Wimseyfic fragment: Botanical Gardens
Jun. 17th, 2012 08:28 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
nineveh_ukIt is a lesson from better writers than myself that the reason Sayers doesn't write Peter and Harriet mooning round the Botanical Gardens (er, not literally) is that there is very little to say. But I've had a go nonetheless. Far more profound than the following fanfic fragment is the realisation that for all Annie Wilson's diatribe about sticking to one's husband whatever he does, she does to Mrs Jukes exactly what Miss De Vine does to her, destroying the family in pursuit of her own ends.
Anyway, very much a fragment, the Botanical Gardens...
Soon will you and I be lying
Each within our narrow bed
Lord Peter Wimsey, strolling through the honey-coloured arch that marked the entrance to the Botanical Gardens, considered that life was for the present not too bad. Oxford, even Oxford with a poltergeist, was paradise after the heated folly of Rome. Moreover Oxford held Harriet, a Harriet newly and entrancingly amenable, who refused no invitations, but replied to his letters in tones hitherto unimaginable, took his arm at will and flushed scarlet from head to toe when caught contemplating his phiz from the other end of a punt. With any other woman, he would have felt that victory was assured.
Unfortunately in the case of Harriet the non-too-distant future looked less promising; with the hunt for Arthur Robinson well under way, Harriet must surely deduce the identity of Robinson’s wife, and with who and how came why. With this in mind, to take five minutes apart from the world to wander the gravel paths with her arm slipping idly through his was worth the store against the day she should step away and shake hands for ever , fleeing from the devil love behind the high serenity of Oxford’s walls. To be happy? Some comfort if he could believe it.
This new threat of Oxford as an alternative to matrimony had discovered to Wimsey a complacency long possessed, hitherto unacknowledged but in its acknowledgement now gravely shaken. Quite simply, he had allowed himself to take for granted that there existed no other serious contender for Harriet’s hand nor obstacle to his suit but Harriet herself, and with that same complacency he had been persuaded that however long it took - although resolution before decrepitude had crept too far upon him was preferable – she would, with world enough and time, be his. Against both callow young men and their more sophisticated elders he had felt the need for no guard beyond Harriet’s own wariness; against Oxford he was impotent, with no defence but the one he had sworn never to use. She had asked for two-and-thirty red and white ivory chessmen, had accepted them with a gratitude undreamt of, had acknowledged his fears of the poltergeist, the hands at her neck, and fallen beneath him, laughing and breathing hard, and she was still that Harriet who threw out brutal words, taking nothing, forgetting nothing, forgiving nothing, bitter and scarred and weary of heart and hand, still standing armed against a world that had hurt her.
*
Miss Hudson selected a strawberry from the basket and examined it thoughtfully.
‘Do you think they’re doing it?’
‘What?’ asked Miss Colburn, whose general air of charming naivity was almost entirely unfeigned.
‘IT.’
‘Oh!’
‘Not at Shrewsbury,’ said Miss Dale darkly, and as four youthful and enquiring faces turned towards her, blushed horribly. ‘I mean to say, there was a chap at my brother’s coll. They had to tell him if he didn’t cut it out they’d go to the Dean. Chas was rather torn about it, but honestly! It was that or fail Mods.’
‘Good gracious!’
Miss Dale, having recovered her equilibrium, shrugged. ‘The walls are too thin and the bedsprings creak. That’s the devil of these modern buildings.’
*
‘Perhaps they’re red,’ said Harriet.
‘What?’
‘Cowslips of Jerusalem. Like daughters.’
‘Having no daughters, I do not feel qualified to comment. But I observe a horny-handed son of toil hoeing something or other beneath a specimen tree. We shall enquire of him.’
The horny-handed son of toil was disappointing. Yes, he was familiar with Cowslips of Jerusalem. The gentleman might know the flower as Pulmonaria. No? Then perhaps as lungwort. Yes, that was right, miss, short, with bluish flowers and prone to mildew. There were some under the quince in the south border if the lady cared to show the gentleman.
Wimsey, who had been contemplating venturing on a romantic gesture courtesy of the florist, amended his plans. Cowslips of Jerusalem were romantic and it seemed they were even in season; lungwort was clearly impossible.
Past the goldfish in a limestone basin, the cottage-garden daisies, first poppies and foxgloves and whatever vermeil roses might be, the wisteria blossoming along the wall, and Harriet’s hand sliding through his as she buried her face in the hanging blooms.
‘There was wisteria on the garden wall when I was a child. My mother loved it.’
‘I’ve never heard you talk about your mother before.’
