by A. S. Byatt
‘They dance for their mates, as do turkeys and peacocks.’
‘But you do not feel your own sense of wonder corresponds to something beyond yourself, William?’
‘I do indeed. But I also ask myself, what has this sense of wonder to do with my moral sense? For the Creation we so admire does not appear to have a Creator who cares for his creatures. Nature is red in tooth and claw, as Mr Tennyson put it. The Amazon jungle does indeed arouse a sense of wonder at its abundance and luxuriance. But there is a spirit there—a terrible spirit of mindless striving or apathetic inertia—a kind of vegetable greed and vast decay—which makes a mindless natural force much easier to believe in. For I think you will not accept the old deists’ arguments that tigers and strangling figs were designed to prevent the miseries of old age in deer and of rotting in tree trunks, any more than you accept Whewell’s ideas about day and night.’
‘The world has changed so much, William, in my lifetime. I am old enough to have believed in our First Parents in Paradise, as a little boy, to have believed in Satan hidden in the snake, and in the Archangel with the flaming sword, closing the gates. I am old enough to have believed without question in the Divine Birth on a cold night with the sky full of singing angels and the shepherds staring up in wonder, and the strange kings advancing across the sand on camels with gifts. And now I am presented with a world in which we are what we are because of the mutations of soft jelly and calceous bone matter through unimaginable millennia—a world in which angels and devils do not battle in the Heavens for virtue and vice, but in which we eat and are eaten and absorbed into other flesh and blood. All the music and painting, all the poetry and power is so much illusion. I shall moulder like a mushroom when my time comes, which is not long. It is likely that the injunction to love each other is no more than the prudent instinct of sociability, of parental protectiveness, in a creature related to a great ape. I used to love to see paintings of the Annunciation—the angel with his wings dipped in the rainbow, of which the butterfly and the bird of Paradise were poor, imperfect echoes, holding the white and gold lily and going down on his knee to the thoughtful young girl who was about to be the Mother of God, love made flesh, knowledge given to us, or lent. And now all that is as it were erased, and there is a black backcloth on an empty stage, and I see a chimpanzee, with puzzled eyes and a hanging brow and great ugly teeth, clutching its hairy offspring to its wrinkled breast—and is this love made flesh?
‘I know my answer—it is—if God works at all he works in the ape towards Man—but I cannot measure my loss, it is the pit of despair itself. I began my life as a small boy whose every action was burned into the gold record of his good and evil deeds, where it would be weighed and looked over by One with merciful eyes, to whom I was walking, step by unsteady step. I end it like a skeleton leaf, to be made humus, like a mouse crunched by an owl, like a beef-calf going to the slaughter, through a gate which opens only one way, to blood and dust and destruction. And then, I think, no brute beast could have such thoughts. No frog, no hound even, could have a vision of the Angel of Annunciation. Where does it all come from?’
‘It is a mystery. Mystery may be another name for God. It has been well argued that mystery is another name for Matter—we are and have access to Mind, but Matter is mysterious in its very nature, however we choose to analyse the laws of its metamorphoses. The laws of the transformation of Matter do not explain it away.’
‘Now you argue on my side. And yet I feel all these arguments are nothing, the motions of minds that are not equipped to carry them through.’
‘And there too is hope, as well as dread. Where do they come from, our minds?’
Away from the hexagonal stadium, much attention was being paid to the mysteries of the mundane and the material. Eugenia and Rowena, and the other girls too, for there was to be a bevy of bridesmaids, were always undergoing fittings. A steady stream of dressmakers, milliners and seamstresses wove their paths in and out of the various nurseries and boudoirs. Odd glimpses could be had of the young ladies standing still, cocooned in silk, whilst the neat, self-effacing little attendants, their mouths bristling with pins and their hands busily snapping scissors, went round and round them. New bedrooms were in preparation for William and Eugenia. She occasionally brought him patterns of silk twill or damask to approve. He had no sense that disapproval was possible, and in any case was indifferent enough to his creature comforts to be mildly amused by all this industry and tastefulness, though he was less delighted to find himself the object of the attentions of Lionel Alabaster’s tailor and valet, who made him a wardrobe consisting not only of his wedding-suit, but of suitable gentlemen’s country wear, breeches, jackets, boots. As time drew on, the kitchens began to smell delightfully of the baking of batches of cakes and jellies and puddings. William was expected now, as he had not quite been before, to sit in the smoking-room with Edgar and Lionel and Robin Swinnerton and their friends, whose conversation had only two topics, the mysteries of breeding horses and hounds, and the laying of bets and taking of dares. After several glasses of port, Edgar would, invariably, begin to recount the high moments of his life. The time he and Sultan had flown over the wall into the Far Paddock, where they had almost broken their necks. The time he had jumped Ivanhoe in through the window of the Hall for a bet, and skidded the length of it on a Turkey carpet. The time he had swum the river in flood on Ivanhoe, and nearly been swept away.
