The Peppered Moth

by Margaret Drabble

  Time had run out for Bessie Barron in an unexpected manner. Her bitter widowhood, which had been a sore trial to her daughter Chrissie as well as to herself, had seemed set to prolong itself into an unendurable and lengthy afterlife. Bessie would ring her daughter of an evening and say, ‘I wish I were dead, but what’s going to kill me?’ These were not happy conversations for Chrissie. Hypochondria had not served Bessie well. She had cried wolf all her life, but when she needed the wolf, the wolf would not come for her. She was suffering from various new but nowhere near fatal symptoms, which she described with relish. A cataract was forming, and she had developed old person’s diabetes, but there were pills and pellets and capsules for everything these days. Anti-depressants, sleeping pills, diuretics, beta-blockers. She lived on a cocktail of drugs. But, unlike a cocktail-cocktail, it didn’t seem to cheer her up. Chrissie would think of Nick Gaulden, who at that point was still alive, though seriously committed to drinking himself to death before the age of sixty, and wonder if he had not chosen the better path. At least Nick had known joy.

  In the end, Chrissie had cracked, and had offered to take her mother on a cruise. She didn’t offer to take her round the world, as Joe Barron was repeatedly said to have repeatedly and falsely promised to do, but she offered to take her across the Atlantic on the QE2, And Bessie had been pleased to accept.

  Chrissie regretted the offer as soon as she made it, nay before she made it. She felt she had been coerced and worn down. It had been an act of appeasement. Would Bessie’s aggressions and invasions be halted by this treat? Chrissie did not for one moment believe that they would be. All would go on as it had done. The enterprise was doomed from the start.

  It was not Donald’s money that she intended to lavish on her mother. By this stage, she had money of her own. Despite or because of her reckless early marriage and lack of qualifications, Chrissie Gaulden had managed to build up, over the years, a successful career and, eventually, her own business. When Faro started school, Eva Gaulden had found Chrissie a part-time job in the library of a privately owned research institute, a job with flexible hours, well suited to a single mother. The institute had been founded in the 1930s by a rich Middle European immigrant, and Chrissie had spent her first few years cataloguing books and correspondences in languages she did not understand and devising new systems to deal with an eccentric and valuable collection. She had taught herself librarianship and bibliography, and although she had occasionally winced at the irony of finding herself so surrounded by words, she had been grateful for the work and the money. And she was a success. Sir Henry, founding father and well-known philanderer, liked her, and tried to seduce her, but Chrissie had had enough of philanderers and declined to be seduced. Sir Henry did not hold this against her, and continued to take her to the opera when he had a spare ticket. She was promoted, and became assistant director. Her greatest coup was to foresee the electronic age, and to force Sir Henry and his staff into an early familiarity with the word processor, the personal computer and the floppy disk. Chrissie might not have acquired the right A-levels to become a surgeon, and had failed in the last ditch to become an archaeologist, but she worked out for herself the implications of the digital revolution and she made sure the institute was properly wired up. So well had she managed this transition that she was able to smile at the struggles of greater institutions—the British Library, the university presses, even the Home Office—as they made expensive mistakes.

  The institute had introduced her to eligible widower Donald Sinclair. She had tried to explain the modern world to him, as he attempted, disastrously and ineptly, to communicate by modern technology with colleagues in Greece, Turkey and Bulgaria. She failed: he was too old to learn new tricks, and could not even send a fax. So she married him.

  Marriage had enabled her to retire from the institute, but she retired with a pension, and went off to found a bibliographical consultancy. She retired from this too, but it still made her an income. So Chrissie had plenty of money in the bank with which to finance a transatlantic trip for herself and her widowed mother. In theory, from afar, this seemed such a nice thing to do, and Chrissie managed to feel nice about it at times, as she made the bookings, discussed arrangements with Cunard and her travel agent, and told her neighbours about her plans. It all sounded so pleasant. ‘My mother and I are going over to New York—she’s always wanted to take a sea voyage, and I thought this would be just right for us.’ Yes, they nodded, the travel agent, the newsagent, the butcher, the baker, the gardener, and Mrs Fraser at the Hall. Yes, it would be very nice, they all said. But they didn’t know Bessie Bawtry, did they?

