Angels and Insects (11 page)

‘I am happy to accept that explanation.’

‘Good man, fellow bridegroom. Civilised man. We are not armed warriors now, are we? Civilised men in smoking jackets, we are, who stay seated as we should. I admire you, William. Edgar is an anachronism. You didn’t think I knew such a word, I’ll be bound.’

‘On the contrary. Thank you for your kindness.’

‘We must see each other often through our marriages.’

‘With great pleasure.’

He found it hard, afterwards, to remember the exact emotions of his wedding day. It was his observation that all ceremonies brought with them, besides a sense of deeply coloured significance, a heightened sense of unreality, as though he were a watcher, not a participant. He thought this sense of
watching
might derive from the
absence of simple belief in the Christian story, the Christian world, as Harald had so movingly described it to him. Irrelevant analogies poked their way through the curtains of his inner eye, even in these most sacred moments, so that, as he stood beside Robin Swinnerton, under the booming organ of the parish church of Saint Zachariah, and watched Eugenia and Rowena advancing along the aisle on the arms of Edgar and Lionel, he thought of the religious festivals at Para and Barra, the puppet-images of the Virgin, decorated in laces and silk floss and silver ribbons, smiling perpetually on their way to the church, and beyond that to the dances in Indian villages, where he was dwarfed by masked beings with the heads of owls, or ibises, or anacondas.

And yet it was a very English, a very bucolic wedding. Eugenia and Rowena were dressed like sisters, but not like twins, in white silk dresses with long lace trains, one trimmed with pink rosebuds all over, and one—Eugenia’s—with cream and gold. Both wore crowns of the same rosebuds, and pearl necklaces. Both carried mixed lilies and roses—the scent dizzied him as the procession reached the place where he stood to receive her. Behind them was a bevy of little girls, with ribbons and streamers in pink and gold, wearing dresses of white net with satin sashes, and carrying baskets of rose petals to throw. The church was packed: the absence of any friend or family of his own was more than made up for by the ranks of Alabasters and Swinnertons and local friends and connections, all nodding in flowers and ribbons. Rowena was flushed with excitement, and Eugenia was wax-white, most colourful in the gold of her downcast lashes, her lips pale, her cheeks smoothly, evenly, colourless. They made their vows before Harald, who married both his daughters with sonorous pleasure in the repeated phrases, and spoke briefly about the moving nature of a double wedding which made it more than usually clear that a family was being enlarged by additions, rather than anyone being taken away. For Rowena would remain in the parish, and Eugenia for the time being in her
home, now William Adamson’s home, which was a matter for rejoicing.

He should have been conscious, he thought, of two souls speaking their vows together, but he was not. He was conscious of all the soft finery surrounding Eugenia’s body, and the scent of the flowers, and the perfection and clarity with which she spoke her responses, as opposed to Rowena, who tripped, and stumbled, and put her hand to her mouth, and smiled at her husband for forgiveness. Eugenia looked straight in front of her, at the altar. When he took her hand, to put on the ring, he had to push, to manoeuvre, as though the finger had no will or life of its own. And he thought, standing there in the church, on the circumference of her skirts, Will she be so numb in the bed tonight, what shall I do? And then he thought how many men in his position must have thought such secret thoughts, all of them unuttered and unutterable. And he thought, as they progressed back through the church, between the respectable ladies in their florid bonnets, and the dark gentlemen in their silky cravats, between the modestly clad servants in their straw hats and the few farm labourers at the very back, that everyone at the wedding had a secret thought about him and her, those two, how would they be when left alone together? Everyone’s imagination tickled and pricked and clutched at him, he sensed, as he went by them.
She
was too innocent to know, he thought. He tried to imagine Lady Alabaster imparting information to Eugenia, and could not. She was there in the front row, smiling benignly in glistening mauve.

Everyone
does
survive their marriage night, he thought, coming blinking out into the daylight of the churchyard, and the chatter of birds in the trees and the shrill squeals of the little girls. The species is propagated, it goes on, innocent girls become wives and mothers, everywhere, every day. Eugenia’s hand was very still in his, her face white, her breathing faint. He had no idea what she was thinking or feeling.

The little girls pelted them with petals which a sudden gust of wind lifted into the air like a cloud of wings, rosy, gold and white. They swarmed around the two couples, making their shrill noise, and hurling their soft missiles.

