Babel Tower

by A. S. Byatt

  Next to the Christmas tree stands Daniel’s son, Will, who is ten, with Daniel’s dark hair and watchful dark eyes. He stares at his father with angry intensity, and flinches when Daniel approaches to hug or kiss him. Daniel retreats. Frederica says, “You remember me, Will?”

  “More or less,” says Will, sounding absurdly like Daniel.

  Winifred fetches tea on a trolley. There is tea in her wedding-present silver teapot, there are sandwiches of potted meat and egg and cress, there are hot mince pies and a huge Christmas cake. “We made it together,” Mary tells Daniel. “Grandma and Will and I made it, we stirred and stirred, we made it months ago and left it to mature; it’s full of brandy and lovely spices. And yesterday we iced it and decorated it for you all to come. We piped everyone’s initial round the edge—Marcus helped us put the proportions right—B and W and F and M and D and W again and M and L for Leo—with silver balls round the letters, and roses decorating them, and then in the middle we made the moors in snow—we put the Fylingdales Early Warning System in the middle because Will wanted it, though it’s a funny thing—and snowy trees, and here is a frozen lake—and there is a beck and some crags—Jacqueline says we oughtn’t to have the Fylingdales balls but Marcus says it’s all right, they’re there—they look lovely in icing sugar and we can eat them up—”

  Daniel says the cake is beautiful, which it is. Winifred says, unnecessarily, that it’s a secular cake, and Mary says quickly that they are all going to the Carol Service in the church in the village tomorrow on Christmas Eve. “It isn’t midnight, it’s for the family, the teachers at my school go, we sing, I’m good at singing, everyone’s going. Except Grandpa, of course.”

  At teatime Jacqueline Winwar comes with presents for the family to be put under the tree. She is accompanied by the geneticist with whom she works on her snail populations, Dr. Luk Lysgaard-Peacock, half-Danish, half-Yorkshire, with a square-cut jutting gold-red beard, gold-red hair and dark blue eyes under deep eyebrows. Frederica has never paid much attention to Marcus’s young friend Jacqueline, whom she always thinks of as one of two, Ruth and Jacqueline, the blonde and the brown, Marcus’s religious friends, Gideon Farrar’s Young People. She remembers Jacqueline as a nice brown leggy girl with long bunches of hair and owlish glasses. What she now sees is a wiry young woman, about twenty-six years old, who moves quickly and neatly, and has a poised and watchful oval face under a cap of shining brown hair, variable browns, all blending and changing in the light. She has clear dark brown eyes behind black-framed glasses. Will goes and stands next to her. Mary kisses her and so does Winifred. Marcus says “Jacquie,” with real pleasure, and is also pleased to see Luk Lysgaard-Peacock. Daniel asks about the snails and Luk says they are hibernating. Frederica watches as they all sit and chat easily. She sees Jacqueline look at Marcus, and then sees Luk Lysgaard-Peacock look at Jacqueline, both with that look that betrays a particular interest, not proprietorial but simply more alive, more alert. She watches Winifred hurry to give Jacqueline tea, mince pies, cake, information about carols. She thinks: My mother would like her for a daughter. She thinks: But it was the other one Marcus liked, a much more fey and boring person. The nurse, he liked the nurse, she remembers. She looks at her brother. He is talking to Luk Lysgaard-Peacock. She hears the word “engram,” she hears the words “molecular memory,” she hears the names Scrope, Lyon Bowman, Calder-Fluss. Jacqueline says, “There has to be something wrong with the planaria experiments, I cannot believe memory is carried that way.”

  “We could try and repeat the experiment,” says Lysgaard-Peacock.

  “I’d like to get up something with snails,” says Jacqueline. “They have large neurones. You could do something interesting on the chemistry of memory.”

  Frederica watches Marcus. No, he is not sexually interested in this nut-brown intelligent person. Or does not appear to be—who has ever been able to say what Marcus wanted? Whereas from time to time Jacqueline gives a quick look in his direction. And Luk Lysgaard-Peacock gives a sharp look in hers. Frederica thinks about sex and is quite unaware that she is hearing the first discussion of what will be a scientific advance, an important piece of research.

