A Severed Head

I laughed. 'Rusted through lack of practice, brother. Show me something else.'
'Who is this?' said Alexander. He turned the anglepoise directly upward and revealed a bronze head which was mounted on a bracket above the work table.
I felt a shock of surprise even before I recognized it. 'I haven't seen that in years.' It was Antonia.
Alexander had done the head in the early days of our marriage and then professed dissatisfaction with it and refused to part with it. It was in a light golden bronze and showed a youthful forward-darting Antonia that was not quite familiar to me: a champagne-toasted dancing-on-the-table Antonia that seemed to belong to another age. The shape of the head was excellent, however, and the great flowing pile of hair at the back, wildly tressed and somewhat Grecian: and the big rapacious slightly parted lips, these I knew. But it was a younger, gayer, more keenly directed Antonia than my own. Perhaps she had existed and I had forgotten. There was nothing there of the warm muddle of my wife. I shivered.
'It can't be her without the body,' I said. Antonia's swaying body was an essential part of her presence.
'Yes, some people are more their body than others,' said Alexander, as he played the beam over his head, unshadowing a cheek. 'All the same, heads are us most of all, the apex of our incarnation. The best thing about being God would be making the heads.'
'I don't think I like a sculpted head alone,' I said. 'It seems to represent an unfair advantage, an illicit and incomplete relationship.'
'An illicit and incomplete relationship,' said Alexander. 'Yes. Perhaps an obsession. Freud on Medusa. The head can represent the female genitals, feared not desired.'
'I didn't mean anything so fancy,' I said. 'Any savage likes to collect heads.'
'You wouldn't let me collect yours!' said Alexander. I had never let Alexander sculpt me, though he had often begged.
'To carry on your pike? No!' As we laughed he drew his hand over the back of my head, feeling the shape under the hair. A sculptor thinks from the skull outwards.
We stood for a little longer looking up at the head of Antonia until I felt the misery rising in my heart. I said, 'I could face a stiff drink soon. By the way, I sent off a case of Vierge de Clery and some brandy.'
'They came this morning,' said Alexander. 'But no port! All claret would be port if it could.'
'Not if I could catch it in time!' I said. We had this argument every Christmas.
'I'm afraid we've got the usual mob coming tomorrow,' said Alexander. 'I wasn't able to put them off. Rosemary says they look forward to it! But with luck we may be snowed up.'
We wandered across to the door and opened it, pausing on the threshold to look at the scene outside. The cold air touched us sharply. It was darker now, but the last light of day lingered with a living glow which seemed to emerge from the snow itself. The white untrodden sheet stretched away to where the two great acacia trees, loaded now and half sketched in in black, marked the end of the lawn and framed the now hidden vista of hills wherein were folded the lost ironstone villages of Sibford Gower and Sibford Ferris. The snow fell silent and straight down out of a windless sky, and through the open door we apprehended its positive silence. We were shuttered as in a tomb. Then darkly blurred as in a Chinese picture, a blackbird on its way to roost moved suddenly in the lee of a bush, turned its head towards us, and then sped away noiselessly low over the snow. In the last twilight of the afternoon we saw its eye and its orange beak.
'The ousel-cock, so black of hue,
With orange-tawny bill,'
Alexander murmured.
'You quote too aptly, brother.'
Too aptly?'
'You don't recall the rest?'
'No.'
'The throstle with his note so true,
The wren with little quill,
The finch, the sparrow, and the lark,
The plain-song cuckoo grey,
Whose note full many a man doth mark,
And dare not answer nay.'
Alexander was silent for a moment. Then he said, 'Have you been faithful to Antonia?'
The question took me by surprise. However I replied at once, 'Yes, of course.'
Alexander sighed. The light came on in the drawing-room and cast into the darkening air a cone of gold into which the snowflakes, grey now and scarcely visible above, filtered to become, before they came to rest, tinsel for a moment. The evergreen kissing bough which Rosemary laboriously plaited every Christmas, as my mother had taught her to do, was to be seen hanging in the window, decked with coloured balls, and oranges and long-tailed birds and candles and hung with mistletoe; and now I could see my sister mounting on a chair to set the candles alight. They flickered, and then rose in a strong glow as the old ambiguous symbol swayed slightly in the breeze that always haunted those tall ill-fitting Victorian windows.
'Why «of course»?' said Alexander.
At that moment we heard the tinkle of the piano. Rosemary was beginning to play a carol. It was Once in Royal David's City. I took a deep breath and turned away from the door. I crossed the room to collect my cigarettes which I had left in the bay-window. Alexander, who did not seem to expect an answer to his question, had turned the anglepoise back to shine upon his unfinished head. We contemplated it together to the distant sound of the piano. I had known that it reminded me of something, something sad and frightening, and as I looked now at the damp grey featureless face I remembered what it was. When my mother had died Alexander had wanted to take a death mask, but my father had not let him. I recalled with a sudden vividness the scene in the bedroom with the still figure on the bed, its face covered with a sheet.
I shuddered and turned to the doorway. It was quite dark outside now. The snow fell, invisible save in the light from the window, into the depths of its own sleep. Rosemary began to play another verse.

Seven

My darling Georgie, I have not spent Christmas quite as I expected. On the evening when I last saw you Antonia suddenly announced that she wished to leave me and to get married to Palmer Anderson. I won't tell you the details now, but it looks as if this is what is going to happen. Nor can I tell you exactly what my feelings are. I don't altogether know myself. As you may imagine, I am suffering from shock. Indeed, I feel scarcely sane and nothing seems solid any longer or real for the present. You will understand that there is nothing more I can say just now. I needed to tell you the facts anyway and it is a great relief simply to be writing to you. Hope and fear nothing if you can. Oh, sweetheart, I have never felt more wretchedly incapable of any bright or adventurous destiny. I feel half faded away like some figure in the background of an old picture. Try at least if you can, to restore to me some sense and some vigour. Darling child, your love and your devotion have been so precious to me: support me now with patience. Excuse this cowardly and distracted letter. Your discredited prince kisses your feet. I am simply too miserable to think straight. Please bear with me and go on loving me. If I can I'll call on you tomorrow at the usual time. If I can't come I'll telephone about then.

M.

I finished the letter and put it hastily into my pocket. Antonia and Rosemary were descending the stairs, still trying to talk both at once.