The day passed in eating, and speeches, and running on the lawn, and finally in dancing. He danced with Eugenia, who remained white and silent, gravely watching her steps. He danced with Rowena, who laughed, and with Enid, who chattered about his coming to the house as a shipwrecked stranger. He saw Eugenia go past, in Edgar’s arms, and then in Lionel’s, and then in Robin Swinnerton’s, and everyone seemed to twirl dizzily even when the music stopped. When, finally, the young Swinnertons drove off and the Alabasters began to make preparations for the night, he was uncertain where to go, and no one offered him guidance. Edgar and Lionel lounged in the smoking-room and he did not think he would be welcome even if he wanted to be there, which he did not. Harald passed him in the corridor and stopped him, and said, ‘God bless you, my boy,’ but offered him no advice. Lady Alabaster had retired early. His things had been moved from his little attic room to his new dressing-room, which opened out of the new bedchamber prepared for him and Eugenia. He made his way up there, nervous and lonely—Eugenia had already gone up—unsure of what, if any, ceremonial was required.

In his dressing-room, a valet was turning down his bed and warming the sheets, an exercise that might surely be deemed to be unnecessary. A new nightshirt had been laid out for him, and new silk slippers, embroidered by Eugenia. The valet, a thin, black-coated creature with long white hands and soft russet whiskers, poured water from a blue jug into his washbasin and handed him soap and a towel. He indicated the new hairbrushes, ivory-backed, a present from Eugenia, and bowed himself out of the room, softly, quickly. William walked across to the connecting door, and
knocked. He had no idea how she was, what state she was in, what he should do. He vaguely believed they might consult with each other.

‘Come in,’ said the clear voice, and he opened the door, to find her standing in the furled, crushed circle of the dress, its lace spread all over, her shoulders rising white out of her petticoats, marble and untouchable as he had seen them on that first evening. Her headdress was cast on her dressing-table, and had begun to wilt. Her maid was unpinning her hair. It fell in crimped runnels over her shoulders. The maid, a thin girl, in a black stuff gown, was brushing out this hair, stroke by silky stroke. It lifted electrically to meet the brush, and clung here, ballooning, before the next stroke began. It crackled.

‘I am sorry,’ he said. ‘I will go back.’

‘Martha has just to unhook me, and finish the brushing—I need at least two hundred strokes every evening if my hair is to have any life in it. I hope you are not too tired?’

‘Oh no,’ he said, standing in the doorway. She was white all over. Even her nipples must be white. He remembered Ben Jonson. ‘O so white! O so soft! O so sweet is she!’ He felt an intruder then, in all his clothes, in front of Martha the maid, who shared his embarrassment, who turned her head away and brushed and brushed and brushed more intently.

Eugenia was not embarrassed. She stepped out of the ring of her discarded lace trains and floating silks. She said, ‘As you see, we are nearly finished. Attend to these laces, Martha, leave off brushing until these things are away. I do not think all this can be quite as you expected to find it? Do you like your rooms? I paid special attention to the colours you seem to prefer—a kind of green, with touches of crimson here and there. I hope all is to your liking.’

‘Oh yes. It is all most beautiful, most comfortable.’

‘Don’t pull, Martha. Unhook me, here and here. I shall be only a very little time, William, now.’

It was his dismissal. He went back into his dressing-room, leaving the door ajar, and put on his own nightshirt and the pretty slippers. Then he waited, standing in the candlelight, with the moonlight behind it, a curious sheeted figure, attentive to small sounds. He heard the maid run to and fro, he heard the bed creak as Eugenia climbed in. And then he heard the maid at his door, knocking softly, opening. ‘Madam is ready for you now, Sir. If you would care to come in, everything is ready.’

And she held the door for him, and made a bob, and turned back the corner of the sheet and whisked out of the room on silent feet, with downcast eyes.

He was afraid of hurting Eugenia. He was also, more obscurely and more urgently, afraid of smutching her, as the soil smutched the snow in the poem. He did not come to her pure. He had learned things—many things—in the raffish dancing places in Pará, in the sleep-time after dancing in the villages of the mulattoes, which it was better not to remember here, though the knowledge might have its uses. He saw her sitting up in the bed, which was huge, and curtained, and piled high with goose-feather quilts, and white-lace-trimmed pillowcases, and soft bolsters, a soft nest in a severely frowning box. How the innocent female must fear the power of the male, he thought, and with reason, so soft, so white, so untouched, so untouchable. He stood there, with his hands at his sides.

