The Virgin in the Garden (67 page)

“Please go on,” said Alexander, trying to lean away from Frederica onto the nearest stone monstrosity, who was the blind, straightforward, incorruptible highest Arthur. Anthea Warburton, in a great many layers of stiff white net petticoat under rosebudded poplin, came and touched Poole’s elbow.

“Can you do something,” she said, in her featureless well-bred little voice. “I feel so awfully green.”

“Too much school tea,” said Frederica, heartily, and took notice, too late as always, of the stiff, alarmed complicity of the two men. Green? Green. School slang. An old word. Oh, God. I have put my foot in it. She was annoyed mostly at the childishness of her remark about the tea, and then bothered by why
Alexander
should be so scared. At this point, as though by accident, Elinor Poole appeared, closely followed by Jennifer Parry, who was balancing her small son on her hip, and was followed in turn by her husband. Bill had moved towards the tables, clearly preparing to speak, and champagne corks popped.

“Well –” said Jenny, loudly, shrilly and terribly to Frederica. “When’s the happy event?” Frederica looked at Anthea, looked away, smoothed her own skirt defensively down over her own flat front.

“
What
happy event?” she countered, drawing her brows together.

“The new arrival. In your family. I take it we’re celebrating that, as well as your successes, aren’t we? Though if I were Stephanie, I don’t know,
entre nous
, that I’d have embarked on motherhood with such gay expedition. Too late to tell her, my dear, and I shall of course put a smiling face on it, but let me tell you, Frederica, for what it’s worth, don’t. Don’t give it up, don’t stop, don’t turn into a cow and a mopper-upper, don’t suppose that the death of the mind can be avoided by a little rushed reading between two lots of nappies and dishes, because it can’t. Adultery you may find time for, but life, no, and thought, no, and don’t let them –” she frowned round at Poole, Anthea, Elinor, Alexander and sad Winifred who had joined them – “don’t let them tell you any different.” She tugged at the fat little legs of her son, which were wound round her waist. “Get off, you little old man of the sea. Go to Daddy. You’re a little old man of the sea, and the fact that you’re a lovable dumpling makes it worse, not better. Are you listening to me, Frederica Potter? The real glory of this conversation – or monologue it’s been so far, but I’ll shut up, don’t worry – is that you won’t listen to me, because it’s me telling you and you won’t trust my motives, and you’ll be right. But I’m right too, and you’ll find that out, one way or another. End of speech. Oh Geoffrey,
do
take this damp creature. I shall move off and offer my best wishes to Mrs Orton. I’d like a word with you, Alexander, before the break-up of this happy occasion, if that’s O.K. by you.”

Alexander nodded, speechless. Frederica stared at Stephanie and wondered why she had failed to notice what was there to be seen. Elinor Poole fumbled in her handbag for a handkerchief and when Thomas put his arm round her shoulder Anthea began to make respectable little gulping noises in her throat. Geoffrey Parry took his son, and sat down
on the cloister wall on the other side of Pallas Athene. The boy rested his head in the curve of the man’s shoulder. Mrs Thone moved round and sat down next to them.

Frederica could not quite think where to go, and could not stay to meet her mother’s eye, so wandered off towards Stephanie. The school waitresses were taking away teacups and replacing them with glasses of bubbling wine. Alexander watched Frederica’s relentless back, caught Thomas Poole’s tragic stare, and turned with graceful solicitude to Anthea Warburton, whom he wished the earth would open and swallow, asking her whether she felt quite well, whether he could get her a glass of water or wine, whether she would like to come further into the shade. She came, to his relief, thus making it possible for Thomas Poole to find his wife’s handkerchief for her, and for Alexander to drift, temporarily he was aware, away from Jenny. Jenny, driven by some domestic female demon of wrath, then marched over to Bill, who was clearing his throat for the congratulatory speech he had prepared, with quotations from Ascham’s praises of the learning of the young princess. She congratulated Bill, as she had his family, on the approaching happy event, aware herself by now, as she had not previously been, that the Potters were ignorant of Stephanie’s state. Bill, half-listening, half-coughing, suddenly caught the import of what she was saying, and Winifred, hurrying uselessly up, was in time to see him meet Daniel’s eye with a look of such concentrated and disproportionate loathing that she thought for a moment that he had gone truly mad, and was about to hurl bottles, or silver salvers, at his sturdy black son-in-law.

Daniel informed Stephanie that som’at was up, he was afraid.

