Manly Pursuits

by Ann Harries

  The last time I saw Oscar before his arrest, he had found it impossible to remain seated in the comfortable chair, so great was his agitation. I knew only too well of the details of his sublime love for Alfred Douglas, a love which had long ago transcended the physical, but I recognised also the symptoms of self-surrender, where a man has handed over his life entirely to the loved one, as if in a hypnotic trance. Why else would he pursue this pointless libel case, other than to obey the loved one’s wishes: to collude with the son’s ravenous craving to destroy his father? I knew of Oscar’s illegal meetings with boys in hotel bedrooms: his ‘feasting with panthers’. I feared that these episodes would be revealed at the trial: Oscar declared there was no means of establishing they had happened. I remember him so clearly now, standing at my study window, staring into the geometry of white roses and yew hedges of the Fellows’ Garden, and remarking: ‘Do you remember, Francis, that morning twenty years ago when we strolled round Magdalen’s narrow bird-haunted walks, do you remember I told you that I wanted to eat of the fruit of all the world and that I was going out into the world with that passion in my soul?’

  I replied that I did, and that the walk in question had occurred during the week that the meadow was purple with snake’s head fritillary.

  Oscar looked at me affectionately. His face had indeed grown unpleasantly fleshy (’a great white caterpillar’, a mutual friend of ours had fondly called him), but his smile was as sweet and as heart-warming as ever, in spite of the blackened, protruding teeth. ‘Ah, the fritillaries, coz: we never did resolve our argument. I declared that they were native to Magdalen, but you insisted that some incumbent from Ducklington had transplanted the bulbs a mere hundred years ago. I cannot bring myself to believe that the fritillaries of Magdalen Meadow have not waved their purple shawls for as long as Magdalen itself has stood: surely they cannot be colonists from a village near Witney!’ His smile suffused his teasing words.

  ‘I can still only say that the Ducklington fritillaries are entirely indigenous. I cannot say that with certainty about the Magdalen colony.’

  Oscar grew nostalgic. ‘I once made a buttonhole of lilac and mulberry fritillary bells in the spring – the only flower I know which Nature has imbued with checks. I considered ordering an entire suit of the fritillary pattern to be woven in tweed, to go with it. Instead I wore it with that very loud yellow-and-black chequered jacket, do you remember?’

  ‘You were wearing it when I first met you. In the Botanic Gardens’ greenhouse. You attracted the butterflies.’

  ‘And you were dropping insects into the green jaws of carnivorous plants. I watched them writhe in the plants’ transparent stomachs. You told me that the Venus’s flytrap could count to three. Or was it two?’

  ‘What are you going to do about this trial, Oscar? I fear you have been ill-advised.’

  He turned back to the window. ‘At first I confined myself exclusively to the trees of what seemed to me the sunlit side of the garden, and shunned the other side for its shadow and its gloom. I was determined to know nothing of failure, disgrace, sorrow, despair; remorse that makes one walk on thorns, anguish that chooses sackcloth for its raiment. And now I am forced to taste each of them in turn.’

  ‘Do I detect the influence of Rome? You would not suit sackcloth, Oscar.’

  He ignored my feeble jibe. His voice was caterpillar soft. ‘You know that I have deliberately gone to the very depths in the search for new sensation. Will you ever understand how desire can become a malady, or a madness, or both? I grew careless of the lives of others. I took pleasure where it pleased me, and passed on. I forgot that every little action of the common day makes or unmakes character, and that therefore what one has done in the secret chamber one has some day to cry aloud on the housetop.’

  ‘No, no, you are wrong!’ I interrupted. ‘We would not hear ourselves speak if everyone shouted their secret sins from the housetops! Think again, Oscar, for all our sakes!’

  He gathered his hat, stick, coat. ‘Goodbye, dear coz. I will keep you informed of my sojourn in the outer rings of hell.’

  I was to see him only once more.

