A Natural Curiosity

by Margaret Drabble

  Alice’s aunt Susie Enderby had not yet spoken to Blake Leith, but they had exchanged glances, a small recognition had passed between them. She had of course noticed the pale pink of the liquor and had wondered what kind of omen this might be. She was also discovering that her new pink and grey and white suede shoes were too tight: was she going to have to stand all evening, would the pain subside, would numbness succeed, should she have another drink to aid the anaesthesia? She had found herself talking to a chap called Len Wincobank, who said he was something to do with real estate: she dimly recognized his name, and seemed to recall that it had murky connotations, though of what nature she could not remember. Wincobank was making small talk about the beauties of the Peak District. Susie’s eyes wandered, and met the wandering gaze of Blake Leith, stationed strategically on a diagonal at the other end of the room, by the French windows leading into the conservatory. She looked away quickly, and tried to concentrate on what Wincobank was saying. He had moved on from Chatsworth to the possibilities of developing the Hansborough Valley Road into an audio-visual tourist attraction. Her eyes wandered again, and this time lighted upon her husband Clive, who was talking intently to a large woman in a purple dress, a woman whom she had never seen before.

  Clive Enderby was listening to Liz’s account of Shirley’s return with the mysterious stranger. The subject matter itself established intimacy, for they spoke to one another as fellow-citizens of the world, as unshocked adults. They discussed Shirley’s plans for the future, the date of the inquest, the unpredictability of human behaviour. An undercurrent of sympathy, of mutual curiosity, flowed through their discussion of the affairs of others. They feel they are allies, although they do not know the cause.

  The Bowen party had been here for some time, but Alix and Beaver were still bemused by the shock of finding themselves offered a drink called Pharsalian Pink. Does this mean that the third reader of Lucan’s Pharsalia is here with them, in this very room, they ask one another? The Third Reader. The Third Man. Beaver, who does not care for vodka and has failed to find beer, has moved on to the wine, and is discussing spies and Cambridge of the 1930s with Alix. Beaver’s old friend the classical scholar and translator, Philip Hoxton, had once been proposed in the pages of The Times as the Fourth Man of the Burgess—Maclean scandal: now he, says Beaver, would have appreciated Pharsalian Pink, but I can hardly think our hostess reads Latin, can you?

  ‘Her husband’s an archaeologist, I told you,’ said Alix, reprovingly, wondering if she is going to have to spend the whole evening looking after Beaver, or whether she can foist him off on some young admirer. She looks around for young admirers, but the student age group (well, by now the post-grad age group), the age group that has rediscovered Beaver, seems to be missing. There are various teenagers, like Sam and Tony and Alice Enderby, but they are too young. She spots the Vice-Chancellor. He would surely be willing to pay his respects to a great man? After all, he’d given Beaver an honorary degree, rather belatedly, a couple of years ago. He could spare him five minutes. Not that he’d have heard of Lucan or the Pharsalia, for he was a scientist, as most vice-chancellors seemed to be these days, but he might be able to chat along about university politics, or the old days, or the sensational rise in bus fares . . . Or then again, perhaps not. The gap widens, even here, in the Socialist Republic of South Yorkshire, between those who take buses and those who do not. And vice-chancellors do not. Beaver is so rude, now he is old. Alix doesn’t mind it, but many do. Beaver tells her another wartime partisan anecdote about old Hoxton in the Balkans. ‘Maybe he was a spy, after all,’ muses Beaver. ‘I don’t suppose it matters, one way or the other, do you? Get me another drink, Bowen, will you?’

  ‘Are you sure you should?’ asks Alix. He has already had two glasses of wine, as well as a preliminary snifter of the pink.

  ‘Yes, I am,’ says Beaver. ‘Quite sure. I’ll just wait here. Off you go-’

  On her way to the drinks table, Alix passes Perry Blinkhorn, who interrupts his conversation with a tall, bony, middle-aged, horse-faced woman to salute her. Alix sees Brian, bending low over a very slightly lopsided dowager-humped old lady. Alix sees Liz, talking to Clive Enderby, and she sees her new friends the Bells, talking to another couple whom she uncertainly identifies as Janice and Edward Enderby. The Bells put out distress signals to her, they transmit hope of relief.

