Babel Tower (8 page)

“A bit frightening,” says Leo.

“A bit, yes,” says Frederica, who believes there is pleasure in fear.

“Only a bit,” says Leo.

“It gets more frightening later. More exciting.”

“Go on reading.”

“It was after tea-time; it was pouring with rain, and had been all day; his hood was dripping into his eyes, his cloak was full of water; the pony was tired and stumbled on stones; the others were too grumpy to talk.”

“Poor pony. We don’t let Sooty get too tired, do we? We look after him. He doesn’t mind a bit of rain, Auntie Olive says. He’s a tough little thing, Auntie Olive says.”
“Yes, he is. Very tough. Shall I go on?”

“Go on.”

“ ‘I wish I was at home in my nice hole by the fire, with the kettle just beginning to sing,’ thought Bilbo. It was not the last time that he wished that!”

Leo rubs his eyes. He pushes his little fists into his eye-sockets and winds them energetically, so that Frederica’s own eyeballs wince sympathetically.

“Be careful, Leo. You’ll hurt your eyes.”

“I won’t. Those are
my
eyes. I don’t hurt them. They itch.”

“You’re sleepy.”

“I’m
not
. Go on reading.”

“Still the dwarves jogged on,” says Frederica, “never turning round or taking any notice of the Hobbit.” Leo has settled into his bed: his head is in the hollow of his pillow, his cheek on his hand. She looks at him with appalled love. She knows every hair on his head, every inch of his body, every word, she thinks, of his vocabulary, even though he is constantly proving her wrong. And he has ruined her life, she thinks, for inside the new docile Frederica the old Frederica still has her histrionic passion-fits. I would walk out tomorrow if it were not for Leo, she tells herself hundreds of times each day, with contempt and puzzlement. She looks at his red hair, such a beautiful red, richer than hers, with the shine of those chestnuts he gathered with Hugh Pink. He is a very male child. He has strong shoulders and an aggressive jut to his chin. She is surprised by her passion for his small body as she was surprised by her passion for his father’s, which it will no doubt grow to resemble; she thinks of Leo always as his father’s child. She loves to see him straddle Sooty, his small legs at odds with the heavy straps and buckles and irons of the stirrups, his head, in its black velvet helmet, too important for his body, like a beetle, like a goblin. But Leo on Sooty is his father’s son, in his father’s world, where she doesn’t belong, and isn’t welcome. Nor does she want to belong or be welcome, she tells herself, with her usual mixture of honesty and fury, she has made a terrible mistake. Her voice goes on peacefully, dry and lively, telling about dwarves and wizard, Hobbit and trolls, things going bump in the dark, terror and mayhem, and Leo shudders agreeably. Inside her head she goes over and over what she has done, how she could have done it, how it cannot be undone, how she can live. Only connect, she thinks contemptuously, only connect, the prose and the passion, the beast and the monk. It
can’t be done and isn’t worth doing, she thinks on a long repetitive whine, she has been here so often before. She thinks of Mr. Wilcox in
Howards End
, thinks of him with hatred, that stuffed man, that painted scarecrow. Margaret Schlegel was a fool in ways Forster had no idea of, because he wasn’t a woman, because he supposed connecting was desirable, because he had no idea what it meant.

“ ‘Dawn take you all and be stone to you!’ said a voice that sounded like William’s. But it wasn’t. For just at that moment the light came over the hill, and there was a mighty twitter in the branches. William never spoke for he stood turned to stone as he stooped—”

The door opens. Mother and son look up, and there is the man, the father, his return, as usual, unannounced. The sleepy boy is awake in a flash and sits up to be embraced. Nigel Reiver hugs his son and puts his arm round his wife. His cheek is cold from the outdoors—he has come straight up, he is even a little breathless, he is eager to see his family. He is a dark man in a dark suit, a soft armour, with the blue shadow of a dark beard on his solid cheek.

“Don’t stop,” he says. “Go on reading, I’ll listen, it’s my absolutely favourite book,
The Hobbit
.”

“It’s a bit frightening,” says Leo. “Only a bit. Mummy says it gets more exciting than this, even more.”

“Oh, it does,” says the dark man, stretching himself on the bed beside his son, both heads on the pillow, looking up at Frederica, perched on the edge with the book.

He has nothing at all to do with Mr. Wilcox.

There is something to do with sex, which he is good at, and which Forster perhaps wanted Mr. Wilcox to be good at, but couldn’t quite imagine, couldn’t give life to.

