Babel Tower (96 page)

Frederica does not really listen to Parrott’s troubles about the loss of Jude, because she has troubles of her own. The custody hearing approaches, and Jude’s trial has made Frederica even more despondent than she would have been. She feels that both she and Jude are
naughty children whose naughtinesses have found them out, have been judged by the inscrutable rules of the inscrutable grown-up world to be not naughtiness but grave crimes. She feels too, as children do feel, that what she thought was the grown-up world, and believed to operate by logic, operates in fact according to the system created out of its own prejudices and emotions, which cannot be second-guessed. She and Jude have been made to recite travesties of their life stories, in language they would never have chosen for themselves. They have been judged and found wanting. In a sense, it does not matter. Who cares, Frederica thinks, what those twelve stolid and baffled people think of
Babbletower,
what His Honour Judge Plumb makes of educated women or sex after the Pill? But these things do matter. Jude’s book will not be read, and worse, worse, Leo will be taken from her.

At first she draws comfort from the frequent visits and reassurances of Anthea Barlow, who exclaims brightly that she has established a real
rapport
with little Leo, who is “wise for his years,” who is “a constant surprise to me”—“You must be so proud of him, Mrs. Reiver.” Later Frederica begins to feel irritation with Mrs. Barlow’s over-frequent quotations from Julian of Norwich. “All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well, Mrs. Reiver.”

“You don’t
know
that.”

“I believe it. Dame Julian was talking of the long term, of course. You don’t have any religious beliefs, Mrs. Reiver?”

“No,” says Frederica, reflecting that even here, where she is simply being intellectually truthful, she is open to judgement, judgement which may take her child from her. “My brother-in-law is a clergyman,” says Frederica lamely.

“All shall be well and all shall be well and all manner of thing shall be well. By the purification of the motive in the ground of our beseeching. That’s how Dame Julian goes on. By the purification of the motive.”

“I’m not quite sure what you mean.”

“Oh, I’m just chattering. You must want what’s best for Leo, for dear Leo, Mrs. Reiver.”

Frederica has a vision of fields and paddocks, of woods and hills, an English vision. She sees Sooty’s stolid black figure swishing through meadow grass in a slight drizzle.

“Nothing is altogether best,” she says. “It’s not black and white. It’s a mess. Most of life is. Courts don’t seem to know that.”

“Oh, of course they do. They don’t see life at those rare moments when it isn’t a mess, you must remember. Mess is their business. You must have faith.”

“They believed all those lies those women told. Olive and Rosalind and Pippy Mammott.”

“It may not be the same judge, Mrs. Reiver. Have faith.”

But it is the same judge. The custody hearing takes place before His Honour Judge Plumb. This time Leo is taken to the courtroom, and sits with Mrs. Barlow whilst his parents tell the judge what arrangements they have made for his welfare. Nigel’s barrister has brought photographs, of Bran House, of the orchard, of Leo’s room; he has also brought photographs of the pile of bed-heads and rotting chairs in Hamelin Square, luridly lit by the bonfire, in whose shadows the black children dance. He explains that Leo’s place is assured at Brock’s and Swineburn. “I need not assure Your Honour that the Swineburn of the 1960s is a very different place from the Swineburn that has been so much in the press since the
Babbletower
case. It is a traditional but forward-looking school, with high standards and a kindly regime.” He explains that the three women of Bran House are in the Court and ready to speak, or to give any help they can to describe the loving home that awaits Leo—as it always has—since he was snatched away from it.

Nigel speaks. He is brief, he is sensible. He says his son is his son and he is fortunate enough to be able to provide for his security and loving care. He says he does not doubt that his ex-wife loves the boy in her way, but he does not think she is the type to be interested in kids, not really, and she will find she can do very well by visiting and so forth, which she will be free to do. He says he doesn’t like the look of the place where she is living or the kinds of friends she has, and he doesn’t want Leo to grow up there. He speaks brusquely, man to man, looking the judge in the eye, confident but anxious
enough.

Pippy Mammott speaks. She says that the boy’s mother has never loved him, that she isn’t maternal, that she only wants the boy to spite his family, that she herself is his real mother, has looked after his sicknesses, taught him to tie his little shoes, done
everything
whilst “she” looked on, or “sulked,” or “read books.”

