Babel Tower Read online

  “You can’t, if you aren’t a rabbit. Something like this.”

  Frederica puts her hands to her head and more or less wrings her red hair. Leo laughs shrilly—the story overexcites him.

  “Go on reading, now. Go on.” He prompts. “Mr. Tod opened the door …”

  “Tommy Brock was sitting at Mr. Tod’s kitchen table, pouring out tea from Mr. Tod’s tea-pot into Mr. Tod’s teacup. He was quite dry himself and grinning; and he threw the cup of scalding tea all over Mr. Tod.”

  Leo shrieks with laughter and rolls about on his pillows, damp-skinned and catching his breath. Frederica touches his hair, and then buries her face in his chest. He clutches at her hair and kicks, convulsed with laughter.

  One day, a week or so later, they are all having tea, Olive, Rosalind, Pippy Mammott, Frederica and Leo, when the sound of wheels is heard on the gravel outside. Rosalind says, “That must be Alice,” and Pippy Mammott, her mouth full of fruit cake says, “Not Alice’s car. Land Rover.” “Not our Land Rover,” says Olive. “No shuddering noise.” “Don’t recognise it,” says Rosalind. Pippy goes to the window. “Three men,” she says. “No one we know. Getting out. Coming to the door.” “Conservative canvassers?” says Olive. Pippy has gone to the door. There is a male murmur, which ends distinctly with “Frederica.” Frederica stands up and goes herself to the door. There is Pippy Mammott, and there on the flight of steps leading up to the front door, where they have no right to be, where in some sense they do not exist, are Tony and Alan and Hugh Pink. The Land Rover is new and shiny. Hugh says, “Good afternoon, Mrs. Mammott. We happened to be passing—”

  “And thought we would look up our old friend Frederica,” says Tony.

  Alan says, “Frederica. We aren’t intruding, I hope?”

  Frederica is afraid she will cry. She runs down the steps and puts her arms round Alan’s neck. He hugs her. Tony hugs her. Hugh Pink gives her a peck of a kiss on a cheek. Pippy Mammott stands in the doorway and observes these indiscriminate embraces.

  “Tea?” says Frederica with a slightly hysterical laugh. “Would you like to come in for some tea?”

  “That’s what we hoped you would say,” says Tony, advancing on Pippy Mammott. “So kind,” he says, though Pippy Mammott’s expression is not exactly kind. “We’ve come such a long way, tea is just what we want, isn’t it, Alan, isn’t it, Hugh?”

  They come in, a body of energy, they look around themselves curiously, they advance on Olive and Rosalind and shake their hands.

  “You found your way back, I see,” says Olive to Hugh Pink.

  “It wasn’t difficult. We happened to be passing. We thought we’d look up Frederica. On the off chance.”

  “The tea’s cold,” says Pippy Mammott. “I’ll make fresh.”

  She goes off with the trolley. Frederica performs introductions: Tony, Alan, Hugh, Olive, Rosalind, Leo.

  Everyone sits down and considers everyone else, watchfully. Alan says one or two polite things to Olive and Rosalind about the architecture of Bran House, to which they reply briefly, at a loss.

  Tony says, “And you, dearest Frederica, how are you keeping? What are you doing with yourself, tell us how things are?”

  “I have Leo,” says Frederica, and stops. “Tell me—you tell me—about everyone—about what you are doing—”

  Tony says, “Everyone’s got election fever.”

  Alan says, “I’ve got some lectures to do at the Tate, on Turner, I’ve suddenly got interested in Turner, romanticism was never my thing, but I’ve got interested—”

  Hugh says, “I actually sold my pomegranate poem, the one I sent you, to the New Statesman. I’ve written quite a lot, there might be a book, almost. Can’t call it ‘Bells and Pomegranates,’ that’s spoken for, but I’m having a go at bells. No competition with ‘Lübeck Bells,’ of course. More of a relation of ‘Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary.’ ”

  “With silver bells and cockle shells,” says Leo.

  “Exactly,” says Hugh to Leo. “A garden full of shiny things—”

  “But a silver nutmeg. And a golden pear.”

  “Your son is a poet, Frederica.”

  “He likes words,” says Frederica.

