The History Man (12 page)

Howard goes on getting ready; later, he takes a bath himself. Afterwards, he walks back to the bedroom, a room that he has rearranged for the evening, and changes, putting on clean jeans, a purple vest shirt. Then he goes downstairs, and there is someone with Barbara in the kitchen. It is Myra Beamish, sitting at the pine table, slicing and breaking the long loaves of French bread. She looks up at him in the doorway; she is wearing a fluffy pink chiffon party dress, and her hair is neater and fresher and darker than usual; Howard realizes she is wearing a wig. ‘Oh, Myra,' he says. ‘Hello, Howard,' says Myra, ‘I hope you don't mind, I came early. I knew Barbara would be glad of some advance help. She has so much to do.' ‘That's good,' says Howard, ‘how would you like a drink.' ‘Oh, Howard,' says Myra, ‘I would most certainly love a drink.' A row of glasses stands ready poured and waiting for the evening; Howard picks one up, and carries it over to Myra, who smiles at him, and says ‘Ta.' ‘Where's Henry?' asks Howard. ‘Who knows?' says Myra. ‘Who knows about Henry?' ‘I thought you might,' says Howard, sitting down. ‘Does Barbara know all and everything about you?' asks Myra. ‘I don't,' says Barbara. ‘Nothing.' ‘Then why should I be expected to know about Henry?' ‘Oh, you're not,' says Barbara. ‘I haven't seen you since before the summer,' says Myra. ‘What did you do over the summer? Did you go away?' ‘No, we didn't,' says Barbara, ‘we stayed right here, and Howard finished a book.' ‘A book,' says Myra, ‘Henry tried to write a book. A very profoundly solemn book. On charisma.' ‘Fine,' says Howard, ‘Henry needs another book.' ‘Howard, Henry needs more than a book,' says Myra, cutting bread. ‘I must say I like your books better.' ‘You do?' asks Barbara. ‘Especially the sex one,' says Myra. ‘The only thing I never understand about that book is whether we could do all those perverse sex things now, or whether we had to wait until after the revolution.' ‘Christ, Myra,' says Barbara, ‘nothing in consenting sex is perverse.' ‘What's more,' says Howard, ‘they are the revolution.' ‘Oh boy,' says Myra, ‘you have such terrific revolutions. You've really improved revolution's image.' ‘I try,' says Howard.

Barbara gets up from the table. She says: ‘Howard's books are very empty but they're always on the right side.' ‘They're nice books,' says Myra, ‘I can almost understand them. More than I can say of Henry's.' ‘Perhaps that's what's wrong with them,' says Barbara. ‘Of course, they sell very well.' ‘What's the new book, Howard?' asks Myra. ‘What are you abolishing now?' ‘People,' says Barbara. ‘Barbara doesn't understand this book,' says Howard. ‘She's such an activist she thinks she can dispense with theory.' ‘Howard's such a theoretician now he thinks he can dispense with action,' says Barbara. ‘Why don't you tell Myra what's in the book? It's not often you meet someone who's really interested. You are really interested, aren't you, Myra?' ‘Of course I am,' says Myra. ‘It's called
The Defeat of Privacy
,' says Howard. ‘It's about the fact that there are no more private selves, no more private corners in society, no more private properties, no more private acts.' ‘No more private parts,' says Barbara. ‘Mankind is making everything open and accessible.' ‘Even me?' asks Myra. ‘Oh, we know all about you,' says Howard. ‘You see, sociological and psychological understanding is now giving us a total view of man, and democratic society is giving us total access to everything. There's nothing that's not confrontable. There are no concealments any longer, no mysterious dark places of the soul. We're all right there in front of the entire audience of the universe, in a state of exposure. We're all nude and available.' Myra looks up; she says, with a squeak, ‘You mean there isn't a me any more?' ‘You're there, you're present,' says Howard, ‘but you happen to be a conjunction of known variables, cultural, psychological, genetic.' ‘I think that's intellectual imperialism,' says Myra. ‘I don't think I like your book, Howard.' Barbara says, ‘But who is this me you're protecting? Isn't it just the old bourgeois personality cult, the idea that the individual just isn't accountable? Isn't that what the world's found the need to get away from?'

