Babel Tower

by A. S. Byatt

  Q. You felt he was better where he was.

  A. Well, then, in a sense, obviously, yes, he was.

  Q. How did he come to go with you, then?

  A. He ran after me. He said he was coming. He seemed to know I was going.

  Q. He wanted you to stay?

  A. No. He said he was coming. I would have gone back in with him, and stayed. But he said he was coming.

  Q. He was a desperate, confused little boy, in the middle of the night?

  A. Yes. But he was determined. You don’t know him. He has a strong will.

  Q. You are not going to tell me that a little boy of—four years old—has a will strong enough, in the middle of the night, to impose a decision on a loving mother who has—with some self-renunciation it would appear—decided that he was better where he was? Was it not rather, Mrs. Reiver, the case that a little boy, whom you had been content to leave in his bed, sensed inconveniently that you were leaving him, and came out to remonstrate, to plead? And you, fearing that your rendezvous with your young men would be missed, snatched up this little boy, as an afterthought, and carried him away as an unplanned piece of luggage

  (The witness is silent.)

  Q. Would you not say it was more or less like that?

  A. (In a whisper) No. It was not like that. I love my son.

  Her voice is small and dry. She cannot utter, she cannot speak. She licks her lips, a nervous gesture which the Court notes.

  Griffith Goatley asks his client a few calm questions after this. He then produces signed affidavits from Bill Potter and Daniel Orton, describing violent assaults made upon them by Nigel Reiver on two occasions after his wife’s departure.

  Laurence Ounce’s first witness is Miss Olive Reiver. He establishes that she is the unmarried sister of Nigel Reiver and lives in the family home, Bran House. He takes her through her brother’s marriage.

  Q. Were you surprised when he married Frederica Potter?

  A. Not by then, no. She had often been staying with us. They were obviously very much in love. I was happy to see Nigel so happy.

  Q. And Frederica. Was she happy?

  A. It was hard to tell. She didn’t find it easy to fit in to our way of life. She wasn’t from our sort of background.

  Q. Do you think she found you intimidating—the close family—the lifestyle of the country, to which she was not used?

  A. Oh no. I think perhaps she rather despised us. She thought we were a bit slow and boring, I think. She lived for the moment when Nigel was there. She didn’t try too hard with the rest of us.

  Q. She perhaps missed her old friends?

  A. I wouldn’t say that. She had lots of visitors. All the visitors she wanted. Mostly young men from London. We made them welcome, of course; that was good manners.

  Q. Was any attempt made to prevent her friends from coming, or to discourage communication with them?

  A. Oh no. We keep open house. I think they found us a bit stick in the mud. Tweedy types. (Laughs.)

  Q. And when your nephew was born—young Leo—did she seem more settled?

  A. Oh no. Perhaps the reverse. She began to seem quite sulky and unhappy. We couldn’t cheer her up. She took to sitting in her room.

  Q. She was depressed?

  A. You could call it that. It was a good thing there were so many of us to give a hand with the baby.

  Q. But she loved the baby?

  A. Oh, I think so. But I don’t think she’s the sort to whom looking after a baby comes naturally. She didn’t hold him naturally, you know, she was kind of awkward. Reserved with him.

  The evidence moves on to the alleged acts of cruelty.

  Q. Did you ever see your brother express anger towards his wife?

  A. They had the odd row. They both gave as good as they got. Shouting matches on the stairs. Kiss and make up, I’ve seen it several times. Normal, I’d say. She did sulk rather a lot, and that provoked him. But they were happy after their rows, all smiles and hugs.

  Q. Did you ever see your brother strike his wife?

  A. No. Never.

  Q. But he might have done?

  A. I don’t know what went on in their private quarters. But I wouldn’t think it was like him. We’d have seen, if she’d been bruised, and she wasn’t.

  Q. On a certain occasion, in 1964, the doctor was called to dress an extensive gash in your sister-in-law’s thigh?

  A. She told us she’d tripped over the barbed wire in the paddock field, going about to look at the moon.

  Q. Did that strike you as an odd story?

  A. Not really. She was always running around at night and wandering off. She was bored, poor thing.

  Q. And the injuries were consistent with the barbed-wire story?

  A. The rips in her trousers were. I didn’t get a close look at her leg. That wasn’t my concern.

  Q. The wound didn’t happen when she was wearing a nightdress?

  A. I know nothing about a nightdress. I never saw a nightdress. I did see trousers with bloodstains and barbed-wire rips.

