A Whistling Woman (47 page)

“It's like a bower-bird's bower. I'm sorry, that just came to mind. I
love
the peacock feathers and honesty in the jar on the turning of the stair. They are such very beautiful things.”

“Unlucky,” said Luk.

“You are the one who is against astrology—and superstition—and all that. Peacock feathers are completely improbable, completely beautiful things. I heard what you had to say about Darwin feeling sick every time he saw one. I don't think even you can think up a useful evolutionary explanation for all those colours, and that sheen, and hundreds of eyes. I've seen them put them up in great fans, Crowe had some. They
creak,
and they quiver, and up they go, and they rustle ...” She laughed. “They're absurd, and breath-taking. Every time.”

Luk looked at her, thin and bony and energetic, with candle-light in her tangle of red hair. He said

“You are covered with bits of burned stuff, and your face looks as though you've pushed it in a bonfire. Do you want a bath?”

“Have you got hot water?”

“Of course I have. A gas geyser, instant hot water, I'll light it. I'll get you a towel. And then, I'll make you a meal. It won't be much—my emergency rations—but it feels like a week since I last had food.”

“Me too.”

She was wearing a smart, tight party-dress, shot brown silk. It was torn at the neck, water-stained and smoke-stained.

“I could lend you a dressing-gown. This is like a bad film.”

“It is, isn't it? That's fun, isn't it?”

Her uncertainty made him confident.

“Oh yes. Go and have your bath.”
He found plastic packs of pumpernickel, a tin of pressed ham, a jar of olives, a tin of black cherries. He found several bottles of wine, and busied himself with corkscrews and tin-openers. He heard the sounds of female flesh in water, of the rattle of his geyser, of the choked gurgle of his primitive drainage. She came down damply, in his grey dressing-gown, her hair trailing wetly over her shoulders, her face thinner, more ordinary, more real without its spiky mascara and spangled eyeshadow.

“I had to wash my hair. It was full of horrible things.”

“I could rub it for you.”

“I did my best. Thank you. It'll dry out.”
She ate voraciously, hunched in an arm-chair, and would have eaten more, if there had been any. He remembered his store of bitter chocolate and Kendal Mint Cake, for his snail expeditions, and broke off several pieces for both of them. He filled her glass frequently, and she drank recklessly, which would have been a good sign if he had been sure what he wanted, or how he wanted it, he thought confusedly, having drunk quite a lot himself.

He said, “Well?”

Frederica thought, that is the end of the wooing, and the beginning of the sex, and the end of the, the end of the, the end.

The sex was good, despite the wine. Luk was aggressive, successful, and then (reasonably) grateful. Frederica liked him. She liked the excitement of his unknown, new, movements and smell. She liked his hair and his beard. She felt sad. She said, tentatively, her mouth close to his ear, “I dreamed about you.”

Luk kissed her mouth. “It couldn't have been anything good,” he said.

She did not answer.

They slept entangled, as though their bodies belonged together. In the morning they were formal and cautious, with that complicated courtesy adult humans use to show they have not been using another human for selfish purposes. There was no milk and no butter, so they had black coffee and more pumpernickel.

Frederica spoke sagely of the felling of Theobald Eichenbaum. She said she had read the pamphlet, and it was of course distasteful, but she felt, many people might feel, there but for the grace of God ...

Luk said he didn't believe in God, or his grace, and things looked different if you were a European, people had had to make difficult choices, and other people remembered. He said his father had been one of the few Danes who had
really
fought in the Resistance. He had trained with the British Army and gone back—had been dropped by parachute—with the Commandos. He wasn't very tolerant of people who had accommodated themselves—and then claimed that they hadn't.

“Was that how you came to be half-English?”

“Not exactly. He met my mother when they were both Christian missionaries in Ethiopia. That was why he came back here.”

“Are they still alive?”

“Oh, yes. Still very Christian. I didn't take that job in Copenhagen because I can't cope with all that at close quarters.”

He was not looking at her. It was not lovers beginning to share their pasts. She thought he was—fighting some other battle, involved in some other snarl. And he was not interested in her, in Frederica, he had asked nothing about John Ottokar, and nothing ... nothing ...

“Wijnnobel is European. He knew Tinbergen, who spent the war in a concentration camp, and refused to be let out as a privilege. Pinsky lost much of his family in the death-camps. They don't forgive, even if they choose to forget.”

“Eichenbaum was a prisoner. He paid.”

“He was a prisoner of the Russians. Because he was in the German army, in the end. There's paying, and paying.”

They drove back again, after breakfast. Luk took Frederica to the door of her parents' house. He said he had better go and help with the damage-assessment. He kissed her very gently and abstractedly. He said

“Thank you.”

