As if by Magic

by Angus Wilson

  “Well, I’ve said about them. They’re horrible, awful. And they aren’t anyone I’ve ever known, or for that matter seen in dreams. At least I don’t think so. I mean about the dreams. Because, of course, you can’t remember all dreams, can you? And they just come without my expecting it, or willing it. No, no, not just when I’m tired. All sorts of times, quite suddenly in the morning when I’m alone and remembering wonderful things that happened—you know like all those holidays at Beynac, or when I’m enjoying myself tremendously at a party—but not just sort of pretending to so that you’re in a state—but really enjoying, and, most incredible, when I’m reading something I care about terrifically and always have, like Wuthering Heights. It just happens, that’s all. And it’s horrid. And of course it’s hard not to think one’s going mad. I mean not that being mad is necessarily bad or even awful, only this would be. And then I get frightened about could it be the incurable kind like Joyce’s daughter?”

  “I don’t think you should think of ‘mad’ like that, darling. You’re obviously not schizophrenic which I think is what you mean. I believe it’s probably just one of these horrid things that happen with overstrain and can be dealt with easily. Even if it’s a more deep-seated neurosis, it’s bound to yield to treatment these days. But you should have told us earlier. What are we here for, Perry and I, but to hear that sort of thing? And as for you,” Zoe turned on Ned as though she would spank him, “if it wasn’t that you’re obviously filled up with half-digested, idiotic so-called ideas, I should call you a criminal. To tell her that these faces were a sort of punishment. It’s like a lot of Calvinists. Where can your generation have got to?”

  “Didn’t say punishment. But if you try to live, y’know, like this, as though, what you say, everything can be just ‘dealt with’, like Ally’s been taught, then evil faces are a good sign. They’re, y’know, some real in all this,” and he levelled his beard accusingly, first at the Pannini church and then at the small School of Bellotto view of Dresden.

  “All this! You speak as though just because we own a few pictures that we like, we have the social values of Bernard Berenson!”

  “Oh for God’s sake, don’t let’s have all that again, Zoe. Will you all, please, not get steamed up. It can hardly be a help to Ally’s hysteric condition. And anyway, darling, you know nothing about Bernard Berenson’s social views. That’s the trouble with the sort of world we live in. Now if we’d had a full-scale slanging match like this when I was a kid, we’d have said our say and done with it. The Little Mam used to tell us to bugger off sometimes, but she didn’t feel it necessary to use Oscar Wilde’s name to give it backing. No. The main thing is: sorry and all that, but no more mimes for Ally.”

  “Yes, now, about that, I do feel we must apologize to you, Ned, abominable influence though I think you’ve been. The mime is your creation. I don’t know whether it’s any good or not, but anything anybody creates as a work of art matters to them. And obviously it matters to you if part of the shape as you see it is lost, especially Alexandra who must look absolutely enchanting. We apologize to you for withdrawing her, but, under the circumstances, we must.”

  Rodrigo twisted the lemon foam around his neck until it flew out and twisted around Zoe’s firm breasts making a unisex bubble bath advertisement.

  “I think you must be what’s called ‘a woman with a mind of her own’, Mrs. Grant. I’d no idea I’d like anyone like that, but I do like you. If that matters. But even if you have a mind of your own, Ally’s over eighteen and it’s really her mind that counts, isn’t it? It happens to be a very good one, nasty faces or no nasty faces. Surely she must decide. Also it can be awfully bad for people—I mean emotionally—letting other people down. I know ’cos I’m always doing it.”

  “You are disgusting, y’know, you don’t think Ally’s mind’s good at all.”

  Ned kicked out towards Rodrigo, only succeeding in giving a glancing blow to Hamo’s shin. Zoe or Perry might have protested, but to their evident surprise, Rodrigo got up, walked the few paces to where Ned sat and pulled at his beard.

  “Shut up, guru-face. You’re not bloody Gandalf, so don’t think it.”

  “Oh, he is,” cried Alexandra, “and you’re the wicked Sauron. At least you’d like to think yourself that, as much as he likes to think he’s wise Gandalf. But, Ned, when he said I had a good mind, I think he meant it. As soon as he looks at my body, he likes to think I’m perfect, because he wants me. Well, you are conceited, Rodrigo, that’s how your mind works. In fact you’re both horribly conceited, but I can channel all that. That’s why I ought really to be with the mime.”

