The witch of Exmoor.

Margaret Drabble.

C E F D.

THE VALE OF IGNORANCE.

Begin on a midsummer evening. Let them have everything that is pleasant. The windows are open on to the terrace and the lawn, and drooping bunches of wistaria deepen from a washed mauve pink to purple. The roses are in bloom.

The meal is drawing to a close. The bowl of fruit has been plundered. A hacked yet n.o.ble slab of Cheddar cheese, a flattening liquid disc of Brie circulate slowly on a heavy round grey veined marble slab. The salad wilts a little in its various oils. There are crumbs and stains on the dark pink loose-woven cloth. Dishes are stacked high by the Aga, in full view, should one wish to look that way, for this is a farmhouse dining-room, and it is open plan, on the twentieth-century, more or less servantless model. The painted moss-green walls glow in the fading light. This is England, but Spain and Italy have coloured the dishes and displayed their bowls and plates upon the wooden dresser, adding their cobalt Mediterranean blues and their hot mustard yellows. The wine is French, and the precociously rosy apples are from New Zealand, but the bread was baked here this afternoon, and the gems of lettuces and the dark red veined oak leaves and the splinters of chive are from the garden. Are the grapes from South Africa? It is hard to tell. Let us say that we are in England, in Hampshire, and that we approach, but not too closely, and not it would seem very rapidly, the end of the twentieth century.

Much bread has been baked by Patsy Palmer over the weekend, for her family and guests are in good appet.i.te. They have been walking, swimming, playing tennis. They work hard during the week, in their different ways, and now they are taking their ease and eating slice after slice of solid brown bread. They have already devoured spinach soup and two large free-range chickens and a platter of roast potatoes garnished with rosemary. Now they eat bread, and cheese, and nibble at grapes, and talk.

This is the home of Daniel and Patsy Palmer. Daniel is that lighthaired, skinny, freckled chap who is absent-mindedly refilling his own gla.s.s from a bottle of claret. He looks lean, hungry and athletic of mind and body, and is wearing jeans, although he must be in his forties. An academic, a civil servant, a lawyer, a diplomat? Something like that. His wife Patsy is plumper than he, though by no means yet fat, and she also is wearing jeans, and above them a navy-blue Chinese silk shirt and an ap.r.o.n with a pattern of ducks upon it. Her hair is short and brown and slightly fluffy. She could be a headmistress, or a gynaecologist, or a magistrate. And those two young people must be their children, for the family resemblance is strong, and their manner at table is offhand and familiarand in young Simon's case verging on the rude. Emily looks like her father; her hair is a clear red-gold, her eyes a Nordic blue. Simon, too, resembles his father in colouring, and his nose is sharp.

He bites his nails between grapes, and avoids eye contact. A motherbut perhaps not his#x2013;would note that he is too thin.

The other women at table are also related to their host Daniel. They are his sisters. You can see that at a glance. Both born Palmer, they are Palmer no longer, for both have married, and both belong to the generation of women who took their husbands' names. Thus Rosemary is now Rosemary Herz, and Gogo (as Grace is known within the family) is Gogo D'Anger. Both the younger Palmers have married out.

Rosemary is the beauty of the family, or so it has always been said, and there is a residue of truth in the saying. Her hair is a light pinkish gold, slightly paler than her niece Emily's, and a.s.sisted in tint by her hairdresser. (She is the only woman in the room to give evidence of regular visits to a hairdresser.) Her eyes, like Daniel's, are a challenging intellectual blue. She is the most becomingly dressed woman at the table, for she has changed, after tennis, into a pale lilac soft cotton dress (an interesting choice of colour, but effective) and added some green gla.s.s beads to dangle into her freckle-dusted cleavage. Rosemary has style. She could be an actress, or a television presenter, or a journalist. Her husband, Nathan, is rather a surprise. He is short and squat and fat and hairy and balding and very ugly. She wears him with pride, like a fashion accessory.

Rosemary and Nathan have two children. They have gone upstairs to the bunk room to watch TV or play some computer game. Or so their parents a.s.sume.

