Little Black Book of Stories

by A. S. Byatt

  So she made her way back, sitting alone in the train as the fields streaked past, drowsing through a century-long night under the cabbage-rose quilt in the B&B. This time she went in the old way, from the house, through the garden-gate; she found the old trail quickly, her sharp eye picked up the trace of its detritus, and soon enough she was back in the clearing, where her cairn of tiny bones by the tree-trunk was undisturbed. She gave a little sigh, dropped to her knees, and then sat with her back to the rotting wood and silently called the Thing. Almost immediately she sensed its perturbation, saw the trouble in the branches, heard the lumbering, smelled its ancient smell. It was a greyish, unremarkable day. She closed her eyes briefly as the noise and movement grew stronger. When it came, she would look it in the face, she would see what it was. She clasped her hands loosely in her lap. Her nerves relaxed. Her blood slowed. She was ready.

  PRIMROSE WAS in the shopping mall, putting out her circle of rainbow-coloured plastic chairs. She creaked as she bent over them. It was pouring with rain outside, but the mall was enclosed like a crystal palace in a casing of glass. The floor under the rainbow chairs was gleaming dappled marble. They were in front of a dimpling fountain, with lights shining up through the greenish water, making golden rings round the polished pebbles and wishing-coins that lay there. The little children collected round her: their mothers kissed them good-bye, told them to be good and quiet and listen to the nice lady. They had little transparent plastic cups of shining orange juice, and each had a biscuit in silver foil. They were all colours—black skin, brown skin, pink skin, freckled skin, pink jacket, yellow jacket, purple hood, scarlet hood. Some grinned and some whimpered, some wriggled, some were still. Primrose sat on the edge of the fountain. She had decided what to do. She smiled her best, most comfortable smile, and adjusted her golden locks. Listen to me, she told them, and I’ll tell you something amazing, a story that’s never been told before.

  There were once two little girls who saw, or believed they saw, a thing in a forest . . .

  Body Art

  THERE WAS CUSTOMARY BANTER in the Gynae Ward at St. Pantaleon’s, about the race to bear the Christmas Day baby. Damian Becket, making his round after a sleepless night of blood and danger, didn’t join in. His newest patient was at the furthest end of the cavernous ward, in the curtained-off section reserved for those who had lost, or might lose, their babies, and those whose babies were damaged or threatened. Dr. Becket frowned a little as he strode between the beds, not quite hearing the mewing and gulping of the infants or the greetings of the women. He was frowning, partly because his patient’s new baby, a scrap of skin and bone in an incubator in Intensive Care, was not doing well. He was also frowning because he was so tired that he couldn’t remember his patient’s name. He did not like to admit a fault. The baby should be doing better. His brain should respond to his need to identify people.

  He did not notice the stepladder until he had almost crashed into it. It was very tall, made of very shiny aluminium, and was directly under a circular fluorescent light fitting. He stopped suddenly, didn’t swear, felt sick because his reactions were slow, and stared upwards into the light, which blinded him. At the top of the ladder, perched precariously on tiptoe, was a figure in what seemed to be a haze of pale filmy garments. Its head was a ball of shiny white spikes. Dr. Becket said that the ladder was dangerous, and should be got out of the way. From the hands of the creature on top of it fluttered scarlet streamers, which glittered wetly in the too-much light. It emitted a ghostly tinkling. What is going on? asked Dr. Becket, staring grimly upwards.

  The Staff Nurse said it was his idea, Dr. Becket’s idea. It was one of the art students, said Nurse McKitterick. Who had given up time and materials to cheer the place up in an original way. Dr. Becket had suggested it to the Art-College liaison committee, such a clever idea. . . . Yes, yes, yes, said Dr. Becket, I see. It looks a little dangerous. His tired senses took in the fact that the ward beyond the ladder was criss-crossed with a rainbow of coloured strips of plastic, and strips of Indian-looking cloth spangled with mirror-glass. There were also brass bells and clusters of those eye-shaped beads that ward off the Evil Eye. They did lighten the darkness of the upper vaulting. They also emphasised it.

