As if by Magic

by Angus Wilson

  “No, you wouldn’t, hon. They went out around when I was weaned: Rubber tits and babies’ bottles. Why even in the thirties they were a crime in any decent modern mother’s home. And by the time I had Elinor, it was breastfeeding or count yourself poor white trash. But my mother saw to it that we all had them in turn as babies. It was that or suck the thumb, she used to say in her homey way. Maybe she was right too. Look at the way that Elinor of mine bites that thumbnail of hers. Comforters they called them. But it was a pretty unhygienic sort of comfort, and psychologically—well, Anna Freud took one look and placed them on the banned list. Trust the Arabs to still live that way. Probably the latest fashion in Larache.”

  Something in her tone made Alexandra go defiantly into the shop and buy two of them immediately, one pink bowed, the other blue.

  Oliver rejected the pink, but refused from then on to be without the blue. And Alexandra, watching his delight, blessed the comforter.

  “It’s the Holy Ghost, that’s what it is,” Rodrigo said, when he came upon the beatified mother and child. “I don’t know what that makes you, Ally. But if it’s a Virgin, then I’m absolved from all guilt at last.” And in this unusually friendly mood, he even saluted Elinor with the whimsy, “Do look, Elinor,” he cried, “Do look. The Holy Ghost or Comforter. I bet you always thought it was a dove. But it isn’t. It’s a piece of rubber with a blue bow.”

  Elinor smiled at him or rather at his direction as though he were not there. She knelt down by the carry-cot and put her face close to Oliver’s. “That’s not a nipple, Oliver. Don’t you be fooled. That’s just a rubber placebo.” She said it all in a special soft and gentle version of her deep voice which, she had once told Alexandra, allowed one gradually to condition babies to adult language, since in any case it was the tone not the words to which they responded. “You don’t need that to sleep. Not that to sleep. Sleep. Sleep, Sleep.”

  Her voice grew softer and softer. Oliver was fascinated, for he lay quiet and his eyes never left her lips. But if she had hoped that she had willed him into sleep, she was wrong. When she put out a hand to take the rubber dummy from his mouth, he let out a terrified yell, and then began such crying of mixed fear and anger that he became redder and redder in the face with convulsion. Elinor drew back.

  “It should never have been given to him,” she said sharply, then, softening her tone, “Alexandra, what was in your mind? You’ve lived so wonderfully with him in natural rhythms. It could not have been that terrible mother of mine. No, even she, with all her plastic culture for the masses, doesn’t live in the pre-breast-feeding age. Oh Lord! Why has there got to be this pain? Look, I know we can’t speak. And where I’m at it takes all and more to endure the sensitisation. All the noises of the world seem to crowd in. As if all the stupid parties and foolish clever talk of all my wasted years was deafening my ears, and all the tastes and smells I’d let take hold of me over the years were . . . well, let’s say it’s bad. But it’ll be done as long as I don’t fight it.”

  Looking at her, Alexandra saw that she indeed looked old, her beautiful modelled face was pinched, the skin wrinkled and scaly, the nostrils red and translucent like someone with catarrh, the lower eyelids pouched and khaki-coloured. She looked away; it was no affair of hers.

  As though to echo this, Elinor said, “We’re not working on the same planes. But I know living to the full with the body, as you were, is hard too. All the same, if I couldn’t help you, surely you could have spoken to Ned. Or—because I know you respect his life-style—to Rodrigo here.” She made a suppliant gesture, but Alexandra was busy now trying to soothe Oliver with the soft tapping on the forehead and chest she had learned from the Arab mothers.

  Elinor tried another tack, “To have spoiled such beauty. For you were beautiful, Alexandra, feeding him, and he was beautiful sucking.”

  Alexandra had taken Oliver in her arms and was walking away from them along the sands. Elinor suddenly shouted.

  “It’s no good talking to you except in the old dead language. Very well, rubber teats! Dummy teats!”

  Alexandra forced herself to make no reply, but Rodrigo answered for her.

