The Peppered Moth

by Margaret Drabble

  Chrissie, in sombre, stylish black, had staked her position in the front pew as First, Finest, Most Suffering and Most Enduring Widow. Nick lay there in his coffin, covered in rubbishy wreaths from grieving castoffs, and she could see the rest of the motley congregation through the red eyes in the back of her proud head. She reached for her daughter Faro’s hand, and clutched it, as the music stopped. She knew that somebody was about to stand up and say something unutterably silly, unforgivably stupid. She felt it in her bones. Faro squeezed her mother’s hand in return. We two against the world.

  The ranks were full. There were Gaulden brothers and sisters, a rackety, impossible, Circean, good-looking, foreign, dissolute crew; none of them had come to much good. Nick hadn’t been the one black sheep of the flock. They had been prodigals all. How ever had Chrissie Barron got herself mixed up with this lot? Nick’s father Gyorgy Gaulden had died a decade earlier, but Nick’s mother Eva was still alive, and present, and sharply surveying the chaos she had engendered. Was it for this that Eva and Gyorgy had escaped from the death throes of Europe to the safety of Finchley Road? To bring forth this feckless, wastrel, decadent Bohemian host? This ragged army, this forlorn hope?

  Unfair, unkind, said Chrissie to herself, as she tried to block out the valedictory words of Eric Mendelsson, old schoolmate, old drinking partner and poker player, failed poet, failed scrounger, failed failure. Balliol scholar, chess player, charmer, wit. One of the cleverest men of his generation. Could have been a chess grandmaster, could have been a poet, could have been a man. One of the cleverest, but certainly not one of the best-looking: he had always been a big-nosed freak, and now, in his early sixties, he was a scarecrow. His lazy, lopsided, voluptuous, terrible smile illuminated his carrion face, as he spoke from the pulpit of his old friend Nick’s schooldays, of the happy hospitable home of Gyorgy and Eva, of the culture and the music and the poetry of the Gauldens ... please God let him not start going on about me, thought Chrissie, but how could he avoid her? She had been Nick’s first conquest, and how desperately they had loved one another, in those long-ago innocent days. Chrissie and Nick had dropped out together, eloped together, and disappeared together from the face of the known earth. They had fallen down a volcanic fissure into the molten underworld. Would that they had at that instant been transformed together into a fountain, into a reed, into a tree with interwoven boughs, into a breeze or a bird! They had believed that the violence of their love would burn away mortality, would purify and transfix them into an attitude of everlasting devotion. Chrissie, who had preserved her chastity through so many assaults in the suburban undergrowth and on the late train back to Farnleigh from Charing Cross, had abandoned herself without restraint to the embraces and assurances of Nicolas Gaulden, and had run away with him in the fullness of her heart and her youth. And now he lay in a narrow box, waiting to be incinerated. What was left of that bright boy, apart from a trail of devastation?

  His children, his grandchildren. He had been prolific. Seven known children and two grandchildren could have attended his funeral, had the roll-call been complete, and who knows how many unacknowledged offspring lurked in the wings, or had never known their parentage? Chrissie, even as she listened to Eric praising (and quite wittily, she had to concede) her own early attempts at soup-making, at running a soup-kitchen, in the flat in Barlby Road, could not resist trying to do a headcount of the numbers of Nick’s women whom she had already greeted or spotted that day. There was Moira, downtrodden First Mistress, whom he had never married, and who bore him two children; then Serafina, mother of Aurelius; then Fiona, who had, after Chrissie’s divorce, for a brief spell become a legal Mrs Gaulden; then Stella, mother of Tiger; and finally Jessica, who was rumoured to have been on the verge of a deathbed shotgun wedding, but who was thought not to have made it. Jessica had drawn the short straw, by common consent. Hers had been the hospitalization, the rejected transplant, the catheters, the plastic bags, the death rattle. Jessica had never known Nick in his golden days.

  But Jessica had probably been convinced that Nick had loved her only, her only and her ever. That was his trick. That was how he pulled it. And no doubt he’d still been able to manage it, a sick man in his sixties, in need of a new liver. Still the most handsome man in London, in the eyes of far too many.

