The Gate of Angels

by Penelope Fitzgerald

  ‘Good-night, Mr Skippey. You must excuse me. I make it a rule to go to bed before midnight.’

  The rain and the wind had both died down, leaving a ragged sky. As they started off at a sober pace towards King’s Parade, the Provost remarked: ‘Your name is Fairly, isn’t it? I think you were in Hall at St Angelicus, when we were discussing the mystery of your south-west door. I liked what you said about the mind being entitled, as it surely is, to a body of its own, a good deal more satisfactory than the present one.’

  ‘I wonder, Provost,’ said Fred, ‘if anyone’s quite explained to you the objects of our Society. I mean, whoever gets up to propose the motion, and of course whoever opposes it—’

  ‘People will go to such curious lengths,’ the Provost went on, gently beating time with one hand, as though to music. ‘My sister writes that she has left instructions in her will that her little finger is to be severed before her funeral so that there will be no possibility, or let us call it likelihood, of her being buried alive.’ Fred was not quite sure of the right answer.—‘That should do the trick,’ he said.—‘Yes, and of course she must please herself with these matters, but it’s the particularity of it, Fairly—I am right about your name, I think?—I mean, one might, I think, lose one’s little finger at any time. So many things are mechanised now which weren’t so formerly. They provide unexpected dangers.’ He added, ‘As to being buried alive, so many things walk, you know, when they seem to be buried safely enough.’

  What a strange face was his, protective and fatherly in the light, then again, as his head turned and his black-rimmed spectacles glittered, a blank. ‘By the way, who was that man, your friend, or enemy, with a beard?’

  ‘He’s called George Holcombe.’

  ‘I’m afraid I can’t identify him. He is a Fellow of...?’

  ‘He isn’t a Fellow anywhere,’ said Fred. ‘He’s a demonstrator at the new chemistry labs.’

  ‘He looked disturbed, I thought.’

  ‘Perhaps he is disturbed.’

  ‘Why so?’

  Fred did not like to explain, and the Provost said reflectively, ‘I always consider that the new laboratories were a mistake, but it never occurred to me that the staff were not sane.’

  He fell silent and Fred began again. ‘I was just going to explain to you about the way things work at the Disobligers’—but they had arrived at the Lodge, and a butler opened the door, followed by a large tabby cat which sprang up on the Provost’s shoulder, digging its claws into his gown and defending its place against all comers.

  ‘You’re coming in, I hope, for that pipe?’

  Fred said he was afraid he didn’t smoke.

  ‘You mean, of course, that you do,’ said the Provost, stroking his cat triumphantly.

  When he was back in his room Fred found that the fire was still burning pretty well. He lit the Aladdin, and tore up the letter which he had started before the meeting. On a new sheet of paper he started again: ‘Dear Daisy’.

  7

  Who Is Daisy?

  If Holcombe had walked in at that moment, and asked ‘Who is this Daisy, does she belong to the marriageable classes?’, Fred couldn’t have answered him. He knew her name and how he had come to meet her. He didn’t know either who she was, or her address, and therefore he had no immediate way of sending her this letter or any other. He must, presumably, have written it for the pleasure of seeing her name on the paper.

  Three weeks ago, three weeks before the Disobligers’ meeting, he had been bicycling along the Guestingley Road, this time in twilight just turning into darkness.

  Towards the outskirts Cambridge ceased to hold its own as a market town. Patches of field and common appeared, and, along the road, largish houses. It was getting on for dinner time. Lights appeared on the ground floors and at the same time at the top of the house, where the beds were being turned down, and the children put to bed. He saw one or two of them looking out of the windows from behind their safety bars, then the curtains were drawn, cheaper ones in the nurseries, so that the nightlight shone through, showing their colours, blue, green, brown, red. There was a good deal of traffic on the road, a number of motor cars, some farm carts. After the crossing it thinned out. Fred was able to go ahead fast. There were only two cyclists in front of him, two red tail-lamps, not together. One of them a woman, a young woman probably, the shape of one anyway, in a raincoat probably made of American cloth, which glistened in what light there was. Fred, of course, knew the road, but he was paying attention. The brick wall to the left disappeared and became a large dark gap. The gap, Fred remembered, was a farmyard gate and the farm was one of several that obstinately remained, confounding with its clatter and its fierce thin stench the respectable houses on either side of it. Fred was just on the tail of the two bikes ahead of him, possibly rather closer than he should have been, when without warning a horse and cart came lumbering almost at a canter out of the opening. It had no lights and the driver was not holding the reins but either drunk, dead or asleep, lolling over the dashboard. There was a kind of shriek or scream which might have been from the horse, since even old horses make strange noises in a state of terror, then a sound like a vast heap of glass splintering as the world, for Fred jamming on the brakes, went absurdly out of the horizontal and hit him a decisive blow, as black as pitch, on the side of the head.

