A Whistling Woman

  And there was Frederica, running in her shift past the fountain with the naked putti, her red hair streaming, her thin legs visible through the streamers of her scissored skirts.

  She stared at the uninhabited dresses and the lifeless faces in their airless space.

  Time had not stopped there, oh no.

  All the photographs were black and white (and grey, of course).

  The silks and satins and nylons and rayons had faded—and were a little stained—but not much.

  She smoothed her real hands over her real gaudy skirt, and felt the ground under her feet.

  “Interesting,” said the Vice-Chancellor. “I was wondering if you had kept—if you have any—mementos?”

  Frederica said she didn’t think she had. Certainly nothing significant.

  They walked back to join the others in the study.

  Wilkie said he had had a brilliant idea, he would tell her later.

  Who is it that can tell me who I am?

  Chapter 22

  Luk Lysgaard-Peacock went to look for John Ottokar. He should not have needed to go and look for him, for it was working hours, and he should have been beside his machinery. Luk’s calculations continued to burgeon. He walked across the increasingly inhabited campus, where buildings were still going up, and asked people if they had seen John Ottokar. He came on him—or rather, them—unexpectedly, in the grassy amphitheatre in front of the Henry Moore statue of the King and Queen.

  They were sitting facing each other, astride a stone bench strategically placed for those who wished to sit and contemplate the statues, and the moorland behind them. They were both wearing jeans and the rainbow-coloured tabard-like sweaters, which were striking enough singly, and which John, recently, had seemed to have abandoned. They were leaning in towards each other, and apparently arguing—their long, pageboy hair swung along the sides of their heads, which they tossed first forwards, then sideways, in emphasis or denial. Their arms flung out, or gestured, in symmetrical reverse, left and right, right and left. He wondered if they were mirror-twins, as he had wondered before, and never asked. It seemed too personal a question, and unwanted. Their knees were touching. Luk had the thought, looking up at the King and Queen, that they were like a two-headed playing-card, the Knave of Hearts or of Diamonds. He had no idea which was which. He thought that it was curious that a duplicated reality appeared to be less, not more, real than a singularity.

  When he came up to them, they both became still, and turned their same faces on him, with the same questioning look.

  He saw which was which, because one had differently-glittering fingernails, blue, black, pink, green, as he pushed back his hair.

  He said he had another problem, with his figures. Paul-Zag said “We have problems, ourselves, too.” He smiled sweetly. John continued to stare, emptily. Luk said he was pretty desperate, in a matter-of-fact voice. “Desperate’s a relative term,” said Paul-Zag. “There’s desperate and desperate.”

  Luk did not know what he would have done, if at this point Frederica Potter had not appeared, with her red-headed son, looking determined and anxious. Paul-Zag sat on his fingers. They stared their identical stare at the newcomers.

  “Hi, John O,” said Leo, vaguely, to both.

  “I was looking for you,” said Frederica to John.

  “Nice of you,” said John. “You didn’t say you were coming.”

  “I did, in general. I wasn’t sure when, in particular. I’m here now.”

  “So I see.”

  The twins were taking up the whole of the stone seat. The others had to remain standing. Frederica asked Paul how the community was, with an effort of courtesy.

  “Great things are happening,” said Paul. “We’re building a Pale. We’re enclosing our own ground. We may become an enclosed order, so to speak.”

  “Enclosed?”

  “Not coming out. No one coming in,” said Paul-Zag. “We aren’t good enough at cultivating quite yet. We’re working it out.”

  Luk said “Where does it go—where will it go—this Pale?”

  “Round and round. Round all the land inside. To keep it from exploitation and destruction. To preserve it.”

  All the land, asked Luk, who had been upon the moors and had seen a wandering group of diggers, and a small white van full of planks, at a distance.

  Paul-Zag said yes, all. He said it was good for body and soul to work so hard. Then, he said to John, we shall all have to choose.