  Ned was chuckling now, and Rodrigo began to giggle. “She’s the Lady of Lorien handing it out. Well we don’t need your amulets, lady, thank you. We Hobbits can look after ourselves, can’t we, Sam?”

  “That makes you Frodo, I suppose,” Ned said, “Frodo the beautiful.” He seemed pleased, not angry.

  “Well, he is Frodo,” Alexandra said, “stupid and brave. He’s got the Precious. The nice Hobbit’s got the beautiful ring. Beastly Hobbit!” She copied Gollum’s voice.

  Rodrigo’s giggles increased, as did Ned’s deeper laughter. “Would you say it’s true, Sam? That I’ve got the beautiful ring?”

  “Yes, my lord Frodo, I think I would.” Ned took Rodrigo’s hand and kissed it.

  “Well, it was she who said it,” cried Rodrigo. And they both laughed spitefully.

  Alexandra also began to laugh, but not wildly, rather more it appeared as polite accompaniment to her friends. Then large tears ran down her cheeks.

  “There you are,” said Zoe, “I’m afraid you really must all go . . . Anyway, all this Tolkien. It’s unhealthy for mature people to take a fairy story so seriously. It’s like Peter Pan.”

  Ned said, “But that’s the whole point of The Lord of the Rings. It’s a kind of play on a grand scale. You don’t take it seriously. Least we don’t. We’re not science students or engineers and that, are we, Roddy?”

  But Rodrigo was kneeling at Alexandra’s side, his arm round her shoulders. He kissed her mouth.

  “Don’t worry about all that, Ally, sweet. It’s only a sort of game, a bit of camping up like your dress spangles.”

  “I know. I know. But I don’t think I can do it. You have to be very strong for games, stamina and staying power and all that. I don’t know how to do things like games, I’m not serious enough.”

  “You are, Ally,” Ned called to her, “you’re very serious. That’s why you’re worth playing games with—Gandalf and that. You know they’re the only thing that’s left. He doesn’t,” he turned savagely towards Rodrigo. “He thinks he can play seriously and keep all sorts of disgusting options open.”

  “Oh, of course. I simply see it as wild oats, didn’t you know?”

  But if there were likelihood of a fight between the two men, the woman put paid to it.

  “Oh, shut up about yourselves,” she cried. “This is about me and what on earth can be done with me. At the moment I’m pretty sure that I must do what They say. Even at the cost of the structure you’ve made. I’m sorry, Ned.”

  Ned stretched across Perry and took her hand. He held it for some while, saying nothing. It was Rodrigo who acted as showman.

  “Your absence would be a sort of ruin in itself. It would be an absence of beauty. Isn’t she lovely? I appeal to you, Mr. Langmuir.”

  Hamo was far away from them all. He stared.

  “Well, come on, Hamo,” Perry cried. “They’re letting us into the conversation at last. Don’t sell the pass.”

  “No,” said Hamo. He stared ahead of him, hearing nothing, feeling only for a moment an intense horror of this poor little waif Alexandra fallen among delinquents. Something in Beard and Elegance alike was dangerous. But he let the thought drop—it was none of his affair, he must go East where he could do no harm.

  “What?” cried Zoe.

  “No, you don’t appeal to me,” said Hamo to Rodrigo, “not at all.”r />
  Although Rodrigo blushed up to the roots of his pale gold hair, he joined with all the others in laughing. But Hamo was unaware of their laughter, far away from them. He looked at his watch.

  “I do hope Watton isn’t going to let me down. That hired car will be here at any moment. We shall be late.”

  “For the duchesses’ ball,” Alexandra said, but Perry motioned her not to laugh.

  “Your young chap rang up while you were in the toilet. He said he’d been held up. He said he might be a minute or two late.”

  “Oh! How tiresome!”

  “I don’t think he’s Hamo’s young chap, Perry. He’s his assistant, isn’t he, Hamo?”

