The Red Queen

by Margaret Drabble

  She had tried without success to discover who had sent her this curious and, as it now proves, explosive gift. First of all she had accused her mother because her mother, a voracious and proselytizing reader, had occasionally sent her gifts through Amazon, and because Babs was always happy to have an excuse to gossip with her mother. But her mother, over the phone from Orpington, had denied any such act of generosity. ‘No, not me, darling,’ she had protested. ‘I don’t know the first thing about Korea. Except for the war, of course. I remember the war. Terrible photographs, terrible weather, far too many dead. General Westmoreland, wasn’t it? Or was it General MacArthur? And the Thirty-Eighth Parallel? And a lot of Turkish troops? Aren’t they talking about reunification these days? The sunshine policy, that’s what they call it. When did you say you were off? Do take care, darling, won’t you?’

  Babs’s mother is an intelligent woman, born in a generation that thought it smart to dissimulate intelligence. Her daughter Barbara is an intelligent woman, born in a competitive generation that needs to display and exaggerate intelligence. Her mother’s words have prompted Babs to find out what the words ‘sunshine policy’ mean. She has in consequence become quite a fan of President Kim Dae Jung. She is grateful to her mother for this discreet prompting.

  Babs had next approached her current beau, Robert Treborough, about the mysterious memoirs, but he also denied any knowledge of the Crown Princess. Babs Halliwell had not asked him directly whether or not he had sent her the book because she did not wish to suggest the possibility of favours that might not have been offered and would not necessarily have been welcomed. But she had introduced the lady’s name into her conversation with Robert, and also the name of the lady’s translator, and had drawn a blank on both. Robert Treborough is a smart aleck who hates to deny knowledge of anything, and he would certainly have claimed knowledge, had he had any. So that ruled out Robert. Robert is a historian, of sorts, but Korea is not his patch, and the eighteenth century is not his period. Nevertheless, he was annoyed with himself for not being able to respond to her oblique references. He is a very competitive man.

  Next Babs tried her friend Polly Usher, who seemed a likely suspect. Polly was a keen if random reader, and she and Babs Halliwell had for years enjoyed exchanging recommendations. Polly certainly knew Babs was off to Korea to deliver a paper on ‘Dying by Lot: Uncertainty and Fatality’ because Polly had been kind enough to read this paper and to comment on its contents. Polly might well have known about the Crown Princess.

  Babs Halliwell and Polly Usher had been brought together by a book. They had first met near the Great Ormond Street Hospital for Sick Children, while eating a lunchtime snack in an eighteenth-century public house called The Lamb. Both of them were reading the same paperback novel, part of which was set in the Great Ormond Street Hospital for Sick Children. They had exclaimed over the coincidence, compared notes, and become friends for life. That was a long time ago. Polly’s sick child had been less seriously sick than Babs’s child, and was now well. Babs’s child, who had been very sick, was dead. But that was a long time ago, and Babs tries not to think about it too often. She is so successful at not thinking about it that she occasionally forgets the very evident connection between the field of her academic studies and the death of her child. This is a considerable feat of denial and willed disconnection, and Polly, who is as clever as Babs, does her best to collude in it. Polly has mother’s survivor guilt, and the last thing she wishes to do is to upset her less fortunate friend.

  Polly, like Babs’s mother, pleads innocence and ignorance. She, too, has never heard of the Crown Princess. Could it, she suggests, have been sent by an admiring student? Several of Dr Halliwell’s protégés, both male and female, have in the past developed old-fashioned ‘crushes’ on their good-looking, high-profile and high-bosomed tutor: maybe it is from one of them who is trying to curry favour?

  Babs had herself thought of this possibility, but it is not one that she wishes to pursue. So she had let the matter drop. Somebody, in the future, might claim this act of generosity. But for the present, she had been content to accept the gift, and, as we have seen, had also been sufficiently intrigued by it to choose it as her travelling companion.