‘No? I suppose I don’t remember her very well. She died when I was quite small.’ She slipped her arm through his again. ‘Let’s go and look at the river.’
*
‘There they are!’ said Miss Colburn. ‘Look, they’re holding hands.’
‘Then they positively can’t be doing it,’ said Miss Isaacson with authority. ‘People who are having affairs never hold hands in public.’ As Miss Isaacson was renowned for almost having had an affair with quite a famous musician, this statement was received with due solemnity.
‘He was at high table the other night,’ said Miss Hudson. ‘It was ever so funny; the Warden was doing her Grand Inquisitor act, you know what she’s like when she gets going, and he was being polite and Miss Vane looked like she wanted to slide under the table.’
‘Maybe that was the sherry.’
‘Not Shrewsbury sherry. One can’t, I’ve tried.’
‘I’m surprised Flaxman hasn’t had a go at him,’ said Miss Dale, who had her reasons.
‘Not him,’ said Miss Groves, ‘he’s far too old. His nephew though – ’
*
Sweet Thames, run softly... The water gurgled gleaming brown and silver beneath the high bank, bearing its load of students and day-trippers downstream. The bench had worked less well than Peter had hoped, being just large enough to encourage two people to sit apart. One could hardly move up without being obvious. Besides, a group of woman students in a punt moored by the Magdalen School playing field looked suspiciously familiar. The sky was clouding over, and he did rather need to see the Warden, not that he had a great deal of hope from that stern and upright figure, far too decent to hear a name without proof. Because he knew, quite assuredly he knew, the identity of the poltergeist, but the Dons would insist on proof and fairness and decency, an admirable trait in almost every circumstance but that of sending Harriet back to beard the lioness in her den. If only Harriet herself would see it, if she were on guard against an acknowledged foe and not a phantom. Only she wouldn’t ask the name, and he couldn’t possibly tell her, and his increasing conviction as to why she wouldn’t see it was no comfort. He saw himself bargaining with the Fates, only let her live and I’ll give her up, as if he could. It was all very well for her to believe him honest; he would pour blood in magic sigils on the ground, if it would do any good.
*
‘I don’t understand it,’ said Miss Dale. ‘They’re both quite obviously desperate, and it’s not as if either of them has anything to save themselves for.’
‘You’re so unromantic,’ said Miss Colburn reproachfully. ‘I think they must be in love, with something dreadfully sad dividing them.’
Miss Hudson, Miss Isaacson, Miss Groves, and Miss Dale considered this comment for what it was worth and sighed.
*
The girls in the punt were quite definitely Shrewsbury students. He recognised one who had been making eyes at Jerry, a hopeless venture with that figure. Perhaps if he threw out a lure: not motive and speculation, but some hard fact that Harriet didn’t know, with a leading train of thought. A cheap tactic, but scruples were becoming unaffordable. The dog collar - what had he been thinking of - was hardly a panacea. The crooked porter, yes that was a direct line all right and would do nicely, and if she couldn’t pick up on that, well, he’d know something else. The butler never did it in books, but no novelist ought to miss the jealous lover.
‘I think I shall have to pay a visit to a friend of yours. Do you know how Jukes came to be caught with the stuff on him?’
Anyway, very much a fragment, the Botanical Gardens...
Soon will you and I be lying
Each within our narrow bed
Lord Peter Wimsey, strolling through the honey-coloured arch that marked the entrance to the Botanical Gardens, considered that life was for the present not too bad. Oxford, even Oxford with a poltergeist, was paradise after the heated folly of Rome. Moreover Oxford held Harriet, a Harriet newly and entrancingly amenable, who refused no invitations, but replied to his letters in tones hitherto unimaginable, took his arm at will and flushed scarlet from head to toe when caught contemplating his phiz from the other end of a punt. With any other woman, he would have felt that victory was assured.
Unfortunately in the case of Harriet the non-too-distant future looked less promising; with the hunt for Arthur Robinson well under way, Harriet must surely deduce the identity of Robinson’s wife, and with who and how came why. With this in mind, to take five minutes apart from the world to wander the gravel paths with her arm slipping idly through his was worth the store against the day she should step away and shake hands for ever , fleeing from the devil love behind the high serenity of Oxford’s walls. To be happy? Some comfort if he could believe it.
