Babel Tower

by A. S. Byatt

  “Who?”

  “Mr. Thomas Poole.”

  “There was nothing wrong—that is, there was nothing—he will say so—”

  “Of course. That is Mr. Ounce, over there, with your ex-husband, I assume—”

  Frederica gazes distractedly around the stony corridor she is standing in. There is Nigel, stocky, fierce, in his dark suit and a blood-red tie, with the faint hint of blue on his strong chin, even at this time in the morning. There too are both Olive and Rosalind, in tweed suits, one honey-coloured, one green-and-mauve, both slightly seated, over sensible flanged suede shoes, and there is Pippy Mammott in rust, with her face scrubbed pink and shining and her hair full of iron pins.

  There is Mr. Ounce, and Nigel’s solicitor, Mr. Tiger. Mr. Ounce is portly and billowing, with vinous cheeks and a mouth with all sorts of fluent and savorous curves in it; he has not got much hair, a struggling dark, thinning thatch, but that will vanish under the wig. He is wearing his gown, which billows about his billows. He laughs, and Nigel laughs with him. The three women ostentatiously do not see Frederica. Nigel genuinely does not.

  It is like waiting in an examination hall. A clock ticks, somewhere. Dust motes are suspended in long tubes of pale November light. Frederica thinks: I am too thin to be convincing. It is an odd thought, not real, a product of unreal air, full of old pain, old terror, old triumphs and despair, old dust.

  And then suddenly they are all in the Court, and there is the judge, Mr. Justice Hector Plumb, under his wig, a man not plummy but the opposite, chalky, with a yellow note to the chalk, a man with a thin, semi-transparent hooked nose and deep-etched lines running down and down in papery skin to a folded neck under his bands, a man whose hands, lifted to cover his mouth as he coughs, show bones through softly folded, shimmering, ancient skin above thick pale nails. A man with glaucous eyes under extravagant white eyebrows, a man patently not well, saving his strength, watching from inside the bright cocoon of his purple robes.

  Griffith Goatley explains, in a melodious and pleasant voice, that the two suits, between Frederica Reiver and Nigel Reiver, and between Nigel Reiver and Frederica Reiver, have been consolidated and are to be heard together. “I appear for the wife, Frederica Reiver, and my learned friend, Laurence Ounce, appears for the husband. The petition of Frederica Reiver, being the leading suit, is to be heard first.”

  Frederica’s petition, with its charges of cruelty, mental cruelty, adultery, is read out. She is called to the witness box, and finds herself standing looking out over the court, where she sees Nigel, Arnold Begbie, a spattering of complete strangers.

  Griffith Goatley takes Frederica through her marriage. He addresses her courteously, as though she was a very young woman who had found herself in a world that turned out to be unpredictable and dangerous.

  Q. And in the beginning, your marriage, this marriage which you say you made after reflection and after some three years of acquaintance, your marriage was happy?

  A. Yes. In many ways, yes. It was not quite what I expected.

  Q. What did you expect?

  A. I thought he liked me for what I was. But afterwards, he seemed to want me to stay in his house and never to go anywhere, or see any of my old friends. Or work.

  Q. You have a first class degree from Cambridge University?

  A. Yes.

  Q. And you were a popular and successful undergraduate?

  A. Yes. I think so. I am an intellectual. I intended to go on and do a Ph.D.

  Q. Your husband knew of this ambition?

  A. I believe so. He often said he admired me for my independence, for my self-reliance, things like that.

  Q. But when you were married, this changed?

  A. Yes. When my son was born, of course, it was more reasonable to expect me to stay at home, perhaps.

  Q. Did you feel that your husband’s attitude to your independence was only because he felt you should look after your son?

  A. No. I felt he was jealous. I felt he felt I should stay put, in the house, where I was. I felt he felt that that was what women did.

  Frederica hears her voice. It is not her voice, it is the voice of a quiet young woman, acting out the lives, making the plaints, of intelligent women everywhere.