  “Christ! You are a snob, Elinor.” And assuming Cockney, “Orl right then. Wot’s the matter wiv rubber tits? The kid likes them, don’t ’e? Orl right, it give ’im wind, so what? We all ’ave wind, don’t we? Or don’t you fart up on Nob ’ill. No, I suppose you wouldn’t. It’s all piss up there. Piss elegant.”

  “My God! The British! Wherever you start from it ends up with class! You live all the time with triviality, immediacy. Dandy! You’re just a sub-person, sinking into a dreary, ageing round of malice and gossip and posturing to escape from the boredom and fear that comes from being a robot nothing.”

  Later, Ned came to Alexandra. “Look, it’s been brought up at the Council. I know, like, it isn’t important but there’s lots think it is, y’know, against the natural living of the Community. I don’t care. Rubber, flesh, I mean it doesn’t seem important. But it’s plastic to them. I think you ought to know it was Elinor stopped them expelling you, she explained about the pain of living in the body intensely as you had and that. But, y’know, it’s just impossible to get co-ordination with all this tension. I mean Territoriality’s indifference or it’s nothing. And they must live it in their movements. And now all their muscles are knotted up.”

  Alexandra said, “I’m sorry, Ned.”

  But he scowled and sat throwing stones into the sea. Then he burst out.

  “All this mothers! It’s got to stop, Ally. What we want is not you with your rubber teats or Elinor’s deep breathing, spiritual mother. We want the Great Mother here. The White Goddess. Yes, I mean it. We’ve got tangled up in conventional Reason. We’ve got to go back behind that. We need older cults, Binah or Devi. P’raps even Durga or Kali. We could satisfy her with the sacrifice of this little bastard.” He hardly seemed to be mocking, but Oliver, hearing his voice, put out an arm and delightedly touched his beard.

  Rodrigo came back the next evening from a trip to Larache Post Office. “Ally, I’ve got this letter from my awful mother. Can I read it to you? It’s rather important to me.” And he read. “ ‘Daddy heard the other day that your hero Sir James Langmuir talks of wanting a third private secretary’—she’s put two exclamation marks after the third. Moderately rich people are always fiendishly envious of the very rich—‘someone quite young. Apparently he has all sorts of financial interests in these trendy firms for clothes and records and restaurants that the young go to and spend all that money they have, and he wants a young man who’ll keep him in touch. Knowing how much you admired him, I couldn’t help feeling a tiny bit sad that you were so determined on this year of travelling before you look around. Of course seeing all those places is a wonderful opportunity though the Community sounds as frightful as its name, but you would do the job so beautifully and Sir James seemed to like you that time we met at the Ashtons which considering his usual behaviour was quite something. And then again you do have the most expensive tastes, darling, so that it isn’t going to be easy for you in the sort of job most young men have to take today. And your degree wasn’t exactly brilliant. Mary Bond’s eldest boy, the one you’ve never met, is getting £12 a week! I can’t see you managing very far on that. And then to work with Sir James would be such a wonderful entrée which is the most important thing of all. Of course, Daddy, as always, poor darling! isn’t able to say the right thing to the right person. And given ‘the right person’ here I can’t altogether blame him. But then as you know Sir James is not my favourite person . . .”

  Alexandra said, “I thought an entrée was what people like Mama call what people call starters.” Then looking at Rodrigo, “You wouldn’t really want a job with that man surely. He’s a sort of terrible tycoon.”

  “I think I would. Oh, it’s all very well for you, Ally—you went and got a two one. And Ned dropped out. But I got a two two. I can’t even hope for anything but the dreariest jobs. I shoul
dn’t complain, of course, if I had to teach in some dispiriting place. I’d even try to do it well and so on. But I don’t really want to be a stoic. It isn’t at all the same as being a dandy. It’s only that both can be austere. Whereas with this thing of Sir James’s, I do really believe there could be what she calls an entrée. Not, of course, into the silly social world she means, but into cultivating my own way of life, being elegant and separate, and a bit austere and arrogant in the right way.”

  “It sounds awful.”

