A Natural Curiosity

by Margaret Drabble

  Charles stares, ponders. This does seem meant for him. He is, after all, supremely, of the adulterous and sinful generation. He acknowledges this, across the centuries. ‘What shall a man give, in exchange for his soul?’ Thoughtfully, Charles stumbles out of bed, clutching the Bible. He packs it in his hand luggage. Is it a crime, to steal a hotel Bible? Surely not. His need is greater. Maybe, he thinks, as he collapses between the sheets, there is even some absolving message in the volume, for those Bible thieves compelled by the spirit to read on. He will look, in the morning. He is too tired to look now. His eyes shut. Within seconds, he is asleep.

  At two in the morning, the hotel fire alarm begins to shriek and wail. Charles wakes, from dreams of fish and rivers. He lies there, listening to the alarm. He can hear doors banging, along the corridor. He decides it is a false alarm. If there were a real fire, there would be more noise. Calmly he goes back to sleep.

  Shirley Harper and Robert Holland are standing, arm in arm, in the foresting fin de siècle statuary of the Musée d’Orsay. Lithe bronze boys gambol above their heads, placid white marble matrons pluck classical musical instruments before them, voluptuous asp-bitten nudes writhe and recline to the left of them, stone lions prowl to the right of them. Shirley is leaning slightly upon Robert, partly through devotion, partly through shock. The recent shock to her system has been intense. After ten years of intermittent love-making and several years of none, she has rediscovered the body which she had thought for ever lost, her own body, in which she now hazily, drooping, staggering, stands. It is more of a surprise to her than Robert’s. Indeed, Robert’s solid, fleshly, comfortable self seems in a way no more than a projection of her own body, of her own desires. This does not mean that he is not important to her, for he is: he is a miracle, an intervention, a salvation, she is obsessed by his presence. But only in so far as it relates to her, serves her, delivers her. There he is, a solid person, more solid than bronze or marble or travertine. She leans on him. She needs him, for her own purposes.

  She does not really see the statues, the paintings, the vast well-displayed canvas of decadent Rome, the huge arched ceiling of solid rosettes, the walkways, the Parisian crowds. She sees and does not see. She has never frequented galleries and museums, it is surely too late to learn now. She is here because Robert wished to come here. She has no wishes of her own. She drifts. It is Thursday evening, the museum’s late night. She has spent the day, while Robert was at work, pottering around the neighbourhood, looking at the cafes, the bundles of brown rags in the gutters, the crawling spined crabs of the fishmonger, the arrays of vegetables, the children on their way to and from school. It is a homely district: the fifteenth arrondissement, Robert tells her, but that does not mean much to her. It could be anywhere, north, south, east or west.

  She has had an unsatisfactory but friendly encounter with Madame Lambert, the concierge, who wears a flowered apron such as women used to wear in Northam once, in Shirley’s girlhood. She has tried to take a bath, and failed, for even by daylight the attachments are serpentine, unmanageable, the bath too narrow even for her slim hips. She has glimpsed, from afar, the Eiffel Tower. And now she is in the Musée d’Orsay, which Robert tells her is new, a newly opened renovation of an old railway station. Some of the paintings are famous. Even Shirley recognizes them. Van Gogh, Toulouse-Lautrec, Gauguin, Monet. She stands now in front of an unfamiliar Bonnard nude. The nude is lying flat on her back on an unmade bed, her legs spread, her hair dishevelled. Shirley shifts her weight from foot to foot. Her feet are killing her. And she is numbly sore, within, from the two nights and one evening of sexual intercourse. There is a dull ache in her lower back. A voluptuous, pleasant, womanly ache.

