by A. S. Byatt
“I never know what you want, Wilkie.”
“That’s easy. I want to be the best. Everything else – people included – comes second.”
“The best what at?”
“Everything. Now that’s my real problem. That keeps me awake at nights. If you’re the best at everything, how do you know what to do next? Anyway, think about the coast. I’m off, tomorrow. I’ll drop by and either pick you up or kiss you goodbye.”
And so the sun went down for the last time on the last scene of Astraea and most of the cast hid behind bushes and brakes to watch it if they could, whilst Alexander and Lodge sat up high on the scaffolding, thus seeing, what was denied that night to a lot of the audience, the single red sliver of descending sun. There had been nights when it had gone down glorious round and bloody behind house, terrace and cushion, there had been nights when the sky had been magnificently slashed with silvered crimson on peacock. Tonight heavy clouds were banking, higher and higher, making dark before the dark of night, so that the light on Marina Yeo had to be reinforced with an arclight from the house, a little lurid, contributing considerably more chiaroscuro than Elizabeth I herself would have thought proper.
There she sat, anyway, for the last time, in her white pleated nightgown on her huge cream silk cushion, under the now clearly ponderous high red wig. The yards of rayed linen worn by Elizabeth II for the simple and sacramental moment of the Coronation ceremony had contributed something to the final conception of this bed-garment, whose sheer weight might never have been guessed from the ease with which Marina, before she began seriously to die, that was, trailed it or swirled it.
There she sat, with her finger, as history, mythology and the text dictated, childishly in her mouth, and, since this was a verse drama, spoke to herself with broken eloquence on the nature of things, solitude, virginity, power, the approaching dark. The hunch-shouldered Robert Cecil came busily up and down the terrace steps. Women, reminiscent of Charmian and Iras, waited around. The cushion had corded seams and fantastic knots of cord on its four corners. The queen spoke of England, babbled of green fields, remembered irascibly that the ring with which she had been wedded to England had had to be sawn off, since her aged marriage finger was deformed. Ringman, she called that finger, remembering, somewhat improbably, another childhood rhyme. She spoke too of mutability, and in Ovidian terms of the Age of Gold, rivers of milk and perpetual ripening corn. Then she fell into silence.
Lodge jabbed Alexander’s ribs.
“Best bit of pure theatre I’ve ever done.”
Slowly, slowly, the erect squatting figure with its jewelled turreted head swayed over on to the cushion. Miss Yeo could hold an audience for an unconscionable time, in dying. The red wig rolled away, reminding those who saw visual patterns of the earlier description of the severance of Mary Queen of Scots’ wig from her severed head, and the white-headed woman sank death-pale into the creamy folds of the cushion. Here she jerked, struggled and stiffened amidst her aurora of white pleating, and the ladies came lovingly and made her into her own monument, straightening clothing and limbs, replacing a crimson rose between the closed, outstretched palms of that Tudor Icon. Because of the weather and the arclight the whiteness of this scene was thrown into more relief than ever before, and the actress seemed faceless, apart from the beaked nose that had been so carefully constructed every night with putty, and would not be again. Once they had her displayed on the cushion it was possible to carry her off, which they did, white, soft and still.
“Twisted it a bit,” said Lodge. “She did get into bed, the old bitch, at last. But what theatre.”
There were subdued farewells on the terrace after the play. People’s clothes were already being taken from them and put into wicker crates for Stratford and elsewhere. Wilkie for some reason was ordering a lugubrious smashing of the equipment of the Bottle Chorus. He had a place in the stable yard where all bottles were to be thrown, and whilst some of the little boys enjoyed the crash and clatter of this, some protested tearfully that they had meant to keep their very own bottle as a memento. And of what use, said Wilkie severely to these backsliders, did they suppose one note would be, without the consort? They could make any bottle, any time, sing some sort of music. No, no, the whole thing was going to be smashed now, and he himself had the blueprint and at some future date, in some future place, he promised, the Music of the Spheres should ring out again. In the interim he didn’t want his concept mangling, and besides, broken glass glinted prettily. So they threw, and threw, and threw, in a splintering cacophony.
