Babel Tower (41 page)

Can one fuck erased paintings? Frederica thinks giddily. And is a naked prancing man a mask for a brain and a pair of eyes watching and watching and trying to make sense?

“I ought to get back to my son,” she says. “I’m glad I saw the work.”

Back in the Bloomsbury flat Leo is sitting companionably with Thomas Poole and Simon. He does not run to greet her, but this is a form of punishment; his averted eyes are full of trouble and punishing
anger. Thomas Poole, too, looks at Frederica as though she were a desirable woman. He says, “Mr. Parrott rang. And Hugh Pink. You are in demand. And Tony Watson, who thinks he has talked the
New Statesman
into letting you review some books.”

“Good. I’m tired.”

“I’ll bring you a cup of coffee. Sit down and I’ll bring you a coffee.”

He stands up. She feels guilty. She should have been home hours ago. Thomas Poole touches her hair on his way out to the kitchen. Leo says, “Sometimes you can hate people quite a lot.”

“Who? Who do you hate?”

He does not answer. After a bit, he says, “I hate not knowing where people are. I like it when people are where I know where they are. At Bran House, I knew where everyone was.”

“I don’t go for long. I always come back. I’m earning our living.”

“We once
had
a living.”

Frederica cannot speak. He creeps to her side, and puts his arms round her waist.

“Never mind,” he says, as she might have said.

She bends her head to his. She smells his hair. She has no choices. She imagines suddenly a film in which a sagacious dog travelled hundreds of miles, back along the scent, or the magnetic field, which pulled from what it knew and loved. This hair she could distinguish in a room piled high with other heads. This note she would hear through all others. This person is the centre. It is not what she would have chosen but it is a fact, it is a truth stronger than other truths. It is a love so violent that it is almost its opposite.

“We hate people when we love them,” she says. “Sometimes.”

VIII
 

Frederica, Leo and Daniel travel north for Christmas, sitting together on the crowded train like the nuclear family they are not. Thomas Poole is hurt that Frederica and Leo have not stayed to make a family Christmas in the Bloomsbury flat: Christmas is a time when somebody is always hurt. Both Frederica and Daniel are afraid of going back into the family from which Stephanie is absent. Frederica is also aware of having behaved badly to her parents, who do not know Leo. They are fetched to Freyasgarth from Calverley station by Marcus, who says little but seems calm, which was not always the case. As they drive out along the moorland roads Frederica’s heart lifts: it is grey, it is dark, it is windswept, it is the north from which she comes.

She is taken aback by the beauty of the new house. It is Winifred, not Bill, who meets her on the doorstep, a Winifred smiling with unquestioning delight and weeping a little—“
Frederica,
Leo,” touching both with a warmth that in the earlier days would have been reserve and holding back. Frederica finds that she too is weeping. Leo clings to her leg and watches. Behind Winifred is Mary, who runs at Daniel, and is lifted in his arms. Behind Mary is Bill, smaller than Frederica remembers him, paler and less fiery, waiting to see what his daughter will do. Frederica rushes forward and kisses him too. Marcus carries suitcases to pretty bedrooms looking out on moorland. They are all vaguely aware that Frederica’s return from her long sulk or evasion is and is not the restoration of the lost daughter. Stephanie will not return. Winifred embraces Daniel. Bill shakes his hand. Exclaiming with pleasure, sniffing with emotion, the family moves into the living room, which is in the dark of a winter afternoon, except for a tall Christmas tree, shining with multicoloured lights, red, blue, green,
gold, white, and decorated, by Winifred and Mary, with the magical golden wire hexagons and polyhedrons made eleven years ago by Marcus for Stephanie’s Christmas tree.

Next to the Christmas tree stands Daniel’s son, Will, who is ten, with Daniel’s dark hair and watchful dark eyes. He stares at his father with angry intensity, and flinches when Daniel approaches to hug or kiss him. Daniel retreats. Frederica says, “You remember me, Will?”

“More or less,” says Will, sounding absurdly like Daniel.

