Abigail

by Malcolm Macdonald

  “Oh, but that would be cheating, Steamer.”

  “Really? You mean the love you’re writing about is not a universal love but just a very local one, found only in England in the 1870s? Pity, as young Charlotte says.”

  Abigail laughed. “Oh! You are…insidious.”

  “I mean it. A lot of us could get to be quite fond of your William and Catherine—just as long as neither of them tries to move in next door. Or next year.”

  “But why? If it’s true, then…”

  “Of course it’s true! Who’s denying its truth?”

  “Well then!”

  “Well what? We don’t want all truths to get around, do we? It’s true that it’s very easy for a titled person to get a forgery entered on a passport at a foreign legation, eh?” He looked knowingly at her. “But we don’t want that truth to circulate too widely, do we? And it’s true that women can take as intense a pleasure as men can in…hmm…copulation, as dear Kate and Bill insist on calling it with that implacable solemnity of theirs. Or yours. But we don’t want that truth getting about too widely, do we?”

  “Don’t we?”

  “Of course we don’t,” he said. “Not among our unmarried womenfolk anyway.” She drew breath to object but he went on. “Because—and I’d hardly have thought you needed the reminder—married or not, young women can have babies. And babies have nasty habits. They make messes. They mess up the whole business of inheritance and property. So a few years of ignorance and lost opportunities on the part of young females seems to me a small price to pay for social stability.”

  “If it were the only price,” she said.

  “What’s that mean?”

  She told him then of the night she went searching for Annie and found Uncle Walter. “Until then, Steamer, I thought the few girls one saw in Piccadilly and the main thoroughfares were all that the Social Evil amounted to. I had no idea of those teeming courts and back alleys. I thought there were perhaps a mere hundred girls in London. There must be tens of thousands.”

  “There are a lot, I know.”

  “And I thought they were sustained by a few thousand men of low class or of depraved natures. But how can that be? Are there hundreds of thousands of men of that kind? Of course not. It’s all kept going by normal, apparently decent family men like Uncle Walter. And by all those earnest, hard-working bachelors who have to marry late. There’s another price—a price in family life based on deceit and hypocrisy. And what of the price Annie has paid? Her ability to love blighted by disgust. The same thing must have happened to others, to most of them perhaps. I don’t think it’s so small a price, Steamer.”

  He shrugged. “What’s the alternative? D’you want men of our class to find their outlet with women of our class!”

  “Yes! With love as the basis, not cash. As between William and Catherine.”

  “And tiny feet?”

  “Well, there are various Malthusian devices…”

  “Which you and Pepe had never heard about, I’m sure!”

  “They can be perfected.”

  “They had better be, if you’re anything of a prophet.”

  She could not brush Caspar’s objections aside easily. Winifred’s she could explain away in terms of Winifred’s life and circumstances; but Caspar obviously spoke for people in general—and for their most tolerant wing, at that. Years of journalism, that is, of daily exposure to judgement, had taught her to accept such outright rejection or, at least, to make a convincing show of it. She knew how to smile with interest, and how to raise her eyebrows with a gesture that said: Oh, really? Do tell me exactly how bad it is—I long to know!

  It had not happened often. In a decade of sustained work she had had no more than two dozen pieces rejected outright, mostly short stories. And she could remember every one. She could almost quote them word for word, though others that had gone through with a smile and a nod had vanished from her memory like the ephemera they were. Sometimes she would come across articles that bore one of her pen names and wonder, Did I write that? But rejected pieces lived on within her like unhealed cysts beneath the skin.

