Wise Children

by Angela Carter

  There was a scratchy gramophone going full tilt. I laid claim to my birthday present as soon as he came shyly through the door. His face was still shining with cold cream. I took his hand. ‘Let’s dance,’ I said.

  ‘Nothing for me but to love you, just the way you look tonight . . .’ sang the voice on the gramophone.

  I know I wanted him more than anything, that his sweet face and his silken floss of flaxen hair moved me like nothing else had done in the masculine line before, but, all the same, I scarcely knew what it was I wanted, when all is said and done, in spite of Grandma’s comprehensive sex education and all I’d seen during my life in the chorus and, more than all that, I’d seen my sister cry for love, and nearly bleed to death for love, and I’d listened while the one she loved made her shout out loud, when I was full of envy and desire. I thought I knew the lot, didn’t I?

  And yet I didn’t know a thing.

  Lilac; and a wind blowing in through the window they’d opened to let the fug out; and the smoke of the candles that I’d just blown out, still lingering in the room, catching at the throat; and the first kiss. I nearly fainted when we kissed, I was scared witless, I thought he’d recognise the ruse at once and suddenly I didn’t want to go through with it. I wanted to go home to Grandma, to go back to yesterday’s things we’d lost already – back to Mrs Worthington’s piano, to our shorn sausage curls, to pick up our discarded liberty bodices and encase ourselves again in them. But he was just my own age, just seventeen, a child, too; nothing to be afraid of. And for the purpose of the act, I wasn’t Dora, any more, was I? Now I was Nora, who was afraid of nothing provided it was a man.

  So I kissed him back and we slipped off.

  He went to have a wash in the basin, first, while I stripped off and lay on the sofa watching him, the back of his neck bent humbly as he attended to himself. The water purled. Just the lights round the mirror were burning. A cab stopped outside and panted like a dog; there was a chink of coins: ‘Ta, guv’nor.’ These sounds might have come from another world.

  He was too young for body hair. His tender flesh was all rosy in the light behind him. He smiled as he came towards me. It stuck out like a chapel hat peg. What did? What do you think? I couldn’t keep my eyes off it. I’d never seen a naked man before although Grandma had drawn us pictures. There was a little clear drop of moisture trembling on the tip, it came to me to lick it off. He gave a gasp. His nipples were quite stiff, too. He was shivering a bit, not that it was cold, we’d left the gas fire on.

  He never said: ‘Nora, there’s something different about you, something more enchanting, tonight.’ I never wanted him to, either. I’d have been ashamed. I’ll never know if he could tell the difference. If he did, he was too much of a gent to say. Skin like suede. Eyes the blue of the paper bags they used to sell you sugar in, years ago. I never bled or hurt; a decade and a half of fouettés, jetés and high kicks had done in the membrane without leaving a trace. He used a French letter, don’t ever believe them if they tell you it takes away the romance. He sighed, his eyes rolled back so you could see the whites. Eyelashes a foot long.

  Some things you can’t describe.

  Afterwards, I pretended to be asleep, I didn’t dare talk. He spread my dressing gown on top of me, to keep the draughts off, and kissed my cheek. After a bit, he got up and put his clothes on, singing softly under his breath snatches of the song we’d danced to. ‘That laugh that wrinkles your nose, touches my foolish heart . . .’ I watched him secretly between my lashes. He gave me another kiss and a big smile he thought I couldn’t see and went to catch the late trolley home to his mum and dad in Camberwell. Off he went, smelling of Shalimar and sex, and I lay on the sofa and breathed in the smells of him and me that were really the smells of him and Nora and I kept a little sentimental tryst with silence and the night and the full moon over Croydon and he never would have done it if he’d known I wasn’t Nora. He was the faithful type.

  Did we betray the innocence of the boy with our deception? Of course we did. Does it matter? Let the one without sin cast the first stone. He really thought I was the one he loved so he was not deceived. And I got the birthday present that I wanted and then I gave him back to Nora and if Nora’s heart had been less easily distracted, they would have gone on together, and on . . . until they stopped.

  As it was, they went on together until they stopped, anyway. So that was that.

  The lilac started to rot the morning after, went brown at the edges, reeked of bad breath. Irish, who taught me about metaphor, would have made a meal, if you follow me, out of that lilac.