Thank you is the end, thought Frederica, going into the house. Thank you. Thank you for the use of your body. Thank you very much.

Vincent Hodgkiss and Marcus Potter ate breakfast in Vincent's flat, and could not stop smiling. Vincent said once “You're not sorry?” and Marcus said “You know very well I'm not.”

The Vice-Chancellor appeared at the Academic Board with heavily bandaged hands. He gave a clear, unemotional summing-up of the damage, financial and material. He said errors had been made, not least by himself, and that matters were now, to a large extent, in the hands of the police. Abraham Calder-Fluss said he wished it to be on record that the Conference had—up to the final incursion from outside—been highly successful. This must not be forgotten.

The Professor of Sociology said that, in view of the considerable expense of repairing the buildings, and the very strong feelings of the student body, it would be wise to reconsider the preparatory year of maths and languages. It was anomalous in British education. It was creating ill-will. It should, in his view, be scrapped. A strand of cultural studies could then be offered across the board ...

Lyon Bowman said “I see our student representatives are not with us.”

Calder-Fluss said “I noticed the film people recording some of the—events. Whilst it can certainly be argued that such film will be useful to the police in their enquiries, there were certain unfortunate moments—certain matters—which I hope they can be persuaded not to make public.”

Wilkie said “We've got her on film. Stomping along in a black cloak with a great
rod,
and waving them on.”

“You can't
use
that,” said Frederica.

“It's a newsman's dream.”

“You're not a newsman. You'll kill him.”

“He got it all wrong.”

“
They
got it all right.”

“It was a campaign, it was planned, there was no good outcome. They've all buggered off, caravans and everything. Struck camp. Buses-full, going back down the A1.”

“They'll boil up somewhere else. Wilkie,
please
don't put her on the telly. He—it was
right
of him to—let her do her own thing. But he shouldn't have to—be punished for it.”

“It's news. The public has a right—”

“No, it doesn't. It just has a hunger for blood.”

“It's an amazing bit of film,” said Wilkie. “But OK, I'll scrap it. I'll show it to you, first.”

“I don't want to see it. I don't want her in my mind. She's dangerous.”

Chapter 25

Time moved on. The events of the Battle, as it came to be called, settled into legend, and the University began its repair work. Luk published his paper, in
Nature,
and it was taken up by a Sunday paper, which presented him as a bristling genetic predestinarian and moral pessimist. Wilkie said to Frederica that they ought to have him on the programme to talk about it, and Frederica said it was no good, they'd tried that, he thought they were trivial, and wouldn't come. Luk, who was beginning to have some success in public debates and on the radio, was in fact waiting for the television invitation, which did not arrive. Both Luk and Frederica thought from time to time about their night together, in the shadow of the burning. The shape of it changed, in both their minds. Luk felt a sudden compunction, visited by a memory of the damp-headed, naked woman, bent over his snail-shells, and then could not think why, and dropped it into the well of unconscious cerebration. Frederica allowed Agatha and Daniel to think that her unusual diminution of confidence and energy was a result of the
débâcle
of John Ottokar, as indeed it partly was. She bought herself a Liberty peacock shirt, and then did not wear it. She took, without too much thinking about it, to celibacy. She got better at television interviewing, and branched out into other arts' programmes. She was better, as she had originally been good, because she was not anxious, she was not intimidated. She did not quite care.
At the beginning of the next academic year, in late September 1969, she invited Alexander Wedderburn and Daniel to dinner in Hamelin Square. She was in charge of Saskia and Leo, as Agatha had been in charge when she travelled to the Conference. Agatha was away at a conference on examination boards, and the complicated business of assuring parity of judgement. Frederica said to Alexander that she thought their way of life was about to come to an end.

“Why? It seems a good way of life, considering everything.”

“Well—it appears that Agatha is going to be
very rich
. Rupert Parrott told me,
Flight North
is making a fortune. They reprint and reprint and reprint. Everyone reads it. Children and adults. Culture and counter-culture. People remembering their childhood reading, and kids looking for a story. It's given Saskia and Leo enormous kudos at school. Only I can't see how a woman that rich will want to go on living in this South London desert.”

“I've noticed the gentrification going on. You've got brass knockers and new-old shutters, and window-boxes all round the square.”

Daniel said “Have you asked Agatha?”

“No. It's up to her.”

“You are a family. An odd one, two women and two children, but you
are
one. She won't want to break that up.”

“Well, I'm not going to be able to afford her life-style.”