‘Well,’ said Eugenia. ‘Here I am, you see. Here we are.’

‘Oh my dearest. I cannot believe my own happiness.’

‘You will catch cold, if you cannot believe it enough to come—to come in.’

She was wearing a nightgown in broderie anglaise, and the well-brushed hair fanned over her shoulders. Her face danced before his eyes in the candle flames, around which a single moth was dancing and darting, a buff ermine. When he approached her, slowly, slowly, in fear of his own wrongful knowledge and power,
she gave a little laugh, suddenly blew out the candle, and plunged under the bedclothes. When he found his way inside she held out her invisible arms to him and he reached for her softness, discovering it by touch. He held her to him strongly, to still the trembling, his and hers, and said into her hair, ‘I have loved you from the first moment I saw you.’

She answered with a series of soft, wordless, moaning sounds, half-frightened, half like a bird settling. He stroked her hair, and shoulders, and felt her arms twine round him, surprisingly strong and certain, and then the flicker of her legs against his. Down and in, she plunged and pulled, into the dark, warm nest, almost suffocating, its heat increasing, and with it a sprouting damp, on his skin, and hers, between them.

‘I don’t want to hurt you,’ he said, and her little moans and cries and intimations of pleasure and invitation increased in urgency as she twisted, laughing, first against him, then away. He followed her for a little, meeting her hot little hands with his, gathering courage to touch her breasts, her belly, the small of her back, and she answered with little sighs—of fear, of content, he did not know. And when, finally, his own urgency overcame him, and he went into her with a shivering cry, he felt her sharp little teeth on his shoulder, as she took him in, throbbing, aching and falling away.

‘Oh,’ he said, in the warmth and the wet, ‘you are honey, you are so
sweet
, my dearest.’ He heard a strange chuckle, something laughing and weeping together, in her throat. He thought of the mysteries of knowledge, of what men and women, no less than the creatures, could do if they followed their instinct, unafraid. She was darting her hot face, the cold white Eugenia, into his neck, and kissing him repeatedly where his vein pulsed. Her fingers were wound in his hair, her legs were wound in his, and this was Eugenia, of whom he had said he would die if he could not have her.

‘Oh my beloved,’ he said, ‘we are going to be so happy, we are going to be so happy together, it is
overflowing
.’

And she chuckled, and rolled on her back, and pulled at him, and asked for more. And when they slept, uneasily, he woke in the dark dawn to see her huge eyes fixed on his face, and found her hands touching his private places, and the little sobbing sounds starting again, asking for more, and more, and still more.

And then the maid knocked at the door, with the hot water and the morning tea and biscuits, and Eugenia rolled away, quick as a lizard on a hot stone, and disposed herself, immobile, a sleeping beauty, her rosy face peaceful under her hair.

And so he lived happily ever after? Between the end of the fairy story with its bridal triumph, between the end of the novel, with its hard-won moral vision, and the brief glimpse of death and due succession, lies a placid and peaceful pseudo-eternity of harmony, of increasing affection and budding and crowing babes, of ripe orchards and heavy-headed cornfields, gathered in on hot nights. William, like most human beings, expected this in some quiet corner of his emotions, and, although he would not have said so, if asked, he would have been properly cautious about the unknown future. Certainly he expected some kind of intimate new speech to develop between himself and his wife, and expected her, vaguely, to initiate it. Women were expert in emotional matters, and much of what preoccupied him—his ambition, his desire to make discoveries, his wish to travel—seemed inappropriate subject matter for such delicate explorings. For the first few weeks of his marriage he felt that their bodies spoke to each other in a kind of fluttering bath of molten gold, a kind of radiant tent of silky touch and shimmering softness, so that long, tender silences were a natural form of communion during the mundane grey daylight. Then one afternoon, his wife came to him with downcast eyes and said in a composed whisper that she believed she was with child; that she believed they
could expect a happy event. If his first emotion was a stab of fear, he was quick to hide it, to caress and congratulate her, to turn her laughing around and tell her that she looked quite different, a new creature, wonderfully mysterious. She smiled quickly and briefly to herself on this, and then said that she did not feel quite herself, that she was a little peaked, somewhat nauseous, no doubt quite naturally. And as quickly as the door to his bliss had opened, it snapped shut again, the golden garden of the nights, the honey and the roses. He slept alone, and his wife slept alone in her white nest, and swelled slowly, developing large breasts and a creamy second chin, as well as the mound she carried before her.