William liked to sit quietly in his corner during these relations, invisible, he hoped, in a cloud of smoke. The veins stood out on Edgar’s temples and down his neck. He had both brute strength and a nervous spirit, like his horse. His voice varied between a deeply melodious mumble and a kind of strangled shout that was painful to hear. William judged him. He thought he was likely to die of an apoplexy in the not too distant future, and that this would be of no consequence, since his existence was entirely without aim or value. He imagined the poor horse, snorting and sliding on the Hall floor, its silk haunches twisted with stress. And the man, laughing as he laughed in action, making it dance on stone, as it would never have done in nature. William had not entirely thrown off his father’s censorious religion. He judged Edgar Alabaster in the eye of the God he no longer believed in, and found him wanting.
One evening, only a week before the wedding, he became aware that Edgar judged him, too. He was sitting back invisibly whilst Edgar told a tale of driving a gig through narrow gaps in seven hedges, and must have allowed his thoughts to appear on his face, for he found Edgar’s hot, red face disagreeably close to his own.
‘You must not have the nerve or the strength to do that, Sir. You sit there and smile fatuously, but you could not bring such a thing off.’
‘No doubt I could not,’ said William pacifically, his legs stretched in front of him, his muscles relaxed, as he knew they should be, faced with such aggression.
‘I do not like your attitude. I have never liked it. I believe you sneer in your heart.’
‘I do not mean to sneer. Since we are to be brothers, I hope I would not give such an appearance. It would be most wrong.’
‘Ha. Brothers, you say. I don’t like that. You are underbred, Sir, you are no good match for my sister. There is bad blood in you, vulgar blood.’
‘I do not accept either “bad” or “vulgar”. I am aware that I am no good match, in that I have few prospects and no fortune. Your father and Eugenia have done me the great kindness of overlooking that. I hope you may come to accept their decision.’
‘You should wish rather to fight me. I insulted you. You are a miserable creature without breeding or courage. You should stand up, Sir, and face me.’
‘I think not. As for breeding, I count my father as a good man, and an honest man, and a kind man, and I know no other good reasons for respect except his high achievement. As for courage, I think I may claim that to have lived ten years in great hardship on the Amazon, to have survived murder plots and poisonous snakes, and shipwreck and fifteen days on a li
feboat in the mid-Atlantic may reasonably compare with driving a poor horse into a house through a window. I think I know what true courage is, Sir. It does not consist in fisticuffs as a response to insults.’
‘Well said, William Adamson,’ said Robin Swinnerton. ‘Well said, my fellow bridegroom.’
Edgar Alabaster clawed at William’s coat collar. ‘You shall not have her, do you hear? She is not for such as you. Stand up.’
‘Please do not breathe in my face. You resemble an angry dragon. You will not provoke me into disgracing a house and family I hope to belong to.’
‘Stand up.’
‘In the Amazons, the young men of the tribes who make themselves stupid with spirits behave as you do. They often end by killing each other inadvertently.’
‘I should not care if you were killed.’
‘No. You would care if you were. Eugenia might care deeply if I were. She has already—’
He had not known where he was going. He was appalled that his tongue, even in anger, had run as far as Eugenia’s dead lover. The effect on Edgar of even that half-allusion, choked off, was startling. He went white, drew himself up awkwardly and dusted down his trousers repeatedly with heavy hands. William thought, Now he will really try to kill me, and waited for the blow, turned to avoid it, to leap sideways to kick at the groin. But Edgar Alabaster merely made an incoherent, choking sound, and went out of the room, still beating his clothes with his hands. Lionel said, ‘I beg you not to—not to make too much of Edgar. He is wild in his cups, and he is quiet after, he often does not remember what has passed. It was the drink insulted you.’