  Her royal escort now lies patient and inert in the seat pocket, waiting to arrive in her much-changed hometown of Seoul. Babs must have dozed, after all, for she is woken by the offer of some small and indeterminate meal. She toys with it, apathetically, and sees that the toy aeroplane on the screen has nearly reached its destination. It is due to arrive mid morning, Korean time. Babs is by now longing for a shower and a change of clothes, and hopes there will be time for these in the Pagoda Hotel before the first official conference event of the day, which is a lunch reception in the Chosŏn Suite. Etiquette does not oblige her to change her clothes as frequently as a Korean prince or princess, but she feels crumpled, even in her crushproof modern fabrics, and she would like to stretch her body and refresh her garments. She is being met at the airport, or so her conference invitation and several e-mails have informed her: with luck, this will expedite matters, and she will have half an hour or so to smarten herself up before she has to face the music and meet her fellow participants.

  She is particularly looking forward to meeting Professor Jan van Jost. Jan van Jost is one of the reasons why she has accepted this invitation. An appearance at a conference at which Jan van Jost speaks will stick a glittering golden star on to any ambitious young academic’s curriculum vitae – well, perhaps not the CV of any academic, but the CV of any academic who has an interest in sociology, evolutionary biology, medical ethics, or globalization. Jan van Jost is the guru of globalization, risk and dark choices. It would not be correct to say that he is Dr Halliwell’s hero because she is too competitive and considers herself too cynical to have a hero, but she does know who he is and where he stands, and she wishes to see him plain.

  Cynical though she may be, in some professional respects, she is nevertheless excited by the prospect of arriving in the Far East. She has never been further east than India, and she is expecting to see a land quite different from anywhere she has been before. Her e-mail correspondence with her hosts has been tantalizing. She has been intrigued by the way her own correspondence, when she presses the ‘Reply to Sender’ button on her laptop, immediately transliterates itself not into incomprehensible Korean han’gŭl hieroglyphs, but into the classical Greek alphabet. Luckily she is acquainted with this alphabet, and had at once recognized her own name, ΔOΓYOΣ BAΣBAΣA. Why her alphabet should thus mutate in midair is a mystery to her, but it is a pleasing one. She is sure that Korea itself will be full of such transcultural surprises.

  Through the window, across the bodies of her fellow travellers, she can glimpse what she takes to be a tilting expanse of the Yellow Sea. It is, in effect, of a bruised and yellowish sedimentary tinge. She wonders if the Crown Princess had ever seen the sea. She had seen and crossed the Han River, on her way to Hwaseong: was that the only occasion on which she had ever left the confines of Seoul?

  Babs thinks of the Crown Princess, sitting in the shade, sheltering from the blazing sun in the corner of a baking courtyard, as her husband pleaded for his life. She thinks of Prince Sado, trying but failing to kill himself, and being revived at the brink of death by his doctors, to face a worse and lingering death. She thinks of her own husband, Peter Halli-well, marching night after night with remorseless tread around the confines of their tall North London house. Up and down the two steep flights of stairs, and round and round the central stairwell he had marched, and round and round each room, hour after hour, hour after hour, as she lay in bed and listened to him. He paced and paced, and from time to time he would groan like a beast. ‘I wish I were dead, I wish I were dead,’ he would groan and cry. ‘I want, I want, I want,’ he would monotonously repeat. She had not been able to help him. Depression had been diagnosed, but such a diagnosis was inadequate. Whatever afflicted Peter was more desperate even than a severe cl
inical depression. It was more like despair. Violent, rodent despair. He had been violent, but mostly towards himself. At least he had not sought relief in murdering others.

  Prince Sado had admitted that he found relief in killing. This, thinks Babs, is astonishing. Astonishing self-knowledge, in such dark ages. What had given him so much access to his own mind?