Gogo is the middle daughter. She is taller than Rosemary and a little heavier in build. (Does Rosemary watch her diet? Probably, though one would not think so from the amount she has eaten this evening.) Gogo's hair, which had been family fair at birth, had turned darker in her teens, as though making a protest against its powerful and problematic heritage, and it is now a dull brown; she wears it tied back with a scarf, for she says that the feel of it upon her brow annoys her. This habit gives her a slightly Bohemian appearance, which she accentuates with bright colourson this occasion, a bold shirt of geometric purple and red, worn over a long orange skirt#x2013;but she counteracts this gypsy look with an expression of forbidding severity. She could be called handsome, but not beautiful. She has the Palmer nose. One would not like to speculate upon Gogo's profession, for fear of reprimand or ridicule if proved wrong. (That she has a profession is manifest.) Her husband, David, in contrast, has a most engaging manner, as though to compensate for Gogo's austerity. He is Guyanese, and he is as handsome as Nathan is ugly. One could gaze at him with pleasure for hours, and many do. He and Nathan get on well. They do not often meet, but when they do they like to talk. They form an alliance against the Anglo-Saxons.

Gogo and David have only one child. He is upstairs, playing or watching TV with his cousins. Or doing whatever it is that children of that age do.

David and Nathan are talking now. This weekend was set up as a family conclave, but David and Nathan agree that they cannot spend all their time playing Unhappy Families. They have already spent much of the weekend talking about the problemin the pool, on the tennis court, walking in the shrubbery, chopping parsley#x2013;and now it is their turn, at least for a brief respite, to talk about something else. The Palmers, tacitly, agree. They too have had enough, for the moment, of what to do about Mother. They are refreshed, by the claret and the roast potatoes. They are willing to play David's game, which he says is called 'The Veil of Ignorance'.

He has tried to explain it to them in simple terms, but some of them are not very quick#x2013;or perhaps they are too quick by half, for they keep interrupting him and going off at tangents and having ideas of their own. They are not as docile as his one-time students. But then, they have no examinations to pa.s.s, and for them nothing hangs upon the game itself, or upon his approval.

It is only a game. Gogo knows the game already, has known it for years, so she sits back, smiling her sardonic smile, as David politely and charmingly persists.

'No, it's not a question of imagining a Utopia,' he repeats. 'It's more a question of unimagining everything that you are, and then working out the kind of society which you would be willing to accept if you didn't in advance know your own place in it. If you knew you would have no special privileges or bargaining powers. It's a much more modest proposal than a Utopia. All you have to imagine is that in the original position of choice you don't know who you are or where you stand#x2013;you don't know if you're rich or poor, able or disabled, clever or mentally subnormal, plain or beautiful, male or female, black or white, strong or weak. You don't know if you're an optimist or a pessimist, a risk-taker or a traditionalist, fertile or infertile, straight or gay. Nor do you know if the society itself is going to be rich or poor#x2013;pre-industrial, technologically developed, rapidly developing, booming, declining. You can't expect to be yourself, nor can you expect society to be anything you recognize. Your eyes are veiled by the veil of ignorance. And from this position you have to examine the first principles of justice, and decide what they are. If you cling to any trace of your existing self you will find yourself constructing a theory of justice and a society that favour you.'

'As these do us,' murmurs Emily, but n.o.body hears her.

'Let me get this straight,' says Patsy, who has been trying to concen trate through distractions about bread provision (could they really finish off yet another loaf?she was d.a.m.ned if she was going to bake at midnight, and she has a busy day on Sunday). 'Tell me again, David. You mean I've got to construct a society in which I would be vailing to take my place as the poorest of the poor and the lowest of the low?' 'Well,' says David. 'It's not the whole of the society you have to construct, it's more the principles on which it is founded.'

('I can't see the difference,' murmurs Emily.) 'You could decide', continues David, 'that a small contingent of the very poor are necessary for the proper functioning of society, and that it would just be bad luck#x2013;a sort of social sacrifice#x2013;if you ended up as one of them. It would be quite hard to argue, I think, that a numerically overwhelming ma.s.s of the very poor can const.i.tute a just society, but it certainly has been argued.'

