by A. S. Byatt
Neither was the man created for the woman; but the woman for the man.
‘And he continues,’ said Mr Hawke excitedly, ‘ “For this cause ought the woman to have power on her head because of the angels.” Now this is a hard saying to understand, but it is thought to relate to the temptation placed before the angels when the congregation, praying, attracts their attention—those angels imperfectly in possession of their spiritual nature—’
‘So we are to suppose that all the wonderfully confected millinery of our great ladies, all the slaughtered birds of Paradise and egrets, all the macaws and ostriches, blue jays and snow-white doves, Mr Hawke, are what you call power to deflect the lusts of angels?’ enquired Mrs Jesse. ‘Power they are, those towers and turrets of poor dead creatures put up to terrify like savages with bird-masks and golden feathery cloaks, power of money to send out ships across the sea to slaughter poor innocent living beings to nod above dewlaps, and flutter like portative dovecots in the breeze of society chatter.’
“Saint Paul had no knowledge of such things, Mrs Jesse. He spoke out against female vanity and male lust and showed that these things were not trivial, but part of the very fabric of things, involving Beings celestial and infernal, as our great prophet, Swedenborg, has most clearly shown. Female vanity in all its forms was an abomination to him, and that would of course include modern millinery in many of its modes, as you observe.’
‘He said,’ remarked Captain Jesse, ‘that if a woman have long hair it is a glory to her.’
‘He did indeed, and continued, the verse continues, “for her hair is given to her for a covering”. She should be covered,’ cried Mr Hawke.
‘When we were married,’ said Captain Jesse, ‘Emily’s hair was below her waist, all curls, I remember. I thought it was beautiful. It was beautiful.’
‘Gone the way of all flesh,’ said his wife, lightly, touching the silvery wings beside her face.
‘Only changed,’ said Captain Jesse. ‘Not exactly in the twinkling of an eye, though it can feel like that, the years race past, and where are we, the feathered feet of time flitter past us and we are changed.’
‘You speak frivolously of mysteries,’ said Mr Hawke.
‘And you are disposed to be very severe with us,’ said Mrs Jesse, ‘as though we were a flock in a church, where we are not, though we are gathered together for a serious purpose. And I think we should leave off this discussion and ask Mrs Papagay to calm us, and open our hearts to what messages those who are loved and vanished may wish to impart to us. Do you think a little gentle singing would be of help, Mrs Papagay?’
‘The atmosphere is a little too electric, I think, Mrs Jesse. I feel a great striving of angry and mischievous spirits which is dangerous. I think we should join hands and pray for calm.’
She held out her hands, to Mr Hawke on her left, and Mrs Jesse on her right. Sophy had managed to position herself between Mrs Jesse and Captain Jesse. It was more than she could do, to dip her fingers in Mr Hawke’s hot wrath. Mrs Hearnshaw was between Captain Jesse and Mr Hawke. Mrs Papagay felt great waves of dull red heat, sweating heat inside broadcloth, coming off Mr Hawke. She was all contrariwise, she put it to herself, and could not collect and recognise the individual feelings as she usually did. Instead, defensively, she was thinking, from a distance, and the séance never went anywhere if she was thinking. They were quite interesting thoughts, about how spiritual battles could truly rage, even in quiet firelit seaside drawing-rooms, fuelled by texts flung like arrows, made of words that were there to indicate things, hair, feathers, angels, man, woman, God. There had been a kind of jousting with words between Mr Hawke and Captain Jesse. The words were almost things, in the sense that she had seen, as they talked, a head of hair, a hat, a winged male body burning with desire, and yet they were not things, in the way in which her knowledge of Mrs Hearnshaw’s distress was a thing, or her sense of Sophy’s spiritual vastation, caused by she knew not what, not last week’s creature full of eyes, she thought. Sophy’s state was puzzling. She turned her attention to Mrs Jesse, who was also puzzling, who had had some understanding of last week’s message, which she had chosen not to share, Mrs Papagay was sure. Mrs Jesse had withdrawn a hand, and was fiddling with the leather straps around Aaron’s feet. She was releasing the great bird, massaging his black skin with her fingers, as he stood on the edge of the table and bowed, and rattled his quills. He then took one or two steps towards Mr Hawke, turning his head to one side and peering out of a glittering inky eye. Mr Hawke opened his mouth to speak and then thought better of it. Aaron put his beak against his breast, hunched up his shoulders, and appeared to sleep. The room was full of powers, wrathful and yearning, disconsolate and amorous, the movement of them swayed and lapped around the heads bent over the table.
