Eating People is Wrong (15 page)

‘I do,’ said Viola. ‘People don’t say things they don’t mean. I know I’m only a woman . . .’

‘The point of all this display,’ said Lionel Marshall mischievously, ‘is that she’s in love with one of her students, named Louis Bates.’

‘I’m not. I’m not. I hate him,’ said Viola, and, in tears, she swept out of the room.

III

Some parties improve in the absence of their hostess, but this one did not. The most interesting people left, and the least interesting took advantage of the permissive
atmosphere. Was it all his fault? Treece wondered. At least an apology seemed necessary. He looked in the kitchen. She was not there. He tried the next room, which was her bedroom, and found her
standing there alone, looking out into the darkness. She turned and, seeing him, said, ‘I want to talk to you, Stuart. Shut the door.’ He did, and she crossed the room until she stood
in front of him.

‘I’m annoyed with you,’ she said.

Her aggression made him uneasy. ‘Why?’ he demanded.

‘Oh, you
know
why. This Louis Bates thing. All I want to say to you is, Professor Treece, he upsets me, and I think you ought to give him another tutor. I can’t go on with
him. I am
not
in love with him. That’s ridiculous.’

‘You might be without knowing . . .’ said Treece.

‘Honestly, how could I be? He gives me the shivers. He’s sexually unpleasant, Stuart. I call him The Solitary Raper. He’s like a walking phallic symbol.’

‘Well, you don’t have to look at him, Viola, do you, if you don’t want to? And you must give him a fair trial.’

‘I’ve no intention of giving him any trial at all,’ said Viola.

‘Women are so cruel,’ said Treece. ‘Think how he must feel.’

‘Women
have
to be abominably cruel, Stuart,’ said Viola. ‘You know nothing about it. They’re pursued with offers. Look, Stuart. It’s the hardest thing in
life for a woman to face, but she has to do it; she has to hurt, hurt, hurt people all the time. She can’t afford to feel sorry for them. I feel sorry for lots of men. I feel sorry for
you.’

‘For me?’ said Treece.

‘Yes, of course. I suppose all women do,’ said Viola. ‘You’re a dedicated man; that makes me admire you. But your life is arid, and you know it, and you go about with
that little-boy-lost look on your face as if you want to turn at last to someone, but dare not for fear of being accused of being unprofessional.’

‘Oh, but . . .’ said Treece.

‘Well, perhaps that’s unfair. Whenever I look at you I think of Simone Weil’s definition of the religious man – “Morality will not let him breathe.” But the
trouble with your morality is that it won’t let other people breathe either! You’re fair in a way I can never be. You’re a very honest man; you weigh up and judge and speculate
and criticize. You’re an insult to us all!’

‘It’s hard to see yourself from that far away,’ said Treece slowly. ‘One can always satisfy oneself, I suppose; it’s other people one can’t satisfy. One
thinks one’s way of life is sound and then comes an external vision to say: you are a fake, you are nothing, you’re animal and must die, and no one will know you were ever there.
It’s an intimation of the whole absurdity of what you are and do. It’s the worst kind of despair.’

‘I know, pet, I know.’ Viola put her hands on his forearms and looked up at him with clear grey eyes. ‘You’re a funny person. You live so tensely, don’t you?’
Even as Treece perceived that this was a different Viola, simply a woman, who could end suffering, he was kissing her. He fumbled ineffectually with the front of her dress. ‘There’s a
zip at the back,’ said Viola. ‘You’re supposed to find that out for yourself; but it’s an expensive dress.’ She slipped out of the dress.

‘I say, that’s a nice brassière,’ said Treece, very impressed. ‘It’s broderie anglaise,’ said Viola, flattered. She slipped out of the
brassière.

‘I was so dulled, so stupid, I needed this so much,’ said Treece.

‘Yes, Stuart, I know.’

‘You’re so good to me,’ said Treece. ‘Do you like me?’

‘Of course I do,’ said Viola, ‘or I wouldn’t be here now. Why are you so humble? You don’t trust anyone, do you? You’re afraid that secretly they don’t
really respect Professor Treece as he ought to be respected.’

‘Stop it,’ said Treece. ‘There are no Professor Treeces here.’

Viola giggled. ‘It was Tanya, you know . . .’ she said.

‘Tanya, I know what?’

‘Tanya who said I ought to do this.’

‘She did? Why?’ said Treece, rolling over.

