The Sea Lady

by Margaret Drabble

  In short, the lover died, and that was the end of that.

  Sandy does not seem to wish to describe this denouement more vividly. He discloses that he has described it already, to the best of his limited ability, in a volume called The Queen of Clubs. Although he says it himself, this work is recognized as a minor classic, and it has never been out of print on either side of the Atlantic. It has been translated into several languages, including Japanese.

  'I suppose it's what you'd call a cult book,' says Sandy modestly.

  Dame Mary and Ailsa nod knowingly, as though they are pretending to have heard of it, and Ailsa thinks she may even have read it, or at least looked at it, though she does not say so. If she remembers rightly (and she may not), the nameless lover had been world famous. But she has forgotten who he was, and Sandy has not identified him. So she had better keep her mouth shut, and keep her ignorance to herself.

  Humphrey does not even pretend to have heard of it. He does not need to. He is finding it impossible to believe in this version of Sandy's career. It is simply not possible, and yet it must, he supposes, be true. Why should Sandy invent it? Humphrey has taken Speed and smoked cannabis and eaten home-cooked cannabis cake, in his time, and he has inhaled a lot of high-tar nicotine, but he has never knowingly been in a room with hard drugs or with serious drug abusers. The Sandy Macfarlane Clegg whom Humpy Clark had known had not been a candidate for this kind of consequence. He had belonged to an era of Cherryade and Mint Imperials, and had seemed set to stay put in it. Humphrey backtracks, fast, but he cannot join the dots. He cannot even see the dots.

  A long pause follows, from which Humphrey eventually speaks, in a somewhat aggressive voice, which, although still thick, seems to be regaining its power.

  'So what brought you back here?' he says, getting to the heart of the matter.

  Sandy's face is as pale and delicate as ivory, and his hair is as white and as soft and as fine as thistledown. He sits there, precisely, and raises his thin freckled yellowish hands, and joins his palms and the tips of his fingers together as though in meditation or in prayer.

  'I came back here because I yearned for Finsterness,' he says, with a pedantic simplicity. 'The place haunted me, and so I came back. I was born here, and I was in exile and homesick for years, and so I came back. I suffered from nostalgia for my native heath. Like poor Emily Brontë. And when the opportunity to return arose, I accepted it.'

  This explanation is at once implausible and convincing. Humphrey Clark feels a shudder run down his spine. This small old man alarms him. Perhaps he is not Sandy Clegg at all, perhaps he is a real impostor? There is nothing here to recognize, after all these years. This is a shell, a husk, a shadow of a man. Yet why would anyone tell such lies? Why would anyone wish to impersonate Sandy Clegg and steal his name and story?

  Sandy explains briefly that after the death of his lover in San Francisco he had returned to London to a life of voluntary celibacy and extra-mural teaching and semi-respectable literary journalism. He had given up writing poetry ('the Muse abandoned me', is how he quaintly put it) but he had studied for a doctorate, published an opaque novel with the help of an Arts Council grant, and had found full-time employment in a red-brick university, as a beneficiary of the expansion of Higher Education and a burgeoning interest in gender studies.

  And in due course a post had been advertised in the new University of Ornemouth, and he had applied for it. It had seemed to be designed for him.

  'And here I am,' says Sandy, smiling, 'for gender studies and the slender reputation of The Queen of Clubs have reached even the backwater of quiet little Ornemouth. Oh yes, I have owned up to my past now. My parents are long dead, and I am thought to be mildly if eccentrically distinguished. Our department is not as prosperous and as well funded as Marine Biology' (here he bows his head in deference towards his old friend Humphrey) 'but we get by well enough. I teach a little, I give a few lectures. Life is still quite inexpensive in this neighbourhood. One can live well on a doctoral salary here.'

  Ailsa nods, in worldly endorsement. She had noted this herself, in the prices on the modest menu of the name-changed Copper Kettle, now reborn as the Periwinkle.

  And Sandy bows his head courteously in turn to Ailsa, and says, 'You were very good, the other night on TV, on the subject of the intersexuality of fish. On the study of the changing gender of fish. Gender studies, feminism, the Plunkett Prize. You marry all the disciplines.'

  'Thank you,' says Ailsa, for whom any unexpected compliment, however ironic, however unconvincing, is welcome, so deep is her well-hidden insecurity.