  “He could hardly not,” says Tony, looking at the dark aunts on their sofa. They do not speak. Pippy Mammott returns with the trolley, and fresh tea. Tony eats three slices of fruit cake and Alan eats a sandwich with cucumber and Gentleman’s Relish.

  “And Wilkie?” says Frederica. “You must have seen Wilkie?”

  “He’s full of his television game. He’s made a pilot, he says it’s hilarious, literary knights and theatrical ladies getting everything deliciously wrong, mistaking Auden for Byron, he says, and Dickens for Oscar Wilde, and Shakespeare for C. S. Forester, he told us to tell you you’ve got to come and play, everyone is playing, even Alexander is playing, you have to come and play …”

  “You’d leave them all standing at the starting post, Frederica,” says Alan.

  “No one wants to see me,” says Frederica.

  “No, but you will make them want to. You always did.”

  They take the tea, and smile vaguely at the denizens of the house who offer it, they talk in a trio, lightly and brightly, they reminisce, they cross-refer, they are not impenetrably rude and private, but they speak Frederica’s shop, Frederica’s staple chatter and gossip and thoughts, for which she is dry and thirsty. She begins to speak. She tells Hugh why she loved his poem. She discusses Persephone in the dark with the fruit and seeds, and furious dry Demeter in the air. They quote lines at each other, Hugh and Frederica, companionably.

  Leo says suddenly, “Picks with pink fingers, listless.”

  Hugh smiles at him. “I didn’t know your mother had read it to you too.”

  “She didn’t,” says Leo. “Daddy did.”

  The two dark women narrow their mouths and look at each other. Frederica puts out a hand towards Leo. Hugh, thinking of his poem, notices none of this. He says, “Did he like it?”

  “I don’t think so,” says Leo.

  “Poetry isn’t his—” begins Frederica.

  “He likes hobbits,” says Leo. “I liked it,” he says kindly.

  Alan Melville says, “I should very much like to take a walk in your woods, Frederica, if we may? Do you think we could go on a walk? Being from the grey north I don’t know this country. It’s very beautiful.”

  Frederica stands up. “Let’s walk,” she says. “Yes, that would be wonderful, just what I need, a walk, let’s walk.”

  Alan says to Olive and Rosalind, “Would you like to come with us?”

  “Well, that would be—” says Rosalind.

  “No thank you,” says Olive.

  “No thank you,” says Rosalind.

  It is the first time Frederica has seen them disagree, Frederica thinks; then she thinks she must be exaggerating, she just feels she is herself again, dangerously happy and observant.

  “We won’t be long,” she says, going into the hall, getting a jacket. “I don’t suppose we’ll be all that long and anyway it doesn’t matter, does it?”

  “I’m coming,” says Leo. “Wait for me.”

  “Better not, dear,” says Pippy Mammott. “You might miss your supper. Lovely Welsh rarebit, you like that, and treacle tart, you like that, too.”

  “I’ll get my coat too,” says Leo, making for the door.

  “Your mummy doesn’t want you,” says Pippy Mammott. “She’d like to see her friends she hasn’t seen. We will all just stay here quietly until she comes back. We’ll play Happy Families. You like that.”

  “She does want me,” says Leo. He stands stiffly, near tears, full of force, Bill Potter’s grandson, Nigel Reiver’s son, a small figure by the chimney-piece. “She doesn’t want to see them without me. She doesn’t.”

  Frederica stands and looks at him. She doesn’t speak, but she does meet his eye. It is Tony Watson who says, “Where’s this coat then?” and Alan who says to Pippy, “We’ll t
ake very good care of him, we’ll bring him back in plenty of time for his supper.”

  Frederica holds his coat for him, and he shrugs himself into it. They set off through the orchard and across the meadows, with Leo at first swinging between Hugh and Alan, and then riding on Tony’s strong shoulders, clutching his curly head, and pointing things out, things rapidly becoming invisible in the thickening autumn evening, a crow, a jump, a trough, a gate with dead stoats and magpies nailed to it.

  Because he is there, nobody asks Frederica about her life. It occurs to Alan that the child, however small, has come out with precisely that intention, conscious or unconscious, of preventing Frederica from talking to her friends about her life. If there is a reflective pause in the conversation the boy rushes in, with lots of bright, showy, slightly shrill chatter, in case, Alan thinks, in case. The three friends accommodate themselves to the situation. They are real friends, they came to help as best they can. It is quite dark in the woods, the smoky light lingers after sunset.