  After a decent interval, I got up, too, got dressed, again, dabbed on a bit more scent and went back to the party. By now, most of the guests had faded away, Dora included – she’d roared off in the piano player’s little red sports car back to his flat in Chelsea. But that same record was still turning on the gramophone and chorus boys too tired to go home were swaying in each other’s arms and there was a lingering sense in the air that something exciting had been happening while I’d been away. Then I saw what that exciting something was; he was fixing himself a Scotch and soda at the drinks tray, the man we’d last seen in a kilt, in the act of repudiating us. But now he was romantically garbed in evening dress, with a black evening cape with a scarlet lining over it. And he was, oh, wonders! smiling! At me!

  It transpired the taxi I had heard draw up delivered me – our father.

  God knows why Melchior felt the time had come to give us girls a call but I do think the Lady A., who soon emerged out of the shadows in a white Molyneux frock, had a hand in it, which is one of the reasons why we’re prepared to put up with the old bag now, in her dotage.

  I’ll say this for the old man, he always had a sense of style. He took my hand.

  ‘Strange how potent cheap music is.’ he said.

  The Lady A. smiled kindly on us and went so far as to wind up the gramophone. My heart went pit-a-pat. ‘I will feel a glow . . .’ You’d have thought they only had the one record, the song that might have been written exclusively for that night. ‘. . . just thinking of you, and the way you look tonight.’ I’d never so much as shaken his hand before that night of nights. He didn’t dance badly, for a Shakespearian. It was all too much for me, suddenly. I couldn’t help it, I burst out crying.

  ‘Don’t cry, little girl,’ my father said. ‘Happy birthday. And I’ve got you a very special birthday present.’

  Although he did not live in heaven, our father was in constant communication with the angels. And that is how we came to star, alongside his very self, in that soon-to-be-famous West End revue entitled What You Will.

  The music stopped, the lights were going out, the boys departing. The party was over. He dropped a kiss on top of my head, a light little kiss, a butterfly kiss, but a kiss, all the same. I thought: I’ll never wash my hair again. Then they were gone.

  I lashed out, took a cab home, but I was in such a state I stopped it at Leigham Court Road, got out and walked the rest of the way. I needed air. It was getting light by the time I got back to Brixton, the sky was the colour of a gas jet. I had on a new pair of shoes I was very fond of, I thought they were the peak of chic – red morocco. High heels, ankle straps. Cost a fortune. My high heels went clip, clip, clip on the pavement and I never felt more grown-up in all my life ever after than I did that early morning, watching my shadow teeter-totter home in front of me in those sexy shoes. Because, during the night that now was over, I had made love to a boy for the first time; and my father had kissed me, for the first time; I’d heard my name would be up in lights on Shaftesbury Avenue, for the first time, and I was choked up inside with the pleasure and the terror of the world.

  Grandma was still up when I got home, sucking at one last crème de menthe frappé in her kimono. When she saw my face with all the glory in it, she put the kettle on the stove for tea and gave me a hug.

  ‘Whoever he is,’ she said, ‘he’s not worth it.’

  Why was Grandma stil
l up?

  Why was she dealing the coup de grâce to a freshly opened bottle of liqueur?

  The answer to these questions sprawled at immense and magnificent ease in Grandma’s best armchair, fast asleep and snoring. God, he’d put on weight! Busting out of his waistcoat, and his bookie’s suit of ginger plaid, and his fingers a-glitter with big, fat, diamond rings, and his shoes black and white like spotted dogs – correspondent’s shoes.

  My uncle had come home again.

  We dressed up, we made up and then we spent the hour before curtain-up on the West End premiere of What? You Will? dashing for the lavatory to throw up. First I thought I’d fallen for it, a bittersweet emotion – I was in a state, but my friend, Mr Piano Man, made a speedy diagnosis – nerves, so we all had a brandy and felt better. All London and his dog packed out the house. We’d done a roaring try-out in Manchester, we’d been a smash, but all the same Mr Piano Man now confessed to a touch of nausea himself, because there was more to him than met the eye as one might have guessed by his style, his smart motor, his apartment, etc. etc. He’d done all the music, hadn’t he? Every note. It was make or break for him, that night, but after another brandy we started to feel fine.