“She hasn't changed it,” said Daniel.
Daniel had things preying on his own mind. His son, Will, never a great scholar but always competent, and always pursued by his grandfather's pedagogic vigilance, had quite suddenly failed all his exams. This had been made worse by the fact that the school thought that Mary was showing signs of unusual brilliance—like her mother, Daniel thought—and had been moved on a year ahead of her age-group. He had gone North on receiving this news, and had tried to talk to Will. It had not been a success. Will had glared, and shuffled, and burst out, on one occasion only, with a series of accusations that, Daniel felt, were clearly seared into his mind. Daniel had left him when he was little. Daniel didn't really care what happened to him, he only cared about the down-and-outs in his horrible crypt. Daniel had let his mother die. Daniel was a bad—a bad religious, he didn't really believe in God, he didn't really understand that God was absolute, and came before exams.

This last accusation stung Daniel horribly. He said that what he believed was a personal matter.

Will said, rightly and cruelly, that no, it was not, actually. He had no right to go about behaving like a—religious—since he wasn't one.

Where are you getting all this? Daniel asked his son.

“You don't care where I get anything, or what I get, or what I believe. When have you ever talked to me about God?”

Daniel could not answer.

“Never,” said Will. “That's when. Never. Never. Never. Only about
fucking
exams, which don't matter.”

“Don't swear. And yes, exams do matter. And, if you want me to, I will talk about God.”

“Well, I don't. It's long past—the time when—that would have been—any use. Why don't you go back to your
failures,
they make you feel better, I
don't
.”

“Will—” said Daniel. But Will's burst of speech was over, and he could not be got to say any more.
Alexander told Frederica that he was going to go North, in November, and put on a play, in Long Royston, in aid of the University's appeal for funds for damage-reparation. He said that his costume-designs for
Astraea
had been damaged in the violence, and the Vice-Chancellor was concentrating the appeal action where—where things had been lost.

He thought he would put on a Shakespeare. His own writing was not going too well, inspiration was burned out. He thought he might put on
The Winter's Tale
. Indoors, of course, it was Winter. A play about rebirth after tragedy. Appropriate.

Frederica said her father had always hated that play.

Why, said Alexander.

For being a wilful device for making comedy out of tragedy by ignoring real feelings. By ignoring the feelings of a woman shut in a vault for sixteen years who then conveniently comes back to life as a statue.

“As we are mock'd with art,” she said, thoughtfully.

Alexander asked Daniel what he thought. Daniel said he didn't know the play, and stared darkly down, through the floorboards it seemed.

“I hope you don't hate it,” said Alexander. “I was thinking of doing the play the way we did
Astraea
—with a largely amateur cast, and some professionals. I wondered if you'd like to act.”

Frederica hesitated. She handed around a dish of fruit. Dark grapes and pale golden plums, pomegranates and kiwi fruit, tangerines and Chinese gooseberries. No time to cook pudding, these days, she said.

She said she was too old for Perdita, and too young for Hermione, and not fierce enough for Paulina. And had lost the desire to act a part, somehow. Although she granted she might be said to be doing that all the time.

“I had a sudden vision of you as Hermione, and Mary as Perdita,” said Alexander.

“That's meddling with genes in an unacceptable way—sorry, I don't mean to be rude, I'm thinking aloud. It feels wrong. And I don't seem to want to act, any more.”
Daniel thought, something's wrong, but he was too tired to ask what. He picked at the seeds in his fruit. He thought, Will too had Frederica's genes, and belligerent Bill's, in his fiery half. And his own dark, heavy heredity. Damn.
Luk Lysgaard-Peacock, on one of his autumnal surreptitious snail-excursions, crept in through his sawn paling, heard sounds, and stopped. The ground rose, just inside the Pale, at that point. He dropped down, and crawled forward, peering cautiously over a hummock.

The Hearers were gathered on what had been the burned earth of the hen-houses, next to “his” dry-stone wall. They were chanting. There was a sound of crashing stones.

A figure stood against the wall, a female figure, in a white gown of some kind, pleated. Paul-Zag was sitting on the wall, playing his guitar, and John Ottokar stood beside him, blowing a mournful melody on the clarinet. The Hearers were dancing, shuffling, and filing past, stones in their hands. As they passed, they cast them in the direction of the woman. He did think for a moment that they were stoning her, but then he saw that it was not, not exactly, not that. They were heaping up stones—many of them gathered from the snail-wall—before and beside her, making a kind of cairn, or a loose barrier. She stood and shivered—it was chilly—and they sang.

It was unhappy.

Luk wondered if they were going to hurt her, if he should stay, or get help.

It became clear that they were not. The punishment—if that was what it was—was symbolic only.

Luk retreated, ill-at-ease.

