Babel Tower (84 page)
Authors: A.S. Byatt
Nigel Reiver is the last to give evidence. He stands in the witness box, watchful but relaxed, his face a mask of courteous attention, his body “ready to spring,” is the phrase that comes into Frederica’s head, he does not look at her, either with defiance or with regret. His hair is smooth and longer than it used to be; he too is entering the Swinging Sixties.
Frederica is suddenly invaded by a total memory of the first time they made love, in his bachelor flat amongst the dust and dirty shirts; she remembers his body above hers, and his intent face, looking darkly down; she remembers her surprise at the vanishing of her own habitual detachment, the surprise of her hot pleasure, her complete presence in his hands, under his weight. From time to time, with other men, inconveniently, she has been visited by the ghost of this completely unghostly moment of life, this excess of delight. Now is a bad moment to remember it; she looks down, and feels the hot blood running up her neck. All these words, all these lies and equivocations and painful approximations and truths are to do with this, which cannot be described.
She listens to him describing their marriage, in his usual blocked, cautious words. He is not indignant, as his sisters were on his behalf. On his own, he might not move an arbiter to think him greatly wronged. Frederica is moved.
Q. Your wife has complained that you were absent for unreasonable periods, that you prevented her from having a life of her own.
A. I expected her to be my wife. Her idea of what that meant and mine weren’t the same. With hindsight, I think both of us could have given way a little.
Q. You were surprised when she suddenly left.
A. Very. I didn’t think things were that bad. I knew she was a bit upset. I thought she’d come back.
Q. You hadn’t hurt her, or frightened her?
A. I lost my temper, once or twice. I was worried. Normally, I pride myself on keeping my temper. So when I do shout and hit, it frightens people, it frightened her perhaps, more than it ought.
Q. You say you shouted. Did you hit her?
A. I pushed her about a bit once in the bedroom. She provoked me.
Q. Provoked you?
A. I got the sense she wasn’t
with me
and didn’t want to be. Her thoughts were somewhere else. It was like living with a—with a—with a walking corpse. That isn’t what I mean. She was there, but there wasn’t anyone there. I wanted to shake her, to get her attention back, and once or twice I did, that’s all.
Q. Did you ever throw an axe at her?
A. No.
Q. She has claimed you did. Can you remember any episode which she might be referring to?
A. No. (Pause.) She must have just made it up. She’s got the imagination.
(He gives the impression that he has not.)
Q. When your wife left, did you hope she would come back?
A. Of course. I thought it was a silly misunderstanding.
Q. Did you make any efforts to get her back?
A. Yes. I looked everywhere I could think of. I went to see people—friends—and family. She hid from me. When I found her, she’d clearly decided to live in a different style.
Q. But you still wanted her back?
A. I believe in marriage. We have a child. A woman’s place is with her husband and child. She wouldn’t talk, she wouldn’t discuss, she wouldn’t entertain the idea. I’m not a saint, I’m a reasonable being. I’ve waited and hoped. Now, I think I give up. I’d like to remake my life: but I do want my son. I love my son, he’s happy at home, where he belongs.
Griffith Goatley questions Nigel about the obscene pictures, about the Tips and Tassels, about the Honeypot. Nigel replies that the pictures were given to him by a schoolfriend who thought “they were a good joke.” “I put them with my rugger things and forgot them. I expect they’re still there.” He is open about the Tips and Tassels and the Honeypot.
A. Certain sorts of business entertaining does go on in places like that. With foreigners, you know, people who expect this kind of thing. It doesn’t mean much to me, either way, but I go along with it. I admit once or twice I did go off with women from there. It isn’t very nice, I see, but it isn’t what I think of as “adultery”—
Q. It is adultery.
A. Here it is, it’s named so. It is, I see that. But it’s just horsing around, you know, naughtiness. I never thought of it as anything to do with my marriage. It’s not like paying serious attention to another real woman.
Q. Real?
A. Woman out of one’s own class, one’s own world, who might make claims, distract your
feelings
… (He stops, apparently at a loss for words. He says) I don’t think all that has anything to do with why she left me. I don’t think it was important.