Frederica approached Crowe, who was busy, it appeared, listening to Marina giving Anthea sensible advice. She said she wished to thank him for all he had done. She said – more tentatively – that she wished to consult him about her future. He said, at his most urbane, that he would be delighted to advise about this, if she really wanted him to, and gave her a glass of something – very sweet sherry, she feared, it was, tho’ this seemed unlikely. And what, asked Crowe, did she particularly require advice about.
Well, said Frederica, she had always wanted to be an actress. She wondered if, with these reviews – she did not say, this performance – behind her, she might try for drama school, or rep even, try and build on it. It was what she wanted, a career in the theatre. Did Crowe have any particular suggestions as to how to set about it? Crowe smiled, and patted her shoulder. He smiled more.
“Naturally,” he said, “Lodge’s advice to you would be of more use than mine, or even maybe – doubtfully – dear Alexander’s. But you have asked for mine. And shall have it, dear girl. So brace yourself. In order to make a career on the stage you must first –” smooth as silk – “get a new face, and a new body. And then learn to enact something other than yourself. It may be that you can do all these things. But my advice would be to do as Daddy suggests, dabble your toes in amateur dramatics and build on those excellent A Levels, about which we’ve all heard so very much. You can’t really act, you know. You were type-cast, and there’s not many of those types around to be type-cast as. You have said – with justice – that sweet Anthea was cast for prettiness and grace, but on the stage, in general, Frederica, those qualities are slightly more in demand than yours. I agree it would be better if sweet Anthea’s voice were less twittering, but then, we can’t have everything, although the drama schools are crowded out, I believe, with damsels who combine prettiness, grace, sweet tones, and a modicum of that very special wit – not your kind – that is required in actresses.”
“I see,” said Frederica.
“I’m sure you do. May I congratulate you again on your excellent performance, which surpassed all expectations – even mine. An intelligent hunch, it turned out. And may I wish you luck, in Oxford, or Cambridge, or wherever it may turn out to be. Now I must go back to Anthea’s absorbing little problem. Goodbye, Frederica.”
There were a few tears – not many, for she was furiously proud – in the grease, as Frederica took off her make-up in the mirror for the last time. She watched Marina Yeo covertly. Marina was ugly. Might never have been beautiful. Could, she supposed, always have seemed so. What Crowe had said was because of the Sun Bed, but also meant, she had the wit to realise, and even, she had also the wit to recognise, probably true. So that was that. She watched Jenny too, who seemed hectic, but not dispirited, as she had been. She looked at her own face. Crowe was right, it was odd and nothing, a schoolmistressy face with freckles and a pointed mouth and chin. As to her breasts – tugging the whalebone away for the last time – they were hardly breasts, knobs more, and there were knobs in other places, elbows, knees, which spotlights would lovingly pick out. Alexander came up behind her.
“Take you home?”
“Take Mrs Parry.”
“I expect her husband will come for her.”
“He doesn’t usually.”
“It’s the last night. Don’t be scrupulous. Frederica, Frederica, come.”
She came. She let him march her off without a backward
glance, from either of them, at Jennifer. She sat beside him in the car, and cried a little.
“What is it, my love?”
“Crowe says I’m too ugly to be an actress. And I can only act myself. Get a new face, he told me. The awful thing is, he’s right.”
“I can’t see why you should want to be an actress. Not with a mind like yours. And God knows you’re not ugly.”
“Not?”
“Not. Dry sexiness was what Lodge said, the first time he saw you, when I was so blind and pig-headed. He didn’t say the half of it. Every inch of you is … you are … You are the only woman – ever, I swear – I’ve got myself in this state of extremity about. If that amuses you.”
“It doesn’t amuse me,” slowly. It did frighten her. It frightened her even, in her present state, that Alexander should think, or wish, her to be capable of amusement about sexual extremity. She was an ignorant fool. She had wanted an Alexander who was ungraspable, unspeakable, closed.
“I love you, Frederica. You are ludicrously young, and we are surrounded by ghastly examples of error, and the whole thing is impossible from start to finish, and I love you.”