  Is Shirley shocked by her own behaviour, is she surprised to find herself making love to a stranger in a strange city, less than a fortnight after her husband’s death? She is not quite sure. On balance, she thinks not. Shirley’s life may have seemed orderly, over the last twenty years, but it has not been quite as orderly as it has appeared. For example, Shirley, unlike Susie Enderby, has committed adultery several times, has earned her credentials as a member of the sinful and adulterous generation. It has nearly always been with the same man, it is true, but that does not make it more acceptable: in fact, as the man in question is her brother-in-law Steve, it makes it considerably less so. Steve, as a boy, had always fancied Shirley and she herself had been undecided: there had been times when it had not been clear which of the brothers she would eventually favour. Her choice, over the years, had seemed to her increasingly arbitrary. Why Cliff, why not Steve? Steve himself had put this question to her one afternoon in the 1960s, at a cousin’s wedding reception, inspired by champagne, and Shirley had found her heart beating, her lightly rouged cheeks burning, her whole body suddenly throbbing and melting under her new wide white-collared prim revealing low-cut floral summer dress: Steve had leant forward, touched her bare neck gently with his fingers, and they had wandered off together under the trees, away from the marquee and the wedding guests, had kissed and embraced, then had driven off recklessly to the old quarry, and spent twenty minutes fucking under the hot sun. ‘I’ve wanted to fuck you for years, Shirley,’ Steve had said, astonishingly, as he struggled with her tights and clutched at her bare buttocks, ‘I’ve thought about fucking you for years.’ Shirley had never heard this word used in earnest, and it thrilled her far more than Steve’s revelation of persistence of amorous intent. It thrilled her so unmistakably that Steve got the message at once, and repeated it more and more insistently in her ear until he breathlessly collapsed on top of her. It was a word that reminded Shirley of the bad girl she had wanted to be, had believed herself to be, before she grew up and became a housewife and mother of two. Cliff’s two. Did it remind Steve, too, of another self? Surely so, surely. They returned to the wedding party, wordless, before anyone had noticed they had gone, Shirley’s stiff glazed cotton dress a little crumpled, but her hair demurely combed, her face retouched, relipsticked: Steve also a little crumpled, his tie loosened from the heat, but nobody saw save Shirley, for everybody was overheated, tipsy, merry, Bacchanalian, ungartered. (Well, almost everybody: Mrs Harper had been closely observant, but luckily Cliff, Steve and Shirley had not observed her observance.)

  Shirley had never regretted this experiment, this recalling of a lost option. She and Steve had repeated it several times, when opportunity and mood coincided. It had not affected their social relations, or Shirley’s respect for Steve’s plain wife Dora, to whom, she was certain, Steve never used bad language, body language. It didn’t seem to have anything to do with anything, it was neither right nor wrong, it had been what it was, a celebration of what might have been. It wasn’t even an affair, and when it was over Shirley blotted it from her memory completely, and hoped Steve had too. It came to an end, an unspoken but recognized end, when Shirley decided to have another baby: she threw away her diaphragm, coerced her husband Cliff, went off to Paris on a Weekend Special, became pregnant with Celia, and announced her pregnancy to the world. Steve listened, as a member of that world, offered congratulations, and reverted to his old role of brother-in-law, friend, do-it-yourself adviser. He and Shirley continued to meet, frequently, at family events, in one another’s houses. No frisson had passed between them for many years, but a fondness, perhaps, remained. Shirley, when she thought about it at all, hoped so. Steve was a decent chap, a kind man. She sometimes asked herself, a little jealously, if he had found another woman, into whose hot ear he could whisper bad words. Maybe he had: he looked reasonably content, more content than Cliff. Cliff had never known about her and Steve. Or so Steve and Shirley assumed. Although now, standing in the Museum, as shadowy remembrances of her past sexual self, her now resurrected self, flickered through Shirley’s wheeling mind, she wondered, for a moment. Had Cliff known, all along? Known, and kept his mouth shut, and died silently? Had he smelled strange body odours, overseen illicit glances?

  She dismisses these doubts, these questions from
the past, and returns to the dizzy present.

  And dizzy is the word for it. She is feeling odd, odder than she has felt since she first ran away from home. Insistent sexual activity (for Robert never seems to tire), unaccustomed food, and far more drink than usual have made her weightless, airy, wild: her eyes cannot focus on the statues, the paintings. Everything is at once heightened and fuzzy, bright and soft and explosive. She sails on a high erotic dream.

  It is all magic. Robert has cast a spell upon her, or so she tells him. A spell would, excuse all bad behaviour, condone all licence. The night before, she had felt slightly faint in the street, as they walked towards the little brasserie for their unassuming dinner: she had stumbled, and nearly fallen, and recovered herself, and had to stand and lean against the wall to catch her breath. Robert, all solicitude (for this was his role) had marched her into the pharmacy on the corner, and demanded a potion, a restorative potion, from the pharmacien. And the tall, thin, grey goat-bearded magician had gone off and mixed a pale green-grey chalky draught in a little conical medicine glass. ‘What is it?’ Shirley had wanted to know, giggling a little hysterically as it was pressed upon her. ‘It’s a French medicine. Never you mind what it is. It will do you good. Knock it back,’ said Robert.