  Q. Was there any lack of help in the house?

  A. No.

  Q. Would it have been possible for you to see your friends, to work on a thesis, perhaps, without harming your son, or your marriage?

  A. I think so, yes. My husband is very well off, and there were many people looking after Leo, anyway.

  Griffith Goatley’s gentle, reasonable questions continue. He takes Frederica through her shock that her letters were being opened, through Nigel’s telephone insults to her friends. He takes her also through Nigel’s increasingly lengthy absences.

  Q. You felt he was neglecting you?

  A. You could put it that way, yes. I felt he thought I was shut up there, now, that part of his life, the wooing, was finished. He went back to his world, but I couldn’t, I mustn’t.

  Q. Would you say your marriage was sexually happy?

  A. At first, yes. Very. (A pause.) That was the best thing … the language that worked …

  Q. Did that change, in later times?

  A. Yes.

  Q. Can you tell us why?

  A. Partly, I think, because I withdrew. I began to see I ought not to have got married.

  Q. And was there anything in your husband’s behaviour that led you to reconsider your marriage?

  A. He became increasingly violent.

  Q. When you say, increasingly violent, do you mean as a lover, or as a jealous and unreasonable husband, Mrs. Reiver?

  A. I mean both. He began to hurt me. In bed. And then he began to attack me. Out of bed.

  Q. I believe on one occasion, you looked into his boxes in his cupboard, when he was away.

  A. Yes. I did.

  Q. Can you tell us why you did this?

  A. He had stolen one of my letters. From my brother-in-law, who is a clergyman, and had written to cheer me up. I was trying to find it.

  Q. And what did you find?

  A. A collection of—of pornographic pictures. Dirty magazines.

  Q. You were shocked?

  A. It was very interesting. I was horribly shocked. I felt—quite ill. I felt—dirtied. I was surprised to feel so bad.

  Q. Can you say what the pictures were like?

  A. They were sado-masochistic. (Frederica senses that this precise technical term was not what was required.) There were women being tortured and made filthy. Chains and leather and knives. And lots of flesh. I felt dirtied. I was surprised.

  Q. And did your husband ever attack you? Physically?

  A. He began to, yes.

  Griffith Goatley takes Frederica blow by blow through the battery, the ridiculous confinement in the lavatory, the chase through the stables, the axe, the wound. The healing.

  Q. And did you, at any time, tell anyone else that this wound had been caused in this way?

  A. No, I was ashamed.

  Q. What had you to be ashamed of?

  A. I think people are often ashamed of being hurt. Of having got themselves into a position where … anyone should want to hurt them so much.

  Q. And what was your husband’s attitude?

  A. He was very affectionate.

  Q. He was remorseful?

  A. He was sorry, yes. But he was excited by the—the drama. I knew it would happen again.

  Q. So you decided to leave?

  A. I thought I would have to. I was very disturbed. I was afraid. It was out of control. I thought I would get away and think things out.

  Griffith Goatley takes his witness through her flight in the woods, through her search for somewhere for herself and her son to live, through her decision not to return. He asks her if during her marriage she believed her husband to have been faithful, and she says that, on reflection, she sees she did not, that she had not wanted to understand his prolonged ab
sences, his visits to clubs “with topless waitresses” with “business associates.” Griffith Goatley refers to signed affidavits from the barmaid at the Tips and Tassels, from the doorman at the Honeypot, which state that Nigel Reiver has been seen leaving with certain women, whose profession is to “entertain men all night.” “The doorman, as you will see,” says Griffith Goatley, “deposes that Mr. Reiver is a well-known customer of the club, who enjoys the shows and the ladies. The doorman says,” reports Griffith Goatley, “that Mr. Reiver’s tastes are well known, slap more than tickle, so to speak, not averse to a few risks.”