  When Fred came to he felt terribly thirsty. Surely if it was half-time, they’d come and give him a bit of lemon. Something was buoying him up, preventing him from feeling the pain which he knew was waiting for him. He was in bed, on a yielding mattress, which showed that wherever he was it couldn’t be in college. The room seemed to breathe. Something, anyway, was breathing. It was quietly lit, but enough to throw, on a wall papered with unknown flowers, the shadows of an unknown washstand with its jug and basin. Over him there was a white quilt and a white counterpane. It was very like a nursery. On top of the white counterpane six inches away from him, he could see the left hand of a young woman, large and clean with a broad gold ring on the fourth finger. He put out his hand and touched it. The gold was smooth, the skin felt rough.

  Her face was turned away, but he could see a quantity of hair, a wealth of hair his mother would call it—brownish, or between red and brown, done up at the moment any old how. Her eyes were shut.

  ‘My God, what luck,’ he thought.

  His mind cleared suddenly. He sat up and waited for a moment to see whether he was going to be sick, for that would not do, one couldn’t make an apology, combined with an introduction, after such a beginning. Keeping as still as possible, he said: ‘I owe you an explanation. My name is Frederick Fairly. I’m a lecturer in practical physics and a Junior Fellow of, of—’ He would remember the name, surely, in a moment. ‘I think I have had an accident. I think you, too, have had an accident. I think you must be the young lady who was riding just in front of me.’ But that was an unjustified inference. Quite possibly she lived in this house, and this was her bed.

  Without moving or opening her eyes whose long light brown lashes remained closed as though it was not likely to be worth while the trouble to look at anyone, she answered: ‘I’m Daisy Saunders. Where’s my cycle?’

  ‘I don’t know where it is, Mrs Saunders.’

  ‘I’m not...’ she said. ‘I don’t...I’m not...it’s not mine.’

  ‘Do you want me to go and look for it?’

  She whispered, ‘Yes.’

  ‘I don’t know where my bike is either, or my clothes.’

  His head was bandaged. What about his vest, shirt, stiff collar, socks, sock-suspenders, trousers? ‘No, I’m sorry to say I seem to have nothing at all. Otherwise I could manage to get up, I think.’

  ‘Don’t worry about your clothes. I’ve seen hundreds like you before.’

  She’s drifting, he thought. She can’t know what she’s saying. Doing the least sensible thing, he got out of bed. Accustomed by now to the dim light, he saw that it was a nursery, or perhaps had once been one. Th
ere was a large rocking-horse by the window, with some dark heap draped over its back which might be his trousers. Round the top of the walls ran a frieze of bluebirds in flight. The night-light was burning in a kind of metal case, a bird-cage. It’s like a play, he thought. Perhaps I’m reborn. But at home he never remembered sleeping in a nursery. The girls were all in there, and although he was the oldest, he’d grown up in the box-room. ‘Get back into bed, and don’t move again’ said the young woman. ‘That’s orders.’

  ‘I’m afraid you may be losing grip, Mrs Saunders.’

  ‘I’m not Mrs Saunders.’

  Fred got back into the bed. There was a faint, delicious scent of Pears soap. The pain was worst on his right side, the right of his head, and the right shoulder, not his right leg, that seemed much as usual.

  ‘Couldn’t you find your things?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  She lifted her head a little and let it fall again.

  ‘It’s just my luck to be stuck in bed with a lazy fellow.’