  But Hamo didn’t answer and now it was Ned’s turn to take the floor. He rose to his feet with a great nailed clatter and a large fall of crumbs of bread from his oil-smothered fleece-lined khaki anorak. He made a little German student’s bow to Zoe.

  “I’ve been considering. Actually you couldn’t understand ‘Batteries’ because its structure isn’t part of the way your generation comprehends, but I do promise you it has a real structure. It isn’t just because we can’t be professional that we refuse that name, y’know. I mean it really is its own thing. So in giving up Ally, I am making a sacrifice. I don’t think you really understood when you said what you did, but in case you did, because I don’t believe in class determinism and all that materialist fraud, thank you. And we ought to go.”

  Rodrigo said, “I am sure Mrs. Grant did understand. And what’s more I think she’d comprehend the mime completely and enjoy it.”

  Alexandra got up and smacked Rodrigo’s face, but if she hoped to get away with it, she was wrong; he twisted her wrist viciously.

  She said, “You think you can be clever about everyone. Your stupid, pretty face smiling so self-satisfiedly.”

  But she was not crying when she sat down.

  “Could you not say any more complimentary things to anyone, please?” Perry asked Rodrigo. “We value the objects in this room rather.” His banter was icily hostile.

  Ned, who now appeared to have assumed a permanently youthful suppliant rôle to Zoe’s statuesque manorial lady, said, “But about India and all that, and perhaps North Africa, Ally could come then, couldn’t she? I mean I don’t suppose we shall, but there’s this festival . . .”

  Rodrigo said, “What, that thing of that Elinor’s? I don’t believe too much in her, do you, Ally?”

  “No, I don’t, Ned. I’ve only spoken to her once, because I don’t usually have anything to say to Americans, but it was after that lecture on dandyism. The Elinor person said how she looked on Firbank as the poetry of Freud, which was so awful. No, I don’t think she’d be very good in anything important. But that doesn’t rule out the festival, does it?”

  “Of course it doesn’t,” Ned told them. “Anyway it’s called the Malabar Festival. And it might be in Cochin or it might be in Goa. According to how the communities work out. Both would be super, wouldn’t they? And you promised to come,” he told Rodrigo and Alexandra. To Zoe he said, “It wouldn’t be for months yet. After finals. We’d probably go via North Africa. By Land Rover or something on wheels.”

  “Machinery and macrobiotics,” said Rodrigo and giggled.

  But Zoe didn’t laugh. She got up and gave everyone some more champagne; then she sat down, took a large gulp from her glass and said, “Look here. Is this drugs? I’m sensible you know. I’m a magistrate.”

  The non-sequitur of the year,” Rodrigo said, but quietly so that she could only just hear, then more loudly he told her, “yes, if you mean pot.” And to the frowns of Ned and Alexandra, “No, when people of Mrs. Grant’s generation are really prepared to talk about this, they have to be answered. I have worked that out as a basic moral proposition. I don’t remember the arguments now though, but it is basic. Mrs. Grant, pot means different things to different people. But to everyone it means peace. Well, except to oddities like Ally. But for Ned it gives a whole new dimension of sensation and an entire structural revelation. I’m frivolous, as you can see, me it just gives a fillip—isn’t that an odd word? remember it to use, Ally—to all my colour values. But Ally it just makes vomit and be gloomy, so she never does. Anyway, if you’re a magistrate, you’ll know all that. And we’re not habituated,” he added.

  “I’m not sure,” said Perry, “since my wife is a magistrate, whether you should have said any of that.”

  But Zoe frowned. “I should never have introduced the subject, as this boy,” she touched Rodrigo’s shoulder, “reminded me with the greatest tact. He’s a delightful boy. And with the most beautiful hair.” She stroked the long straight half-ripened green-gold corn absent-mindedly. “Hamo’s going to Asia,” she said. “Aren’t you? Will you be at Goa? I expect you will. I ought to have said before, he’s a very famous cytologist. Is that right, Hamo?”

  “Plant breeder will do.”

  “My dear, I never knew it was correct to use only the Anglo-Saxon words in science as well as in other things.”

  “Do you know Dermott Harvey, he’s a biochemist?” asked Ned.