“I have always loved you.”
He drove her out of Long Royston and as they went past the gatehouse and through the ornate iron gates, it struck her that she would not come again. Not at least until the new University had changed the whole landscape unrecognisably. She had somehow imagined she would become a welcome and familiar visitor there, wandering across lawns and kitchen gardens, and stable yards. She heard behind her the faint crash of breaking glass. Fled is that music. It really was like being shut out of Paradise. The gate should have clanged shut, but did not, for there was a lot of other traffic.
Alexander drove her very fast to the Castle Mound, stopped between the Nissen huts and grabbed her. He tore, most unlike Alexander, at her underwear, causing pain with elastic and pain with fingernails and tugged hairs.
“I must, I must,” he kept saying, even now incapable of a reasonable verb. Frederica fought, as she had once fought for a response, to keep herself intact.
“Not here, not now,” she kept saying. Alexander battled, but not very manfully. They had trouble, and some pain, from gears and handbrake.
“Listen – Alexander – I’ll think of something, I’ll come tomorrow, I promise – if you’ll just take me home now, now this minute. It’s all been too much. I feel dirty. Please.”
“Of course.”
He took her home. They agreed to meet tomorrow, maybe on the Railway Bridge by Far Field, and go for a long quiet walk, away from these places, and think out ways and means. As soon as he was gone and she was alone in her narrow bed in Masters’ Row she was overcome with belated, confused desire, to hold his silk skin, smell his hair, let go … whatever had to be let go. She went to sleep with fists clenched in wrath and desire.
Alexander, staring sleeplessly out of his tower window at the moon on the tomato-houses, witnessed accidentally the weaving, lurching return of Lucas Simmonds, who drove back as he had gone out, except that he was chugging now slowly, over peninsulas of grass and flowers. Dispassionate and cold Alexander watched Simmonds, a tousled figure, roll more or less out of the front of the car, and proceed drunkenly towards his own tower. He did not close the car door. Alexander considered going to his assistance, and could not bring himself to do so – there was no sort of assistance he could render in case of peering demons and milkbottles of blood on doorsteps, and if Simmonds was all right a good night’s sleep would do him more good, most good. The thought of Simmonds was distasteful to him, too. He could leave it till morning. That the man was not dead, but going quietly back to bed disproved some part at least of Marcus Potter’s anxious theory.
41. The Bilge Pond
Next day was Sunday. Marcus woke at home, heard with relief the familiar squeeze and hiss of his own painful breath, opened heavy eyes, closed them again, and lapsed into dreamless sleep. He was ill. He was irresponsible.
Alexander, who had not slept, became ashamed of his last night’s behaviour with regard to Lucas Simmonds. He also remembered that Geoffrey and Jennifer would almost certainly appear with their new plans for his future, and decided with a mixture of cravenness and courage to go out. He went across the cloister to the foot of Simmonds’s tower, where a pristine, gold-topped, white bottle of milk stood in the sun, and ran lightly up the stairs. Simmonds’s door was open. Alexander knocked. No one was there. Alexander went in, noticing that the bed had been slept in normally, that pyjamas were flung across the pillow, as though normally stepped out of. He smelled toast and sweat. It was no business of his to open a window. He decided to keep an eye open for Simmonds and take his walk in the direction of Frederica Potter.
Frederica had trouble in getting out because Bill was quarrelling obscurely with Winifred about Stephanie’s pregnancy. Although it was clear that Winifred could in no way be held responsible for the engendering of their future grandchild, this in no way prevented Bill from berating her for it, saying loudly and frequently that all was now explained, the thing had been conceived out of wedlock, that clergymen should have principles, that he would make a public mock of Daniel Orton. Winifred, unusually for her, wept. She wept, not because of Stephanie, whom she bitterly envied, but because of Marcus, whom she loved and had failed. She did not mention Marcus to Bill in case he thought of something to do about Marcus, such as interrogate Lucas Simmonds, if that person could be found. Anything Bill might do would be worse than inertia. This thought made her weep, and Bill shout, louder. When Frederica said she was going for a walk, Bill said no she was not. Winifred said why shouldn’t she, and Frederica retreated into the kitchen and out through the back door. Immediately she was out, alone, in the sun, her body became her own again, and glistened with hope and terror. She began to run, up across the Far Field, knowing that Alexander would, must, be waiting for her, as surely as she knew the grass was hard and the railway train thundering across the horizon.