  Humphrey does not follow this allusion fully, though he had caught up with some of the details of Ailsa's recent exploits over dinner. He feels excluded, and attempts retaliation.

  'So,' says Humphrey, with more than a hint of aggression now, 'you brought us all this way, just to listen to your story?'

  'No,' says Sandy. 'That was only a part of it. I wanted to hear your stories too. I wanted to fill in the gaps. I wanted to see you again, before we all die. I wanted to read the next chapter. So I thought, why not? There isn't time to wait for another fifty years.'

  There is no reason why he should not have implied that they would all be dead in fifty years, but nevertheless Ailsa is not pleased with his blunt turn of phrase.

  'So you arranged it?' challenges Humphrey.

  'Your names came up,' says Sandy. 'You were on a list. You didn't have to accept.'

  'Who brought them up?' insists Humphrey.

  Sandy shakes his head, disclaiming responsibility.

  'Maybe,' says Humphrey, 'others are not so willing to tell their stories. And maybe there is no next chapter.'

  Sandy takes time to consider this point, with a considered expression of academic detachment on his donnish features; as though he were conducting a seminar, and Humphrey were a not unpromising pupil.

  'It's not that I want a tidy ending,' Sandy offers eventually. 'It's not as though our story were a detective story, with a list of suspects and a revelation and a summing up. It's not a question of forensics or of exegesis. It's not that kind of story. It's not in that genre. But it needs some kind of –' he hesitates, for some lingering meditative time – 'some kind of resolution. Or do I mean reparation? Or maybe, after all, I do mean exegesis. Anyway, I want to know what happens next.'

  They all sit and think about this.

  'I think Sandy's story is a good story, with a lot of plot,' says Ailsa after a while, in a puzzled and palliative but nevertheless brisker tone, playing for time. 'It's just that we're a bit shocked, to hear it all so suddenly, and in such a condensed version. We're a bit shocked to see you again at all, frankly, after all these years, Dr Macfarlane. And what was that other name you had? Max Angelo? That's a good one, Sandy, that's really good. However did you come up with that? And The Queen of Clubs, that's very good too. You have done well.'

  Ailsa is feeling suddenly pleased with herself, because she thinks she has remembered the name of Sandy's lover. She has been fishing around for it in the little creeks of her memory, and she thinks she's got it. Sandy's lover had been an Algerian, like so many French intellectuals of the period. She is almost sure she has got his identity right. She is pleased with herself not only because the name retrieval confirms that she is not yet suffering from degenerative memory loss, but also because the lover had been a scholar of some fame and reputation. Ailsa is comfortable in the company of those who are famous, and Sandy's reflected glory pleases and fortifies her. She has a little rush of relief, of regained and reassuring selfhood.

  Dame Mary is less satisfied.

  'I don't see the meaning of Sandy's story,' she says.

  'Does a story have to have meaning?' asks Sandy.

  'Of course,' says Dame Mary.

  'Only the vulgar crave for meaning,' says Sandy.

  'I am very vulgar,' says Dame Mary.

  'You might as well ask, does a meaning have to have a story?'

  'I'll ask th
at as well, then,' says Dame Mary staunchly. 'It's a good question. Does a meaning have to have a story?'

  The four of them look at one another, as though they are playing a parlour game, and waiting for someone else to come in from the dark to lay down the rules.

  'The problem, as I see it,' says Sandy, after a pause for thought, and resuming his doctoral role, 'is to do with teleology. We were all brought up in a teleological universe. We were brought up to believe that stories have meanings and that meanings have stories and that journeys have ends. We were brought up to believe that there would be an ending, that there would be completion. For each and every life, for each and every organism. But now we know that that's not true. It was true, once, but it's true no longer. We have passed the point in time and in history where that truth applies. The universe has shed the teleological fallacy. So now we have to work out what can take its place. We have to tell and shape our stories in another space, in another concept of space.'

  'I dispute that,' says Ailsa.

  'I don't know what teleology is,' says Dame Mary, defiantly accepting her role as prompt and stooge.

  Sandy bows, with mock courtesy, towards the singer.

  'Then perhaps,' he says, 'you are exempt from its demands. You are a child of nature and of instinct.'