  Worst of all was a rejection by a friend, for it could be ascribed to nothing but honest opinion, even to a care for her own best interests. (Indeed, she had noticed, editors always universalized their own objections: “Any reader with good instincts will scorn this creaking manipulation of the plot,” they would scribble down the margin. Or, “Your reader, I fear, will already have skipped to the end of this paragraph—if not of this chapter!”) At such times she met, or renewed acquaintance with, the demiurge that did her real writing for her. That implacable creature was no rational, urbane, polished young woman such as Abigail took pride in being. She-it would consider Pepe (and most rejections had naturally come from him, as first in the line of fire) with a smouldering hatred, seeing only a perverse, insensitive fool who stood between her distillation of wisdom—wit—pathos—and its proper achievement on the printed page. If she felt sorrow, it was for all those thousands of millions of readers, from now until the end of time, who were to be denied their share because of this doltish, illiterate, barbarian editor!

  For hours after she and Caspar had parted company that afternoon—with all outward show of affection and, on her part, of gratitude—she strolled through the park, scheming every possible means of putting Into a Narrow Circle before that vast and grateful army of readers whose property it rightly was. She could print a few hundred copies herself and employ out-of-work but respectable people to leave them in railway trains about to depart, squeeze them into library shelves, pop them through reviewers’ letterboxes until a groundswell of clamour and curiosity forced Pepe into doing a proper edition. Or she could do as Caspar suggested—recast the tale as an allegory, set in the twentieth century (Into a Future Circle—what an intriguing title! Who could fail to want to read it!), and then, when it was accepted in its theatrical clothing and had passed into that special oblivion reserved for last month’s causes célèbres, she would hurl the real book in the public’s face to let them see just what it was they had accepted. Into a Narrow Circle? Yes, the change would carry a double irony.

  She began to grow quite excited by the idea. If she had picked any other phrase but “hurl…in the public’s face,” she might have been so fired with enthusiasm that she would have tried it. But that phrase had been Ruskin’s when he had accused Jimmy Whistler of “hurling a pot of paint in the public’s face.” Jimmy had sued him for libel and won; but a British jury had awarded him no more than a farthing’s damages. She remembered it not only because she had covered the trial but also because Jimmy had made a joke about it at her farewell dinner. So, in her mind, futility clung to the very phrase, “hurl…in the public’s face.” Before the trial Jimmy had been so sure, so convinced of the rightness of his cause—as convinced as she now was of hers. That memory alone was enough to tip the balance of her judgement back from hot to cold, until at last she saw, with bleak resignation, how impossible it was for her book to be published. For the first time in her life she hated her own country and its people. A land of philistine jurors.

  That evening she told Celia, “There seems no point in showing my parents this book. I think I’ll just lock it away.”

  “Just like that.”

  “No, Celia!” She was sharp. “Not ‘just like that.’ But let’s pretend, eh?”

  “Sorry.”

  “You look it.”

  Celia was hurt. “Oh? Should I be sorry? What’ve I done?”

  Abigail, forced to concede her own unreasonableness, smiled. “Of course you shouldn’t. I just wish I lived in any other country or any other time.”

  Celia smiled too. “Ancient Rome?” she asked.

  “They probably knew it all.”

  “Knew what?”

  “What I try to say in my book.”

  Celia grasped Abigail’s arm, sud
denly alive. “Abbie! Let’s go back to Rome! Just for the summer, you know. Just painting and reading and—and not deciding anything!”

  “We’ll see,” Abigail said. Something in her leaped up with joy at the suggestion.

  Just after she turned out the gas, Celia said, “D’you think I might read this book, Abbie?”

  She read it on the train back to London. She almost finished it on the train to Digswell. And she read the last few pages in the coach to Maran Hill, one of the Stevensons’ country homes, where the Earl and Countess were passing a few weeks by way of a midseason break.

  “Well?” Abigail asked as she finished. They were driving along the foot of the Maran valley, one of the loveliest in all Hertfordshire.

  “It’s an idyllic tale,” Celia said. “But lord, what a fool I am!”

  “Why?” Abigail laughed.

  “I’m ashamed to tell you.”

  “Tell what?”

  “I had no idea…why men and women…you know. Of course it’s obvious. Yet I’d never seen it. I never understood.”

  “But…Henry?”

  Celia shook her head. Then she laughed bitterly. “To think I was afraid to tell you about him! And all the while I was the ignorant one. Is it really like…as you say? Such an exquisite joy?”