('Not to say practised,' murmurs Emily.) 'I don't see a problem,' says Patsy. 'I can't see how anyone can ever vote for anything other than a society in which there's no possibility whatsoever, however numerically remote, of ending up at the very nasty bottom of a heap. I know I'd end up at the bottom of the heap if there was a bottom. I've never had any luck at gambling. So I'd prefer a nice safe foolproof society, please, where even if I pulled the shortest straw I could still survive quite comfortably. In fact I'd like a society without a bottom of the heap at all. Would that be a practical possibility? Would the rules of the game permit it? Would the earth's resources permit it?'

'In practice, it's very difficult to design a society in which there's no bottom of the heap. Millions have died for it, but no country on earth has managed it,' replies David, smiling his civil, engaging, disarming smile.

'Really? It sounds so little to ask. Such a modest request.'

'You always think you're being modest, Ma,' says Simon. 'It's one of your most persistent delusions.' (He speaks more sharply than his sister, with a more unpleasant edge, but Patsy chooses to ignore him.) 'What I want to know is this,' says Rosemary. 'If it were all worked out, according to David's rulesthe universal principles of justice and all that#x2013;would anyone dare to press the b.u.t.ton and make it happen? If there were a b.u.t.ton to press, would anyone press it? Would anyone be willing to rip off the veil and open his eyes in the brave new world of Social Justice? Would one risk all, if one were a professor at Harvard instead of a man in a cardboard box?'

(The man from the attic, who has crept silently down the backstairs to help himself to a banana from the larder, listens intently for the answer.) 'Of course one wouldn't dare,' says Daniel Palmer. 'It would mean giving up all this.' He gestures widely and with a lifted eyebrow, perhaps of dissociation, at his lawns, his Aga, his wife, his dissenting children, his deliquescent Brie, his three empty bottles. 'I like all this. I've worked hard for this. Years of my life have gone into all this. Years of Patsy's life have gone into it. I want to see the bay tree reach six foot. Slow growth. You know, slow growth. Why should I press a b.u.t.ton and risk losing all of this?'

'You might not lose it,' says his daughter Emily more forwardly, and this time they are obliged to listen. 'You could', pursues Emily, 'redesign society exactly as it is. Stone by stone, leaf by leaf. You could work out a theory of justice that said it was proper and necessary for the whole of society that there should be such a person as you in such a house as this, and then you could press the b.u.t.ton. And you might end up right here, having this very same conversation.'

'The odds against that', says her father, 'are about sixty million to one.'

'So you admit', says Emily, 'that there's no justiceno justificationfor our living in this house?'

'None whatsoever,' says Daniel. 'I gave up any hope of any kind of genera] social justice years and years ago. What I have, I hold. That's my motto.'

'It's a pity', says Simon, 'that we can't set up a controlled experiment. Let David work out what he thinks would be really fairand then try it for just a year. Then we could press another b.u.t.ton and all scamper back home. If we didn't like it. Which I don't suppose most of us here would.'

'You might die in the experiment. A year's a long time,' says Emily. 'You might die in real life,' says Simon. His tone is not friendly.

'If there were a b.u.t.ton,' says Rosemary, 'would you wake up in this new world at the same age as you were when you pressed it? Or might you find yourself a newborn baby, or an old person in a geriatric ward? Does the original position make us all the same age, or not?'

'I think you're taking it too literally,' says David, momentarily distracted by the Elgin Marbles, the concept of historical property, and the sugar canes of Guyana. 'It's only a philosophical concept. A hypothesis. There isn't any b.u.t.ton.'

'I take everything literally,' says Rosemary, 'even philosophy.'

'And would you wake up', asks Simon, refusing to be diverted, 'with all the memories of a person who had been brought up in the new society? Would they have been implanted, like in that robot movie? So that you could remember nothing else?'

'You would wake up', says David, teasingly, impressively, 'with the memories of a person who has been born into and lived in a society run on the principles of fairness and justice.'

'Wow!' says Emily. 'That is science fiction.'