A large number of people seemed to be leaning out of the window of this particular express, calling and pointing. She felt that they had recognised her famous face, and then, more plausibly, that she had, in the agitation of the moment, left off some crucial garment. She hesitated, stood, and looked about. It was in this way that Alexander, from the bridge, and Frederica from the touch line of the rugger pitch saw the figure in the Bilge Pond, male, naked, and singing aloud. They advanced slowly. As they came nearer, Frederica to the back, and Alexander to the front of the figure, they recognised Lucas Simmonds, Frederica by the curly head and a certain importunate jut of the ivory buttocks, Alexander by the contorted crimson face. Simmonds was stirring the black, soft, circular water with a long pole, which he manoeuvred with his left hand. The Bilge Pond, long unplumbed, must have been deeper than anyone supposed. At least, it came over Simmonds’s plump knees, swaying and soughing. The singing was partly O come, o come, Adonai, with endlessly elongated and trilling vowels, and partly Milton’s version of the 136th Psalm, which was sung in the Blesford Ride Sunday Service on an average twice a term. The lines of this were often truncated and fell away into swishing of water. There was a certain febrile anger about the way the rod beat the water when the words went, and a curious loud, genuine exultation about those words that were remembered. Simmonds’s hair, on both his head and his body, was very carefully dressed with flowers, furrow weeds, cow parsley, cranesbill and cockoo-pint, birds-foot trefoil and carefully placed large moon daisies, with ears of rye grass and barley grass and trailing woven sticky skeins of goose grass.
When Alexander approached closer he saw that the right hand was holding a very sharp butcher’s knife, and that there were little wounds, and quite possibly larger wounds, crisscrossed along the inside of Simmonds’s thighs, which were sheeted with glistering and dulling blood.
Alexander saw that Simmonds was mad: he had never for a moment supposed he would ever see anyone so classically, so grandly, so archetypally mad. But he could
neither begin to imagine his state of mind nor think what to do. He thought he ought probably to walk boldly up. He walked.
“Simmonds. Simmonds, old chap. Can I help?”
Simmonds, with a look of ferocious concentration, stared at the sun, and continued to sing. Alexander stepped to the edge of the pond. Simmonds, wading and splashing a little made a very threatening slash at him with the knife. Alexander retreated. He became conscious of Frederica and made frantic gestures to her to go away. Frederica came closer, and Simmonds turned to face her, so that she saw at last the wilting glory of his floral crown, and breastplate, and the drooping purple flowers looped in the soft bush of his pubic hair. She also saw the blood, and the knife.
“Run home,” said Alexander, “there’s a good girl. Run home, and find help.”
“No help,” intoned Simmonds. “No help.”
“Run,” said Alexander to Frederica.
She ran.
Alexander squatted on the margin of the pond, at a distance, and stared, mesmerised, at Simmonds’s private parts, which were large, and though bloody, unbowed. Simmonds bowed and batted the water, and sang sweetly and trailed away into disgruntled silences. Alexander wondered agitatedly what he should do if this maniac took it into his head to run for the railway line, or to make a determined attempt to castrate himself. Simmonds circulated. Alexander decided that on the whole he preferred the back view.
Frederica burst into a family row that had become augmented by the presence of Daniel and Stephanie who had decided, somewhat despondently, to try and improve matters by apologising jointly for the conception of their child. She shouted out,
“Help, help, Lucas Simmonds is stark raving mad in the Bilge Pond and Alexander’s up there and he’s threatening him with a knife. And when I say stark, I mean stark. Help. Covered with flowers and things, like King Lear or Lady Chatterley’s lover. Do something. They always said there are leeches in there, in that pond, it’s horribly black. He looks awful, he keeps singing.”