The Needle's Eye (39 page)

‘I don’t really know. She’s so vague about it. Why did she say it was, Herbert?’

‘Wasn’t it because she and some of her friends disapproved of the Union trying to dictate terms about the size of the portions of mashed potato?’

‘No, no, don’t be absurd, that was months ago, she didn’t resign over that, I think it was something to do with the Union locking her Director of Studies in his study because he said they couldn’t refuse to submit at least one piece of written work per term. And then they let him out again because he burst into tears and said he had to get home, it was his wedding anniversary. I couldn’t quite make out which Victoria objected to more strongly, the fact that he’d been locked up in the first place, or the fact that they’d let him out again for such a non-political reason. Anyway, she said she didn’t want to be represented by people who did that sort of thing, and resigned. But of course she couldn’t really resign because she’d already paid up for a year, so she went to the Union office and demanded a refund, and they wouldn’t give it her, and so she and some of her friends locked the Union officials into the Union office, and continued to demand their refund with menaces. I always knew she shouldn’t have gone to that place, one could tell there’d be trouble, but I suppose I thought she’d like it.’

‘Perhaps she does like it?’

‘Perhaps she does. I suppose she could hardly
sound
as though she
were enjoying it, could she? I do really find it all quite deplorable, don’t you?’

‘Did she get her money back?’

‘No, of course she didn’t, on the contrary, she was threatened with expulsion by her Director of Studies if she went on making a nuisance of herself.’

‘Her Director of Studies sounds a curious character.’

‘Oh, I don’t know, she thinks he’s very good, she thought it was quite reasonable to do one piece of written work a term. But it is a bit worrying. Perhaps you could give her a little lecture on Union Security when she gets home.’

‘I must admit I’m as disaffected as she is by the idea of Union Security at the moment. And also one must admit that she had a point, in not wanting to associate with a Union who acted so unconstitutionally.’

‘But they don’t believe in constitutions. They believe in direct action.’

‘Then they can hardly have much feeling about Union Security can they?’

‘I rather gathered that the Union is taking the line that it needn’t offer to protect her, as she had already proffered her resignation. So she said that as they had refused to accept it, they had either to stand up for her or give her her money back. So she was back to square one.’

‘You seem remarkably unconcerned.’

‘Well, it is all rather comic, don’t you think?’

‘I suppose it might even prove educational? And there’s no real question of expulsion, is there?’

‘No, of course there isn’t,’ said Herbert Cookson, who had been listening to this interchange with amusement. ‘Certainly not. I wrote to Bert Hammond, who’s up there, and he said it was all absolute nonsense, nobody took it seriously at all. They just play games, that’s all.’

‘She could set up a breakaway union, if she’s got enough support. Send her along to me when she gets back and I’ll tell her how to do it.’

‘I don’t know if it’ll even be necessary next year, because the present lot of representatives will be leaving, and the next year isn’t so militant. They’ve all quietened down recently, because they’re doing their finals.’

‘You don’t mean to say they still consent to do exams?’

‘Amazing, isn’t it? They’re such an inconsistent lot, young people. They tell us we’re hypocrites, and so we are, but I’d rather be a hypocrite than a fool.’

‘I don’t know,’ said Rose, who had been listening quietly, recovered. ‘I think they’re hypocrites too. There’s this girl I know, she’s about nineteen I suppose, and she comes round to see me sometimes, God knows why, I met her at some meeting or other last year and she sort of latched on to me, and I must say I did suspect it was because I would always cook her a nice meal and let her sleep in one of the children’s beds if things went wrong, and I didn’t really mind, because she’s quite appealing in a way – she sort of drifts around, and doesn’t do anything much, and believes in the abolition of property and money and all the rest of it, and the pointlessness of work, and I thought, that’s fine, there’s even something rather touching about it, and I didn’t really mind her lecturing me on my bourgeois mentality while she gobbled up my bacon and eggs. And then a few weeks ago she went off on a holiday to Scotland with some friends, and I thought good, that’s got rid of her for a bit, but no such thing, because in a couple of days she was back again, with her arm in plaster, because they’d had a car accident on the way up. And guess what she wanted me to do.’