  The evening wears on, the noise level mounts, and some of the elderly leave, but not Howard Beaver. He is sitting in a corner, and has found acolytes, in the form of a television researcher, her boyfriend, a journalist from the Northam Star, and radio reporter Tony Troughton. They are talking about making a programme about Beaver. This conversation suits Beaver very well. Elsewhere, other deals are being suggested or struck: property deals, political deals. Sexual transactions are also taking place, for the crystal bowl is empty, and the potion is at work. Tony Kettle has led Alice Enderby upstairs to bed, and they are already stripping off their clothes in reckless bravado, in wild abandon. His, friend Sam has not been so lucky: Sam has been cornered by a young philosophy lecturer who wants to describe to Sam various versions of the Prisoner’s Dilemma. Sam, who cannot follow this kind of thing even when he is sober, thinks he is going mad. ‘

  Blake Leith has wheedled Susie Enderby into the dank unlit unrestored conservatory, and they stand together by a row of withered geraniums, staring at the starlit April sky. He is talking in a low voice, urgently, as though time and life were running out, now, here, irrecoverably. He has one hand on her shoulder, and her dress has slipped slightly: his hot hand rests on her bare skin, lightly burning. He is talking of his own affairs, of his only son killed in a motorbike accident, of the emptiness of life, of his ruined hopes, of his envy of happy married couples, of his feeling that he is for ever excluded from peace and warmth and happiness, of his knowledge that he is outside, looking in, a ghost man, a shadow man, a straw man. He is very drunk, and so is Susie. He kneads her shoulder, her collarbone, his fingers sink towards her breast. Look, he says, look backwards, look at all those real people; and from the dark chill of the unused glasshouse Susie looks back at the lighted party, where animated brightly coloured figures talk and laugh and gesture and eat and drink behind a solid pane. Look at them, he says, look. And she looks, then turns back to him, and he bends over her and kisses her and takes her in his arms. They stand there, locked in a Mills and Boon embrace. Susie, Susie, he whispers, and kisses her again, more deeply. There is nothing she can do about it, she is utterly convinced, her whole body trembles and blazes, and as he presses against her she is near orgasm inside her new thin silk dress. She has fallen helplessly, hopelessly in love with this smooth-talking, desperate second-rate small-town seducer, this self-condemned cad, this self-dramatizing worthless bastard. She has given herself up, and in a few days, in a few hours, in a few minutes, she will no longer be able to remember that she once knew him for what he was, that she once thought of him in these terms, for this knowledge of him is slipping from her and is being replaced, transfused, irradiated by a new knowledge, a new longing, a new and overwhelming desire. She hears herself groan in surrender as he searches for her under her clothes, as she presses her body towards him and offers its secrets, as she shakes and trembles to his fingers. This can never be undone, it is too late, she has left the real world of real people, and entered the dark world of passion, she has already forgotten where it was that she stood an hour ago, her old dry self, for now she is another person, she is this person, his person; and he, she can tell, is hers.

  Where will this end? Neither of them knows. They have willed disaster, and they set out on its dark salted flood, burning, glorious, redeemed, transformed. Susie’s feet bleed, one of her shoes is a white kid well of red blood, but she does not care, she is beyond care, in another kingdom.

  Clive Enderby has not missed his wife, has not noticed her absence from the throng. He has been too busy talking about urban regeneration grants, while at the same time trying to keep half a
n eye on Liz Headleand and half an eye on his sister-in-law Janice, who has been drinking far too heavily and looks as though she might say or even do something unforgivable at any moment. He can tell that Fanny Kettle could not care less if one of her guests were to rip off her clothes and dance naked on the table, indeed she would probably applaud loudly, but he has his professional reputation to consider as well as his poor brother’s poor health. Clive is trying to keep a firm grip of things, but has a sense that he has already let go of one or two ends, and that bits of plot and machinery are beginning to speed up and unravel in an unintended way. Who could have predicted, for instance, that either Liz Headleand or Joanna Hestercombe would be at this mad party? Does either of them have any idea who the other is? Bemused, as he chatters on about 420,000 square feet of industrial and commercial units, he wonders if his speculations are correct, and if he is guilty of criminal negligence in concealing them. ‘I think the U D A should speak to the U D C more openly,’ he hears himself saying, as Besserman nods sagely. Clive has no idea what he is talking about. He is mildly obsessed by the purple apparition of Liz Ablewhite. He senses drama, disaster, revelations.