  Great Granary 1899

  Huxley’s face is hewn from concrete, but tonight it has assumed the elasticity of animal flesh. He cannot prevent himself from smiling, the demand upon unused muscles causing the layers of brick and cement in his cheeks to crumble dangerously.

  ‘The Princess!’ he cries out in a voice distorted by repressed hysteria. ‘They’ve caught her at it!’

  ‘At what?’ Jameson frowns, and cocks his head.

  ‘Lighting the fires, sir! In the forests. The master thought you’d best know. She’s downstairs, sir, in a sorry mess.’

  ‘That woman!’ exclaims Jameson angrily. ‘She’s been hounding him for years. He’s obviously not going to marry her – so this is her revenge. Hell hath no fury, and all that!’

  ‘Does she wear a great deal of jewellery and perfume?’ I enquire.

  Jameson pulls a face. ‘I should think so! Some of these foreign women dress up no better than gypsies, if you ask me. But I’d better go down. Perhaps we can continue our discussion some other time. Goodnight, Wills.’

  Clapham Junction 1895

  On alighting from the train at Clapham I became aware that a disturbance of some kind was causing a crowd to gather on the opposite platform. This communicated itself to the passengers on my train who were continuing to Waterloo: they pulled down the windows and, hanging out of them, some two or three to a window, became extremely animated, whistling and catcalling and shouting out terms of Cockney abuse. My curiosity thus aroused, I waited for the train to pull out from the platform in order to see for myself the cause of this merriment. So densely packed had the Waterloo-Reading platform become that it was at first quite impossible to discover what irresistible incident or personage lay within the ranks of the onlookers. My dignity, of course, would not permit me to cross the railway bridge in order to jostle with the multitude, and finally I concluded that some sort of side-show from a visiting fair must be delivering an impromptu performance for the diversion of fellow travellers. A number of passengers who had disembarked at Clapham with me now also lingered, tantalised by the spectacle across the railway lines. I was about to leave my platform and locate my connection for Battersea when the crowds on the opposite platform suddenly parted, revealing the source of their entertainment.

  Whoever has decreed that a few seconds is a short space of time has not stood in the rain on a railway platform and discovered upon it his closest friend in handcuffs.

  At first I thought I saw only an unkempt man in prison dress, his exhaustion and sorrow almost tangible. But as my brain cells began to fire with such violence it was as if an electric storm had broken out in my head, I could see that Oscar was trembling. His great body was so much reduced in size it seemed impossible that this gaunt frame could belong to the man I had seen in my rooms not six months earlier. A short scrubby beard bristled from his chin; his head of curls had been cropped by a clumsy knife and was partially covered by a prisoner’s cap, marked with arrows. These arrows descended in a trail all over his drab uniform, already several sizes too big for him. A downcast Sebastian, he stood linked by metal cuffs to a prison warder’s arm. So pale was he, I thought he might faint, or vomit.

  The crowd had discovered his identity, and were shouting out his name: ‘Mr Hoscar Wilde, hauthor and poof in ‘andcuffs!’ Not all of the men (for there were few women) were of the uneducated classes, but their jibes were of the coarsest nature. One man stepped forward and spat full in Oscar’s face: I could see the saliva trickle, untouched, down my friend’s cheek.

  The group of passengers around me began to snigger. One well-dressed gentleman stepped forward and called across the railway lines in a penetrating voice: ‘To lose one trial, Mr Wilde, may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose all three looks like carelessness!’ Howls of appreciation from the scoffers.

  Oscar raised his eyes. The crow
d held its breath. Was he preparing an epigram that would forever transform Clapham Junction into a gathering place for wits; a piece of repartee that men could repeat in pubs, and grow glorious?

  Instead, Oscar’s exhausted gaze shifted from face to face until it settled upon my own. The flesh around his eyes was swollen from weeping.

  Perhaps three seconds had passed.

  Out of the depths of his suffering, a smile of recognition and of love surfaced timidly in his eyes. He bit his lip with his black tooth.

