The Wilful Eye (23 page)

‘What about this?' she asked.

‘I'd like it to remain in your keeping. Will you look after it for me?'

‘Of course.'

While the prince watched, Belle pinned the stalk to the front of her chemise again. It was like a third stage of ritual, but not one to be found in any spell book.

They had forgotten all about Belle's family until they heard voices raised in the kitchen. The three of them had slipped away unnoticed and were now arguing among themselves.

‘You silly old fool . . . You should've stopped him . . . Why didn't you hide it?'

That was Delphie and Elise accusing their father. The prince turned to Belle.

‘What do you want to do with your family?' he asked.

The carriage rolled off down the lane, with Belle's father on the driver's bench at the front, Delphie and Elise sitting behind. They were still arguing and snapping at one another.

Belle and the young man who had been a beast stood at the window and watched them go. Belle had opened the window to let the morning sun in and the fuggy warmth out. It was good to inhale fresh air again.

‘What do you think?' she asked. ‘Will they make a life for themselves in the chateau?'

‘They'll have all the comforts.' The prince's voice, though fully human, retained a deep reverberant quality. ‘Since you don't want me to remove my invisible servants.'

‘No, I don't want to punish them that way. If there's a punishment, they make it for themselves.'

‘One another's company.'

‘Exactly. They can either behave like a proper family or be at each other's throats all the time.'

Belle didn't bother to wave as the carriage swung round a corner and disappeared from view.

‘I'm glad we're staying here,' said the prince. ‘I like your cottage better.'

Belle surveyed the parlour floor, which was littered with strips of discarded fur. ‘Needs cleaning, though,' she grinned. ‘Look at the mess you've made.'

The prince nodded, and moved forward to start tidying.

‘Wait,' said Belle. ‘I have a question to ask first.'

‘Yes?'

‘My father made a trade to get the rose, but it must have been sitting in the vase a long while before that.'

‘Four years.'

‘So you chose to put your human heart into a flower of your own free will. Why?'

His brows came down and he dropped his eyes.

‘My father said you
wanted
to be an animal.'

He nodded, reluctantly. This was obviously one revelation he shied away from.

‘Tell me,' Belle insisted. ‘You've told me everything else.'

‘It was a bad time for me.' He spoke in stops and starts. ‘I'd grown up in the chateau while my parents were away at the king's court in Paris. Courtly life was their whole existence . . . it still is. I grew up a solitary child, with books for my friends. There wasn't a book I didn't read and re-read. Especially on magic.'

‘You became a great scholar and magician.'

‘I don't know about
great.
'

‘Making magic mirrors. Creating invisible servants. How old were you then?'

‘Those were my early experiments. I was twenty when my parents heard about them and summoned me to court.'

‘You must have been a sensation there.'

‘No, you don't understand. My parents didn't want me to be a magician, they wanted me to be a courtier. The king disapproved of the use of old-fashioned magic.'

‘I can't imagine you as a courtier.'

He snorted. ‘I was never cut out for it. I was awkward and shy, no sense of style. The fashionable clothes were too tight on me. And I was always clumsy. I kept knocking things over. They said I moved like a peasant.'

‘Who said?
Your parents?'

‘No, though I'm sure they thought it. It was the ladies at court who said it to my face. The queen's retinue. And the daughters of families my parents wanted to marry me off to. They made fun of me.'

Belle was surprised to see that he was shaking. She took a step forward and put a hand over his hand – no longer a paw, but still a large masculine hand. Her touch quietened him as it had so often quietened the beast he had been.

‘They were so pretty,' he went on. ‘I'd never seen girls like them. I'd never seen any girls much at all. I thought they were butterflies in their lace and muslin, white and pink. But they had tongues as sharp as rapiers.'

‘They teased you?'

‘They used to ask me questions and laugh at my answers. I had no wit or skill with words. When they saw me coming, they used to giggle and cluster round me. And they had a nickname for me. They thought I was so dumb and stupid, they called me “the beast”.'

‘But you weren't stupid. You were a great scholar.'

