A Natural Curiosity

by Margaret Drabble

  ‘Who knows? Defective nurture? The castrating shears?’

  ‘I never worked out what the beheading thing was about, either. You said that was castration complex, but I don’t quite see why.’

  ‘And will you try to find his mother for him?’

  ‘I suppose I’ll have to. I sort of said I would.’ She paused. ‘And what about you and Shirley, Liz? Will you try to find her?’

  Liz hesitated, took off her glasses, polished them on her sleeve, and put them back on again.

  ‘Well, to tell you the truth, I’m not all that keen on finding Shirley. What a mess she’d have to come back to. But I suppose she’ll have to come back. And face the music.’

  ‘And you still haven’t been able to contact Celia?’

  ‘Well, you know what it’s like in Oxford, they’re not on the phone, you leave messages at the porter’s lodge, nobody seems to have seen her for days. But that doesn’t mean anything. She’s probably sitting quietly in the Bodleian, with a pile of books. You can’t page the whole of Oxford.’

  ‘But the boys have been contacted?’

  ‘Apparently. Steve spoke to Bob in Australia. Didn’t let on about Shirley, just said his father had had an accident. And they’ve got black sheep Barry back from Newcastle.’

  ‘It’s a bit worrying, about Celia.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. She’s a cold fish, Celia. She’ll survive.’

  ‘So what happens next?’

  ‘I’m going to Clive Enderby again in the morning. He seems quite bright.’

  Alix poured another cup of coffee, stirred it.

  ‘And what do you think has happened to Shirley?’

  Liz laughed, heartlessly, miserably, perplexed.

  ‘God knows. Maybe she’s dead too. They’re trying to trace her Mini. Apparently she took £400 out of her Midland Bank current account at a cashpoint in Ecclestone three days ago. So perhaps she’s just bolted.’

  ‘For a new life?’

  ‘A new life, at her age?’

  They both contemplated this cold prospect.

  ‘Out of a cashpoint?’ said Alix, eventually. ‘How come? I can only ever get £50 out of mine. And it won’t always let me have that.’

  ‘She must have had one of those supercards,’ said Liz, ‘It’s just the sort of thing she and Cliff would have had.’ (Liz, of course, had one herself.) ‘Well, well. I’d never have expected such a thing of Shirley. Though I suppose she was a bit of a rebel, in the old days. But I thought she’d settled down.’

  ‘And what about Cliff? Would you have expected such a thing of Cliff?’

  Liz shrugged her shoulders. ‘I knew he was depressed. But he belongs more to your realm than mine, don’t you think? He’s become a statistic. A victim of the economy. Another failed-small-business suicide. There are hundreds of them a week, probably.’

  ‘No, not a week, surely.’

  ‘Well, you know what I mean. You can feed him into the counter-attack. Write off to the Employment Institute and present it with Cliff as a small statistic. Poor old Cliff.’

  Sadness fell in the pleasant, muddled drawing-room. They nursed their coffee-cups. They could hear Sam on the telephone, upstairs. He had asked permission, like a polite boy, to ring his half-brother Nick.

  Your primroses are lovely,’ said Liz, gazing for comfort at the wineglass of yellow deep-cored open reaching faces.

  Alix brightened. ‘Do you know what I found, yesterday, at the end of the garden under the chestnut tree? A little clump of tiny tiny cyclamen. I hadn’t the heart to pick them. They are too beautiful.’

  They fell silent, contemplating the primroses, summoning the cyclamen.

  Alix did not admit that she had fallen to her knees by the miracle of the cyclamen, and spoken to them. She does not want Liz to know she has gone mad.

  Liz Headleand paced up and down Clive Enderby’s office. Paced energetically, demonstratively. Clive Enderby watched her with admiration and apprehension. She paused, gestured largely, walked on, speaking the while.

  ‘My guess,’ said Liz, ‘is that they had some kind of final row, some kind of show-down, and that Shirley walked off, or rather drove off, and that Cliff went and filled himself full of carbon monoxide as a result. You say she was here consulting you about her legal position? I imagine she’d just had enough, she just blew up and walked out. In which case, she won’t even know he’s dead. How could she? It’s hardly national news.’

  ‘And you’ve no idea where she might have gone?’

  ‘How should I know? We weren’t very close. She wouldn’t have come to me. Why should she?’

  ‘And were there friends she might have gone to?’