The two pairs of dark eyes watch Frederica.

The room is full of slumberous warmth and watchful sharpness.

“And there they stand to this day, all alone, unless the birds perch on them; for trolls, as you probably know, must be underground before dawn, or they go back to the stuff of the mountains they are made of, and never move again. That is what had happened to Bert and Tom and William.”

“I meant to stop there, it’s a good stopping place, and Leo was nearly asleep, weren’t you?”

“I
wasn’t
, I was waiting for my Daddy to come.”

“No you weren’t. We didn’t know he was coming.”

“I did. I knew
in my bones
he would come this evening, I
knew
and I was right. Go on reading.”

“Go on,” says the man, lying on his back like a knight on a tombstone, his shiny dark shoes overhanging the bedfoot. So she goes on, for they are all happy, to the discovery of the treasure in the cave, and the end of the chapter.

“Have you been a good boy?” asks Nigel. “What has happened while I was away?”

“A man came to see Mummy, he was a very nice man with a funny name, his name was Pink, he found us in the woods and we asked him to tea.”

“That was nice,” says Nigel smoothly. He kisses his son good night, and Frederica kisses him, and the light is put out, and the little boy stirs his blankets into a containing nest.

Pippy Mammott has made supper for them to eat by the fire. She has made supper Nigel likes, shepherd’s pie and baked apples with honey and raisins. She does not eat with Nigel and Frederica, but she does come in and out whilst they eat, offering second helpings, which Nigel accepts, refilling wineglasses, solicitously asking them to be careful of the apples, which are piping hot—“As they should be,” says Nigel, detaining her to be congratulated on both pie and apples. He and Frederica sit in large armchairs each side of the wood fire, and Pippy Mammott stands between them with her back to the flames, warming her bottom. She tells him what Leo has been doing and saying, how well he is learning to ride Sooty, what a dauntless little boy he is, how they had an unexpected visitor, a friend of Frederica’s apparently passing by quite accidentally on a walking tour.

“That was nice,” says Nigel, smoothly, again. When Pippy has gone away with the trolley and the debris of the meal, he says, as Frederica is expecting him to say, “Who is this Hugh Pink?”

“An old friend from Cambridge. He writes poetry. Rather good poetry, I think. He was in Madrid for a year or two, and now he’s back.”

“You didn’t say he was coming.”

“I didn’t know. He was on a walking holiday. Leo and I happened to bump into him, we gave him tea—it was Leo who invited him to tea—not me—”

“Why didn’t you, if he was your friend?”

“Well, I would have, I expect, I would have got round to it—”

“Funny he just turned up—”

“Not really. He’d no idea this was where we lived. He was just walking. In the woods, like Leo says.”

“I expect it was nice for you, to see an old friend?”

Frederica looks up, to see what is meant by this placid query. She calculates her answer.

“Of course it was. I don’t seem to have seen any of my old friends for a long time.”

“You miss them,” states Nigel, in the same placid voice.

“Naturally,” says Frederica.

“You should invite them,” says Nigel. “You should feel free to invite them. You should ask them to stay.”

Frederica chooses, after a moment, not to answer this remark. She stares, frowning, into the fire. She says, as placidly as he has been talking, “Are you back for long this time?”

“Does that make any difference? Why don’t you just invite them? Maybe I’ll be here, maybe I won’t. I don’t suppose my presence will affect your reunion.”

“I didn’t mean that. I just wanted to know how long will you be here this time?”

“I don’t know. A few days. A few weeks. Why does it matter?”

“It doesn’t. I just want to
know
.”

“Well, I don’t know myself. There may be phone calls. Things may come up.”

Frederica, looking into the logs, sees in her mind’s eye a woman stepping barefoot across a bed of cinders, trying to find a path between little smouldering hot places, ready to break out into flames.

“When you go back, I’d like to come with you.”

“Why?”

“Well. We used to do a lot of things together. Dancing, you know, things in town. And I would like to see some old friends, it’s true, I would. I’m thinking, I might look for another job. I need something to
do
.”

This sentence comes out more tense, less casual, than she meant it to be.

“I would have thought you had a lot of things to do. A child needs his mother near him. There is a great deal here to occupy anyone.”

“Don’t talk to me like that, Nigel. That isn’t the sort of thing
you
can say to
me
. You knew what I was when you married me—you
knew I was clever and independent and—and ambitious—you seemed to
like
that. God knows I had nothing
else
someone like you might be interested in, no money, no connections, I’m not
beautiful
—all I was was bright and you can’t marry someone for their brains and their—resourcefulness—and then expect them to behave like—”

“Like—”

“Like the sort of girl you might have been expected to marry—
but didn’t
—one who has always gone hunting and shooting and likes just
being
in the country.”