  His patient, whose name, Yasmin Muller, was of course written on the end of her bed, was sobbing quietly. She looked guilty when she opened her swollen eyelids and saw Dr. Becket’s severe young face staring down at her. She said she was sorry, and he said he didn’t see what she had to be sorry about. His fingers were gentle. He said she was rather a mess but it couldn’t be helped and would improve. She asked after her son. Dr. Becket said he was hanging in. He was strong, in so far as anyone born so much too soon could be strong. It is early days, said Dr. Becket, who had concluded that exact truthfulness was almost always the best path to take, though the quantity of truth might vary. We can’t tell yet what will happen, he said gravely, reasonably, sensibly. She saw him in a blur, for the first time really. A wiry man in his early forties, with a close-cut cap of soft dark hair, slightly bloodshot eyes and a white coat. She said, out of her own drugged drowsiness, “You look as though you should get some rest.” And he frowned again, for he did not like personal remarks, and he particularly did not like to appear to be in need of anything.

  On his way back he remembered the ladder, and was about to side-step, when the whole rickety structure began to sway and then toppled. Damian Becket put out a steady hand, directed the thing itself away from the bed it threatened, and staggered back under the full weight of the falling artist, whose head hit his chest, whose skinny ankles were briefly flung over his shoulder. He clutched; his arms were full of light, light female flesh and bone, wound up in the rayon and muslin harem trousers and tunic, embroidered in gold and silver. His nose was in baby-soft, silver-dyed, spun-glass spikes of hair. Lumpy things began to bounce on the floor. Bitten apples, a banana, a bent box of chocolates. The woman in the nearest bed laid claim, loudly, to these last. “That’s where my chocolates went, I was looking all over, there was only a few left, I was blaming the cleaners.” The person in Dr. Becket’s arms had quite definitely lost consciousness. Her skin was cold and clammy; her breathing was irregular. There was not, of course, a spare bed to put her on, so he carried her along the ward, and out into the nurses’ area, followed by his entourage. There he laid her carefully across the desk, felt her pulse, flicked up her eyelids. She seemed bloodless and anaemic. Skinny.

  “Just a simple faint,” he said, as she opened her eyes and took him in. “In need of a good meal, I’d say, whatever else.”

  She had a nice little pointed face, rendered grotesque, in his view, by gold studs and rings in pierced lips and nostrils. She was white like milled flour. She sat up and pulled her shapeless garments around her. “I’m so sorry,” she said in a breathy voice. “I’m OK now. I hope nothing got broken.”

  “Mr. Becket saved the situation,” said the Staff Nurse. “Did you slip?”

  “I felt dizzy. I don’t like heights.”

  “What were you doing up there in those impractical clothes, in that case?” asked Damian.

  “It was a nice idea. To decorate the ward. I offered.”

  She sat, slightly hunched, on the edge of the desk, swinging white-stockinged feet in streamlined modern nubuck clogs, with high wedged soles, open at the back. They were a dull crimson, stained with splashes of paint, or glue. Damian Becket bit back a remark about the idiocy of climbing ladders in such footwear, and asked instead, “When did you last eat?”

  “I don’t really remember. I was late for here, so I just ran out.”

  “I was going to take myself to the canteen for brunch. Would you like to join me?”

  The nurses had piled the pocketed fruit on the desk beside her. She did not look at it.

  “OK,” she said. “If you like.”

  THEY WENT DOWN to the basement canteen in a service lift, accompanied by two green-gowned theatre porters and a trolley. The artist shivered,
possibly because she was cold, which she should have been, in those clothes. He said:

  “I’m Damian Becket. And you?”

  “I’m Daisy. Daisy Whimple.”

  They went into the canteen, which had moulded imitation wood plastic chairs, circa 1960, and some unexpected prints, bright abstracts full of movement, on pale green walls. There was the usual smell of cooking fat, and a clatter of steel teapots. She hesitated in the doorway, and her white face grew whiter. He told her she didn’t look too good, found her a seat, and asked what he could bring her.

  “Whatever. Well, preferably vegetables. I try to be a vegan.”

  He came back with an English breakfast for himself and a vegetarian pasta dish for her, with a tomato side-salad. The pasta was pinkish and grey-green cork-screws, covered with some kind of cheese sauce. She ate the tomato, and turned the fusilli over and over with her fork, in the aimless way of children trying to heap leftovers to make them look smaller. Damian Becket, having eaten two sausages, two rashers of bacon, a fried egg, a heap of fried potatoes and a spoonful of baked beans, felt more human and studied Daisy Whimple more carefully. Anaemic almost certainly, anorexic possibly. An odd limpness in the wrists. He couldn’t really see her body in the furls of her clothing but he had held it in his arms, and it was young and tautly constructed. She had blue eyes and sky-blue painted lashes. Her veins in her thin arms were also very blue, as was a kind of traced tattoo like lacy flowers, that infested her lower arms like the evening mittens of Edwardian ladies. Her nails had been very neatly bitten.