Myra casts her eyes, rather theatrically, around the kitchen, looking at the shelves with their Caso Pupo goblets, their French casseroles, their fish dishes, their dark brown pot labelled
Sel
; she says, with some dryness: ‘Well, it must be very nice to feel you've transcended bourgeois individualism. I can't say I have.' ‘But tell us more about this self you've got in there,' says Howard. ‘There's a busy, active agent, with will and motive and feeling and desire. But where does it all come from? Genes, culture, economic and social potential. It acts out of specified forces under specified conditions.' ‘I thought you always reckoned we were free,' says Myra. ‘I thought this was the big Kirk message.' ‘Ah, the big Kirk message,' says Barbara. ‘The point is, the self is in time, and it changes in time. The task is to realize our selves by changing the environment. To maximize historical potential to the uttermost.' ‘By being nude and available,' says Myra. ‘When history's inevitable,' says Howard, ‘lie back and enjoy it.' Myra burst into laughter; she says, ‘That's just what you are, Howard. An historical rapist. Prodding the future into everyone you can lay your hands on.' ‘How true,' says Barbara. ‘Oh, come on, Howard,' says Myra, ‘of course there's a me. I'm in here, I know.' ‘What's it like, Myra?' asks Howard. ‘It's not you, and it's private, and it's self-conscious, and it's very bloody fascinating.' ‘Oh, Myra,' says Howard. Myra suddenly puts down the knife; her laughter has gone. She says: ‘There's a me, and I'm sick of it.' The Kirks look at her; they notice that a long streak of a tear has established itself on Myra's nose. Barbara sits down next to her; she says, ‘What's up, Myra?' Myra reaches into the handbag she has brought, an old party handbag from the days when there were party handbags, black with cracked sequins sewn onto it. She takes out a green square of Kleenex and puts it to her nose. She says: ‘Actually, Kirks, I didn't come here just to help you cut bread. I came because I want you to help me. I want to tell you something. Before Henry gets here. I'm separating from him.' Barbara says: ‘You, Myra?' Myra sniffs. She says, ‘I know I'm an old bourgeois individualist who's not supposed to freak out. But, God, I need help. And I knew just who to come to. I thought, the Kirks. They're such a great couple.' The Kirks, the great couple, stare at each other, and feel like a couple. ‘Of course we'll help,' says Barbara, ‘we'll do everything we can.'

V

The Kirks and Beamishes have known each other for a very long time, since the days in Leeds, in fact, where Howard and Henry were graduate students together. Over the years in Watermouth they have seen a good deal of each other; it is one of those relationships which, based on an old friendship, keeps on running its course, even though the subscribing parties to it have all changed and have little really to say to each other. The Beamishes have come to the Kirk parties; the Kirks go to the Beamishes'; they talk a lot to one another, over the telephone and in person. There have even been closer intimacies. Once, in the days of 1968, when everything was unsettled, Howard went out to the farmhouse, after a telephone call from Myra. Henry was out teaching an evening class on Conflict in Modern Society, at an adult education centre in one of the nearby seaside towns; Myra was sitting on the sofa crying; Howard went to bed with her. It was a failed, unrepeated occasion; he remembers nothing about the event but the anxiety afterwards, with himself on his knees, naked, wiping all trace of his presence from the bedroom carpet, while Myra made the bed, hoovered the house, emptied the ashtrays and washed all the glasses, to make everything exactly and precisely as it was before. The space between them was growing wide then, and now seems immeasurable; today the Kirks have only to look at Myra, sitting there, a knife in her hand, in that old chiffon party dress no one else in their entire acquaintance would wear, to see how much they themselves have changed, developed, grown up with experience, since they first came to Watermouth. As for the Beamishes, they profess somehow to understand the Kirks, to be privileged intimates; what they do not understand is that the Kirks they understand are people of several protean distillations back, people they themselves cannot remember ever having been.

Meanwhile the Beamishes, like some extraordinary historical measuring rod, have managed to persist just as they were when the Kirks first found them in Watermouth. Enormities have torn through the world, tempers have altered; the Beamishes have become different only by their obstinacy in staying the same, living on in a strange cocoon of odd experience which strains them without altering them. Or have they altered? The Kirks look at Myra, as she cries in their kitchen, her outrage stated. Howard remembers her tearful unease of years ago; he thinks, disconfirmingly, of Henry, and what he has become. For Henry has now grown fat; he has taken to talking in a loud, heavy voice; he has become noticeably lazy. In the department, in the common room, when intellectual matters are discussed, he has acquired a manner of shifting conversation round to questions of manure and pasture and the state of nature in general. When Howard or others try to push him on sociological or political matters, he looks pained. Once, in Howard's study, as they had gone through finals marks together, he had begun to cry a little and accuse Howard of damaging his career, in ways he could not quite name; Howard, it seemed, by doing what Henry had always intended to do, had stopped Henry from doing it himself. ‘That's foolish,' Howard had said; ‘I've become foolish,' Henry had said. And Myra, too, has darkened and become stranger; she noticeably drinks more, and talks frenziedly at parties, as if there were nowhere else in the world to talk. ‘Why?' he says to her. ‘Why do you want to leave him?'