The silence thickened. A petal fell. A sudden flurry of rain lashed the windowpane—Captain Jesse turned his great head to consider the weather. Mrs Papagay proposed that they try automatic writing. She drew the paper towards herself—she did not wish to impose on Sophy. She waited. After a moment the pen wrote confidently:
Blessed are they that mourn.
For THEY SHALL BE COMFORTED.
‘Is anyone there?’ Mr Hawke enquired. ‘Any message for any particular person present?’
He will not come, she said.
‘Who will not come?’ said Mr Hawke.
‘Arthur,’ said Mrs Jesse, with a little sigh. ‘It means Arthur, I am sure.’
The pen wrote rapidly.
And he that shuts Love out in turn shall be
Shut out from Love and on her threshold lie
Howling in outer darkness.
The pen appeared to like this word, for it played with it, repeating it several times, ‘howling’, ‘howling’, ‘howling’, and then adding
those that lawless and incertain thoughts
Imagine howling—’tis too horrible …
‘A poetic spirit,’ said Mr Hawke.
‘The first two are Alfred,’ said Mrs Jesse. ‘The pen may have hooked them, so to speak, out of my mind. The last is from Measure for Measure, a passage about the fate of the soul after death which Alfred was much struck by, as we all were. I have no idea who is uttering these things.’
One shall be Comforted. All tears shall be wiped away. The Bridegroom Cometh. Ye know neither the day nor the Hour when he cometh. Light the Lamp.
‘Who is telling us these things?’ asked Mrs Jesse.
‘No, oh no,’ said Sophy Sheekhy, in a strangled voice.
‘Sophy—’ cried Mrs Papagay.
Sophy felt cold hands at her neck, cold fingers on her warm lips. The flesh crept over the bones of her skull, along the backs of her fingers, under the whalebone. She began to shake and jerk. She fell back open-mouthed in her chair and saw something, someone, standing in the bay of the window. It was larger than life, and more exiguous, a kind of pillar of smoke, or fire or cloud, in a not exactly human form. It was not the dead young man, for whom she had felt such pity, it was a living creature with three wings, all hanging loosely on one side of it. On that side, the winged side, it was dull gold and had the face of a bird of prey, dignified, golden-eyed, feather-breasted, powdered with hot metallic particles. On its other side, turned into the shadow, it was grey like wet clay, and formless, putting out stumps that were not arms, moving what was not a mouth in a thin whisper. It spoke in two voices, one musical, one a papery squeak. ‘Tell her I wait.’
‘Tell whom?’ said Sophy, in a small voice they all heard.
‘Emilia. I triumph in conclusive bliss. Tell her. We shall be joined and made one Angel.’
It was hungry for the life of the living creatures in the room.
‘Sophy,’ said Mrs Papagay. ‘What do you see?’
‘Gold wings,’ said Sophy. ‘It says, “I wait.” It says to tell you, “I triumph in conclusive bliss.” It says to tell Emily—Mrs Jesse—Emily—that—they shall be joined, and made one Angel. In the hereafter, that is.’
‘Well, Richard,’ she said. ‘We may not always have got on together as well as we should, and our marriage may not have been a success, but I consider that an extremely unfair arrangement, and shall have nothing to do with it. We have been through bad times in this world, and I consider it only decent to share our good times, presuming we have them, in the next.’
Richard picked up her hand and looked at it.
‘Why, Emily,’ he said, and then again, ‘why, Emily—’
‘You are not usually at a loss for words,’ said his wife.
‘No, I am not. It is only that—I understood—I understood you to be waiting—for some such communication. I had never supposed you would say—anything like—what you have just said.’
‘It may be that you have other ideas,’ said Mrs Jesse.