  Joanna Hestercombe is now talking to the Vice-Chancellor about Simon Blessed and his paintings. She knows them well and indeed has loaned some to the exhibition. He is pretending to know them. Joanna is an unmarried horse-riding, dog-owning woman, a woman happier in gumboots than in court shoes. Her steel-grey hair is scraped severely back from a high forehead and a central parting, and pinioned by a mother-of-pearl comb on either side, above the ear: below the combs, wiry tufts burst out vigorously, almost like a little girl’s bunches. There is both innocence and worldliness in her face, her manner. She is thin, bony, finely drawn. Her teeth are prominent. She speaks of Simon Blessed’s painting of one of her grandfather’s horses, Archangel. The texture of the coat, the ripples of muscle under the chestnut skin are magnificently rendered, she says. Magnificently. She speaks precisely. She does not sound ridiculous. She knows what she is talking about.

  Across the room a woman called Marcia Campbell (also, like Liz, a stranger to most of the gathering) is talking to Fanny Kettle about Ogham Abbey, the anchorite and Eastwold Grange. Fanny is telling Marcia what they got for the Grange, what they paid for this new Northam house, what they might have got for the Grange had it been in a less out-of-the-way part of the country. Marcia nods, smiles, encourages, volunteers that she has always liked that flat part of the country by the Humber, that she thinks it has its own desolate beauty. Too desolate by half, says Fanny. I was going mad, out there. Mad. And the damp, I can’t tell you. It’s under sea level, you know. Marcia nods again. Fanny prattles on. She has no idea who Marcia Campbell is, and has no recollection of having invited her, but as she arrived with Joanna Hestercombe of Stocklinch, she must be all right. So reasons Fanny, if reasoning it could be called. And Marcia is a good listener, patient, attentive. She does not let Fanny notice that her eyes keep straying towards that other uninvited guest, to Liz Headleand in her purple dress.

  It is easier now for Cliff and Marcia Campbell to keep an eye on Liz, for the party is thinning out a little. Groups of people are sitting on settees, perched on arms of chairs, leaning against bookshelves. The amorous glimmer of the Pharsalian Pink is beginning to dim, and Susie and Blake Leith have emerged from the conservatory. Fanny’s guests are staider than they were in the old days, Ian Kettle notes with some relief: the only real troublemaker is Janice Enderby, who is having a boring high-pitched altercation with some unfortunate young academic from the polytechnic. ‘Nelson Mandela House!’ she cries, indignantly. ‘Stuff Nelson Mandela!’

  Ian Kettle himself is engaged in conversation with Perry Blinkhorn, Brian Bowen and old Beaver. They are talking about the Celts and the Romans, about imperialism and aggression, about the cults of Vercingetorix, Arminius and Boudicca. Do superior cultures really vanish without trace? Perry Blinkhorn argues that they may. Perry Blinkhorn, rightly suspected of being religious, has been reading Simone Weil, on the French Resistance, on the German war machine. But the Germans lost, Kettle points out. And who knows, the blood of the Parisi may still flow in your veins, in mine. We are both of local stock, you and I. What is defeat, what victory?

  Blake Leith is talking to Liz about his home at the sea’s edge. There is a strange look in his eyes, an exalted glitter, and a sea sex smell to him, a salt tang. On the red cliff’s edge, he says. On the edge of the North Sea. He lights a French cigarette with trembling fingers. Liz has noticed that she herself is giving off a strange odour, an odour not her own: it must be the stale reactivated vegetable dye of the Mexican dress. She too smells, of fibre and fish. Of murex. Of magic. Of brew. And as she stands there, talking idly to this shabby handsome villain, she begins to feel a strange prickling in the back of her neck, a tingling, a premonition. Her scalp crawls, and she turns, a half second before Marcia Campbell touches her lightly on the shoulder.

  ‘Hello,’ says Marcia. ‘Forgive my interrupting, may I introduce myself? I think you must be Elizabeth Headleand. And I think I am your half-sister Marcia Campbell.’

  Liz’s mouth drops open. She stares.