  And Shirley had knocked it back. It was bitter, digestive, comforting. ‘What on earth was it?’ she asked again, as they wandered out to the street and on to their café.

  ‘It was an aphrodisiac, of course,’ said Robert. ‘What else would you expect, from a man like that, in Paris?’

  And they had both laughed, and staggered on, to their little Parisian supper of jambon de Paris, salade de tomates et frites, to Robert’s friend Stukeley, who had become a regular in their lives—Neighbourhood Character, Witness, Wedding Guest.

  And now here she was in the Musée d’Orsay, staring at Bonnard’s Femme assoupie, and thinking of sex. It would be difficult to think about anything else in front of so blatantly erotic a painting. She wonders if she is ‘in love’ with Robert, or he with her. Probably not. No, he is using her as a bizarre revenge, to bury the corpse of Amélie, as she is using him to bury Cliff. Cliff and Amélie had been the prime movers in this affair, they had taken the initiative, and Shirley and Robert were obediently, helplessly potion-charmed, irresponsible, drifting and surging, directionless, in their wake.

  The woman lies, exhausted, satisfied, her legs spread wide, one knee bent, forming a triangle, a theorem, a proposition. The dishevelled bed is like a map of the whole world.

  Shirley experimentally takes off her shoes, and stands in stockinged feet on the cool flat rosy slabs. The sensation is delicious.

  ‘Tired?’ asks Robert. No, no, says Shirley, although she is, and he knows that she is. They move on, paying scanter attention to the paintings that solicit them, and descend through the lower galleries. And at the entrance to the Moreau room, Shirley sees someone that she knows. She turns away quickly, thinking she has not been seen.

  The coincidence of this near-encounter is not as extreme as it might appear, for the woman she recognizes is an art historian, and where else should one expect to see art historians but in art galleries? She is Esther Breuer, friend of Shirley’s sister Liz Headleand. Esther is accompanied by a man whom Shirley does not recognize, although Robert Holland does. Robert pretends not to see him. Everybody pretends not to see everybody. Shirley had once, on one of her rare rain-avoiding visits to the National Gallery, seen Esther give a lecture on Neapolitan art and the treatment of the subject of Judith and Holofernes. She cannot remember a word of the lecture, but she remembers the occasion well, and recalls it now.

  Shirley and Robert move on, along the main concourse, towards the exit.

  ‘Do you know who that was?’ asks Robert.

  ‘No, who?’ says Shirley, guiltily, wondering how well Robert knows Esther, and whether he also by some disastrous misfortune knows Liz.

  ‘That was Robert Oxenholme, Minister for Sponsorship,’ says Robert Holland.

  ‘Oh, really?’ says Shirley, relieved. She has never heard of Robert Oxenholme. And they continue to make their way through the lofty halls, towards the taxi, the tomato salad, the steak and Stukeley, as Esther and her Robert linger in front of Moreau’s ambiguous, quaintly obscene, well-endowed Jason, who is trampling on a small feathery monster. Jason’s penis is tied up in a large pink silk ribbon, like a birthday present, and the sorceress Medea stands behind him with an expression of half-amused expectation.

  Half an hour later, Esther Breuer and Robert Oxenholme settle into their little green basketwork chairs in the museum diningroom, in front of a reserved table covered with starched napery. Overhead, the chandeliers glitter. The waiters are attentive. Esther slips off her shoes, under the table: she too has Museum Foot, though not as badly as Shirley, for her shoes are soft and flat, not high and pinching.

  ‘I think,’ says Esther, as a waiter covers her diminutive lap with damask, ‘that I saw Liz’s sister, somewhere down there.’

  ‘Really?’ says Robert, without hesitation, as he reaches for the wine list.

  ‘I think so,’ says Esther. ‘Rather surprising, really. One wouldn’t expect to see her here. And she seemed to be with a strange man.’