‘I am happy to accept that explanation.’
‘Good man, fellow bridegroom. Civilised man. We are not armed warriors now, are we? Civilised men in smoking jackets, we are, who stay seated as we should. I admire you, William. Edgar is an anachronism. You didn’t think I knew such a word, I’ll be bound.’
‘On the contrary. Thank you for your kindness.’
‘We must see each other often through our marriages.’
‘With great pleasure.’
He found it hard, afterwards, to remember the exact emotions of his wedding day. It was his observation that all ceremonies brought with them, besides a sense of deeply coloured significance, a heightened sense of unreality, as though he were a watcher, not a participant. He thought this sense of watching might derive from the absence of simple belief in the Christian story, the Christian world, as Harald had so movingly described it to him. Irrelevant analogies poked their way through the curtains of his inner eye, even in these most sacred moments, so that, as he stood beside Robin Swinnerton, under the booming organ of the parish church of Saint Zachariah, and watched Eugenia and Rowena advancing along the aisle on the arms of Edgar and Lionel, he thought of the religious festivals at Para and Barra, the puppet-images of the Virgin, decorated in laces and silk floss and silver ribbons, smiling perpetually on their way to the church, and beyond that to the dances in Indian villages, where he was dwarfed by masked beings with the heads of owls, or ibises, or anacondas.
And yet it was a very English, a very bucolic wedding. Eugenia and Rowena were dressed like sisters, but not like twins, in white silk dresses with long lace trains, one trimmed with pink rosebuds all over, and one—Eugenia’s—with cream and gold. Both wore crowns of the same rosebuds, and pearl necklaces. Both carried mixed lilies and roses—the scent dizzied him as the procession reached the place where he stood to receive her. Behind them was a bevy of little girls, with ribbons and streamers in pink and gold, wearing dresses of white net with satin sashes, and carrying baskets of rose petals to throw. The church was packed: the absence of any friend or family of his own was more than made up for by the ranks of Alabasters and Swinnertons and local friends and connections, all nodding in flowers and ribbons. Rowena was flushed with excitement, and Eugenia was wax-white, most colourful in the gold of her downcast lashes, her lips pale, her cheeks smoothly, evenly, colourless. They made their vows before Harald, who married both his daughters with sonorous pleasure in the repeated phrases, and spoke briefly about the moving nature of a double wedding which made it more than usually clear that a family was being enlarged by additions, rather than anyone being taken away. For Rowena would remain in the parish, and Eugenia for the time being in her home, now William Adamson’s home, which was a matter for rejoicing.
He should have been conscious, he thought, of two souls speaking their vows together, but he was not. He was conscious of all the soft finery surrounding Eugenia’s body, and the scent of the flowers, and the perfection and clarity with which she spoke her responses, as opposed to Rowena, who tripped, and stumbled, and put her hand to her mouth, and smiled at her husband for forgiveness. Eugenia looked straight in front of her, at the altar. When he took her hand, to put on the ring, he had to push, to manoeuvre, as though the finger had no will or life of its own. And he thought, standing there in the church, on the circumference of her skirts, Will she be so numb in the bed tonight, what shall I do? And then he thought how many men in his position must have thought such secret thoughts, all of them unuttered and unutterable. And he thought, as they progressed back through the church, between the respectable ladies in their florid bonnets, and the dark gentlemen in their silky cravats, between the modestly clad servants in their straw hats and the few farm labourers at the very back, that everyone at the wedding had a secret thought about him and her, those two, how would they be when left alone together? Everyone’s imagination tickled and pricked and clutched at him, he sensed, as he went by them. She was too innocent to know, he thought. He tried to imagine Lady Alabaster imparting information to Eugenia, and could not. She was there in the front row, smiling benignly in glistening mauve.