Frederica speaks. Or tries to speak. She is inaudible. The judge peers down at her, his long white face creased into a frown.

“Speak up.”

“I’m sorry. I wanted to say, the square isn’t like that, now. It’s gentrified. We’ve got a circular lawn, with a yin-yang pattern in bricks. The dump’s gone. We all contributed.”

“I see.”

“It’s important not to make it look worse than it is. Because any arrangements I make can’t compete with Bran House. I wouldn’t want Leo not to go there. But he wants to be with me, and my arrangements are good, and will work—though it is harder for a woman to work, and look after a child, than a man. But we are two women, two responsible women, Your Honour, two efficient women. I know the Bran House people loye Leo—he loves them—but I too have feelings about tradition and family. My family is a bookish family, a
thinking
family—it matters as much to me that Leo should grow up in a house
full of books,
as it does to his father that there should be a pony and woods. And I care about schools and I happen to think it’s
wicked
to send away little boys to sleep in dormitories when they could be at home with their mothers. You may not agree, but it is a belief I do hold, and Leo is my son. My father was a schoolmaster in a boarding school, a very liberal one, so I know what I’m talking about.

“I know I’ve been criticised. You criticised me, when you heard the divorce. Some of the evidence you heard was lies, but that’s over, that’s done. It isn’t ideal to have to try to earn your living and bring up a son—and I won’t take maintenance for me, I don’t want it—it isn’t ideal, but it can be done. If I were the person they say I am, I wouldn’t even be
trying
to keep Leo. When you heard the divorce, you asked if I meant to take him when I left. I said I thought of leaving him because it would be better for him, but he insisted on coming. Please understand—
that is what happened.
I thought of leaving him, and he came, and—he’s a little boy, but he knows what he’s doing. I wouldn’t think of it again. Unless he asked.”

Judge Plumb says: And if he asked?

Frederica: I’d listen, I suppose. He’s his own—

She cannot speak.

Judge Plumb asks to speak to Mrs. Barlow, alone. Mrs. Barlow comes out of the Court and says the judge wants to see Leo, who has been taken away to “play” somewhere else. There is a long wait. Then all the parties file back into the Court. Frederica feels ill. Her life has passed, in this moment, entirely out of her control. She was proud and fierce and independent: she was clever and free and wild. And now she is in a room full of people all of whom exercise control,
influence, over her future, because of the existence of an absent small boy whose rights and desires are more important to her than her own. She thinks, briefly, that sex made Leo, and remembers pleasure with Nigel, which seems to have nothing to do with Leo. She feels emptied, and knows that everything will be taken from her. She does not even hear the beginning of the judge’s remarks.

“… there had to be substantial doubt in this case whether the very strong presumption in the favour of the mother, the biological presumption that she would care for the child, that the child needed her physical presence, at least in the early years, would apply. Mrs. Reiver has been described—by those unfriendly to her—as ‘not the maternal type,’ and it is true that she is not an archetypal mother-figure. But few real women are, yet most bring up children. Miss Mammott is extremely motherly, and whereas Mrs. Reiver showed no signs of resentment towards Miss Mammott for her role in the little boy’s upbringing, Miss Mammott displayed a spitefulness towards Mrs. Reiver, a possessiveness about the boy, which I did not find wholly encouraging. It has been eloquently argued, on Mr. Reiver’s behalf, that his family is old and has traditions his son may inherit. I was however struck by Mrs. Reiver’s argument that her own more modest family also has traditions, which she may reasonably expect her son to adhere to. It takes all sorts to make a world, the sporting and the bookish, the entrepreneurial and the intellectual.

“I am entirely convinced that both parents love Leo very deeply, and are primarily interested in his welfare. In this he is a fortunate little boy, compared to many who appear before me. It is clear that he would be less comfortable living with his mother than with his father, but comfort is not everything. And as an old boy of a particularly spartan prep school and public school I am inclined—which may surprise her—to agree with Mrs. Reiver that little boys, at least, are best at home, with those who love them.

