David Lodge - Small World (9 page)

“I think you reckon without the variation in regional accents,” said Persse.

“Look, I haven’t got time to explain it now,” said Dempsey Irritably, moving towards the door. “The bell has gone for dinner”

Persse found himself an inconspicuous place in the dining-hall, half-hidden from Angelica’s view by a pillar. It was no great sacrifice to be on the margins of this particular feast. The mead tasted like tepid sugar-water, the medieval fare consisted of fried chicken and jacket potatoes eaten without the convenience of knives and forks, and the wenches were the usual Martineau Hall waitresses who had been bribed or bullied into wearing long dresses with plunging necklines. “Don’t look at me, sir,” the yellow-haired lady begged Persse as she served him his drumsticks. “If this is ‘ow they dressed in the middle ages, well, all I can say is, they must ‘ave got some very nasty chest colds.” Presiding over the festivities from a platform at one end of the dining-room were a pair of entertainers from Ye Merrie Olde Round Table, one dressed up as a king, the other as a jester. The king had a piano accordion and the jester a set of drums, both provided with microphone and amplifier. While the meal was being served, they entertained the diners with jokes about chambers and thrones, sang bawdy ballads, and encouraged the diners to pelt each other with bread rolls. It was a rule of the court that anyone wishing to leave the room was required to bow or curtsey to the king, and when anyone did so the jester blew into an instrument that made a loud farting noise. Persse slipped out of the room while the medievalist from Aberystwyth was being humiliated in this fashion. Angelica, sitting between Felix Skinner and Philip Swallow on the far side of the room, flashed him a quick smile, and fluttered her fingers. She had not touched the food on her plate.

Persse stole away from Martineau Hall, towards Lucas Hall, drawing in deep breaths of the cool night air, and gazing at the ruffled reflection of the moon in the artificial lake. The strains of a new song which the king and jester had just started, their hoarse and strident voices powerfully amplified, pursued him: King Arthur was a foolish knight, A foolish knight was he, He locked his wife in a chastity belt, And then he lost the key!

Lucas Hall was deserted. Persse trod lightly on the stairs, and along the corridors, as he searched for room 231. Its door was unlocked, and he stepped inside. He did not turn on the light, as the room was sufficiently illuminated through a fanlight over the door, and by the moon shining in through the open casement. Snatches of song still carried on the night breeze: Sir Lancelot, he told the Queen, “I soon will set you free.”

But when he tried with a pair of pliers

She said, “Stop, you’re tickling me!”

Persse looked round the small, narrow room for somewhere to conceal himself. The only possible place was the built-in wardrobe. The packet of Farex was heavy in the pocket of his anorak. He took it out and placed it on the bedside table, reflecting that it was a rather poor substitute for jellies soother than the creamy curd, and lucent syrops, tinct with cinnamon, even if those did sound like baby-food.

He heard in the distance the thud and whine of the lift in operation, and stepped hastily into the dark interior of the wardrobe, pushing clothing to one side as he did so. He pulled the door to behind him, leaving it open an inch, through which he could breathe and see.

He heard the lift doors open at the end of the corridor, and footsteps approaching. The door handle turned, the door opened, and into the room came Robin Dempsey. He switched on the light, closed the door, and went across to the window to draw the curtains. As he took off his blazer, and draped it over the back of a chair, his eye was caught by the box of Farex, which he inspected with evident puzzlement. He eased off his shoes, and removed his trousers, revealing striped boxer shorts and sock suspenders. He took off one garment after another, folding and draping them neatly over the chair, until he was quite naked. It was not the spectacle Persse had been looking forward to. Dempsey sniffed himself under both armpits, then pushed a finger down into his crotch and sniffed that too. He disappeared from Persse’s line of vision for a few moments, during which he could be heard splashing about at the sink, cleaning his teeth and gargling. Then he reappeared, still naked, shivering slightly, and got into bed. He turned off the light from a bedside switch, but enough illumination came through the fanlight above the door to reveal that In was lying on his back with his eyes open, staring at the ceiling, and glancing occasionally at a small digital clock whose figures glowed green on the bedside table. A profound silence settled in the wont.