Winifred fetches tea on a trolley. There is tea in her wedding-present silver teapot, there are sandwiches of potted meat and egg and cress, there are hot mince pies and a huge Christmas cake. “We made it together,” Mary tells Daniel. “Grandma and Will and I made it, we stirred and stirred, we made it
months
ago and left it to
mature
; it’s full of brandy and lovely spices. And yesterday we iced it and decorated it for you all to come. We piped everyone’s initial round the edge—Marcus helped us put the proportions right—
B
and
W
and
F
and
M
and
D
and
W
again and
M
and
L
for Leo—with silver balls round the letters, and roses decorating them, and then in the middle we made the moors in snow—we put the Fylingdales Early Warning System in the middle because Will wanted it, though it’s a funny thing—and snowy trees, and here is a frozen lake—and there is a beck and some crags—Jacqueline says we oughtn’t to have the Fylingdales balls but Marcus says it’s all right, they’re there—they look lovely in icing sugar and we can
eat them up
—”

Daniel says the cake is beautiful, which it is. Winifred says, unnecessarily, that it’s a
secular
cake, and Mary says quickly that they are all going to the Carol Service in the church in the village tomorrow on Christmas Eve. “It isn’t midnight, it’s for the
family,
the teachers at my school go, we sing, I’m good at singing, everyone’s going. Except Grandpa, of course.”

At teatime Jacqueline Winwar comes with presents for the family to be put under the tree. She is accompanied by the geneticist with whom she works on her snail populations, Dr. Luk Lysgaard-Peacock, half-Danish, half-Yorkshire, with a square-cut jutting gold-red beard, gold-red hair and dark blue eyes under deep eyebrows. Frederica has never paid much attention to Marcus’s young friend Jacqueline, whom she always thinks of as one of two, Ruth and Jacqueline, the blonde and the brown, Marcus’s religious friends, Gideon Farrar’s Young People. She remembers Jacqueline as a nice brown leggy girl
with long bunches of hair and owlish glasses. What she now sees is a wiry young woman, about twenty-six years old, who moves quickly and neatly, and has a poised and watchful oval face under a cap of shining brown hair, variable browns, all blending and changing in the light. She has clear dark brown eyes behind black-framed glasses. Will goes and stands next to her. Mary kisses her and so does Winifred. Marcus says “Jacquie,” with real pleasure, and is also pleased to see Luk Lysgaard-Peacock. Daniel asks about the snails and Luk says they are hibernating. Frederica watches as they all sit and chat easily. She sees Jacqueline look at Marcus, and then sees Luk Lysgaard-Peacock look at Jacqueline, both with that look that betrays a particular interest, not proprietorial but simply more alive, more alert. She watches Winifred hurry to give Jacqueline tea, mince pies, cake, information about carols. She thinks: My mother would like her for a daughter. She thinks: But it was the
other
one Marcus liked, a much more fey and boring person. The nurse, he liked the nurse, she remembers. She looks at her brother. He is talking to Luk Lysgaard-Peacock. She hears the word “engram,” she hears the words “molecular memory,” she hears the names Scrope, Lyon Bowman, Calder-Fluss. Jacqueline says, “There has to be something wrong with the planaria experiments, I cannot believe memory is carried that way.”

“We could try and repeat the experiment,” says Lysgaard-Peacock.

“I’d like to get up something with snails,” says Jacqueline. “They have large neurones. You could do something interesting on the chemistry of memory.”

Frederica watches Marcus. No, he is not sexually interested in this nut-brown intelligent person. Or does not appear to be—who has ever been able to say what Marcus wanted? Whereas from time to time Jacqueline gives a quick look in his direction. And Luk Lysgaard-Peacock gives a sharp look in hers. Frederica thinks about sex and is quite unaware that she is hearing the first discussion of what will be a scientific advance, an important piece of research.

She thinks: Families pull together and fly apart. Now, I am pleased and excited to see all these faces which resemble mine and each other. But by the end of the holiday we may all feel trapped and impinged on and diminished.

