A Natural Curiosity

by Margaret Drabble

  ‘Is Sam going?’

  ‘Oh yes, of course. Everybody’s going. Apart from the dukes and duchesses. Sam’s a great friend of young Tony Kettle. And who knows, maybe her famous husband will be there. The famous Kettle. Iron Age Kettle might honour us.’

  ‘It seems a bit much, going to a party,’ Liz had murmured, ‘what with Cliff still on ice, and Shirley gone dotty.’

  ‘Sitting here won’t help them,’ said Alix, ‘whereas going out will help me. So you might as well come.’

  And thus Liz found herself, in Alix’s spare room, going through a heap of oddments pressed upon her by Alix, looking for party wear, and thinking of dukes and duchesses, and her dead mother, and Charles. She found to her dismay that she couldn’t get into most of Alix’s things. Have I really put on so much weight, she wondered, as she rejected a black skirt, a green slinky acetate evening dress from the sixties, and a Maltese lace blouse. Her mother had died fat. Shirley was very thin. Was there a moral in this?

  But her mind was elsewhere. In Baldai, with Charles. Just before leaving London, she had received a mysterious phone call, from an unknown gentleman, wanting to know when Charles was expected home. He did not seem to realize that Liz was not Charles’s wife, nor even his ex-wife, but his last ex-wife-but-one, and she had not disabused him. In the course of their brief conversation he had revealed to her that he was urgently expecting an answer to a letter he had written to Charles, inviting him to become the Director of the Royal Geographical Association. ‘In confidence, you know,’ he kept saying, in a fussy, prissy, storm-in-a-teacup voice, ‘in confidence.’ He needed a reply. The Queen needed a reply. The Prime Minister needed a reply. Where was Charles?

  ‘He’s staying in the embassy at Baldai, as far as I know,’ Liz had said. ‘You could try ringing him there,’ said Liz. Incompetent old fool, she had said to herself, as she put down the phone. Can’t even get hold of an up-to-date Who’s Who. And what a bloody silly idea, asking Charles to be the Director of the R G A. Charles hated geography, hated travelling, his whole aim was to make travelling and geography redundant, through the satellite. Bloody fools.

  But now in Alix’s spare room, rejecting the too-tight Maltese blouse (a never-worn present from Alix’s Auntie Flo) she stared at herself a little forlornly, reconsidering. Of course, in England, that was how things were done. The less you knew about something, the more likely you were to be asked to run it. That was how people got appointed in this country; at random, to run things about which they knew absolutely nothing. Charles was a manager, so let him manage the Royal Geographers. He probably retained the reputation for being a good manager. People didn’t know of the crises through which Global International Network was staggering. And it came to her that the RGA had a reputation for being immensely wealthy. The salary there would be good, even by television standards. And the perks considerable. Sir Charles Headleand he could shortly be, at the very least. And she could have been Lady Headleand. If she had stuck to Charles, if he had stuck to her.

  She sighed, and resolved to diet. Honours, stuffed shirts, the establishment. Charles had become the kind of person who liked that kind of thing. Banquets, toasts, speeches, receptions, trumpets. Charles would be delighted, she guessed, to become Sir Charles, and honourably to quit the field of profit and loss. He could escape from his flat in Kentish Town and live somewhere grand again.

  But who would entertain for him? Who would arrange his geographical dinner parties? Maybe he would establish to his own satisfaction the demise of Dirk Davis, and would come back and marry Carla Davis, as his fourth wife. But surely Charles could see that Carla would never do? Even if money were heaped upon Carla, she would never do.

  Liz almost found herself thinking that it was a pity that she and Charles had sold the house in Harley Street.

  Charles had been like his old self, the last time she’d seen him. What was it he’d said about her mother? She couldn’t quite remember, but she’d been much struck by it at the time. And by his interest, among other things. She was slightly surprised to find that he still bothered to think at all about herself, her mother, and Shirley.

  Liz thought of Shirley.

  Shirley had barricaded herself into her house, had locked herself in for the weekend. Would she be on the phone to that man, would she be swallowing sleeping pills, would she be reading Cliff’s old love letters? Liz could not imagine. She did not really know Shirley very well. It occurred to her as she sat there on the spare bed in her underwear that the scene was now set for Shirley to repeat, in every detail, the withdrawal of their mother. Yes, Shirley could shut herself up, the widowed recluse, as old Mrs Ablewhite had done, and speak to no one, ever again. Was that how it would be? Was that how it had been?