  She thinks: Families pull together and fly apart. Now, I am pleased and excited to see all these faces which resemble mine and each other. But by the end of the holiday we may all feel trapped and impinged on and diminished.

  There is a sound of wheels stopping with a whine and a scream. The door bell sounds. Winifred opens the door and stands, puzzled. On the doorstep, in a navy overcoat, shoulders squared, is Nigel Reiver.

  “I am hoping,” he says, “to find my wife and child. I have brought their presents and thought—since it is Christmas—they might speak to me at least. I have come a long way.”

  “Come in,” says Winifred, uncertainly. It is indeed Christmas; he is the husband and father; hospitality requires that he should be let in; Winifred knows nothing of him or of what has happened.

  “Wait—” he says, and fetches from the car two large cardboard boxes, wrapped in Christmas paper, striped in midnight blue and silver, with shiny rosettes of blue and silver paper ribbons.

  Frederica stands up in the room with the Christmas tree and moves to stand in the doorway, so that he cannot cross the threshold into the lighted group inside. He puts down his two large boxes, and stands easily there, meeting her eye, ready to move quickly. There is his real face, the dark, dark look, the intentness that always stirs her.

  “I did think,” he says, “it might be sensible to talk, just to talk. I do think you might at least let me know what you think is happening. I do think I have a right to say Happy Christmas to my son. Don’t you?”

  The real wrong, Frederica thinks, was hers, was done by her in marrying him when she did not wholly want to, when she could not go through with it. This knowledge makes her tentative, uncertain.

  “I don’t know,” she says, barring the door. “It’s no good. It’s no good.”

  “I don’t want to impose myself on you if you don’t want me,” says Nigel. “I won’t stay long, though I’ve come a long way. I want two things: to see my son and give him a Christmas present, and to have a sensible discussion with you about where we go from here, even if it’s only to arrange a time and place to have a discussion. That’s all. I think I have a right to that, I do think so.”

  Leo appears at Frederica’s side. He is white, and staring. He looks from one to the other. Nigel holds out his arms. Leo looks at Frederica, who nods—what? Permission? Understanding? He walks past her, and is lifted in his father’s arms. Nigel buries his nose in the bright hair whose scent is the centre of Frederica’s existence. There are tears in Nigel’s eyes.

  “I’ve missed you,” he says to Leo. Leo twists his hand in his father’s collar. He looks back at Frederica with Nigel’s black eyes in her own sharp white face. She is ready to die, to lose consciousness.

  “Take your coat off,” says Leo.

  “Come in,” says Frederica, moving with stone legs, out of the doorway. “Come and meet the family. It is Christmas.”

  She introduces him. “My father you know. My mother, my brother, Marcus, my brother-in-law, Daniel, Will, Mary, this is a friend, Jacqueline, and a friend, Dr. Lysgaard-Peacock.”

  “I’ll go now,” says Luk Lysgaard-Peacock.

  “No—” says Frederica. “There is no need for anyone to go. Nigel has just come with presents, he isn’t staying, no one must move.”

  Her voice is sharp. It makes people want to move, and begs them not to. They do not move. Lysgaard-Peacock and Jacqueline do not move. Winifred takes Nigel’s coat, and brings him tea and cake. Leo sits on his knee, with an arm round his neck. Bill and Nigel nod at each other with a curious respect: Nigel then nods at Daniel, who smiles and frowns together. No one speaks, so Nigel says, “I brought presents for Frederica and Leo. Perhaps they should open them, since I won’t be staying. Perhaps,” he says, looking at Will, “you could fetch the two boxes in the corridor.”<
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  Will does as he is asked. Nigel tells his son to open his box. Still in the same fiercely cosy voice he tells Will to help Leo. Will helps. The box is opened. A Hornby electric train is revealed, a beautiful thing, a Flying Scotsman engine, carriages, trucks, rails, turntable, station, signals, points.

  “He’s too little,” says Will. He stares almost angrily at Nigel.

  “I’m not,” says Leo. He clasps the engine to his chest. “I’m not too little. This is mine.”

  “I think you could help him set it up and understand it,” says Nigel to Will. “He’s not too little if someone works it with him, shows him the ropes, sets it up.” He smiles his warm secret smile at Will. “I’ll be glad if you’ll set it up for him. I’d like to do it myself—all fathers like to play trains at Christmas—but I shan’t be here. But you will.”