‘Well, I’m such a mess about this. She said I ought to, and that you . . . She takes a great interest in me.’

‘Are you and she lovers?’ asked Treece.

‘No; she’s never done
anything
to me,’ said Viola. ‘It’s just one of these stories that people put about, people who gossip like me. She has affairs with
men; she’s having one with Herman. I don’t think she enjoys them, but she has them.’

‘Do you enjoy them?’

‘I enjoy this. Do you like me?’

‘Very much,’ said Treece. All the same, somehow, his excitement began to diminish. He felt slightly disturbed by all this; it reminded him that it was she, with him, who was
involved. All at once the room began to boom with moral reverberations. Notions of responsibility spilled lazily about his head as he lay there on the bed.

‘That bloody coffee,’ said Viola. ‘I put some on. Fasten me up at the back, my baby.’ My baby, Treece noted in astonishment; there it was again, as always. Treece was the
sort of man that people always wanted to mother, or father: indeed, as someone had once said of him in the old bohemian days in London: ‘Some men go around leaving illegitimate children;
Stuart leaves illegitimate parents.’ Treece had never exactly wished this, but it was a concomitant of his character. ‘I wish you could stay, but all these people . . . Can you come
back?’ Here, Treece saw, was a future, a complex of consequences; and it meant, too, problems of discipline within the faculty; after all, what he had done for her he ought to do for every
member of the department. So now, as he repeatedly kissed her on the end of the nose as she put on her dress, he was stomaching a desire to hurry from the room, leap aboard his motorized bicycle,
drive madly to somewhere safe – for this, which had once been safety, was now safety no more. He had to make the point to her; it was only fair. She was sweet, she was gentle, she was good.
When she had first been appointed, she had looked like a damp, frail figure rescued from a shipwreck, needing a protector. It was an illusion; at the interview Treece had observed that Viola had a
strong line in articulation, an assurance of opinion, which had earned her the appointment. But ever since then Treece had really responded to the other side of Viola, the frightened girl; he
hardly granted that she was a woman, a modern woman with opinions that ran counter to his own, that she was of a generation that he felt he didn’t even understand, the fifties, the Willoughby
lot. When he thought of this he trembled: but he had to make his position plain. ‘This doesn’t mean I agree with your opinions,’ he said. They went into the kitchen.
‘Don’t worry,’ said Viola rather grimly. ‘Intellectually, you’re in the clear.’

5

I

P
EOPLE WHO
think that architecture is a facet of the soul, and are concerned about what sort of house they dwell in (they have to be people with money
to believe this) all, nowadays, either live in Georgian houses, or want to, or would want to if it were not so inconvenient. The house in which Emma Fielding lived was, as all her visitors
squealed, a collectors’ piece. It was Georgian, civilized, spacious, and dense; corridors gave on to charming rooms and staircases. It was such a good example that people had already formed
an organization to protest against its demolition; no one had tried to demolish it yet, but if you are interested in houses, you know what the world is like; and it is not like you. The fact was,
however, that Emma had chosen the house not because
it
was a collectors’ piece, but because the people who owned it, the Bishops, were; Emma collected people. When, a little time ago,
a song came out called ‘Eating People is Wrong’, Emma felt a twinge of conscience: she agreed with the proposition, but was not sure that she exactly lived up to it. When she had first
gone to the house to see the room, she had been greeted by Mrs Bishop, frail, white-haired, with a deaf-aid. The flat consisted of a bedroom and a living room, and a peculiar stunted sofa.

‘That’s rather nice,’ said Emma, pointing to the sofa.

‘Yes, dear,’ said Mrs Bishop. ‘It’s a chaise short.’

‘Do you get the sun in here?’

“No, dear; it’s the wrong side of the house for the sun,’ said Mrs Bishop. ‘Still, it’s an ill wind, you know, and there is one compensation: it’s on the
right side of the house for the shade. You look thin, don’t you, dear? What have you been worrying about?’

‘Nothing,’ said Emma.

‘Nonsense. I can tell you’re a worrier. You’re worried about not being married.’

‘You’re quite wrong,’ said Emma.

‘Of course you are. All girls do. You aren’t married, are you?’

‘No,’ said Emma.

‘Well, then, that’s what it is.’

‘I don’t want to marry; I’m not equipped to marry,’ protested Emma.

‘Don’t be silly,’ said Mrs Bishop. ‘Everybody’s equipped to marry. It’s very simple equipment.’

‘I mean I’m simply not ready to settle down. I have so much to do first.’