Goatley.
She may hold a different view on that.
A. I bet she doesn’t.
That
isn’t what’s at stake. It’s her idea of her independence, that’s what’s the real issue here. I give in on that now, I’m asking for a divorce, being a wife isn’t her idea of how to live, I accept that now. If we’d both been a bit wiser in
the beginning, it would have saved a lot of tears. But we do have a son, and for his sake I would try to keep it up, I would have tried, because I think he comes first and he will be best in Bran House, in his own place. I wanted her to stay, but she went off with all these men, and a man can only take so much of that.
Laurence Ounce produces a signed affidavit from Nigel’s doctor, Dr. Andrew Roylance, who says that he has never at any time treated Mr. Reiver for any venereal infection, and that he remembers the occasion of Mrs. Reiver’s flesh wound, which he was told was, and which was in his opinion consistent with, a tear caused by falling on barbed wire scrambling over a wall or hedge with a concealed strip of the wire.
Frederica is recalled to the stand, and examined by Laurence Ounce about the evidence of Theobald Drossel.
He takes her through the evidence about Thomas Poole, and through Thomas Poole’s own evidence. Frederica replies confidently enough that she lived chastely at Poole’s flat, and adds tartly, “I would have had to in any case, even if I had not wanted to, since I had caught the infection.”
Q. If you had not had the infection, you might have slept with Mr. Poole.
A. I do not think I would, no. I am just pointing out, it was out of the question.
Q. But you
thought
about it being out of the question.
A. Mr. Poole has said that he himself thought we might consider—a closer relationship. I didn’t. He says I didn’t. He is quite clear.
Q. So it matters to you to be thought chaste, to be a woman who does not sleep with all and sundry?
A. I have never done that, and don’t intend to.
Q. What are your relations with Mr. John Ottokar?
A. Private, I hoped. I have made love to him. I admit that. On several occasions, more or less as Mr. Drossel says.
Q. Do you love Mr. Ottokar?
A. I don’t know what that word means, any more. I don’t know how to tell a Court what I feel about him. I think I do feel—have felt—love for him. Yes. It is—it was—a serious relationship.
Q. It is—it was? How do things stand at present?
A. I don’t know. I haven’t seen him since the summer.
Q. I believe he is your student.
A. Was my student.
Q. You were, as it were, in a position of responsibility towards him?
A. Hardly. He comes to an
adult
class I teach. We are all grown-up people, in that class.
Q. And sleep with each other?
A. No. This is different.
Q. Mr. Ottokar is not here today. He has been served with a petition, and has not entered an appearance.
A. That is so.
Q. Was there, is there, any question of your eventually marrying Mr. Ottokar?
A. None that I know of. None, that is. All this—these proceedings—have probably put an end to it. I mean to the relationship, not to the idea of marriage, which never arose, until you mentioned it.
Q. Never arose. Never arose. It was simply an affair, under your son’s nose, but not serious.
A. It was serious. It was not frivolous. I tried to see him without upsetting or involving Leo.
Q. And his brother?
A. I have never slept with his brother.
Q. What is your relationship with his brother?
A. I should like to say, none. His brother—his brother—he invades my flat, without my consent. He invades his brother’s relationships. It is hard to explain briefly.
Q. Mr. Drossel describes a scene in which he claims one Mr. Ottokar burned your books whilst under the influence of drugs.
A. I think he was. Yes, he did. It was Paul and I tried to stop him. I don’t want him in my house, or near my son. It is all very unfortunate.
Q. It is all very unfortunate. Very unfortunate, I would agree. You feel a little out of control of these brothers and their passions and their way of life?
A. I may never see them again. I haven’t seen them, either of them, for months. It’s past.
Q. But you feel love for Mr. Paul—I’m sorry—for
Mr. John
Ottokar.
A. I did. I don’t know what I feel now. I
don’t know.
Q. And Mr. Desmond Bull. You heard Mr. Drossel’s evidence.
A. That was the only time.
Q. The only time?
A. The only time I made love to Desmond Bull.
Q. But you go there often?
A. He is a colleague. I like his pictures.
Q. But the only time you made love to him on his mattress, to which he invites many women, was the time when Mr. Drossel happened to have his eye to the etched window?
