Strange Music (37 page)

Angela laughed. ‘He's got a nerve! I wonder how many others will choose an inner self that is the exact opposite of their outer self?'

‘Well, Nicole is coming as a
man
! Which is about as far as one could get from her
outer
self, I'd say.'

‘Why? A man! Good Lord.'

‘I suppose because there's no famous
woman
castaway on a desert island.'

‘And what's so special about a desert island?' Angela asked.

‘She says the attractions . . . it's all come about since they saw
The Admirable Crichton.
She says the attractions of a desert island occur to her a hundred times a day. I think it's a public hint to Tony, because they haven't had a real holiday for two years.'

‘So what's
his
inner self? We should cover these – the flies are beginning to notice.'

They stacked the completed trays and threw a cheesecloth over them before returning to the final assortment.

‘Tony's inner self?' Angela reminded Marianne.

‘
Woman
Friday, of course! Willard says that when the officers put on a show for the other ranks, back in the days of
AMGOT
, Tony always strapped a pair of half-coconuts to his chest and put on a grass skirt and did a hula-hula dance. He says Tony was quite sexy but I'll believe that when I see it.' She lifted the tray. ‘Hold up the cloth and I'll add this to the stack.'

A minute or so later there was a scream from the bathroom, where Angela had gone for a pee. Marianne came running, only to find her fully clothed in all her flounces, staring down at the long drive. ‘What – or who – is
that
?
'
she asked.

Deep in the shadow of the limes that flanked the drive as it neared the house walked . . . a
skeleton
!

Marianne ran to fetch their binoculars. ‘My God, it's Hilary!' she murmured, and then laughed. ‘No one can be more literal than Hilary when she puts her mind to it.'

She passed the binoculars to Angela, who saw that it was, indeed, Hilary Lanyon, and now that she had emerged into the early afternoon sun, it was obvious why she had appeared to be a mere skeleton back there in the deep shade of the trees: she was dressed from head to toe in black: black sweater, black slacks, black socks, black gym shoes – onto which she had painted the bones of a skeleton – a complete front view on her front, including the front of her arms, and (as they saw when she turned to shout at Terence and the children to catch up) a complete rear view on her back, again including her arms. Her hair had been scooped up inside what, from this distance, looked like half an ostrich-eggshell or a giant half ping-pong ball and she had Leichnered the elements of a skull upon her face.

‘Trust her!' Angela murmured. ‘What
is
one's inner self if it is not one's own skeleton, after all! I wonder what Terence has chosen for
his
inner self?'

Her question was answered almost at once, when Terence, leading Maynard and Diana and pushing six-month-old Karl in his pram, emerged from the shade of the trees. By parental edict, the children – almost all of whom wanted to come in last year's personae as Victorian waifs and strays – were dressed like the rest of The Tribe as members of those other tribes, the Lost Boys and the Faeries of
Peter Pan and Wendy
. Terence himself was dressed as . . .

‘Some kind of eighteenth-century gentleman,' Marianne said in a puzzled tone.

‘Adam Smith – isn't it obvious?' Terence told Willard. ‘Who the hell are you?'

Willard took off his hat, a high-crown affair in the shape of a church spire. ‘Crocketed finials,' he said, pointing out a few. ‘Isn't it obvious?'

‘Not to me.'

‘The Houses of Parliament? This monogram?' He indicated the sandwich-board that adorned him, front and back, bearing an elaborate Gothick monogram of the letters:

‘Still no?' He replaced his hat.

‘Still no, I'm afraid, old chap.'

‘Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin! Really! The ignorance of some people high in government these days is appalling. Pugin provided the setting in which you guys make all those disastrous policy decisions.'

The hula-hula girl leaned forward and said in confidential tones, ‘Between you, me, and the gatepost, man, Willard is as likely to develop crocketed finials on any of his buildings as I am likely to express milk from these coconuts.'

‘Don't they scratch?' Terence asked.

‘They do a bit. I'm going to the workshop when we've got this stall put up. Sand them down a bit more.'