  “You should eat something. If you don’t eat meat and things, you know, you in fact need to eat more, to keep up the protein.”

  “I’m sorry. It’s nice of you. I feel sick, that’s really the problem, with the ladder and all that.”

  He asked her about herself. He was not good at this. He was a good doctor, but he had no skill at talking, no ease of manner, he didn’t in fact want to know the details of other human lives, except in so far as he needed to know facts and histories in order to save those lives. He was unaware that his conventional good looks were to a certain extent a substitute for amiability. Even now, he was thinking, if she talked a bit, she might lose her nervous tension and be able to be hungry. He imagined her from inside her body. Her cramped little stomach.

  She said she was a student at the Spice Merchants’ College of Art. She had wanted to be a designer— well, it was all she had ever been any good at at school, her education had been—with a fleeting look up at his face—much interrupted, rather haphazard. But really she wanted to be an artist. She had taken part in one or two joint studio shows, with the people she worked with. Some people quite liked her stuff. Her voice trailed away. She said she’d seen the notice in the art college asking for volunteers to make things for the wards, and she thought it was a really nice idea. So she’d come. She was surprised there weren’t more. More students there, that was.

  “Please try to eat something. Would you prefer anything else—fruit, a roll and butter, some cake—”

  “Everything seems to turn my stomach. I’ll eat when I get back.”

  He asked where she lived.

  “Oh well, like, I sleep on my boyfriend’s studio floor. Lots of us do that. There’s lots of studio space in the old warehouses. Once they get done up of course they go for astronomic prices, the floor-space, but people like students and such get like temporary bases in the ones that aren’t done up—or not done up yet— you can get nasty surprises, your feet go through the floors and that kind of thing. But it’s OK, it’s a roof, and a workspace.”

  She said, doubtfully, she’d better be going then. She was still forking over the fusilli. He remarked that they were nasty colours, unappetising really, fleshy and mouldy. This interested her. She reconsidered the pasta. You’re right, she told him, it’s meant to look appetising, tomato juice, spinach. It looks a bit disgusting. Dead, maybe. Lots of colours are sort of deathly. You have to be careful. He said he liked the brightness of her decorations. They were in keeping with the hospital’s modern art collection. Had she seen that? She said she had seen some of it, and meant to get a look at the rest while she was on this project. She stood up to go. She looked as pale as ever, no hint of any kind of pink, either deathly or flushed with energy. He said he would walk her to the door. She said he didn’t have to, she was fine. He said he was going home anyway.

  They stopped in the new entrance lobby round the central stairwell. Stainless steel and glass doors and cubicles had been fitted incongruously into the late Victorian red brick. The brick was that very hot, peppery red of the Victorian Gothic. The brick walls were decorated with panels of encaustic tiles, depicting chillies and peppercorns, vanilla pods and tea-leaves, nutmegs and cloves. St. Pantaleon’s stood in Pettifer Street, just where it joined Whittington Passage. It was in Wapping, not so far from Wapping Old Stairs. It had once been a workhouse, which had become the Spice Merchants’ Lying-in Hospital to which was attached the Molly Pettifer Clinic for the Treatment of the Diseases of Women. It had become St. Pantaleon’s when the new National Health Service refurbished it in 1948, adding prefabricated temporary buildings which still stood. Sir Eli Pettifer had been a surgeon who had worked with the East India Company and with the British Army in India and in other places. He had written a treatise on the medical uses of culinary spices, and had made a fortune, through judicious speculation in spice cargoes. His daughter, Molly, had been one of the first generation of qualified women doctors, many of whom were allowed to train because a need was perceived for their ministrations in the Empire. Like many of them, Molly had been carried away by typhoid, whilst practising obstetrics and general surgery in Calcutta. Pettifer had endowed the hospital for her, and persuaded the spice merchants to endow it more richly still. He had left it his huge Collection, mostly of medical instruments and curiosities, with the injunction that it be made available for the instruction and amazement of the general public. It occupied several locked strong-rooms in the basement, whilst much of it was still crated, and much more heaped haphazardly in dusty display cabinets. One of the paintings from the Collection—a Dutch painting of an anatomy lesson being performed on a stillborn infant—had hung in the entrance hall. It had been Damian Becket’s idea to take it down and put it in the Hospital Committee Room, replacing it with a large abstract print by Albert Irvine, which he himself donated. Carried away by the brilliance of Irvine’s powerful brush-strokes, pink and gold, scarlet and royal blue, woven with emerald and flicks of white, he had talked the hospital into collecting other modern works, inviting sponsors, talking the artists into loans and concessions. Painted banners by Noel Forster floated down from the inside of the Gothic tower. Huge abstract visions of almost-vases and possibleseashores by Alan Gouk, in bristly slicks of paint, purple, sulphur, puce, lime, ran along the walls. In the corridors were Herons and Terry Frosts, Hodgkins and Hoylands. A Paolozzi machine-man glittered, larger than life, next to the reception pigeon-hole. There was an Art Committee, who usually followed Damian’s suggestions. They had also put him in charge of the Pettifer Collection, which he knew he should look at, go into, catalogue, arrange, only he was so tired, and there was so little money, and so many sick women, and he preferred his abstract modernist brightness. Indeed, “preferred” was too weak a word.