From Brenda Pincher to Avram Snitkin

Well, here I still am, a sacrifice to the cause of true ethnomethodology. I've got no more tapes, so I've got to write to you, as I've got to communicate or I shall get sunk and absorbed in what's going on here. Even if communicating is not the right word, given the one-way nature of this—well, it isn't a correspondence. I won't think about that. I'll pretend you're real, and out there, and that I shall be able to get this message-in-a-bottle
out
to you. Gander still goes out regularly, and Zag occasionally. They do such shopping as is done, and we have to rely on how spaced-out, or not, they are, for what they remember, or don't remember (Loo-paper. Aspirins. Torch batteries)—to bring back.

We work a lot harder and eat a lot less and grow a lot thinner. We clean a lot, but somehow—maybe some of this is subjective—things get grubbier, paint gets scraped off and not put back, blankets fray. We have rituals now. The Manichees worked a lot with mirrors and light and Gander brought back a whole van-full—balancing mirrors on stands, mirrors to screw on walls, old pub mirrors, gilded mirrors out of what looks like redundant cinemas or something. We've got a mirror-room
lined
with the things now, and we do—movements—in there, and—sing, and dance. Also there's a lot of talking. Joshua talks a lot, about light, and emptying out, and self-loss. Eva W. talks a lot, about Rosicrucians, and astrological mysteries, and alchemical transfigurations. I think I'm not the only one that thinks that's all crap, though it's interesting that none of us would ever
say
any such thing to any of the others. This might be a relic of the Quakerly charity, which could be a very severe thing. But it also feels like fear. As though everything's explosive, or potentially so, and no one wants the explosion quite yet. (Some, including me, don't want it
at all
.)

We have got semi-savage chickens running in and out of everywhere, shitting on things, like a Yorkshire version of sacred cows. That adds to the general run-down feeling. We are still allowed to look at the television, oddly, but the programmes are restricted. We get to see Nature programmes—lots and lots of shots of snakes pretending to be leaves, and killer fig-trees in the Amazon—and we get to see children's TV. No News. Can you tell me, Avram (if you ever get this letter) who is Charles Manson, and what has he done?

I've been wondering why everyone puts up with Eva W. now she's moved in permanently. She even got what used to be Lucy's bedroom. I've had the idea that she's a kind of lightning-conductor. Because we are all repelled by her—I was going to say, because we all hate her, but that's schoolgirlish talk, we don't, it's more primitive, we are
repelled
and
appalled,
except those who are fascinated (Zag, Lucas Simmonds, Canon Holly)—because we are all repelled by her, except
those,
we somehow draw together, and don't mind things in each other that might have been irritants.

Also, she somehow channels away the conflict between Gideon—sexy, out-of-his-depth, no-longer-charming, grumpy Gideon—and Joshua Ramsden, who grows in beauty, and epigrammatic crispness, and untouchability. He really has got a lovely face. I have to say that. He is
both
repelled by, and in a way I simply don't understand, attracted to Eva W. and her mumbo-jumbo.

I'm avoiding telling you, Avram Snitkin, Avram Snitkin, who have
got
to be real and ordinary (well, you never were
that
) and out there somewhere in an ordinary world—I've been avoiding telling you what has scared me. If we all end up dead, I'd like to have told somebody.

He talks a lot about
stones,
as well as about light, and fruit, and mirrors. He gets them out of the
Book of Joshua
in the Bible, which is one of the really bloodthirsty ones. God and Joshua are always beating people into submission with hails of stones.

Anyway, as we all know, one of the things people were traditionally stoned for, was adultery.

One of the girls—well women—I'm scared to write this, Avram—turns out to be pregnant. It is that Ruth, with the plait dangling, and I
suppose
I assume Gideon is the other party, since no one's suggesting parthenogenesis, though when she's asked, she stares—she stares
stonily
—and says she doesn't know how it happened.

No, we didn't
stone
her. Joshua quoted the New Testament, Let him who is without guilt among you, cast the first stone.

Then he said, we were all guilty, because we were all one, and we would build a commemorative pile of stones.

So we all walked past poor silly Ruth and solemnly added our non-vindictive stone to the heap in front of her.

It was silly and quite horrible.

I want to come out, and must not, for some sort of professional ethnomethodological honour requires me to see it through.

I am not sure, Avram, we shall always stop at symbolic stones. I mean, they were
already
real, she was
already
in a sort of pillory.

They haven't sent for a doctor, or sent her to see one, or anything. I tried mentioning it to Elvet Gander, and he said

“In the fullness of time, dear girl” and snapped his fingers. If we all die, it will be because of his mind-expanders.

It is just possible that Joshua Ramsden is the father. I mean, why does he otherwise not go after Gideon? It is also possible that the whole idea of sex, and everything to do with it,
embarrasses
him, with a religious intensity of embarrassment.