  It is not clear that this is a compliment, and Dame Mary makes a snorting noise of dismissal.

  'And I don't know what exegesis is, either,' she adds, in a muttered throwaway that receives no acknowledgement.

  'Do you mean to say,' says Ailsa indignantly, at Sandy, starting off in another direction, on another and baser level of counter-attack, 'that for all these years you have been spying on us, like a little sneak, and planning your revenge?'

  And what do you think you were doing, reading my mother's diaries in the University of Sussex?'

  'That was a coincidence,' says Ailsa. 'I didn't know they were there, when I started on that project. I wasn't looking for them, in particular. It was Mass Observation that I was working on, not the Cleggs of Turkey Bank. I was astonished to come across them. I wasn't being intrusive. And I wasn't looking for you, if that's what you think. I'd forgotten all about you. I hadn't forgotten Humphrey, it's true, but I'd forgotten you. It was an accident. I wasn't even looking for me. And anyway, your mother's diaries weren't very interesting. They weren't very personal, you know. She'd deposited them in the public interest, but they weren't very interesting. It wasn't me that was the spy.'

  'I didn't need to spy on you,' says Sandy. 'You didn't exactly court obscurity, did you? You were hard to miss. You nailed your knickers to the mast.'

  Ailsa takes this camp and unexpected coarseness tolerably well, and turns in appeal to Dame Mary.

  'This rude and naughty man,' she says, 'is playing games with us. He has brought us all together on purpose. I don't believe it happened by accident. There are accidents, but this little gathering isn't one of them. I don't know where you come into it, Mary, but I bet you do. You said you'd been to Ornemouth before, didn't you? When was that, I wonder? Don't tell us that you too were at school with Sandy? No, you can't have been, you're too young. And anyway, you're Canadian, aren't you? Did you meet him in Paris, in his belle époque, at a transvestite ball? Don't tell us you're an impostor too. Maybe you are Humphrey's long-lost cousin? Or mine? Come on, tell us what it is with Ornemouth for you. What are you doing here? Tell us your story.'

  'Dame Mary,' says Sandy, reprovingly, 'came here because she was invited by the Vice Chancellor, who is a great fan. As am I. Dame Mary came here to sing to us. Which she has done, very beautifully. Dame Mary is very welcome here. The Burns song was unforgettable, and if I may say so very moving. Very appropriate, very moving. She came ten thousand mile.'

  Dame Mary shakes her round stubble head, shaking away this not very convincing compliment.

  'Not quite,' she says. 'I came from St Vincent's Wharf. I've got a nice apartment there. Not quite a penthouse, but very nice, very modern. I've got a lovely concierge, and a very nice river view. I'm glad you liked the song. It's a bit of an old chestnut, but Sandy put in a request for it, and I thought, why not? Sandy and I met at a party in Earls Court once, but I think he's forgotten about it. It was a bit of a wild party.'

  'The Devil has all the best tunes,' says Ailsa, 'and the libertines write the best lyrics.'

  'Yes,' says Humphrey, listening to an echo.

  'Tell us your story,' repeats Ailsa.

  And the Dame, with good humour, obliges.

  Dame Mary's Story

  Dame Mary discloses that her connection with Ornemouth is tenuous and superficial. She had been there once, for a day, as a tourist, but of course she'd tried to make it sound a bit more intimate than that, in her little speech before her after-dinner singsong. She'd wanted to flatter the local populace. Well, you have to, don't you? It's part of the job.

  A few years ago, she can't remember how many, she'd been on tour with the Winter Palace company, and they'd been playing the Royal at Newcastle, and she'd stayed with the duke at the castle. Gerry's father was still alive then, but only just. And Gerry had taken her for a spin, to show off his future fiefdom. He'd driven her round and about, and shown her salmon rivers and grouse moors and some old churches and all that kind of feudal thing, but what she remembered best were the three bridges over the Orne at Ornemouth, and the codfish in the Pool of Brochan. Had any of them seen the codfish of Brochan? Gerry was mighty proud of those fish, he said they'd been in his mother's family for centuries.

  'Once seen, never forgotten,' murmurs Ailsa.

  'But I don't suppose,' says Dame Mary, 'that me being given an honorary degree has much to do with Gerry or with those fish.'