Persse coughed.

Robin Dempsey sat up in bed with the force of a released spring, his torso seeming to quiver for some seconds after achieving the perpendicular. “Who’s there?” he quavered, fumbling for the light switch. As the light came on, an archly fond smile suffused his features. “Angelica,” he said, “Have you been hiding in the wardrobe all the time? You minx!”

Persse pushed open the door of the wardrobe and stepped out. “McGarrigle! What the fuck are you doing here?”

“I might ask you the same question,” said Persse.

“Why shouldn’t I be here? It’s my room.”

“Your room?” Persse looked around. Now that the light was on, he could see some signs of masculine occupation: an electric razor. and a flask of Old Spice aftershave on the shelf over the sink, a pair of large leather slippers under the bed. He looked back at the wardrobe he had occupied and saw a bright blue suit on the solitary hanger inside. “Oh,” he said weakly; then, with more resolution, “Why did you think Angelica was hiding in the wardrobe?”

“It’s none of your business, but it so happens that I have an appointment with Angelica. I’m expecting her here at any moment, as a matter of fact, so I’d be obliged if you would kindly piss off. What were you doing in my wardrobe, anyway?”

“I had an appointment with Angelica too. She told me this was her room. I was to hide in it and watch her going to bed. Like in ‘The Eve of St Agnes’.” It sounded rather silly to his own ears when he said it.

“I was to go to bed and wait for her to come to me,” said Dempsey, “Like Ruggiero and Alcina, she said. Couple of characters in one of those long Eyetie poems, apparently. She told me the story—it sounded pretty sexy.”

They were both silent for a moment.

“It looks as if she was having a bit of a joke,” said Persse at last.

“Yes, it does,” said Dempsey flatly. He got out of bed and took a pair of pyjamas from under his pillow. When he had put them on he got back into bed and pulled the blankets over his head. “Don’t forget to turn off the light when you leave,” he said in muffled tones.

“Oh, yes. Goodnight, then.”

Persse ran downstairs to the lobby, to look at the noticeboard which he had consulted for Morris Zapp. Angelica’s name did not appear anywhere on the list of residents. He hurried back to Martineau Hall. In the bar the conferees, who earlier had been drinking heavily to get themselves into the mood for the medieval banquet, were now drinking even more heavily in an effort to erase it from their memories. Bob Busby was nursing a glass of whisky alone in a corner, smiling fixedly in a brave effort to pretend that it was by his own choice that nobody was speaking to him. “Oh, hallo,” he said gratefully, as Persse sat down beside him.

“Can you tell me what is Angelica Pabst’s room number?” Persse asked him.

“It’s funny you should ask me that,” said Busby. “Somebody just mentioned that they saw her going off in a taxi, with her suitcase.”

“What?” exclaimed Persse, jumping to his feet. “When? How long ago?”

“Oh, at least half an hour,” said Bob Busby. “But, you know, as far as I know she never had a room. I certainly never allocated her one, and she doesn’t seem to have paid for one. I don’t really know how she got on this conference at all. She doesn’t seem to belong to any university.”

Persse ran down the drive to the gates of the hall site, not because he entertained any hopes of catching up with Angelica’s taxi, but just to relieve his frustration and despair. He stood at the gates, looking up and down the empty road. The moon had disappeared behind a cloud. In the distance a train rattled along an embankment. He ran back up the drive, and went on running, past the two halls of residence, around the artificial lake, following the route he had taken with Morris Zapp that morning, until he reached the top of the hill that afforded a panoramic view over the city and the University. A yellowish glow from a million streetlamps lit up the sky and dimmed fight of the stars. A faint hum of traffic, the traffic that never night and day, to roll along the concrete thoroughfares, vibrated on the night air. “Angelica!” he cried desolately, to the indifferent city, “Angelica! Where are you?”

