Babel Tower (81 page)
Authors: A.S. Byatt
She has refused offers to accompany her to the Court. She has tried not to think about it too much—she is not, she thinks, afraid of appearing in public, even in the witness box, for is she not a good public speaker, a charismatic teacher, an articulate person? She has been afraid of losing Leo, but not of losing him because of anything she may say or do. She has her confidence. She puts on a pair of black, shiny high-heeled shoes, slings her bag on her shoulder, and sets off for the Underground. The time ahead is a kind of blank. But at the end of it, something will be over, will be settled. She will be—not free, the word is beginning to be meaningless—but responsible for herself to herself again. The inside of her mouth is dry.
Inside the Court building she meets Arnold Begbie, who has with him her Counsel, Mr. Griffith Goatley, holding her brief and a whole heap of other briefs. Mr. Goatley is a blond, clean-cut, fastidious-looking person, with a beautiful pale skin and beautifully manicured hands. He tells Frederica not to be nervous, and she says she is not. He tells her to speak out, and to say everything she has to say, clearly—“Even what you may find it distasteful to say, Mrs. Reiver, just speak out.” He says that she is the only witness he will be calling, in her own suit. “We have signed affidavits from your doctor, in the matter of the little infection you unfortunately had, and from a barmaid at the Tips and
Tassels Club, and from a waitress and the doorman at the Honeypot, in the matter of your husband’s probable adultery. This should be quite enough—would certainly have been quite enough—had the counter-petition not been brought. My colleague Laurence Ounce, who is appearing for the opposition, seems to be calling a considerable number of witnesses in person. Only one of the persons named as corespondents has entered an appearance—”
“Who?”
“Mr. Thomas Poole.”
“There was nothing wrong—that is, there was
nothing
—he will say so—”
“Of course. That is Mr. Ounce, over there, with your ex-husband, I assume—”
Frederica gazes distractedly around the stony corridor she is standing in. There is Nigel, stocky, fierce, in his dark suit and a blood-red tie, with the faint hint of blue on his strong chin, even at this time in the morning. There too are both Olive and Rosalind, in tweed suits, one honey-coloured, one green-and-mauve, both slightly seated, over sensible flanged suede shoes, and there is Pippy Mammott in rust, with her face scrubbed pink and shining and her hair full of iron pins.
There is Mr. Ounce, and Nigel’s solicitor, Mr. Tiger. Mr. Ounce is portly and billowing, with vinous cheeks and a mouth with all sorts of fluent and savorous curves in it; he has not got much hair, a struggling dark, thinning thatch, but that will vanish under the wig. He is wearing his gown, which billows about his billows. He laughs, and Nigel laughs with him. The three women ostentatiously do not see Frederica. Nigel genuinely does not.
It is like waiting in an examination hall. A clock ticks, somewhere. Dust motes are suspended in long tubes of pale November light. Frederica thinks: I am too thin to be convincing. It is an odd thought, not real, a product of unreal air, full of old pain, old terror, old triumphs and despair, old dust.
And then suddenly they are all in the Court, and there is the judge, Mr. Justice Hector Plumb, under his wig, a man not plummy but the opposite, chalky, with a yellow note to the chalk, a man with a thin, semi-transparent hooked nose and deep-etched lines running down and down in papery skin to a folded neck under his bands, a man whose hands, lifted to cover his mouth as he coughs, show bones through softly folded, shimmering, ancient skin above thick pale
nails. A man with glaucous eyes under extravagant white eyebrows, a man patently not well, saving his strength, watching from inside the bright cocoon of his purple robes.
Griffith Goatley explains, in a melodious and pleasant voice, that the two suits, between Frederica Reiver and Nigel Reiver, and between Nigel Reiver and Frederica Reiver, have been consolidated and are to be heard together. “I appear for the wife, Frederica Reiver, and my learned friend, Laurence Ounce, appears for the husband. The petition of Frederica Reiver, being the leading suit, is to be heard first.”
Frederica’s petition, with its charges of cruelty, mental cruelty, adultery, is read out. She is called to the witness box, and finds herself standing looking out over the court, where she sees Nigel, Arnold Begbie, a spattering of complete strangers.
