by A. S. Byatt
Even so, there it had been, an annual festival, an annual assurance of the power of the imagination, spreading the spun web of its shining influence far beyond itself, over the whole contents of those heaped floors, counters, racks of material goods. Sprinkling serviceable stockings with snail-trails of silver thread, bobbing up in glass balls, crimson, green and gold amongst the Pyrex dishes, dangling in lines of celluloid and netting gnomes and fairies on black cotton from the whizzing and clanking machinery that shot canisters of money around overhead.
In those early days some mechanical genius had made it possible for you to ascend to the Fairy Palace, or descend to the Grotto in wobbling little chariots, piloted by gnomes and fays, chariots swan-shaped or dragon-shaped, which were winched along what must have been the service escalator and then vanished with a swoop and a clatter, above, or below, as the case was. Frederica had loved that, as she loved ghost trains and helter skelters, the whisking away under a mysterious arch into another place, shiny with artifice. Now she stood sourly on the silvery turning, gliding steps of the main escalator, and was slowly swallowed, erect, into the depths. Past racks of dresses and frou-frous of stiffened net, down past chairs and radiograms and three-piece suites and tables, mahogany, walnut, oak, laid with china, Wedgwood, Minton, Coalport, cut glass and the new Dartington glass with crystal tears enclosed in stocky stems. Down past the Bedding, where someone had built, round the escalator, a radiating series of alternative bedrooms, like segments of an orange, offering, as it were, endless variations on the Idea of a Chair, or of a Bed, low divan with careless striped spread, high quilted scallop shell with glazed chintz valences, utility pale wood with white candlewick, vanitory units in white and gilt, carpets with flowers, with shaggy white fur, with the ubiquitous sperm and matchstick geometry, nut-brown, rose-pink, acid yellow. Each of these roomlets had windows in hardboard and cellophane, under curtains matching the bedspread, gathered net, looking out on a bright dark blue paper sky and a few artificial stars, in the windowless inner dome of the centre of Wallish and Jones. Down past the ground floor, a mart of little things, a Vanity Fair of notions and necessities, novelties, and eye-catchers, to the Household Basement, where segmented kitchens, bright with imitation daylight and abbreviated vistas on to painted pathways and paper floral borders, succeeded the segmented bedrooms. Frederica stepped off the escalator. She glowered into the little kitchens and was not tempted to cross their thresholds, or try their ingenious folding stools or spidery-legged bar-chairs. She passed them by, dismal scarlet and clinical white, ice-blue and jiggy Formica imitating marble chips, made in the days before plastic colours acquired clarity, when they did not know what they were but were only uneasy imitations of other things, and when, furthermore, good taste required that scarlet be muddled and muted before it was an acceptable brightener.
Amongst the gadgets she had hoped to find something cheap and real and ingenious, a tool with an elegant functional shape, or an exotic appliance – a garlic press, a well-shaped spatula, a corkscrew, something inessential but showing goodwill, admitting the fact of Stephanie’s domestic intentions. But in practice she could not bring herself to touch, or take, any of these either. An inveterate lover of depths, she suddenly developed claustrophobia, and made again for the upper air.
The haberdashery had always been a favourite haunt. They had come here in their early days for lace collars for party dresses, ribbons for hair, tape, elastic, buttons and press-studs. Frederica in 1953 was disposed to see these visits as tedious rituals, although she saw that it might be possible to see them otherwise, with a kind of Dickensian nostalgia for the details of a vanished life, which was, in fact, how in 1973 she came to see them. But today she was depressed too, by papers of pins and packets of needles. She wandered towards the frankly frivolous area of this department, where sleek velvety headless blackamoor busts were draped with gilt and glassy chains, where hooped ear-rings hung from leafless ebony-coloured trees, where monstrous champagne glasses were piled high with solid plastic bubbles, wine-coloured mixed with gold and silver and pearl. Here the counters were festooned with mists of rainbow-splayed chiffon scarves, amongst which blossomed dahlias, roses, asters, peonies, poppies, in silk, or paper, or the new true-to-life plastic, with gold and silver leaves of tin-foil and tinkling aluminium. Wandering through these notions she came unawares on a struggling circle of people, beyond whom was the whirling glass circle of the revolving door, and saw that she had reached the display of bridal veils. Grimly she stopped to survey it. In the centre was a circular kiosk, with a harassed plump girl revolving jerkily within it. Round her, on layers of glass shelving, supported on fragile chrome bars, rose little pronged gilded stands on which were balanced or suspended the wreaths and haloes. Waxen orange blossom, papery silver laurel leaves, velvet bows, glass-studded tiaras, waxy conglobated simulated pears in little clusters on wire stalks, all with their suspended froths of tulle, with those networks of sharp, geometrical lines the random folds take on. Some were by now distinctly grubby, and some were fresh and snowy.