  ‘I don’t know if Shirley had any friends. No, I’ve no idea where she is. And while we’re on the subject—which we’re not, but maybe we should be—I gather she came to see you a month or so ago to ask about the money from my mother’s will?’

  ‘Yes, that’s right.’

  Clive, at his desk, watched Liz intently.

  ‘And you told her a cheque would be on the way?’

  ‘That’s correct.’

  ‘But it’s not come through yet. Or at least, I haven’t had my bit, so I assume she hasn’t had hers. The will left everything to us equally, I believe?’

  ‘That’s correct.’

  ‘But the money will be on its way—would have been on its way—soon?’

  ‘Oh yes. That’s quite correct.’

  Impatiently, Liz paused, stared, suddenly sat.

  ‘And would it be indelicate of me to ask how much it would be?’ She glowered at him, commandingly, then continued, without pausing for an answer, ‘Because it’s odd, isn’t it, that Shirley should have left now, without the money?’

  Clive Enderby was looking through a file on his desk. His colour was slightly heightened. His collar was very white, his light suit was very grey.

  ‘The house,’ he said, ‘was sold for £21,000. Your sister approved the sale.’

  ‘Really? Is that all? Can you really buy a three-bedroomed house in a desirable suburb for £21,000? You can’t get a bedsit for that in London. Not even in the nastiest parts of London.’

  Clive coughed. ‘I think it was quite a good price,’ he said. ‘Your sister seemed to think so too. I know that house prices have been soaring down south, but they’ve actually been drop ping round here. And the suburb is no longer quite so desirable. And the house was—somewhat neglected.’

  Liz smiled. ‘Yes, it was a dump,’ she agreed. ‘And you say Shirley knew the house had been sold? So she’s walked out on ten thousand, or whatever’s left of it when we’ve paid your fees? Was there any more? Did the furniture bring in anything?’

  Clive shook his head. ‘We had to pay the house clearers to take it away,’ he said.

  ‘So that was it,’ said Liz. ‘Ten thou. Give or take a few hundred. I wonder what happened to that silver wine cooler. I don’t suppose my mother had anything in the bank, had she?’

  ‘I sent you a statement,’ said Clive. ‘With all the details. Well, an interim statement.’

  ‘Did you? Oh yes, so you did.’

  She relapsed into silence, then fumbled in her bag, found a packet of cigarettes, lit up, laid the dead match in a black and silver ashtray.

  They looked at one another. Behind Liz glittered the devastation. Clive wondered whether or not to speak, whether or not to produce the final explanatory document from the drawer at his elbow. Was this the moment? Her incuriosity astonished him. Had she never looked at her mother’s bank statements? Had she never asked herself about her mother’s income? He had photocopied clues and sent them to her, but they seemed to have aroused no suspicions. Perhaps it was better so.

  He changed tack.

  ‘So you’ve no idea,’ repeated Clive, ‘of where your sister might be?’

  Liz shrugged her shoulders.

  ‘Look,’ she said. ‘I’ve told you. We weren’t a very close family. I haven’t seen much of Shirley f
or—oh, for years. She resented me. She thought I got off lightly, not having to look after Mother. She would never have confided in me.’

  ‘But she did ring you, about her husband’s business?’

  ‘Well, yes. But that wasn’t usual. I was surprised to hear from her.’

  ‘It did just occur to me,’ said Clive, apologetically, ‘that it was possible that her husband might have . . . attacked her, in some way?’

  Liz looked puzzled, then caught on.

  ‘Murdered her, you mean?’ said Liz, nodding energetically. ‘Done away with her?’

  ‘Well, yes,’ said Clive. ‘But the police say there’s been a sighting of her since the established time of death. But then, as you point out, she might never have gone near the garage. The police aren’t very bright, in these parts.’

  Liz shook her head. ‘No,’ she said. ‘Cliff would never have killed anyone. He wasn’t that kind of chap.’ She laughed, a little wildly. ‘No,’ she went on. ‘It’s much more likely that it was the other way round. She vanished, he kills himself. Though that’s not very likely either.’

  ‘Well, there must be some more or less likely explanation,’ said Clive. ‘I’m sure it will all sort itself out in the end. Would you like a drink?’

  ‘I rather think I would,’ said Liz. And Clive opened the little office refrigerator.

  Over the gin and tonic, they talk about Northam, about the Town Council, about the privatization of British Steel, about house prices. And while they talk, Clive watches Liz and wonders. As she is about to drain her glass, he suddenly says to her, ‘I admired your performance on television, a couple of weeks ago. Very brave, I thought it.’

