As if by Magic

by Angus Wilson

  Perry, carried away by the scene, got up and began his determined stride out of the room, out of Zoe’s house. As he came to the door, it opened before him. There stood a creature, flat-breasted, thin-hipped, with enormous eyes staring from purple-tinged, translucent-skinned sockets set in a pinched, grubby, greasy white face, hair streaming negligently around the shoulders, the whole dressed in a filthy, dusty, blood-stained grey prison uniform. He stoked up these epithets of disgust to banish the chill he felt at seeing Jack’s ultimate grievance bound back in his own face, the deeper chill at being reminded of what he had creatively denied—the ultimate tie and the ultimate barrier in his marriage—Alexandra!

  Alexandra did not look at Him; she seldom did. She sensed His feelings always too strongly and too immediately to need to see His expressions.

  She said, “You have to be interrupted because Hamo’s here and he’s going on that world thing. Mama says to come down.”

  With weary fury he answered, “The new prose when given verbal utterance makes once more its tediously reiterated conviction of the value of sloppy nothingness.”

  He could have kicked the dusty-seated, over-narrow little boy’s bum as it moved down the stairs ahead of him for making him once more speak forth in such usherish, prissy words instead of his own usual plain and vigorous prose.

  *

  All the time Alexandra could hear Him braying behind her, could imagine the red clownish face split open at the wide sloppy mouth in a Francis Bacon cardinal’s shriek, but, in fact, for one of His most effusive welcomes. Arms outspread, eyes all liquid and alive-o with insincerity.

  “My dear Hamo!” All on a decrescendo. “My dear Hamo! Every apology, my dear fellow. I was ‘brooding’—you know how we writers ‘brood’—I suppose you chaps daren’t brood for fear of breaking a beaker. I’ve been brooding over the old by now rather high-smelling masterpiece.”

  Swallow, swallow, puff and blow like a bull-frog.

  “What is that horrible concoction like iced nail-varnish? Darling, why ever not champers?”

  Fuss and clink, clink and strain, and pop of cork and braying laughter.

  “A million things to tell you, old man, and now you’re going half round the world.”

  The low contralto murmur. “He’s going all round the world, Perry.”

  And twisting the sapphire in Her left ear round and round so that one still watched after all these years since childhood, to see the blood that never came, and now wringing the bit of chewed lace handkerchief with Her beautiful, plump blue-veined white hands. And all this hand-wringing because He bull-frogged as He always did, and sounded blah, blah, blah in false friendship. And her wonderful breasts, soft, white, swelling away from the cleavage like two snowy hills (oh to have those breasts!) blushing or flushing or whatever pointless spoiling, all because corks popped vulgarly and His laughter echoed round the room making it empty, making all Her squirrel’s hoard of beautiful nuts (the pictures, the porcelain, the mirrors, the tables) seem nothing, seem no protection against His hollow laughing. His laughter of unhappiness. She hated Their unhappiness. His blah, blah, blah, and Her twisting torment.

  Drawing away from Them, she sought (with no gorgeous, sinister Rodrigo there, no loving, frightening Ned) to snuggle into the luxurious warmth of her fur coat, but her thinly fleshed shoulder blades found only the painful pressure of the rococo twisted strut of the chair-back. Her hand went to stroke behind her and found no soft fur that she had flung there with negligent ease as she went to summon Him. (Oh to trail down Embassy stairs with Roddy or to sit back in opera-house boxes letting furs fall from one’s shoulders.) Looking down at the rug (Bokhara, botherer), she saw beside her chair no beautiful shading hat, trailing its garden-party loveliness, where she had let it fall in gracious disorder. Both, she first sensed, then saw, had been tidied away on (as He in His awful, careful send-up of Her culture called it) the gilded Ompierre Chayz Long.

  Miles away it seemed to her exhausted body, every muscle tightened to withstand the impact of Their unhappiness, of Their rebukes (His hurt look and bray, Her silent tidying away)—miles of sliding Bokhara botherer on which to prove herself the ungainly gawk They always denounced, to call for all the wrong attentions.