A. Yes. That one time.
Q. We may find that hard to believe. Why did you break your rule, if it exists, on that one occasion?
A. I needed comfort. I was in a great rage, after Paul Ottokar’s skoob activities.
Q. Skoob?
A. Books, backwards. Towers of burned books. A new art-form.
Q. So one artist burns your books and your natural reaction is to make love to another because you “needed comfort,” because you were “in a great rage.”
A. Yes.
Q. And that is what you normally do, when you are in need of comfort, make love to some man?
A. No.
Q. You say you have never made love to Mr. Hugh Pink?
A. No.
Q. Nor to Mr. Tony Watson nor to Mr. Alan Melville?
A. No. That is, no, not since I was married.
Q. And Mr. Edmund Wilkie?
A. Not since 1954. A long time ago.
Q. Tell me, Mrs. Reiver, do you think the act of sex is sacred, or just a kind of quick source of Comfort or assuagement of rage?
A. “Sacred” is a word that isn’t in my vocabulary. I think sex varies with people and times. I think it can be very serious—very important—and now and then not important, just something that happens. One should never hurt or cheat people. This isn’t a good answer, I know, when I’m in this court, which calls sex adultery, and sees every man as a potential husband and father. But the truth is,
I was faithful to my husband until I left him
—as he was not, even if it was only tips and tassels and honeypots, so to speak.
Sex isn’t
—
Q. Sex isn’t?
A. It doesn’t matter.
Q. You were going to say?
A. Sex isn’t the root of the matter. The root is unkindness and cruelty.
Q. You will have read Sigmund Freud, being so clever. Everything has a sexual element, according to him. Unkindness and cruelty
may spring from the sexual insecurity of a man denied and at some deep level rejected, frustrated, trivialised?
A. (Silence.)
Q. You have no response to that?
A. It wasn’t a question. It was a statement.
Q. A statement on which you don’t wish to comment.
A. No. I think not. No.
The lawyers make their final speeches. Griffith Goatley speaks first. He presents his client as a brilliant and generous young woman—he emphasises the “
young
”—who married in good faith someone not from her own background, someone socially more privileged, from a class with very well-defined ways and expectations, into which she was expected to fit—to fit gratefully, he might suggest, as might be clear from the evidence of her sisters-in-law and housekeeper. There was no suggestion of compromise, says Mr. Goatley. “From the moment of marriage this young woman’s husband treated her primarily as a fourth member of his household of adoring women. The reasonable expectations she might have had of any continuance of the friendships or conversations she valued in her own world were disappointed. Her husband’s absences were longer and longer, and as he himself has admitted, concerned not only with business, but at least as much with convivial pleasures, and more reprehensible activities—some of which endangered his young wife’s health, and, as she has pointed out, might well have endangered the health of their unborn child. She felt herself unwanted and superfluous in this apparently idyllic home—and whatever Your Lordship may make of the factual side of the evidence of the Misses Reiver and Miss Mammott, it seems abundantly clear that there was never either liking or sympathy or understanding shown towards my client.”
Griffith Goatley, with clarity and reasonable precision, sums up Frederica’s tale of violence—the blow to the spine, the terror in the lavatory, the axe-throwing. “Her husband and his family deny that any of this took place: they have closed ranks: their evidence, you may think, is almost remarkably consistent and homogeneous. My client is, as she has been throughout her married life, isolated and unsupported.” Frederica is not, he says, a saint or a heroine—“she is a young
wife who got out of her depth—both as to social class, and, you may think, despite some juvenile peccadilloes, as to sexual cruelty, as to the interest in hurting and humiliating women represented by the nature of the pornographic material she discovered, and by the kind of entertainment provided at least by the Honeypot, and by precise services offered by the particular call girl, Myra Thanopoulos, with whom Mr. Reiver does not deny that he has associated.”
He asks that Frederica Reiver be granted a divorce on grounds of cruelty, both mental and physical, and on grounds of adultery.