A Whistling Woman by A. S. Byatt
These are the leaders, and then there are the Watchers. Elvet Gander, psychoanalyst. Always one step out of the arena, looking to see what other people’s utterances mean, cover, can be translated into. Trained, God help him (!), in suspicion and scepticism from the dark days of his studenthood, and wryly watching his own tentative hand-claspings and drawings-back. Daniel Orton’s a watcher. He doesn’t appear to be watching according to any rules, or for any power-intrigue that I can see. Does he have a deep, quiet faith, or is he a Priest of No God, like his colleague? You don’t learn much about him. I asked him if he was married and he replied, “My wife died in 1959.” End of conversation, end of topic. End of him, he implied. He was stalwart at washing-up, clearing up, closing shouting-matches. He sees Ellie’s invisible fence, and keeps to his side. She notices this. Miss B. Pincher is a watcher, I suppose. She looks so damned ordinary, it’s as though she’s an emissary from another planet, pretending to be human.
The final Meeting was “inspirational.” When these things work, they work like poems, or orchestras. First one takes up a note, then another, and they build on it. The Quakers began—they are usually “called” to speak first—with biblical quotations about those who are born of the Spirit. “The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth: so is every one that is born of the Spirit.” We must give up our wills and go with the wind, was the message. Zag suddenly made up a beautiful little song, a lilting wind-song, in a minor key. Even Ellie said something. She didn’t stand to speak, indeed she sank her head with its coverings a little lower, and held it with her bandaged hands, and said “There should be a safe place where we wouldn’t be afraid to hear.” Did I speak? I did not. I don’t. But I did hear a vague rushing in the silence. Afterwards, everyone was all solemn and so to speak rainwashed, after a storm. They agreed that they (we) must do more to make Ellie’s safe place. The Fishers want to found a therapeutic community—like Laing’s Philadelphia Association, with differences. They said they admired Laing but weren’t quite sure about his praxis. (The word “hairy” came up again, tho’ they can’t have uttered it? Who did?) They said their community wd have open doors, but a core of residents who would both care and be cared for. No “patients.” No “doctors.”
Farrar asked why the Joyful Companions were not already the desired community, and the others found it hard to answer, for the reason was, that they do not trust him. This caused them to turn to me, and say that my insights, my wisdom, were as necessary as the wisdom of the churches. I was suddenly the centre of attention because I wasn’t Gideon Farrar. I said I would think about it. God knows, Kieran (God!!!). (We write, God, exactly when we least believe in It. Natural theologians, of course, use this involuntary cultural reflex as evidence of G’s persistence.) OK, God knows I want no part of Farrar’s huggy-bunnies and happy-clappy-chappies. I wonder, cd one use his undoubted energy differently, like earthing electricity? What do we want people to be? Holly’s Jung wanted healthy Aryan spirits in Aryan bodies, mandalas and sun-worship. But our deliciously earthy Freud was earthed in pre-war Bourgeois Vienna, bleak and musty with antimacassars and three-piece suites, quite like our front parlour in Stockport. (Did you know I grew up in Stockport?) I don’t want to perpetuate the Normal bourgeoisie. So what, where? If we did start such a thing—with an imaginative psychiatrist (or two) and a few sensible visionary Quakers, we cd make a real safe house for people like Ellie, and your Lamb.
Young Ludd went round the Tigers asking who would be prepared to put time in, to take the idea further. John Ottokar said he wouldn’t. He said he wouldn’t have the spare time. Then he added “And I might be moving away. That is, I am moving away.” First I’d heard of it, and, as it turns out, first Zag had.
The other non-starter was the man I’d picked for the possible king-pin, the solid Daniel Orton. He’s got experience in plenty, and good sense, I intuit. He just said “No, I don’t think so.” Holly said “That is strange, Daniel. This would seem, on the face of it, to be your work, your calling, precisely.” Orton repeated, no, I don’t think so.
I asked him, as he was leaving, catching him privily in the entrance hall, why. He looked at me with a look I interpreted as crossness—I don’t know what else it was. He said “I’m not a community animal, Mr. Gander. I know myself so far.” I said “But you belong to a community—” He said “That’s how I know.” At this point there was shouting behind us, and John Ottokar rushed past and flung himself on to a motor bike, on wch he must have come. I asked Zag what had happened. Zag said “He’s a turd, he’s turning himself into a pure turd.” I am too tired to analyse his choice of metaphor (unless it’s literal). This is a dreadfully long missive to inflict on you. Take it at yr own speed—foolish advice for what I must make the last sentence.