  Let the Hamster’s mumble soothe her tensed body, flow through her torn, exhausted head. Mumble, mumble, mumble, and sitting up, oh such a tall hamster, little pink nose quivering, little paw cleaning his little whiskers. “Lysine content, amino acid content, protein content.” But Mama not content with all his contents.

  “No, no, don’t try to make it all detached and scientific and small, Hamo. You can’t look small however hard you try. Anyway, I won’t let you belittle yourself, it is the most important work anyone can be doing. And, of course, no one else can do it.”

  And all a low contralto moaning for the world’s ills, and twisting Her handkerchief, wringing Her hands, and with Her guilt for all her Ompierre, in fact because of it, murdering sleep, since Her contralto declaiming broke again and again on the shore of one’s head, battering and bruising, just as sleep was coming down, a comforting shrouding fog blanket that could replace the banished warmth of the fox and lamb, her treasured liberation while she waited for the dreaded delights of Rodrigo and Ned, in whose fox and lamb battle for her she could abandon her weary body and exhausted mind.

  “But, of course, without full stomachs, everything one is trying to do—contraception, literacy—makes nonsense. A full stomach is the prerequisite to self-respect. Surely, Hamo, surely.”

  And mumble, mumble, rolling in his little paws his own little nut.

  Must work without pressures, objectivity, check and check again, no falsifying claims of human urgency.

  “Oh, certainly! But they’re not going to put such things on to you, surely. You must be free of all that. Policies, administration, those are things for non-creative minds. For people like me who can’t . . .”

  And then stopped, rigid, like a circled hare, or like a beautiful statue, Venus or somebody with those rounded arms and shapely breasts and all the high colour draining from Her cheeks, for the thousandth time that twisting, twisting handkerchief had tied itself tight into that particular knot. Help! Help! She signalled to the world as She turned the sapphire’s beam now here, now there—I’m strangling him, I’m strangling the man I love.

  And, all unwittingly, the Hamster’s mumble, mumble came to Her aid—a hamster a day keeps the psychiatrist away. And to His aid, for as She had whitened so had He reddened until His bloodhound dewlaps became turkey wattles. But now He could gobble again.

  “Absolutely sure you should take no notice of her, old boy. Creation and administration are natural twins. The one feeds the other. Sounds improbable, I know. But it’s the truth. Not as to the physical twins, of course. That would be a disgusting operation, I imagine.”

  And now the wattle had so swelled and the gobbling so filled the room, that He felt big enough again to strike with His curved sharp turkey beak.

  “Mind you, I can’t say. Because we’ve never had two of a kind. Or two of different kinds for that matter. Whether the one we’ve got would share her brown rice with her twin is a macrobiotic question that I can’t answer with my flesh-eating prejudices.”

  Mama, who had suffered as by rote the pain of Her own anguish, half rose as though to come towards Her bleeding daughter’s aid, but, as so often, He forestalled. Came over, put His hand on her grey cotton arm.

  “No. Don’t believe it, Ally, I don’t. You’d give all your brown rice and the contents of your begging-bowl to the first who asked. It’s the disease of women—giving. You inherit from Zoe. And I—I’m just a great big, ungenerous, small-souled Hector.”

  Looking at Her with His large, hurt bloodhound’s eyes. It was like. And Mama, laughing and explaining.

  “Perry is that dog Hector. Aren’t you, darling? But it won’t do for Hamo who never watches the box and hates dogs. Don’t you remember when we had poor Mariette?”

&nb
sp; “I hope I never showed my dislike.”

  “Of course you did. Your impassive scientist’s mask’s just like the sizzlegraph that tells where earthquakes are happening abroad—at least, thank God, it is always abroad.”

  “Seismograph, I think. But I must admit I don’t care for pets. I doubt if animals are intended for that sort of exploitation.”

  “Exploitation! What about you and your hamsters. Wretched things! Fed entirely on sorghum! Whatever that may be.”

  “Oh! That’s necessary verification. But to use creatures to satisfy emotional needs seems to me unnatural.”

  And now Mama, almost girlish, as always when She and He found themselves for a moment publicly on the same side, shaking Her head, not controlling Her ridiculous giggling.

