Maud Bailey—Fergus Wolff

Maud Bailey and Fergus Wolff’s relationship survives in the narrative chiefly through Maud’s recollections of its afterlife: a history of mutual torment in which Fergus’s relentless argument and judgments about her appearance narrowed her freedom to think and act. Its significance lies not simply in the fact that Maud was hurt, but in the concrete habits of self-concealment and exhaustion that remain after the relationship has ended.

Identity and Background

The relationship is introduced retrospectively, when Maud tells Roland that she had a difficult time with Fergus and that the two of them tormented one another. Fergus is not present in the conversation, but his influence is audible in the details Maud remembers: his early-morning lectures, his use of psychoanalytic language, and his pronouncements about how she should wear her hair. Her account makes clear that this was not merely a disagreement between two people with different opinions. The pattern left Maud feeling battered and interfered with her ability to work.

Maud also acknowledges the relation’s capacity for mutual injury rather than presenting herself as untouched by it. She says she hates the noise and distraction, and describes the experience of being on the receiving end of Fergus’s arguments. In a separate conversation, Leonora tells Maud that she had been hurt by Fergus and had become annihilated by that hurt. Leonora’s blunt diagnosis gives the relationship a visible consequence in Maud’s later emotional life, while Maud’s own account supplies the remembered particulars behind it.

Argument and Its Effects

One emblematic pattern was Fergus’s use of psychoanalytic argument as a form of pressure. Maud remembers him quoting Freud to her at six in the morning, having got up early and moving about their flat without clothes while he lectured. The argument concerned Freud’s account of women’s supposed wish for a penis. Maud says she did not think Freud was right, but emphasizes the setting and delivery as much as the proposition: the quotation became part of a noisy performance that left her unable to work.

The imbalance in the exchange is captured by Maud’s description of Fergus as a man who argued by increments of noise. As she began to speak, he would produce another argument, cleverer and louder than the last. His method made it difficult for her to hold the floor; intellectual cleverness did not open discussion so much as overwhelm it. Maud’s recollection therefore links the relationship’s conflict to the conditions of speech itself: she was not simply answering ideas, but trying to speak against a steadily escalating volume and pace.

This account also explains why Maud resists turning every choice into a deliberate political statement. Roland calls it exhausting when everything becomes a political stance, even if the discussion is interesting. The exchange follows Maud’s story of the flat and its early-morning lectures, connecting the burden of Fergus’s arguments to her later distaste for making every aspect of life carry an explicit ideological meaning. The relationship’s effect is shown in the present as a weariness with imposed interpretation, not only as a memory of quarrels.

Hair, Appearance, and Self-Concealment

Maud’s hair provides a distinct example of how Fergus’s judgments continued to shape her presentation. She explains that its colour had drawn suspicion: people did not believe it was natural, and at a conference she had once been hissed at for supposedly dyeing it to please men. She used to wear it sheared short. Fergus called that style a cop-out and a concession, and said it made her look like a skull; he urged her to have the hair she had grown out.

Maud did grow it, but now puts it away. Her explanation is precise about the sequence: she had worn it short, Fergus condemned the short style, she grew it, and she now covers it. The result is not a simple adoption of his preference. Even after following his advice, Maud chooses concealment. The conversation shows how scrutiny from different directions—public assumptions about pleasing men and Fergus’s insistence about what her haircut meant—turns appearance into a contested decision that she would rather remove from view.

Roland encourages her to let her hair out, but Maud asks why he says so. The question leaves the choice with her rather than treating disclosure as an obvious cure. The exchange gives a small, present-tense counterpoint to the remembered dynamic with Fergus: Roland makes a suggestion, and Maud is able to ask for its grounds instead of simply receiving another verdict about what her appearance signifies.

Aftermath and Narrative Significance

Maud’s recollections emerge in conversation with Roland, who knows about the relationship and has heard that Fergus told him about it. Maud takes up the subject herself, moving from its general emotional damage to particular memories of the flat, Freud, and her hair. Her account gives Roland—and the reader—an understanding of the fatigue behind her guardedness without reducing her to a diagnosis or making Fergus’s version of events the only one available.

The account’s most forceful contrast is between interpretive insistence and the freedom to make a choice without being forced to defend it. Fergus’s arguments made Maud feel that she could not work; his criticism attached meanings to her hair whether it was short or grown. In the later conversation, Maud can describe that history, laugh with Roland at the absurdity of its performance, and still question his advice. The relationship thus remains consequential after its end, but the act of recalling it also marks a change: Maud can name the pressure and distinguish it from the life she wants to lead.