Angels and Insects

by A. S. Byatt

  ‘Amy’s in the workhouse, with a baby, Sir, or will be any day, and she no more than a baby herself. And without a character, Sir—what will she do, I don’t know, I can’t tell, poor little creature—’

  Something in William boiled over, remembering Edgar in the scullery, remembering Amy’s submissive droop of the spine. He went out, without reflection, to the stableyard, where Edgar was saddling Ivanhoe.

  ‘I wish to say something to you.’

  ‘What then?’ without even turning his head.

  ‘I hope this about poor Amy is nothing to do with you.’

  ‘I know nothing, and care nothing, about “poor Amy”.’

  ‘I think you are lying. The poor girl is in trouble, and you are the cause.’

  ‘You jump very early to conclusions. And in any case, I do not see what business it is of yours.’

  Edgar let go of the girth he had been steadily tightening round Ivanhoe’s belly, straightened himself, and looked at William with a very slight smile on his pale face.

  ‘What is your interest in the matter?’ he said slowly and deliberately.

  ‘Common humanity. She is only a child. And one I like, one I care for, one whose childhood has been drudgery—’

  ‘Ah. A Socialist. Who “cares for” little drudges. I could ask, where has your “care” led you? No one looking at the two of us would be in doubt which of us had spent more time with the little woman. Would he? Think about what people would make of your concern. Think about that.’

  ‘That is ridiculous. You know it is.’

  ‘And I answer the same, your accusations are ridiculous. The girl has not complained, and you cannot do anything to disprove what I state.’

  ‘Why can I not? I can find Amy and ask her—’

  ‘That would do no good, I assure you. And you should think what Eugenia might think. Of what I might choose to say to Eugenia.’

  Edgar looked so pleased with himself that William was momentarily confused, and could feel the blood banging in his head.

  ‘I could bang you against the wall,’ said William. ‘But that would not help Amy. She should be provided for.’

  ‘And you should let those who are able to do that,’ said Edgar, ‘—who do not include you—take care of that as they see fit. My mother will send some sort of present. It is her place. You yourself have found us generous enough, I trust.’

  ‘I shall see that something is done.’

  ‘No, I shall. The girl was in our service and unless you want to brandish your care for her in Eugenia’s face—’

  He turned back to his horse, led him out, and mounted.

  ‘Good day, brother-in-law,’ said Edgar, and dug his heels into Ivanhoe, who gave a startled bound and trotted away.

  He could not bring himself to discuss Amy with any of the women, neither with Lady Alabaster, nor with Eugenia, nor with Matty Crompton. Edgar had aroused in him some disproportionate and inhibiting male shame at his own powerlessness and impotence. He thought of collecting what pitiful sum he might collect and asking Tom to give it to May, and then thought of the uselessness of such a sum, of the misconstructions that might be put on his action, and did nothing. Here and there in Brazil, it might well be, were pale-eyed dark-skinned infants with his blood in their veins, to whose support he did not contribute, who knew nothing of him. Who was he to judge so righteously? It was not his place to care for Amy, Edgar was right about that. And so he wavered, and did nothing, whilst Amy’s biological time, presumably, moved sweetly or painfully along its inevitable track.

  In the Winter of 1861 and 1862 Edgar had spent much of his time riding to hounds, or out with a gun, and the family indoors had been even more sedentary and female than in the Summer. In this Winter of 1863, whilst the Ant History was going through the press, Robin Swinnerton asked William rather diffidently if he cared to hunt, for he had a horse that needed the exercise, and could mount him. No Alabaster had proposed this, or supposed William might be interested, and perhaps other circumstances, tact or delicacy towards the family—his family—might have led him to decline Robin’s offer. But he was angry with Edgar, and full of nervous energy over his book and its progress. He did not want to stay still in the house. So he accepted, and rode out once or twice on Robin’s mare, Beauty, who jumped neatly, like a cat, but was not the fastest horse in the field. He was almost happy, going out across crisp English fields in the grey morning, smelling the polished leather, and the warm mane and glossy neck of Beauty, and beyond these animal smells, the whole Autumn and stubble and bracken, a whiff of woodsmoke, a sharpness of crushed hawthorn leaves that suddenly and surprisingly, as Beauty pricked her ears and rose in a rush of air and a suck of mud beneath her feet, reminded him of Matty Crompton’s secret smell, her sharp armpits, the acrid touch amongst lavender and lemon.