  No doubt about it, Shirley and I are both a bit mad, thought Liz, and not surprisingly. More surprising that for so long we have managed to appear to be viable.

  The force of repetition is terrible, terrible. We assemble strangers at random gatherings, we shake off parents and lovers and husbands and wives and children. We miscegenate and emigrate, we fly to the uttermost parts of the earth, and yet the same face grins at us, the same hand beckons us. There is no escape.

  And is that all there is to it? All?

  Liz shook her head, as though to shake away these thoughts, and looked around at the familiar collection of undistinguished objects—the ill-matched furniture, the pewter candlesticks, the 1930s stained wood wardrobe, the rickety bookcase made by Brian in an evening class, the tapestry-seated chair embroidered decades ago by Alix’s mother, the spotted cane bedside-table. A wave of love of Alix reached Liz, as she summoned her energy to struggle into the last possible item of party gear, an old bold purple Mexican tent-style cotton gown, and found to her relief that it fitted. Indeed, it looked quite good. Dare I wear this, wondered Liz, as she inspected the violent-green snake embroidery on the sleeves. After all, it’s only Northam, who will notice? thought treacherous Liz.

  Alix, already changed, was downstairs on her knees by the bookcase, looking for the dictionary. She and Brian were trying to work out what a Walpurgisnacht was, and whether Fanny Kettle’s party would be one. The dictionary had vanished. Over their heads they could hear the creaking of floorboards as Liz addressed herself to the mirror in borrowed garments. They had been discussing the supernatural. ‘I think it’s the wrong time of year,’ said Alix. ‘But I’m not sure. I think they happen in May. We’re too early.’

  Alix was wondering whether to tell Brian about the red marks on the front gate, on the pavement outside the house. It seemed he had not noticed them, and now they had almost disappeared, washed away by a light rain. Red hieroglyphs, written in some red greasy substance—lipstick perhaps? They had been faintly menacing, and had reminded Alix of Angela Malkin, and of Sam’s story about the pig’s trotters, and of the house where Jilly Fox had died. The walls of cities these days sprouted strange messages in unknown scripts. Other cultures live alongside our own. Perhaps these hieroglyphs were curses, the modern equivalent of the Roman defixiones, those leaden tablets that damned one’s enemy in perpetuity. ‘I curse Tretia Maria and her life and mind and memory and lungs and her words, thoughts and memory: thus may she be unable to speak the things that are concealed.’ Thus a Roman Briton had cursed a woman long ago, and thus, perhaps, might Angela Malkin curse Alix Bowen.

  Alix decided not to tell Brian about the red marks. It would only upset him. It did not occur to Alix that the symbols might have been directed at Brian, not at herself. She knew they were her own. But could not read them. Angela haunted her. She tries to put her from her mind.

  ‘I like your new dress,’ said Brian.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Alix. And in came Liz, in royal purple.

  ‘What do you think?’ said Liz. ‘Do I look too grotesque?’

  As the Bowens and Liz Headleand set off to pick up Howard Beaver, Shirley Harper lay in a deep hot orange-and-nasturtium scented bath, and stared at the repeating floral pattern of he
r bathroom wall. Since getting home, she has spent a lot of time in the bath, carelessly consuming electricity and oil and water, floating on a high timeless tide. The healing bath, the regression to the womb, the salve of the wounded. Her body drifted, almost weightless, her mind swam. Hysterical fugue. She repeated the words like an incantation. Her eyes moved over the repeating flowers, pale green, moss green and ivory, a pattern of lotus and leaf. She was very fond of this pattern. It soothed her. She thought of Cliff Harper and Steve Harper and Robert Holland, the three men of her life. She thought of her three children. She thought of her mother, and of Liz, and her unknown father. If she lay here long enough, if she poured in yet more hot and perfumed water, could she dissolve all ties, could she float free? What would be left? Should she subject her bones to this warm solution?

  Many endings have occurred to Shirley, more, perhaps, than have occurred to you or me. She could open her veins now with a razor in this warm suburban tub, like Lucan in imperial Rome, and drift out of narrative and into the unknown. She could immure herself, as Liz has thought she might, she could shut herself up in her home, as her mother had done before her, and receive no callers, for the rest of time. She could abandon this house and all its associations, and gamble all on the goodwill of Robert Holland. She could enrol in one of Brian Bowen’s evening classes on the Victorian novel, or she could try to get a job to keep herself busy, or she could make a pass at Steve Harper.

