Before the War

by Fay Weldon

  ‘Miss Ripple,’ he says. ‘Thank you for your proposal, though I must say it comes as a surprise.’ How do men turn down women who demand marriage? It so seldom happens. There are few literary references. ‘I need time to think, and I will respond within the week. But I am honoured and flattered that you should put such trust in me. I respect your confidences and can assure you I will keep them to myself.’

  ‘Thank you,’ she says. ‘That is very prettily said.’

  He tells Vivien he has a meeting with Mungo any minute now to settle the new timetable for A Short History of the Georgians and must hurry away. Will she leave the folder of illustrations with him? He admires her work and very much looks forward to seeing them. Mind you, the picture has changed somewhat since he last saw her. With the news that Joseph Stalin, a Georgian, had been appointed General Secretary of the Communist Party of the new Soviet Union, her father has expressed the belief that Georgia will cease to be just a place known only to the historians and intrepid travellers but will be celebrated by all who have faith in the future of mankind: Sir Jeremy anticipates that the book will sell well, and that, this being the case, more time and money must be spent on its production.

  ‘Ah,’ she says. ‘Father is unusual in that he lives in such great hope of Utopia. I hope when I take over the business I can retain such trust. Don’t think you are obliged to use my drawings just because he is your boss and I am his daughter. Myself, I would not think of employing me. There are others who cost less and do better.’

  Pillow talk with such a one would require application, he could see. Sweet nothings would be rare. Intelligence, wit and honesty, in his view, are not necessarily desirable qualities in a wife: the girlish trill of vapid chatter might prove more restful.

  She takes the hint and unfolds her long large self to leave. Good teeth, he notices, strong and even, though of gravestone shape and size. He prefers little sharp teeth, the kind that are almost translucent, like Rita’s, like Phoebe’s.

  ‘I hope you will think seriously about my offer. It remains on the table. I think it would suit us both. You are the kind who finds fidelity intolerable and I am the kind who, frankly, finds male attention unbearable.’

  Ah, that’s the clue. She’s an invert, a lesbian. Love between women is fashionable in some literary and titled circles. Free-thinking women drift from man to woman and back again, revelling in emotional storms, but some do seem to have an actual aversion to the opposite gender. She is probably one of these congenital unfortunates, and scared of the world’s disapproval. To be married to such a one might do him no harm in literary circles.

  Sherwyn Wonders And Worries

  And Vivvie leaves. He marvels. It seemed to be one of life’s wonders – some writer said it – that nothing happens and nothing happens and all of a sudden everything happens. It is a sign from fate. He has no choice now but to hand in his notice. If he refuses her she may find a way of having her revenge. His career as a literary man about town has been hanging fire long enough. He must act, and now. Left to his own devices Sir Jeremy will never do Sherwyn any favours, let alone accept him for a son-in-law. Less than a year ago Sherwyn went to some trouble to write, at Sir Jeremy’s behest, a series of articles for the house magazine Futures on the inevitable collapse of the Liberal Party. He doubted that these articles would ever appear in print and Sherwyn was right. What did happen was that Sir Jeremy kept them and used their substance in a lecture to the Fabian Society (watchwords: Educate, Organise, Agitate!) without so much as crediting the real author. And meanwhile The Uncertain Gentleman languishes on a shelf unread and ripe for anyone’s stealing. Bitter, bitter. The novel is a thriller, true, inasmuch as a murder is committed, and by whom is the key. But what was the great Conrad if not a thriller writer? What else was The Secret Agent?

  A novel with a strong plot can nevertheless be literature. Books can’t be all reflection and contemplation. The Riddle of the Sands is much admired. Sherwyn thinks of poor doomed Erskine Childers, its author, even at the moment languishing in Dublin under sentence of death by an Irish military court. Childers’ alleged sin? Carrying a pistol on his person – a Spanish-made ‘Destroyer’, a 32 calibre semi-automatic – the same one Sherwyn’s Irish hero Patrick Vickery, goaded beyond endurance, uses in The Uncertain Gentleman. Childers’ real sin? Writing a novel with a discernible plot. Perhaps the Irish connection – which Sir Jeremy always preferred to eschew on the principle that no good ever came out of Ireland – is unwise and will prejudice its reception. But too late now: the novel is written. Once those two fateful words ‘The End’ are written, there must, for the wise writer, be no going back.