  Hounds met one day outside the Bay Tree Inn, in a neighbouring village. Edgar and Lionel rode off immediately after the Master, in the place that was usually theirs. They did not acknowledge William’s presence at the Meets, as though some rule of minimal courtesy, which obtained in Bredely Hall, did not need to be kept in the outer world. They did acknowledge Robin, when he was not with William, and this led William to hold back, as the Hunt followers pressed forward, and to set off in the rear. On that day the field spread out quickly and over a distance: William could hear the horn vanishing, and the faint echo of galloping whilst he himself was still negotiating a quiet, rutted lane between high hedges. It was here that a Bredely stable lad, whom he knew only by sight, caught up with him, riding a stolid cob, and said, ‘Mr Adamson, Sir. You are asked to come back to Miss Eugenia, please.’

  ‘Is she ill? Is anything wrong?’

  ‘I couldn’t say, Sir. I don’t think it can be anything bad or them as gave me the message’d’ve said, but that was all. You are asked to come back to Miss Eugenia.’

  William was irritated. He turned back, listening to the horn and the hounds baying, and set off at a good trot—Eugenia never commanded his presence, so the matter must be urgent. The hedges slipped by, he galloped peaceably across a few fields and turned in at the stable gates. The ostler took his bridle and William hurried into the house. No one was around. On the stairs, he met Eugenia’s maid.

  ‘Is my wife well?’

  ‘I think so, Sir.’

  ‘Where is she?’

  ‘In her room, Sir, I think,’ said the young woman, unsmiling. ‘I brushed her hair, took away her breakfast, and she told me she was not to be disturbed until after dinner. But that is where she is, I believe.’

  There was something odd about the girl’s manner. Something furtive, apprehensive, and also excited. She lowered her eyes demurely and went on down the stairs.

  William went up, and knocked at Eugenia’s door. There was no reply. He listened, his ear to the wood. There was movement inside, and, he could sense, a listening watchfulness which became still, reflecting his own. He tried the door, which was locked. He listened again, and then went quickly round, through his own room and the dressing-room, opening that door without knocking.

  Eugenia was lying back in her bed, largely naked, though a kind of wrapper was still clinging to her arms and shoulders. She was much plumper now, but still silky-white, still sweet. As she saw who it was, she blushed, over face and neck and breasts, a great flood of furious rose. Standing next to the bed, clothed in a shirt and nothing else, was a man, a large man with his back to William. Edgar. The room was full of an unmistakable smell, musky, salty, aphrodisiac, terrible.

  William did not know what to feel. He felt revulsion, but no primeval awe. He felt a kind of grim laughter rising in him, at Edgar’s grotesque appearance, at his own open-mouthed idiocy. He felt humiliated, and simultaneously he felt hugely empowered. Edgar gave a kind of stifled bellow, and for a moment William sensed Edgar’s thought, that it would be simplest for Edgar to kill him, now, quickly, before any more could be known or could happen. He was to think later that Edgar might have killed him, if he had
not been caught with his tail between his legs. For a naked prick which was power two minutes ago, in the presence of the female, is vulnerability and ridicule when three are in the room. He said, tersely, to Edgar, ‘Get dressed.’

  Edgar fumbled obediently to obey. William became slowly decisive. He said, ‘Then go. Go now.’

  Neither brother nor sister could say, ‘It is not what you think.’ Neither tried. Edgar’s feet would not find the outlets in his breeches. He flapped and swore to himself. William continued to watch Edgar intently and did not look at Eugenia. When Edgar bent to put on his boots, William, feeling sick and trembling with some powerful feeling said, ‘Just take those, take them, in your hand, and anything else, and get out of here.’

  Edgar opened his mouth, said nothing, and closed it. William nodded at the door. ‘I told you to go.’

  Edgar picked up his boots, and his jacket, and his whip, and went.

  William looked at his wife. She was panting. It was no doubt from fear, but it resembled closely enough the pants of pleasure, which he knew.