This new threat of Oxford as an alternative to matrimony had discovered to Wimsey a complacency long possessed, hitherto unacknowledged but in its acknowledgement now gravely shaken. Quite simply, he had allowed himself to take for granted that there existed no other serious contender for Harriet’s hand nor obstacle to his suit but Harriet herself, and with that same complacency he had been persuaded that however long it took - although resolution before decrepitude had crept too far upon him was preferable – she would, with world enough and time, be his. Against both callow young men and their more sophisticated elders he had felt the need for no guard beyond Harriet’s own wariness; against Oxford he was impotent, with no defence but the one he had sworn never to use. She had asked for two-and-thirty red and white ivory chessmen, had accepted them with a gratitude undreamt of, had acknowledged his fears of the poltergeist, the hands at her neck, and fallen beneath him, laughing and breathing hard, and she was still that Harriet who threw out brutal words, taking nothing, forgetting nothing, forgiving nothing, bitter and scarred and weary of heart and hand, still standing armed against a world that had hurt her.
*
Miss Hudson selected a strawberry from the basket and examined it thoughtfully.
‘Do you think they’re doing it?’
‘What?’ asked Miss Colburn, whose general air of charming naivity was almost entirely unfeigned.
‘IT.’
‘Oh!’
‘Not at Shrewsbury,’ said Miss Dale darkly, and as four youthful and enquiring faces turned towards her, blushed horribly. ‘I mean to say, there was a chap at my brother’s coll. They had to tell him if he didn’t cut it out they’d go to the Dean. Chas was rather torn about it, but honestly! It was that or fail Mods.’
‘Good gracious!’
Miss Dale, having recovered her equilibrium, shrugged. ‘The walls are too thin and the bedsprings creak. That’s the devil of these modern buildings.’
*
‘Perhaps they’re red,’ said Harriet.
‘What?’
‘Cowslips of Jerusalem. Like daughters.’
‘Having no daughters, I do not feel qualified to comment. But I observe a horny-handed son of toil hoeing something or other beneath a specimen tree. We shall enquire of him.’
The horny-handed son of toil was disappointing. Yes, he was familiar with Cowslips of Jerusalem. The gentleman might know the flower as Pulmonaria. No? Then perhaps as lungwort. Yes, that was right, miss, short, with bluish flowers and prone to mildew. There were some under the quince in the south border if the lady cared to show the gentleman.
Wimsey, who had been contemplating venturing on a romantic gesture courtesy of the florist, amended his plans. Cowslips of Jerusalem were romantic and it seemed they were even in season; lungwort was clearly impossible.
Past the goldfish in a limestone basin, the cottage-garden daisies, first poppies and foxgloves and whatever vermeil roses might be, the wisteria blossoming along the wall, and Harriet’s hand sliding through his as she buried her face in the hanging blooms.
‘There was wisteria on the garden wall when I was a child. My mother loved it.’
‘I’ve never heard you talk about your mother before.’
‘No? I suppose I don’t remember her very well. She died when I was quite small.’ She slipped her arm through his again. ‘Let’s go and look at the river.’
*
‘There they are!’ said Miss Colburn. ‘Look, they’re holding hands.’
‘Then they positively can’t be doing it,’ said Miss Isaacson with authority. ‘People who are having affairs never hold hands in public.’ As Miss Isaacson was renowned for almost having had an affair with quite a famous musician, this statement was received with due solemnity.
‘He was at high table the other night,’ said Miss Hudson. ‘It was ever so funny; the Warden was doing her Grand Inquisitor act, you know what she’s like when she gets going, and he was being polite and Miss Vane looked like she wanted to slide under the table.’
‘Maybe that was the sherry.’
‘Not Shrewsbury sherry. One can’t, I’ve tried.’
‘I’m surprised Flaxman hasn’t had a go at him,’ said Miss Dale, who had her reasons.
‘Not him,’ said Miss Groves, ‘he’s far too old. His nephew though – ’
*
Sweet Thames, run softly... The water gurgled gleaming brown and silver beneath the high bank, bearing its load of students and day-trippers downstream. The bench had worked less well than Peter had hoped, being just large enough to encourage two people to sit apart. One could hardly move up without being obvious. Besides, a group of woman students in a punt moored by the Magdalen School playing field looked suspiciously familiar. The sky was clouding over, and he did rather need to see the Warden, not that he had a great deal of hope from that stern and upright figure, far too decent to hear a name without proof. Because he knew, quite assuredly he knew, the identity of the poltergeist, but the Dons would insist on proof and fairness and decency, an admirable trait in almost every circumstance but that of sending Harriet back to beard the lioness in her den. If only Harriet herself would see it, if she were on guard against an acknowledged foe and not a phantom. Only she wouldn’t ask the name, and he couldn’t possibly tell her, and his increasing conviction as to why she wouldn’t see it was no comfort. He saw himself bargaining with the Fates, only let her live and I’ll give her up, as if he could. It was all very well for her to believe him honest; he would pour blood in magic sigils on the ground, if it would do any good.