  Strange that Sherwyn’s thoughts happened to turn to Childers that very day. On the very next President de Valera is to have the quixotic warrior-writer taken out and executed by firing squad, ignoring an appeal that was pending and never allowed to happen. But perhaps Thomas Hardy’s ‘Immanent Will’, in his guise as Spinner of the Years, as the intricate set of gears that rule all our comings and goings, tends to engage a little more as anniversaries approach, move a notch on.

  Sherwyn, ignorant of everything that is to come, and only vaguely aware of what is past (it being without the context of the future) takes a few minutes of his present to look at Vivien’s portfolio of illustrations. He finds the fanciful pen-and-ink drawings of old Georgia competent enough – a peasant’s hut, a pretty village, a child’s face, various romanticised sanguinary battles. He himself has seen trench warfare in the flesh, an unattached foot here, a smashed in head there, and finds himself glad Vivien had been spared such visions. Already he seems to have protective feelings towards her.

  Her illustrations will do. The production period won’t have to be too much extended.

  He does not think many will share Sir Jeremy’s new enthusiasm for Georgia just because it’s the up-and-coming Stalin’s birthplace. He’ll share a sandwich with his pal Mungo in the office next door and tell him about the extraordinary episode of Miss Ripple and her proposal.

  Ten To Four, Thursday November 23rd 1922. Dilberne Court Stables

  Let’s take another look at Vivien, since she is not to be with us for long. She takes the 2.20 Brighton train back to Dilberne Halt. She doesn’t go straight home but drops by at the stables to compose herself and spend a little time with the being she describes as her best friend, her hunter Greystokes, a dappled grey, but his coat fading almost to pure white around the rump; a handsome creature, a good-tempered, gentle galloper and easy ambler, an ex-racer with a good pedigree but a bad record, since he is not given to exerting himself if he can help it. He has lost so many races he has been bought cut price by Sir Jeremy to be hired out for stud. Greystokes is a big horse of more than sixteen hands, and Vivien looks quite small as she leans against him for comfort and nuzzles into his warm neck.

  Vivien is to marry Sherwyn, of course she is. At face value he is a rotter, a cad, a bounder, but Vivien is as clever as her writer in detecting Sherwyn’s hidden virtues. He will live to be a perfectly amiable if rather vain old man with many tales of the past to tell; she, as we know, is soon to die giving birth to the twins, Mallory and Stella, who will inherit very different aspects of their mother’s nature but not Sherwyn’s, since he is not to be their father.

  For a strange and unexpected thing had happened to Vivien a month earlier. She was half way through grooming Greystokes – her father kept the stables heated, as her nursery had never been – when an angel appeared in the doorway in the form of a well-muscled young man. That is to say he appeared to Vivien rather as an illustration of the Angel Gabriel she had once seen as a child, as he brought the good news to Mary, outlined against brilliant light and with a discernible halo, though that might have been an optical illusion, because of the way the sinking late October sun was shining through the curved slats of the stable door. A slit of clear sky must have opened up where black storm clouds had been gathering in the West.

  An Innocent Girl

  Bear
in mind Vivien’s extreme innocence, or ignorance as some might call it. General conversations did not drift to sexual matters as so many do today: bodies, except for an expanse of flesh around female shoulders in the evenings, were by and large kept shrouded. Revelation was left for the marriage night. Vivvie has never had the opportunity of seeing a naked man. (She has visited Vienna, but there sculpted genitals were hidden by fig leaves.) She did not examine herself ‘down there’, ‘down there’ being vaguely indecent. The nooks and crannies of the female body were best left ignored. Parts remain unnamed and without words the owner is left as though blind in the land of the sighted.

  Vivvie had quickly averted her eyes when once she came across her parents entwined on the marital bed in some surprisingly noisy and impulsive act but did not care to dwell upon the detail. She had seen mares covered by Greystokes often enough but made little connection between animal and human behaviour; that of humans must surely be more dignified and affectionate than that of the beasts.

