Babel Tower (83 page)
Authors: A.S. Byatt
On the question of Nigel’s attacks on his wife, on the question of the trousers, the imaginary nightdress, the nature of the wound, Pippy’s witness coincides precisely with that of Olive and Rosalind. It goes further.
Q. Did you see the wound in question?
A. Naturally I did. If there’s anything to be dressed, or cleaned, or tended, I’m the one—even when it’s her.
Q. How would you describe the wound?
A. Very jagged, very uneven. Typical barbed-wire, like you see in hunting. Dr. Roylance said so immediately. Typical barbed wire, he said. Silly girl tried to scramble over a hedge without seeing there was wire the other side, and fell. She doesn’t have country instincts. We all knew the hedge was wired. Nigel was very upset. He sat with her all day, soothing her, and chatting.
Frederica writes a note to Goatley. “She’s lying. They’re all
lying.
”
“Exaggerating?” he writes back.
“No,
lying.
Flat, magniloquent
lies.
”
“Perhaps she believes herself?”
“She
can’t
—none of it was
like that.
”
“The judge might notice she’s full of animosity. It does come through. But it’s hard to credit her with the imagination to lie on a large scale.”
“But she
is
—”
“Ah, yes, but what does the court believe?”
Ounce does not ask Pippy, as he asked Olive and Rosalind, what she thinks should happen now. He does say, “Do you think there is any hope of reconciliation after three years’ absence?”
“As to that, I couldn’t say. I know Nigel wanted things to be as they were and should have been. Families should be together. But I say, if she won’t do as she should, the little boy should come back where he’s at home, and happy, and loved. There’s an abundance of
love, a
sufficiency
of love, I do want to make that clear. She could see him all she wants, she knows she could, but he needs his proper things in the proper place. He can’t be happy in a basement in
south London,
he’s a country child, born and bred …”
The court is adjourned for lunch after Pippy’s evidence. Frederica drinks a half-pint of shandy. She cannot eat. She does not like beer, but needs alcohol and is thirsty. She tries to joke; she says to Arnold Begbie, “I feel I’m on trial for reading books.”
“You are. Partly.”
“I wouldn’t be if I were a man.”
“Perhaps not. I know a couple—early thirties, can’t have children, desperate to adopt. The social worker concerned in vetting them sent in a report saying, ‘Plausible couple, well-intentioned. Too many books in the house. Wife reads.’ ”
The next witness after lunch says his name is Theobald Drossel, known as Theo. He is very small; only his head can be seen above the box; he is almost entirely bald and his skin is unhealthy. His face is long and lugubrious. He wears a brown suit and a checked shirt. Frederica finds him faintly familiar, and then, as he says what his profession is, recognises him in the same instant. He is the little man from Hamelin Square, whose Austin coughs continuously. He says he is the director of the Sharp Inquiry Company.
“I watch people. I find things out. Anything, really. I find out. I do mostly marital work. In the nature of things.”
Q. You have been in the employment of Mr. Nigel Reiver?
A. Yes. Since December 1964.
Q. What were you asked to do?
A. Follow that lady Mr. Reiver’s wife, see where she went, what she did. See what the little boy did.
Q. And where was Mrs. Reiver living from October 1964?
A. She was living in Bloomsbury, in a mansion flat owned by a Mr. Thomas Poole. I watched her go in and out of the flats, and I watched her go to work with Mr. Poole and come back with him. In the nature of things, I did not gain access to the flat to see what went on there.
Q. Did you form any impression of the relationship between Mr. Poole and Mrs. Reiver?
A. It was very loving, very affectionate. I saw them kiss and cuddle on various occasions, when they separated in the street, and so on. I saw them go shopping with all the kids, his and hers. They was very like a married couple, you know, easy with each other, very affectionate.
I engaged their
au pair
girl in conversation on two occasions. I pretended to be a neighbour who wanted to borrow a drill. I find a drill is a more plausible thing to try and borrow than sugar. Lots of people don’t have drills. The young woman—very prudently—wouldn’t let me into the flat, so I couldn’t ascertain the sleeping arrangements. I pretended to think that Mrs. Reiver was, so to speak, Mrs. Poole, and the young woman in question, Miss Röhde, (referring to his notebook) enlightened me, as she thought, as to the real situation, but said she supposed they would soon marry,
everything pointed that way,
she said, they would make a lovely family.
Q. Later, Mrs. Reiver moved house?
A. Yes. She went to live in Hamelin Square, Number 42, with a Miss Agatha Mond and her little girl. Miss Mond appears to be unmarried and to have few visitors.
