by Stephen Fry
Dinner, when guests are invited from outside, is a formal full-fig feast. The ladies slip into off-the-shoulder frocks and the staff into over-the-shoulder modes of food dispensal—white gloves, fork-and-spoon service, effulgent napkins wrapped about the bottle necks. Wine and conversation flow, cheeks and candles glow. Even when the house interns alone are present, a certain elegance of protocol is maintained. The women are taken in draped on the arms of their men at eight and shag off en masse for coffee in the drawing room at elevenish, leaving the hairy element to crack nuts and jokes over the port. This much-maligned procedure, Simon told me the other day, originated in Victorian days when women were anxious to keep from their husbands, brothers and sons the alarming news that they possessed bladders and urinary tracts. Whatever its basis, I find the custom highly satisfactory. Anne has the delightful habit of calling us into the drawing room, when she believes the sexes have been segregated for long enough, by performing gentle Schumann sonatas on the piano. One loves to play at being civilised, but one does need rich friends to meet the rising costs of such an exercise. Civilisation, after all, is not an attitude of mind, it is an attribute of wealth. Dinners at Swafford, to my mind, are very nearly as fine as breakfasts.
Luncheon lies between these two in ceremony as in chronology. The library serves as the muster station and pre-prandial lapping-pool of choice; thence we are gonged to the dining room for solids. Podmore brings in the dishes and dumps them at Anne’s end for her to dole out down the table. It is the quickest meal, puddings are often sent back untouched, the imbibal of anything stronger than iced water is uncommon and conversation tends to the stilted. The British are uneasy about domestic weekday lunches; the work ethic is in us ingrained so deep that even the leisured classes like to behave as though midday eating is a tiresome intrusion on a life of toil and honest diligence.
As we made our way into the dining room on this day, my appetite already ruined by Oliver’s rude health and Anne’s distraught demeanour, the atmosphere within doors crackled with the same kind of tension as prevailed without. It is a mark, I have often noticed, of God’s cheap sense of literary cliché that he so often chooses to provide climatic conditions that reflect our inmost moods. The day of Jane’s christening, for instance, which I think of as the Day of Rebecca’s Curse, was a streaming, soaking day, to match the sodden weeping that attended it. The weather that accompanied the scene of Helen’s departure from my house and life with a screaming Roman and a coldly sniffing Leonora was bone-chillingly frosty, imparting an iced numbness that exactly suited my mood. And the day, if we cast our minds back all those pages ago, that saw my expulsion from the Sunday Shite was clear and warm and free and bright. Today’s bristling electric menace, while overdone like all God’s effects, could not be said to be inappropriate.
Michael was silent, Anne brittly garrulous. I watched Clara, who in turn cast quick covert glances towards a flushed and expectant David. Simon was, rarely for him, moody and unresponsive. Max contented himself with suave responses to Anne’s chatter. Patricia, Rebecca and Oliver wittered about London things. The twins, who might have brought some zest to the table, ate in the nursery. Mary Clifford said nothing, until towards the end of dinner when she tried to press pudding on a reluctant Clara.
“You really should, dear.”
“I’m not very hungry, Mummy.”
“No, but I think a slice of treacle-pie would be a good idea. Don’t you, Davey?”
This megalithically foolish remark caused Max to bite his lower lip and Oliver to raise his eyebrows. Davey was about to reply when Simon butted in.
“It’s pretty good pie actually, Clara. If you don’t finish yours I’ll have it, don’t you worry.”
“Simon is one of those who can gorge himself like a pig and not have an ounce of flesh to show for it,” said Anne, cutting Clara a slice. “He’s already had three helpings.”
“It’s two actually, Mum,” said Simon, sending his plate along for the third. “Got to keep my strength up, we’re moving the pigs out to the fields to glean this afternoon. Do you want to come along, Clara?”
Clara looked helplessly at Simon, her eyes big and watery under their thick lenses.
“Clara and I thought we might go for a walk, Simon,” Max said. “When you say ‘glean,’” he went on effortlessly, “do you mean they actually get by foraging for themselves, or do you supplement their diets? I’ve always wanted to know.”
While Simon explained I watched Clara turn with lowered head back to her bowl and poke at her pie in misery. I fancied, this forlorn moment aside, that in fact she looked a little better than she had on arrival at Swafford the previous week. Nature, it seemed to me, was sure to right Clara’s defects in time without Davey’s mystical interference. Look at American girls. At the age of fourteen they look as if they’re recovering from a traffic accident: their mouths are caged with wire, their legs and backs strain in corrective stockings and splints, their skin is lumpy from acne, their upper lips fuzz with down, their sad little bras are stuffed with Kleenex and their eyes slither independently in all directions but forwards. Yet by the time they reach eighteen they have become almost too beautiful to bear, with teeth like indigestion tablets, eyes to dive into, skin you want to lick all over, fresh boobs and postures new. No armpit hair, however, which I believe to be a calamitous error. Have you ever let honeysuckle live up to its name? Ever drained its honey? When you take the flower and pull the stamen through, a delicate shining drop of nectar swells up at its head. A bead of sweat bulging at the tip of a woman’s axillary hair is as beautiful. Your true connoisseur of women delights in the great meaty reek of the female essence, not the sterile lemon top-notes of deodorants and creams. The French understand this, about the only thing they do understand—apart from French of course. Think of those giddy Baudelairean amants burying their heads in comedy actresses’ sweat-soaked how-dare-yous. Haaa . . .
