A Natural Curiosity

by Margaret Drabble

  ‘Catherine wheels never worked properly when we had them,’ says Liz. They always got stuck. All that money, fizzling away. Stuck. Charles would get in such a rage. I’ve never really cared for fireworks.’

  ‘Italian fireworks,’ says Esther, ‘are something else altogether. And very noisy too. Lots of bangs.’

  ‘In Celtic mythology,’ says Alix, ‘wheels were believed to be apotropaic. It says so in one of Beaver’s poems. I had to look the word up. Beaver used to do it on purpose. To obscure.’

  ‘Beaver was a barbarian,’ adds Alix, obscurely, thinking of Lucan, and the Roman legions, and Beaver’s stubborn selfexile from the soft south. She has not yet decided whether or not to edit Beaver’s letters. Her decision depends partly upon what she makes of the Queen of Novara, whom she will meet for the first time this evening. She is waiting for a sign, a portent. Liz and Esther do not know whether to encourage her to pursue the project or not. Would it be right for Alix to spend more years of her life with Beaver’s dusty old books and holiday slides, with footnotes and dictionaries, looking up words like ‘apotropaic’ and discovering that it means ‘warding off evil’, and worrying about what Beaver really did in Paris when he wasn’t working on a transition! They do not know, they cannot advise. Part of Alix would be engaged and satisfied by this task. But what of the other Alix? What of the stubborn mouse of Utah, gnawing patiently away at the tangled knots of injustice, preferment, inequality, aggression? And what of the Alix, who lives not in the past, but in the pale hour before dawn, dreaming of that great festival which she glimpses now but in shadowy images, that great festival to which all shall be invited, to which all shall come in celebration? Liz Headleand, Esther Breuer, Charles Headleand, Shirley Harper, Stephen Cox, Otto Werner, Perry Blinkhorn, Marcia Campbell, Fanny Kettle, Steve and Dora, Carla Davis, Dirk Davis, the Black Orchid, Paul Whitmore, Old Uncle Tom Cobbleigh and all? It is already too late for Cliff Harper and Howard Beaver, it may be too late for Dirk Davis, time is running out for others on this list, and Alix wants this party to take place in her lifetime, here on this earth. What help from the letters of the dead?

  ‘One would think,’ says Esther, watching their friend the butterfly, ‘that at our age things would be clearer. That life, if you like, would be even more circular than it is. That options would have diminished to nothingness. Instead of opening up. As they do. Odd, isn’t it, the way new prospects continue to offer themselves? One turns the corner, one climbs a little hill, and there is a whole new vista. Or a vista that seems to be new. How can this be?’

  They gaze at the lake. Little boats with coloured sails skim lazily upon the water, a windsurfer tries the light breeze, a spluttering little orange chugger disturbs the peace. Esther raises her fresco-binoculars and watches them, then lifts her eyes up to the mountains. She focuses, stares, smiles. She hands the binoculars to Liz.

  ‘Look,’ she says, ‘do look. I thought they were great silver eagles.’

  And there, across the lake, beneath the steep mountain, hang great men-birds, hovering motionless in the bright air, against the falling forests of deep green. Liz watches, hands the glasses on to Alix, Alix watches.

  ‘Icarus,’ says Alix. The flights of Icarus.’

  The afternoon wears itself away towards evening. They walk along the lake shore, the picturesque idyll to one side of them, and heaps of characteristic Italian speculative building rubble to the other. They pick their way over bricks, exposed pipes, unfinished draining systems, and a dry river bed, they walk past back gardens with rabbits in cages and nodding sunflowers, and find themselves in a small cemetery where the dead stare gravely at them from silver-framed photographs amongst bulbous dust-whitened plastic flowers. The blue butterfly is still with them. It settles on Esther’s grey-blue hair.

  ‘Amazing,’ says Esther, staring with admiration at the tragic kitsch.

  Esther has decided not to marry Robert Oxenholme. Well, she thinks she has decided not to marry him. She has not told him yet. She has not mentioned the proposal to Liz and Alix. She has decided that she is better on her own. She has decided to leave Elena Volpe. Now, standing there in the marble-chip-gleaming cemetery, she suddenly says: ‘I’m coming back to London. I’m going to buy a flat. In London. That’s the plan.’

  Esther’s parents have recently died, and have left her money. She can now afford to buy a flat. Not a nice flat, in a nice district, but a flat.

  Liz and Alix express their satisfaction at this decision. They all three wander back toward their hired Renault, talking of England and its prospects, of the approaching June election, of the way the wind blows.

  ‘England’s not a bad country,’ says Liz, as they get into the car, to drive towards Pallanza.

  ‘No,’ says Alix. ‘No.’ The lake glitters, the mountains soar, the coloured sails catch the evening sun, and the shadows of the Lombard poplars are long. ‘No,’ says Alix, ‘England’s not a bad country. It’s just a mean, cold, ugly, divided, tired, clapped-out post-imperial post-industrial slag-heap covered in polystyrene hamburger cartons. It’s not a bad country at all. I love it.’

  And they laugh—what else can they do?—as Liz drives off towards Pallanza, where an old woman waits for them on her terrace, amidst lichen-gilded baroque statues, and dark carved hedges. White peacocks stray on an emerald lawn beneath a spreading cedar. A fountain plays, its waters tumbling from an upheld shell. A frog croaks, the midges hum and lightly whine. The white azaleas and the white lilac cluster. The old woman’s spectacles are folded before her on the wrought-iron table. She does not need them to gaze at her splendid view, her historic view of garden and lake. She is far-sighted now, she can see into the past and the future.

  And the present she enjoys. She is looking forward to receiving her guests. She does not receive many visitors these days.

  She is looking forward to the bottle of champagne that will be opened for them. She is looking forward to showing them her treasures. She is too old now to take them round the garden herself, but Robert Oxenholme will escort them. Robert Oxenholme will open the champagne. Dear Robert is good at these things. That is what he is for. There he sits, dear boy, at the far end of the terrace, reading the evening paper, smoking a little cigar to keep away the insects, as he waits to receive the three unknown women from England. He has been trying to persuade her to leave some of her treasures to the National Gallery. She has been elusive. She has been stringing him along. ‘What has England done for me?’ she has asked him. They are old friends, Robert Oxenholme and the Queen of Novara.

  The old woman smiles and nods to herself. A blue butterfly settles on her folded spectacles. Life is still pleasant. She has wit and power and she owns beauty. The white peacocks strut and flaunt. The scent of lavender fills the evening air, blending with the blue smoke of the little cigar. She is filled with pleasurable anticipation as she hears the wheels of the hired Renault crunch along the gravel drive.

  About the Author

  MARGARET DRABBLE is the author of The Sea Lady, The Seven Sisters, The Peppered Moth, and The Needle’s Eye, among other novels. For her contributions to contemporary English literature, she was made a Dame of the British Empire in 2008.