“I don’t see why any girl would marry if she can’t put up with being a wife. And a mother. If a girl becomes a wife and a mother, she must expect a few changes, I should think. I would have understood if you hadn’t wanted to take the step. I don’t think I more than half expected you would when I asked you—but you did. I thought you were a resourceful sort of girl. And now all you do is whinge. You have a lovely boy like Leo, and you whinge. It’s not very pleasant.”

Frederica stands up and begins to pace.

“Nigel, please listen to me. Please listen. I don’t see very much of
you
—you don’t tell me very much about where you are or what you do—”

“It wouldn’t be of any interest to you.”

“That may be. I don’t know. But I
have to have something to do
.”

“You were always a great one for reading.”

“But reading was
work
—”

“I see. You don’t do it if you don’t have to.”

“I don’t mean that. You know I don’t. I know I don’t
need
to earn my living—don’t need, that is, in terms of money, don’t
need
—”

Her need is so terrible, she is almost in tears.

“We aren’t enough for you, Leo and me.”

“You aren’t ever here. And Leo has all sorts of people besides me, he’s
rich
in people, Pippy and Olive and Rosalind, they adore him. He doesn’t live in a nuclear family. All your friends, you and all your friends, were brought up by nannies.”

“You know why in my case. My mother bolted, you know that. Bolted when I was two, you know that, I’ve told you. I’ve told you often enough. She had no strength of character, no resources. I thought you could look after Leo and be resourceful. I told you that.”

He is rueful, charming, and bullying.

“Please,” says Frederica. “Please let me come to London with you and see someone about some work. I could get some reading for publishers, I’m sure I could, and do almost all the work at home with Leo. Or I could go back to university and do a doctorate—I could work on that partly at home—and then, when Leo grows up, I could be ready, I could do something.”

“You could see your friends. All your friends are men. I noticed. I can’t take you this time, I’m going straight on to Tunis, I have to see my uncle, it isn’t possible.”

The little smouldering places are flaming here and there, like gas jets. Frederica takes fire.

“Then I shall just go. I shall just get up and go, myself, by myself. You don’t care about me, you only care about your house and yourself—”

“And Leo.”

“And
yourself
. You can’t see me, you’ve no idea who I am, I am someone, I
was
someone. I am someone, someone nobody ever sees any more—”

She is less sure of this, that she is someone, than she passionately sounds. No one in Bran House sees what she thinks of as Frederica, not Pippy, not Olive, not Rosalind, not Leo, not even Nigel.

“Cambridge spoils girls,” says Nigel, to provoke. “It’s a sort of hothouse. It gives them ideas.”

“I want to go back there,” says Frederica.

“No, you don’t,” says Nigel. “You’re too old.”

Frederica goes to the door. She has some vague idea of throwing clothes into a suitcase and beginning to walk away down the road, in the night. She does not know where a suitcase is, and she is aware that such a plan is absurd. She feels that someone as clever as she is
must
be able to think of a way out of a situation—not a situation, a
life
—she should never have got into. Her nerve-endings hurt, in her hands, in her teeth, in her spine. Nigel stands between her and the door. He says in a small voice, a small, sad, honey voice, “I’m sorry, Frederica. I love you. I only get angry because I love you. You are here because I do love you, Frederica.”

He has learned what a surprising number of men never learn, the strategic importance of those words. He is not a verbal animal. Much of what he says, Frederica has noticed without yet thinking about it, is dictated by the glaze of language that slides over and obscures the
surface of the world he moves in, a language that is quite sure what certain things are, a man, a woman, a girl, a mother, a duty. Language in this world is for keeping things safe in their places. You must be brave, this kind of language says, and ordinary panic-struck human beings hear the imperative and perform extraordinary feats of tearless, uncomplaining stolidity. You might think that those who handle this solid currency with its few words would be able to add those other simple ringing ones, “I love you, I love you.” They have clear meanings in this world, and women everywhere wait for them as dogs wait for titbits and sustenance, panting and slavering. And yet these words are withheld, for the most part, whether because their utterance renders the speaker vulnerable to rejection, or whether emotion embarrasses, is not usually clear. It is not a question of class. Working men and businessmen and owners of country houses do not say, “I love you,” and women in council flats and women in town houses say constantly, “He never says he loves me.”