  The young man with the halo wore stable overalls. He was remarkably handsome. He said something in a foreign language but whatever it was seemed polite and pleasant enough. She did not understand why but she unpinned her hair, which was her best feature. Now it rippled glossily over her shoulders and almost down to her waist. He was taller than she was and that made her feel both secure and helpless. She could even lean her head on a male shoulder. The Angel Gabriel for his part undid a couple of buttons round shoulders and waist and the overalls fell down and he was all skin, though she was so close to him and her skirt rucked up so that she could not see, only feel, the secret that had been kept from her.

  One did not argue with a visitation from the Angel Gabriel; gratitude was expected. She was up against the stable wall; the unknown and unseen thing was inside her. She was aware of a kind of dark blanketing mist dividing her soul from her body and that it was best and certainly desirable to let the body have its way. Greystokes showed no surprise at all, which she took as his assent. And then the Angel Gabriel was buttoning up his overalls and he was gone, as lightly and pleasantly as he had come. She smoothed down her skirt, found her mitts – how had she come to lose those? – and went back to curry-combing Greystokes. The storm broke and there was a sudden shock of thunder and a flash of lightning lit up the stable but Greystokes calmed quickly. (Your writer feels it necessary to point out that if the breaking of Vivvie’s hymen resulted in no trauma or bleeding, she is, remember, a keen horse rider, and any vigorous exercise can disrupt the fringe of tissue that is all a hymen is. She felt no pain,only marvel.)

  Had that been the sexual act, the hidden thing? Vivvie supposed so. Did that mean she could have a baby? Probably not. Whatever it was, the event could hardly be classed as sin. It did not involve moral judgement. Besides she had been standing up and she had heard them say in the kitchens that you didn’t get pregnant if you were standing up when you ‘did it’. The Angel Gabriel has gone back to heaven or wherever such visitations go and left her cheerful and energised and with an understanding that sudden change is possible. She will beard Sherwyn in his den and propose to him.

  Anyway, here is Vivvie, mission accomplished, nuzzling into Greystokes’ glossy neck as the sinking sun shines through the slats of the stable door, and confiding the day’s events to the dumb beast. She has to confide in someone, and if it’s a horse who doesn’t answer back or doubt her, and a horse who has witnessed what she remembers as a transfiguration so much the better.

  A Woman Of Alpine Property

  Vivvie had thought about it for a whole month before making her approach to Sherwyn. He seems a suitable candidate for marriage, a veteran, a man of action, not afraid of her father, able to charm her mother, someone who understood the importance of money – she had seen the soles of his shoes – and as such would protect her inheritance so long as it was to his advantage. She lacks the courage to confront her parents about the details of that inheritance, which she knows exists and is vast. Apparently she owns an Alpine village in Bavaria, church, inn, town hall and fifty houses (she receives ground rent and tithes from all of them) accumulated over fifty years. She seems to be a direct descendant through her mother’s line of the Wittelsbach family, Counts Palatine of Schyren, and until the abolition of the German nobility in 1919 would thus have been entitled to call herself a Princess. For two whole generations Vivvie’s long deceased grandmother Elise and her mother Adela had unjustly been barred from the inheritance for reasons of religion. Elise had turned Protestant back in the eighteen-eighties and angered her mother, Maria, a devout Catholic, greatly. This much Vivvie knows and supposes it to contribute to the palpable tension whenever she tries to bring up the subject of money. Since she turned twenty Vivvie’s mother has been getting her to sign cheques for considerable sums. Vivvie does not like to press her father on the issue. He will just tell her to leave complicated matters to those who understand them.