Griffith Goatley takes Frederica through her marriage. He addresses her courteously, as though she was a very young woman who had found herself in a world that turned out to be unpredictable and dangerous.
Q. And in the beginning, your marriage, this marriage which you say you made after reflection and after some three years of acquaintance, your marriage was happy?
A. Yes. In many ways, yes. It was not quite what I expected.
Q. What did you expect?
A. I thought he liked me for what I was. But afterwards, he seemed to want me to stay in his house and never to go anywhere, or see any of my old friends. Or work.
Q. You have a first class degree from Cambridge University?
A. Yes.
Q. And you were a popular and successful undergraduate?
A. Yes. I think so. I am an intellectual. I intended to go on and do a Ph.D.
Q. Your husband knew of this ambition?
A. I believe so. He often said he admired me for my independence, for my self-reliance, things like that.
Q. But when you were married, this changed?
A. Yes. When my son was born, of course, it was more reasonable to expect me to stay at home, perhaps.
Q. Did you feel that your husband’s attitude to your independence was only because he felt you should look after your son?
A. No. I felt he was jealous. I felt he felt I should stay put, in the house, where I was. I felt he felt that that was what women did.
Frederica hears her voice. It is not her voice, it is the voice of a quiet young woman, acting out the lives, making the plaints, of intelligent women everywhere.
Q. Was there any lack of help in the house?
A. No.
Q. Would it have been possible for you to see your friends, to work on a thesis, perhaps, without harming your son, or your marriage?
A. I think so, yes. My husband is very well off, and there were many people looking after Leo, anyway.
Griffith Goatley’s gentle, reasonable questions continue. He takes Frederica through her shock that her letters were being opened, through Nigel’s telephone insults to her friends. He takes her also through Nigel’s increasingly lengthy absences.
Q. You felt he was neglecting you?
A. You could put it that way, yes. I felt he thought I was shut up there, now, that part of his life, the wooing, was finished. He went back to his world, but I couldn’t, I mustn’t.
Q. Would you say your marriage was sexually happy?
A. At first, yes. Very. (A pause.) That was the best thing … the language that worked …
Q. Did that change, in later times?
A. Yes.
Q. Can you tell us why?
A. Partly, I think, because I withdrew. I began to see I ought not to have got married.
Q. And was there anything in your husband’s behaviour that led you to reconsider your marriage?
A. He became increasingly violent.
Q. When you say, increasingly violent, do you mean as a lover, or as a jealous and unreasonable husband, Mrs. Reiver?
A. I mean both. He began to hurt me. In bed. And then he began to attack me. Out of bed.
Q. I believe on one occasion, you looked into his boxes in his cupboard, when he was away.
A. Yes. I did.
Q. Can you tell us why you did this?
A. He had stolen one of my letters. From my brother-in-law, who is a clergyman, and had written to cheer me up. I was trying to find it.
Q. And what did you find?
A. A collection of—of pornographic pictures. Dirty magazines.
Q. You were shocked?
A. It was very interesting. I was horribly shocked. I felt—quite ill. I felt—
dirtied.
I was surprised to feel so bad.
Q. Can you say what the pictures were like?
A. They were sado-masochistic. (Frederica senses that this precise technical term was not what was required.) There were women being tortured and made filthy. Chains and leather and knives. And lots of flesh. I felt dirtied. I was surprised.
Q. And did your husband ever attack you? Physically?
A. He began to, yes.
Griffith Goatley takes Frederica blow by blow through the battery, the ridiculous confinement in the lavatory, the chase through the stables, the axe, the wound. The healing.
Q. And did you, at any time, tell anyone else that this wound had been caused in this way?
A. No, I was ashamed.
Q. What had you to be ashamed of?
A. I think people are often ashamed of being hurt. Of having got themselves into a position where … anyone should want to hurt them so much.
Q. And what was your husband’s attitude?
A. He was very affectionate.
Q. He was remorseful?
A. He was sorry, yes. But he was excited by the—the drama. I knew it would happen again.
Q. So you decided to leave?
A. I thought I would have to. I was very disturbed. I was afraid. It was out of control. I thought I would get away and think things out.