‘Knowledge out of books. Not the kind of learning to impress
them.
I knew I wasn't stupid, but they made me think I was. And the worst of all was . . . was . . .'

He faltered to a halt. Belle squeezed his hand a little harder. ‘You can tell me.'

‘The colour of my eyes. Not like anyone else's eyes. They thought I was abnormal. They told me I had the eyes of an animal.'

Belle pursed her lips. ‘So then you wanted to
be
an animal . . .'

‘I was so angry. I couldn't bear it anymore. I ran away from the court and back to the chateau. If they called me a beast, I thought, then wait till I'm really a beast. I found a spell to take the human heart out of my body, and I transformed myself. I didn't care. I made myself into the most terrifying beast that ever was.'

‘You'd have liked to hurt them back,' she said slowly.

‘I don't know . . . it was too difficult being human. I hated the world and everyone in it.'

No,
thought Belle.
You hated girls. You were afraid of women.

Suddenly it all made sense. The court ladies had hurt him so much that he'd wanted to live without human feelings. They'd made him so powerless that he'd chosen another sort of power. Animal power. She didn't have to tie up the loose ends in her mind, she grasped the pattern intuitively.

Frightened by women. Terrified by feminine beauty . . .

She stared into his amber eyes. Had he learned to understand it himself? Probably not. But he
had
changed, and there was a sadness in the depths of his eyes.

He'd confessed enough, she decided. No need to make him spell out the rest in words.

She pulled a face and lightened the mood. ‘So that's your story, Mr Beast?'

‘Yes.' He was a very serious young man. ‘But not Mr Beast anymore. I'm Prince Arrol Torayne de Lanceray. You can call me Arrol.'

‘Arrol. Hmm.' Belle considered. ‘No, I think I prefer Mr Beast. I'm used to it.'

She stooped to pick up a strip of mottled fur, which she draped round her neck like a velvet scarf. She gathered another strip and wrapped it round her hand like a furry paw.

‘And I'm Mrs Beast,' she laughed.

She reached out, stroked his cheek with her paw and gave a sort of growl in the back of her throat.

I'
ve always loved ‘Beauty and the Beast' – who hasn't? I'd have hated to modernise the story in any way that diminished its essential fairytale quality. But to make it up-close-and-personal in the way of modern fiction, yet at the same time even more fairytale-ish – that was a dream worth pursuing!

I suppose there are two themes in the versions that have come down to us. The first is the idea that true personal qualities matter more than outward appearances; so the Beast is hideously ugly, but his behaviour is courteous and kindly. The second is the theme of hospitality; the Beast shows hospitality in providing food and comfort for the lost traveller, Beauty's father; the father breaks the laws of hospitality by plucking a rose to take home to his daughter (a bit harsh, but that's how the Beast explains it); then the Beast renews his hospitality towards Beauty. In some versions, a backstory gives a reason for why this prince became a beast in the first place – because he denied a fairy shelter from the rain. Naturally, she put a curse on him for his lack of hospitality.

It all makes sense . . . but more sense in the age when fairytales like ‘Beauty and the Beast' were first recorded. Let's face it, most of us don't worry so much about hospitality these days. As for inner qualities trumping outer appearances, yes, that's still a good one, but we wouldn't rush to tie it in with a story of a beautiful young girl coming to appreciate and marry a rich old gentleman.

I started out with some very modern cynicism about the motives of Belle's father. I know I'm not the first reader to suspect that, although he's full of justifications and we're told many times how much he loves his daughter, nonetheless, his actions speak louder than his words. And what he actually does is save his own skin by handing his daughter over to a monster. Okay, so Belle is the daughter willing to sacrifice herself for the good of the family, but I suspect he manipulated her into that selfless way of thinking.

My other starting point was the rose that Belle's father plucks from the Beast's rose garden. So mysterious and poetic, yet it's no sooner introduced than it drops out of the story. I was sure it deserved to have a bigger role.

