Alasdair Gray - Poor Things

I said I would break into the closet where his father kept the port if he did not start reading. He said, “At once then! But before I read let me give you a title for Bell’s letter, a title which is not her own but which will prepare you for the breadth, depth and height of what her letter encompasses. I call it MAKING A CONSCIENCE. Listen.”

He cleared his throat and read with a distinct tone and grave elation I thought theatrical. Later his delivery was interrupted by a few heartfelt sobs he tried, and failed, to contain. The following letter is given, not as Bella spelled it, but as Baxter recited it.

Dear God,

I had no peace to write before

we are afloat upon this blue blue sea.

Wedder is snug in bunk and glad at last

not to be do do doing all the time —

the silly chap has done some silly things.

How Auld Lang Syne seems that soft warm bright night

when I bade you good-bye, chloroformed Candle,

then skipped down ladder into Wedder’s arms.

Swift as the wind we sped in cab to train

and curtained carriage where we wed wed wed,

went wedding all the way to London town

and booked into Saint Pancras’s Hotel.

And yet poor Duncan wanted marriage too!

He did not get it. Please tell Candle so.

You never wedded, God, so may not know

eight hours of it takes much more out of men

than they can give without a lot of rest.

Next day was all my own. I saw some sights,

then waked my Wedder with a good high tea.

“Where have you been?”

I told.

“Who did you meet?”

“No one.” “Do you expect me to believe

you walked all day and never saw a man?”

“No — I saw crowds of men but spoke to none,

except a policeman in Regent’s Park

from whom I asked the way to Drury Lane.”

“Of course!” he said. “It would be the police!

They’re very tall and handsome are they not?

Guards officers are strong and handsome too.

They prowl the parks for girls who won’t say no.

Perhaps your policeman was in the Guards.

The uniforms are very similar.”

“Have you gone daft?” I asked him. “What is wrong?”

“I’m not the only man you ever loved —

admit you have had hundreds before me!”

“Not hundreds — no. I never counted them,

but half a hundred might be about right.”

He gasped, gaped, groaned, writhed, sobbed

and tore his hair

then asked for details. That is how I learned

he did not think that kissing hands is love.

Love (Wedder thinks) only deserves the name

when men insert their middle footless leg.

“If that is so Dear Wedder, rest assured

you are the only man I ever loved.”

“Liar cheat whore!” he screamed. “I am no fool!

You are no virgin! Who deflowered you first?”

It took a while to find out what he meant.

It seems that women who have not been wed

by wedders like my Wedder all possess

a slip of skin across the loving groove

where Wedderburns poke their peninsula.

This slip of skin he never found on me.

“And how do you explain the scar?” he asked,

referring to a thin white line which starts

among the curls above my loving groove

and, like the Greenwich line of longitude,

divides in two the belly Solomon

has somewhere likened to a heap of wheat.

“Surely all women’s stomachs have that line.”

“No no!” says Wedder. “Only pregnant ones

who’ve been cut open to let babies out.”

“That must have been B.C.B.K.,” I said,

“the time Before they Cracked poor Bella’s Knob.”

I let him feel that crack which rings my skull

just underneath the hair. He sighed and said,

“I told you everything — my inmost thoughts,

childhood and darkest deeds. Why did you not

speak of your past? Or rather, lack of past.”

“You never gave me time before tonight

to tell you anything, you talked so much.

I thought you did not want to know my past,

my thoughts and hopes and anything of me

not obviously useful when we wed.”

“You’re right — I am a fiend! I ought to die!”

he yelled, then punched his head, burst into tears,

pulled off his trousers, wed me very quick.

I soothed him, babied him (he is a baby)

and got him wedding at a proper speed.

Yes, wed he can and does, but little Candle,

if you are reading this do not feel sad.

Women need Wedderburns but love much more

their faithful kindly man who waits at home.

I had a baby once. God, is that true?

If it is true what has become of her?

For I am somehow sure she is a girl.

This is a thought too big for Bell to think.

I must grow into it by slow degrees.

God, do you read the change there is in me?

I am not quite as selfish as I was.

I felt for Candle though he is not here

and tried to comfort him. I start to fear

the feeling that will grow if I think much

about the little daughter I have lost.

Strange how the baby-minded Wedderburn

has taught this cracked and empty-headed Bell

to be more feelingful for other folk.

He managed it by making me his nurse

when we reached Switzerland. I’ll tell you how.

The jealousy which he had shown in London

did not depart when we reached Amsterdam.

The only time we were not arm-in-arm

was when he left me in a waiting-room

to see a doctor for his lethargy—

that’s what he called the tiredness that he felt,

which was quite natural. We all need rest,

and time to sit and look and dream and think.

The doctor’s pills let him dispense with rest.

We rushed through racecourses and boxing-clubs,

cathedrals, café-dansants, music-halls.

His face was white, his eyes grew huge and shone.

“I am no weakling, Bell!” he cried. “On! On!”

Thank you, dear God, for teaching me to sleep

by simply sitting down and shutting eyes.

In omnibuses, trains, cabs, trams and boats

this came in handy, but was not enough —

I had to find some other way to sleep.

The second night abroad we went to see

an opera by Wagner. It was long,

and Wedder, every time I shut my eyes,