Griffith Goatley takes his witness through her flight in the woods, through her search for somewhere for herself and her son to live, through her decision not to return. He asks her if during her marriage she believed her husband to have been faithful, and she says that, on reflection, she sees she did not, that she had not wanted to understand his prolonged absences, his visits to clubs “with topless waitresses” with “business associates.” Griffith Goatley refers to signed affidavits from the barmaid at the Tips and Tassels, from the doorman at the Honeypot, which state that Nigel Reiver has been seen leaving with certain women, whose profession is to “entertain men all night.” “The doorman, as you will see,” says Griffith Goatley, “deposes that Mr. Reiver is a well-known customer of the club, who enjoys the shows and the ladies. The doorman says,” reports Griffith Goatley, “that Mr. Reiver’s tastes are well known, slap more than tickle, so to speak, not averse to a few risks.”
Q. Do you know what the doorman may mean by that, Mrs. Reiver?
A. No. Not exactly.
Q. Are you surprised by this evidence?
A. No. Well, yes, in a way, I didn’t know. But no, on the other hand, I did know there was something and was trying not to. I don’t know how much such things matter.
Q. They may matter very much. I will turn, if I may, and I apologise for speaking frankly, to the evidence of your doctor. On two occasions in November 1964 you were treated at the Middlesex Clinic for sexually transmitted diseases.
A. I was.
Griffith Goatley goes through the medical evidence.
Q. And how do you believe you came by this infection?
A. From my husband.
Q. You are sure of this?
A. Quite sure. He was the only person I slept with, between marrying him and leaving him. I was furious.
Q. Furious?
A. Well, I know now, it could have hurt—the baby, it could have—hurt his eyesight.
Or his brain.
I ought to have been told.
Judge.
Are you offering this evidence in support of a charge of adultery, or of cruelty?
Griffith Goatley cites several precedents for both.
He concludes his examination of Frederica with a few questions about her present way of life, her home, Leo’s school, his friends. He sits down. He has told the story of an intelligent, perhaps overconfident, perhaps over-educated young woman, who has found herself in deep water, socially and sexually, who may have provoked reasonable irritation but has been attacked and abused out of all proportion to her faults.
Laurence Ounce asks if he may put a few questions to this witness at this point, on behalf of his client, in answer to her petition. The judge gives him leave to proceed.
Q. Tell me, Frederica Reiver, why did you marry Nigel Reiver?
A. Why?
Q. Yes, why. You are a clever woman, you had a life-plan of sorts, you had known your husband some time—known in every sense I believe—before you decided to marry him. You were not, I take it, swept away by sudden passion. So why?
A. He wouldn’t take no for an answer.
Q. But you are a very strong young woman, strong-willed, clever, we are always being told how clever you are. I am sure you have given no for an answer to several other young men?
A. Yes. I have.
Q. So why were you suddenly ready to marry this one? You were already sleeping together, I believe?
A. Yes. As I said, that worked. That was the thing I was sure about. I thought all the rest would follow.
Q. An odd view, for an “intellectual,” as you labelled yourself.
A. Not really. All intellectuals these days read D. H. Lawrence, who says we should listen to—to our passions—to our bodies. To our feelings. I had strong feelings. Good ones.
There was nothing but cool respect in Griffith Goatley’s eliciting of information. Laurence Ounce meets Frederica’s eye with sexual intelligence; he implies, with a twist of his clever lip, with a cock of his large head, that they understand each other.
Q. Ah, D. H. Lawrence. The immemorial magnificence of mystic, palpable, real otherness. You felt
that.
A. I don’t know why you’re asking. But yes, in a way. The prose is dreadful. But why not? Yes, that. It did seem to work.
Q. You married for good sex. Despite the fact that Mr. Reiver in no way shares your intellectual tastes, may never have opened Lawrence?
A. It was the attraction of opposites. I didn’t know anything about him. He seemed—you quoted it—
other.
I liked that. I thought
he was more—more self-sufficient and grown up than most of the men I knew.
Q. And you knew a great many?
A. I was in a position to.
Q. An odd phrase. You refer, no doubt, to the privileged position of Cambridge women. You were not sexually inexperienced when you married Nigel Reiver?