Myra's expression is blank but slightly mystified, as if she had not expected such a question; surely the Kirks have an instinctive comprehension of all marital disillusion. ‘I suppose for the most obvious of all reasons,' she says, ‘I want the chance to exist, which I've been denied. I'd like to assert my identity. That is, Howard, if you've left me with one.' ‘Of course,' says Howard. ‘Where is it, then?' asks Myra. Barbara says: ‘Myra, has Henry done something to you?' ‘No,' says Myra, picking up the knife, and starting slicing at the bread again, ‘he never does anything to me. That's why he's so boring. If I were asked to define my condition, I'd say boredom. I'm bored because he never does anything to me, and nor does anyone or anything else. Am I making sense?' ‘I think so, Myra,' says Barbara. ‘Doesn't he sleep with you?' ‘Oh, it's not that,' says Myra. ‘He does, in his own trite way. But, contrary to prevailing opinion, that's no revelation. Someone should write a book on the boredom of orgasm. Why don't you, Howard?' ‘Howard's not bored,' says Barbara. ‘Look, have you tried anyone else?' Myra, her face a little red, looks down at the table. ‘That's just not the issue,' says Myra. ‘There's no one else.' ‘You're not leaving him for anyone?' ‘No,' says Myra, ‘I'm leaving him for me.' ‘What will you do?' asks Barbara. ‘I don't know,' says Myra. ‘It's push, not pull, that's driving me.' ‘But what is the issue?' asks Howard. ‘What is it you want that you don't have?' ‘Well, obviously,' says Myra, with a little impatience, ‘absence from Henry.'

The Kirks, compassionate instructors in the arts of separation, look at each other. ‘I don't think you've told us much yet,' says Howard. ‘You must have been thinking about this for a long time. You must know what it is your marriage isn't expressing.' ‘It isn't expressing anything at all,' says Myra. ‘You might say it was silent.' ‘But you're not silent,' says Howard, ‘you've something in yourself to be said.' ‘Yes,' says Myra. ‘Ouch.' ‘And Henry?' asks Howard. ‘Does he feel the same?' ‘Howard,' says Myra, ‘have you inspected Henry lately? Don't you find him banal? Don't you think really he's become ridiculous?' ‘I've worried about Henry,' says Howard. ‘I'm concerned for him.' ‘Well, can't you imagine me wanting to be free of him?' ‘But haven't you talked about it? A marriage is a thing in common; you have something to do with his nature,' says Barbara. ‘I think that sounds a nasty question,' says Myra, ‘as if I'm to blame. But he shapes me much more than I do him. The man shapes the woman. He has the advantages. He sets the pace.' ‘But you've not talked,' says Howard. ‘No,' says Myra, ‘there's nothing to talk about. You always said marriage was an archaic institution. Now you seem to want me to stay with him.' ‘Oh, no,' says Howard. ‘Howard doesn't mean that,' says Barbara, ‘he just wants to get into the question of where things went wrong.' Myra begins to cry again. She says: ‘I thought you'd agree with me.' ‘We're not trying to stop you leaving him,' says Barbara, ‘we want you to understand what you're doing.' ‘I think I do understand that,' says Myra, ‘I'm quitting while the going's good.' ‘Have you thought of asking what's wrong with Henry?' asks Barbara. ‘Trying to help him?' ‘I've been trying to help him ever since we married,' says Myra. ‘You've been married as long as we have. It was the year after, wasn't it? You know what things are like.' Howard looks at Barbara; he says, ‘Ah, but ours hasn't been one marriage. It's been several.'

Myra sits at the table, and contemplates this undoubted truth for a moment. She looks up at the Kirks, standing, one on each side of her, custodians of the coupled relationship, concerned, a striking pair. She says, ‘Oh, you two. I don't know how you do it.' ‘How we do what?' asks Barbara. ‘Have such a good relationship,' Myra says warmly. ‘I wouldn't exactly boast,' says Barbara. ‘Do you remember when Howard and I split up in Leeds?' ‘Of course,' says Myra, ‘but you talked to each other and got back together again. You learned to deal with each other. We never will.' Howard says, ‘Myra, everyone's life looks more successful from the outside. Ours has been a fight. We've had our disasters.' He takes Myra's glass, and pours some more wine into it. ‘But you bounce back,' says Myra. ‘Thanks a lot, love.' ‘I suppose it's a question of being determined to keep up with every stage of life,' says Barbara, ‘of never relaxing.' ‘You've just been more mature about it than the rest of us,' says Myra. The word ‘mature' rings pleasantly with the Kirks; they look at each other with some pleasure. ‘I think yours is the only successful academic marriage I know,' says Myra. ‘What's wrong with the others?' asks Howard. ‘You know what's wrong,' says Myra. ‘Look around you at all these sad pairs. How can they work? The man goes out to the university, his mind's alive, he's fresh with new ideas.' ‘Sometimes it's the woman,' says Barbara. ‘Even the women are men,' says Myra. ‘He talks all day to pretty students who know all about structuralism, and have read Parsons and Dahrendorf, and can say “charisma” properly, and understand the work he's doing. Then he comes home to a wife who's been dusting and cleaning. He says “Parsons” and “Dahrendorf”, and she says “Huh?” What can he do? He either gives her a tutorial, and thinks she's pretty B minus, or he shuts up and eats the ratatouille.' ‘She should work,' says Barbara. ‘Oh, fine,' says Myra, ‘except she keeps getting older, and the students manage to stay eighteen. And then comes the bit where all your friends start separating and divorcing, because the husbands run off with the alpha students who can say “charisma”.' ‘Do you think Henry wants to run off with an alpha student?' asks Barbara. Myra looks at her. ‘No,' she says, ‘not Henry, he hasn't that much ambition. He might sort of stumble into walking off slowly with a beta student. Maybe I'd like him better if he did.'