Yours ever
Elvet
The snail-searchers were scattered in a triangle. Marcus lifted his head and noticed it was briefly equilateral, before Jacqueline moved away, attenuating the connections, pulling both invisible lines after her to a fine point.
All three, spread at silent, companionable distances, were preoccupied with mathematics. All three were thinking about order (and disorder) in mathematical terms.
Marcus, the only natural mathematician, picked up an empty shell of Cepea nemoralis, a fine-lined coil of chocolate brown on shimmering horny-gold, and puzzled again about the way natural patterns of growth constructed themselves along the Fibonacci spiral. Snail-shells, ramshorns, spider-webs, branches of trees and twigs on branches, sunflower heads. Take a number, add it to its predecessor, add the number obtained to its predecessor. 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13. It grew in starts, not smoothly. Kepler had noticed that the ratio of these numbers to each other became closer and closer to the ratio of the Golden Section as the series progressed. As though 0.618034 was a mystical constant in the geometry of life. Marcus had discussed with Luk, a merely journeyman mathematician, but an imaginative naturalist, the possibility of working out the maths of the dynamics of phyllotaxis, or the increments of the snail-shell. The one in his hand—and all the others around—seemed constructed on a Platonic skeleton of the ordering of things, a glassy web informing matter.
Jacqueline’s mathematical problems were only just beginning. She was trying to master the differential equations needed to map and measure the action potential of the symmetrical giant cells on the ventral surface of the snail-brain. The idea was to insert micro-pipettes into the prepared cells, to inject potassium chloride, and to pass pulses of electricity through them. She was having trouble with the dense layers of connective tissue around the cells, which were hard to soften with enzymes, and hard to dissect by hand. The electrodes were hard to insert, and hard to keep in place. She had to readjust both the chemistry and the mechanics, and then to readjust them again. Her work disintegrated into mess and failure; the beauty and order of the creature’s nervous system became mash and inert stuff. Beyond the preparation were the problems of the oscilloscope and the problems of constructing a voltage clamp to make the delicate measurements possible. Somewhere in all this cutting and stripping and splaying lay the thread of a clue—perhaps—to the biochemistry of learning and memory. The snail knew how to move, to choose and avoid foods, to mate, to hibernate. In these neurones were a map of part of that process of knowledge and learning. A ghost-dissection hung in her imagination on the moor. The snails on the wall before her slid forward on contracting and expanding feet, opened their delicate, miraculous mouths, extended their shining horns.
Luk Lysgaard-Peacock’s maths was simpler. It was arithmetic—six pink, twelve wide-striped, two chalk-white, a yellow—becoming statistics meaningful or maybe meaningless, as his numbers were added to the numbers recorded by his Edwardian predecessor and the original Victorian clergyman. The beautiful idea that snails carried their genetic code on the coils and colourings of their shells, which had acquired a happenstance metaphorical elegance with the discovery o
He measured the world from inside the balance of his own body—he was a creature among creatures, out here amongst heather and tough grass and thorn-trees. He noticed the sharp, peaty smell of the air; fresh earth at the opening of a burrow; exposed roots, scraped by what? Things moving—sheep on the horizon, a long, slender, dark coral worm, a spring bubbling in a reedy patch, moss, snails, snail-trails, a majestic golden slug.
He noticed the variable human triangle, too. He could feel Jacqueline’s purposeful progress without looking at her. He asked himself how, and registered the faint electrical crawl of his own sexual interest, mingled with the naturalist’s scanning for anything moving. It was his nature to be shadowy. He wondered if Jacqueline’s body registered Marcus as his registered her. Would he pick up those currents? He could not feel that they were there. Marcus was not charged.