The very last thing I expected to keep from the traditional version was the Beast transforming into a prince – changed back by the power of Belle's love. Ho hum! Spare me, please! But, when I started mulling over the story, the Beast in my imagination grew far more terrifying than in the traditional version, where he's polite and civilised almost from the beginning. And then the question popped into my mind – what turned him into a beast? Forget fairy curses; what might make him want to become a beast? That's when I discovered a backstory that still makes total sense nowadays. Maybe even one of the eternal stories in the relations between men and women, boys and girls . . .

So the prince-beast-prince transformation stayed and turned into the core of my novella. And around that core, everything else fell into place. The rose linked in with the transformation and wove its way through the whole story. Other elements I hadn't considered crucial found new roles and slotted home too. So the magic mirror reappeared in order to let Belle overlook her family, rather than to let her overlook the Beast – in his agonies of love – while visiting her family. Plus the invisible servants who serve the banquets, the father's past as a wealthy merchant fallen on hard times – it all clicked together with the pure and simple logic of a fairytale.

I had a curious illusion while I was writing ‘Heart of the Beast'. I imagined that I was getting back to the very earliest version of the fairytale – way, way back, long before it was ever recorded. The heart of Beauty and the Beast! I was only kidding myself, of course. Still, that's how it felt, and it was a very pleasant illusion!

‘ B
abe!' shouted Ivan.

‘Hey, Babe!' I called back.

And we stood there on the corner, laughing as if the air around us was suddenly electric with jokes, surprised to be meeting again after so much time had flowed by . . . well, maybe, after all, not so very much, for as we stood there, the time between then and now was collapsing in on itself. Nearly three years? It seemed like a moment; it seemed like a lifetime. For I had been away, and, though I had come home again it hadn't seemed like home. I had been twisted into a different shape, and the twisting had hurt me. Well, it was still hurting. Me and my lot – my mum and dad, that is – had set off to travel the world, and then, over in the UK, my father had died. That was the beginning of the twist. I still felt, every morning, as if part of me was dying with him.

‘We'll get over this,' my mother had said bravely, trying to comfort me, and when it came to getting over things, she certainly set me a good example, because, a year later, she fell in love and married again. Travelling the world can change lives, but not many lives are as changed in the same way as mine. I felt that change back then – I still felt it going on every minute of the day. I missed my father dreadfully, and I did not like my mother's new husband . . . Brook Ardrey. His mere name was like a bad spell to me.

Anyhow my mother and I were home now, and she'd brought her new guy with her (like some sort of souvenir). And here I was, rediscovering this lost place which I had once known by heart. It was both old and new to me. After all, I'd set out as one person and come home as another, which was fine. We all have to change. But over the last few days I'd felt the town all around me, nudging me, always nudging me, reminding me of the girl I'd been back then. These days I mostly existed in a sort of dream, but today I was out on my own, rediscovering places where Dad and I had once been, staring up at suddenly familiar street names (same corner, same café on the corner), gazing out towards the sea (same celebrated view), and, suddenly, there he was, materialising as if he were a necessary part of the landscape. Ivan! Babe!

As we laughed we were probably both exploring our memories . . . well, I know I was exploring mine. (How long ago?) Then the clock on the war memorial, set in its circle of grass and garden where two main roads crossed at the centre of town, celebrated our reunion by chiming six times. We both heard it, but we were too busy staring at each other as if, in our different ways, we had discovered lost treasure, and laughing because the discovery was amazing, though of course our very amazement was ridiculous too.

‘Where have you been?' I asked as if he had been travelling. ‘It's ages since . . .'

‘I'm in a share house out by the university,' said Ivan, nodding over his right shoulder. ‘Still here. I've just shifted about ten streets to the north carrying a lot of books with me, bogging myself down with study and a part-time job, which keeps me flat out busy.' (I wasn't surprised. Kids these days often work long hours and his family weren't all that well-to-do.) ‘Economics, history, philosophy – weighty stuff! Pins you in one place. So, what about you?'

‘I've been flitting about the globe. Lots of different places,' I told him. ‘This way and that,' – (zigzagging my hand) – ‘me and my mum. We've done a lot of creative drifting over the last year or so. Done a lot of changing . . . too much . . . but never mind all that just now.'