  ‘You too. Dress yourself. Cover—cover up.’

  Eugenia turned her head on her pillows towards him. Her lips were parted. Her limp legs were still parted. She lifted a tremulous hand and tried to touch his sleeve. William sprang away as though he had been stung. He repeated, with an edge in his voice, ‘Dress yourself.’

  She rolled herself very slowly out of the bed, and gathered up her clothes. They were cast down here and there in the room. Stockings on the carpet, drawers on a chair, her corset draped over a stool.

  ‘It is like a whorehouse,’ said William, simply telling the truth, and betraying himself into the bargain, which went unnoticed. He remembered, then, thinking he might smutch her, God help him. His sickness increased. She ran around, curved on herself, cradling her breasts in her arms, moaning.

  ‘I can’t put this on without Bella—help me.’

  ‘I shan’t touch you. Leave it off. Hurry. You are horrible to see.’

  She obeyed, and put on a white dress, which hung oddly on her uncompressed flesh. She sat down at the mirror and made one or two automatic passes with the hairbrush. When she saw her own face, a few tears fell between the pretty lashes. She sat, lumpish, in front of her mirror.

  ‘What will you do?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ William said truthfully. He was looking back, with difficulty. ‘I don’t want you to think you must lie to me, Eugenia. This—this has been going on all the time, hasn’t it? All the time I’ve been here?’

  He could see the lies pass over her face, like clouds over the moon. Then she shuddered, and nodded. ‘Yes.’

  ‘How long?’ said William.

  ‘Since I was very little. Very little, yes. It began as a game. You cannot possibly understand.’

  ‘No. I cannot.’

  ‘At first it seemed—nothing to do with the rest of my life. It was just something—secret—that was you know—like other things you must not do, and do. Like touching yourself, in the dark. You don’t understand.’

  ‘No. I don’t.’

  ‘And then—and then—when I was going to marry Captain Hunt—he saw—he saw—oh, not so much as you have seen—but enough to guess. And it preyed on his mind. It preyed on his mind. I swore then, I would stop it—I did stop it—I wanted to be married, and good, and—like other people—and I—I did persuade him—he—was mistaken in me. It was so hard, for he would not say what he feared—he could not speak it out loud—and that was when I saw—how very terrible—it was—I was.

  ‘Only—we could not stop. I do not think—he—’ she choked on Edgar’s name, ‘meant even to stop—he—he is—strong—and of course Captain Hunt—someone led him to see—he saw—not much—but enough. And he wrote a terrible letter—to—to both of us—and said—oh—’ she began to weep rapidly suddenly, ‘he could not live with the knowledge even if we could. That is what he said. And then he shot himself. In his desk there was a note, to me, saying I would know why he had died, and that he hoped I would be able to be happy.’

  William watched her weep.

  ‘But even after that—you went on.’

  ‘Who else could I turn to?’

  She went on weeping. William looked back over his life. He said, ‘You turned to me. Or made use of me, anyway.’ He began to feel very sick indeed. ‘All your children, who revert so shockingly to the ancestral type—’

  ‘I don’t know, I don’t know. I made sure I don’t know,’ cried Eugenia, on a new high frantic note. She began to sway to and fro, exaggeratedly, banging her head on the mirror.

  William said, ‘Make less noise. You cannot wish to attract any more attention.’

  There was a long silence. Eugenia moaned, and William stood, paralysed by conflicting furies and indecisions. He said, when he felt he could not protract this unbearable scene a moment longer, ‘I shall go now. We will talk again later.’

  ‘What will you do?’ asked Eugenia, in a small toneless voice.

  ‘I don’t know what I shall do. I shall tell you, when I do know. You may wait for my decision. You need not be afraid I shall kill myself.’

  Eugenia wept quietly.

  ‘Or him,’ said William. ‘I want to be a free man, not a convicted murderer.’

  ‘You are cold,’ said Eugenia.

  ‘I am now,’ said William, lying at least in part. He retreated into his own room, and locked the door on his side.

  He lay down on his own bed, and, to his later surprise, fell immediately into a deep sleep, from which he woke, just as suddenly, and unable for a moment to remember what had happened that was terrible, only that something had. And then he remembered, and felt sick, and over-excited, and restless, and could not think what to do. All sorts of things went through his mind. Divorce, flight, a showdown with Edgar, making him promise he would go away and never return. Could he? Would he? Could he himself stay in that house?