‘You know that is not so. I have tried to be understanding, I have tried to be patient, I have respected—’
‘Too well, too well, you tried too well, we both—’
Captain Jesse shook his head, like a surfacing swimmer.
‘But all through these séances I understood you to be waiting—’
‘I do love him,’ said Emily. ‘It is hard to love the dead. It is hard to love the dead enough.’
Mrs Papagay was made intensely happy by this exchange. Who would have thought it, she said to herself, and yet, how right, it was only when the Angel threatened her with the loss of the husband she had taken for granted that she really saw him, saw him in terms of his loss, his vanishing, that was implied, and was driven to imagine existence without him. She knew she was romanticising, but she was filled with a kind of bubbling delight at the spectacle of the looks, shrewd and wondering together, that passed between these two elderly people, who might be supposed to have no possible secrets from each other, and yet had this great one. How interesting, said Mrs Papagay to herself, and was brought back by a kind of choking sound from Sophy, who was turning a terrible colour, ash and plum and lapis blue together, her lips moving numbly. She snorted, she sucked desperately for breath, as though her life was being sucked out of her. Mrs Papagay stood up quietly and went round and put her own warm hands on Sophy’s chilly temples. Sophy’s little heels drummed on the carpet, her spine arched and jerked. Her eyes were open and unseeing. Nothing so dreadful had happened to her before. Mrs Papagay tried to pour love and holding, withholding, along her own fingers. Sophy lay entranced in the presence of absence, absence made of dripping clay and the dust falling from drooping feathers. Sophy felt it weaken, sighed its terrible rattling sigh in her own larynx, saw it disintegrate, baleful, yearning, into the spangly gloom which frothed up, boiled, swayed and was black liquid again. She turned her head towards Captain Jesse and saw his albatross stretching its wings, its huge uncaged wings, and staring with its gold-rimmed eye.
‘Sophy,’ said Mrs Papagay.
‘I am quite well,’ said Sophy, ‘now.’
Mrs Papagay judged it might be better to end the séance with some perhaps uplifting written messages. It was always surprising how the living, in the presence of the dead, continued to be preoccupied with their living concerns, great and trivial. No one but herself had been much shocked by Sophy’s state. No one had feared for her. As though they all knew Sophy was acting, Mrs Papagay thought, although they also needed to believe she was not; they believed what they needed to believe, either way, she thought, and thus kept the dark, the ferocious, lurching dark, in order and at bay. She herself knew Sophy was not acting, but could not see what Sophy had seen. Afterwards, she thought she must have been mad not to suppose the forces in the room might be unappeased and dangerous, but then, she was like the others, she knew it was all a parlour game, at one level, a kind of communal story-telling, or charade, even whilst she held Sophy’s mortally cold hands. Anyway, she drew the paper absently towards herself, and took up the pencil, which squirmed gleefully in her hand, and set off, possessed, across the paper, in a fanatically neat, unhesitating hand.
Is the Conjugial Angel stone
That here he stands with heavy head
The backward-looking pillared dead
Inert, moss-covered, all alone?
The Holy Ghost trawls in the Void
With fleshly Sophy on His Hook
The Sons of God crowd round to look
At plumpy limbs to be enjoyed
The Greater Man casts out the line
With dangling Sophy as the lure
Who howls around the Heavens’ colme
To clasp the Human Form Divine
Rose-petals fall from fallen hair
That in the clay is redolent
Of liquid oozings and the scent
Of the dark Pit, the Beastly lair
And is my Love become the beast
That was, and is not, and yet is,
Who stretches scarlet holes to kiss
And clasps with claws the fleshly feast
Sweet Rosamund, adult’rous Rose
May lie inside her urn and stink
While Alfred’s tears turn into ink
And drop into her quelque-chose
The Angel spreads his golden wings
And raises high his golden cock
And man and wife together lock
Into one corpse that moans and sings
‘Stop,’ said Mr Hawke. ’There is an evil spirit present. These are filthy imaginings, which must be put an end to. Turn up the lights, stop, Mrs Papagay, we must be strong.”
Aroused by his angry voice, Aaron sidled across the table, knocked over the rose-bowl, and took wing to the mantelshelf, leaving behind him a dark stain covered with white rounds.