Bill began to talk, much too fast and somewhat disjointedly, not about Roger Ascham, but about the eternity of the work of thought, or art, and about
Areopagitica
. “For Books are not absolutely dead things, but do contain a potency of life in them to be as active as that soul whose progeny they are; … As good almost kill a Man, as kill a good Book: who kills a man, kills a reasonable creature, Gods Image; but hee who destroyes a good Booke, kills reason it selfe, kills the Image of God, as it were in the eye. Many a man lives a burden to the Earth,” Bill said, glowering furiously at Daniel, “but a good Booke is the pretious life-blood of a master-spirit …”

“A burden to the earth is what he certainly thinks I am,” said Daniel, roundly and comfortably.

“What is he
on
about?” asked Stephanie, who had missed, in a dreamy daze, most of the earlier happenings.

“He’s telling you books are better than babies,” said Daniel. Bill was now roaring convolutedly about how he had always been a strong
supporter of the equal education of women, and about the goodness of Alexander’s play, and the education of its heroine.

“Oh God,” said Stephanie. “He’s found out. He’s mad.”

“I think he thought I could be got rid of, or something,” said Daniel cheerfully, “but this makes it all a bit too solid, you could say.”

“You don’t need to look so
calm
about it.”

“I don’t see why not It doesn’t matter to me. I’ll take better care of my son than he has of his.”

“It might be a daughter.”

“Or my daughter,” said Daniel, who was no prophet.

Bill was uttering some uncannily wrathful hopes that Frederica would make a better use of her talents, her many talents, than he was afraid to say he had of such as he had been endowed with. A man’s child was his future, unless he was rare or gifted enough to be a master-spirit, and so his own future …

There was a car starting up in the background. It came out under the archway between the towers on two wheels and cut screaming across a half-moon of the lawn. Basil Thone stepped onto the lawn in protest. Marcus Potter ran out, after it, out of some more complex urge, waving frantically but voicelessly.

“Simmonds,” said Alexander to Anthea Warburton, and abandoned her unceremoniously. Marcus was still running, although Simmonds and his beetle-car, having demolished a few parterres and a fine verge, were now out of sight, leaving a screech, a hum, and a burning smell hanging in the air. Alexander began to run after Marcus. Daniel, patting Stephanie on the shoulder, began to lumber after Alexander. Bill stopped talking. Frederica bit her lip and put her head in the air.

Alexander caught Marcus some way along the road up into the moors. The boy had his head down, and was running, pathetically wambling, catching his breath in great gulps. Alexander was not in very good condition himself, but he put on a sprint and tried to gasp to the boy to stop; Marcus rolled on, paying no attention. For several minutes Alexander trotted ludicrously on beside him, saying things like “… do no good … told you better not … have some sense.” He heard the thunder of Daniel’s feet getting closer, and flung himself desperately at Marcus in a sort of rugger tackle, as though it was a matter of male pride to bring down the quarry himself and not have Daniel do it. They tumbled together on the road, and Marcus fought like an animal, who had seemed so bodiless, biting and scratching and occasionally landing a weak blow. “… trying to help …” sobbed Alexander.

“He was my
friend
,” said Marcus, in the past tense, as though Lucas Simmonds was already dead.

Daniel came up, planted his feet in the dust, and stared down on them.

“Stop it,” he said. “Don’t be daft. There’s no point at all in all this, the man’s miles away now. Come home, Marcus.”

“No.”

“Well, what
shall
you do, then?”

“I –” said Marcus. He fought for air. He had the thought that he might die, there in the road. It was not a bad thought. “I –” he said again, his lungs in spasm. His eyes rolled up and he passed out.

Daniel proved to be good at artificial respiration, which proved to be needed. Alexander knelt uselessly in the dust, watching this efficiency, and then, when the boy was breathing in a fluttering way, helped Daniel to carry him slowly back to the school. Bill met them, white now and tentative. Daniel, who had his second breath, ordered him to see that the boy was taken up to the Nursery and a doctor found immediately. Alexander, who had not got his second breath, clung to a pillar, air tearing his lungs, his eyes blurring. His face was clawed and his clothes begrimed; his lovely hair was every which way. Through hot tears he saw Frederica striding away into the distance, furious, her party and her dignity spoiled. The Parrys, on the other hand, were coming towards him. He looked for Poole, but could not see him.