Q. And Mrs. Reiver? Did she have few visitors?
A. No. She had a great many. She had many male visitors, both single ones and in large groups. I kept a record, the days I was there—I wasn’t always on this job, you must understand, I had other commissions, there are gaps in my information. I counted about seven or eight very regular male visitors, to whom she was very affectionate, kissing and hugging and stroking.
The witness reads out a list: Tony Watson, Hugh Pink, Edmund Wilkie, Alexander Wedderburn, Daniel Orton, Desmond Bull, Jude Mason. He reads out a rough count of observed visits, singly and in groups. Frederica stares. Her private life is a spectacle for this little man in an Austin. He describes her friendly evenings as “wild parties—the neighbours used to
murmur
about them as they passed my car. She was felt to be a bit outrageous, in the square.”
Q. Did you feel that any of these visitors were more than simply intimate friends?
A. I followed the lady on various occasions when she visited Mr. Desmond Bull in Eagle Lane, Clerkenwell. I got friendly with his landlady, who is rather proud of having a Bohemian painter lodging in her house. This landlady—Mrs. Annabel Patten—told me—he reads from his notebook—“he has a mattress in his studio where he screws his models and students and women who come.” It was her opinion that Mr. Bull was “an insatiable sex maniac.” I do not think she meant by that that he was mad or perverted, merely that he enjoyed sex. She herself took a vicarious pleasure in his activities, and …
The judge points out that what the landlady said is inadmissible, since it is hearsay. Ounce asks his witness if he himself observed anything in Mrs. Patten’s house.
A. I was able to gain her confidence enough on July 28th, 1966, to be allowed to peep in through a glass panel—one of those frosted things—on Mr. Bull’s door. There I observed Mrs. Reiver holding a glass of wine in a state of undress.
Q. Undress?
A. Stark naked. Very much at her ease.
Q. Perhaps she was modelling for Mr. Bull.
A. If she was, that was not all, because I saw Mr. Bull, also stark naked, with his member erect, walk towards her and push her down. On his mattress, you see, the one on his studio floor. I was able to persuade Mrs. Patten to sign a statement as to what we had witnessed—she said she didn’t mind, as Mr. Bull “doesn’t give a fuck who knows what he does, he’s proud of it.”
Judge.
Mr. Bull has made no answer to the service of the Petition naming him as co-respondent.
Clerk.
No, my lord.
Judge.
He has not put in an appearance.
Clerk.
No, my lord.
Judge.
He is content to let this matter go forward and not to contest it.
Q. Are there other men with whom you observed Mrs. Reiver to be on intimate terms?
A. There is Mr. John Ottokar.
Q. When did you first see Mr. Ottokar?
A. That must have been in May or June 1965. He used to come regularly to the square and stare at her lighted windows like a love-sick male dog. At first I thought he might be a burglar—I was sitting quiet in my car, quite unobtrusive—I sit for hours, often, sometimes I read a bit, by torchlight—but I saw his look, the way he looked. And one night she let him in. So I crept across the square and looked down into the basement. She sleeps in the basement. Often she doesn’t draw the curtains. Even when she does, since it’s a fairly thin blind, you can see quite clearly from the shadows what she is doing, what anyone else in there is doing. I was able to satisfy myself that intercourse had taken place. I saw it take place again on July 5th and July 14th and on at least fourteen subsequent occasions.
Q. And did you observe Mrs. Reiver with Mr. Ottokar anywhere else?
A. I followed them to Yorkshire in the summer of 1965, where they signed into a hotel under the names of Mr. and Mrs. John Ottokar.
Judge.
Was that necessary, given how much you said you had seen?
A. Oh, I think so, my lord: I was able to obtain signed affidavits from the hotel staff there, and also my brief was to follow her everywhere she went, not to lose sight of her.
Ounce.
Are there more men you have seen with Mrs. Reiver in compromising situations?
A. There is Mr. Paul Ottokar.
Q. Mr. Paul Ottokar.
A. The problem with Mr. Paul Ottokar is that he is Mr. John Ottokar’s twin. His identical twin. I did not realise at first that
there were two young men of this description—blond young men with long hair—so to speak
haunting
Hamelin Square, because you don’t expect it, do you, you don’t expect two vagrants hanging around in the small hours to be watching the same window and look alike. But on one occasion I have observed one brother to be watching from the basement area from which I have watched myself on occasion when Mrs. Reiver was so to speak amorously engaged within with the other brother, so I did a bit of thinking and realised there were two. Mr. John Ottokar works for the Eurobore Systems Analysis Centre. Mr. Paul Ottokar is a pop singer called Zag who sings with a group called Zag and the Szyzgy Zy-Goats. S-z-y-z-g-y, my lord. Pronounced “Ziggy.”