‘What can it mean?’ said Mrs Hearnshaw, reading. ‘What can it mean?’
‘It is obscene,’ said Mr Hawke. ‘It is not fit for the eyes of ladies. I believe it is the communication of an evil spirit, to which we should give no more hearing.’
Aaron let out a loud, perhaps affirmative, croak at this, which made them all jump. And Pug, shifting in his sleep, let out a series of popping little farts, and a rich, decaying smell. Emily Jesse, her lips pinched and white, took up the offending paper and carried it over to the fire, into which she dropped it. It curled and crisped, browned and blackened, and flew on ashen wings up the chimney. Mrs Papagay, watching Mrs Jesse, knew that this was their last séance in this house, that something truly remarkable had happened, and precisely for that reason, no more attempts would be made. She was sorry, and she was not sorry. After Mr Hawke, rumbling, had left alone, and Mrs Hearnshaw’s cab had borne her away, Mrs Jesse made tea for Mrs Papagay and Sophy, and said she had decided it would be wiser to have no more meetings for the present. ‘Something is playing games with much that is sacred to me, and it is not myself, Mrs Papagay, but can be no one else, and I find I do not wish to know more. Do you think I lack courage?’
‘I think you are wise, Mrs Jesse. I think you are very wise.’
‘You console me.’
She poured tea. The oil-lamps cast a warm light on the teatray. The teapot was china, with little roses painted all over it, crimson and blush-pink and celestial blue, and the cups were garlanded with the same flowers. There were sugared biscuits, each with a flower made out of piped icing, creamy, violet, snow-white. Sophy Sheekhy watched the stream of topaz-coloured liquid fall from the spout, steaming and aromatic. This too was a miracle, that gold-skinned persons in China and bronze-skinned persons in India should gather leaves which should come across the seas safely in white-winged ships, encased in lead, encased in wood, surviving storms and whirlwinds, sailing on under hot sun and cold moon, and come here, and be poured from bone-china, made from fine clay, moulded by clever fingers, in the Pot
tery Towns, baked in kilns, glazed with slippery shiny clay, baked again, painted with rosebuds by artist-hands holding fine, fine brushes, delicately turning the potter’s wheel and implanting, with a kiss of sable-hairs, floating buds on an azure ground, or a dead white ground, and that sugar should be fetched from where black men and women slaved and died terribly to make these delicate flowers that melted on the tongue like the scrolls in the mouth of the Prophet Isaiah, that flour should be milled, and milk shaken into butter, and both worked together into these momentary delights, baked in Mrs Jesse’s oven and piled elegantly on to a plate to be offered to Captain Jesse with his wool-white head and smiling eyes, to Mrs Papagay, flushed and agitated, to her sick self, and the black bird and the dribbling Pug, in front of the hot coals of fire, in the benign lamplight. Any of them might so easily not have been there to drink the tea, or eat the sweetmeats. Storms and ice-floes might have taken Captain Jesse, grief or childbearing might have destroyed his wife, Mrs Papagay might have lapsed into penury and she herself have died as an overworked servant, but here they were and their eyes were bright and their tongues tasted goodness.
XII
And when at last they left, they went out into the dark indeed. It was ice-cold, and gusty, with salt water flung in the air, and the sound of water distant and close at once. They thought nevertheless they would walk home, already apprehensive about making savings. For if Mrs Jesse would hold no more séances and Mr Hawke was angry and hostile, what was to become of them? They hurried towards the sea-front, with the wind behind them, preceded by a bulwark of open umbrellas. After a time, Sophy pulled at Mrs Papagay’s sleeve and tried to shout quietly into her ear.
‘I think we are being followed. There have been footsteps behind us since we left Mrs Jesse.’
‘I think you are right. And now we are stopped, they are stopped. It is only one person.’
‘I am afraid.’
‘So am I. But I believe we should stand our ground—here under this gas-lamp and allow our follower to pass peaceably, or challenge him. We are two, he is only one. I do not wish to go into the maze of alleys behind the fish-market still with a follower. Do you feel brave, Sophy?’