Two

MEANWHILE, Morris Zapp had been having a quiet evening, tęte a tęte with Hilary Swallow. Philip was at Martineau Hall, doing his medieval bit. The two eldest Swallow children were away from home, at college, and the youngest, Matthew, was out playing rhythm guitar in a school band. “Do you know,” Hilary sighed, as the front door slammed behind him, “his sixth form has four rock groups, and no debating society? I don’t know what education is coming to. But I expect you approve, Morris, I remember that you used to like that frightful music.”

“Not punk, Hilary, which seems to be what your son is into.”

“It all sounds the same to me,” she said.

They ate dinner in the kitchen, which had been extended and expensively refitted since he had last been in the house, with teak veneer cabinets, a split-level cooker and cork tiling on the floor. Hilary cooked them a tasty steak au poivre with baby squash and new potatoes, followed by one of her delicious fruit puddings, in which a viscous fruit compote lurked beneath and partly, but only partly, permeated a thick stratum of light-textured, slightly waxy spongecake, glazed, fissured and golden brown on top.

“Hilary, you’re an even better cook than you were ten years ago, and that’s saying something,” Morris declared sincerely, as he finished his second helping of the pudding.

She pushed a ripe Brie across the table. “Food is one of my few remaining pleasures, I’m afraid,” she said. “With the dire consequences for my figure that you can see. Do help yourself to wine.” It was their second bottle.

“You’re in great shape, Hilary.” Morris said, but in truth she wasn’t. Her heavy bosom looked in need of the support of a good old-fashioned bra, and there were thick rolls of flesh at her waist and over her hips. Her hair, a dull brown, flecked with grey, was dragged back into a bun which did nothing to hide or soften the lines, wrinkles and broken blood vessels in her facial skin. “You should take up jogging,” he said.

Hilary snorted derisively. “Matthew says that when I run I look like a blancmange in a ‘panic.”

“Matthew should be ashamed of himself.”

“That’s the trouble with living with two men. They gang up on you. I was better off when Amanda was at home. What about your family, Morris? What are they doing these days?”

“Well, the twins will be going to college in the fall. Of course I shall have to pay for their tuition, even though Désirée is rich as Croesus from her royalties. It makes me mad, but her lawyers have me over a barrel which is where she always wanted me.”

“What’s Désirée doing?”

“Trying to finish her second book, I guess. It’s been five years since the first one, so I figure she must be badly blocked. Serves her right for trying to screw every last cent out of me.”

“I read her novel, what was it called?”

“Difficult Days. Nice title, huh? Marriage as one long period pain. Sold a million and a half in paperback. What did you think of it?”

“What did you think of it, Morris?”

“You mean because the husband is such a monster? I kind of liked it. You wouldn’t believe the number of women who propositioned me after that book came out. I guess they wanted to experience a real male chauvinist pig before the species became extinct.”

“Did you oblige?”

“Nuh, I gave up screwing around a long time ago. I came to the conclusion that sex is a sublimation of the work instinct.” Hilary tittered. Thus encouraged, Morris elaborated: “The nineteenth century had its priorities right. What we really lust for is power, which we achieve by work. When I look around at my colleagues these days, what do I see? They’re all screwing their students, or each other, like crazy, marriages are breaking up faster than you can count, and yet nobody seems to be happy. Obviously they would rather be working, but they’re ashamed to admit it.”

“Maybe that’s Philip’s problem,” said Hilary, “but somehow I don’t think so.”

“Philip? You don’t mean to tell me that he’s been cheating on you?”

“Nothing serious—or not that I know of. But he has a weakness for pretty students. For some reason they seem to have a weakness for him. I can’t think why.”

“Power, Hilary. They wet their pants at the thought of his power. I bet this started when he got the chairmanship, right?”

“I suppose it did,” she admitted.

“How did you find out?”

“A girl tried to blackmail the Department over it. I’ll show you.”

She unlocked a leather writing case, and took from it what appeared to be the Xerox copy of an examination script. She passed it to Morris, who began to read.

Question 5. By what means did Milton try to “justify the ways of God to man” in “Paradise Lost?”

“You can always tell a weak examinee,” Morris observed. “First they waste time copying out the question. Then they take out their little rulers and rule lines under it.”