  Donald, of course, knew better. Gallantly he offered to accompany his wife and his mother-in-law, but Chrissie forbade him. Bessie, she knew, would drive him mad. It was too much to expect of him. So they compromised. Donald would fly out to New York, and spend a day or two with them there, and then they would all fly back together. Donald also insisted on paying for a single-room supplement for Chrissie. At her age, she could not be expected to sleep in the same cabin as her mother. It would not be seemly. Chrissie said she could pay for it herself, but Donald pleaded, and she consented. Donald, whatever Faro said, was not a mean Scot. He was a kind and generous man.

  So, all was set for the great adventure. Bessie and Chrissie were to cross in August, sailing from Southampton in calm summer weather. That was the plan. Bessie had been much given to seasickness as a child, on fishing-boat outings at Bridlington or Scarborough, and had managed to vomit heroically all the way across the Channel on the Dover-to-Calais ferry on her first trip to France in 1954. Chrissie did not want to hear Bessie boasting about feeling ill for five whole days across the Atlantic, even though Bessie had assured Chrissie that she would not mind being sick at all. It would be well worth the trouble. It would all be part of the fun.

  For you, maybe, but what about me? Chrissie had thought grimly.

  But even Chrissie’s forebodings had lifted a little when she saw the great liner in her Southampton dock. There she was, that great cliff of red, white and black, with her sharply curved ocean-slicing throat-cutting prow, her banked ziggurat of white decks, her triumphant funnel. She was a city of the sea, built to accommodate thousands. Big enough for the pair of them, surely. And Bessie was visibly pleased and excited. Even if everything were to go wrong from now on, at least she was enjoying the moment of embarkation. Her cheeks were uncharacteristically pink with pleasure as she handed over her passport for inspection and received information about dining arrangements. The Crystal Bar, the Britannia Grill, the Queen’s Grill. This was the life. This was what she had been born for: the Best. She was wearing a pretty, loose and not-too-short Liberty-patterned silk dress and jacket of greens and blues, and her feet looked tolerably comfortable in their beige plastic low-heeled sandals. Chrissie had warned her mother that there might be a lot of standing around. Would Bessie, so sedentary and so inert for so long, be able to take the strain? She must wear flat shoes, Chrissie had bossily insisted. Bessie liked being bossed by her daughter in this proper caring manner. She was happy to obey.

  Chrissie had had nightmares for weeks and weeks about her mother wandering with swollen feet, lost along endless corridors. About her mother locked in the bathroom, stuck in a lift, stuck in her bath.

  But so far all seemed to be going well and according to plan. Donald, the perfect gentleman, saw them on board. He spoke to pursers and bursars and made sure the right baggage arrived in the right rooms. He joked that he might stow away. He admitted to being responsible for the bouquets of flowers that greeted them in each adjoining room. Chrissie felt tearful with gratitude. He was a champion. She did not deserve him, when her mean heart was so full of wrath and fear.

  Chrissie went up to the boat deck to wave Donald goodbye, and Bessie insisted on coming too. (Chrissie had hoped that Bessie might tactfully have a sit-down and do some unpacking, but she seemed full of an unnatural energy.) So they stood side by side, mother and daughter, up al
oft, as they watched Donald dwindle, diminished, below them. They all waved a lot, and Don disappeared into the Cunard building. A steward with a tray offered them glasses of champagne, and a silver band struck up, plaintively playing ‘Keep the Home Fires Burning’. Chrissie sipped at her champagne, and Bessie gulped hers down. (Was that wise?) They stood there together, in the late-afternoon sun, and listened to the band, and the screaming of the gulls, and the ship’s blast announcing departure, and they stayed above to watch the shore recede. Dozens of little yachts and dinghies and scooters and hoppers and buzzers filled the Solent and accompanied the great ship as she drew slowly away to sea. There were cheers and waves from strangers. Bessie Barron smiled as though she owned the whole world, as though she were the Queen of the Queen. She looked happy, at last.

  So far so good, thought Chrissie Sinclair.