Around the central figure a kind of rugger-scrum of brides-to-be were easing and squeezing their hips. Outside was cold and wet: inside was hot: steam rose from tweed and gabardine and fur-lined bootees. A larger ring of attendant mothers, grandmothers, aunts and sisters stood like seconds in an enclosure around the working throng, and clutched umbrellas, hats, and damp parcels. It was possible for the girls to get their heads to the counter, and to stretch their necks in the direction of the many stalked and circular mirrors that stood on the counter among the veiling. It was almost impossible for them to make space for their bodies to follow. They bent their trunks acutely forward, their bottoms wedged, elongated themselves unnaturally and obliquely, and reached, clutched, wavered, at the crowns above. When they had reached these, and lowered them onto their damp hair, they had to keep up a steady shoving and wriggling of their lower parts, in order not to lose their balance. Some, having peered in the mirrors, twisted their torsos to display a framed face to the attendant relatives, tilting, nervously clutching, sometimes, as though in a wind. Frederica watched, fascinated. Inside the frames of veiling, over the bulky, too solid bodies, the faces changed. There was an occasional smirk of embarrassment, or grimace of distaste, but most of these faces, revealed with a classical gesture of a hot damp hand suddenly taking on a produced, shy grace, composed themselves into a remote and reverential expression, round faces, horsy faces, prim faces, anaemic faces, faces with steel-rimmed glasses, all with parted lips and eyes stretched in a kind of ritual amazement at an as yet unachieved new self, new world. Frederica thought it was touching and absurd, and looked at their legs, stumping, thumping, jostling on the muddy floor. After a moment she laughed aloud, and went back to the Notions for a silly present for Stephanie.
In the end she bought two silly things, a pair of swansdown and white kid slippers in a kind of transparent casket with a pink bow on it, and a belt, one of those chain-mesh belts, somewhere between a dog-lead and armour, that were then so fashionable, where you hooked one end into a link of the chain and let the rest dangle like an imitation châtelaine. Or fetter. This took up the whole of her Four Quartets fund but satisfied her. Stephanie could save the slippers for her honeymoon, they would be a sign that Frederica sympathised with the whole enterprise. A revelation. As for the belt, she had chosen it on the very good principle that it was what she would have liked herself, as a random gift.
After that she inserted herself into the whirling glass door, described a neat half-circle, took a deep breath of fresh air, which made her feel giddy, and strode away down the grey and rainy street.
20. Paterfamilias
It was a rule of Alexander’s not to enter the houses, or homes, of married women with whom he was in love. It was, he believed, good neither for them nor for him. Either they did not like their houses or homes and were therefore irritable and distracted, or else they did, secretly, like them, and wanted to consecrate either house or lover by b
ringing him into it. There was a third possibility, which he had never encountered, but feared, that one woman, one day, would require him to join in the ritual destruction of house or home, to take hatchet and blowlamp to it, and make love in the wreck of the drawing-room curtains. Once or twice it had come perilously near that. He preferred to be the man outside.
He had had a good Easter. He had written to Jennifer how he missed her in all places, walking through his parents’ hotel, peering through numbered doors at anonymous bed after anonymous bed, striding, alas alone, over chalk downs or prowling along the tide-line on Weymouth sands. His parents had an endless series of brown Edwardian basement kitchens and sculleries, sparsely furnished, with ill-fitting glazed doors and gusty coconut matting. There they sat amongst monstrous cans of tomato soup and boxes of dehydrated onion, turning the pages of the Daily Telegraph and listening to the radio. Captain and Mrs Wedderburn were both proprietors and staff, planning comings, goings and shoppings, sorting soiled sheets and damaged crocks. Alexander did not write to Jennifer about this. “My parents are well and happy and glad to see me,” he wrote, though they had barely found time to address him. He wrote elegant letters also to Crowe, about the intense pleasures of solitary walks and no boys. Crowe’s replies, full of enthusiasm for the summer ahead, he carried with Jenny’s in his pockets.
When he got back Jenny’s spirits seemed low, and her manner almost fractious. He was not sure whether she was distressed because he had been away, or angry that she was forced to stay put. They met once on the Castle Mound and realised they were being overlooked by the apparently disembodied, grinning face of the girl in a snood, who materialised in a bramble bush. “Like the Cheshire cat,” said Alexander, but Jenny said fiercely that that was no joke, she was now a perpetual Alice peering through tiny keyholes into inaccessible gardens, she wanted a bit of mundane reality. Thank you.
So Alexander found himself calling on her for tea, having carefully arranged to be expected down the road at the Potters in the evening. Bill Potter was not speaking to Geoffrey Parry since they had quarrelled about Thomas Mann, who was, Bill said, an otiose charlatan. Parry said they could agree to differ. Bill said no self-respecting intellect could carry on like that. Parry said Bill did not read German. Bill said that in this case that didn’t matter. Parry said Bill was insular, and Bill said that was ignorant abuse. Parry told Jennifer, who was not listening, that irascibility and immoderation need not be infectious. He had not spoken to Bill since.