  Fred felt deeply shocked. In all his life he had never been called lazy before.

  ‘Where’s the fellow I was riding with? What happened to him?’ she asked.

  ‘I don’t know what’s happened to him. I don’t care what’s happened to him. Why are we talking about him?’

  Perhaps he raised his voice a little. The door opened, and a stronger light intruded, first in a segment, then expanding across the bluebirds and the whiteness of the walls and ceiling. A head looked halfway round the door, and Fred heard a man’s clear high voice, the true voice of scholarly Cambridge.

  ‘Venetia, there are two total strangers in the nursery. One is a man, who has lost his clothes. The other is a woman, who, I think, has also lost her clothes...’ Then, coming a little further into the room. ‘This is my house, as it happens. You mustn’t think me unwelcoming. My name is Wrayburn.’

  It was clear that he had never been allowed to worry. That was not his work, worrying was done for him. Behind him, in fact, and into the room, came an exuberant charitable Mrs Wrayburn, fringed and tasselled like a squaw, although in pince-nez.

  ‘Oh, my dears. I left you to sleep in peace till the doctor came.’

  ‘They are ill?’ asked Mr Wrayburn doubtfully.

  ‘The farmer’s son brought them both in. Strong arms, you know. But of course, I didn’t want you to be disturbed.’

  ‘I have been disturbed,’ said Mr Wrayburn. ‘I heard voices upstairs. Why didn’t they take them into the farm?’

  ‘Mrs Wrayburn?’ said Fred.

  ‘Ah, he can speak!’

  ‘He was speaking much louder just now, and tramping about,’ said Mr Wrayburn.

  ‘It’s Mr Fairly, isn’t it? I found a visiting card in the top pocket of your jacket. And your wife.’

  ‘I’m not Mrs Fairly,’ said Daisy.

  ‘Well, but your wedding ring, my dear. And you were together in a heap on the road. You were brought in here together in a heap, you know.’

  ‘I’m not his wife.’

  Mr Wrayburn summoned his good manners.

  ‘I hope you’re quite comfortable, all the same,’ he said.

  Fred was moved to a nursing home in Bridge Street, or at least found himself there, with his own toothbrush and dressing-gown, sent for him from St Angelicus. That was after he’d become unconscious for the second time, said the untiring Mrs Wrayburn, making kindly enquiries in a velvet hat stitched with Assisi work. Unaccountably, Mr Wrayburn had come with her. Fred wanted to know where Miss Saunders was—‘You seem more certain of her name than she was herself,’ said Mr Wrayburn.

  ‘Are you criticising her?’ Fred asked. He was determined to get up and leave this place, which he couldn’t afford anyway.

  ‘Criticising her? Of course he isn’t!’ Mrs Wrayburn cried. ‘Why should a young woman, or any woman, have to account for her comings and goings? Why should she know her name if she doesn’t want to? All that we have the right to ask is, do the higher elements in her nature predominate? Are her feet on the path that leads to joy? Is she in harmony with the new century?’

  ‘I’m not quite certain, Mrs Wrayburn,’ said Fred. ‘What did she say herself?’

  ‘She didn’t appear to be seriously hurt. But I thought she looked very pale. At any rate, she got up and dressed and said that she would go to a doctor if necessary as soon as she got back to London. She thanked us—not that we expected thanks—’

  ‘We did expect them,’ said Mr Wrayburn. ‘I never remember expecting them more.’

  ‘I can’t thank you enough myself,’ said Fred. ‘Did she mention what part of London she was going to?’

  Mrs Wrayburn shook her head, and with a smile of real kindness put a paper bag full of grapes and a pair of silver-plated grape-scissors by the bed. ‘Snip to your heart’s content, Mr Fairly, and bring them back whenever it suits you. Snip! Snip!’

  As they left, Mr Wrayburn lingered behind for a moment and said, ‘I learn that you are a Fellow of Angelicus. If my wife had known that she would not, of course, have made the mistake of thinking you a married man.’