  For how many seconds did our gaze thus lock? These incidents cannot be measured in the language of time. My gaze will ever be locked into that moment on Clapham Junction when the accumulation of my life’s experience was called upon to be judged.

  Oscar was waiting for me to raise my hat.

  I turned my back and hurried to catch my connection.

  Cape Town 1899

  So this is where the Colossus comes to be alone with the Alone; to think his Great Thoughts, to have his Big Ideas; to gaze across the scrubby land to the pale frill of ocean with blue ripple of mountains beyond. Your hinterland is there!

  This is the settler summerhouse on the foothills where he sits and stares out. Evidently those stolid Dutch gardeners had a feel for views as well as vegetables. Oleander and plumbago tumble out of the nearby ravine, from the depths of which rattle forth the relentless semiquavers of a mountain stream. A simple fountain stands in the rose garden.

  Now my Maria flits among the white roses. Her movements are different from those of the English children I know. She has a quick agility which suggests imminent flight in any direction. She has never been trained to sit still or curtsy: she has made a contract with the sun and the earth, a contract unknown to children of the North. She somersaults unashamedly down a grassy slope and crawls back on her hands and knees. She cartwheels in perfect circles among the rosebushes. She is getting dirty already.

  Her mother has not come with her after all. When I arrived at the appointed hour, panting with the exertion of lugging my heavy equipment up the long mountain track, I found Maria paddling in the fountain, her boots and stockings thrown anywhere.

  ‘Where’s your mommy?’ I smiled brightly (no pointless greeting today).

  ‘My mommy says she can’t come. Mr du Toit came so my mommy must stay.’ The child scratched at a scab on her knee.

  My grey heart burst into colour. ‘And who is Mr du Toit?’

  Maria became aware of my camera, which I was erecting upon its tripod. ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Have you never had your photographs taken before? First you must tell me who Mr du Toit is. Then I’ll tell you what this is.’ I began to unfold the black cloth.

  ‘He does the knives.’ The child crept up to the camera, mesmerised by its strangeness. ‘He brings a stone and sharpens the knives. Then he fixes things what are b-broken. How can that make a picture?’

  I show her how. She hovers like a humming-bird, examining the lens, glancing at the plates. She pulls the black hood over her head and shrieks with excited terror.

  I feel the years drop away from my tired body.

  I position her in profile and she enjoys pretending to smell the odourless petals. I tell her Dodgson’s story of the gardeners who painted the white roses red.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because the wrong roses had been planted. They were supposed to be red – for the Queen of Hearts, you see.’

  Maria appears to have encountered neither the most famous children’s book of the century, nor even a pack of cards. I resolve to put this right before I return to England in three days’ time.

  She soon understands what I require and freezes into patient poses, gathering rosebuds, scattering petals, brushing a full-blown bloom against her cheek. She is quite wrongly dressed for a session of this sort, in her dark serge frock with inevitable white pinafore. I have not asked her to replace her boots and stockings, as bare feet seem more appropriate to the mood of the pictures.

  It is growing hot. I wish I had a Panama hat, like Kipling’s. The shadows are sharp and black. I try to adjust my lens to the brilliant light, and hope for the best.

  This fully operational fountain has taken me by surprise. I can only assume that the Great Granary’s gardeners keep it serviced. It is not an ambitious fountain: a large stone basin with central pediment releasing three fine jets of water. Perhaps it is a Netherlandish assertion of triumph over water; a nation which can reclaim land from the seas and reverse the flow of rivers can build a fountain on a mountain.

  Maria’s skirt is wet at the edges; splashes of damp stain her pinafore. I move the camera closer to photograph her as a tomboy Narcissus leaning over the water which shimmers back her image. The whites of her eyes and teeth flash in the wavelets. She sits on the edge of the basin and kicks her feet.

  As I change plates I notice she has found something of interest on the basin rim. She bends over and exclaims in delight.

  ‘What is it?’ I move over to her side.