  He has somehow acquired a little more territory. He turns to Frederica.

  “Won’t you open yours?”

  “I’ll put it under the tree with the others and open it later, on Christmas Day.”

  “Now,” says Nigel. “I may have to take it back, I need to know now if it is what you want.”

  Nothing, she wants to cry, I want nothing. Leo says, “Open it. I want to see. Open.”

  Will carries the parcel across. Frederica pulls listlessly at the blue rosette, at the wrapping paper. Leo climbs down from Nigel’s knee and comes to help. The shiny paper rustles. There is a large, solid, cardboard box. There is silver-and-pink tissue. There is a dress. It is dark charcoal grey with a high neck and long tight cuffs, woven with red silk braid and embroidery, very rich, very plain. It is a long tunic that goes over a short, slightly flaring skirt. It looks like, it is, Courrèges. Frederica, like most women with red hair, does not wear red, but there is one red, a clear dark vermilion, that brings out the fire in her hair and the gold in her dusting of freckles. This is that red. No one knows what to say. Winifred is wearing a heavy green polo neck and a tweed skirt; Jacqueline is wearing a dark brown double-knit jumper over fawn cord trousers: Frederica herself is in jeans and a checked flannel shirt. Leo says, “Put it on.”

  “I can change it, or get it altered,” says Nigel.

  “Put it on! Put it on!” says Leo. “Now. I say, now!”

  And Frederica, who has been holding the lid of the box, ready to replace it, suddenly puts it down, picks up the dress, and walks out of the room to put it on.

  “I thought,” says Nigel to Winifred, “there must be a pub near here, where I could stay—”

  “Our bedrooms are full,” says Winifred foolishly.

  “Completely full,” says Bill. “No room at the inn, I’m afraid. None.”

  Frederica comes back wearing the dress. In its honour she has put on black tights and carefully dressed her hair in a chignon. She is beautiful. Frederica is never beautiful, though often alive with attractive energy, but just for the moment, in the Courrèges dress, she is wholly beautiful, it is the word. The dress fits almost too perfectly: her small high breasts sit neat and elegant inside its beautiful seams; her thin wrists, her narrow waist, her long thin hips, are beautiful where the silk-lined cloth skims past them, making them look like necessary forms in relation to each other. It is a strange style, formal, tailored, severe, ending so far above the knee that the brevity of the skirt should be childish, a gym-slip, a dolly-dress, but is not. Frederica’s long thin legs are set off by it; another inch on her thighs would spoil its up-and-down simple complexity. She stands there. Luk Lysgaard-Peacock says, “Beautiful,” and Nigel looks sharply at him.

  “I can’t take it,” says Frederica. Every precise inch of it is a betrayal of carnal knowledge, of Nigel’s certainty of the nature of her body, of how it works, how it moves, how it is.

  “And everyone always says men can’t shop for women,” says Nigel, as though she had not spoken. “They can if they put their mind to it, of course they can. When I saw that red, I thought, That’s the one, it’s a risk, but it’ll work. And it does. You have to admit it does something for you, Frederica. You’ve got to keep it—no strings—whatever you—whatever we—decide. I want you to have it. It’s yours. No one else could wear it like that. Leo likes it, don’t you?”

  “I like it,” says Leo.

  Winifred makes a new pot of tea for her son-in-law whom she does not know. Leo sits on his knee. Frederica stands there, incongruous and beautiful. The dress isolates her from the company, as though she were in cellophane wrapping. She looks at Nigel with reluctant admiration: there are things he knows how to do. He discusses with Winifred the possibility of local pubs. Luk Lysgaard-Peacock thinks of recommending the Giant Man at Barrowby and then looks at Frederica and does not speak. Leo says, “You might possibly sleep here with us, possibly you might.”

  “I don’t think so,” says Nigel, with the same reasonable ease. “Not just now, I don’t think that could be managed.”

  A clock strikes in the village. Mary says, “We shall miss the carol service, we must go.”

  “Count me out,” says Bill.

  “We already did,” says Mary. “But Daddy will come, and Grandma, and Will, and Jacqueline and Dr. Lysgaard-Peacock, will you come?”