“I have been very impressed with the clarity and perceptiveness of Mrs. Barlow’s accounts of her conversations with both the father and the mother, the people at Bran House and the people in Hamelin Square. She herself is very impressed with the intelligence of the little boy, and after speaking to her, I have myself spoken this morning to Leo. I always take off my robes on such occasions, so as not to frighten the children more than can be helped. It is quite clear to me from talking to Leo—and, indeed, from what Mrs. Barlow reports—that he wishes to stay with his mother. He does not wish to lose contact
with his father or his old home but he fears the loss of his mother as the worst thing—“the
bad thing
” that could happen to him. Mrs. Barlow has suggested that there may be an element of fear
that his mother would leave him,
in his fear that he will be taken from her. These are deep waters. They need not concern this Court, since it is quite clear what the boy wants, and he is able to state his wishes fearlessly, and in the expectation of being listened to—on which his parents are to be congratulated.

“I therefore award joint custody of the boy to his father and his mother—with an expressed wish that his mother’s wishes should prevail on his early schooling at least. I award care and control of the boy to his mother, Frederica Reiver.”

Outside the court again, Frederica stands giddy, looking round for Leo. There is a scuffling sound, and a shrill cry, and she feels a violent pain on the right side of her head. Pippy Mammott has rushed up and swung her heavy handbag at Frederica’s face. The sharp clasp cuts her eye-corner: her cheek begins to swell into a grazed, bleeding bruise. The Bran House people gather round Pippy, who is crying hysterically, and pull and hustle her away. Nigel stops to study Frederica, but Mrs. Barlow has taken Frederica in charge, has a Persian lamb arm round her shoulder—she smells of Je Reviens—and is drawing her away down a corridor. In some curious way, this moment of violence is a release. Nigel calls, “I’ll see you,” Frederica nods, her head bowed over a bloodied handkerchief. Heels tap on stone: the opponents hurry apart. In a kind of antechamber Frederica finds Leo. She begins to cry. Anthea Barlow brings a bowl of warm water, with cotton wool, and dabs at Frederica’s cheek. Tears run into the water. Leo sits beside her, his body pushed against hers. Frederica smells disinfectant, Je Reviens, and Leo’s hair, Leo’s warm red hair. He does not discuss his experiences. He does not ask how she hurt herself. He winds his fingers in hers, and says, “When can we go home?”

Spring 1967 runs into summer. The gentrification of Hamelin Square continues: tubs of geraniums and tiny cypresses appear and are stolen, more windows are painted white, a park bench appears on the grass, is stolen, and is replaced with a more stolid one, bolted to the earth, with a bright green waste bin, also bolted to the earth, next to it. Homosexual behaviour (in private) and abortion are made legal. The world explodes in colour: the Beatles produce
Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely
Hearts Club Band,
with its Peter Blake cover on which the four moustachioed majordomos in brilliant satin uniforms stand beside their suited waxwork selves of 1963, under the cardboard eyes of Karl Marx, Laurel and Hardy, Alistair Crowley, Cassius Clay, Mona Lisa, W. C. Fields and Tarzan. The songs are full of brilliance, “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds,” tangerine trees and marmelade skies. BBC2 begins to transmit in colour. Frederica has a colour TV because she has acquired a small TV column in a women’s magazine which flares briefly under the name of
Boadicea,
with mini-skirted, glacé-booted, gold-macintoshed career women striding through it. She cannot stop watching, and neither can Leo. The colours are rich, are jewelled, are electric and psychedelic after the small grainy grey worlds of
Muffin the Mule, The Virginian
and
Batman.
An orange cut in half is a glistening revelation, an open rose is a visual drama, the Queen’s pink and blue and green and yellow outfits seem absurd and inappropriate, as they did not in mere black and white. The
Report of the Steerforth Committee
is published. It is a fat document in two volumes and arouses a storm of protest—
Charter for Permissiveness, The Beginning of the Age of Ignorance, Fetter Our Children with Rote Learning, Why Do They Not Realise That Education Is Oppression, Out of Touch Committee, Committee Unacceptably Child-Centred, Where Are Our Verbs and Conjunctions, Participles Depart
and so on. Roger Magog adds a note of protest saying that the committee has failed to understand the need for partnership and trust between pupils and teachers. Guy Croom adds a dry note predicting that certain skills are about to disappear for ever. No journalist reads the document through, and its conclusions are often stated to be the opposite of what their authors believe they are. Alexander commissions a series of modern-dress Shakespeare scenes for educational television, and thinks of writing a Brechtian play about the French Revolution.