  What she sees is a plump, smiling, pretty woman in her fifties in a loose black soft dress, with thick white hair in a bun held by a gold pin. She wears gold earrings, a gold necklace, and is carefully made up, with violet eyes, dark lashes, a dark-pink pencilled mouth, a fair clear skin. She holds out a hand, this smiling sociable apparition.

  Liz holds out her own hand, uncertainly. The other woman grasps it, warmly, firmly. She smiles, encouragingly, and speaks again.

  ‘Well, what I mean is,’ she says, reasonably, ‘I know I’m Marcia Campbell, well, in so far as I know anything, and for what that means, and I think I am your half-sister. If you see what I mean.’

  This speech, despite its apparently hesitant qualifications, is entirely coherent and comprehensible to Liz, who manages to find a voice.

  ‘Yes,’ she says, rather faintly. ‘I do see what you mean.’

  They are left looking at one another. Blake Leith stares at them both for a moment, then mumbles excuses and melts away. He thinks they are playing some game with him. His mind is on other things.

  ‘I wasn’t sure, to begin with,’ says Marcia. ‘But then I did think it must be you. I mean, the you that I think you must be.’

  ‘This is all very strange,’ says Liz.

  ‘Yes, isn’t it?’ says Marcia. ‘Shall we sit down? It’s even stranger than you think. Or than I thought, perhaps I mean. I don’t know what you thought, do I? Shall we sit down?’

  And slightly tranced, Liz follows her new half-sister to a small settee, a two-seater, where they sit side by side. They engage in conversation. Watching them from afar, Clive Enderby wonders what these two strangers can have found to talk about, that it should engross them so completely. They nod, fall silent, speak. They clasp and unclasp hands. Then, from afar, he sees Liz Headleand lift one hand, and gently, wonderingly, touch the other woman’s brow, touch her white hair, touch her round cheek. The two women lean slowly towards one another, and slowly kiss one another on the cheek, slowly, ceremoniously. Then they fall once more to deep talk, earnestly, gravely, courteously.

  And so might quietly have talked for hours, had not a diversion distracted and disrupted them and forced them into action. Howard Beaver, across the room, struggling to his feet from his armchair in order to potter off to the lavatory, let out a loud groan and fell gradually but heavily full length upon the floor. At first Liz and Marcia merely glanced in his direction and returned to their dialogue, assuming normal party drunkenness, but the ensuing panic made it clear that worse had befallen: ‘Liz, Liz,’ shouted Alix, who had made her way instantly to Beaver’s side, and Liz, equally fast in her reactions, was there in seconds, pinching Beaver’s mouth open, bending over him, breathing into him, massaging, pumping. ‘Ring for an ambulance, quick,’ she said, ‘quick, quick,’ as she pummelled and breathed, as Beaver let ou
t low deep inhuman groans of struggle, of mortal combat, of pain.

  ‘Oh God,’ said Alix, ‘oh God.’

  ‘Is there another doctor here, a proper doctor?’ cried Liz, as she paused dishevelled, from her task, and then resumed it, as Beaver groaned again. He was a big man and had fallen awkwardly, one leg crumpled beneath him: ‘Pull him straight,’ Liz, breathless, half weeping, said to Brian, ‘help, pull him straight, has anyone rung for the ambulance?’

  Beaver was still breathing when the ambulance arrived, breathing loudly, stertorously, terribly. ‘I’d better go with him,’ said Alix, who was pale with fear, with reluctance, with a kind of horror. No, no, I’ll go. I’m more used to this kind of thing than you are, said Liz, bravely. The look of relief on Alix’s face was undisguised. Yes, yes, that’s OK, I’ll be fine, said Liz, as she followed the stretcher out on to the dark street. Hop in, said the ambulance men, and Liz hopped in: as she settled herself on the blanket-covered bunk, she saw Marcia Campbell on the pavement, tapping at the closing door. I’ll follow you, said Marcia. I’ve got my car here, I’ll send Joanna home in a taxi, I’ll follow you. Tell them to let me in, won’t you? Liz nodded, and the door slammed shut, and the ambulance, bell ringing, accelerated down the silent dark streets past the twitching curtains towards the Royal Infirmary, where Liz and Shirley had been born, where Rita Ablewhite, mother of Liz Headleand and Shirley and of Marcia Campbell, had died.