  Q. Do you know what the doorman may mean by that, Mrs. Reiver?

  A. No. Not exactly.

  Q. Are you surprised by this evidence?

  A. No. Well, yes, in a way, I didn’t know. But no, on the other hand, I did know there was something and was trying not to. I don’t know how much such things matter.

  Q. They may matter very much. I will turn, if I may, and I apologise for speaking frankly, to the evidence of your doctor. On two occasions in November 1964 you were treated at the Middlesex Clinic for sexually transmitted diseases.

  A. I was.

  Griffith Goatley goes through the medical evidence.

  Q. And how do you believe you came by this infection?

  A. From my husband.

  Q. You are sure of this?

  A. Quite sure. He was the only person I slept with, between marrying him and leaving him. I was furious.

  Q. Furious?

  A. Well, I know now, it could have hurt—the baby, it could have—hurt his eyesight. Or his brain. I ought to have been told.

  Judge. Are you offering this evidence in support of a charge of adultery, or of cruelty?

  Griffith Goatley cites several precedents for both.

  He concludes his examination of Frederica with a few questions about her present way of life, her home, Leo’s school, his friends. He sits down. He has told the story of an intelligent, perhaps overconfident, perhaps over-educated young woman, who has found herself in deep water, socially and sexually, who may have provoked reasonable irritation but has been attacked and abused out of all proportion to her faults.

  Laurence Ounce asks if he may put a few questions to this witness at this point, on behalf of his client, in answer to her petition. The judge gives him leave to proceed.

  Q. Tell me, Frederica Reiver, why did you marry Nigel Reiver?

  A. Why?

  Q. Yes, why. You are a clever woman, you had a life-plan of sorts, you had known your husband some time—known in every sense I believe—before you decided to marry him. You were not, I take it, swept away by sudden passion. So why?

  A. He wouldn’t take no for an answer.

  Q. But you are a very strong young woman, strong-willed, clever, we are always being told how clever you are. I am sure you have given no for an answer to several other young men?

  A. Yes. I have.

  Q. So why were you suddenly ready to marry this one? You were already sleeping together, I believe?

  A. Yes. As I said, that worked. That was the thing I was sure about. I thought all the rest would follow.

  Q. An odd view, for an “intellectual,” as you labelled yourself.

  A. Not really. All intellectuals these days read D. H. Lawrence, who says we should listen to—to our passions—to our bodies. To our feelings. I had strong feelings. Good ones.

  There was nothing but cool respect in Griffith Goatley’s eliciting of information. Laurence Ounce meets Frederica’s eye with sexual intelligence; he implies, with a twist of his clever lip, with a cock of his large head, that they understand each other.

  Q. Ah, D. H. Lawrence. The immemorial magnificence of mystic, palpable, real otherness. You felt that.

  A. I don’t know why you’re asking. But yes, in a way. The prose is dreadful. But why not? Yes, that. It did seem to work.

  Q. You married for good sex. Despite the fact that Mr. Reiver in no way shares your intellectual tastes, may never have opened Lawrence?

  A. It was the attraction of opposites. I didn’t know anything about him. He seemed—you quoted it—other. I liked that. I thought he was more—more self-sufficient and grown up than most of the men I knew.

  Q. And you knew a great many?

  A. I was in a position to.

  Q. An odd phrase. You refer, no doubt, to the privileged position of Cambridge women. You were not sexually inexperienced when you married Nigel Reiver?

  Griffith Goatley objects. Pre-marital incontinence is inadmissible as evidence in a divorce suit. The judge over-rules him, when Ounce explains that he is seeking to establish how likely or unlikely Mrs. Reiver was to have been surprised by “sexual peccadilloes and so on, on a husband’s part.”

  “You may answer,” says the judge.

  “You knew quite a lot about men, when you married,” says Ounce, wrinkling his eyes at Frederica, waiting to re-establish the fleeting sexual connection between them.

  “Yes,” says Frederica.