‘Pay her hospital bills?’

‘No, no, that I wouldn’t have minded, it was worse than that. She wanted me to recommend her a solicitor and lend her the money to sue the girl who’d been driving the car. I couldn’t believe my ears. She told me some rigmarole about the insurance, and about how they’d only been covered for third parties, and I said, well, she must have known that, and if she didn’t she ought to have found out, and that if she didn’t bother about things like that and went around with people who didn’t bother then it was no good complaining later. And then I said, what do you want to sue her
for
, and she said damages, and I said what damages, and the truth was that there had been
no expense involved at all, and she could hardly have said that she was suffering loss of wages because she’d never earned a penny in her life. I just couldn’t believe it. That anyone could be so vindictive. The girl was her friend, after all. How could one sue a friend?’

‘Some people would.’

‘Yes. But she wasn’t some people. She didn’t believe in insurance and litigation and lawyers and money.’

‘I suppose if she’d been seriously injured, she might have had a point?’

‘But she wasn’t seriously injured. She’d sprained her arm, that’s all. It hadn’t cost her a penny, so why should she want money for it?’

‘Did you lend her the money for the solicitor?’

‘No, I didn’t. I refused. I even tried to ask her what she wanted the damages for, and she couldn’t think of a very good reason, and finally said, well, she had lost her holiday in Scotland, hadn’t she. So I pointed out that some people insure against that kind of thing, the kind of people she despises so much, and those that don’t can hardly complain. It was her attitude that upset me. It was so vindictive. She wanted something for nothing, and was annoyed when she couldn’t get it. And she expected me to sympathize with her. That’s what upset me most of all.’

‘Did she take it to a solicitor?’

‘I don’t know. I haven’t seen her since. I don’t think that the girl who was driving could have been held responsible for the accident anyway, Charlotte said there wasn’t another car involved, she swerved to avoid a child and went into a wall. I expected at any moment to hear her say she was going to sue the child. She did mutter something about its parents. Don’t you think it’s shocking?’

Yes, shocking, everyone agreed, and sighed, and then began to laugh, as they took note of the attitudes into which they had fallen: comfortable middle-aged people, sitting around in easy chairs drinking alcohol, deploring the wickedness of youth. But it was too late to stop, even though they had become aware of what they were doing, indulgently, recklessly, they went on with it, capping anecdote with anecdote, comparing the folly of one young person with the laziness of another, the venality of one with another’s parasitic idealism.
Herbert Cookson had a good story about the son of a friend who had pawned the family silver: another man, whose presence Simon had hardly noticed until that moment, produced an account of a militant student of his who had sold out on all his following upon the offer of a job in a thinly disguised advertising agency, and Clare Cookson described a girl who had warmly advocated the liberation of women and the free-for-all sexual permissive society until she became pregnant, and had then, with equal self-righteousness, insisted that the man involved should marry her, because if he didn’t he would be an exploiter and profiteer. They laughed at these stories, aware that they shouldn’t really be allowing themselves to tell them: ‘But after all,’ said Clare Cookson, ‘we must get it off our chests once in a while, mustn’t we?’ And indeed, that is what they did: they exorcized, for the moment, the ghost of righteous youth, and ended up feeling much better for it, defending even Victoria’s ridiculous involvement – because she will, after all, said Simon, learn something from it, at least she cares, at least she tries to make sense of things.

Only Rose seemed unappeased. Rose thought about the camel and the needle’s eye. What was the point of knowing what was right, if one didn’t then do it?

‘I must go home,’ said Rose, rising to her feet. ‘I really must get back to my baby-sitter.’

Simon rose to his feet immediately, to offer her a lift, but he was too late: the other man, whose name he had never caught, forestalled him. He had not the confidence to insist, even though he thought that he saw Rose give him a look of dismay. A little encouraged by it, he followed her out into the hall, and under the cover of looking for Julie’s coat he managed to say that he would ring her in the morning. ‘Ringing won’t do,’ she said, ‘I must come and see you, I must come and see you.’

‘You’ll have to come to Chambers then,’ he said: and that was all they had time for before Julie joined them.

