Babel Tower (22 page)

“ ‘Just this once,’ ” says Frederica, picking on the operative phrase. “What do you mean, ‘Just this once’? I
never
go anywhere, I
never
see anyone, I have no life, and when my friends come, you have the gall to say ‘Just this once, don’t go.’ ”

“You have to understand,” says Nigel, “I don’t feel sure of you. You aren’t the sort of girl I was accustomed to. In a sort of a way I was a bit scared of you. I’m frightened you might find me boring, me and Leo, and want to go off, or something. You can understand that?”

“Oh yes,” says Frederica. “I can understand that. But I can’t live with it, any more. If you keep me shut up here because I might go off, I
will
go off, you can see that?”

“Leo—” says Nigel.

“Don’t blackmail me with Leo. I am myself, as well as Leo’s mother.
I want to see my friends.
”

“Just this once—” Nigel begins doggedly, and then laughs, sharp and unhappy. “Look, we’ll start again, we’ll go to London, I’ll take you to Amsterdam with Pijnakker and you can look at your pictures, we’ll go on a holiday—we could go to the West Indies—”

“I don’t
want
to go to the West Indies, I want to go where I can talk about books—where I can
think
—I have to
think
, the way you have to do whatever you do do, with Pijnakker and Shah—”

“You can think here. It isn’t thinking you want, it’s men. You need lots of men.”

“
No
, Nigel. I need—”

“He was holding your hand.”

“Is that so terrible?”

“Yes. Yes, it is. To me, it is.”

“I’m sorry. It wasn’t anything. Leo was even there. They are just my friends.”

“Just this once—stay with me. I’m sorry. Stay with me.”

She stays, because she sees only too well that if she
does
attempt to telephone the Red Dragon, all that will result will be hideous embarrassment and violence. They go out in the car, Frederica and Leo and Nigel, and they have what might be called a good day. Both of them talk to Leo, who chatters to both of them. Leo does not mention
Alan and Tony and Hugh, though Frederica is waiting for him to do so. It is as though they had never come, never existed.

When they come hack, Nigel says, “There, that was a good day.”

Pippy carries Leo off to bed. She brings supper for Nigel and Frederica. She does not meet Frederica’s eye. Frederica is tired. She has got through another day, and finds this consoling, until, when relaxation dribbles a livelier blood into her veins, she starts thinking again: Getting through another day, and another day, what sort of a life is that? “Most people’s lives,” some cynical Good Fairy mutters in her head. “Most people’s lives.” Frederica stabs carrots, savagely, with her fork. She thinks, Today is Sunday, they all have jobs, they will have gone home.

Rifts are closed, but also sprung open, in bedrooms. Frederica sees that Nigel has a scenario for this night, a scenario of long, subtle, complex love-making, of gentleness and closeness, of pleasure and loss of self and exhausted sleep. She tries, because she is tired, and because in some ways she is in despair, to school herself to accept this, because it is what he has to give, and because she needs sleep and unconsciousness, and because of Leo. She watches Nigel undress—he likes to sleep naked—and she thinks to herself that his body is more real to her than those of Tony and Alan and Hugh added together—and Alexander and Wilkie and Raphael Faber, she tells herself rather wildly. She even sits quietly on the edge of her side of the bed, in a white lawn nightdress with long sleeves and a yoke and collar, and wonders whether women in previous centuries would even recognise her despair, given that she does not want to go away and make love to Tony, Alan and Hugh, but merely to talk to them, merely to feel a little mental space for freedom. The bedroom is dark, and Nigel has drawn the curtains, which are dark red, a kind of damask, with red trees and red blooms on a red ground. When Frederica is alone she leaves the curtains open and sees stars or clouds. She imagines Alan and Tony and Hugh in a large room with white walls and pale blue curtains, with open windows blowing the blue curtains, and sunlight coming in. She hunches her shoulders and stares at her knees. The naked man pads, strutting a little, as naked men do, in and out of the bathroom, making tap noises, spitting noises, flushing noises. Frederica sits and waits, and thinks. She thinks, I am a woman, and thinks what a silly pretentious thought
that
is. She thinks, I thought that, because the kind of woman I am is not quite sure she
is
a woman, she likes to be reassured about that. I am a thin woman, a sharp woman,
a wordy woman, not the sort of animal men think of at all when they think of a woman. Cambridge obscured this, temporarily, there were so few women, we were all treated as though we were real ones, like nurses in prisons, like secretaries in barracks.