‘Your dad died, didn't he,' Ivan said. ‘Word got around. I – well, I was sorry to hear it. Sorry . . . he was a really good guy, your dad was.' I could tell he meant it. I think he could see, looking at me, just what a blow it had been to me . . . what a blow it still was, whenever I thought about it.

‘Yes, and then my mother married again,' I said. ‘Brook, his name is. Brook Ardrey.'

I tried to sound casual about it, but I couldn't keep that twist I mentioned – that inside twist that always made me feel like such a different person, that twist that always hurt me – out of my voice. My words came out all stiff. ‘We've had to come back for a bit. My gran's been ill. She was needle-sharp when we left but now she's, well, she's sort of slumped. Thinks she's living about fifty years ago.'

Ivan looked solemn.

‘Sorry to hear it, Babe,' he said. ‘Bad news, even if it did bring you home.' Then he added, ‘I suppose standing still will be a bit of a shock . . . I mean, after all that creative drifting?'

‘I've been drifting all right, but it sounds as if you've been burrowing,' I said, changing the subject a little. ‘Philosophy and all that powerful stuff. Deep burrowing! Do you get paid much for philosophy? Does your place cost you much?'

‘A bit too much,' he said. ‘Would you like to come in with us?‘ We've definitely got room for one more.'

Actually it seemed like a good idea to me because – but a sharp wind blew in on us. I was distracted. ‘Hey!' I said. ‘Is that café still down the hill a bit? Have you got time for a cup of coffee?'

‘Great,' said Ivan. ‘Let's go, Babe!'

Ten minutes later there we were in that same old café (not the scruffy one down at the bottom of our hill, but the stylish one halfway up, just where the really big houses took over), and we were studying each other, smiling through the faint steam rising from the coffee cups . . . a steam that made us both seem just a little ghostly.

But I was so pleased to see him. My homecoming, even as part of a broken family, was suddenly made real. I somehow imagined my ears pricking up like a dog's ears, anxious to hear every single word Ivan might have to say. Town gossip would tie me into home once more.

‘So! Here we are again,' Ivan was exclaiming. ‘I can hardly believe it.'

‘It's true though,' I told him. ‘It ain't no dream, Babe!'

We both laughed, not so much because anything was funny, but taking pleasure in rediscovered friendship.

Back a few years we'd wound up in the same class. I was a bit ahead of myself and Ivan was lagging behind, which seems funny now, because he was a great reader even then. But we began telling one another about stories we were reading, and swapping the books that imprisoned those stories in cages of words. When we talked about stories we had both read, it was almost like people at a party, clinking glasses and wishing one another adventures and good fortune.

‘You lot still rich?' Ivan was asking. ‘Or have you spent it all travelling?'

‘Well, I suppose we're rich enough,' I admitted. ‘But everything's changed. I've never got used to Brook Ardrey.'

‘So what's wrong with him?' asked Ivan. ‘I mean, I know he couldn't – could never be like your dad, but is he nasty to you or what?'

Now that was a big question. I didn't mind him asking, but I didn't quite know the answer myself.

‘He's good-looking,' I said, hearing my voice sounding slow and cautious. ‘And he's sort of masterful, like a hero in a Mills and Boon book. I think my mother loves him being masterful. Anyhow, I get on well enough with him, but sometimes I still find him kind of creepy. I don't know. It might be just that he's so different from my dad. I mean, Brook
tries
hard – tries to move into the space Dad left, and take it all over, which is fair enough, I suppose, because Mum's invited him in – flung the door wide, wide,
wide
!' (I threw out my arms to illustrate.) ‘But he just
doesn't
fit
. Never will! While he's saying something – something playful – to me, his face, his expression, I mean, is – ' (I heard myself hesitating) ‘I don't know what it is, but it's
not
playful, that's for sure. And since we've been home I see him looking at Grandma, frowning to himself as if . . . as if she were some kind of computer, and he had to work out a program on her. And sometimes he looks at me as if . . .'