  “Don’t ‘do’ Hector, darling. Pet dogs are unnatural and that will never do. Really, Hamo, you do want it all ways.”

  But His hurt eyes were still levelled at her; His hand was still fondly upon her shoulder. She saw no hope of let-up unless she, too, played along. She said, in a mistress-to-dog voice: “Go away, Hector. You’re muddying my tights with your great paws.”

  As she had hoped, a buzz was at once released that hovered over her for only a sentence or two—“Forgiven, tail-wagging, grovelling old Hector.” Then, happy, released, braying, as the generous uncle at the Christmas party who has saved the best games to the last. Just as at every children’s party she could remember from her early years, he had saved his story-telling to break up whatever spontaneity had taken over.

  “Well, we’ve talked enough about others. Let’s talk about me.”

  And now she could let the grey, soothing fog envelop her, for it was The Novel.

  “Everyone sees the seaside landlady from the Cockney’s or Wakes Week point of view . . .”

  “I don’t, darling. I think of poor old drunk Winifred turning a dishonest penny with those foreign students at Brighton.”

  “Middle-class bohemia. I’m talking about the real thing. In the childhood section of the new novel I shall be giving or trying to give the horrible sense of being a national, pilloried, comic figure, the unwilling companion of stout lady and bare bum and the spinster praying for a man—the comic postcard set. Her house invaded, inspected, found wanting; children piddling on the parlour carpet; that nice Mr. Snooks in hardware bringing back a nasty tart; six months hard labour and six months solitary confinement; trying to change from the Hoggart sacred hotpot to the trendy sacred spaghetti Bolognese, and getting a fart in the eye for both; the back-breaking work, the bills, the bilking, the . . . well, you’ll see. Mrs. Reynolds, as I’ve called the landlady, the hero’s mother, comes wonderfully out of the Little Mam, the same incredible courage when it comes to the crunch, the same absurd ‘gin and it’ jollity to get through the ordinary . . .”

  Through the gradually settling soothing fog, through a determined revision of the school inspection scene—Birkin’s angry rejection of the true blood values as served up to him through Hermione’s ego-conscious, mind-dominated voice, a supreme blasphemy—she could sense the sapphire turning, turning, the crumpled lace handkerchief, probably now, too, the involuntary twitching and screwing up of the eyes. Oh God! It’s His mother, let Him do what He likes with her, what does it matter what goes into His silly book that, probably, luckily, will never be written? Hermione saying children shouldn’t know about the way flowers function, and Birkin saying they were bound to know, so let them know rightly. But that didn’t sound like Lawrence, and Birkin was Lawrence’s voice. Only six months to go and she couldn’t remember exactly who said what! And the text was everything. The trouble was that Birkin’s voice had become so lost in Ned’s version of Birkin redeemed in loving. And Mama had rounded that corner, choosing something else, something less deep to attack.

  “Darling, nobody has Wakes Weeks now. I’m sure they don’t.”

  “Don’t be tedious, Zoe, it’s just a simple verbal shorthand. Now, Hamo, the Little Mam has this extraordinary resilience, because she always has a sense of reality, of the concrete things, never lets illusion take over.”

  The Hamster primly mumbled.

  “I’ve only met your mother briefly once or twice.”

  “Well, she has. And this means I’ve got to be extraordinarily careful that the language is exact, every word meaning what it should, no bloody fake poetic prose. Mrs. Reynolds is too real for that, like the Little Mam . . .”

  “Oh Perry! Don’t sentimentalize! Your mother lives in a dream world of gay pluck and golden hearts that has never allowed her to face anything, and when anything faces her, she cries. And why not, poor darling? She’s done her best for life, keeping everyone laughing, looking beautiful. ‘Gin and it’ indeed.”

  And Birkin said: Humanity is a dead letter, let humanity disappear as soon as possible. Or be restructured with love, Ned said.

  “Darling, of course you have to synthesize and invent. And if it helps to attach your inventions to your mother, it’s not for me, Heaven knows . . .”

  “No, it’s not . . .”

  And the Hamster, tactful hamster, ering and ahring, and pulling out a hamster auburn whisker or two with his paws in agitation, poor nervous hamster.

