Eating People is Wrong (21 page)

But tonight she would be at the Christmas Ball. Who with? Oliver? Treece? She would be telling people about him, and how glad she was to be rid of him. She’d be having a wonderful time,
and here he was moping in his bedroom. And, after all, the note was in part a retraction. She was sorry. He would go and let her tell him so.

At the Town Hall the Christmas Ball was well under way. Upstairs, perhaps, in the darkened room, affairs of high civic importance were being wrangled by councillors and aldermen, late at their
duties; down below in the ballroom, let out by the night for a not intolerable sum, all was abandon. Big brass ashtrays like spittoons stood about the floor in large numbers. An air of rather
frowsy jollity depended from the paper streamers. It cost Louis sixpence to put his coat in the cloak-room, a sum he did not willingly disemburse; he wished he had not worn it, though the night was
cool, it being early December. As people had to get drunk before eleven o’clock, when the bar closed (or else smuggle in their own liquor), they had set to work early. Emma was not to be seen
in the press. Louis, with some wit, looked into the bar, and observed there an august party: the stout Vice-Chancellor, full of bonhomie, a scattering of professors, Dr Masefield, Merrick, and, at
the end of the row, Treece. They were having their photograph taken, a distinguished group. ‘Grin, gentlemen, grin,’ ordered the Vice-Chancellor. ‘No need to look miserable. The
next round’s my privilege.’ Treece, affecting a nervous smile, was clearly ill at ease. ‘Further forward, you, please,’ said the photographer. Treece moved forward.
‘Now back; no,
back
, I said, a bit more.’ Treece tripped over his feet and looked ungainly. ‘Smiles all round,’ said the photographer, and there was a great,
explosive flash. Amused by this little comedy, Louis withdrew and walked along the outer fringe of the dance floor towards the stage. He suddenly saw Emma, sitting in a blue basket chair, her feet
thrust out, drinking lemonade through a straw and talking with a girl named Anne Grant, a creature with a very short haircut and a sharp, pixie-like face. ‘If he’s as bad as that, why
does he show himself to people?’ Anne was saying.

‘Who?’ asked Louis, coming up. Emma turned round, and flushed, and said that she thought Louis did not like dances; and Louis flushed, and said that he didn’t, and asked her to
dance, simply in order to separate her from Anne Grant. ‘I don’t dance very well,’ he said when they got on to the floor. ‘I can only go straight; I don’t know how to
do the corners.’

‘Well, we can stop and come back when we get to the end of the High Street,’ said Emma.

‘What’s this one?’ said Louis.

‘A waltz,’ said Emma.

‘That’s in threes, isn’t it?’ asked Louis, dancing on his own for a moment, to get the beat, ‘Right, come on, quick. No, we’ve missed it. Try again . . .
now
!’ And off they went into the throng, dancing straight across the room, banging up against the wall, stopping, starting again. Louis pulled Emma closely to him until he was
practically inside her dress. ‘So
this
is dancing,’ he said. ‘I like it.’ They moved up under the dais, beneath the band. ‘I’m sorry about the other
night,’ said Louis. ‘So am I,’ said Emma, saying what he hoped she would say. ‘I’ve regretted it very much, as I told you in that note.’ ‘Thank you for
that,’ said Louis. ‘I know I seemed cruel; I haven’t been able to forget it. But I was right, wasn’t I, now honestly?’ ‘Why were you?’ asked Louis.
‘It’s so hard for a woman, Louis,’ said Emma. ‘I like men and want them as my friends, but they always want to make love or something. I don’t want to hurt them, but I
don’t want to hurt myself. Love is something other. I doubt if I’m capable of it. Sometimes I want to try it, but I suppose I’m too afraid.’ They hit up suddenly against the
wall, turned round, set off again.

‘I’m a mess,’ said Emma. ‘You’re better away from me. I’m just terrified of the whole business, I suppose.’

‘You’re like a child of eighteen,’ said Louis. ‘You have to come to terms with the world. You can’t go on like some young virgin who can ignore all men until at
last her prince comes and the air trembles, and trumpets sound, and you know this must be love. It’s not like that. People like you ought to live in a different world; you’re a menace
to the rest of us, when we run up against you, because we count for nothing with you. We’re so plebeian about love, aren’t we?’

‘I suppose you’re trying to find out whether I’m a virgin,’ said Emma. ‘Well, I don’t go talking about my sex life to all and sundry.’