The man carries his penis in front of him, neither erect nor quiescent, but stirring with life, but solidifying. He says, “Darling.” He approaches the motionless woman and pulls at her nightdress, intending to lift it romantically over her head.

Frederica sees in her head, with total clarity, the succession of images in the locked case, the screwed-up bodies, the blown-up flesh, the carmines and roses, the slippery rubbery masses. She twists away, clutching her garment, and says, “It’s no use. None of it is any use. You know as well as I do that this is over, that I can’t stay, that it hasn’t worked. Tomorrow I will put some things together and get a taxi or something from Spessendborough and just
go
in a civilised sort of way. And then we can be friends and it will not be so awful.”

She had not expected to say any of this, and is uncomfortably aware that her tone is that of a nanny talking to a child. Nigel stops a moment, and then continues his advance. The penis has not shrunk, it has become an angry club, wavering in front of him. His face is flushed. He takes hold of Frederica’s hair, pulls her head back on to the bed—she lets herself fall quickly, remembering the commando grips—pushes up the nightdress and takes her. He does not try to hurt her, he does not kiss or caress her. He bangs away, and explodes, and sits back on the floor, swaying slightly. Frederica says, in a thin voice, frightened and furious, “
That
has nothing to say to it. I am going to go, tomorrow.”

“No,” says Nigel. His eyes are full of tears. They run on to his cheeks. Frederica wipes her legs with the sheet and the nightdress.

“It isn’t
me
you want,” says Frederica. “You just want to hold on to what you’ve got, like all possessive males, you’re like one of the stags when one of the females tries to trot off, you bellow and rush. It’s nothing to do with
me.
”

“How do you know? You don’t know my thoughts, you don’t know
much
, I often think. You don’t notice much. How do you know what I feel?”

“I don’t think I care any more what you feel. I’m going to go and sleep in that other room. Good night.”

She goes into the spare bedroom and sits on the edge of the bed, in the dark, and shakes. She waits. She is not thinking, she is simply
afraid. She waits. When she hears footsteps along the corridor, she gets behind the door. She is still shaking. Perhaps she will faint. The door opens violently and the man comes into the room. He stands, accustoming his eyes to the dark, and Frederica whips round the door, and runs along the corridor and down the stairs. She runs into the kitchen and out into the scullery, and pulls at bolts, and chains, and goes out into the quiet damp night. She goes on running, across the back yard, through a gate into the stable-yard. She listens. At first there is no sound of pursuit and then she hears a door open. That is all. He is not crashing. He is coming quietly. Frederica opens the door to the saddle-room, quietly, quietly, slips in and shuts it. She does not like to be shut in. She wants to be out in the air, to run all the way to London, but that is silly, she needs to be very clever. She gets behind a rack of saddles and waits. She thinks, when he opens the door, if he opens the door, this nightdress will shimmer. She finds a horseblanket, drapes it over a chair and crouches under. Every hiding place is also more dangerous, because she cannot run. She can hear her own blood, banging in her head and her heart. Her mouth is dry. She crouches.

After what seems a long time, the door is thrown open with a crash. She can hear him breathing. She sees his bare feet, and the bottoms of his pyjama trousers, striped blue and white. She breathes shallow, shallow, just enough air to keep alive. He says, “Frederica?” She keeps still. He walks in and looks around. She thinks he must have a hunting animal’s instinct for warm flesh and breath, but he listens, and does not come towards her. He says, “I’ll find you,” and she can tell from his voice that he does not know she is there, not really, he is a bit embarrassed, for all his heaving rage, to be talking to an empty room. He goes out, leaving the door open. She still cannot hear his feet on the paving stones, which makes her feel hysterical. She hears a door, another further door, a sudden movement of a horse in a stall, the scrape of a metal shoe. She hears the second door close. Then for a long time she hears nothing. She crouches in the cold in her damp nightdress and says to herself, “Come on, you are clever, intelligence can be used for
anything
, what are you going to do?” But she can think of nothing at all, except going back into the house, and hiding, and waiting until morning, and running on to the road, once she has some sensible clothes—and the road is some two and a half miles away, and unfrequented—and hitching a lift. And there is Leo. How can she run away when he is awake?