  None of these endings seem very plausible, very likely. But then, Shirley’s behaviour for the past month has been highly unlikely. It astonished me, it astonished her, and maybe it astonished you. What do you think will happen to her? Do you think our end is known in our beginning, that we are predetermined, that we endlessly repeat? Perhaps you think it more than unlikely, perhaps you think it impossible that Shirley should have run away as she did, that she should have made even a month’s bid for freedom. At her age, with her background, a respectable middle-aged Yorkshire housewife from Blackridge Green. Perhaps you wonder what she was doing in Paris at all? Perhaps, in short, you are even more of a determinist than I am? (And anyway, what is her age? I must say I have lost track of this a little myself. Is she forty-eight or nine now, as I had thought, or fifty, as others tell me? And if she is fifty, does that make her behaviour more or less implausible?)

  The contrasting fates of those two sisters in Arnold Bennett’s Old Wives’ Tale has long exercised me. You will recall that the spirited Sophia runs off with a travelling salesman to Paris, where he abandons her and leaves her to a life of spirited and hard-working independence, while the quieter Constance stays at home, marries her father’s assistant, and dies in the house she was born in. You will also remember that after her gay Paris period, Sophia in her old age returns home to the Five Towns and to Constance, a glamorous Frenchified figure—but old, old. Both die at the end of the novel, as sisters in real life die. Bennett makes no judgement on either life, but his friend, the rackety rake Frank Harris, complained that Bennett had given Sophia a muck-rake instead of a soul. She had run off to Paris, but had remained a housekeeper at heart. She had wasted Paris, wasted her mad escape, had enriched herself, like a dull bourgeoise, and returned a failure, a failed experiment. D. H. Lawrence had disliked Bennett’s impassive narration, and wrote his own riposte in the form of The Lost Girl, a novel about a provincial draper’s daughter who runs off to Italy with a travelling Italian entertainer and discovers sex, intensity, passion, landscape, what you will, in the freedom of the Apennines.

  I don’t know which of these stories you find most plausible. Shirley had not read either of them, though she had once heard some of an adaptation of The Old Wives’ Tale on Woman’s Hour on the radio. But although she had not read them, and therefore cannot reflect upon them, the issues they present are quite clear in her mind as she lies there in her hot bath.

  She contemplates the reality of the suburban world to which she has returned. It is not really very convincing. Its hold is weak. True, the bath is excellent, far better than Robert’s disastrous arrangement in Paris, and the cooker works well, and the bed is comfortable, and the television speaks to her in English. Moreover, somebody (it can only be Steve) has mended the handle of the downstairs cloakroom lavatory. But Shirley cannot help noticing how little difference her absence has made. Everything looks exactly the same, but not seriously so. It does not have the solid, terrible, grave sameness, the nightmare unchangingness of Abercorn Avenue. It is frivolous, arbitrary, random. There had been Joan Halliwell, walking her Airedale. There had been Mr Porter in his blue Honda Civic. There had been the newsagent’s, with the overflowing litter bin. There had been an early ice-cream van, playing a ridiculous hollow sad tune. Nobody seems to notice she has been away, is back. Curtains do not twitch, faces do not appear at windows to watch the arrival of the delinquent Mrs Harper in her red Mini. It is not that kind of area. Tongues may wag, a little, discreetly, but even that she doubts. Even curiosity has died, here.

  There had been post waiting for her, neatly stacked on the hall table. Bills, a reminder from the dentist, junk mail. Nothing.

  Shall she resume her non-existence? Is that what you seriously expect?

  But then of course, Robert Holland, like the Gerald Scales of Bennett’s novel, like the Ciccio of D. H. Lawrence’s, is not a very likely prospect either. What possible future could there be for him and Shirley? I have made him as plausible as I can, I have offered him motivation, but I have to admit that it doesn’t seem probable that he and Shirley can continue to go on seeing one another. But then, extraordinary things do happen in life, and one cannot rule out Robert Holland.

  I wonder if those of you who object to the turn that Shirley’s life has taken are the same as those who objected to its monotony in the first place. If you are, you might reflect that it might be your task, not mine or hers, to offer her a satisfactory resolution.

  Meanwhile Shirley, waiting for this resolution, turns on the hot tap once more, and lies back, and lets her hair float free, and her ears fill, as her lips taste the sweetly acrid oil.