“If you have a moment, Alexander,” said Jenny, “I want to talk to you.” She summoned up the trailing remainder of the family. “Geoffrey can hear what I have to say, we’ve talked it over already.”

Alexander began to envisage a scene not unlike one he had already been put through before, where the lady assured him graciously that it had all been a mistake, that she had really loved her husband, all this time. Such scenes were a price he paid for the kind of delicate love-life he led.

“I told Geoffrey what happened.”

“Oh?”

“
Exactly
what happened,” said Jenny, on an unnecessarily minatory note.

“What did?” said Alexander, foolishly.

“We went to bed together. Twice. I told Geoffrey. Geoffrey is going to divorce me for adultery.”

“But –”

“As for Thomas, Geoffrey doesn’t want to part with Thomas, but –” here she became tearful, a little, “neither do I. I really don’t, whatever I’ve said about him. I love him. I love you. As I told Geoffrey. Geoffrey says we must all sit down and talk it over sensibly, what happens to Thomas.”

Alexander looked helplessly at Geoffrey, willing Geoffrey to say
something for himself, or perhaps to take a swing at his own face, which he felt would have been certainly proper and with any luck final. Geoffrey, he saw to his horror, was amused. Geoffrey was at least partly pleased by the way things were turning out. Geoffrey, he surmised, already envisaged a life with an attractive
au pair
girl and long hours in the library with Thomas Mann. He thought of saying, “Geoffrey, your wife is untouched by me, I couldn’t get my end up.” Not the sort of sentence he could utter. He thought, more Machiavellian, of assuring Geoffrey that he loved Thomas himself, that he couldn’t think of separating Thomas from his mother, for Geoffrey, he saw, would fight for Thomas however little he cared what Jenny now did. But such assurances stuck in his craw. For one thing, he was by no means ready to assure either Geoffrey or Jenny that he would take on Jenny herself. How the hell, he thought, crossly, could she
contemplate
going off with a chap who couldn’t even get his end up?

“I told Geoffrey about all those application forms,” she went on, remorselessly. “It would be easier, of course, if you are thinking of going.”

“Geoffrey –” said Alexander.

“I’ve nothing to add to what Jenny’s said,” said Geoffrey, the amusement broader on his face.

“There are things she hasn’t told you.”

“Nothing, I’m sure, that could change what I want now,” said Geoffrey Parry, who had totally lost the strained look of the pram episode and seemed his old scholarly self.

“We’ll talk again after the last night,” said Jenny, kindly. “That is, the last night of your play.”

The Parrys walked away, an apparently harmonious family group, whilst Alexander climbed slowly to his tower.

Perhaps there had been too many parties. Perhaps there was too much sense of threat and thunder in the air. In any event, the Last Night of the play ended, if not with a whimper, at most with a melodious twang. Alexander sat and watched it through with feelings compounded of such desire and terror that he would not, earlier, have imagined this possible. One paradoxical effect of Jenny’s ultimatum, and of Frederica’s party in general, was to give a unique and savage sense of urgency to his desire to
possess, make, have, make love to, fuck Frederica Potter. None of these words were part of his usual vocabulary. He did not say to himself “deflower” because he supposed that had already been done. He also wanted for the first time, although he was usually lazily incurious in such matters, to know just when, and by whom, the defloration had been performed. Under his nose in his play? Or earlier? Outdoors or indoors? By Crowe, Wilkie, or some unknown acneous youth from Blesford Ride? God knew there were enough of them. He felt extremely sour towards Thomas Poole, who had put his end away with such signal, if inconvenient success, and he felt a distinct distaste for the fleshy and complacent Daniel Orton, whose success turned out not to have been even inconvenient. He was horrified by his own emotions during the scissor-slitting scene which took place in less light than in earlier halcyon weeks, and even under a few ominous drops of rain. The muscle-bound Frederica of the early summer wriggled and arched her pelvis, waved a sinewy ankle in the air and exposed most of her slight breast in a way he considered tiresomely excessive, and which produced an inconvenient erection. It was funny, he thought, how he had not minded Wilkie’s excavations in Jenny’s décolletage. It was abhorrent. He, he himself, had made a fool of him, him himself. At least, at the least he should have, in recompense, what he now knew he wanted. That bloody girl. No, not bloody. When she ran off, in her torn petticoats, he sat still and waited for her to return for her Tower speech which she did, surpassing herself, hysterical and chill. Ego flos campi. Stone women do not bleed. I will not bleed. Alexander felt his own hard intentions set like stone.