  “You come in and out,” said Frederica. “You come and play your music. In that tent, in the Anti-University. I know, because Will comes and listens. He thinks you’re the greatest.”

  Paul-Zag swayed back and forwards on the bench. He said that would come to an end, it would all come to an end. He said inanely that it was the birth of tragedy from the spirit of music, and winked knowingly at Frederica, who felt as though he had spat at her.

  On the gravel road below them, the same small white van drew up, the one Luk had seen up on the moorland. It was being driven by Elvet Gander, who parked it, and came up into the King and Queen’s amphitheatre. He nodded pleasantly at Frederica, acknowledged Luk, patted Leo on the head, and said to Paul he was glad he had found him, he would give him a lift back to the Hall. Paul stood up, looking down, his arms hanging. John moved his leg, so that he was now sitting rigidly on the bench, facing the others, almost in an imitation of the pose of the bronze figures. Gander said to him

  “You want to come?”

  John did not answer. “Not yet?” said Gander pleasantly. He said to Paul “Not yet.”

  Luk said to Gander “I’m told you’re enclosing the land.”

  “So it would appear. A symbolic reality of some importance. A space for contemplation, for concentration.”

  “A concentration camp.”

  Gander waved a dismissive hand. “Not worthy of you, Mr. Peacock. A bad joke. Be careful with words, they hurt.”

  He led Paul away to the van, where he, though not Paul, turned back to wave amiably enough at John and the others. The van gave off a curious winking glitter as it drew away. It appeared to be full of mirrors, piled against each other, their planes distributing light.

  Luk, worried now about his snail populations as well as his figures, turned to expostulate with John Ottokar.

  John Ottokar said to Frederica “Well, shall I? What do you think? Shall I go in there?”

  “Don’t be silly. You don’t want to. It’s all nonsense. It’s all increasingly frightening nonsense. You know that.”

  “I do, do I? And you know me, do you? You think you can do away with the god I grew up with, just because you choose to call Him nonsense?”

  “John—” said Frederica.

  “I’d better get on with this stuff of Luk’s,” said John, snatching at Luk’s folder of figures. Luk opened his mouth to explain his problem, and John strode away without waiting to listen.

  Frederica and Luk sat together on the bench, beneath the statues. Frederica wanted to cry, or to shout, but not in front of Lysgaard-Peacock, who had rebuffed her the last time they had met. She said, in a small voice

  “It is all nonsense.”

  “Of course it is. But not to him, apparently.”

  “I can’t understand how anyone can believe—can seriously believe—”

  “Can’t you? I can. I did myself, once. I don’t now. Then it was clear to me—that there was—oh—” he was embarrassed—“God. And now it’s quite clear that there isn’t, or anyway, nothing we can know or care about.”

  They sat together in silence for a moment. Leo had wandered off to inspect the statues.

  Frederica said “I behaved badly. As usual.”

  “Not particularly. He’s been in an odd mood. I’ve been pushing him around, with figures.”

  There was a silence, not uncompanionable. Luk said “If they put their damned Pale round my snail populations ...”

  “Surely they can’t. Surely they’ll let you in.”

 
“Why? Why should they?”

  Frederica subsided into silence. Luk said

  “It can’t be easy, there being two of them.”

  “It isn’t.” Frederica thought and then said “It’s hellish. I was so determined not to give in—that is, not to let it—them—it—get me down.”

  “Hard to see how it will change,” said Luk, with the gloomy satisfaction of a man whose own life is going badly. “Though if that one gets concentrated in a camp—this one—”

  “He came up here to get away from him. And now he’s back.”

  “He’s good at his job,” said Luk. “Indispensable. I’m writing this paper for the conference. Snarled-up in maths. He’s been very good.”

  “He is good,” said Frederica. She thought they should stop talking about her own problems, and asked how Jacqueline was.

  “As far as I know, absolutely fine.”

  There is a whole narrative in the words “As far as I know.” Frederica nodded quickly. She asked what Luk’s paper was about.