*
‘I don’t understand it,’ said Miss Dale. ‘They’re both quite obviously desperate, and it’s not as if either of them has anything to save themselves for.’
‘You’re so unromantic,’ said Miss Colburn reproachfully. ‘I think they must be in love, with something dreadfully sad dividing them.’
Miss Hudson, Miss Isaacson, Miss Groves, and Miss Dale considered this comment for what it was worth and sighed.
*
The girls in the punt were quite definitely Shrewsbury students. He recognised one who had been making eyes at Jerry, a hopeless venture with that figure. Perhaps if he threw out a lure: not motive and speculation, but some hard fact that Harriet didn’t know, with a leading train of thought. A cheap tactic, but scruples were becoming unaffordable. The dog collar - what had he been thinking of - was hardly a panacea. The crooked porter, yes that was a direct line all right and would do nicely, and if she couldn’t pick up on that, well, he’d know something else. The butler never did it in books, but no novelist ought to miss the jealous lover.
‘I think I shall have to pay a visit to a friend of yours. Do you know how Jukes came to be caught with the stuff on him?’
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2012-06-18 02:09 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-06-18 08:18 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-06-17 08:25 pm (UTC)She had asked for two-and-thirty red and white ivory chessmen, had accepted them with a gratitude undreamt of, had acknowledged his fears of the poltergeist, the hands at her neck, and fallen beneath him, laughing and breathing hard, and she was still that Harriet who threw out brutal words, taking nothing, forgetting nothing, forgiving nothing, bitter and scarred and weary of heart and hand, still standing armed against a world that had hurt her.
(no subject)
Date: 2012-06-17 09:31 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-06-18 08:52 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-06-18 08:51 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-06-17 09:37 pm (UTC)‘Not at Shrewsbury,’ said Miss Dale darkly, and as four youthful and enquiring faces turned towards her, blushed horribly. ‘I mean to say, there was a chap at my brother’s coll. They had to tell him if he didn’t cut it out they’d go to the Dean. Chas was rather torn about it, but honestly! It was that or fail Mods.’
‘Good gracious!’
Miss Dale, having recovered her equilibrium, shrugged. ‘The walls are too thin and the bedsprings creak. That’s the devil of these modern buildings.’
I can hear my upstairs neighbour's phone when it's on silent, never mind anything else...
(no subject)
Date: 2012-06-17 09:38 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-06-18 08:52 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-06-18 08:58 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-06-18 12:23 am (UTC)I just love this. Particularly the phiz.
‘Then they positively can’t be doing it,’ said Miss Isaacson with authority. ‘People who are having affairs never hold hands in public.’ As Miss Isaacson was renowned for almost having had an affair with quite a famous musician, this statement was received with due solemnity.
Ha! The students are great; I can only imagine the extent of the wild speculation Peter must have inspired.
(no subject)
Date: 2012-06-18 10:00 am (UTC)I was greatly relieved to think up using the students to break up Peter's rambling, and they were a lot of fun to write. I can't believe they weren't speculating frequently about the progress of the H/P relationship (or lack thereof) once Peter turned up (and before). They're really a lot less discreet than they think they're being!
(no subject)
Date: 2012-06-18 03:25 am (UTC)The students and the lungwort are great, too. I must particularly pick out ‘I’m surprised Flaxman hasn’t had a go at him,’ said Miss Dale, who had her reasons.
for admiration. It made me laugh at an ungodly hour before I had finished my first cup of coffee, which is an extraordinary achievement.
(no subject)
Date: 2012-06-18 12:00 pm (UTC)I do feel sorry for Peter in GN*. There he is, faced simultaneously with Harriet finally really interested him, with Harriet considering a completely different alternative to him despite this fact, and with the possibility of nothing coming of it all if she gets bashed on the head first. Meanwhile he is also trying to prevent WWII; no wonder he doesn't look well. On Harriet's obtuseness, I see Harriet as observing things in GN, but failing to take the next step and analyse/deduce. She's in the middle of a University, but she doesn't, as Miss De Vine put it, apply an academic, let alone a criminologist, mind to the puzzle, stopping after the collecting data stage. Of course, Harriet isn't actually an academic, or a criminologist, so there's no reason why she should work it out all on her own and she disclaims her competency from the start, but when it comes to Peter all put hanging an illuminated arrow over Annie's head and her still not get it, you've got to wonder what is going on psychologically.