  “But what did Annie tell you? In Rome you told me she talked of nothing else.”

  Celia hid her face and chuckled. “I thought they did to her what Henry did to me. Just decorated her and…and drooled.”

  An intense green light reflected off the water meadows beside the river; it filled the cab with an unearthly radiance.

  “Damn Henry!” Celia said, looking up again.

  “Never mind, Celia. You’re young yet. You’ll still have your day.”

  Perhaps, she thought, I should lend this book to all England—one reader at a time! Only the rational parts of her would ever learn to accept the impossibility of seeing it published.

  It was marvellous to see her parents together again, especially as they were so obviously relishing a second honeymoon still. Over dinner they relived for Abigail’s and Celia’s benefit the triumph of their first railway contract—Summit Tunnel on the Manchester & Leeds, over forty years ago. John had been no more than a navvy ganger when the tunnel started. Then the contractor had gone bankrupt and Walter Thornton, the company’s engineer, had taken a big risk to his own reputation and had proposed John as the man to finish the job. The same day Nora, tramping from Manchester to Leeds, had come into John’s life with nothing but a faded blue dress, a gold sovereign, and a phenomenal gift for figures. Together they had slaved through the night working out all the costings “every way from Jericho.” When John went before the Manchester & Leeds board the following day he dazzled them with Nora’s sums; without her, he swore, he’d never have been trusted with so great an enterprise—the world’s then-longest tunnel. He’d come straight back to the Summit workings and asked Nora to marry him.

  Nora was so carried away at the retelling of this tale that she ran upstairs to get the very blue dress she had been wearing—as if the story would not become real until everyone had seen it and felt it.

  “I’ve not washed it nor anything,” she said. “I left it as it was, to look at in case we ever got too proud.”

  “What’s this?” Abigail asked. “Blood? It looks like blood.”

  Nora smiled and nodded. “Next day, while John was in Manchester, I went to help break up a rabbit warren. Conies, we called them. Breaking warrens and squandering conies was a great country sport in those days.”

  “You were always a huntress, weren’t you!” Abigail said. “I’d never realized it went back that far.”

  “And further!” Nora answered. “I got two dozen conies that day. That’s rabbit blood on that dress.”

  “I can’t imagine you like that,” Abigail told her. “I can only ever imagine you in places like this.”

  Nora grinned at John. “He can,” she said. “He proposed to me in that lane, dead rabbits and all. And me barefoot, in that dress.” She put her hand in his. “He said—you’ll excuse the Yorkshire, but it means nothing in any other tongue—he said, ‘I hope I may always remember thee like this, Nora, my…most precious.’” Her eyes began to swim. “‘Dusty. Loppered wi’ blood. Bare of feet.’” Her voice broke. She could not continue.

  John supplied the rest, speaking only just above a whisper; his lips scarcely moved. He took both her hands between his. “‘There’s grand changes agate, they’ll sweep up thee and me and carry us I know not where. But I ’ope thou might never lose this…this sunshine i’ thy spirit.’” He did not turn from her. “And she never did,” he added.

  “And never will!” Abigail ran between them and put an arm around each. “Oh, I’m so glad about you two. We all are.”

  “Amen,” Nora said.

  Later, when they were preparing for bed, Celia said, “What is it about some people—they can make life so much more real than it usually is? They carry an extra sort of electricity around with them.”

  “My parents, you mean? Yes, they have…”

  “But you too, Abbie dear. You also have it. There’s always more life when you come into a room, and it departs with you. You don’t have to say anything, or do anything. It’s just something that’s…you!”

  At that moment Nora came in. “I suppose I may read this book that’s doing the rounds of the family?” she asked. “So as not to feel entirely superannuated.”

  “I shan’t publish it,” Abigail warned. “Winnie and Steamer have persuaded me.” She handed the by-now-tattered envelope to her mother.

  “From all I hear,” Nora said, “that’ll simply quadruple my pleasure.”