  “No, you know it isn’t. It’s one of the only personal protests left. It doesn’t mean at all being arrogant to the weak. Only to the awful and to the petty bosses. And living with some style. I think Sir James does it that way. Only his being so rich makes it difficult to tell whether he’s a dandy or just a shitty bully. At least, working for him, I shall find out. What my father calls ‘the hard way’. All that occult isn’t very promising, I admit. We’ve seen enough of that guff here. But there must be an explanation. I just don’t believe that people who run large enterprises are stupid. That’s a University sort of illusion. They’re much less stupid and boring than academics. Anyway, I can’t stay here much longer.”

  “No, I don’t think you should.”

  “Well, then. What I really want to ask is could you write to Hamo Langmuir and ask him to write to Sir James to say I’m the person he must give the job to. He said Sir James would do anything for him and I know he would do anything for you. He had worship in his eyes if ever a man did. I mean I have it, of course, but not in that way.”

  “If you really want it, I must. But, Roddy, a tycoon person What will you turn into? It’ll be awful if you start wearing bowler hats and umbrellas, and flowered shirts and frills for dinner, and giant roses in your button-hole.”

  “I’m not going to be that Sir Gerald Thing, M.P. He’s not a dandy. He’s what’s called a British ‘act’. Being a dandy in the real sense isn’t like that. And you know it. And if you think I’m too corruptible then you should marry me. If you believe that Elinor bitch when she says I could become a flamboyant robot, it’s your duty to save me from it. Just as it’s my duty to rescue you and my son from this squalor—spiritual, physical, æsthetic squalor, every sort of it. For all we love Ned, it has to be said. And it’s not just priggish to say it either. I know Oliver loathes my very touch, and I’m not going to pretend I love babies smelling of salt and covered in sand. But it would all be different. We’d be reasonably rich, especially when you earned as well, which you’d want to. And I’d want that too. Being a dandy doesn’t mean being a Victorian husband, you know. Just having everything appropriate and elegant, which we could do. And we’d look elegant. And he’ll be handsome, with my looks and yours. All that does matter. It’s a taking-off ground for protest against second-rateness. Whereas this sloppy place is just a dive into a treacle well or a treacle midden. Just because my ghastly parents and yours live in middle-class taste and awfulness doesn’t mean we can go on all our lives reacting. Anyhow, you and Oliver mustn’t stay here any longer. It’s getting far too cold. I don’t mean just now, although this wind is freezing.”

  “Yes. I know what you mean. I can understand general statements if I try. Even though I’m a female.”

  Alexandra was immensely relieved that they could end on a joke, because she could not bear at that moment to be driven from her routine. But she promised to think over going back to London if she could resolve the intolerable problem of being in the same city as Zoe and Him. And also if Ned was all right.

  Meanwhile they agreed to put on lovely clothes and go into Tangier and a day’s luxury which Oliver should share. They could visit the British Library and find the address of Hamo’s Institute to which to send the letter for forwarding that Alexandra would immediately write. She would urge Hamo also immediately to write to this Sir James person saying that Rodrigo Knight, who would already have written to him, was the only young man who could possibly do what he wanted as his secretary.

  The next morning when they left for Tangier the south-west wind blew behind them from the sea carrying squally rain so that their delight in for once appearing elegant was spoilt by all the leather they had to cover themselves and Oliver with for protection. Nor was he any happier than usual with Rodrigo for his cot-bearer though he stopped short of crying, making only a face that would have brought in large funds to an N.S.P.C.C. appeal. But if Oliver’s suppressed misery caused Alexandra disquiet, it was almost forgotten as they came upon the three small children under the trees. The two Swiss children—the four-year-old boy in torn, thin pyjama trousers and the three-year-old girl in an oversize pair of dirty linen slacks—were apparently burying Louise’s baby under a mound of pine needles and leaf mould.

  “She’s cold,” they said in explanation to Rodrigo’s anxious questioning, “she’s cold.”

  And it seemed very likely, for the wizened little creature had on only a pair of cotton drawers. Rodrigo clothed it in the embroidered military tunic he was wearing under his long leather coat; the tunic went round the little thing three times, the roughness of the frogging against its skin made it cry. Alexandra took the large Turkish shawl she had draped over her head and wrapped the Swiss girl in it; it trailed on the ground like an Edwardian illustration of a small girl dressed in her mother’s ball gown. There was nothing left for the boy except one of the many covers on Oliver’s cot, it cost Alexandra much irritation to part with this and Oliver began to cry.