  Liz starts, stares, goes into a different mode. She suddenly speaks to him in a different kind of voice, in a different register, as equal to equal. Clive, who is not an insensitive man, notices this, notches it up in his memory. ‘Really?’ she says.

  ‘Yes,’ he says. ‘I thought you made your case very well.’

  ‘Well, that’s more than most people did, and very kind of you to say so,’ said Liz. ‘I got a lot of flak over that programme. You wouldn’t believe the kind of thing people write. Well, perhaps you would. Being a lawyer. You’d think I’d personally tried to rape their own personal infants. People are odd. Deranged, a lot of them, without knowing it.’

  ‘It’s a disturbing subject,’ said Clive.

  ‘Yes. But they must have been pretty disturbed beforehand, to write such violent letters. It can’t have been just the sight of me on telly that tipped them over the edge.’

  She smiled, boldly, but not wholly comfortably.

  ‘It’s the sanctity of the family,’ said Clive Enderby. ‘People don’t like to hear it attacked. Or to think they are hearing it attacked.’

  ‘People talk a lot of nonsense these days about the sanctity of the family,’ said Liz. ‘I don’t know why. If they’d seen some of the cases I’d seen, they wouldn’t think it so sacred. The things people do to one another, in the name of family. Somebody has to speak up against it. For the sake of the outcasts.’

  ‘But you yourself have a large family,’ said Clive, responding to a vibration of distress in her voice. Offering comfort, requesting explanation?.

  ‘Yes,’ said Liz, softening. ‘Yes, a large family. Three stepchildren, two children, and now a granddaughter. She’s lovely, my granddaughter. Mine is the new extended family, the new model. We thought we’d do it better, my generation. But I don’t suppose we have.’ She paused, continued, in a sudden spurt of intimacy. ‘I wanted a large family, because mine was so small. So silent. And we had no relatives, Shirley and I. None. There must have been some, but our mother hid them all. No father, no aunts, no grandparents, nothing. Oh yes, I wanted a family, I married for family. And I love my children, all of them. But do they love me? No, they judge me, they resent me, they think I have crippled their lives, they think I am making fools of them and of myself.’

  ‘Now that cannot be quite true,’ said Clive.

  ‘No, of course it isn’t true, it’s an exaggeration, of course they love me. But you know what I mean.’ The gin and tonic, on an empty stomach, had gone to her head, the memory of her mother had momentarily demented her. ‘And you, Mr Enderby, how many children do you have?’

  ‘Two,’ he said. ‘And do call me Clive.’

  ‘Two. And how old are they?’

  ‘Eight and six. A boy and a girl. William and Victoria.’

  ‘A model family.’

  ‘Yes, a model family. And we live in a four-bedroomed house with a double garage and an au pair girl attached. And my wife works part-time. Mr and Mrs Average Professional Couple.’

  ‘There’s no such thing as the average professional couple,’ said Liz.

  ‘No,’ said Clive, echoing Liz, ‘maybe not. But you know what I mean.’

  They gazed at one another, appraisingly. Clive smiled, Liz smiled. They had spoken to one another, in human voices, across a great divide, and both were surprised that this had been possible. They contemplated the nature of that communication, of that surprise. It was tinged with sex on both sides. Clive put it to himself that he fancied Liz. Liz fancied Clive, though she did not put it to herself so clearly or so crudely. There he was, a young man still in his thirties, looking at her with admiration, and expressing that admiration. It has been a long time since she had solicited or been aware of receiving such attention. She responded to his interest with interest. A small excitement, pleasurable, containable, stimulating, like a mild sweet breeze, stirs the carefully regulated office air. As Clive helped Liz into her grey cashmere coat, he smelled her odour, she smelled his. He patted her shoulder, as she settled the coat fabric, and she felt the weight of his hand. He touched her arm as he opened the door for her. He stood by the lift, his hand on the button, and smiled at her. When they shook hands on parting, both hands lingered slightly, warmly, in a friendly professional clasp. A little warmth flickered and glowed between them, a small animal bodily knowledge. Cliff Harper was dead and Shirley Harper had vanished, but Clive and Liz (as they now called one another) were alive.