  Not Surprising, Look At Me

  Her father’s stud farm, Vivvie cannot help noticing, needs considerable upkeep. Greystokes is not kept all that busy – looks are not everything. He’s big and strong, has got perfect conformation, great length to his neck, and big, powerful quarters; great, correct limbs; and plenty of bone, but his record in siring winners is declining. Vivvie has checked the stud book. Greystokes was enormously popular at first – out of Gainsborough the 1919 Derby winner out of famous Epsom Oaks Rosedrop – and covered a record two hundred and fifty mares in his first two years at stud, at around 150 guineas a shot. The year after it was down to eighty at a mere 100 guineas, this season it’s down to sixty-five at 65. Costs exceed takings by a long chalk. The foals look good but don’t make winners. But her father won’t give in – he blames the mothers not the fathers for the failure of the progeny. Not surprising, thinks Vivvie, look at me. But given the right dam, he is convinced, sooner or later Greystokes will sire a spectacular winner and things will look up. In the meantime her father’s incurable optimism makes the stud farm an expensive business. But she is not encouraged to raise doubts – financial matters are best left to men. She signs Coutts cheques, she notices, countersigned by Courtney and Baum, her mother’s family lawyers.

  So That’s All Right Then

  Anyway. Here is Vivvie, the enthusiasm inspired by the Angel Gabriel four weeks earlier having diminished a little, and what seemed so sensible in theory now seeming a little eccentric in reality, calming herself down by currying Greystokes and wondering if she has done the right thing. Greystokes’ sturdy flanks are reassuring: they heave, they shudder, as she tugs with the comb. He understands her; he is on her side. More dark hairs remain in the comb than pale. Greystokes will be more white than dappled by the time she is finished. Autumn is turning to winter. How beautiful will his progeny be.

  Vivien, if asked, would have denied it, but she does share certain characteristics with her mother. Some things Vivien, as does Adela, just knows. To what degree she can foretell the future – how much her prophecy, when acted upon, really brings the future about, who’s to tell? What Vivvie does know is that if Greystokes lifts his head in agreement she’ll be right, if he lowers his head and whinnies she’ll be wrong. He is all the oracle she needs, and he serves her well.

  ‘Did I do the right thing, old friend?’ she asks. ‘Will I end up as Mrs Sexton?’

  Greystokes lifts his handsome head and flurries and snuffles the air in apparent agreement, just as he did when the Angel Gabriel approached, all aglow with heavenly light.

  So that’s all right then.

  Vivvie On A Horse

  Vivien being so tall, large and bosomy, Greystokes is the only horse upon which she has ever looked good. Her quarrel with her father is that he restricts the amount of time she can ride Greystokes – on the somewhat unscientific grounds that too much exercise weakens and degrades sperm, be it of human or horse. Vivvie thinks maybe he is talking about himself – Sir Jeremy having been both a cricket and a rowing Blue when he was at Oxford and look at wh
at resulted: herself, Vivien. She seems to have inherited her father’s biceps as they were when he begat her, though twenty years on his muscles seem to have changed to flesh and fled to his belly, and he now looks as substantial and splendid as Edward VII in his prime.

  Vivien knows she is over-fanciful: indeed, she reproaches herself for having an over-fevered imagination just as a contemporary girl would accuse herself of being paranoiac – the latter term being not yet in common usage. (Freud’s work, Certain Neurotic Mechanisms in Jealousy, Paranoia, and Homosexuality, a successor to Totem and Taboo, was published in English that very year and made quite a splash.) Be all that as it may, she feels that if only she had more time with Greystokes his success rate as a sire would improve: he would breed winner after winner.

  Once in a position to run her own establishment – which she surely would be when married to Sherwyn Sexton – she will take over the stud farm, turn it into a money-making proposition, and ride Greystokes as much and as long as she pleases. Sherwyn is not frightened of her father. With Sir Jeremy by his side everything will get sorted out. The world is full of hope and the promise of pleasure.

  Her face as I regard her is gentle, relaxed and only mildly sorrowful. I see her as the slats of light come through the stable door and fall across her body. She unwinds her damp scarf and it drops where it falls, in hay and dust and stable muck. She doesn’t notice or care. She takes off her hat and her hair falls rippling down, reddish gold, and glorious before the sun goes in when all things quickly turn to a kind of newspaper grey. I see her as almost a ghost, but not quite, being fictional rather than real. Greystokes whinnies again. That is the scene as I remember it or invent it, I can no longer be sure which.