  ‘Then you’d better not tell Liz,’ says Robert Oxenholme, pondering the vintages of white burgundies. He is not really interested in Liz or her sister. And neither, at this moment, much, is Esther. She has other things on her mind. One of them is Robert Oxenholme, who has just asked her to marry him, and the other is the museum itself, which she has just seen for the first time. What does she make of it, what does Robert make of it? Do they agree that the impressionists and post-impressionists are ill hung? Do they think there is too much junk, too much kitsch, too many multicoloured onyx and marble maidens? What do they make of the architectural conversion? What will they make of this restaurant and their approaching dinner? The view, they agree, is beyond reproach. The Seine flows beyond and beneath their repast.

  ‘This restaurant is frightfully expensive, Robert,’ says Esther, peering at the list.

  ‘Is that a criticism or a complaint?’ he asks.

  ‘Well,’ says Esther. ‘I’ll say one thing for this Museum. I haven’t seen a single sponsorship advertisement. Not one. Nothing about Degas by courtesy of Dunlop tyres, or Maillol sponsored by Michelin, or Renoir by Renault, or any of that kind of stuff you have to pretend you’re so keen on. The French spent government money on this. Is that right?’

  ‘What about a Meursault, for a change?’ asks Robert.

  ‘Well, am I right or not?’

  ‘There were many donations,’ says Robert vaguely. ‘In lieu of inheritance tax. It’s a different system.’

  ‘Donations,’ says Esther. ‘Yes. From artists and collectors. From the Redons, not the Renaults.’

  ‘Those Redons are amazing,’ says Robert, distracted. ‘Amazing.’

  And they talk, for a while, about the paintings. The meal proceeds, discreetly, smoothly. The lights of the city shimmer in the dark flowing water. Esther and Robert are both Italian Renaissance scholars, after their fashion: art nouveau, symbolism, the fin de siècle are not their field, but they enjoy wandering in a foreign land, and they are still under a strong enchantment. Robert talks well, about painting: he does not spend all his time discussing cost-effectiveness and subsidies and admission prices and lighting, although Esther teases him about these preoccupations. He likes the paintings, he understands them. He does not see them as walls of money. Esther wonders, if she marries Robert, will life proceed smoothly, well attended, into old age and the next century, the next millennium? With waiters and white burgundy’ at beck and call? It is a seductive prospect, and Robert knows it. But there are great gaps in their friendship, great holes and absences, subjects of which they never speak, cannot speak. Will it do? Can she have any faith in the fact that Robert seems to think it will do?

  Now Robert is talking about the Puvis de Chavannes and Augustus John. The poor
fisherman. It is a great painting, he says. The greatest portrait of poverty ever painted. He enthuses. The poor fisherman, with his sad rod at a sad angle. Impotence incarnate. The little boat, the flat water, the babe among the flowers on the shore. The discretion of the sacred, the high horizon. The resignation, the patience. He speaks of John’s gypsies, of Gwen John’s portraits of Dorelia, of Harold Harvey’s Cornish fishwife.

  Esther watches him. He is charming, he is rich, he is well connected, he is intelligent, he has a good job, he has a sort of title, he has curly hair, he shares her interests, and he is interested in marrying her. Why?

  Esther has never been married. She cannot imagine what it would be like. The risk-taking part of her, the Bohemian freelance part of her, is attracted, perversely, to this gamble, to this gamble of security. She who has never covered her bets, never secured her interests or insured her life or possessions or committed herself to any one person—shall she not take the greatest risk of all?

  She cannot decide whether marrying Robert would be taking a risk or throwing in the sponge. And if the sponge, what sponge? Is the sponge Elena Volpe, the woman with whom Esther has been living for the last year in Bologna?

  Esther does not know. She does not wish to be moved by the fact that life with Elena in Bologna has been less than easy. She had looked upon Bologna as a forbidden dream, had succumbed to its temptations with a slight guilt, seduced by the architecture of the city and the gracious ardour of Elena’s protestations. She had abandoned for Bologna and Elena her flat off Ladbroke Grove and a life of austere eccentricity, of solitude and concentration, of a narrow clear depth. But what she has embraced is neither soft nor simple. Or not, at least, for her. She is too old to learn new ways. Elena is young, still in her thirties, a fully paid-up, radical-feminist-lesbian-Marxist. It is easy for her. But for Esther it is impossible.