  Celia Harper lies prone on her bed in her room in north Oxford, wrapped in a rug against the cold, with a woollen hat on her head and a scarf around her neck. She has run out of fifty-pence pieces for the meter and cannot be bothered to go out in search of more. She is too absorbed to move, despite a sore throat and an incipient chill. Surrounded by books she lies. Books in many languages. The bed of Babel. Greek, Latin, Russian. Open before her lie volumes of the poems of Joseph Brodsky, in both Russian and English, on top of an open Homer. ‘Letters to a Roman Friend’. ‘Odysseus to Telemachus’. She has been picking her way through them patiently, finding odd words she recognizes in the Russian text. Now she is reading Tacitus. The murder of Galba. She reads of the death of Piso, dragged from the Temple of Vesta and slaughtered by Sulpicius Florus and Statius Murcus. She reads that Otho studied Piso’s severed head ‘with peculiar malevolence, as if his eyes could never drink their fill’. She can read Latin quickly, thanks to her excellent classical education at Northam Girls’ High School. She races on, through the dreadful annals, fortifying herself on nibbles of Kendal Mint Cake.

  Neglected on the floor lie two letters delivered by hand from college, at the request of the porter. One is from her brother Barry, the other from her uncle Steve. They ask her to get in touch because her father is ill. The phrasing in each is slightly different but the import the same. Celia pays no attention to them. She feels safe, safely out of touch. The cold dull breath of home cannot touch her here. Home, where nothing ever ever happened, where tedium reigned supreme. If they really want her, they will have to come and get her. She does not believe that her father is ill. They are just annoyed with her, she speciously reasons, because she forgot his birthday. She is glad there is no telephone in the flat, for if there were, they would surely be nagging at her. She can’t afford to let them get at her. They will slow her down, rust her up, paralyse her.
She banishes them, exiles them from her attention. She will read Tacitus until 5.30, then allow herself half an hour more of Brodsky, then a little Aeschylus, and then she will bicycle into hall for her supper. After that, who knows, she may go to a film at the Film Society with Anna and Pat. This is the real world, the world she has created for herself. She does not wish to be pulled out of it by her father’s illness. She eats another square of mint cake. These days, she eats and eats, and stays as thin as a pre-puberty child. She eats and eats and reads and reads. She is devoured by greed. She devours.

  Shirley Harper walks along the beach, gazing at the distant headland and the sea. She remembers this little bay. It is called happiness. She takes off her shoes, rolls down her tights, steps delicately on the cold ridged wet sand. Lug worms. Razor shells. Her naked instep aches with imprinted memory.

  Steve Harper sits at the kitchen-table with his head in his hands. His wife Dora is ironing pillowcases. The kitchen is filled with the soothing smell of hot wet cotton, but Steve is not soothed. Dora is crying, quietly, stoically, her plain kind broad friendly face blotchy with misery. She grieves for her husband. She worries about Shirley. She worries about Celia. She cannot forgive Cliff. She refuses to see her mother-in-law. She is sorry for old Mrs Harper, but she cannot bring herself to see her. Mrs Harper does nothing but complain. Even now, in these sad days, Mrs Harper blames Shirley, blames Cliff’s partner Jim, blames the boys, blames Celia, blames Oxford, blames Cliff. Given half a chance, she would blame Dora. Moan, moan, moan. No, Dora cannot bear it. Somebody else will have to comfort Mrs Harper for the death of her son.

  Shirley settles her boarding-house bill, surprised by how little her out-of-season night had cost. True, the bed had been narrow, the room tiny, but it had been a bed, in a bedroom. With a washbowl, although no soap. And a small electric fire. She had slept little. Images of childhood had drifted through her drowsing. A loneliness, an oppression, a desire to escape, a craving for the normal. She had failed to find the normal. She had been marked out. Marked from birth. In a little terraced house on a desolate seafront she lay listening to the waves, in utter solitude. Nobody knew where she was. Nobody but this landlady, to whom she now offers a ten-pound note, from whom she now waits for change. The landlady is loud-voiced, stout, falsely jolly, chatty. She seems the most normal person in the world. But who knows, thinks Shirley, who knows what oddities, what longings, what past crimes, this large mobile acrylic-cardiganed bosom may conceal? Human nature, since Cliff’s death, has gone soft and shapeless, has melted into an amorphous mass, an unpredictable uncorseted lump of matter. Shirley cannot tell where it will break out next. What lumps, what growths, what abnormalities, what liquifyings, what solidifyings? The bosom heaves with laughter at its own joke. It is a wild morning, and the sea crashes against the sea wall.