  “Why not?” looking at Jacqueline.

  “And Marcus will come with them, and what about you?” says Mary, looking doubtfully first at Frederica and then at Leo and Nigel.

  “Last year we went to carols,” says Leo.

  “So we did,” says Nigel. “In Spessendborough. It was lovely, wasn’t it? I love carols. They connect you to your ancestors. Mine are all buried in Spessendborough.”

  “We don’t run to ancestors,” says Bill.

  “Everyone has ancestors,” says Luk Lysgaard-Peacock, looking at the faces with a geneticist’s eye.

  “Come to the carols,” says Leo to Nigel. He turns to his mother in her dress. “You come.”

  “I’ll change this dress.”

  “No. Come in the dress.”

  Frederica changes her dress.

  • • •

  They put on their coats, all except Bill, and walk through Freyasgarth to St. Cuthbert’s Church, where in the candlelight they sing the old songs: “O Come, All Ye Faithful,” “Unto Us a Boy Is Born,” “Lullay My Liking,” “We Three Kings,” “It Came upon the Midnight Clear,” “The Holly and the Ivy.” Leo stands between his parents, holding both hands from time to time, separating them and connecting them. Daniel stands between Will and Mary. The singing is not much, but there are one or two sweet high voices in the stone, and Luk Lysgaard-Peacock has a clear, unafraid, pleasant tenor. Mary, alone of the Potter stock, can sing, and does, clear and small. Frederica thinks of years of being trapped in school singing. And now she is a grown woman, autonomous, and trapped by her own nature—her own acts and choices.

  Winifred weeps for her daughter Stephanie.

  Will cannot weep for his mother.

  Nigel’s bass is occasionally off-key, but a useful augmentary din.

  Daniel thinks of the child in the straw. He thinks of his son, who has a brief life in front of him, and of Mary’s son, who was most cruelly killed, long ago. He thinks of the face he does not think of and manages to avert his attention from it in time, by concentrating on song. “The holly bears a berry, As red as any blood, And Mary bore sweet Jesus Christ, To do poor sinners good.”

  Back in the house, there is a move to leave Nigel and Frederica alone to talk. Frederica does not want this, but everyone nevertheless disappears: Luk and Jacqueline to their own families, Bill to his study, Marcus and Winifred to wrap presents, Daniel and his family to wash up. Nigel and Frederica and Leo sit together in the sitting-room in the evening dark. There is a wood fire.

  “We never lived in a beautiful house,” says Frederica, wondering.

  “Listen,” says Nigel. “Come back to our house—not for Christmas, I can see you’re here—but come back for a visit, say Boxing Day, say the day after—there’s the Meet—we could talk a bit and think things out.
Sooty is dying to see Leo, and so are Pippy and Auntie Olive and Auntie Rosalind—they are very sad at spending Christmas without him, when families ought to be together—”

  “This is mine—”

  “And I found you, because I knew you’d be here, because families are important. So I know you know they are, so I know you know Leo ought to see his.”

  “I want to see Sooty,” says Leo. He says, “I want to see him every day.” He says, “Let’s go back and just see him, Mummy?”

  “I can’t,” says Frederica.

  “Only for a few days. You can bear us for a few days.”

  “I can’t. I mustn’t. I can’t come.”

  She cannot, in front of Leo, cry out that she is sorry, she made a hideous mistake, she should never have married, and now they must all suffer for it.

  Nigel says, “Well, let Leo come. Let me take him back to see Pippy and Sooty and the aunts. We love him, he’s ours, it will be his house, I have a right to see my son.”

  Frederica bows her head. She thinks she knows that if Leo goes back to Bran House she will never see him again, unless, of course, she too goes back. And she is afraid of going back, physically as well as emotionally. She cannot go there again. It is quite reasonable for Nigel to want to see, to entertain, his son—she believes a child needs two parents, she believes, in principle, in civilised sharing. She also fears, with a sick, exhausted part of her, that Leo may be happier in the end at Bran House, where his life will have a form to which he has been brought up, a form that is his inheritance, on one side. And then she thinks of him being sent away, a little boy, to boarding school, as Nigel was. And then she remembers the clinging body of the boy on the run through the woods.