  “Er. And yes, there’s that. And er . . . how is the boat?”

  Oh God! The Boat! Worse than The Novel.

  “It still makes a wonderful escape from all this . . .”

  But The Boat was so awful that it really did bring down the comforting fog in automatic self-protection, softer fog to lie back in, fox furs and feather boas in which to bury one’s tired body, feathers and fur, fur and feathers, Rodrigo’s stroking hands, Ned’s lap to take one’s head, feathers and fur. A staring face, eyes hard and mad, a green-white, cheesy epileptic face, and a fat lower lip drooping like a pale blood pudding, bubbles of foam at the mouth corners—no one I know! no one I know! Yet someone, she was sure, who with others equally horrible, was always in wait. And his fingers! Her head clicked open as she woke. She’d woken herself. She must have screamed. But far away, Mama, kind, but embarrassed (Oh, keep your shame for Him).

  “Ally, darling, no one blames you for going to sleep. At least, I don’t think Hamo does. With finals next year and a choice of young men, and mimes, anyone sensitive would go to sleep. But you really ought to learn not to snore.”

  And He giving her a large whisky, which she drank at a gulp. Oh, how super the burning warmth in the tummy. And Mama.

  “Gracious! And we’re always being told that booze is fit only for geriatrics.”

  And now the Hamster, so curiously short-paced and mincing for such a tall hamster, rises and gets her fur coat, places it round her shoulders.

  “You’re shivering. You mustn’t work so hard, Alexandra.”

  But mumbling, as always when speaking to her, and trying, what could he be doing? to take something out of his well-cut hunting-jacket pocket at the same time as he firmed the fur coat to her shoulders. And suddenly, rip, the lovely fox collar was half torn from the lamb. Hamster stutterings, and fumblings in his pocket, now pulling out an envelope, now stuffing it back again. And Mama.

  “Please don’t worry, Hamo. It was half disintegrating already. That’s the whole point of it, isn’t it, darling?”

  And bray, bray Ha! ha! ha!

  “Haven’t you got a decent miniskirt? I thought the young lived only in the present. But it seems with you that when you’re not dressed as a S.F. robot, you’re got up like Isadora Duncan in her cups.”

  “Take no notice, Ally darling. Papa has an Edwardian dirty mind. That’s why miniskirts are such a joy to him.”

  “Miniskirts are the antithesis of smut, Zoe.”

  “All right, sweet. I hate them just because they make me look like a senior girl guide. It was a beautiful coat, Ally, and I’m quite determined now to give you a new one. We can have it infested with moths and so forth first, if you must feel that it’s moulting.”

  And now the Hamster looking straight at her, actual
ly looking.

  “I like the tights.”

  “Yes. Well, Hamo dear, I suppose you would. But let’s not talk about that. I do think, Ally, miniskirts aside, that you should put on something warmer. And I am worried about the knee. Even Fonteyn would have had no artistic scruples about using Dettol.”

  “Yes, rag bag, off with you.”

  And, heaven-sent bliss, after enduring Hector’s old paw on her shoulder for a moment again, she was released.

  Looking at the deep cool green bath, she longed to soak her weary body for hours with all sorts of magic scents to cloud the brain and drown the reason. A drowsy numbness wouldn’t pain her sense. It would be delicious. But Rodrigo or Ned or both would soon be here. And how awful if they were to be confronted with Them and the Hamster. So she stripped off her tights, thought to wash her knee under the tap, but, seeing it already scabbed, decided better to leave it, put on the glorious swishy pink satin petticoat she had bought at the High Street Mart and over it her other wonderful buy—a blue-green sequined evening dress with shoulder-straps and waist almost at the knee. The skirt just reached the top of her leather boots. To it all she added the double row of wooden beads that fell below the knee. Threading a large needle, she cobbled the lovely fox to the lamb—your generation live in the present, He had said, all right this would do for the present. But it didn’t, it fell apart as she put it on; she she was forced to make do with her black patent-leather coat. Before going down, she looked at herself in her dressing-room mirror, and enjoyed watching the reflection as its eyelids shone a brighter and brighter silver and green with the make-up she was applying.