Everyone does survive their marriage night, he thought, coming blinking out into the daylight of the churchyard, and the chatter of birds in the trees and the shrill squeals of the little girls. The species is propagated, it goes on, innocent girls become wives and mothers, everywhere, every day. Eugenia’s hand was very still in his, her face white, her breathing faint. He had no idea what she was thinking or feeling.
The little girls pelted them with petals which a sudden gust of wind lifted into the air like a cloud of wings, rosy, gold and white. They swarmed around the two couples, making their shrill noise, and hurling their soft missiles.
The day passed in eating, and speeches, and running on the lawn, and finally in dancing. He danced with Eugenia, who remained white and silent, gravely watching her steps. He danced with Rowena, who laughed, and with Enid, who chattered about his coming to the house as a shipwrecked stranger. He saw Eugenia go past, in Edgar’s arms, and then in Lionel’s, and then in Robin Swinnerton’s, and everyone seemed to twirl dizzily even when the music stopped. When, finally, the young Swinnertons drove off and the Alabasters began to make preparations for the night, he was uncertain where to go, and no one offered him guidance. Edgar and Lionel lounged in the smoking-room and he did not think he would be welcome even if he wanted to be there, which he did not. Harald passed him in the corridor and stopped him, and said, ‘God bless you, my boy,’ but offered him no advice. Lady Alabaster had retired early. His things had been moved from his little attic room to his new dressing-room, which opened out of the new bedchamber prepared for him and Eugenia. He made his way up there, nervous and lonely—Eugenia had already gone up—unsure of what, if any, ceremonial was required.
In his dressing-room, a valet was turning down his bed and warming the sheets, an exercise that might surely be deemed to be unnecessary. A new nightshirt had been laid out for him, and new silk slippers, embroidered by Eugenia. The valet, a thin, black-coated creature with long white hands and soft russet whiskers, poured water from a blue jug into his washbasin and handed him soap and a towel. He indicated the new hairbrushes, ivory-backed, a present from Eugenia, and bowed himself out of the room, softly, quickly. William walked across to the connecting door, and knocked. He had no idea how she was, wha
t state she was in, what he should do. He vaguely believed they might consult with each other.
‘Come in,’ said the clear voice, and he opened the door, to find her standing in the furled, crushed circle of the dress, its lace spread all over, her shoulders rising white out of her petticoats, marble and untouchable as he had seen them on that first evening. Her headdress was cast on her dressing-table, and had begun to wilt. Her maid was unpinning her hair. It fell in crimped runnels over her shoulders. The maid, a thin girl, in a black stuff gown, was brushing out this hair, stroke by silky stroke. It lifted electrically to meet the brush, and clung here, ballooning, before the next stroke began. It crackled.
‘I am sorry,’ he said. ‘I will go back.’
‘Martha has just to unhook me, and finish the brushing—I need at least two hundred strokes every evening if my hair is to have any life in it. I hope you are not too tired?’
‘Oh no,’ he said, standing in the doorway. She was white all over. Even her nipples must be white. He remembered Ben Jonson. ‘O so white! O so soft! O so sweet is she!’ He felt an intruder then, in all his clothes, in front of Martha the maid, who shared his embarrassment, who turned her head away and brushed and brushed and brushed more intently.
Eugenia was not embarrassed. She stepped out of the ring of her discarded lace trains and floating silks. She said, ‘As you see, we are nearly finished. Attend to these laces, Martha, leave off brushing until these things are away. I do not think all this can be quite as you expected to find it? Do you like your rooms? I paid special attention to the colours you seem to prefer—a kind of green, with touches of crimson here and there. I hope all is to your liking.’
‘Oh yes. It is all most beautiful, most comfortable.’
‘Don’t pull, Martha. Unhook me, here and here. I shall be only a very little time, William, now.’
It was his dismissal. He went back into his dressing-room, leaving the door ajar, and put on his own nightshirt and the pretty slippers. Then he waited, standing in the candlelight, with the moonlight behind it, a curious sheeted figure, attentive to small sounds. He heard the maid run to and fro, he heard the bed creak as Eugenia climbed in. And then he heard the maid at his door, knocking softly, opening. ‘Madam is ready for you now, Sir. If you would care to come in, everything is ready.’