  He went out a piano player and came back a star, What! You Will? his first big hit. After that he did a string of musicals, all smashes in their time, every one forgotten now. Not a soul remembers. He always thought of me as ‘Dora’ and, this was the confusing thing, I was ‘Dora’, but not the Dora he’d fallen for, although he didn’t notice any difference, either, and always sent me lilac, lots and lots of lilac, the sentimental thing. I’d got nothing whatever against him; he gave me lovely hot dinners, we had some good times, but when he gave me a kiss for luck that night, I turned the other cheek, I didn’t like the way his breath smelled and Nora, ever worldly wise, said: ‘That means you’re going off him.’ I lived in fear he would propose.

  ‘Break a leg,’ he said.

  He joined up, first thing. Missing in action in 1942. I used to go and see his mother, sometimes, in Golders Green. There was his photo on the piano, and the music for the song I sang, he made a fuss, he got his way – Dora’s very own number. ‘O Mistress Mine.’ You can’t say fairer than that. The piano was open, there was the music, nobody to play it. I used to take his mother the occasional black-market egg.

  Melchior came in at the last moment and gave us his blessing, with a look that said he knew we knew but he wasn’t going to ask for our forgiveness because wasn’t he just about to give us our big chance? With the bald wig on, he looked uncannily like; he was personating, who else – the ‘Will’, in What! You Will! in person. Shakespeare.

  I must tell you that our father had become a truly great man of the theatre, by this time. Now he was fortyish – although he didn’t look it, with all that velvet glamour – and peaking. At the apex. ‘Our greatest living Shakespearian.’ Luck had a lot to do with it, not to mention the Lady A.’s private fortune financed his Shylock and his Richard III and his Macbeth in Brighton that gave us girls so much grief. (He’d always steered clear of Hamlet, though, and now he was too old; perhaps he was nervous the critics might think he wasn’t half the man his mother had been.)

  Yet still he yearned for new fields to conquer. Wheelchair swears that ever since she told him how she’d seen his left-hand daughters do the splits, he’d nourished a yen to try out song and dance. I used to think that he and Perry were chalk and cheese – never take them for brothers, let alone twins. But nowadays I’m not so sure. Ambition, the curse and glory of the Hazards, who’ll risk everything they’ve got and a little bit more on a throw of the dice.

  For, if Melchior Hazard starred as the eponymous William Shakespeare, then who had written it, conceived it, planned it, put it all together?

  Why, Peregrine Hazard.

  So they were a team at last.

  What You Will! Dazzling new revue!

  They were a team at last and they were a triumph.

  We were eighteen years old, hair like patent leather, legs up to our ears. We sported bellhop costumes for our Hamlet skit; should, we pondered in unison and song, the package be delivered to, I kid you not, ‘2b or not 2b’. We performed a syncopated Highland fling in tasselled sporrans after, as weird sisters, we burst out of a giant haggis in a number based on the banquet scene; in abbreviated togas, led the chorus during the ‘Roman Scandals’ number; I sang my solo ‘O Mistress Mine’ in fifteenth-century drag to a mutely mutinous Nora on a balcony – she got the last laugh when she poured a bucket of water over me, and I didn’t have much of a voice, anyway, but Mr Piano Man was besotted; we did a Morris dance with bells upon our ankles, than sang ‘It was a lover and his lass’ in harmony and parts (‘Hey nonny bloody no’); and went through a spirited version of the Egyptian sand dance on the deck of a large gilded barge that glided slowly from one side of the stage to the other in the spectacular conclusion of the first part of the show.

  Our frocks were sumptuous. No short-cuts, no half measures – real silk, real satin, real feathers, sequins by the truckload. There’s a lot of conspicuous consumption in show business. Even the backdrops were awesome. There was a mural copied from the British Museum for the Cleopatra number, a bit of a John Martin behind Macbeth. The actual finale featured the Lady A. as Good Queen Bess. She didn’t have much to do but stand around which was just as well because she wasn’t the song-and-dance type but she stood magnificently, in a red wig and a frock copied off a miniature in the V and A with a farthingale the size of the Albert Hall and half a ton of imitation pearls round her neck. Nice touch, her two little girls debuted in doublet and hose as pages.