  Whom had she missed? Furtively, Chrissie counted again, on the fingers of the hand that Faro was not clutching. The children: there was Faro, his firstborn; Moira’s daughters, Iona and Arethusa, who for a long time had lived upstairs; then the boys—Serafina’s Aurelius and Stella’s Tiger. There were supposed to be two more boys, somewhere, and another woman—where was Jenny, with her boys, Sam and Derwent? Or was it Derwent and Sam? Chrissie had never met Jenny Pargiter and her sons, and had been unable to locate her earlier in the proceedings, as the funeral party had loitered in the academic-ecclesiastical red-brick cloisters, making uneasy conversation and trying furtively to read the messages on the bouquets that perspired inelegantly in cellophane wraps. Chrissie had been assured, by Stella, that Jenny Pargiter was there, but she looked in vain for a young mother emblematically accompanied, like a martyr, by two identifying Gaulden sons. Perhaps Jenny Pargiter had come without them? Perhaps she had thought them too young or too ill-disciplined for such an outing? Warning notices advised that the spacious cemetery lawns, where mourners from other unknown funerals strayed in the middle distance, were out of bounds to noisy children. Perhaps Jenny Pargiter had decided not to risk it?

  But, in that case, which was the unattended Jenny Pargiter, the penultimate mistress? Chrissie had formed no very clear picture of her, but had assumed, as an outdated ex-wife will, that this latter rival must be possessed of grace, style, beauty and probably (though not necessarily) youth. Brooding on a possible Jenny Pargiter, Chrissie now realized that she had managed to summon up little more than a vague assembly of floating attributes, most of them detached from one or another of Nick’s death-convened harem—the slenderness of Moira when young, the stateliness of Serafina, the sharpness of Fiona, the blond fey English countryside calm of Stella, the unblemished skin and bright white all-American teeth of young Jessica. These incompatible features had not begun to form a coherent whole, an Identikit Gaulden bride, for none of these women much resembled one another, and had no evident common denominator. Jenny Pargiter might be, indeed almost certainly was, somebody quite other, who would, when correctly identified, add some quite shocking or revealing new ingredient to the retrospective assessment of Nick Gaulden’s amorous tastes. Jenny Pargiter was no chimera, no harpy, no composite ghost: she was a solid and unique woman, and somewhere in this chapel she stood, waiting to identify herself as the object of Chrissie’s envy and contempt. Or would she, like Stella, prove in the long run, a true friend? Unlikely, now. Chrissie no longer had need of such friends. She could suffer no more, as she had once suffered, the torments of obscure and unallocated resentment and suspicion. Let Jenny Pargiter reveal herself as Helen of Troy, Chrissie need suffer no more. It was all one to her now. Curiosity was all that remained to her.

  And yet she was curious about this congregation, this extended family, some of whom she had not seen for years.

  Moira, who had lived upstairs, had not visibly improved with the passage of time—a pallid, whining, spiritless creature, a broken reed, a lower-middle-class misery, thin then and scrawny now, her face lined with endurance and forgiveness. She was wearing a prim dark-striped mannish suit, and her hair had turned a curious ancient tarnished yellow-green-grey, not unlike Auntie Dora’s; it was tied back with a large black velvet bow which suggested a bisexual character from a historical costume drama. Moira’s daughters, Iona and Arethusa, had grown up handsomely, however, and inherited something of their father’s beauty—a noble, high-prowed, clear-cut face, with chiselled lips, and a blue intensity of eye. They were fetchingly dressed, in a similar style: both wore long skirts, dark buttoned jackets, pearl necklaces, wide-brimmed hats. A classic couple. And each was provided with a
baby and a husband—Nick Gaulden’s only known (though not legitimate) grandchildren. Chrissie had forgotten the names of these infants, had she ever known them, but gathered there was one of each sex.