After perhaps two hours, she comes out, and stretches her cramped body. There is silence. He will be waiting for her in the house. Perhaps, she thinks, it will all get out of hand and he will kill me with his commando tricks. She does not
really
think he will do that. No human being in full possession of life and thought
really
supposes they are about to die. She thinks if she can just manage to hide
in
the house until breakfast time—until light—

She flickers back barefoot and silent round the edge of the stable-yard, across the back yard, to the back door. The air is cold and damp. The sky is overcast. The door is locked and bolted. She stands on the doorstep and thinks what to do next. She feels curiously relaxed. She will have to be let in bedraggled and cold, at dawn, but what will that matter? She breathes a deep sigh.

“And
now
what will you do?” he says, behind her, stepping out of the house-corner. He has put on a shirt and a pair of plimsolls. He is holding an axe. Frederica screams at the sight of the axe, as he meant her to. It is not a very big axe, as axes go, a neat, portable, shining little axe.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” says Frederica, doubtfully.

“I’ll get you,” he says thickly and moves towards her.

Frederica runs.

She runs like fury, through the yards, into the orchard, across the orchard, out into the field. He runs after her. He runs better, but she is madder, she runs quite extraordinarily fast, her mouth is wide and fills with cold night air, and drags at it in great gulps. She runs across the field. He laughs, he stands at the top of the slope of the field as she is stumbling down it, he gives a great whoop of laughter, and throws the axe at her.

She ducks and twists. She cannot see, she will never know how good or bad his aim is or was meant to be. The flat of the axe catches her on her ribs and winds her. She and the axe fall together, its blade bites the flesh of her hip, cuts at her calf. The nightdress reddens very fast, with blood. Frederica lies on her side and stares dumbly at the grass, at a molehill, at the skyline, at the black and grey clouded sky. She is winded. Her eyes hurt. She feels blood and blood, her blood, great hot puddles of it. It has a finality. She stares.

He runs to her side, he kneels beside her. He is beside himself, he is crying, he tears up her nightdress and makes an efficient bandage to stanch the blood. He says, “I didn’t mean it, I didn’t mean it, you know I didn’t mean it.”

“What’s mean?” says Frederica incoherently, and lapses into blissful unconsciousness. She comes round in his arms: he is carrying her up the hillside, back into the house. She thinks, I might get some sleep.

He bandages her up very successfully. He straps her up in sticking plaster and lint, he swabs and stanches. He says, “They’re only superficial cuts, you really don’t need a doctor, I do know what I’m talking about—”

“Because of the commandos.”

“It comes in useful. I am
terribly sorry.
What can I say? I don’t know how I … I do love you … I don’t want to hurt you.”

“That’s not what it looks like.”

“I know. Oh, God,
I’m sorry.
You have to understand—”

“I understand.”

“I don’t like the way you say that.”

“You aren’t meant to.”

“Please, Frederica.”

“Go away. I need sleep.”

“You need sleep.”

He goes away, obediently. She lies in her bed, and Pippy Mammott brings her breakfast. Pippy Mammott says, “I gather you fell over something in the night.”

“Something like that.”

“I’d be more careful, if I was you.”

“What do you mean by that, Pippy?”

“What I say. I’d be more careful, rushing around in the night.”

She pretends to be worse than she believes she is. This gives her a kind of space for manoeuvre, though she does not know
what
she will manoeuvre. Leo comes to see her, and strokes her face.

“Poor thing. You’re ill.”

“I fell over. I was silly.”

“You’ll get better, Daddy says so.”

“I just need a lot of sleep, Leo, that’s all, I need to keep very very still. I can’t walk very well.”

“Poor thing. Poor thing.”

“Leo, don’t cry. I’ll get better. I promise.”

He weeps and weeps. She sits up and holds him. All this is not good for him.

“Your face is all bashed, it’s horrible, you must have had a
horrible
fill.”