Read Online A Whistling Woman by A.S. Byatt - Free Book Online Page B

eyeliners and thick mascara. She looked, in the mirrors, she thought, like a fierce doll. It stirred a memory. What? Who? The Wicked Queen, in Disney’s
Snow White
. The lights would bleach her, they said. There were about ten candidates, sitting in the gloom, two Sunday journalists, a lady novelist, an actress. Television presenters in those days were still sweetly-spoken women with immaculate, dressed hair and excellent, trained elocution, or men with
gravitas
and Broadcasting House resonance.

The auditions were arranged in pairs. Frederica was surprised, and annoyed, to find Alexander Wedderburn, who had moved from radio to educational television, as part of the BBC team. He explained to Frederica that each pair would interview each other—“First A will interview B, and then vice versa, five minutes each way.” He said “We’ve tried to put men with women and vice versa. I’m afraid you’ve drawn Mickey Impey. He’s a pop poet.”
    â€œI know. Leo recites his stuff at school.”
    â€œHe was on our committee on teaching English. Dreadfully cocky. That may help, of course.”
    Frederica nodded. Mickey Impey was a pretty young man with a lop-sided mass of golden curls. He wore a tee shirt printed with Blake’s
Ghost of a Flea,
surrounded by a ring of buttons.
Frodo Lives. Make Love
Not War. Ho Ho Ho Chi Minh
. FALL OUT FALLOUT.
Psychiatry
Kills. One Law for the Ox and the Tiger Is Oppression. Down with School
Dinners
. He rattled when he moved.
    They tossed a coin for who should go first, and Frederica lost. If she had been thinking she would have seen that this was a disadvantage, since the second questioner has time to sum up the first during his own interview. They were in canvas chairs, facing each other. The poet put on a friendly, mischievous grin. Frederica considered him. The clapper-board clapped.
    â€œWhen did you start writing poetry?”
    â€œI piped ditties in my pram. My pram was my chariot of fire, my cloud where I piped away. Everything was poetry. Still is.”
    â€œThey must have been pleased with you at school?”
    â€œI was teacher’s pet as a tiddler. Spouting nursery-rhymes. Later, I got ground down by the system.”
    â€œThe system?”
    â€œWhat they
force down
you. What
kills the imagination
. Facts and figures, kings and queens, weights and measures, eggs and skeletons and stuff, lumps of shit. Oh dear. I’m not supposed to say that, am I?”
    â€œI’ve no idea. I shouldn’t think so. Couldn’t you find any good in anything?”
    â€œThey shut me in a mental prison-house, girl. It was torture.”
    Frederica thought, there are five minutes, I should get away from education, and on to his poems. But he was displaying an attitude, like a butterfly opening its wings in the sun.
    â€œSo how would you educate the young?”
    â€œI wouldn’t. I’d give them their freedom. To find out
what
they want,
when
they want. You only learn what you
desire
to learn.”
    â€œAnd things like science? That need technical knowledge—”
    â€œListen, darling, science is a Bad Thing. The planet is going to kill itself dead with science. Probably they’ll blow us up with nuclear mushrooms, and if they don’t, they’ll burn away the earth’s crust with napalm and extinguish the fowls of the air and the fish in the sea with pesticides. Oh yeah. Science is for two things, human greed and human blinkered arrogance. Don’t teach little kids science. Teach them human things, making love, painting pictures, writing poems, singing songs, meditation. I wrote a poem against science. Do you want to hear it?”
    â€œOK, if it isn’t too long.”

    The metal men in coats of white

In shuttered rooms with shuttered eyes

Make metal death with metal claws

Block out the sunshine from the skies.

The children dance in forests free

They smell the sunshine and the