  They come back companionably, discussing words for twilight: dusk, gloaming, crépuscule, Dämmerung. Hugh quotes Heine—“Im Dämmergrau, in das Liebeland / Tief in den Busch hinein.” Alan says to Frederica, as they prolong the walk by coming back to the front door round the outskirt of the moat, “You really do live in a moated grange.”

  “When Hugh came, he kept quoting ‘Only connect.’ I got quite cross, but he was right, of course.”

  “Did you connect?”

  “Look, Alan, how can one say one thing is more real than another, here and London, people with their heads full of books and people with their heads full of figures? But I got a bit sick of all the Cambridge literary intensity. I am half sick of shadows, I said to myself, I will Connect, and found myself in a moated grange.”

  “Complete with Mrs. Danvers.”

  “Don’t. You can do awful damage with inappropriate comparisons.”

  Leo says, “Im Dämmergrau in das Liebeland.”

  Hugh says, “You can twist your tongue round anything.”

  Alan takes Frederica’s hand.

  They come round the corner, across the bridge over the opaque green water, and crunch across the gravel. There is another car beside the Land Rover, a shimmering silver Triumph, not Nigel’s green Aston Martin. On the top step, looking down from a height, are three men, one of whom, much the smallest, is Nigel. The other two are both dressed in blazers and flannel trousers, formally informal. One has dark skin and a large curling white beard, elegantly trimmed. The other is bald, with horn-rimmed glasses. Alan drops Frederica’s hand, and Tony lifts down Leo, who looks around him, and then makes a little rush across the gravel, and toils up the staircase to his father.

  Frederica apologises for her friends, although she knows she should not. She introduces them, says they are old friends, explains that she had no idea they were in the neighbourhood. Whilst she says all this, falling over her words, Nigel and his companions remain stolidly in possession of the centre of the top step, in front of the door. He nods quickly and silently in the direction of Alan, Tony and Hugh, as they are introduced, neat, unsmiling, economical nods. He introduces his own companions, Govinder Shah and Gijsbert Pijnakker. Both these persons hold out their hands formally to Alan, Tony and Hugh, who have to take them on a slant, like courtiers.

  “And my wife,” says Nigel. “Delighted,” says Shah. “So glad to meet you,” says Pijnakker. Frederica has a sensation of being summed up and judged, by both at once, in different ways. Shah has soft full lips inside his beard, and deepset dark eyes, under curly white brows, with smile-lines set round them. He is wearing an Indian silk scarf inside an ivory silk shirt inside his dark blue blazer: it is flame and gold, with little flowers in crimson and black. Pijnakker is egg-shaped, a shining egg-head on a solid egg-body, neat and hairless. His shirt is striped butcher-blue and white, and he wears a navy scarf tied extremely neatly. Nigel is wearing a dark sweater and dark trousers. Alan, Tony and Hugh are all in corduroy jackets and trousers, over polo-necked sweaters. Nigel’s friends make Frederica’s friends look flimsy and insubstantial. Frederica’s friends, on their own ground, might make Nigel’s friends look pompous, but they are not on their own ground. The two groups might join and talk animatedly and fuse, but that is not going to happen. Nigel explains to Frederica’s friends that he has important things to discuss with Pijnakker and Shah. He then offers the friends a drink, which they refuse, retreating towards their Land Rover. Tony says, “Why don’t you lend us Frederica to have dinner with us in Spessendborough, whilst you talk?” There is an effort of pure will behind this casual invitation which everyone can feel. Nigel says, “Oh, I don’t think so, I don’t think she’d want to do that. We’ve only just arrived.”

  Frederica says, “You won’t really need me, if you have things to discuss—”

  She knows rationally that there is no reason why she should not say this.

  She knows she will pay for saying it.

  “We’ll be around a bit,” says Tony. “Staying in the Red Dragon. Perhaps we’ll see you again.”

  “Perhaps,” says Nigel. “Who knows?”

  It is quite clear to everybody that he hopes never to see them again.