A sheepdog trotted towards them, making small whining sounds, from the direction of Gunner Nighby’s new hen-battery in the water-meadow. It was Lucy Nighby’s Shirley. She ran up and wreathed herself round Jacqueline’s ankles, snorting and nipping at her calves. Jacqueline looked for Tobias, the sheep who thought he was a dog. He was trotting towards them along a sheep-track. Jacqueline whistled to him; she was fond of him, and approved of his resolutely confused ambitions. He came up, a little wearily. Jacqueline put out a hand to pat him, and found her palm smeared with blood. Blood was seeping up from his skull between his stubs of horns. Blood was wet, Jacqueline also saw, all over his fleece, red-brown and tacky. A lot of blood. Jacqueline knelt down and ran her fingers through the wool. The wound on his head was nasty but superficial. The blood on his flanks and rump did not appear to be his own.
Jacqueline cried out. Luk came over and looked at the trembling beast. Jacqueline said they should perhaps take him back to Dun Vale Hall in the car. Luk said he wasn’t sure about that. Perhaps they should reconnoitre the battery? Shirley appeared to be urging Jacqueline in that direction, nipping and butting and whining. There was blood also on Shirley’s silver-white ruff, but it could have come from Tobias. They decided against going back for Luk’s car. They went towards the battery, in the brightening morning, along the sheep-track with the dog and the sheep. Over a rise, beyond a knot of thorns, they saw the large, ugly box, with its galvanised roof and creosoted walls. They went on.
In front of the building Lucy Nighby was picking up eggs. She had obviously dropped a full basket. There were intact eggs rolling around her, and a mess of yolk and albumen and shell, in which she was picking up pieces. She was kneeling on the concrete in front of the building, her hair over her face, picking up eggs. When they came up, they saw that her hair was full of blood and spattered yolk. She looked up blankly, one eye completely closed by a huge, swollen bruise, her nose dripping blood on to her shirt and breeches. Her cheeks were bashed and swollen. Her movements were jerky. She was not distinguishing, as she scrabbled in the mess, between empty shells and slippery, filthy, unbroken eggs.
Jacqueline ran forward, took hold of her, and tried to keep her still.
“What’s happened? Lucy, what’s happened? Who hurt you?”
A voice from the battery door said
“It’s not her as is hurt. Get in here, I’m bleeding to death, the silly cow’s done for me.”
Luk went to the door. He could hear the rows of hens making alarmed cluckings and rattling their cages. There was a smell of chickenshit and feathers. It was dark. Gunner Nighby sat inside the door, crouched over his leg, gripping. He was also bloody. His hands and face were smeared, his shirt splashed, his trousers, when Luk touched them, soaked.
“Went for me,” said Gunner to Luk. “Wi’ a trowel. My good trowel. Stainless steel. Bloody sharp. Gashed my leg. Gashed my rib. I’ll get her for this. Get a doctor. Go on, do something, or I’ll be dead.”
“What did you do to Lucy?”
“I didn’t take a sharp trowel to her, any road. Do something, you cunt.”
Luk did something. He took off Gunner’s disgusting trousers, ripped off Gunner’s shirt and vest, made a pad, and a tight bandage, round his groin, and saw that there was indeed a nasty triangular rent in his left rib-cage. He made him a pillow of sacks, and went back to Jacqueline, pursued by wheezy invective.
Lucy was in a pitiful state. She sobbed steadily, a metronomic, gasping sobbing. She would not be dissuaded from gathering up the eggs. When they questioned her, she made only an almost inaudible keening. When Luk suggested fetching his car and driving both Gunner and Lucy to the doctor, she shook her head violently and pushed him away with dripping fingers. Jacqueline said they should get the car, go to Dun Vale Hall and call the ambulance. Someone should stay with Gunner. She looked at Marcus. Luk was already running down the track to the road. He was fit, he ran fast. Lucy moaned and rocked. Jacqueline said that perhaps Marcus should stay with Gunner, until help came. Keep an eye on the bandage.
Marcus didn’t answer. His face was white, his shoulders hunched. He opened his dry mouth and closed it. Lucy picked up an unbroken egg and dropped it. Marcus flinched at the splatting sound. Jacqueline said
“You can’t afford to faint. There’s only three of us, we’re all needed. Gunner won’t hurt you.”
“No,” he brought out, with difficulty.
“Maybe you’d better go with Lucy and Luk.”