  The plane descends, and Babs Halliwell banishes Peter from her consciousness. She braces herself for landing and for the excitement of social interaction. Who will be there to greet her, and how will she recognize the person? How will the person recognize her? She has been told to select the VIP channel, but she cannot see that there is one, so she goes without difficulty through normal passport control to the baggage-claim area. While she waits for her suitcase to emerge from its lair, she has the foresight to visit the currency exchange desk to acquire some Korean won, in case of emergencies. She will receive a handsome per diem, for this is a long and surprisingly well-funded conference, but who knows when she will lay her hands on her discreet brown envelope? She likes to be independent. By the time she returns to the luggage belt, her navy-blue Samsonite suitcase with its purple Pagoda label has already heaved into sight and is about to disappear once more. She grabs it, and marches towards the exit notice, where a smiling young man is waving a large card with her name upon it. He has spotted her, and identified her, and is waving energetically. She waves back, relieved that she is in the right place on the right day. She is tall, and noticeable, and easy to spot. She advances upon the smiling young man, who grasps her hand in greeting, and then grasps the suitcase from her, and tries to appropriate her hand baggage. She lets him have the suitcase, but keeps her other bags. He is smaller than she is, and she is a feminist.

  His English is excellent; his smile unfaltering; his manner eager but calming. His name, he says, is Mong Joon. He hands her a card, which she thrusts into her pocket. He ushers her into a taxi, enquiring after her flight, and points out features of interest as they are driven from the airport island of Incheon along a busy motorway towards central Seoul. She notes an expanse of tidal flats and marshland blooming with banks of a soft, grey-blush-pink and grey-green water plant. Then they come to a wide and busy river crossed by many bridges, and plied by many ferries. They pass steep green hills topped by radio masts, and make their way along multilane highways in heavy traffic. She is feeling a little dizzy with the newness of it all, as he hands her a copy of the conference programme and the day’s events. She is expected, imminently, at the lunch reception. She begins to suspect that she will not have time for the shower to which she had been looking forward, and she is right. This smiling minder is telling her that she has arrived just in time for the official lunch reception. Although he smiles, he is firm about this. She staggers into the hotel, beginning to feel that it has already been a very long day, and is checked in at reception. Her suitcase is labelled, and immediately vanishes. Her hand baggage is helpfully wrenched from her. Yes, she has time to visit the ladies’ room, but he will wait for her right here, to escort her instantly to the Chosŏn Suite. They must not miss the official reception and the heralded arrival of Jan van Jost.

  The young man’s accent is globalized American. He has studied at Berkeley, as he has already informed her.

  In the ladies’ room, she does her best to repair her complexion. The lights are more flattering than those of the aeroplane toilet, and the application of a little powder and moist cinnamon lip paint restores her equanimity. She combs her hair, and sniffs at herself: does she smell of overnight transit? Perhaps, but it is too late to do much about that. She sprays herself with a little eau de Cologne, a refreshingly innocent Orpington perfume to which she has been lastingly loyal. She is ready to face the music and Jan van Jost.

  The Chosŏn Suite is already full of labelled people of many nationalities. She registers her name, and takes her badge, and looks around her. Whom does she recognize? As yet, nobody. Cameras flash; drinks are offered. Perhaps unwisely she accepts what she takes to be a glass of wine. Her smooth-faced young minder introduces her to a clutch of Korean professors, and a journalist asks her to pose with one of them. She makes small talk. Soon, she knows, there will be speeches.

  But the speeches do not come. More drinks come, and nuts and crisps and varnished rice crackers and pickled radishes also come, but no speeches. Everybody is waiting for the speeches, and for the opportunity to attack the buffet lunch, temptingly displayed on a side table. Babs Halliwell, whose minder is not-so-discreetly watching her every movement, has managed to find an acquaintance in the form of a microbiologist from Australia, whom she had first met three years earlier at a dinner at All Souls in Oxford. She remembers him well, partly because he had at this dinner claimed an earlier acquaintance with her husband Peter, and partly because they have since been in e-mail correspondence on medical matters. He remembers her, and seems pleased to see her. He is billed to give a paper, if she remembers rightly, on fertility rates and gender imbalance in post-industrial societies. He has put on weight since their last meeting, but on this she does not comment. His name (she peers myopically at his label, just to make sure it really is him) is Bob Bryant.