And I should hope at that time of the morning that you hadn't finished your first cup of coffee! However do you manage it?
*Except when he is being annoying, I want to slap him over his brush off about newspapers being silly about female students - not least because events prove Harriet's point that it's a genuine issue for the college.
(no subject)
Date: 2012-06-18 12:17 pm (UTC)And that makes all the difference in the world.
Meanwhile he is also trying to prevent WWII
It's shame, really, that he managed the case but muffed the Proper Job. Although since he was trying to prevent WWII from breaking out in Italy, someone had clearly been deceived by the red herring into overlooking the real villain.
I think GN is incredibly cleverly done, because every time I read it, I am as obtuse as Harriet, even though with hindsight all the clues are in place. Peter must really be in love to continue to think her clever, though, because having seen through it all himself she must seem almost wilfully blind. Or, as you say, psychologically blocked somehow.
However do you manage it?
I'm a morning person anyway, and I really can't write if I leave it too late. My brain gets all obstinate and refuses to cooperate (weekends are usually a washout because I indulge in lie-ins).
(no subject)
Date: 2012-06-18 07:18 pm (UTC)I did get whodunnit the first time I read GN, by about halfway through. I'm not sure why - I think I remember Annie's conversation about the dons being a bit weird, and seeing her crop up again - but it's unusal for me. I still think it's beautifully put together as a mystery, and I sympathise with Harriet not getting it to start with because it portrays her as someone facing a mystery in real life that isn't 6 people the author has told us are important, but a whole clutch of people from all over the place, any one of whom could be the villain. But then Peter turns up and says "Ah yes, you have narrowed it down, and she's just given us this whopping big clue" and Harriet still doesn't get it, and I can only put it down to something Freudian. Mind you, for all Peter's "Oh no, I can't tell her", if he had half a brain he'd have said something straight after the alibi incident along the lines of "That's very helpful. One knows one's on the right track when the suspect establishes an obviously faked alibi."
I am still impressed that even as a morning person you don't get up and faff around for two hours.
(no subject)
Date: 2012-06-18 09:37 am (UTC)I have great sympathy for Peter with his incorrectly proportioned bench. What he actually needed was a large sofa with lots of people on it so that everyone would have to squidge up, or a cocoa party in a very small student room with everyone sitting on top of each other on the floor. I also greatly appreciate the fact that all your flowers are correctly in season unlike Certain (officially sanctioned) People. And not just lungwort but mildew as well... Oh dear.
(no subject)
Date: 2012-06-18 12:05 pm (UTC)What he actually needed was a large sofa with lots of people on it so that everyone would have to squidge up
Hence the Balliol concert. The Bach concerto was an added bonus, but he'd have gone to anything just to arrange two hours of squidged-up-ness as the prelude to a final proposal. And quite clearly he should have taken her to a squashed Bohemian party years ago, but his main in is via Marjorie Phelps and he felt a bit awkward about it.
Lungwort has long been one of my least favourite flowers, so I sympathise greatly with Peter that it isn't a good excuse for sending something extra from the florist.
(no subject)
Date: 2012-06-18 02:13 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-06-18 03:59 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-06-18 02:15 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-06-18 04:04 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-06-18 04:53 pm (UTC)The ache between them is palpable, especially his sense that she needs to discover the name on her own and his terror that doing so, especially once she understands the why, will take her from him forever - "that Harriet who threw out brutal words, taking nothing, forgetting nothing, forgiving nothing, bitter and scarred and weary of heart and hand, still standing armed against a world that had hurt her."
Exquisite.
(no subject)
Date: 2012-06-18 08:52 pm (UTC)I'm not sure whether Peter is taking Harriet's "you'd rather see me dead than embarrassed" a bit far, or taking the considered view that she has had such a hard time owing her life to him once that he can't possibly push it on her a second time.
(no subject)
Date: 2012-06-18 05:47 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-06-18 09:14 pm (UTC)I can only hope that Annie's parents are still alive and reasonable people and Beatie and Carola went off to them - and that Beatie ends up with the motorbike garage!
(no subject)
Date: 2012-06-18 09:32 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-06-19 08:05 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-06-18 08:03 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-06-19 10:15 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-06-18 08:23 pm (UTC)Peter's stray thought about the poor girl not having a chance with Jerry given her figure. How DO you do it?! Thank you.
M
(no subject)
Date: 2012-06-19 10:16 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-06-19 06:34 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-06-19 08:24 pm (UTC)