I think Milton succeeded very well in justifying the ways of God to man by making Satan such a horrible person, though Shelley said that Milton was of the Devil’s party without knowing it. On the other hand it is probably impossible to justify the ways of God to man because if you believe in God then he can do anything he likes anyway, and if you don’t there’s no point trying to justify Him. “Paradise Lost” is an epic poem in blank verse, which is another clever way of justifying the ways of God to man because if it rhymed it would seem too pat. My tutor Professor Swallow seduced me in his office last February, if I don’t pass this exam I will tell everybody. John Milton was the greatest English poet after Shakespeare. He knew many languages and nearly wrote “Paradise Lost” in Latin in which case nobody would be able to read it today. He locked the door and made me lie on the floor so nobody could see us through the window. I banged my head on the wastepaper bin. He also considered writing his epic poem about King Arthur and the knights of the Round Table, which is a pity he didn’t as it would have made a more exciting story.

“How did you get hold of this?” Morris asked, as he skimmed through the script.

“Someone in the Department sent it to me, anonymously. I suspect it was Rupert Sutcliffe. He was first marker on the paper. It was a resit, in September, a couple of years ago. The girl had failed in June. Sutcliffe and some of the other senior members of staff confronted Philip with it.”

“And?”

“Oh, he admitted he’d had the girl on his office carpet, like she said—and that rather nice Indian you burned a hole in with your cigar, do you remember?” Hilary’s tone was casual, even flippant, but it seemed to Morris that it concealed a deep hurt. “He claimed that she seduced him started unbuttoning her blouse in the middle of a consultation. As if he couldn’t have just told her to do it up again. The girl didn’t take it any further, fortunately. She left shortly afterwards—her family went abroad.”

“Is that all?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, is that the only time Philip has cheated on you?”

“How do I know? It’s the only time he’s been caught. But nobody I discussed it with seemed particularly surprised. And when I go to Department do’s I get a look that I can only describe as pitying.” They were both silent for a few moments. Then Morris said: “Hilary, are you trying to tell me that you’re unhappy?”

“I suppose I am.”

After another pause, Morris said: “If Désirée were sitting here now, she’d tell you to forget Philip, make your own life. Get yourself a job, find another guy.”

“It’s too late.”

“It’s never too late.”

“I took a postgraduate certificate of education course a few years ago,” said Hilary, “and as soon as I finished it, they started closing down schools in the city because of the falling birthrate. So there are no jobs. I do a little tutoring for the Open University, but it’s not a career. As to lovers, it’s definitely too late. You were my first and last, Morris.”

“Hey,” he said softly.

“Don’t be nervous, I’m not going to drag you upstairs for a trip down memory lane…”

“Too bad,” said Morris gallantly, but with a certain relief.

“For one thing, Philip will be back soon… No, I made my bed ten years ago, and I must lie in it, cold and lumpy as it often seems.”

“How d’you mean?”

“Well, you know, when the four of us were… carrying on. Philip wanted a separation, but I begged him to come back home, give our marriage another chance, go back to being where we were before, a reasonably contented married couple. I was weak. If I’d said, to hell with you, do what you like, I daresay he would have come crawling back with his tail between his legs inside a year. But because I asked him to come back, with no conditions, he, well, has me over a barrel, as you would say.”

“Do you still, ah, make it together?”

“Occasionally. But presumably he’s not satisfied. There was a story in the paper the other day, about a man who’d had a heart attack and asked his doctor if it was safe to have sexual intercourse, and the doctor said, ‘Yes, it’s good exercise, but nothing too exciting, just with your wife.’ “

Morris laughed.

“I thought it was funny, too,” said Hilary. “But when I read it out to Philip he scarcely cracked a smile. He obviously thought it was a deeply poignant story.”

Morris shook his head, and cut himself another slice of Brie. “I’m amazed, Hilary. Frankly, I always thought of you as the dominant partner in this marriage. Now Philip seems to be calling all the shots.”

“Yes, well, things have gone rather well for him lately. He’s started to make a bit of name for himself at last. He’s even started to look more handsome than he ever did before in his life.”

“I noticed,” said Morris. “The beard is a knockout.”

