Exhibition. But her throat is dry, and her hands are cold and damp. She never perspires, but a cold dew seems to have settled on her brow. She is turning into a frog. It is meant to work the other way round. She is supposed to turn into a princess, at this, her first ball. But instead, she is turning into a frog. A frog, in a homemade dress.

  Joe Barron will be there, she tells herself. He too has been a beneficiary of Miss Wadsworth’s broad benevolence. He will be a welcome and an easy guest. Joe is good with people. The Barrons, as Bessie knows well, are one of the best families in the neighbourhood. And Joe has always been a good friend to Bessie, kind to her in her hesitations, supportive of her ambitions. She has come to rely on his partiality for her. She knows she can always fall back on Joe’s good will. He is a friend, perhaps more than a friend. But Bessie has not seen so much of Joe since her recent triumphs. It was too bad about his not getting a County. She had imagined that they would go up to Cambridge together, that he would be there for her as an escort and an ally amidst the alien youth of southern England. What will happen to him now? He can’t spend the rest of his life selling Barron Glass. Can he? Is he jealous of her success? Has he been avoiding her?

  Highcross House comes into focus, on its slight eminence, in the fading glimmer of dusk. It is, unusually, ablaze with light, and making an effort to welcome its guests. It stands on the site of what was once Highcross Farm, a building which nobody now remembers. The old farm had been a pleasing and harmonious dwelling, built of a light and delicate limestone of pink and ochre and a weathered orange, with a steep tiled roof, whereas the new Highcross is heavy, red and brutal, well pointed, ostentatious, penitential, and, like its present owner, angry and severe. Bessie Bawtry’s home in Slotton Road has six rooms: this house has about forty. It stands uncomfortably upon its land. The Heathcote Wadsworths had been wise to build up here, on magnesian limestone, away from the fault line, rather than on top of their own burrowings, for the clay Coal Measures are riddled with subsidence. They have built wisely, but they have not built with elegance. This is not a house to inspire affection.

  Bessie is in no position to make such distinctions, for the sheer size of the thing overwhelms her spirits and blurs her vision, but the London houseguests have made much mock of it—such arch and spiteful mock that poor Gertrude has almost felt within herself an impulse to defend it. It is not its fault that it is so ungainly, so unsmart, so out-of-every-fashion. She has tried to make up for its failings with lights and flowers, with ribbons and candles, and music spills out of the doorway and across the gravel terrace.

  Vast polished floorboards, acres of sideboards, huge bulbous banisters, heavy-framed mirrors, false Tartan and some fine Georgian Sheffield plate. Fruit cup, more alcoholic than it tastes, and little sandwiches, and sausage rolls with flaky greasy pastry. Is this a party? What is it for? What are parties for? Here are chattering and giggling, and a room where the carpet has been rolled back for dancing. The older folk gather and gossip in corners, the more confidant of the younger ones flap and flirt. It should be easy to escape notice in this mêlée, to mix, to blend in, to vanish. Not many of the guests here are accustomed to this kind of party. Will the locals and the gentry mix, will trade speak to houseguest, will doctor speak to colliery manager? Will they recognize one another for what they are, or will the signals be too confusing? Gertrude Wadsworth hasn’t the faintest about how to introduce anyone to anyone, and she doesn’t know who half of them are in the first place. She is gauche and graceless and red in the face, despite her layers of bright pink face powder. But there is enough noise going on to cover the gaps, and some people, at least, seem to be having a good time. What more can one hope for?

  Bessie Bawtry is lost. She has surrendered her grey cloth coat to a maid in a cloakroom, and is now exposed in her crêpe de Chine frock with its unintentionally uneven hemline. She has lost sight of Miss Heald and Miss Haworth. She cannot see any of the Barrons. Where is Joe, her reliable sixth-form sweetheart? She had been sure she would find him here. She recognizes Mr Spooner from the Laurels, but she has never been introduced to him, so that’s not much good. She is lost in a sea of unknown shapes and faces. She dares not take a glass of the fruit cup from the silver tray that is offered to her. A feeling of panic pervades her. She longs to be back home, at her cramped little table, with her Latin grammar, her Golden Treasury, her certificates. But she cannot go home. There is no way home. She is stranded. And now this huge woman in pale green bears down upon her, angrily, gruffly, and demands her name.