‘Well,’ said Mrs Bishop, ‘if you’re going to be like that. We don’t allow animals or children, dear . . .’

‘I must be careful not to have any,’ said Emma.

‘I used to be a big friend of Marie Stopes,’ said Mrs Bishop. ‘And you’ll be surprised how useful it’s come in since. And no musical instruments or firearms; and I
don’t know what you use, but don’t block the toilet with sanitary napkins, will you?’

‘No,’ said Emma.

‘I know these rules seem terrible, but one has to have them; and don’t get the wrong impression – there are lots of things you
can
do, if you just think about it,’
said Mrs Bishop. ‘Well, I’ll tell my husband we’re having you. He thinks a lot of what I say. In fact, he thinks more of it than I do.’

One got through life, Emma believed, by convincing oneself that each stage was a
temporary
condition, a momentary expedient, accepted half-heartedly and just for the time being.
Compromise was shocking, but she was always doing it; and there were unexpected rewards. This time, in order to have the Bishops, one went without the harmonium. Secret harmonium playing would be
quickly detected; and there was nowhere to hide it; the wardrobe, though large for a wardrobe (you could probably have hidden another wardrobe in it), was small for even the most self-effacing
harmonium. Whatever her happier qualities, moreover, Mrs Bishop proved to be a practised investigator. She had a metaphysical sense of evil operating in the world around her, even in her own house,
and she was perpetually on a look-out for the world’s corruption (Is it you? Is it you? she seemed to ask as she peered around her, wondering if her tenants were really married, whether her
neighbours were pickpockets or prostitutes), not because she condemned it, but because she was interested in it. What worried her was not the actual sin, which she encouraged, but the failure to
repent afterwards. She was a true provincial Nonconformist; when you looked at her the word Nonconformity took on shape. She belonged to one of those small vestigial Christian sects that meet in
rooms over teashops. ‘We had some lovely sins today, dear,’ she would cry, knocking on Emma’s door on Sunday evening, fresh from church in her fur coat and fox fur, a frail
figure, yet (as Emma came to realize) as strong as a horse, in character and physical endurance. The church she attended made a practice of public confession, so that, as Mrs Bishop explained, you
not only had the pleasure of
doing
the sin, but the second, more sophisticated, pleasure of talking about it afterwards. As the weeks went on, the confessions got more lurid; competition
grew up as to who could commit adultery the most times in one week. ‘Thirteen times,’ said Mrs Bishop one week. ‘You wouldn’t think anybody had it in them, would you?’
‘Perhaps he was lying in order to have something to confess next week,’ suggested Emma. It was Emma’s view that it was more Christian not to sin at all than to sin and repent, but
Mrs Bishop speedily disabused her on that score. ‘Who did they kill the fatted calf for, the prodigal son or the other?’ she demanded. Emma was reminded of a remark made to her by Herr
Schumann, the German student, who had said once, meeting her at coffee, ‘I like the English. They have the most rigid code of immorality in the world.’

The house itself was a citadel of the old guard – frondy, ornate, bubbling with flowers. Pianola rolls filled a cupboard on the stairs, the faded titles recalling romantic operas. In the
lavatory there was a large wooden chest, and when it was opened (it was unlocked) it revealed to Emma a collection of Edwardian hats, with great brims, and ostrich plumes; when she was using the
toilet Emma would sit there and try them on. The Edwardian period was their period; if only there hadn’t been that war, what wonders, said Mrs Bishop, would have happened. ‘People like
us would have come to our own, you know, if the Hun hadn’t . . . You know, it’s terrible when your generation isn’t the one that’s on top any more. Perhaps it’s wrong
to make a virtue out of the age one lived in, just because one did live in it; it’s such an unfashionable age just now, too. But it was a more civilized age than this one; it was so much more
peaceable.’

‘But wasn’t it very vulgar?’ asked Emma.

‘I don’t think so. I detest vulgarity; I won’t have it in my house; and people then were very conscious of what vulgarity was. If you were not a gentleman, it was no use being
anything.’

‘It seems to me it’s vulgar to call things vulgar in that way.’

‘Oh, well, I liked it, but then I’m naïve,’ said Mrs Bishop. ‘I heard a famous writer on the radio say how awful it must be for intelligent young men now that they
can’t have servants, because now they have to do all the things they shouldn’t have to waste time doing. I understand that; I don’t suppose anyone much younger than me
can
,
any more.’