  Saskia and Imogen would have been, ooh, sixish, sevenish, by then and, God, we cordially hated one another, especially me and Saskia. She was only a wee scrap with big eyes and carrot curls but she’d stick her foot out and trip me up, she snagged my tights on nails, she was a little terror and if he’d featured her in Alexandria, I’d have dumped her off the barge and let her drown.

  Either the markets had recovered, by this time, or a good deal of fiddling went on while Rome was burning because we had charge accounts opened for us at Harrods by gents who kept it from their wives. All day long, vans delivered to Bard Road the proceeds of our shopping – silk underwear, cashmere jumpers, silk stockings in quantity, we couldn’t get enough stockings. We never even thought of darning our stockings, now, once we’d holed them, we passed them on to the girls in the chorus and treated ourselves to more.

  Grandma ate the contents of the ribboned baskets of exotic fruits delivered daily, but the flowers set the cat among the pigeons.

  Grandma read it in a book. I swear, to this day, she only did it to annoy us but, from this book, she took into her head the notion flowers suffered pain. How, when you cut a flower, it emits a fearful scream of anguish – happily, audible only to other flowers, but Grandma claimed her ears were sensitive enough to catch the echo; has a fearful spasm; a crisis, then goes into rigor mortis. After that, she’d cross the road if she saw a florist’s shop, so as not to ravage her sensibilities or injure her eardrums. What with dodging butcher’s shops, too, and furrier’s, going out with Grandma was all ducking and weaving, like a short walk through no-man’s-land.

  But boys on bikes delivered flowers hourly. Roses, carnations, tuberoses, lilies, orchids, mixed bunches, flowers I’d never known existed, flowers that looked as though they were rotting, flowers that looked rude. Grandma would greet the delivery boy with a long face and moan and keen over our floral tributes.

  ‘Wires through their hearts, poor things . . . criminal!’

  She’d take them out to the back yard and stick them in the compost, wailing glumly the while. Then there was the jewellery. Which we concealed from her, in case it entered her unaccountable head to make us give it back. Sometimes we thought, in our youthful, heedless vanity, that the old bag was jealous of us.

  Stars on our door, stars in our eyes, stars exploding in the bits of our brains where the
common sense should have been.

  Our Uncle Peregrine was rich, again, and always laughing. It made a noise in his belly like barrels rolling around a cellar. Melchior went so far as to offer him a walk-on as Falstaff but Perry turned it down. He was happier in the wings. He liked to pull the strings and see the puppets move, he said; you might think, if you heard him say that, he was a cold-hearted bugger but cold-hearted, never! He was the heart and soul of mirth.

  He and Grandma would sit hugely wedged in the breakfast-room armchairs, gossiping away for hours, breaking into fruity chuckles, the bottle of crème de menthe, the bucket of ice beside them – nothing but the best for Grandma Chance, these days. When it was growing light, outside, they’d hear our key in the lock, they’d hush up as best they could, one last hiccup of merriment, then the old lady would rise up and put on the kettle. ‘Condescended to come home at last, have you, you celestial bodies.’ If one of us came home alone, she’d roll her eyes and intone hollowly: ‘Ooh la fucking la!’ She’d check our handbags to make sure we had our Dutch caps with us. ‘Give the girls a break,’ said Perry. ‘They’re only young once. I bet you raised hell yourself, when you were their age.’ But references to that forbidden country, her past, were taboo.

  Then tenor, Nora’s boyfriend, went off somewhere up North, lost touch, and Nora fell, again – blazed, cooled; fell again, blazed, cooled; and again – I lost count of how many times she fell in love, that year. Meanwhile, my friend offered me a fur coat. He liked me very much.

  ‘Not a fur, Mr Piano Man, thank you very much,’ I said. ‘Whatever would Grandma say?’ But he wouldn’t take no for an answer and a van delivered a big box next morning. In the box, among the tissue paper, a grey squirrel jacket, fingertip length, frail and lovely, ‘like her own virtue’, as poor old Irish would have put it a year or so hence in another country, but Irish could never afford to give me furs, he taught me to eschew the double negative, instead.