  They waited for the bus in a light drizzle. Some village children, pinched in the face, thin and lightly clad, came and stared at them. To keep themselves warm they drank hot milky coffee and, in pouring it out, spilt some on the ground. A cat, so thin that its ribs made stripes on its black furry side giving it a false tabby look, crept out in an attempt to lap up the spillings; but it was first stoned by the children and then chased away by a large half-starved mongrel pointer who barked so loudly that Oliver’s crying increased. But then, they weren’t, after all, called upon to “do anything” about the village children, the dog or the cat.

  On the bus, they stood with Oliver in his cot suspended between them, just as on each side of them stood sesame-smelling peasants with live fowls suspended upside down between them.

  Alexandra said, “I believe I’m having a presentiment. I mean a bad one. Something’s going to happen to the Community. Something bad.”

  “It’s happened,” Rodrigo said, “oh dear, I do hope you haven’t caught psychic gifts from Elinor. Do you think you’ve got those faces coming on again?” This made them laugh a little.

  In Tangier the sun shone.

  They could get out of the wind. They ate a delicious potage and a daube of kid at a small French restaurant. They had sherbet. They drank a bottle of red wine. They bought Oliver a vulgar comic rubber camel intended for tourists which they swung on a stick above his carry-cot. He was delighted. They found the address of the Institute and posted Alexandra’s letter to Hamo. By now the sun was shining warmly. The stormy time was done. Alexandra decided to sleep at the Community instead of going into Larache. She fed Oliver from her breast on the bus and he sucked so contentedly that Rodrigo was able to stroke his arm gingerly without his objecting. They both felt rather happy.

  It was the more disconcerting, then, that when they reached the village in fast fading light, they were met by a little crowd of people who stood at the entrance to the path that led through the wood to the Community beach. It was not a crowd that made way for them, and when they decided to go round it, stumbling among the trees through increasingly sinking sand dunes, they were followed by the noise of shouting that sounded angry and some stones that were not aimed at a cat.

  However, the weather turned really hot during the next week or two and Alexandra, lying sea-rocked, forgot the whole bad presentiment. Her happiness was ambiguously reinforced at the end of that time when Rodrigo, concealing childish excitement under extra urbanity, produced a summons to an interview, all expenses paid, with the gr
eat Sir James. She felt happy for him, she was almost sure; and worried for herself without him, she almost knew. He was to leave by air from Tangier in five days’ time.

  But before that time, many more of the Community began to leave as the stormy cold rains returned in full force. Going to the bus for Larache and Thelma, Alexandra fell in with the Swiss couple and their children and Louise with her baby, all seeking to hitch their way south to Marrakesh. She noted with amused annoyance that all three of their children wore thick bristly little fur coats and fur hoods that stank in the rains. There were no signs of the clothes that she and Roddy had given to them.

  The shouting children of the village were reinforced this time by some youths, who really frightened Alexandra by walking round the little group of Communards in closing circles and laughing jeeringly. The Swiss youth was so thin and his ginger beard and whiskers so straggly that his evident weakness made the situation more frightening than if there were no man with them.

  Louise said again, “Why can’t they love us? We aren’t up to putting anyone down about anything. I want to build a House of Love.”

  The comment seemed more apposite now, but hardly more effective. It was some time before any vehicle came along the road. A group of unveiled women, presumably Berbers, with red and yellow plastic buckets, gathered round the communal tap. They looked angrily at the little white group and chattered volubly. Then they began to shout directions to the youths. Alexandra felt so frightened for Oliver that she always remembered with pride afterwards that she hadn’t been frightened for herself. But at last a large lorry appeared from the north, raising clouds of dust behind it. She wondered if the others felt as relieved as she did, but she did not ask them, for she felt safer not to be associated with them. The lorry stopped and the Swiss couple began to hoist their children into the back. When Louise sought to follow them, one of the Berber women, accompanied by laughter and shouting, rushed forward and tried to pull the little fur coat off the baby but succeeded only in tearing its ill-sewn seam. For a moment Louise seemed about to hit her, then she burst into tears.