‘Sandpaper on breasts!' Willard shuddered and turned on Terence. ‘And as for you – invoking the Great Adam Smith – have you no shame? You guys have even got the
Tories
thinking that nationalization is the only panacea for all ills.'

‘You know what they say,' Terence answered lightly. ‘If you laid all the economists in the world end-to-end, they'd still point in all directions. But if you want to be serious, only a fool would recommend a market-driven free-for-all these days – even to the Tories. You never travelled on troopships in the war, did you? British troopships.'

‘Why?'

‘Because below decks they were closer to hell than anything you ever heard a hellfire preacher describe. That's where British socialism finally took root and flourished among the hoi polloi who put crosses on ballot papers. Look – if I hold that for you, poor Tony can go and sandpaper his tits and you can knock a hole in the lawn. As I was saying – it's a British pandemic that has to run its course . . . burn itself out. Then Adam Smith will have his day once again. I'm keeping him good and warm, don't worry.'

‘And meanwhile you'll go on pointing in all directions!'

‘Oh, no! I point to the horrors that lie in the depths of the Marxist abyss – you have no idea how close to its edge some of them are.'

‘There's Bruno,' Eric said a short while later. ‘He managed to find his way, then.'

‘To the man who found his way through Blake's poetry,' Faith remarked as they went to greet him, ‘finding the Dower House would be a piece of cake. Especially as he's come by taxi. Bruno! You're very welcome.'

‘Bruno!' Eric added, ‘I suppose you got the invitation too late to devise an inner-self outfit?'

‘But I am
wearing
my inner self!' Bronowski's eyes twinkled. ‘In full view! I'm surprised that you of all people, Brandon, fail to spot it. I usually wear it inside, appropriately enough.' He touched the fountain pen clipped in his breast pocket.

‘Your inner self is a
fountain pen
?' Eric asked.

That twinkle again. ‘Pierrot must be a very
literal
character – as well as being a literary one. My inner self is the
ink inside my fountain pen
, of course. But I wasn't going to ruin a good suit to make that clear to the more slow-witted guests at your party.'

‘Just ink?' Eric asked.

‘Ah! But what may it
become,
you see? A word? A sketch? A blot? An incommensurable number?'

Faith turned on Eric. ‘You really ought to know better by now. Come on, Bruno – let's see what treats Marianne and Nicole have for us this year.'

‘Talking of treats,' Bronowski said as they crossed the lawns, making for the back of the house, ‘you two missed a cornucopia after last Wednesday's meeting of the editorial board. Huxley started talking to James Fisher about the depletion of the human genetic pool because educated people are having smaller families than the
Lumpenproletariat
– not that he used those terms, exactly, but that's what he meant.'

‘He's bent my ear on that theme a couple of times,' Eric said. ‘He's trying to devise some sort of eugenics programme that doesn't awaken Nazi echoes. I'm going to suggest he should practice first on making water which doesn't feel wet.'

‘James is broadly sympathetic, of course. It always amuses me how these old aristocrats of the intellect – once they get past their own procreative years – start devising schemes to curtail the potency of others.'

‘Did you contribute a few pearls?' Faith asked.

‘I pointed out that genius parents tended to have less-bright offspring while the sons and daughters of morons have higher
IQ
s than their parents. It's a well-known statistical phenomenon called Regression to the Mean. But biologists seem to think they're excused mathematics.'

‘It ought to be called
Pro
gression for morons,' Eric remarked, ‘and
Re
gression for geniuses.'

‘Pay no attention to him, Bruno,' Faith advised. ‘He's just miffed that he didn't spot your inner self at once. I, of course, saw it the moment you stepped out of the taxi and I realized straight away that you had only worked it out as you came up the Long Drive.'

‘Did you paint the bones on the clothes yourself?' Sally asked; she was not so much her inner self as her earlier self – back in military uniform, in fact, in ‘full mess undress' with the crown and three pips of a brigadier on her shoulders.