Jennifer had baked a special cake for Alexander, and made special tea. She rubbed her face ecstatically against his when he came through the door, and small Thomas, on her arm, gave a proprietary pull at the flesh of her cheek. She took Alexander on a guided tour which he had not asked for. He was troubled to realise that she attributed to him the lover’s intense curiosity to know every detail of the hidden life of the beloved, pink-blossomed lavatory, nursery with Beatrix Potter frieze and cheery sub-Miro mobile, bedroom with Swedish furniture and tweed curtains. In the bedroom he felt like a voyeur, a dirty intruder. Jennifer moaned softly and took his hand. Small Thomas, propped on her hip, moaned too. She put the child on the bed and sat down herself on its edge. Alexander went on standing. Thomas whickered and tugged at her clothes: she gave him a little push and he burst into tears. She picked him up, twisting him expertly and not ungently, hung him head down over one shoulder, where he could not see, and returned abruptly downstairs.
They took tea, both jumpy, both aching with something that was neither desire nor the opposite. Thomas, in his high chair, stared at Alexander with glass-blue eyes. Alexander sipped tea from roseate china and thought: she would have let me, with him peering from the other side of the bed. Jenny cut bread and Marmite soldiers for Thomas, who cast them on the floor. She turned his chair away to the window. “Look at the trees and the blue sky and the sun, Thomas.” Thomas gulped and churked and twisted back to continue his gaze at Alexander. Alexander felt he should address him, and held out an uneasy finger which was taken in a wary, buttery grip. “He likes you,” she said. “Oh dear.” She wiped a few tears, gathered up Thomas and seated him on Alexander’s knee, allowing one of her own hands to linger electrically in his crotch as she did so. She sniffed and stood back to contemplate them.
Thomas was small, hot and solid. Thomas’s little hand rested on his arm. Thomas smelled both very washed and very grubby, soap and urine, witch-hazel, Marmite and jam. Thomas was human, would be a man, stared steadily, critically, gloomily. After a moment he jack-knifed, agitated his whole body like a jelly or jumping bean, and nearly plunged to the floor. She snatched him up, twisted him into blank reverse over a shoulder, kissed him, squeezed him into silence.
“He would love you, Alexander.”
“I must go to the Potters.” He stood up and brushed his clothes.
“I love you.”
“I love you. I can’t bear to be in this house like this. It’s no good. You must get a whole day off and come out in my car. I have got the car.”
“I can’t.”
“You must. Use your ingenuity.”
“My cunt hurts.” Blushing.
“It will. So do I. I can’t bear any more of this.”
He got out, and went to the Potters.
Frederica let him in. As she opened the door she warned him in a stage-whisper. “There’s a monster row brewing in this house. I should say it’ll blow up about now. Everybody’s been foul for days.”
“Perhaps I should go home.”
“Oh no,” said Frederica, and closed him in.
They were all there. Something was wrong with the lighting: it was unusually cold and dim. Bill asked if Alexander would like sherry, poured a little for the two of them, and then, as an afterthought, a small dose for Winifred. No one but Frederica showed any impulse to speech: Frederica rattled on to Alexander about Mrs Parry, and her performance in The Lady’s Not for Burning, from which it was only a short step to Frederica’s own determination to be a professional actress, not sit in a house and let her talents, such as they were, fust in her unused, by God. Since she had had Lodge’s letter offering her the part of Elizabeth before her coronation she had been, apart from the contretemps in the Chattery, in glory, and had taken to decorating her conversation with oaths and expletives, not exactly archaic, but obviously modern versions of Elizabeth’s. This was very trying. Alexander tried to damp her enthusiasm with statistics about the number of unemployed female members of Equity. Bill said she would go to University and get a good degree, like Stephanie, and then she would be equipped to choose a profession. “Like Stephanie,” said Frederica jeering.
“Like Stephanie,” said Bill. “Though you show surprisingly little sign of Stephanie’s self-discipline, or respect for truth, I must say.”
“I suppose Stephanie’s done what you want, then, Stephanie’s career is O.K. by you?”
“She could do better. She will do better. This place is only a stage.”
“You don’t know anything about Stephanie, or what she means to do. You don’t know what she wants, or what any of us want. You don’t know what you’ve done to us.”
“Oh, Frederica,” said Stephanie. She began to redden. Alexander looked at her with interest. He thought that Frederica had predicted a row with such certainty because she intended to provoke it.
“I know that Stephanie wants too little. I tell her frequently she’s wasting herself in that place. You would agree I’m sure, Alexander.”
Alexander was saved from replying by Winifred, who said, without thinking rapidly enough of the consequences of speech, since she was put out by Frederica, “That isn’t it. Something’s wrong – Stephanie?”
“Nothing is wrong. Nothing at all. The truth is, I am engaged to be married. I didn’t want to talk about it yet.”
For some reason she was addressing Alexander. She looked unhappy. Bill said, “And to whom, if I may ask, since I must ask, since I have no inkling, are you engaged to be married?”
&n
bsp; Still addressing Alexander, she said, “To Daniel Orton.”
“And who is Daniel Orton?”
It was impossible, Alexander decided, to work out whether this question arose from genuine ignorance or heavy irony. It was answered by Frederica.
“He’s the curate. The one who comes, you know, who came about kittens.”
“No,” said Bill.
“My felicitations,” said Alexander, weakly.
“You must be out of your mind.”
“I want to marry him. I’ve thought about it. So has he. It’s something you’re supposed to think about for yourself.”
“Piffle.”