  So the Gaulden line continued. Chrissie, with a conscious act of generosity, chose to be pleased about this. She had never had anything against those poor girls: it was not their fault if they and their mother had been instrumental in the ruin of her life. If it hadn’t been them, it would have been others. It was good to see them looking so smug, so well groomed, so well provided. A husband each—unlike their mother, they had not gone in for sharing or a communal home.

  Serafina had come next in the catalogue, and there she was, still as large and glossy as ever, in full bloom. She was of West Indian descent, and had robed herself for this occasion in some kind of full-length orange and purple toga: her head she had bound up in a tall and elaborate turban, intricately and lavishly swathed. She looked like an African empress, and this no doubt was her intention. Her son Aurelius stood proudly by her side, sixteen years and already well over six feet tall, wearing the traditional costume of his age and class—trainers, jeans and a black leather bomber jacket decorated with many metal runes and hieroglyphs. A fine, well-made, tawny-golden lad, an excellent proof of the wisdom of crossing one’s genes with those of dark strangers. Impossible, any longer, to be jealous of Serafina and Aurelius: they did not recognize possession, jealousy, marriage, divorce, alimony and other such domestic trivia. They were outside the system. Chrissie saw now how petty it had been even to think of resenting Serafina. Although she had, bitterly, jealously, resented. Serafina had been harder to take than Moira. But Serafina had been as inevitable an event in Nick’s sexual odyssey as she believed Nick to have been in her own. Serafina had appeared, held court and moved on, massively unscathed.

  Fiona, the only other legal wife, was more of a mystery. She had been married for her money, or so Chrissie had always supposed, for, unlike Serafina, she offered no other visible attractions. And Nick must have taken her to the cleaners, after that spell of marital cohabitation in the big house in Frognal, for she now looked more downtrodden than Moira ever had, and twice as old. Her hair was quite white, and she kept fumbling noisily in her handbag for throat sweets to stop herself coughing. She seemed to have a perpetual cough. Perhaps she too was dying, and eager to join Nick in perpetuity. Would she commit suttee by leaping into the furnace? Had anyone ever tried that, at Golders Green? Chrissie had never cared for Fiona. She had never seen the point of her.

  Whereas Stella Wakefield, Tiger’s mother, Chrissie had come to love. Stella was her only true friend in this gallery, and she hoped she would remain her friend even now Nick was gone. Stella was a brave, blond, Bohemian dissident, who had kept a wise distance between herself and the dangerous Nick; she had never moved in with him and had never allowed him to move in with her, she had seen him when she wanted, on her own terms, and had taken, flatteringly, to ringing Chrissie for advice about how to handle him. Tiger was a delightful, affectionate little lad, whose haphazard barefoot upbringing in a rambling house in Wimbledon had done him no harm at all. He sat, alertly, intelligently to attention, by his mother’s side. He was only about half the size of his half-brother Aurelius, whom he revered, but he was equally smartly if less conventionally dressed in a red and white jacket with brass buttons which appeared to have been purchased from an army surplus store for midget military musicians. He was following the proceedings with an expression of intense interest on his eager face. Death had no dominion over him, that was plain to see, nor over Stella, who believed (and why not?) in the transmigration of souls, and who had come to Golders Green dressed in a beautiful many-coloured tapestry wool coat embroidered with the symbols of the zodiac. (Chrissie eyed it enviously, and was waiting for an appropriate moment after the ceremony to ask Stella where she had bought it. But Stella would probably cast her down by telling her she had made it herself. Stella, unlike Chrissie, was very creative.)

  Moira, Serafina, Stella, the unknown Jenny Pargiter and Jessica. Poor little Jessica—she had been picked up in the off-licence. Or so rumour had it.