  So he was a little put out when Daisy Whimple stared dutifully up at the banners, cast her eye over the brush-strokes and said unenthusiastically, “Yeah, very nice, very colourful. Pretty.”

  “What sort of work do you do?” asked Damian Becket levelly. “Not like this, I take it.”

  “Well, no, not like this at all. I’m into installations, or I would be if there was any space anywhere I could get to install anything.”

  “The things you are doing in the ward are—are bright.”

  “Yeah, I figured that was what was wanted. I mean, like, the notice actually used the words cheer up the wards, didn’t it? I agree, really, you want easy cheerful art when you’r
e in one of those places. Easy on the eye, yes. For Christmas and all that.”

  “But you haven’t—installed—anything to do with Christmas. No snow, no Christmas tree, no reindeer. No crèche.”

  “No one asked for a crèche. I can’t do that sort of stuff. It’s all kitsch.”

  There was venom in the word. She added:

  “And I don’t suppose the establishment’d be too happy if I, like, sent it up, the angels and stars and stuff. Though the angels are the bit I don’t mind.”

  He asked, on an impulse, which modern artists she really admired. The answer came quick, without time taken for reflection, as though it were part of a credo.

  “Beuys. He was the greatest. He changed everything.”

  He was piqued to find that not much came into his mind, apropos of Beuys. He dredged.

  “Didn’t he work in fat and felt?”

  She looked at him kindly. “Among other things. He worked with himself too. He sat for days and months on a stage with a coyote.”

  Damian said foolishly that you could hardly have a coyote in a hospital.

  “I know that. I’m doing what was expected OK, OK?”

  “OK.”

  He said that he would be very interested to see her work when she had finished it. He said he hoped she would get a proper meal. He said he was going to get a taxi home, and could he drop her anywhere. She said no, she needed fresh air. Thanks.

  They parted. It was cold outside: an icy wind was blowing in off the Thames. It fluttered in her silly clothes, and ruffled her silver hair. He resisted an impulse to run after her and lend her his overcoat.

  HE LIVED in a Docklands apartment, glass-walled and very modern, looking over at Canary Wharf. It was simultaneously austere and brilliant. His furniture was chrome and glass and black leather. His carpet was iron grey. His walls were white, and were hung with abstract works—several of Patrick Heron’s 1970s silk-screens, some of Noel Forster’s intricately interlaced ribbons of colour, resembling rose windows, a Hockney print of cylinders, cones and cubes, a framed poster of Matisse’s Snail. He had also one or two brilliant Korean silk cushions in traditional green, gold, shocking pink and blue. He lived alone, since his parting from his wife, with whom he did not communicate. He considered himself hopelessly and helplessly married. He was a lapsed Catholic—this was something about himself that rose to the surface whenever—which was rarely—he was in a position where he was required to give a personal description of himself. He could have added adverbs—savagely lapsed, insistently lapsed, even in some sense devoutly lapsed. His way of life—including his attitude to his marriage—still ran furiously along the narrow channels cut by his upbringing.