  Q. Did you ever think your brother might have caused the injury?

  A. No. I’m surprised to hear it suggested. He loves her—well, anyway, he loved her. He was very tolerant of her ways, in my opinion, and has made great efforts to get her to come back and live in the family home, with the little boy. It’s not surprising he got a bit irritable—she made him look a bit of a fool, you might think, just going off like that in the middle of the night, with a pack of arty types from London. But he wouldn’t hurt her. What good would that do?

  Q. And what do you think should happen now, after she has stayed away for three years?

  A. I don’t approve of divorce. I’m a regular churchgoer, I know the Church’s teaching is that marriage is once and permanent. I think a child should live in the family home with both his parents. But if she won’t come hack and try again, try a bit harder, I think she should let Leo come back to us, to the home he grew up in and will inherit, where he’s loved and safe.

  Laurence Ounce calls Rosalind Reiver. The witnesses have not been in the courtroom before they give evidence. Rosalind Reiver too reports that Frederica had frequent visitors, made no attempt to settle in Bran House, “sulked” and enjoyed quarrelling with her husband. She also states that the wound in Frederica’s thigh was said at the time to be caused by barbed wire, and that she has seen ripped trousers with bloodstains consistent with this story. She too knows nothing of a nightdress.

  The two sisters are impressive because of their solid, unimaginative ordinariness. They are reasonable, circumscribed, English country gentry. They frown as they appear to try to be fair to their errant sister-in-law. They make it clear that they are devoted to Leo; their heavy mouths smile, their dark eyes open with love when he is mentioned. Rosalind adds to Olive’s evidence a moving image of the two of them teaching the enthusiastic little boy to ride Sooty, of the mother refusing to come out and watch his exploits, “reading a book” all the time, when he has learned to post at the trot. She too thinks Nigel has been very patient.

  Laurence Ounce calls Pippy Mammott. Pippy’s face is pink and shining with generous indignation. She is a more volatile witness than the stolid sisters, in that she has an air of having worked herself up to make an appearance, state a position, fight for a cause. Pins are working their way out of her head: now and then, during her evidence, she puts up her hands to put them back, looking as though she is trying to hold her head together. Ounce puts to her much the same series of preliminary questions as he put to the sisters, about the early days of the marriage, about Frederica’s friends, or lack of friends, about their way of life, about Leo.

  Q. She seemed happy to be pregnant?

  A. I wouldn’t say that, no. Oh no. I would say it came as a blow to her.

  Q. It wasn’t a planned pregnancy?

  A. I overheard her talking to one of her friends on the telephone. She was always talking away on the telephone, all the time. She said, “Guess what, I�
�m preggers, it’s an absolute disaster, it ruins absolutely everything, my life is in ruins.”

  Q. Are you sure these were her words? Or is that just the drift of what she was saying?

  A. I was dreadfully shocked to hear her. It was a terrible thing to say. So naturally I remember it.

  Q. But perhaps when the baby was born she felt different? Many women are shocked to find themselves pregnant, but love their child when he comes.

  A. I don’t think she felt any different. She wasn’t natural with him. I tried to show her little things—how to soothe him, how to do his little nappies, how to get him to take his milk, but she was very irritable, very sulky, very sluggish, she didn’t want to know. I caught her looking at him as though she wished he weren’t there.

  Q. That was your interpretation.

  A. I know who did everything for that child. I know who put plasters on his knees and who he turned to when his guinea-pig died. I know who knew how he liked his eggs and his toasted soldiers …

  Q. Perhaps she felt de trop?

  A. What did you say?

  Q. Perhaps she felt you looked after him so well, she was superfluous?

  A. I don’t think that was so, not at all. She plain wasn’t interested. She was always reading a book when she wasn’t walking by herself or phoning her friends. I’ve seen her feeding the little boy with one hand and holding up some book with the other, and her eyes were on the book, I can tell you, not on the baby. I’ve heard him howl his little heart out, and I’ve run and run to see what the matter was, and he’s been hurt with a penknife, and there she was upstairs, reading a book, and didn’t seem to hear a squeak. Not a squeak.