  Celia Harper has heard that her mother is back in England. She is appalled. Appalled by her own unwillingness ever to hear anything about it. ‘Quite safe and sound,’ the College Warden had said, offering Celia a sherry. Celia glowered at him as though the sherry were poisoned. She is angry with Liz, though she could not have said why. She sipped her poisoned sherry, balefully.

  Janice and Edward Enderby are quarrelling on their way to Fanny Kettle’s party. They are quarrelling about which of them forgot to set the video for the Channel 4 Titus Andronicus. Alice Enderby sits in the back of the car, listening to the old routine. If she were to video them, and play them back to themselves, would they be shocked, would they recognize themselves, would they try to stop this terrible bloody Jacobean marital farce? Alice Enderby abstracts herself from their circular nagging, and admires an enamel ring which adorns her middle finger, and surreptitiously strokes the hem of her new black lace slip. She has hopes of this party. She has hopes of Tony Kettle.

  Fanny Kettle’s witch’s brew shimmered in a large crystal bowl, its mauve ice-cold spirit breath flickering in the high warm room. Its title, PHARSALIAN PINK, was propped up against it, inscribed in silver ink on a purple card designed by Tony. Ranged around the bowl were little shining glasses: reposing in it was a replica fourth-century Roman silver ladle adorned with a ram’s head. Ian Kettle, who had mildly entered into the mood of the evening, had told Fanny that she ought to serve her drink from a Celtic wine bucket, but Fanny had stuck out for the crystal. Anachronistic it might be, but it was too pretty not to use, and whenever else did one have an opportunity? Ian Kettle was willing to humour his odd and faithless wife Fanny. He had long since given up all hope of trying to control her, had lost interest in her infidelities, and indeed had lost interest in sexual activity altogether. His emotional needs were adequately satisfied by the fan letters he received from admiring television viewers, and by the elevated devoti
on of a schoolmistress in Ilkley. Let Fanny play, while Ian worked. She didn’t seem to be doing much harm. She was a nymphomaniac, a good old-fashioned nymphomaniac, but so what? That was Ian Kettle’s view of his wife Fanny, at whom he now smiled quite proudly as she sipped and offered round her dangerous concoction.

  Guests were already gathering, the room was filling, the conversational buzz was rising from subdued murmur to chatter and laughter and the odd excited recognizant shriek. Solid Northam academics (who thoroughly disapproved, in principle, of pretty Fanny’s little ways) were all too ready to gather together and drink under her roof. They devoured small pastry parcels of chicken liver and tiny salmon and asparagus brown bread twirls, as they gazed around for more exciting faces than their own—was that big bearded chap over there Sigurd Sturllasson from Iceland and Yorkshire TV?—and told themselves that everything was perfectly OK because the Vice-Chancellor had turned up and moreover had gone quite pink in the face already. The Vice-Chancellor told himself that everything was perfectly OK because that old stick Martin Daintry was there eating a crab claw, and Sir Martin Daintry observed out of a corner of his dry eye that Joanna Hestercombe had condescended to a nibble of raw carrot and a tête-à-tête with, of all people, Perry Blinkhorn. Nobody was in a position to disapprove of anybody, so why not enjoy the party, and have another of those curious pink drinks?

  Tony Kettle had deserted his position by the brew and had gone into a corner in the so-called library with Alice Enderby. Alice, wisely sipping orange juice, listened intently as he told her about his proposed refusal to embark, after his A-Levels, on any form of higher education. Alice Enderby had large staring brown eyes, a thyroid neck, irrepressibly curly hair (which she tried, unsuccessfully, to flatten with water and lacquer and gel), and a manic manner which she was saving for later in the evening. Alice Enderby had been through hell, this was her line, her parents were both as neurotic as hell, what could she do but laugh at them, and she rather admired Tony for being on such good terms with his obviously impossible mother. Alice could hardly speak to Janice and Edward Enderby. Home life was hell. Domesticity was hell, said Alice. Alice had vowed to commit suicide by the age of thirty, if she found herself in any way resembling her mother. But who would tell her when she was turning into her mother? Could she make Tony Kettle or some future Tony Kettle take a vow to alert her to growing signs of Janice-like behaviour? And if she did turn into Janice, would she still have the Alice-formed conviction that she ought to commit suicide, or would she be another person altogether? A Janice-person, a sadistic person? ‘Yes,’ said Tony, ‘I’ll stick it out till July, and then I’m off.’ Alice nodded, and her eyes popped and her brown curls bounced as she twisted and twisted her enamel ring.