  ‘I’m Miss Bawtry,’ offers Bessie, knowing that she is now one of the grown-ups, no longer little Bessie, but Miss Bawtry, for had not Miss Strachey herself, the principal of Newnham College, so addressed her?

  ‘Miss Bawtry, eh! Miss Bawtry!’ parrots the cruel hardfaced big woman, and she laughs, a dismissive, contemptuous laugh. ‘Well, Miss Bawtry, make yourself at home here, won’t you! Have a glass of wine, why don’t you!’

  Bessie knows she has done something wrong, but what is it, what can it be? She turns away, in confusion. But the big woman pursues her, catches her hand, and says, ‘Come along, Miss Bawtry, let me introduce you to—to Freddie Farley. Freddie, come here and speak to Miss Bawtry!’

  And Freddie Farley, summoned from another conversation, is forced to speak to Bessie Bawtry. He is gentler with her than Gertrude Wadsworth has been, for unlike Gertrude he is not shy, he is easy and sociable, and he does the best he can with this nice timid little blond girlie: he walks her to another room, asks her questions, and learns from her that she is between school and college, that she has a place at Cambridge, that she lives in Breaseborough, and that she has never before been to Highcross or met her hostess.

  ‘Cambridge, eh!’ he echoes admiringly. ‘You must be a clever one, then!’

  Bessie Bawtry does not know whether this is meant as a compliment, nor, if it were, how she should receive it. She says nothing. Freddie starts to speak to her of all the people he knows at Cambridge, but of course she has never heard of any of them, nor can she respond to any of his inquiries about the town, or the colleges, or the dons. Freddie Farley cannot think of any other topic of conversation. He is getting nowhere with this one. He asks her to dance, but she says she cannot dance. He will have to ditch her, he can’t spend the rest of the evening trying to talk to this tongue-tied mousie of a schoolgirl, it is too painful. He has done his best. He tells her to look up his cousin Douglas at St John’s when she goes up next autumn. And he hands her on, like a parcel, to Angela and Cedric, and bows his way out.

  Bessie is overcome by a sense of unutterable failure. Freddie Farley, good-natured, lightweight, has undone all her bright hopes, all her prospects. He has pushed her back into the mire, just as she was beginning to clamber painfully out of it. She has not understood one word he has said to her, but she has understood its import. It is as she suspected. Cambridge is a place peopled by confident characters like Freddie Farley, in dinner jackets, who will be unspeakably bored by Bessie Bawtry. There will be no place for her there. She is a failure before she even arrives. There is no way forward, she is condemned to Breaseborough for ever.

  Angela and Cedric, far less friendly than Freddie, reinforce his message. They quiz her about her schooling, cut her short when she mentions Miss Heald, and walk away from her in midsentence.

  Bessie escapes to a cloakroom, and sits in the water closet until someone comes and rattles the door handle.

  She finds her lonely way to the library, where she lurks behind a bookcase. The titles of the books swim before her eyes. The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Punch and the Spectator in bound, unread volumes. Samuel Johnson, Smollett, Richardson. Bessie knows that she is more capable than most of
the people in this house of reading those volumes. But what does that matter? Books do not matter. They are the foothills. Beyond them stretch Alpine ranges of unscaleable and giddy horror. There is no happiness to be had on earth.

  ***

  ‘So do you think Gertrude is happy}’ asks the poet of the painter, as they take refuge from their social obligations in the library alcove. They are pursuing a conversation about their hostess, initiated earlier on the dance floor. Bessie Bawtry, perched out of sight on the library steps, tries not to listen, because she knows that eavesdropping is wrong. But she dare not move, and she can’t help overhearing.

  ‘Happy as happikins,’ says the painter, settling into the window seat and kicking off her tight glacé kid buckled shoes. She rubs her toes, and yawns. It’s been a long day, and most of the folk up here are heavy going, and the tunes are old-fashioned. Gertrude has tried hard, but she hasn’t quite pulled it off. It’s too shaming to retire to bed alone before midnight, but really, she’s almost had enough. Not that it’s very pleasant in the guest rooms. It’s arctic up there.