  But Bessie’s benign mood, like the weather, seemed set fair. She was determined to be pleased by everything, even by the monotonous television channel that showed nothing but the bridge of the liner cleaving its way through the unresisting water. Bessie was to find this channel particularly enchanting, and would sit to watch it for ten minutes at a time. Her behaviour, on that first evening at sea, was impeccable. She unpacked, and hung all her new clothes tidily in her closet, and praised the bathroom facilities, and inspected her life-saving vest, and locked her passport and dollar bills and traveller’s cheques in the combination-lock safe. She popped round to Chrissie’s only once during this procedure, to ask if Chrissie had worked out how to switch off the wardrobe light. She arranged her books and her many varieties of tablets on her bedside table, and played with her television set, and read instructions about mealtimes and formal dress and swimming pools and roulette and guest lecturers in the various brochures and folders scattered around for her perusal. Then she sat on her bed, in happy anticipation, waiting to see what would happen next. Or so Chrissie assumed, for there Chrissie found her, when she tapped on her door and suggested that in half an hour they should go up to the Crystal Bar for a drink.

  Bessie thought this was a fine idea. Yes, that would be very nice indeed. Should she change for dinner, she wanted to know, and if so, what should she wear? Chrissie said there was no need to change, and Bessie looked very nice as she was. But if she wanted to, well, of course she could. Chrissie was going to wear her Maxine Quirk dress, but she was changing only because she thought it wasn’t quite right to go up to dinner in her travelling trousers.

  What a pleasant conversation between mother and daughter.

  In Bessie Barron’s wardrobe hung one new long never-worn evening dress, and one new short never-worn cocktail dress. Each was waiting eagerly for its first outing.

  Bessie decided not to change on that first evening. She deferred the pleasure. But she put on her necklace of heavy gold links, and a little pink lipstick. She looked a most agreeable and presentable old lady as she walked by her daughter’s side along the corridor towards the lofty lifts. The size of the lifts and the height of the stairwell pleased her, though she was critical of the portrait of Her Majesty. There was nothing claustrophobic about this vessel. It was as spacious as the Titanic and almost as luxurious. On the other hand, there was nothing agoraphobic about it either. You could not get lost here, or stray off course. Your course was set. Bessie knew all about port and starboard, naturally, and could feel superior to those who persisted in muddling them up. The décor, apart from Her Majesty, pleased her, and she caught her own reflection in the many mirrors with satisfaction.

  Seated in the Crystal Bar on the upper deck, and nibbling at shiny brown and white and pink nuggets, Bessie surprised Chrissie by ordering a champagne cocktail. Chrissie had been expecting to steer her attention towards the quaintly christened selection of alcohol-free or low-alcohol cocktails—perhaps a Lucky Driver, or a Shirley Temple, or a Virgin Mary? But Bessie went straight for the best. Chrissie, who had already fortified herself in her cabin with a few fingers of whisky, decided to join her, and you could not imagine a more agreeable sight than the two of them sipping their sparkling beverages from dainty sparkling glasses as they sailed along the coast of Cornwall and out towards the open ocean.

  Dinner also was a success. Bessie basked in the deference paid towards herself and her daughter, for although she was a republican, she was also a naïve and irredeemable snob, and her daughter’s unearned title by her second marriage gave her as much pleasure as her daughter’s first marriage to a disrespectful layabout had given her pain. She nodded graciously as the smartly dressed maître d’hôtel led them to their table and at the elegant little Irish waitress who smoothed their napkins for them and offered them varieties of bread and water. She smiled at the suave and conspiratorial wine waiter, adorned with silver chains and spoons and badges of office, and at the supernumerary young Dutchman who seemed to be called upon to fill any unlikely gaps in the flow of attentive service. Bessie settled herself down, and inspected the handsome menu with undisguised anticipation, and wondered, aloud, if she should select the caviar.

  Chrissie, whose chair commanded a good view of the dining room, gazed around her with interest and began to relax. Perhaps it was all going to be all right. Even the placing of their table seemed to be in their favour. To Chrissie’s left sat a chilly threesome, consisting of a formidably handsome couple in their late thirties, and the squat and elderly mother of one or the other of them: this trio spoke in German, when it spoke at all, and was not likely to attempt to set up any potentially embarrassing relationship. To her right sat an American couple of unassuming and vaguely scholarly aspect, in late middle age, who nodded and smiled in a friendly but noninvasive manner. There was nobody here to cause alarm or to distress. All was orderly, all in its place. Bessie could relax, and so could her anxious and protective daughter. Chrissie, who had once so loved disorder, had come to appreciate the virtues of calm. The accents of Breaseborough would mingle sweetly and unobtrusively here, in this placeless place, in this floating island of the people and the voices of the world.