  “The disadvantages of sex for Darwinian adaptation. The cost of meiosis, if that means anything to you—the splitting of fertilised cells to form the zygote. Uses up a lot of energy compared to other methods.”

  “Other methods?”

  “Parthenogenesis. Clones. Budding.”

  “I see. Well, I don’t, but I’m interested. I shall listen to your paper.”

  “Twins, of course, are a sort of clone. In some cases. Or one can be a bud of the other. We think. He doesn’t like my research. He doesn’t like the idea—from the religious point of view—that what we call altruism is a kind of machinery of self-propagative interest. And he doesn’t like my views about the redundancy of the male.”

  A small smile flickered over Luk’s intent face, as he thought of the satisfactory lining-up of his evidence and his argument, however involved and difficult it was proving to be.

  “What matters,” he said, “is getting things as right as we can. Describing the world as it is.”

  “Oh yes,” said Frederica. “I wonder if I ought to go after him?”

  “Do you want to?”

  Frederica thought about it. “I’ve got to sort it out.”

  “You might let him take a run at my figures, first,” said Luk Lysgaard-Peacock.

  Men, thought Frederica, as Leo came up and put his arms round her, neither bud nor clone, but himself. She smelled the hay and fur smell of his hair. Luk Lysgaard-Peacock moved along the bench, stood up, and walked away.

  “See you,” he said.

  “Sure,” said Frederica.

  Will and Leo went into the Teach-Inn. Leo wrinkled his nose at the intense smell of sewage and incense mixed. Will had become a silent and solitary teenager, dark like his father, slighter in build, with his father’s dark eyes and his mother’s milder mouth, which in him, at this age, often looked sullen. He seemed to like Leo, and was happy enough to take him about, despite the five-year age-gap.

  He said “You’ve got to hear this mind-blowing music. If he’s playing. He comes and goes.” Leo said “OK,” amiably but without enthusiasm. Like his mother, he was impervious to the enchantment of music. He was explaining to Will, as they negotiated the earthy paths between the booths, that since he got his new family he didn’t really see it any more. He said his new step-brother and sister were younger than him. He said that when he did go to visit his father, he couldn’t go riding. Sooty was dead, and the new family, Robin and Emma, had got new little ponies that were much too small for anyone Leo’s size. They were called Shellover and Petit Gris. Shelly and Petty for short, said Leo. I’d look ridiculous if I went on them, so I don’t. Even if I was asked, which I’m not, actually. Shame, said Will, who was listening for sounds, which he heard. He’s there, said Will. Now you’ll hear something. Blow your mind. Leo said, had Will noticed the funny smell. Naturally, said Will. You get used to it.

  Leo was surprised, on entering the singing-space, to see that the singer was John O’s unnerving brother, though he realised at once that he went with the smell. He was sitting on a tallish three-legged stool, bent over his guitar, from which ribbons dangled, crimson, gold and silver. He was wearing his jester’s jerkin and his fingernails were painted alternately black with white whorls and white with black whorls. He also had glittery eyelids. His audience was mixed, and rapt. A few hippies, a large number of boys and girls more or less Will’s age, a group of student-looking people from the University. They were all sitting on a kind of oriental floor of patchwork cushions. It was quite dark. It was a dull day, and the light through the canvas roof was dimly ruddy. Leo opened his mouth to say that this was only Paul O, and Will hushed him, and pulled him down among the gathering on the cushions. Leo listened to the strumming. There was no microphone. Simply the flow of the music, and then, the clear singing voice.

  Leo thought that if Tolkien had been describing this music he would have said that it was like the endless rippling and eddying of a brook, with rapids and whirlypools. There were quite a few Tolkienish people in the audience, people with silvery bands round their brows and those sort of flimsy shirts which flared out to pointy cuffs and dangled. Leo didn’t like to see them. They looked sort of made-up and unreal, and in some way diminished the shining reality of the Tolkien-world in his head. He felt Will next to him settling into the cushions, and glanced at his face, which was smiling vaguely and gently.