  “How many men had you slept with?”

  Goatley objects; his objection is sustained; the judge and the Court have seen Frederica hesitate, not knowing the answer.

  “Moving on,” says Ounce, “moving on to the question of these feelthy pictures. Do you not think—as a sophisticated woman, as you are, that you may have been exaggerating your reaction to them? You have a degree in English literature, a good degree. You must have discussed Shakespeare’s bawdy, Chaucer’s naughty tales, Rochester’s lyrics, with aplomb, in your day, I imagine. Are you really shocked by a few filthy pictures, however deplorable—are they not an unfortunate phenomenon like smoking-room songs, like the lavatory jokes indulged in by all little boys, including your own son, I have no doubt.”

  “I can only say I was terribly shocked. It does interest me that it was such a blow. I agree, if you’d told me I’d react like that, I’d have said I probably wouldn’t. But they made me sick.”

  “A real foray into Bluebeard’s cupboard. Perhaps best to leave cupboards shut, you might think. All marriages need private places, private cupboards, you may think. The pictures were not forced on you, were not left about to upset you?”

  “Oh no.”

  “Going back to your evidence. My learned friend asked you why your sexual happiness changed. I believe he expected you to reply, ‘Because my husband neglected me and was cruel to me’ or some such answer. But I wrote down what you did say. It was ‘I think it went wrong because I withdrew. I began to see I ought not to have got married.’ Would you care to comment on that observation, Mrs. Reiver?”

  Frederica looks down at her hands. She cannot quite speak. He has heard her thoughts. She knows the answer, and knows she should not give it, and cannot speak.

  “Come, Mrs. Reiver, you are usually so articulate, so clear. It is a simple question. ‘I began to see I ought not to have got married.’ ”

  “I began to see I had promised something I couldn’t give,” says Frederica, temporarily relieved by having at last said what is in her mind. She pauses again.

  “You had married in bad faith?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “Not exactly. But it might look like that. You might be thinking, I have made a mistake, maybe even, a dreadful mistake, and a sensitive man, even if not the most articulate man, might become irascible, sensing this reserve, might have fits of blind irritability, in response to this withdrawal.”

  “I didn’t withdraw.”

  “Forgive me, Mrs. Reiver. It is the word you used.”

  “Withdrawing doesn’t excuse axe-throwing.”

  “It does not. But we do not admit that an axe was ever thrown. Tell me again, Mrs. Reiver, why you married Nigel Reiver.”

  “I have told you. Sex. Sexual happiness, that is. And persistence. His persistence.”

  “The fact that he was very rich had nothing to do with it?”

  “Almost nothing. I like—I liked—good restaurants. But it was more the glamour of th
e opposite, of the unknown, how the other half live. Bad faith, again. I am not asking for maintenance, not for myself. I hope I am allowed to make that clear at this point. I didn’t marry for money. A bit for the glamour of the difference.”

  “You are very articulate,” says Laurence Ounce, somehow diminishing Frederica.

  Q. If we may turn to your precipitate flight from Bran House, for a moment. It was very convenient, was it not, that your friends, a group of male friends, were visiting at the time, were able to hang around with a Land Rover and wait for you?

  A. They were not welcome. They might never have come again. I was very frightened. It seemed like then or never. At the time.

  Q. And how did you prepare your son for this midnight exodus? Did you tell him you were leaving Bran House, his father, who loved him, his aunts, the housekeeper who had been responsible for his upbringing, his pony, to whom he was so attached? Did he come willingly?

  A. (The witness is visibly shocked by this question.) He decided himself.

  Q. What do you mean? You put it to him, to a little boy in his bedroom, a very small boy—you asked him to decide between his parents?

  A. No. I would never do that. No. I didn’t tell him. I didn’t wake him. I didn’t think I could. I didn’t think it was fair. I didn’t mean to go for long, for ever, then, at that moment. I felt he was better where he was.