  Over their dinner, Bessie and Chrissie conversed harmlessly about Henry James. Bessie was rereading The Bostonians, which she had chosen as a good book to accompany her from the Old World to the New. She was enjoying it, but was not sure if she approved of its sexual politics. (She did not use that phrase, but would have done had she been Faro’s age, and that is what she meant.) Chrissie was reading, for the first time, Manhattan Transfer by Dos Passos. Mother and daughter spoke of the social penetration of Henry James, and of his ambivalent attitude towards women in the professions—the portrait of the young woman doctor was very good, said Bessie. Bessie said that she had attended a supervision at Downing College in Cambridge in which Dr Leavis had spoken of The Portrait of a Lady, and had invited Bessie to give an opinion on the significance of James’s use of proper names. Bessie had not read this novel for years. Chrissie said she had never read it, and wasn’t it about marrying for money? If you’ve never read it, you have a treat in store, said Bessie, as she polished off her elaborately constructed little tower of strips of tender green and orange vegetables surmounted by thin warm white slices of delicate breast of fowl.

  Were they not a credit to their education, this mother and this daughter, as they sailed across the Atlantic speaking of Henry James?

  This good behaviour could not last. But the next day, luckily, Bessie managed to find a harmless outlet for her temperamental need for indignation. She was filled with mild and self-gratifying contempt by the inefficiency of some minor aspects of the lifeboat drill. A confusing message was sent out over the Tannoy, which had to be countermanded and then clarified, and when she and Chrissie reached their designated station on the boat deck, the loudspeaker serving their cluster of life-jacketed and self-consciously giggling passengers did not work at all, and instructions had to be yelled out by the unenhanced human voice, and relayed from group to group amidst the gaming tables and the fruit machines. The fruit machines themselves also attracted a certain cens
oriousness: how could people waste their time on such pointless activity when so many finer delights were on offer? Bessie had never seen so many gambling devices, nor such a variety of them, in her life. Surely the QE2 had not always pandered to such low instincts? She had expected something more refined. And she gathered that bingo was played, in the afternoons, in one of the inferior lounges.

  Oh dear, here we go, thought Chrissie. It wasn’t going to be plain sailing after all. Things weren’t going to be good enough.

  Chrissie had already wondered if she might be able to sneak off one evening and have a flutter at the roulette table. Nick Gaulden, at this point in the chronology shacked up with an unknown woman called Jenny Pargiter, had once been a gambler, and she’d learned the spin of the wheel with him, back in the spinning sixties. Her mother wouldn’t approve. Maybe she’d be able to sneak out at night when she was asleep?

  But Bessie soon forgot her mood of passing irritation with the declining standards of luxury liners. Shortly after the lifeboat exercise, she discovered the library, with which she pronounced herself well pleased. When she had finished her Henry James, there would be plenty here to feed her reading habit. She made friends with the librarian on duty, and settled into a chair with a pile of new hardback novels. Chrissie took a turn by herself on the sun deck. It was safe to leave her mother in an environment of books, and the librarian must be well accustomed to passengers like Bessie Barron. She would probably be pleased to have such an eager consumer on board. Bessie would certainly boost turnover and productivity. Chrissie, pacing briskly along in the comfortable pink-and-white trainers that her mother deplored, remembered all those library books she had carried back and forth for housebound Bessie in Farnleigh. There had been a trauma about a book which Chrissie herself had dropped while reading surreptitiously in the bath. The red binding had run into the pages and stained them. Chrissie had been feeling guilty about this book for thirty years. She had never owned up to the misdemeanour. For some reason she associated it with the death of her grandmother. Was it associative guilt? Was she guilty of the death of her grandmother? She hadn’t liked her all that much, but she hadn’t wished her dead, had she? They must buy a postcard to send to Auntie Dora, said Chrissie to herself, as she clocked up her second mile.