  Nevertheless, he stood up and changed into his house clothes and went down to dinner, where, apart from the absence of both Edgar and Eugenia, things were as they were every night, with Grace from Harald, bickerings amongst the younger girls, and a kind of ruminative supping noise from Lady Alabaster. The servants brought the dishes, and removed them again, silently, unobtrusively. After dinner card-games were proposed, and William thought of declining, but Matty Crompton said to him on their way through the corridors to the parlour where tea was served, ‘O what can ail thee, knight-at-arms,/Alone and palely loitering?’

  ‘Do I look as though something ails me?’ asked William, forcing himself to speak lightly.

  ‘You have a brooding look,’ said his friend. ‘And you are distinctly pale, if you do not mind my observing it.’

  ‘I missed my gallop,’ said William. ‘I was called back—’ He paused, considering for the first time the strangeness of that calling-back. Miss Crompton appeared not to notice. She enlisted his support for a game of Anagrams, with Lady Alabaster and the elder children and Miss Fescue, who was always enlisted to help Lady Alabaster. They arranged themselves around the card-table, in the light of an oil-lamp. They all looked so comfortable, William thought, so innocent, so much at home.

  The game consisted of making words out of alphabet cards, prettily decorated with pictures of harlequins, monkeys, columbines and devils with forks. Everyone had nine letters, and could give any complete word they could make secretly to anyone else, who must change at least one letter, and pass it on. The game was not to be left with the letters with demons on, which were, rather at random, some of the awkward letters, like Q and X, and some of those in demand, like E and S. William played with half his mind, pushing on easy words like ‘was’ and ‘his’ and ‘mine’ and accumulating demons. At one point, finding himself with PHXNITCSE, he suddenly woke up, and found himself able to present Matty Crompton with INSECT even though that left him with an X with a demon on it. Miss Crompton, her face heavily shadowed in the lamplight, gave a small snort of laughter at this word, c
onsidered it for some time, rearranged the cards, and pushed it back to him. He was about to point out that the rules did not allow of returning the same word, without adding or subtracting a letter, when he saw what she had sent him. There it was, lying innocently in his hand. INCEST. He shuffled the evidence hastily, looked up, and met the dark intelligent eyes.

  ‘Things are not what they seem,’ said Matty Crompton amiably. William looked at his cards, and saw that he could make another word, and get rid of the X, and answer her message. So he pushed his word back, and she gave another snort of laughter, and the game went on. But now, his eyes met hers, from time to time, and hers gleamed with knowledge and—yes—excitement. And he did not know if he was more comforted or alarmed that she knew. How long had she known? How? What did she think? Her smile was not commiserating, nor was it prurient, it was somehow satisfied and amused. The luck of the letters was uncanny. It gave him the feeling that occasionally comes to most of us, that however we protest we are moved by chance, and struck by random shocks and blows, in fact there is Design, there is Fate, it has us in its grip.

  It was possible, of course, that she had somehow shaped his cards. She liked riddles. He watched the flick of her precise, thin wrists as she passed PHOENIX on to Elaine, neatly getting rid of the dangerous X. Did she see him as a dupe, as a poor victim? Had she always seen him that way? Things were not what they seemed, indeed.

  At the end of the game, he managed to say to her under his breath, ‘I must speak to you.’

  ‘Not now. Later. I will find a time. Later.’

  He found it hard to sleep, that night. On the other side of the locked door was Eugenia. He could not hear her snore, and he did not hear her move, and once or twice resisted a compulsion to go in and see if she had killed herself. He thought she would not do that; it was not in her nature; though of course he knew nothing about her nature, after this morning. Everything he had thought he knew was overturned. Or maybe not. He had partly known that he did not know Eugenia. Either she had no inner life, he had thought, or it was locked away, inaccessible to him. Something terrible had been done to him. And to her, he thought. He should perhaps wish to kill Edgar. Except that even Edgar was in some ways less simply hateful, in this hellish plight. He was more driven, less complacently, ordinarily brutal and overbearing than he had seemed.