'Well,' says easy-going Nathan, 'you can count on me to press your b.u.t.ton. Any old b.u.t.ton. I'd give it a whirl. I can't be bothered to do the redesigning from the first principles bit myself. I'll leave that to the professionals. I'll leave it to my distinguished brother-in-law. I think I can trust him not to introduce a tyranny or a totalitarian state or an elective monarchy or the murder of the first-born or the culling of anyone whose first name begins with an N. I'll just take my chance with whatever David and his chums suggest. The odds are I'd end up being someone much nicer than me in an even nicer place. I'd take a gamble.'

'He's a terrible gambler,' says Rosemary, leaning over proudly to pat his hairy hand. 'You should have seen him in the casino at Venice. All his chips on the table.'

'Really?' says Patsy. 'I'm surprised. You are a dark horse, Nathan.'

'I like dark horses and long odds,' says Nathan. 'And poker, and backgammon. But I don't get much time for them these days. Rosie doesn't like it, do you, Rosie?'

Husband and wife smile at one another, in not quite convincing collusion. Nathan takes his hand away from Rosemary's, and fishes in his pocket for a crumpled packet of cigarettes.

'Do you mind, Patsy?' he asks. 'I'll go in to the garden if you like.'

Patsy shakes her head, and reaches behind to the dresser for a saucer to serve as an ashtray.

'Smoking is gambling,' says Emily, staring coolly at her uncle. 'It's just a question of luck.'

'A question of luck as to when or whether I develop the fatal cough? Yes, I suppose you're right.'

'In the just society,' asks Emily, turning back to David, 'would there be any smoking areas? Or would it be altogether forbidden? Would there be s.e.xual reproduction? Would there be illness and death?'

'Smoking areas could be agreed. Or not. But the other things would have to carry on as now, I'm afraid. Otherwise you would end up with a society without anything recognizable as human beings at all.'

'How nice,' says Emily, still staring hard at David.

'That might be the only way,' says Simon. 'You could devise this perfectly just system, but then human beings would come along and mess it all up. Much better to redesign the human beings.'

'What a gloomy couple you are,' says David, smiling his charming televisual smile.

'I'm not gloomy,' says Emily. 'Simon may be, but I'm not. I'm just being radical. I mean you might as well go back to the original plan. If you're going to have an original position, it might as well be really original.'

David is not sure whether she is being quite clever or very stupid. The evening grows late: surely it is time these teenagers went to bed? His own son had politely vanished hours ago, like the good boy he is.

'A society without human beings', says Daniel gravely, 'is a radical concept.' Patsy permits herself to sn.i.g.g.e.r.

'A society without human beings', says Gogo, breaking her silence, 'is exactly what she seems to have designed for herself.'

Nathan and David and Patsy quickly exchange guilty glances: so the game of Unhappy Families is back upon the table. David has done his best to distract, but he has failed. The Palmers are relentless. They could bring any topic home. They could la.s.so conversations about gardening, or the cinema, or the Hubble telescope, or the sugar industry, or Guyanese politics, or the slave-trade, and bring them home to graze about their mother.

'I mean, for G.o.d's sake,' says Gogo. A long pause follows. She has the floor. 'The Witch of Exmoor,' she says, echoing a phrase that Rosemary has tried out on her over their picnic lunch on the lawn.

'It just isn't habitable,' continues Rosemary. 'She can't go on living there. At her age. It's impossible. We all thought the Mausoleum was bad enough. This is a thousand times worse. At least the Mausoleum was in reach of public transport. Well, almost. I think Daniel ought to go and have a look. Show a bit of masculine authority.'

Daniel smiles his thin, dry, bleached smile. His spare face is briefly irradiated by a sad, mocking, uncertain light. His sisters mocked him much.

'Describe it again, Rosie,' he says. He enjoys her recital. He might as well take pleasure from it.

'Well' says Rosemary. 'To begin with, it's vast. And it's hideous. And it's uninhabitable. And what electricity there is keeps going off. And it's about to fall into the sea.'

'It's literally on the edge of the sea?'

'On the very edge. Perched. And the drivewell, you can't really call it a drive. It's hardly even a track. It's more or less impa.s.sable. Deep ruts. Great pot-holes. Stuff growing out of the hedges. It was bad enough getting down it in the spring. G.o.d knows what it's like in winter. And it's four hours from London even if you put your foot down all the way along the motorway. And then all those miles over the moor. There's a sign, written on a piece of cardboard. I stopped to read it. It said BEWARE OF VIPERS BREEDING.'