  “No.” Hamo still spoke from far away, but urging himself to join them. “Naturally I do know a number of biochemists, but no one of that name.”

  “He revolutionized light filtering. We owe everything that’s good in psychedelic lighting to him. With his machine you have precise control over the amount of fluid and the point at which it enters the slide. It means that every movement is unpredictable and can never be recaptured. Random science. That’s something worth having. I should think he’s about the only scientist who isn’t anti-life. I mean the only scientist who allows for magic. Except for Laing.” He looked slyly at Hamo. Then he roared with laughter.

  “Any scientist of standing knows that he works within an unpredictable framework, but that’s hardly the formal beauty of his work,” Hamo could not avoid sounding severe. He turned his head away from Ned’s laughter.

  Ned said, “Formal beauties laid up in people’s heads, imposed on others, each a little box hoping for eternal fame. It hasn’t got us very far, has it?”

  “It rather sounds, surely,” said Zoe, “as though the mime came from a little box and was imposed.”

  “Oh God! Mama, don’t be coy with Ned. Kick him or kiss him. But, anyway, I expect Hamo’s work is what they call team-work, isn’t it?”

  “Some people call it that,” Hamo smiled, but he could not gauge the intention of her words.

  Something obviously impelled Alexandra to respond. She said to Ned and Rodrigo, “His uncle Sir James something is learned in Atlantean science.”

  “Sir James Langmuir that’s going to, like, finance a college of occult science. He’s a Superman. It’s because of men like that having money that you have to be on the side of capitalism. Sort of. I wish he’d grant me a grant.”

  But Rodrigo’s excitement was greater so that Ned’s was drowned. “Sir James Langmuir! He’s the most fabulous dandy ever. He dresses—well, for an old man—simply fantastically, doesn’t he?”

  Hamo was pleased at this praise of his great-uncle. It atoned. But he said, “He has a good tailor and valet, I expect.”

  “Well, he would. All dandies do. Brummell did. He lives in our county. And he’s terrifically rich, and marvellously arrogant. Of course my mother was mad to know him. And she set Father on to him. He snubbed them both superbly. And then he’s got this interest in groups. He asked me all about pop festivals.”

  “But you don’t know about them,” Alexandra objected.

  “Well, I said all that about classless dandyism. And he was really impressed, which made my bitchy mother much angrier.”

  Hamo didn’t care for the tone of this. “I really think I shall have to leave without my assistant.”

  But Zoe motioned him to stay put. “We’ll get these two young men off first. Then we can say a proper long good-bye to you, darling Hamo. Ally, I’m going to give you dinner in bed. And then Perry and I will have our del
icious picnic. I can phone to Mrs. Mather at the cottage tomorrow to explain. And after that he’s going to be shut up in every comfort to write his book. There’s a limit to what your states are going to do to this household, Alexandra darling, and getting in the way of Perry’s novel is the chief one.”

  Alexandra uncurled her legs, fastened the wide belt of her black leather coat with a decisive gesture.

  “Yes,” she declared, “we must be off.” And into the silence, she said, “You didn’t really think I was going to stay here, did you? That would have suited your books nicely. At least Mama and Him were trying to feel for the size of wearing parents’ shoes. But you two, you were just suiting your own books. Well, they don’t suit mine.”

  “We haven’t any books,” Rodrigo cried, “any of us, Ally darling. So don’t you think it.”

  “You may not have, but I have. Let the selfish little bitch go. As her father, I am pleased you want her. As a man, I am amazed. I’m trying to write a novel that’s something to do with real life and real people . . .”

  “Yer. I heard about your books once from the guy that taught us English at school. He read us a bit out of one once. Was it some seaside place? Sort of social realist crap to do with who’s got a level on whom in dear old England. And your hero had, y’know, the right heart and all that. The guy said it was all more real than the Angries. And we said we wouldn’t know.”

  “ ‘More real than the Angries’.” Rodrigo took it up, “I expect Ned’s making it up. But it does sound wonderfully like a quote doesn’t it? If I have to do copy-writing to make lots of lovely money, as I expect I shall, I shan’t go for publishing. I’d much rather get people to stop having smelly armpits than persuade them to buy books that no one wants to read.”