‘I am not all and sundry. I’m
me
,’ cried Louis exasperated. ‘What does one have to do to get to know you, to come into your world? Have a blood-test? I don’t
mind. Just set me an examination and I’ll take it.’

‘There isn’t any examination,’ said Emma. ‘You have to take me as I am. I don’t want to do anything unless I’m really in love, and I’m not with you, and
that’s it.’

‘In any case,’ said Louis cunningly, ‘I don’t think you are a virgin. I think you just think like one. When you get to my age, you don’t meet virgins any
more.’

‘Really, you have a terrible cheek,’ said Emma.

‘What about you?’ demanded Louis. ‘You adopt this terrible feminine hauteur, so that it’s simply impossible to get near to you, and you won’t respond emotionally to
anything or anyone. I know I’m as bad, but it’s you we’re trying to sort out. If you don’t touch up against people, you are nothing; you never define yourself, you never
exist.’

‘That’s a terrible thing to say,’ said Emma.

‘It’s a terrible thing to be,’ said Louis. ‘But the trouble is, I am too.’

They hit up against another couple. All about them, in the wide, darkened area of the dance hall, couples were disclosing their Christmas plans to interested playmates: this one was off
delivering letters for the Post Office; that one skiing down wet snowslopes in Austria. He would go off home, that awful place; and Emma would be gone, for five cruel weeks, an insurmountable
interval in which people are forgotten, personal impacts elided from the memory, to her family’s metropolitan urbanities. Resentment arose. All the time, around him, intellectuals moaned of
the breakdown of working-class culture, that vigorous healthy life, bellies close to the soil, that they believed themselves cruelly severed from; as for Louis, he was in the damn thing, and all he
wanted was to get out. If one married on one’s level, one was tied. But an intelligent and sophisticated wife (an Emma) could give every entry that was needed by a man of talents into finer
society, could tell him what clothes to buy, what to do about one’s dandruff, what courses to order in restaurants, how one wine tasted differently from another, what ties to wear with what
suit.

‘Are you going away for Christmas?’ he asked Emma.

‘I’m going home,’ said Emma. ‘What about you?’

‘I don’t know yet,’ said Louis. ‘Where’s your home?’

‘Oh, no,’ said Emma. ‘I’m not telling you. You’re quite capable of just arriving . . .’

‘Who
me
?’ cried Louis, aghast, though the comment was true enough. ‘Well, I hope you’ll think about me.’

‘Why should I?’ said Emma.

‘Because I love you,’ said Louis. For a moment Emma strove with herself to face this fact and respond to it, but she couldn’t; all there was was pity, and a scrap of
distaste.

All at once they were among the band; Louis, lost in amorous transports, had failed to watch where they were going and now the musicians were scattering as the pair of them flailed mercilessly
around, knocking over music stands. ‘Oh,’ said Emma, detaching herself and hurrying to the side. Louis stood firm in the middle of the disaster, apologizing sweetly. By the time he had
pushed his way through to the side there was nothing to be seen of Emma. He went and looked into the bar. She was not there, but, leaning against a doorpost, talking to a pretty girl in a very
short dress, with her mouth touched up with black lipstick, was Walter Oliver.

‘Have you seen Emma Fielding?’ he asked Oliver.

‘Come and watch me do a seduction,’ said Oliver. ‘This girl has put herself in severe moral danger, and I’m it. Come on,
amigo
. Tell her what a fine fellow I
am.’

‘Yes, he is,’ said Louis feebly.

‘Good God! Not like that,’ said Oliver. ‘I want her virtue, not her vote. Try some of that old moonlight on the water stuff, or a bit of crap about Ceres and the essential
fertility of the world. Come on, man, boost me.’

‘I think he’s horrible,’ said the girl, turning her black-painted pout to Louis.

‘Luckily for you, I am,’ said Oliver. ‘OK,
amigo
, slope off now and I’ll get on with my idyll.’

‘I’m looking for my partner,’ said Louis.

‘Try the river,’ said Oliver.