  Q. But the boy loved his mother?

  A. Naturally he did. He was always trying to get her attention. Mostly he failed. But I was there—his Pippy—and his aunts were there, and so he was well looked after.

  On the question of Nigel’s attacks on his wife, on the question of the trousers, the imaginary nightdress, the nature of the wound, Pippy’s witness coincides precisely with that of Olive and Rosalind. It goes further.

  Q. Did you see the wound in question?

  A. Naturally I did. If there’s anything to be dressed, or cleaned, or tended, I’m the one—even when it’s her.

  Q. How would you describe the wound?

  A. Very jagged, very uneven. Typical barbed-wire, like you see in hunting. Dr. Roylance said so immediately. Typical barbed wire, he said. Silly girl tried to scramble over a hedge without seeing there was wire the other side, and fell. She doesn’t have country instincts. We all knew the hedge was wired. Nigel was very upset. He sat with her all day, soothing her, and chatting.

  Frederica writes a note to Goatley. “She’s lying. They’re all lying.”

  “Exaggerating?” he writes back.

  “No, lying. Flat, magniloquent lies.”

  “Perhaps she believes herself?”

  “She can’t—none of it was like that.”

  “The judge might notice she’s full of animosity. It does come through. But it’s hard to credit her with the imagination to lie on a large scale.”

  “But she is—”

  “Ah, yes, but what does the court believe?”

  Ounce does not ask Pippy, as he asked Olive and Rosalind, what she thinks should happen now. He does say, “Do you think there is any hope of reconciliation after three years’ absence?”

  “As to that, I couldn’t say. I know Nigel wanted things to be as they were and should have been. Families should be together. But I say, if she won’t do as she should, the little boy should come back where he’s at home, and happy, and loved. There’s an abundance of love, a sufficiency of love, I do want to make that clear. She could see him all she wants, she knows she could, but he needs his proper things in the proper place. He can’t be happy in a basement in south London, he’s a country child, born and bred …”

  The court is adjourned for lunch after Pippy’s evidence. Frederica drinks a half-pint of shandy. She cannot eat. She does not like beer, but needs alcohol and is thirsty. She tries to joke; she says to Arnold Begbie, “I feel I’m on trial for reading books.”

  “You are. Partly.”

  “I wouldn’t be if I were a man.”

  “Perhaps not. I know a couple—early thirties, can’t have children, desperate to adopt. The social worker concerned in vetting them sent in a report saying, ‘Plausible couple, well-intentioned. Too many books in the house. Wife reads.’ ”

  The next witness after lunch says his name is Theobald Drossel, known as Theo. He is very small; only his head can be seen above the box; he is almost entirely bald and his skin is unhealthy. His face is long and lugubrious. He wears a brown suit and a checked shirt. Frederica finds him faintly familiar, and then, as he says what his profession is, recognises him in the same instant. He is the little man from Hamelin Square, whose Austin coughs continuously. He says he is the director of the Sharp Inquiry Company.

  “I watch people. I find things out. Anything, really. I find out. I do mostly marital work. In the nature of things.”

  Q. You have been in the employment of Mr. Nigel Reiver?

  A. Yes. Since December 1964.

  Q. What were you asked to do?

  A. Follow that lady Mr. Reiver’s wife, see where she went, what she did. See what the little boy did.

  Q. And where was Mrs. Reiver living from October 1964?

  A. She was living in Bloomsbury, in a mansion flat owned by a Mr. Thomas Poole. I watched her go in and out of the flats, and I watched her go to work with Mr. Poole and come back with him. In the nature of things, I did not gain access to the flat to see what went on there.

  Q. Did you form any impression of the relationship between Mr. Poole and Mrs. Reiver?

  A. It was very loving, very affectionate. I saw them kiss and cuddle on various occasions, when they separated in the street, and so on. I saw them go shopping with all the kids, his and hers. They was very like a married couple, you know, easy with each other, very affectionate.