  The Wrayburns had notified the police. But by the time a constable arrived the horse had manoeuvred the cart to the edge of the road and was cropping the grass in the darkness, while the driver, whoever he had been, had completely disappeared. The farmer described this man as a casual, who was supposed to be going to pick up a load of old wooden sleepers at the railway station. He’d called in to collect some seed potatoes to exchange for the sleepers. The farmer couldn’t say exactly what he’d intended to do with the sleepers, but they were handy things to have about the place. The man was called Saul, but that could be either his Christian name, couldn’t it, or his surname. Didn’t know where he came from, didn’t know his cart hadn’t any lights. At the station, the staff knew nothing about any sale or exchange of old sleepers which were, of course, the property of the Great Eastern Railway. All this the police regarded as unsatisfactory. Fred’s bicycle, and Daisy’s, both damaged, were still by the side of the road. Daisy’s had been hired that morning from Trimmer’s shop in Silver Street, when she had given her name and left a sovereign deposit. She hadn’t been back to the shop since, and though they always took addresses as a general rule, they couldn’t find any trace of hers. Fred was asked whether he had noticed anyone else on the scene at the time of the accident. Yes, another man, bicycling just in front of Miss Saunders, but he couldn’t describe him and had no idea where he’d got to. This, too, the police, although they spoke much more politely than to the farmer or to Trimmer, considered unsatisfactory. It was clearly going to be difficult to prepare a case to go before the magistrate’s court.

  ‘But you’ll have to find Miss Saunders,’ said Fred. ‘Surely there can’t be anything more important than that.’

  The police said that they would be making every effort to trace the young woman. But this didn’t satisfy Fred. He didn’t want Daisy traced, he wanted her found.

  PART TWO

  8

  Daisy

  Daisy lived in south London, where Stockwell turns into Brixton. She had always been used to there being too many people. The pavements, in fact, seemed too small to hold the houses’ inhabitants, so that they spilled into the gutters and stood there offering objects for sale—matches, penny toys made of lead or tin, almanacs, patent medicines, cage-birds and so on, until darkness fell and the last prospect vanished. Then the house doors opened and somehow took them all in, along with the day’s returning workers, the preachers from the gas-lit street-corners, the children, the drunks, all in and battened down at last. But south London, once you got away from the river and its warehouses, was built low, so that whenever the fog cleared, you saw an immense sky, moving at its own pace through sun and cloud, or over the net of the stars.

  Daisy grew up with the smells of vinegar, gin, coal smoke, paraffin, sulphur, horse-dung from backyard stables, chloride of lime from backstreet factories, and baking bread eve
ry morning. When she was quite young they had been very poor. That was bad, but on the other hand, the great city was almost as well adapted to serve the very poor as the very rich. The stalls in the markets were strictly arranged, with all the cheapest stuff at one end. The customers accepted, without pretensions, which end they belonged to. At the cheap end you could get cow-heel, which didn’t turn as quickly as most kinds of meat. The cow-heel simmered murkily at the back of the range for most of the day, until the broth, according to Mrs Saunders, thickened of its own accord. After the long boil you took the bones out and pressed the glutinous grey mass under a plate weighed down by a flat iron on top of it. One of the glue factories down by the river came round collecting the bones, although they paid very little for used cow-heels.

  On quarter-days a hand-bill came through every letterbox: Keep ahead of your landlord. Late night work not objected to. These men would move your stuff in a barrow, which made less noise than a pony-cart. The Saunderses, mother and daughter, always circled round their home ground, never taking rooms twice in the same street. Daisy’s mother wanted to stay close to her job at the Falcon Brewery. Daisy minded babies. She had no brothers or sisters of her own, but that was an advantage, otherwise she’d have got sick and tired of babies by this time, Mrs Saunders said.

  It stood to reason that Daisy had had a father, but she couldn’t give a connected account of him. He was down on her birth certificate as a packer and handler. What had he ever packed or handled, where was he handling now? Neither mother nor daughter wanted to know this. Then came an unexpected, indeed inconceivable change of fortune when Mrs Saunders’ sister, never before referred to, left her a house, a small terrace house in Hastings. Solicitors wrote to say that they had been “directed” to tell her this, and “desired” to give her the particulars. ‘But I thought she was dead,’ Mrs Saunders said, again and again.