  So there they were, all Nick’s women. What a lot of messed-up, wasted lives. But there were, at least, a lot of them—maybe there was something to celebrate in that? Fecundity, prodigality, the life force? And yes, anticipating her very thought, old Eric was moving on to this theme—well, you could see that in the circumstances Eric kind of had to. Bachelor, celibate, unreproductive Eric Mendelsson began to sing the praises of babies, and to declare what a fine father old Nick had been. The jokes were a bit risky, but nobody leaps up to stop the proceedings during a funeral oration—it’s only at weddings that witnesses are asked to raise objections. And it was all a bit late in the day for that. Eric told funny stories about Augustus John and Sabine Baring-Gould and other prolific parents, who had had difficulties in recognizing all the members of their own vast brood, and who had taken to saluting all small children with a vague paternal benevolence. ‘And whose little girl are you?’ ‘Why, yours, Papa, yours!' Nick, dispatched to the primary school gates on a rare occasion to collect one of his own, had identified the wrong infant, and had dragged it struggling down the road until overtaken by an angry Arethusa.

  Polite laughter. Faro grinds the nails of her spare hand into her palm. It’s not all that funny, is it?

  Chrissie is wondering how all this lot ever got paid for. Had anybody in that gathering ever earned an honest living? How shocked her own thrifty Yorkshire-bred parents would have been had they ever known the full extent of the fecklessness and recklessness of the Gauldens. She had done her best to conceal it from them. She had become a mistress of deception and misrepresentation. But they must have guessed at some of it. They weren’t stupid.

  Perhaps it wasn’t fair to say that nobody in that chapel had ever had a proper job. Some of them had tried. It is true that the first generation of the Gaulden family, once uprooted from Berlin and its homeland, had found it difficult to settle and to find appropriate employment. But it had not come to England to make its fortune. It had come here to survive. Like many thousands of others it had left most of its possessions behind, and it was not easy to make a fresh start in a foreign country on the brink of war. They were lucky to have been allowed to settle in Finchley, and not to have been interned as enemy aliens on the Isle of Man.

  Gyorgy had been traumatized by the events of Europe. His own parents had been interned as political dissidents, and died in a camp. Most of his family disappeared. Gyorgy never recovered, physically or mentally, from the shock of his sudden forced exodus. His health had suffered; and he developed chronic asthma, though he found it difficult to give up smoking. And he lacked the resilience and the élan of some of the new refugees, who were to found publishing houses, start businesses, retrain for professions, re-enter academe or join the BBC. Gyorgy could not make a new start. Gyorgy haunted the Reading Room of the British Museum, that refuge of the refugee, where he claimed to be writing a history of his native province, but no person ever saw a word of his manuscript. He dwindled into invalidism, while his wife went out to work.

  Eva Gaulden, despite bearing several children, managed to earn enough money to keep her family going. She worked first as matron in a hostel for refugee children, then as translator of black propaganda for the BBC, and finally as subeditor and typist for a respected literary monthly financed with American money. Maybe she could have founded a publishing house, had she been less preoccupied with children and survival, with Gyorgy and the news from Europe. But she kept going. She kept a roof over their heads.

  Eva Gaulden, unlike Bessie Bawtry, had been faced with hard and potentially deadly choices, and had worked hard all her life, and now the most gifted and beautiful of all her sons had gone before her. Tributes were paid to Eva that day, and rightly. It is not good to lose a child, even when one is in one’s eighties, even when he has invited his own death. Chrissie squeezed Faro’s hand again, as Eric beg
an to round off his eulogy. Maybe Eric was right. With so many dead people behind him, maybe Nick had done well to try to spread his seed and his genes and to repopulate North London. And it was wrong to think harshly of Eric. Eric might have wasted his talents in the eyes of the world, and blown his mind with many substances, but who was to blame him? He had done no harm in his mild life. He had merely wasted it. There were worse things.

  The only Gaulden relative who had ever made serious money was said to have made it somewhat dishonourably. Gyorgy’s nephew, Victor Rose, was said to have made a small fortune. (Chrissie sneaked a glance around the room and back up at the gallery, to see if she could see him, but if he was there, she didn’t recognize him. But she hadn’t set eyes on him for years, had she? She had lost touch with most of this lot.) Victor Rose had made his fortune out of scrap, then landfill. The images that this métier evoked were not fortunate. Smoke, bulldozers, incinerators, mountains of rubbish, noxious gas and scavenging birds of prey. Seagulls, the rats of the sky.