It is the first time they have heard this detail: they respond with suitable admiration.

'Did it mean it literally? Vipers, literally vipers?'

'I should think so! It looked real snake country to me. You could feel them round about. You know, roots and bracken. I don't know what she thinks she's doing there. She's got no connection with that part of the country at all. If she wants to go native why doesn't she go back to Lincolnshire where she says she came from? Or Sweden, come to that?'

'She always said she wanted to live in the country,' says Daniel.

'Yes, but why choose Exmoor? It can't mean anything to her.'

'Hampshire means nothing to me,' says Daniel. 'But I happen to like it here. I don't see why she shouldn't live on Exmoor if she wants.'

'In a derelict hotel?'

'I thought you said it was a folly.'

'It's hard to know what it is. It's enormous. She only lives in a bit of it.'

'And it's a four-hour drive?'

'At least. It was just over 200 miles on the clock, but the last 60 are a nightmare. And I can tell you it's not very nice to drive for four hours and then have the door more or less slammed in your face.'

Daniel and Gogo like this bit best.

'So she didn't want you to come in?'

'Not really. She kept me out there in this terrible overgrown courtyard. Netties everywhere. And it was p.i.s.sing with rain. She had her back to the door as though she was guarding something. I had to say I was dying for a pee before she'd let me in. And then she said, why didn't you stop a bit earlier and pee in the hedge?'

They all laugh at this sally, and not for the first time.

'What was the lavatory like?' inquires Emily, freshly.

'Well, it was clean. But sort of basic. No lavatory seat, for example. Nothing extra. Except spiders. Those long leggy ones. Lots of them-'

'Her familiars,' says Gogo.

'No pot plants, no toilet rolls, no little cane tables, no volumes of verse?'

'There was a toilet roll, but G.o.d it was damp. The damp there is a killer.'

'And she gave you a slice of corned beef,' prompts Gogo.

'Yes, a slice of corned beef. And a piece of soggy Ryvita. It tasted a thousand years old. There's a cold like mildew down there. It bites. It's full of microbes. Full of fungus spores. It fills the lungs. I can't describe how horribly cold it was. And this was mid-May.'

'She wasn't expecting you,' ventures Patsy in extenuation.

'How could she be expecting anyone if she won't have a telephone?' returns Rosemary.

'Perhaps she really doesn't want to see us,' says Daniel. (This is the kind of thing he says.) 'Well,' says Rosemary, with gravitas, 'that would seem to be the message. She says she doesn't want to see anyone. She says she's too busy. I said busy doing what, and she said she was busy being a recluse. She said it was a full-time job.'

They all laugh, and there is a respect in their laughter, for Frieda has turned the tables on them this time. They are surrounded by friends who complain at length of the burden of visiting their aged relatives, their aunts with Alzheimer's, their fathers grumpy with cancer or heart conditions or gout, their mothers whining of the treacheries of the past: none of them has a mother who does not want to see them. It is against the natural order. What have they done to earn such rejection? Frieda has removed herself from their concern and set off into the unknown. They had seen trouble coming a year or more ago, when she suddenly decided to sell the family home and all that was in it, but they had not expected a removal as dramatic as this. She had sold the big house in Romley (optimistically and falsely described by the estate agents as 'on the borders of Stoke Newington') and purchased a dilapidated thirty-room Victorian castle by the sea.

'But you said she looked well enough,' says Daniel.

'Oh, yes, she looks well enough. I think she's lost weight. Well, one would, on a diet like that. Worse than a health farm. G.o.d knows where the nearest shop is.'

'I don't see how we can intervene,' says Daniel, who has no wish to be sent off to Exmoor as family delegate. 'She's not doing any harm up there, is she?'

'Not to us,' says Gogo. 'She can't harm us any more. She's done her worst.'

'I wouldn't be so sure,' says Daniel, rethinking his position as a new light strikes him. 'She's only in her sixties.'

'I'm not so sure either,' says Rosemary. 'I told you what she said about remaking her will? She said she was going to reallocate her posthumous copyrights. Is she allowed to do that?'