Judge.
Say that again.
Witness.
Zag and the Ziggy Zy-Goats.
Judge.
Clever. Very clever.
Witness.
My lord?
Judge.
Continue. So you found two brothers, twin brothers, taking an interest in Mrs. Reiver?
Witness.
Yes, my lord. It is more difficult to tell them apart than you might think. For sometimes both of them wear respectable suits, and sometimes both of them wear, kind of
costumes
—harlequin things, and shiny cloaks and stuff, and painted bodies. And when they watch at night, they wear black PVC raincoats, and it’s beyond me to know which one is inside and which is out watching.
Judge.
What do you mean, painted bodies?
Witness.
Well. They go in for very weird behaviour, very ostentatious, self-advertising kind of stuff. There was one night, one of them set fire to a lot of books, with paraffin, on the bit of waste ground in the middle of the square. He was wearing nothing but a long glittery plastic cloak and he was painted all over in all sorts of colours on his naked body. I formed the opinion he was under the influence of some sort of drugs. Mrs. Reiver had a battle with him over the fires. It was her books he was burning, I think, perhaps. They wrestled, and he
fell in the fire, and got quite burned. They called an ambulance. She was holding on to his naked body and screaming and crying.
Ounce.
Was Mrs. Reiver’s son in the company of these painted young men?
A. Often and often, both when she was there and when she wasn’t. He plays a lot with a gang of little black kids that run around in the street doing silly things like steal milk and ring people’s door bells, and one of the brothers encouraged them to set firecrackers under my little car. It did quite a lot of damage.
Q. Is there anything that leads you to feel certain that Mrs. Reiver did have intercourse with both brothers, and not only with Mr. John Ottokar?
A. Well. Once I could see they were arguing and so I crept up and listened. No one can see you in the area outside the basement window if you keep in the shadow of the steps. And he was shouting at her, he was telling her they both always shared women, that he was the
real
one and his brother was “the shadow” and a lot of stuff like that. I wrote one phrase down. “This is the real flesh you have imagined.” He seemed to be trying to say the experience wasn’t complete without both of them, so to speak.
Q. And what was her response?
A. I saw them lying on the bed. I saw him undressing her, before I had to run, because I heard Miss Mond coming home.
Part of the Evidence of Thomas Poole,
examined by Laurence Ounce.
Q. And why did you invite Mrs. Reiver to share your flat?
A. Because I was sorry for her—she had been very frightened, was at a loss, and needed, she believed, to hide from her violent husband. It seemed a sensible arrangement. We were both single parents, with the care of children, who needed to work for our livings. I was able to help her find work. We were able to share housekeeping and baby-sitting.
Q. And you enjoyed having her?
A. Very much. We knew each other well. I was a colleague of her father, as a schoolmaster, at Blesford Ride School.
Q. So you were
in loco parentis
?
A. To an extent.
Q. Although your children were the same age. Or almost.
A. There are more generations than two.
Q. Indeed there are. You are not old enough to be her father. Did you find her—do you find her—attractive?
A. Yes. She is an attractive woman.
Q. Did it occur to you that things might work out very well if you married, if you worked together, harmoniously, and shared your lives as you were, in fact, already doing?
A. It did occur to me, yes.
Q. Would you have liked to marry Mrs. Reiver, had she been free?
A. The question is purely hypothetical.
Q. Would you?
A. Yes. I would. I admire her greatly and feel love for her.
Q. To the point of making love to her, in earnest of your hopes, when she was in your flat?
A. No. She didn’t want it. She had been much hurt. She needed peace, and a time to reflect. I tried to give her that.
Q. Why did she leave, Mr. Poole?
A. Because she decided to ask for a divorce, and felt that our co-habitation might compromise her. She may have been right. I am very sorry it had to be so.
Q. Perhaps she left you for younger men, and a racier life?
A. Perhaps. She was determined to divorce her husband and take charge of her own life. I don’t think she would do anything to jeopardise that.
Q. Would it surprise you to learn that she has been reported as giving “wild parties” and entertaining a pop singer called Zag?
A. Nothing would surprise me about Frederica. She has a streak of recklessness. But she is also an adult, and an intelligent woman, who made a mistake she is paying for.
Q. You refer to her marriage as “a mistake.”
A. She was much cast down by the sudden death of her sister. I think she married whilst deeply involved in that grief, that terrible pain. I think she should not have made any decision, in that state. But there it is.