Please excuse me. We return to the luncheon.
Michael stood. “You’ll forgive my leaving,” he said. “I have work to do this afternoon. But I trust we’ll all be here at four to welcome Janie when she arrives?”
Nods all round.
I left as soon as possible to commence my stake-out in secrecy. It was a difficult undertaking to reach the Villa Rotunda without being seen from the house. A number of the guests, I knew, would be in the drawing room that overlooked the South Lawn at the back of which the villa stood. I had, therefore, to skirt the entire lawn in a wide loop and achieve the summerhouse from the rear. This necessitated the negotiation of much thick vegetation. The bushes and shrubs had set themselves the happy afternoon task, it soon came to my notice, of attempting to knock from my hand, by the use of cunningly upthrust roots and protruding twigs, the cup of coffee I had foolishly decided to take with me on the journey. By the time I had grunted myself through the rear window of the Villa there was no more than an inch of coffee remaining, much supplemented by garden detritus. An inch of after-luncheon coffee, I reflected, is better than a centimetre and I drank it gratefully down, leaf-fragments, thunder-flies, twig-bark and all. None the less, the spillage of so much was shortly to cause me a moment of panic, as I was to discover.
Settling cosily on the croquet trunk once more, I watched a spider swing from the ceiling and pondered, like Robert the Bruce before me, on the problem of effort. To stand up takes effort, to move about takes effort: simply to be still, to do no more than endure, even that takes effort. Effort is expended strength. Strength comes from food. We carry on because we eat. But creative effort? How is that expense replenished? Where does creative energy come from? From food also? Then how can it be that a poet, say, who once could write, can suddenly write no more? Not, surely, because he has stopped eating spinach? David thinks he has a creative energy that comes from . . . from God knows what. From nature, from some intricate connecting web, a sustaining field of force such as they talk about in
that absurd science-fiction story with Alec Guinness, the one that Roman amazed me by calling an “old” film . . . may the force be with you . . . if that was an old film to Roman—Star Trek, was it called? Something like that—then what was Duck Soup? . . .
“It’s burning! It’s burning!”
An excited voice outside the window. I leapt to my feet. The coffee cup fell from my lap and smashed on the floor.
Not David’s voice. Nor Clara’s.
I went to the window and looked out.
There below me were the twins, squatting on the pathway that ran between the rear of the Villa Rotunda and the edge of the lake. One of them had a magnifying-glass in his hand, the other was holding a snail. A sizzle of steam rose from a small hole in the snail’s shell.
“Hoi!” I shouted.
They turned in guilty alarm and then smiled when they saw who it was.
“Hello, Uncle Ted.”
“We’re experimenting.”
“Well, you shouldn’t experiment here,” I said.
The twin holding the magnifying-glass frowned.
“Why not?”
“Because . . .” I sought for a reason. “Suppose your brother David were to see you. You know what he thinks of cruelty to animals.”
“That’s all right.”
“Davey’s in the woods somewhere.”
“He went with Clara.”
“Ages ago.”
Ages ago? Ages ago? I looked at my watch. Ten past three.
Damn you, Ted, you fat buffalo. Damn you, you great wallowing tit. You’ve slept for forty minutes. If you’d had a whole, full cup of strong coffee, perhaps . . .
I hurled myself down the front steps of the Villa and round to the twins.
“Where?”
“Where what?”
“Davey and Clara. Where in the woods did they go?”
They shrugged.
“We don’t know.”
They pointed across the lake.
“Somewhere.”
“Shall we go and hide and seek them, do you think?”
“No, no. You stay here. I just wanted to . . . catch up with them. Have a word.”
“Right ho.”
“We’ll stay here.”
“You bet. We’ll be here.”
“Right here.”
“Just exactly here.”
I marched off around the lake, cursing my lazy old body. It was entirely my point. Energy. Effort. Where does it go?
I stamped through the damp pong of the lake’s edge, my feet tearing up the tangle of glasswort, marshwort, mallows and kingcups beneath. Ahead lay the small woodland copse where Davey and I had walked on our first day. It was more humid now, the air bursting with vapour and, above, the clouds thickening to the colour of cuttlefish ink.
I stood in this spinney and listened. Larks, chaffinches, thrushes and flies squeaked, chirruped, throstled and buzzed. Small pockets of midge eddied and bounced in the gloomier thickets. I walked towards the darkest, densest part of the copse as quietly as a heavy man can when the ground beneath him is carpeted with dried twig and crackling bark.
Somewhere ahead of me I heard David’s voice, very low and husky. Bending double, I edged towards the sound, lifting each foot high off the ground and placing it down with all the strained delicacy I could manage. The effort caused me to pant and blow like a steamroller. Sweat gathered in my eyebrows.