‘Me? Paint like this?' Hilary craned her neck to admire, once again, the extremely lifelike skeleton that adorned her all-black outfit. ‘Have a heart!' She tugged at her sleeve to straighten out the ulna and radius bones. ‘Debbie did it.'

‘Really?' Sally was suddenly showing a more-than-casual interest. ‘Did you give her any reference?'

‘Who to? I mean, what for? I wasn't
employing
her.'

‘No, I mean reference material.'

‘Ah. No, she didn't need any. She won some anatomy prize at the Slade – not that you'd know it from her paintings, mind. She showed me one. It's all paint dribbled down from the top of the canvas. Not a single line that's actually drawn.'

‘And yet she can paint bones as realistically as this, just from memory!'

‘Why this sudden interest, Sally?'

‘Oh . . . well, not for myself personally, but last time I was at Enfield I heard they were looking for a medical illustrator. She'd probably think it beneath her dignity but it's a living wage – ten quid a week and meals while on duty. Would you tell her? Or would it be beneath the dignity of a brigadier?' She cocked an ear. ‘That sounds like Rachel crying.'

Sally leaned toward the sound. ‘Yes, that's my Rachel. It doesn't sound important.'

‘And which part of the house do you live in, young lady?' the distinguished-looking old man asked.

‘I don't,' Betty said. ‘Not any more. We used to live in the oldest part – those windows up there – but then Mummy and Daddy moved to Dormer Green. That one was my bedroom.' Her eyes lingered there.

‘Ah! Now I
know
you don't live here. All the Dower House children seem to call their parents by their Christian names.'

‘Well, it's no good standing crying in the garden and shouting “Mummy!” because there are nine mothers here and they'll all think there's only a one-in-nine chance it's them so you could howl until the cows come home.'

‘You sound as if you wish you still lived here.'

‘I do. And so does Charley. But Daddy says renting a house is a mug's game when you can pay the same money and end up owning it but Eric says that we probably don't own enough of our own house yet and when we do we'll pay Schedule A tax which is the same as rent so there's no difference.'

‘Goodness gracious! The things you children know these days! What do you want to be when you grow up?'

‘An architect like Sally and Marianne and come back here and live up there again in our flat. They could be very old by then and might be grateful for someone younger.'

He sat down beside her on the old car chassis, without – Betty noticed – bothering about the rust. She approved of him for that. ‘D'you think being an architect is fun? I'm a journalist, you know, but I've had a lot of dealings with architects down the years. Did you go to the Festival of Britain?'

‘Yes! I'll say! It was fun.'

‘Well, I was the director for all that. I dealt with all those architects – but “fun” is not the first word that springs—'

‘Did you meet Willard there?' She bit her lower lip, grinned, shrugged her shoulders, and added in a near whisper: ‘He designed all the toilets there!'

The old man chuckled. ‘I know. I was there when we offered him the contract. He was going to turn it down until he heard the size of the fee. But he's not my only connection with this place, you know. There's Faith Bullen-ffitch and Eric Brandon and—'

‘Eric tells us funny stories when we walk to school and back.'

‘I'm sure he does. D'you see that jolly man talking to that other man with a huge wig and silk britches?'

‘That's Mister Fogel. He comes to every midsummer party. Faith works for him.'

‘And so does Felix Breit. And Eric. And me, too, in a way. The jolly-looking man and I are advisors on all the books they publish. So I think you're quite right, young lady, to want to come back and live here. This house is a sort of powerhouse – you know about powerhouses where they generate electricity? Well, this old Dower House is like a powerhouse where they generate ideas. Keep in touch with it, eh? I must go now but I have really enjoyed our little talk. I didn't ask your name? I'm Gerald. Gerald Barry.'

‘Betty Ferguson.'

Smiling self-consciously, they shook hands.

‘The bestest tree! The bestest tree!' Sam and Hannah cried. ‘Freddy's never been in the bestest tree.'

‘Is that true, Freddy?' Felix bent low over him and peered deep into the little boy's eyes. Startled, he jerked his thumb from his mouth and shook his head slowly.

‘Cat got your tongue?' Felix asked.