There is a sound of wheels stopping with a whine and a scream. The door bell sounds. Winifred opens the door and stands, puzzled. On the doorstep, in a navy overcoat, shoulders squared, is Nigel Reiver.

“I am hoping,” he says, “to find my wife and child. I have brought their presents and thought—since it is Christmas—they might speak to me at least. I have come a long way.”

“Come in,” says Winifred, uncertainly. It is indeed Christmas; he is the husband and father; hospitality requires that he should be let in; Winifred knows nothing of him or of what has happened.

“Wait—” he says, and fetches from the car two large cardboard boxes, wrapped in Christmas paper, striped in midnight blue and silver, with shiny rosettes of blue and silver paper ribbons.

Frederica stands up in the room with the Christmas tree and moves to stand in the doorway, so that he cannot cross the threshold into the lighted group inside. He puts down his two large boxes, and stands easily there, meeting her eye, ready to move quickly. There is his real face, the dark, dark look, the intentness that always stirs her.

“I did think,” he says, “it might be sensible to talk, just to talk. I do think you might at least let me know what you think is happening. I do think I have a right to say Happy Christmas to my son. Don’t you?”

The real wrong, Frederica thinks, was hers, was done by her in marrying him when she did not wholly want to, when she could not go through with it. This knowledge makes her tentative, uncertain.

“I don’t know,” she says, barring the door. “It’s no good. It’s no good.”

“I don’t want to impose myself on you if you don’t want me,” says Nigel. “I won’t stay long, though I’ve come a long way. I want two things: to see my son and give him a Christmas present, and to have a
sensible
discussion with you about where we go from here, even if it’s only to arrange a time and place to have a discussion. That’s all. I think I have a right to that, I do think so.”

Leo appears at Frederica’s side. He is white, and staring. He looks from one to the other. Nigel holds out his arms. Leo looks at Frederica, who nods—what? Permission? Understanding? He walks past her, and is lifted in his father’s arms. Nigel buries his nose in the bright hair whose scent is the centre of Frederica’s existence. There are tears in Nigel’s eyes.

“I’ve missed you,” he says to Leo. Leo twists his hand in his father’s collar. He looks back at Frederica with Nigel’s black eyes in her own sharp white face. She is ready to die, to lose consciousness.

“
Take your coat off,
” says Leo.

“Come in,” says Frederica, moving with stone legs, out of the doorway. “Come and meet the family. It is Christmas.”

She introduces him. “My father you know. My mother, my brother, Marcus, my brother-in-law, Daniel, Will, Mary, this is a friend, Jacqueline, and a friend, Dr. Lysgaard-Peacock.”

“I’ll go now,” says Luk Lysgaard-Peacock.

“No—” says Frederica. “There is no need for anyone to go. Nigel has just come with presents, he isn’t staying, no one must move.”

Her voice is sharp. It makes people want to move, and begs them not to. They do not move. Lysgaard-Peacock and Jacqueline do not move. Winifred takes Nigel’s coat, and brings him tea and cake. Leo sits on his knee, with an arm round his neck. Bill and Nigel nod at each other with a curious respect: Nigel then nods at Daniel, who smiles and frowns together. No one speaks, so Nigel says, “I brought presents for Frederica and Leo. Perhaps they should open them, since I won’t be staying. Perhaps,” he says, looking at Will, “you could fetch the two boxes in the corridor.”

Will does as he is asked. Nigel tells his son to open his box. Still in the same fiercely cosy voice he tells Will to help Leo. Will helps. The box is opened. A Hornby electric train is revealed, a beautiful thing, a Flying Scotsman engine, carriages, trucks, rails, turntable, station, signals, points.

“He’s too little,” says Will. He stares almost angrily at Nigel.

“I’m not,” says Leo. He clasps the engine to his chest. “I’m not too little. This is
mine.
”

“I think you could help him set it up and understand it,” says Nigel to Will. “He’s not too little if someone works it with him, shows him the ropes, sets it up.” He smiles his warm secret smile at Will. “I’ll be glad if you’ll set it up for him. I’d like to do it myself—all fathers like to play trains at Christmas—but I shan’t be here. But you will.”