  She finished the book shortly after lunch the following day. Abigail had watched her from safe hides, through cracks in doorways, peeping in mirrors. But Nora’s face had given nothing away. Now, as her mother crossed the ballroom, she was afraid to turn and look at her face. She stood in the large bow window, peering out through the lavender-tinted glass at the lawns and a small fountain down near the ha-ha.

  Nora put her arms around her from behind and, kissing her on the ear, gave a gentle hug. “I want your father to read it,” she said.

  Abigail was too delighted—and astounded—to know how to respond.

  “There’s so much in it,” Nora went on, “that we both know and have rediscovered, but we’d never have the wit to say.”

  Abigail began to laugh. “I thought Winnie and Steamer would be for it and you’d be dead set against it. Have I changed so much? Or is it you? Or did I never really know you?”

  “Who knows that side of anyone? I didn’t know it of you. I didn’t know you saw it all so deeply.” She sighed. “Oh Abigail, what shall you do? You’re no lass for these times. You’d want eyes as narrow as one pair of cufflinks to be sure of happiness. Chain and all. Aye! What shall you do?”

  “I’m finished with Pepe,” she said. And she wept, quite spontaneously. All the tension of these last weeks suddenly brought her down. A child again, she turned into Nora’s arms and cried for the sheer comfort to be found there.

  “You never could do the easy thing,” Nora said, clutching her hard. “Not from birth. The first thing you ever drew—you remember that? A flower pot? The first thing that wasn’t just scribble?”

  Abigail, her sobbing only part stilled, shook her head.

  “In this very house it was. Above this very room. If you covered one sheet of paper, you covered twenty before it satisfied you. There never was such a child for going on and on, through anger and tears, on and on, till you got it right. I wonder if any of us ever changes. You said last night I was always a huntress. My earliest memory of a great excitement is going ratting with a stray terrier. And if I live to be a hundred, I’m like to die in the hunting field.”

  Abigail’s weeping had
subsided. A void was replacing the sorrow. “Let’s go along the linden walk,” she suggested. And when Nora turned back toward the hall, she said, “No. No hats. No gloves. And damn who meets us! If that old blue dress were down here still, I’d say put that on and kick off your shoes as well.”

  The ha-ha was less than a hundred yards long, little more than the width of the lower lawn, which it made seem continuous with the deer-cropped parkland beyond. At each end, behind a concealing shrubbery, its ditch rose to a wrought-iron fence, with a wicket gate to give access to the south park. From the western gate stretched an avenue of ancient limes that had probably been planted in Elizabethan days. This was the linden walk Abigail had suggested.

  “I still can’t publish it,” she said when they had gained the avenue.

  “No question of that.”

  Abigail laughed, with hardly a trace of bitterness. “Somehow the disappointment of it is outweighed by your approval. That means more to me.”

  “Then you may be thankful your next crust of bread didn’t depend on publication!”

  Abigail stooped to pick a buttercup, trembling in the breeze. “D’you still like butter?” She held it below her mother’s chin. “Yes, you do. So do I.” But she did not test herself. “I used to have a sort of rule that I’d try to live by my earnings and leave my income untouched. But I never applied it absolutely rigorously. Perhaps I should do that. Is there a way of locking up my income against any weakening in my resolve?”

  Nora snorted. “You’d be as ridiculous as a steam engine with sails! I was making the opposite point. Because you have an income, because you don’t depend on your earnings, you can be that much more honest in life. If it’s true, for example, that my approval means more to you than publication, you can accept that fact and say so. You must also accept what you are—a rich woman.”

  “But how?”

  “That’s what I asked. What shall you do now?”

  Abigail sighed.

  “Still,” Nora went on quickly, “no need to make up your mind all in a hurry. Time’s on your side. Celia told me at breakfast that you’re thinking of going back to Rome and spending the summer painting. I think that would be excellent. You need a long break from everything. And painting was always a kind of second love, wasn’t it?”