When Rose got home, she found her baby-sitter Eileen had fallen asleep. Eileen had returned home: she had found her garage man and had been rejected by him. And there she sat, in Rose’s armchair,
the baby in a carry-cot by her, snoring slightly, her heavy dark face slumped into misery. Rose could hardly face waking her, she so much dreaded her complaints: she had had to listen to her mother’s version endlessly. Mrs Sharkey was in despair about Eileen: she wouldn’t do a thing for herself or the baby, she wouldn’t even get up to feed it, she let it cry all night, when she changed it she dropped its nappies on the floor and left her mother to wash them. ‘What can I do?’ said Mrs Sharkey, ‘I can’t just leave them lying there, can I?’ ‘She’ll pick them up, surely,’ Rose had said, without much faith. Because the truth was, why ever should she pick them up, what for, ever? There she sat, nineteen, finished, excluded for ever from what she might want to be. She would never try to make the best of things, the gulf between her reality and her aspirations was total, and would remain so. They would drag on for ever, she and her mother: her mother making the best of things, because that was her nature, the daughter letting things go, because that was hers. She couldn’t even go to the bad, now, with a baby around: she’d done that already, and it hadn’t proved much fun. Her face was heavy, like the face of a middle-aged woman. Some people, thought Rose, thinking of Charlotte, aren’t even given a chance to betray themselves.

She bustled around a bit, not wanting to wake Eileen more directly and after a moment or two Eileen jerked and came round. Rose was tired, she had enough of her own on her mind, but she had to listen for half an hour to Eileen’s complaints about her mother. She’d begun to think she’d have to get a job, just to get out of the house. That sounds a good idea, said Rose: but apparently it wasn’t, because her mother had refused to mind the baby during the day, and she couldn’t get it a place in a nursery. Anyway, said Eileen, she didn’t fancy any of the rotten jobs she could get: there was one serving in the Greek shop, but the shop stank and she couldn’t work there, and there was another one in the bedding factory but the hours were so long, and there really wasn’t anything else she could do. There must be something, said Rose. Oh, I suppose it’ll have to be the bedding factory, said Eileen: the nursery said it would take the baby when it was six months, but it would mean getting up at six thirty to walk it down there, because it was a long way.

Rose could see that she had, in fact, faced the bedding factory. No wonder she looked depressed. What a terrible moment it is, the moment at which one abandons possibility. Gone was Eileen the wicked lady, driving around in taxis, wearing fur coats, drinking cocktails: gone was Eileen the make-up girl with false eyelashes and a pink overall: gone was Eileen the garage man’s girl, taking trips up the motorway in a fast car. Eileen picked up her baby, and sighed, and accepted a pound note. Her eyes were dark brown, soft, voluptuous: she looked at Rose with a profound reproach. Oh hell, thought Rose, get out of here, you lazy cow, before I offer to adopt that creature for you. For she accepted the reproach: there was no doubt about it, the glamour of her own example had done Eileen no good. The neighbouring thrill of publicity, the drama of violence, the excitement of divorce, all had helped to corrupt her. In the old days she had collected Rose’s press cuttings, had borrowed her clothes, had come to take baths in her bath. (The Sharkeys had no bath: their house was on a controlled rent, and the landlord refused to spend a penny on it.) Christopher too had encouraged her, when she was fifteen: he had offered her cigarettes, drinks, rides in the car. I refuse to accept any responsibility, thought Rose, thereby accepting it. Get out, get out, get out, she thought. And Eileen went.

The next morning, Simon sat and waited for Rose. There were other things he was doing as well, but principally he was waiting. She had rung his clerk at nine, to say she would be in later in the morning, and had been given an appointment for eleven thirty.

She arrived upon the dot, and was shown in: she stood there in the doorway, looking round, clutching a folder of papers. She was trying to be sociable. What strange tasks she set herself.

‘So this is where you work,’ she said, gazing, at the desk, at the leather chairs, the oblong shapes of briefs and files and boxes, the red tape tied neatly round the white papers, the brown and red austere masculine outlines. She sat down, edgily. ‘What a nice room,’ she said.

‘Do you think so?’

‘Well, yes, don’t you? What are those notices you have on the walls?’