But I had to stop telling him about my mother's new husband, mainly because I couldn't quite explain that look which always seemed so sinister to me. And I couldn't have said even that much to most people – well, I hadn't really said any of it to myself until then. But, even though Ivan didn't know my stepfather or my grandmother, he seemed to catch on to what I was trying to explain. He'd always been good at catching on to vague things and making sense of them . . . as if meanings were dancing around him like moths fluttering around a light, and he was sort of snatching them up as they went by, and then pinning them down in a way that made them real. He hadn't said much about my father dying, but there was something about his voice when he was saying how sorry he was that seemed truly sorry. I knew he meant it. But of course we'd both had a bit of practice at netting words and meanings. It had been our special, private game, I suppose. Apparently still was.

I think we began calling each other ‘Babe' back when I was about twelve and he was fourteen. It was because of some song at the time – one that we both liked – and as we walked home from school together, we had worked out a plan for capturing the words because once you have the words you have power over the song . . . you can sing it whenever you want to. I was supposed to memorise lines one, two and three. His job was to catch lines four, five and six. If we got a moment to ourselves next day we would sing the song to one another, fitting it together as best we could. ‘Hey there, Babe!' the second verse began, and soon we started calling one another ‘Babe'. It seemed a cool thing to be doing. ‘Hey there, Babe!' we would mutter to each other every morning in class, feeling sophisticated, but careful not to let other kids hear, just in case they started slinging off at us.

Well, in due course we left school the way everyone does, and life began swishing us round and sending us in different directions. I took a gap year, not quite sure just what I wanted to do. Once through my back door, family life took me over in a big way, what with Mum and Dad travelling and quarrelling, which they did back then. And anyhow they had never been impressed with Ivan. Our town was nearly a city, and there were levels in it, not just age levels either, and not just hills and plains. I mean, my lot had all that money lurking in our background, thanks to Gran, and Ivan's family were just getting by, struggling on the edge of everything. Right now, staring at him over the rim of the coffee cup, it was strange to think that someone from a family on the edge could be interested in something like philosophy. It sounded pretty profound. But I had no right to be surprised. Ivan had always been a reader and he had always liked playing tricky games with words, and the thoughts those words expressed.

It must be hard for most kids to lose a parent, to have a father or mother somehow tumble away, over and over, out of their lives. As for me, I felt a true piece of myself had died along with my father. Part of me had gone, and would never be part of me again. And even if you get a replacement it doesn't help much. Actually, it can seem as if some sort of treachery is at work. You can even feel a bit treacherous yourself for going along with it.

Brook, my mother's new husband (I can't really think of him as any sort of father), was kind enough to me – kind enough to everyone – and there were times when I even liked him, though always in that puzzled, careful way. Back then I couldn't work out why I felt so cautious about him, but I think I knew from the beginning that he wasn't driven by love. He was driven by a sort of calculation, and I felt that I was being assessed all the time. He was working me out in terms of profit or loss. Mum too! His assessment of Mum somehow ran beneath all the kindness he showed her, and it reduced her to a piece in some game he was playing. I felt she had become a bit less of a person than she had been . . . had become a voice babbling away in the background, loving me or loathing me according to Brook's instructions. I knew Brook felt I wasn't necessary, that I was some sort of leftover intruding into his well-regulated life with my mother. He was certainly mathematical about people, no doubt about it. I often caught him watching Mum and me as if we were numbers that he was trying to add up, and sometimes, when he was being particularly nice to me, or to my old gran (who lived, these days, in a special granny flat connected to our house), I got the strange feeling that he was playing a game of chess with us all, shifting us around on some secret board that only he could see . . . frowning over our places and trying to move us in ways that meant he would win whatever game was being played. Of course I couldn't help believing it must be something to do with money. Gran had all that money tucked away . . . invested, Gran would say in rather an impressive voice, which always made me imagine that her money (which could have been spinning out wild and free, and getting itself spent) was caught in a cage guarded by armed accountants.