  I engaged their au pair girl in conversation on two occasions. I pretended to be a neighbour who wanted to borrow a drill. I find a drill is a more plausible thing to try and borrow than sugar. Lots of people don’t have drills. The young woman—very prudently—wouldn’t let me into the flat, so I couldn’t ascertain the sleeping arrangements. I pretended to think that Mrs. Reiver was, so to speak, Mrs. Poole, and the young woman in question, Miss Röhde, (referring to his notebook) enlightened me, as she thought, as to the real situation, but said she supposed they would soon marry, everything pointed that way, she said, they would make a lovely family.

  Q. Later, Mrs. Reiver moved house?

  A. Yes. She went to live in Hamelin Square, Number 42, with a Miss Agatha Mond and her little girl. Miss Mond appears to be unmarried and to have few visitors.

  Q. And Mrs. Reiver? Did she have few visitors?

  A. No. She had a great many. She had many male visitors, both single ones and in large groups. I kept a record, the days I was there—I wasn’t always on this job, you must understand, I had other commissions, there are gaps in my information. I counted about seven or eight very regular male visitors, to whom she was very affectionate, kissing and hugging and stroking.

  The witness reads out a list: Tony Watson, Hugh Pink, Edmund Wilkie, Alexander Wedderburn, Daniel Orton, Desmond Bull, Jude Mason. He reads out a rough count of observed visits, singly and in groups. Frederica stares. Her private life is a spectacle for this little man in an Austin. He describes her friendly evenings as “wild parties—the neighbours used to murmur about them as they passed my car. She was felt to be a bit outrageous, in the square.”

  Q. Did you feel that any of these visitors were more than simply intimate friends?

  A. I followed the lady on various occasions when she visited Mr. Desmond Bull in Eagle Lane, Clerkenwell. I got friendly with his landlady, who is rather proud of having a Bohemian painter lodging in her house. This landlady—Mrs. Annabel
Patten—told me—he reads from his notebook—“he has a mattress in his studio where he screws his models and students and women who come.” It was her opinion that Mr. Bull was “an insatiable sex maniac.” I do not think she meant by that that he was mad or perverted, merely that he enjoyed sex. She herself took a vicarious pleasure in his activities, and …

  The judge points out that what the landlady said is inadmissible, since it is hearsay. Ounce asks his witness if he himself observed anything in Mrs. Patten’s house.

  A. I was able to gain her confidence enough on July 28th, 1966, to be allowed to peep in through a glass panel—one of those frosted things—on Mr. Bull’s door. There I observed Mrs. Reiver holding a glass of wine in a state of undress.

  Q. Undress?

  A. Stark naked. Very much at her ease.

  Q. Perhaps she was modelling for Mr. Bull.

  A. If she was, that was not all, because I saw Mr. Bull, also stark naked, with his member erect, walk towards her and push her down. On his mattress, you see, the one on his studio floor. I was able to persuade Mrs. Patten to sign a statement as to what we had witnessed—she said she didn’t mind, as Mr. Bull “doesn’t give a fuck who knows what he does, he’s proud of it.”

  Judge. Mr. Bull has made no answer to the service of the Petition naming him as co-respondent.

  Clerk. No, my lord.

  Judge. He has not put in an appearance.

  Clerk. No, my lord.

  Judge. He is content to let this matter go forward and not to contest it.

  Q. Are there other men with whom you observed Mrs. Reiver to be on intimate terms?

  A. There is Mr. John Ottokar.

  Q. When did you first see Mr. Ottokar?

  A. That must have been in May or June 1965. He used to come regularly to the square and stare at her lighted windows like a love-sick male dog. At first I thought he might be a burglar—I was sitting quiet in my car, quite unobtrusive—I sit for hours, often, sometimes I read a bit, by torchlight—but I saw his look, the way he looked. And one night she let him in. So I crept across the square and looked down into the basement. She sleeps in the basement. Often she doesn’t draw the curtains. Even when she does, since it’s a fairly thin blind, you can see quite clearly from the shadows what she is doing, what anyone else in there is doing. I was able to satisfy myself that intercourse had taken place. I saw it take place again on July 5th and July 14th and on at least fourteen subsequent occasions.