“It conceals his weak chin.”

“That silver-grey effect is very distinguished.”

“He has it touched up at the barber’s,” said Hilary. “But middle-age becomes him. It’s often the way with men. Whereas women find themselves hit simultaneously by the menopause and the long-term effects of childbearing. It doesn’t seem quite fair… Anyway, Philip managed to get his Hazlitt book finished at last.”

“I never knew about that,” Morris said.

“It’s had very little attention—rather a sore point with Philip. But it was a book, and he had it accepted by Lecky, Windrush and Bernstein just when the chair here became vacant, which was a bit of luck. He’d been effectively running the Department for years, anyway, so they appointed him. His horizons began to expand immediately. You’ve no idea of the mana the title of Professor carries in this country.”

“Oh, I have, I have!” said Morris Zapp.

“He started to get invited to conferences, to be external examiner at other universities, he got himself on the British Council’s list for overseas lecture tours. He’s always off travelling somewhere these days. He’s going to Turkey in a few weeks time. Last month it was Norway.”

That’s how it is in the academic world these days,” said Morris Zapp. “I was telling a young guy at the conference just this morning. The day of the single, static campus is over.”

And the single, static campus novel with it, I suppose?”

“Exactly! Even two campuses wouldn’t be enough. Scholars these days are like the errant knights of old, wandering the ways of the world in search of adventure and glory.”

“Leaving their wives locked up at home?”

“Well, a lot of the knights are women, these days. There’s positive discrimination at the Round Table.”

“Bully for them,” said Hilary gloomily. “I belong to the generation that sacrificed their careers for their husbands. I never did finish my MA, so now I sit at home growing fat while my silver-haired spouse zooms round the world, no doubt pursued by academic groupies like that Angelica Thingummy he brought here the other flight.”

“Al Pabst? She’s a nice girl. Smart, too.”

“But she needs a job, and Philip might be in a position to give her one some day. I could see that in her eyes as she hung on his every word.”

“Most of the conference she’s been going around with our old friend Dempsey.”

“Robin Dempsey? That’s a laugh. No wonder Philip was making snide comments about him at breakfast, he’s probably jealous. Perhaps Dempsey has a job to fill at Darlington. Shall I make some coffee?”

Morris helped her stack the dishwasher, and then they took their coffee into the lounge. While they were drinking it, Philip returned. “How was the banquet?” Morris asked.

“Awful, awful,” Philip groaned. He sank into a chair and covered his face with his hands. “I don’t want to talk about it. Busby deserves to be taken out and shot. Or hung in chains from the walls of Martineau Hall—that would be more appropriate.”

“I could have told you it would be awful,” said Hilary. “Why didn’t you, then?” said Philip irritably.

“I didn’t want to interfere. It’s your conference.”

“Was my conference. Thank God it’s over. It’s been a total disaster from start to finish.”

“Don’t say that, Philip,” said Morris. “After all, there was my paper.”

“It’s all very well for you, Morris. You’ve had a nice quiet evening at home. I’ve been listening to two degenerate oafs shrieking obscene songs into a microphone for the last two hours, and trying to look as if I was enjoying myself. Then they put me in some stocks and encouraged the others to throw bread rolls at me, and I had to look as if I was enjoying that too.”

Hilary crowed with laughter, and clapped her hands. “Oh, now I wish I’d gone,” she said. “Did they really throw rolls at you?”

“Yes, and I thought one or two of them did it in a distinctly vindictive fashion,” said Philip sulkily. “But I don’t want to talk about it anymore. Let’s have a drink.”

He produced a bottle of whisky and three glasses, but Hilary yawned and announced her intention of retiring. Morris said he would have to leave early the next morning to catch his plane to London, and perhaps he had better say goodbye to her now.

“Where are you off to, then?” Hilary asked.

“The Rockefeller villa at Bellagio,” he said. “It’s a kind of scholar’s retreat. But I also have a number of conferences lined up for the summer: Zurich, Vienna, maybe Amsterdam. Jerusalem.”

“Goodness,” said Hilary. “I see what you mean about errant knights.”