  Ailsa agrees that Gerry and the fish are a distraction. There is more to it than that, and, after a little probing, and with some embarrassment and fluffing of lines, Dame Mary admits to a closer connection with Ailsa Kelman. She knows her brother Tommy, of course, but then everybody knows Tommy, there's nothing very special about knowing Tommy. But, more particularly, she had worked, surely they must all know, for a short (but significant and she has to confess productive) period of her life with Ailsa's ex-husband. 'You know, you remember him, you remember your ex,' says Dame Mary, intercepting Ailsa's sideways glance towards the now morosely hunched and silenced and thoughtful Humphrey.

  Dame Mary reveals that, like Ailsa, she had once been in thrall to that dreaded martinet, Martin Pope. Martin was a horrible man, a monster, a tyrant, a bully and a genius. The Infallible Pope, as they used to call him in the business. He had tortured her. She would never work with him again. But he had got good work out of her, she had to admit it. He'd made her do things she didn't know she could do. She'd sung roles for him that she'd thought beyond her range. And she'd lost three stone for Martin Pope. He'd threatened her with a stomach clamp, so she'd gone on a diet, and she'd lost three stone.

  'He's ill and he's mad,' says Dame Mary. 'He is really mad. I'm ill, but I'm not mad.'

  Martin Pope, claims Mary McTaggart, is still obsessed by his second wife Ailsa Kelman. He does not talk about her, but his gruesome fifth-floor Deco apartment in the Adelphi off the Strand is a shrine to her memory. It is full of photographs of her, stuck all over the place. It is ghoulish. There is no sign of his first film-star wife, or of his third secretary wife, or of his fourth Greek actress wife, but the image of his second wife Ailsa is everywhere.

  Ailsa says that this is news to her, and that she does not believe it.

  'It's like a shrine,' repeats Dame Mary with some relish, 'with candles and picture lights. It's ghoulish.'

  Sandy laughs, a small and private and defensive laugh.

  'I didn't know that chapter of the story,' admits Sandy.

  'There's a lot you don't know,' says Ailsa defiantly, hoping that this is true. She is shocked by the shrine, and does not know what to make of it. She had thought she had dropped out of Martin Pope's memory as she had from his life. She cannot believe Dame Mary's stor
y. She must have made it up.

  There were photographs of Ailsa, continues Dame Mary relentlessly, and shelves of her books, and posters of her shows, and videos of her television programmes, and a whacking great oil painting of her, a really terrible likeness, stuck over the mantelpiece. And all along the corridor there were pictures of Ailsa with her baby on her knee. Taken by Lord Snowdon, if she remembers rightly.

  Ailsa stares at Dame Mary blankly, as if mesmerized by this surreal vision of her ex-husband's mania, by this glimpse into a forgotten passage.

  'You did have a baby, didn't you?' asks Dame Mary.

  The Dame sings tragedy, but she talks comedy.

  Ailsa does not seem to take in this query. She shakes her head, in response to it.

  'You've got a daughter called Marina,' Dame Mary informs Ailsa. 'I met her once. She came to a rehearsal. She seemed to me to be a very nice girl, a nice ordinary kind of girl. I don't think she sees much of her father, though she tries to keep in touch with him. But he is a difficult man. Well, I don't need to tell you that, do I?'

  'But Martin hated me,' offers Ailsa, with a tremor of doubt now wavering in her voice. 'He can't have stuck me all over his apartment.'

  'Love, hate, it's all the same,' says Dame Mary.

  'Is it?' says the unhappy Ailsa.

  'How long did you stay married to him?' asks Dame Mary, in a more cajoling tone.

  'Oh, I can't remember,' says Ailsa, resigning herself to an explanation of the inexplicable. 'We didn't really live together much. I wasn't very good at being married. It wasn't my thing. I'm no good at living with people. I should never have accepted him. It was a very bad move on my part. Were you ever married, Mary? I can't remember if you ever went in for marriage?'

  Dame Mary is embarrassed by this diversionary but direct enquiry and she deflects attention from it by saying that she could really do with a ham sandwich. Nobody listens to her. They are too engrossed in decoding and re-encoding what has already been said, what has long ago happened, what might be on the verge of happening. They pursue their elaborate thoughts, while Dame Mary thinks about her ham sandwich.