  The song wasn’t really vague and gentle, though it twanged and rippled in an endless sort of way.

  O the One and the Many, the Many and the One

  The fire in the flame, the crystal in the cone,

  The brain in the skull and the red thread in the bone

  The air going by, and the shadow in the sun.

  Flakes of flame in the flint, flakes of ice on the moon

  Flakes of green in the leaf, we are many we are one

  We are one, we are many, flakes of ash on your sleeve

  We are eaten, we are whole, we return, we stay, we leave.

  A bubble on the ocean, a flower on the loom

  A worm in a loam-maze, a day’s-eye in the gloom

  We are one we are many, we are many we are one

  We spin the thread and twist it, and cut it when it’s done.

  I am god I am maggot I am minstrel I am string

  I am mind I am matter I am motion I am thing

  I am gun I am bullet I am many I am one

  I can kill and resurrect you I am god when you are gone.

  O the feast and the firelight O the goat and the skin

  O the horns and the knuckles and the dancing and the din

  O the One and the Many, O the Many and the One

  O the dancing and the dreaming, until the feast is done.

  Until we have consumed ourselves and feast and fire are done.

  Burn me up burn me up, make me fire make me light,

  Eat my skull eat my heart, eat my bo-ones so-o white.

  We are one, we are many, we are many, we are one.

  We are god, we are lymph, we are god, we are gone.

  Leo looked at Paul-Zag’s face, in its swinging hair, in the incense-smoke. He felt he didn’t want him to notice him, and he felt he didn’t want to be there. So he wriggled away from Will, who was nodding with closed eyes, with the music, and crawled on his stomach to the edge of the booth, and went out. He took a deep breath, forgetting the smell, and then told himself it was no worse, really, than Sooty’s stall when Sooty had just pissed in the straw. There was no one to whom he could speak of the loss of Sooty. He wandered along a branch of the internal pathway, and came to the Mother Goose at the wicket-gate, and Deborah Ritter reading to a smallish assembly of children. He thought he was too big for such community tale-telling, which reminded him of school. And he didn’t like the paper sunflowers, much, or the cardboard cabbages. But he heard a sentence he knew, and turned back to listen.

  “Unlikely though it may seem,” said the Whistler to Dracosilex, “there are thing
s we have in common.”

  Artegall thought there could be no two creatures less similar than the tall birdwoman, with her long neck and soft, soft overlapping feathers and down, and the flint-lizard, who moved little but his golden eyes, like slivers of light in soot. The wind ruffled all the Whistler’s plumage, so that she looked light enough to blow away like a cloud, and vanish in an airstream. Whereas Dracosilex was squat and compact, even his strong claws only sketched on his rocky body, unless he needed to move. Little threads of fire flickered constantly along his black back.

  “We are both neither one thing nor the other,” said the Whistler, mournfully. The Whistlers had many moods, of which mournfulness was only one. They could scream with joy in the wind, they could scold, they could sing in harmony. Dracosilex chuntered to himself quietly enough. He had two moods only. Stolidity, verging on inertia, and incandescence, which terrified everyone. At the moment, he was stolid.

  “We are neither birds nor women,” said the Whistler. “And you are neither snake nor stone. What runs in your veins is not blood, but stone-light, and what runs in ours is not human kindness, but veins of sorcery full of sky and air. We can never have mates, for we would have to choose, men or birds, and we will not give up our feathers.”

  As for him, Dracosilex said, he and his kind appeared when certain so to speak knots formed in the silica. It makes eggs that make us, he said. There is never more than one of us, in any mountain range.

  Leo stood and listened, just outside the gate. When Deborah Ritter had closed the book, she smiled amiably at Leo, and asked him if he liked the story.

  “Oh yes. It’s my story.”

  “Your story?”

  “I’ll show you,” said Leo. He opened the gate, and went in.