She couldn’t think. She was sure she herself would be more use at the Hall. She knew Marcus was not afraid of Gunner. He was afraid Gunner would worsen, or die, and he wouldn’t know what to do. She didn’t wholly know what to do herself although she had done various First Aid badges, as a Girl Guide. She had done all the things respectable girls do. Marcus’s glasses were full of steam. She put an arm round his shoulder. “You go with Lucy. Take care of Lucy. I’ll stay with Gunner.” Luk drove back up the track. Marcus, trying to overcome his own trembling, put out a hand to Lucy.
“Come with us,” he said.
Lucy rocked back on her heels. Marcus hated touching people. He took hold of her bloody, slimy hands. His own were insubstantial. He gripped. Barely perceptibly, she gripped back. He brought her to her feet—she was a slight woman, feather-boned—and half-carried her to the car. The first touch was the worst. He went into her atmosphere of blood and sulphur and mess. He kept hold of her hand. She didn’t take hers away, though she flinched. Luk drove them away.
Jacqueline went back to Gunner, who was drowsy and truculent. He said they shouldn’t go off without him, he could very well die. He didn’t believe that, Jacqueline saw, though she thought he might be right. She put a hand on the tight bandage, to add to the pressure where the blood welled up.
“She ought to be locked up. She hurt my kids.”
“Hurt? How?”
“Beat them up. Battered them. They were trying to help me. They tried to take the rake away. She went for me, wi’ the rake. She turned on them. She meant to finish me. She meant to do for me. Wi’ th’ rake. Should be locked up.”
“What did you do to her, Gunner?”
“Told you. You can see. She went for me. I didn’t stab her. Not with rake. Not with trowel. You can see who went for who, it’s bloody obvious, bloody obvious. She hurt th’ kids. She’s not fit ...”
He muttered. “I was just telling her off ...”
His voice trailed into silence. His chin fell. Jacqueline felt his pulse, which was faint. His blood pumped quietly, in and out of his body.
Luk swung his car into the farmyard of Dun Vale Hall. The
“Stay there,” said Luk. He had a bad feeling about what was behind that unsnecked door. He got out of the car and went in.
He tripped on the steps, which were worn and hollowed. The back door opened straight into the kitchen, which had small deep windows, heavy beams, and white-washed walls, spattered and smeared with bloodstains. Luk sniffed the scent of violence and listened to the silence. He could feel, in his own ribs, someone somewhere in the house, breathing in pain. The light through the uneven window-panes was grey. He crossed the kitchen, stepping thief-soft, and went through a wicket-gate, and a pair of split doors, like a stable-door. He was now in a long paved stone corridor. On the stones blood-splashes glistened, damp in the centre, skinning over at the edges. These flagstones too were hollowed by generations of bootsteps. Luk stepped lightly through the door which divided the servants’ quarters from the Hall, and found himself in a square entrance space, two storeys high, still grey-paved but lit through stained glass windows beside and over the low heavy door, so that pools of violet, amber and green light lay amongst the blood-spots. He listened. He could hear the breathing now. He could feel the presence of bodies.
There was a wide shallow-stepped staircase, going up to a landing with a balcony. At the top Luk found all three children, Carla, Ellis and Annie. They wore interlock pyjamas, printed with white lambs and white daisies on sky blue. All three were blood-smeared, and one, the smallest, Annie, was soaked and dripping. Carla and Ellis sat with their backs to the wall, which was panelled. Carla was eight, Ellis five—both, like Gunner, were white-blond. Annie was lying across their knees, her face invisible under a mask of blood. All the white hair was laced with red, all the small fingernails dark with it. All three were breathing. Carla and Ellis stared at Luk out of shocked, expressionless blue eyes. Carla’s small hand gripped Annie’s shoulder; her knuckles were pale with force. Luk asked them where a telephone was. They stared, shivered, were mute. He bent and listened to their breathing, ran downstairs and found a kind of office, its chair overturned, its phone off the hook and shrilling. He reconnected it, called 999, and explained where he was, where the children were, where Gunner was. He went back to the children, listened again to their breathing—Annie’s was laboured and faint—and found blankets in a nursery bedroom, which he put round their trembling shoulders. He thought of going out to Marcus and Lucy and decided against it. He sat down next to the children; Carla and Ellis, he saw, had scalp-wounds; Annie’s looked worse than that.