  Bob Bryant voices the opinion that they are all having to wait for Jan van Jost, who is too grand to be prompt, and who wishes to make an entrance. He is said to be flying in from a lecture tour of China, but he should have arrived by now. Indeed, he should have arrived the night before. Bob is hungry and wants his lunch. Babs says she is not so hungry, but would like a chance to check out her hotel room and hang up her clothes. Does Bob know van Jost? Well, he wouldn’t say he knew him, but he has shared a platform with him, says Bob. ‘What is he like?’ asks Barbara. ‘Dapper,’ says Bob, who is not. ‘An Armani intellectual,’ says Bob. ‘Aha,’ says Babs, as though she had known this, though in fact she had not.

  The proceedings begin without the King of the Conference Circuit. He has been delayed, some whisper. He is resting, others mutter. He is playing hard to get, conclude the journalists. Babs Halliwell is disappointed in him. In her view, the great should condescend. They should not stand on ceremony and make difficulties for the organizers of public events. She is annoyed with him for keeping her from her shower and her deodorant and her change of garments. Bob Bryant looks crumpled and casual, but that’s all right for him – he is an Australian, and that’s his style. It is not her style. She is from Orpington and Oxford, and she likes to impress.

  The delegates are warmly welcomed in several languages, and more photographs are taken. The unfortunate and conspicuous absence of Jan van Jost from these official records will be keenly noted. Maybe somebody will be able to airbrush him in. Babs is not sure if she is hungry or not, but allows herself to be propelled towards the buffet and a plateful of small slivers of this and that. Somebody speaks to her about the Korean national dish of kimchi, and she samples it and praises it. She likes it: she likes ferocious foods.

  She is beginning to feel very blurred, and is desperate for a siesta before the evening’s plenary address and the ceremonial dinner. How will she ever learn to distinguish these polite and grey-suited Korean gentlemen one from another? It will be hard to memorize their unfamiliar names, and she feels she cannot continue to peer down at their chests through her large varifocal glasses. She knows that everybody will find it all too easy to recognize her, for she sticks out in this assembly like a giraffe. There are so few women here, and she is so tall. This is nothing to be proud of. If anything, it is a disadvantage. Everything she does is far too conspicuous. At times, this is useful, but not when one is trying to slip away unobtrusively.

  At last, she manages to take her leave, and to make her way to the hotel desk, where she claims her key and enquires after her baggage. It has been taken up to her room, she is told. So she follows it, up to the fifteenth floor. The fifteenth floor appears to be not quite finished: its walls are in the process of being papered by a small army of female paper-hangers wearing combat dress of a pale hosp
ital green. Curling strips of wallpaper cover the carpets and their marbled surround. Paranoia strikes at the proud heart of Babs Halliwell: she is sure that Jan van Jost will not be allocated a room on an unfinished floor. Even Bob Bryant will be better placed than she, for this is a male-dominant culture. (She had learned this from sociologist friends and, more recently, from the Crown Princess.) But she marches on, towards her door, and inserts the electronic key. At first it does not work, but that is because she has put it in the wrong way round. She removes it, squints at it, reverses it, and tries again. This time the little green eye blinks back, and the door gives, and at last she is received into the anonymous safety of Room 1517.

  She sits down on one of her twin beds with a sigh of relief, and kicks off her flat-heeled, gold-buckled shoes, which are beginning to pinch. So far, so good. And yes, there is her little green case-on-wheels, and her navy-blue Samsonite suitcase, neatly arranged for her upon the canvas strut of the collapsible luggage holder. This also is a relief. She had been slightly flustered at the airport by the eager welcoming waves of her minder. But all is well. She unpacks from her hand baggage her sponge bag and her hairbrush and her change of underwear and her red nightshirt and her dressing gown and her slippers, and she takes out her reading matter, and she arranges her books and her conference papers and her pills by the bedside of the bed nearer the window that she has decided to favour. She thinks of taking a shower before opening her suitcase, but she decides that it would be better first to unpack the rest of her conference clothes and to let them hang out in the wardrobe.