A Whistling Woman by A. S. Byatt

Author:A. S. Byatt [Byatt, A. S.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction
ISBN: 9780307424570
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2007-12-17T16:00:00+00:00

From Kieran Quarrell to Elvet Gander

Well, the Lucy question is in some sense resolved. She appeared in Court this morning. They wanted to get the matter sorted out before the Christmas recess—surprisingly kindly of them, considering the Law’s delays in this part of the world. Ramsden (shall we call him Ramsden?) was allowed to go along with her for moral support, and because it’s by no means clear she won’t just clam up again if he’s not there. The magistrate had talked to two of the three children, who persist in their varying evidence. They are called Carla and Ellis, aged nine and six. Carla says Lucy took the rake and went for Gunner “because he was going on about dirt in the house.” Ellis says Gunner hit Lucy, and Lucy bit Gunner, and Gunner took up the rake and Lucy “got it away from him and poked him and he ran away.” Nobody mentioned what effect, if any, the children’s communications with each other might have had on their evidence in all these months. They weren’t in court. It was feared that the little one, Annie, could lose an eye. I told you that. Someone laid about themselves with insane fury. On the evidence they had, especially from Gunner, they had to charge Lucy.

Gunner was the first witness and spoke up for himself. He’s a burly slow cross-looking creature, walking now slightly hooked to one side to show he’s wounded (his muscles probably have knit awkwardly or painfully, but he looks incompetently histrionic). He said he knew he hadn’t been a perfect husband but he hadn’t done all this stuff. He didn’t bash children. Lucy had just gone berserk, that was what it was, she’d just begun to scream, and started laying about her with the rake. She’d hit his face with it. (He does bear those scars, too.) When asked why, if the children were in danger, he’d run away to the hen-house, he said he kept his motor bike out there and meant to go and get the police. He said the kids were fine when he left. He said he didn’t think she’d hurt the kids, she never had before. When asked how all this had started, he said it was because he’d pointed out that the kitchen was filthy, which was no more than the truth, Lucy was a slut, and he’d told her so. But he’d just told her, not hit her. “You didn’t find no marks on her,” he said. Which was unfortunately true.

The people who found them gave evidence. Two scientists—snail students, a man and a woman, and a mathematician, who had found Lucy, and raised the alarm. They said Gunner did know that the children were hurt. He had been “grumbling about how they were hurt,” the woman, Jacqueline Winwar, said. When pressed, she said he had not been wholly coherent, as he had lost a lot of blood. But he had certainly said the children were hurt. She was asked about the tone of voice in which he’d given this information.

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