“So you see, the spirit must find a way in,” I heard David’s voice explain.
“Spirit like air?” Clara asked.
I came to a stop behind a briar bush and peeped through. In a small clearing, less than the length of a long cocktail bar away from my cover, I could see Clara and David, seated on the ground. Clara was sideways on to me but I could see David’s face clearly. He was wearing charcoal-coloured jeans and a white T-shirt. His knees were drawn up a little and he had laid a hand on Clara’s shoulder. I breathed as quietly as I could.
“No, not like air, exactly. You must know about men’s spirit. The spirit that makes life.”
Clara giggled. “What, you mean like . . . sperm?”
A bead of sweat rolled down and stung my eyes. The light was fading and the air was charged enough to make the skin prickle.
“It isn’t a joke, Clara. If this spirit is very pure and very holy, it can make the person receiving it very holy and very pure too.”
Clara stared at him. “You aren’t going to . . .”
I swallowed. This was not what I had been expecting. Not what I had been expecting at all.
“I’ve been thinking. You see, the problems you would like me to help you with are all up here.”
David traced his fingers around her face.
“Usually, you see, I would implant the spirit deep within you . . .”
I suddenly thought about Oliver’s piles at breakfast and wanted to choke. A warm fat drop fell on my head with a slap. Blast, I thought. Some fucking wood-pigeon. Another drop landed on my arm. Rain.
“. . . but I think what would be best in your case,” David continued, “would be for the spirit to be introduced here.”
He ran a thumb between Clara’s lips.
“You mean I’d have to drink it?”
David sighed. It was apparent to me that he was not finding the naïveté of Clara’s response at all sympathetic.
“Your father explained, didn’t he? He told you that I have the power to help people. He told you to trust me and to do what I said, didn’t he?”
Clara nodded. She did not appear to be happy.
“The way to take in the spirit is for me to suckle you, as a loving mother might suckle her young.”
Clara did not reply.
“You must think of how the pure living spirit will enter you and make you whole. It will heal your eyes and your teeth. It will fill you with power and beauty.”
“What will it taste like?”
Splendid child. I found myself taking to her very much. Poetry lies in practical detail.
“It will taste of everything you love. Of honey and sweet warm milk.”
“Aniseed?”
“If you like aniseed it will taste of aniseed.”
“I bate aniseed.”
“Well then, it won’t taste of aniseed. What is your favourite flavour?”
“Worcester sauce.”
“Mm . . .” David paused. I could imagine him wondering how much conviction it would carry if he claimed that his pure holy river of spirit would indeed taste of Worcester sauce. “Your mind will create whatever flavour it desires,” was the best he could come up with.
“Will it look like Worcester sauce, then?”
“Never mind how it will look!” David was becoming exasperated.
“It’s starting to rain, now.”
“The rain is good. It’s clean and pure and quite warm.”
I edged further forward for shelter in the bush; the bramble around me combing my hair with violent scratches.
David had mastered his irritation and spoke now in a calm hypnotic coo.
“Clara. You have been told to trust me and you trust me. You have been told I will help and I will help. I will lie back like this, all right? Now, I’m going to take your hand and put it here, just on my jeans like this.”
“What’s that?”
“You know what that is. You must know, surely? Just feel it for a moment. Feel how warm and firm it is. It is where the spirit comes from. That’s right.”
Clara’s body obscured my view of the details of this woodland scene. I could see David’s face looking up to the trees and his toes curling in their shoes. I could see Clara’s shoulders and the back of her arm. A rumble of thunder sounded far away and the rain began to spank the leaves.
“Now,” he
said. “Just undo me here and . . . that’s it. Gently though.”
“Is this what they all look like?”
“Surely you’ve seen one before?”
“A girl at school showed me a magazine. It didn’t have this loose skin though.”
“OW! CAREFUL!”
“What have I done? What have I done?”
“No, no. It’s all right. But you must be more gentle. It’s extremely sensitive, you see. So, nice and easy.”
“It’s very hot.”
“Yes, that’s right. It is. Very hot. The heat comes from the spirit that is going to make you well and whole. Now, I want you to bring your head down.”
“I don’t like to . . .”
“Clara . . . it’s very simple.”
“But that’s where you do . . .”
“What?”
“That’s where you do pee-pees.”
“Clara, please! It is completely clean. So clean that it can purify your whole body. You have to trust me. What would your father say if I told him you had failed to trust me?”
“All right, then . . .”
Through the riot of brambles I saw her head dip down and David’s right hand press against the nape of her neck.
“Easily,” said David. I imagine he was grateful that the girl’s teeth protruded outwards, not in.
“Wimbledon,” she replied, or so it sounded to my ears. It may be that she said something else. I supposed that any word spoken under those circumstances would come out as Wimbledon.
“Birmingham!” she said, proving me wrong.
“Drain the spirit,” said David, the downward-facing palm of his free hand clutching and releasing the litter of the spinney floor. The rain was falling fast now, bouncing from a treestump beside his head. “Yes. Don’t stop. Keep going. Yes. At any moment . . . at any moment you will feel the spirit . . .”