  Frederica dines with Pijnakker, Shah and Nigel. She does not often meet Nigel’s friends, and when she does, they do not much talk to her. Nigel’s social life seems to be spent in a very male society, a society of clubs, bars, cigars and complicated intrigue. When he is at home, this world rings his moated grange invisibly, airy voices, guttural voices, suave voices, excitable voices, thick-cream voices, European voices, Asian voices, American voices, call him to the telephone, and he sits all evening, lying back in a leather armchair, talking to the wide world. Frederica supposes that if her friends had not come, she would not have been asked to sit through dinner with Pijnakker and Shah. On the rare occasions when people from out there do come to Bran House, she is somehow relegated to Leo’s nursery supper, or Pippy Mammott puts her up something delicious on a tray by the fire. But tonight she sits through dinner and nobody has much to say to her. Pijnakker addresses her more or less in the third person, through Nigel. “Your lady wife is very comfortable here in the country,” he says, including them both in a pleasant enough smile. “In Holland we have no such variety of landscape. It is all flat. Has your lady wife ever visited Holland, I wonder?” “No,” says Frederica. “I should like to see the Rijksmuseum. I should like to see the Van Gogh paintings.” “You must bring her, once, Reiver,” says Pijnakker. “Rotterdam is not beautiful, but she would like Delft and Leiden, she would be interested in tulips.” These are not words that interest Pijnakker, but his intentions are kindly. Shah says, “So you are interested in paintings, Mrs. Reiver.” He, unlike Pijnakker, does look at Frederica. When her eyes meet his, he gives her a little private smile, which may or may not be automatic. He says, “I do admire your brown dress, Mrs. Reiver. It is just the brown for your lovely hair. What kind of pictures do you like particularly?”

  Frederica is fond of the dress she has on, a jersey tube with a high neck and long thin sleeves in a dark brown, between coffee and chocolate. It makes the most of her long thin body, her long thin arms. Dresses are becoming shorter. It makes the most also of her long thin legs. Govinder Shah is considering her small breasts inside this tube. His look is kindly, but Frederica knows he does not find her attractive. He believes strongly that she wants him to find her attractive, and so his eyes linger where they can, politely.

  She says, “I don’t know a lot about pictures, I’m afraid. I know quite a lot about Van Gogh. I have a great friend who wrote a play about him. Literature is my subject.”

  “I believe there have been many plays about Van Gogh,” says Pijnakker. “People find him very interesting, he was religious and mad, very Dutch. He sold only one painting in his lifetime. I admire his persistence, to go on against such odds. What normal man would paint hundreds and thousands of pictures no one wanted to buy? I ask myself, did he know
they would come to be wanted, or was it pure chance?”

  “Hundreds of people make things nobody wants,” says Shah. “But I agree with you also, there are those with the courage of their convictions who make things they know people will want, those who are ahead of their time. Some of these appear to be madmen, and some of them are. I believe Van Gogh’s brother was a dealer. He may have seen more clearly that people would some day want those pictures. Or he may not. I believe he bought them all, stored them all. Maybe he was merely kind. Maybe he was merely exercising family loyalty.”

  “He too died mad,” says Pijnakker. “The Dutch are much given to melancholy-madness. It is the grey rain on our coasts. That is why we voyage, to escape the grey rain and the melancholy-madness.”

  “Whereas we in the sub-continent,” says Shah, “we voyage if we must to escape the extreme poverty and mess we have made of our daily lives. We have made a world in which enterprise is impossible, because we are not orderly beings, but lazy and corrupt beings, and if we have any enterprise we brave your grey rain and your melancholy-madness in order to earn our daily bread and if we are lucky some butter and jam and perhaps eventually foie gras and caviare to put on our bread. But we do not like your grey mists and your miserable cold wet winds, we get sunsick, we like to go back and forth and cannot.”

  All three men laugh at this speech, as though it says more than it appears to say.

  “Happy the man,” says Shah, “with an office in Rotterdam, and an office in London, and a house on a hill in Kashmir, and a villa in Antibes, and a yacht in the Mediterranean and an ocean-going boat too in the North Sea, a free man.”

  Pijnakker says, “Vincent Van Gogh was melancholy-mad in the south, too. The sun did him no good, I think. I like the sun myself, I am partial to a week or two in North Africa or Italy or southern France, I protect my eyes and my skin, and do not expose myself excessively.”