  On her hand is a lizard-like creature with a face like an Oxford gargoyle. Its delicate, prehensile fingers cling to her flesh. Its long tail curls upwards with a Baroque flourish. Its bulging eyes are heavily hooded and remind me of Sir Alfred Milner.

  ‘He can change he’s colour!’ she announces.

  The chameleon is bright green, but even as I watch its pigmentation starts to flush. ‘He’ll go the same colour as my s-sleeve,’ she explains. The fact that her sleeve is dark blue and the chameleon is now a dusky pink seems immaterial.

  I photograph her trying to establish eye contact with the shifty-looking creature. It begins to crawl up her arm, its two eyes rolling about in opposite directions. I can see its heart beating fast inside its rosy skin.

  She plucks it from her shoulder and places it on an oleander bush. ‘Now you can t-turn green again,’ she says to it.

  It occurs to me that we might as well be in the Gardens of Versailles for the degree of mountain in my pictures.

  The octagonal summerhouse is built entirely out of mountain stone, and painted over with whitewash. The inevitable teak beams and benches make it seem like another room in the Great Granary. On either side, at a distance of some fifty yards, are two stone benches for the slaves who would have carried their lords and ladies up the mountain slopes and awaited their commands without making their presence felt. Did they, too, enjoy the view?

  Maria cavorts in the dark cavern of the summerhouse while I turn my tripod round and ponder exposure lengths. The sun rises higher in the sky and beats against my head. I feel I am being strangled by my high collar. The child will not notice if I loosen it. Nor will she care if I remove my jacket and work in my shirt-sleeves.

  She poses under an arch, leans against a column, sits demurely on a bench, plucking at rose petals. My head is in a black bag. I cannot breathe. Sweat begins to roll down my face and body in torrents. I struggle out of the cloth and run to the icy waters of the fountain. Oh, what exquisite relief to feel coolness on my face, my neck. I splash joyously. The slender fountain-spray murmurs lies about rain.

  Maria has joined me.

  ‘You hot, hey?’ Her eyes are enormous with concern.

  ‘Yes, I’m s-sorry,’ I stammer. ‘I’m not used to this heat, you see. Goodness me!’ I am recovering. ‘If this is your winter, I don’t think I’d survive your summer!’

  The child looks around her in astonishment. ‘It’s not winter! In winter it rains and the squirrels go to sleep.’

  ‘Ah, but does it ever snow?’ My fingers, spread out in fountain water, have become numbed by the brimming cold.

  Now Maria climbs back into the basin and begins kicking arcs of water into the air with her brown feet. I have learnt that she answers questions in her own time, and wait patiently for a response.

  ‘What’s snow?’ she enquires in a shower of self-made raindrops.

  ‘Snow is what happens in England when it is very cold. White snowflakes fall out of the sky and cover the ear
th. Children go sledging and make snowballs.’ I cannot put it more simply than that.

  This is not good enough for Maria. ‘But what does it l-look like?’ she cries.

  I rack my scientific brains miserably. ‘I suppose, once it has fallen, it looks like whipped cream – or ice-cream!’ I add in a flash of whimsical inspiration.

  ‘Oo-hoo!’ Maria jumps out of the fountain and runs round the rosebushes with her head thrust back and tongue stuck out. ‘Ook!’ she commands. ‘I ee ing I eam!’ This open-mouthed method of speech reduces her to a great deal of silly giggling, and I decide it is time to return to my camera and pack up. I have taken enough photographs.

  I move into the coolness of the summerhouse where I pack and fold in meticulous order, out of the violence of the sun’s rays.

  When I raise my head, I cannot see Maria.

  With a screech of terror, I run down to the fountain.

  She has thrown her clothes off and her tender young limbs slip through the water like long, sinuous fins.

  I cannot stop looking at her beautiful body.

  She swims round and round, then rears up sharply and, laughing, threatens to splash me. Her tiny shoulders form a perfect right-angle with her neck, yet there is a curve in them that breaks my heart.