Treece came by at this moment, on his way back from the dance floor; his tie had come untied and he looked dismally unhappy. He had been doing the Gay Gordons with Viola. Viola was a little
tight, and had refused to walk up and down at the bit where you walk up and down; she just wanted to spin round all the time. Finally, she had fallen down and had had to be taken to the sidelines
to recover. Treece had never really wanted to come to the ball in the first place. It was the Vice-Chancellor, who spent the weeks before these student occasions in indefatigable effort, gathering
up members of the faculty to go along in order, as he liked to express it, ‘to put up a bit of a show’, who had tempted him here. The Vice-Chancellor, like all vice-chancellors, had
clear ideas of what a university should look like, and taste like; vice-chancellors all share in common a Platonic ideal for a university. For one thing, it should be
big
. People should be
coming to look at it all the time. There should be a special place for parking Rolls-Royces. There should be big sports grounds, a science building designed by Basil Spence, and more and more
students coming every year. There should be new faculties – of Business Administration, of Aeronautical Engineering, of Sanitation, of Social Dancing. Vice-chancellors want big universities
and a great many faculties; professors want small universities and only the liberal arts and pure sciences. Vice-chancellors always seem to win. Seeing Treece now, he left the local dignitaries
whom he was buttering up at the bar, took Treece familiarly by the arm, and said jovially: ‘I think the little lady here has set her heart on you, my boy,’ pointing to Viola, who was
approaching. ‘Oh, Viola, nice dress; didn’t get that out here in the provinces, I’ll be bound. Changed your hair, too? Like it, Viola, like it.’

‘Thank you kindly,’ said Viola in a quaint voice. She turned to Treece and murmured, ‘Christ, can’t we get out of here?’

‘Not yet,’ said Treece.

‘Come and meet the Lord-Lieutenant of the County,’ said the Vice-Chancellor. ‘Very interested in boys’ dubs. Think he thinks this is one.’

They went over and met the Lord-Lieutenant, who asked Treece if he rowed. They met the Lord Mayor, who asked Treece if he was active in politics. Town and gown rarely met, and when they did both
were embarrassed. Treece now asked the Lord Mayor if
he
rowed, and whether he had time to read very much. Finally, conscious of having done good, they retired, Viola and Treece, to the bar
for a quick drink. It was really the first time he had spoken to Viola since her party. ‘Stuart, you’re getting fat, you know,’ said Viola. He speculated about this strange remark
for a moment and then recognized it for what it was, the comment of an eccentric old spinster. He looked at Viola in surprise, and noticed, for the first time, the little lines around her eyes.

They took their drinks and sat down. ‘You and me last night!’ said Viola, raising her glass.

‘It wasn’t last night,’ said Treece.

‘Well, whenever it was then,’ said Viola.

For a moment nothing was said. Then Viola said: ‘Take that squishy-looking cigarette out of your mouth, Stuart, and talk to me properly. Don’t you want to talk to me?’

‘Yes, of course,’ said Treece. ‘What shall we talk about?’

‘I’ve
missed
you,’ said Viola.

‘Have you?’ said Treece. He wondered what she’d do for herself, and suddenly felt sorry for her future. She had had her hair cut in a new way that made her ears stick out
– it was called the
gamin
look – and it made women look like little boys. He found her appearance affected and annoying, and he didn’t like to see her drunk.

‘Poor old Stuart,’ said Viola; ‘you get such a frightened look when you think you’re committed to something; but don’t worry, you aren’t. I just take a
friendly interest in you, though.’

‘I know,’ said Treece, ‘and I’m glad you do.’

‘But you do like me, don’t you?’

‘Yes, of course I do. I’m your friend.’

‘Yes, but who isn’t – at least, on
your
side.’

‘Well, I know, but you mean a lot to me, Viola,’ said Treece, ‘and I wasn’t just mucking about that time.’

‘However,’ said Viola, ‘it’s stupid to talk about situations of this sort, because when you’ve mulled over them they always seem less satisfactory than they are.
Everything has proved that, if you’re careful, actions don’t have consequences. If you changed my life because of meeting me it would wound me. I’d rather change my life to please
you, because at least you would have to take the responsibility, and I’ve got nothing to lose. But what can you make of people who don’t make actions of their thoughts? They’re
nothing; they’re impotent, they’re invisible. We’re invisible, Stuart; we try to live our lives as though they don’t count, as though they go unnoticed.’

‘Yes, that’s true,’ said Treece.

‘Of course, it doesn’t worry me,’ said Viola, ‘but you have to know it, don’t you?’ She looked pointedly into her empty glass.

‘Another?’ said Treece.

‘Please,’ said Viola. ‘Oh, I want to ask you something. Did you send the ghoul down?’

‘No,’ said Treece.

‘And then you say you’re my friend. I
knew
you wouldn’t. I forecast this to myself.’

‘It simply wasn’t necessary,’ said Treece. ‘He’s going to start work again.’