When the war ended, Charles went back to University. This he got through well and easily. He has a not uncommon facility—a memory that is really almost photographic. For an examination he will study day and night for the month beforehand, get phenomenal marks—and will have forgotten most of it three months later. He says this of himself.
Very well. By the time he was ready for a job, I had been lecturing four or five years. I was in a position to pull strings or at least put a friendly oar in. There were a dozen applicants for the post and Charles was the youngest, and least experienced. Well, he got the post and through me—but that is not the point. Which is this. In the crisis week, when things hung in the balance, he came to visit me. He was scruffy, untidy, a bit flamboyant—all this as usual. Nothing terrible—not like our present students, far from that level of exhibitionism, but pretty irritating. I told him that he had to take his appearance more seriously, and that he was putting me in a difficult position. He listened, didn’t say much. Next time I saw him, he had got the post, and—he was looking like me. I must explain that. We are physically different, but I have some mannerisms. Not that I knew of them until Charles showed me them! He had equipped himself with an old jacket of mine—asked my wife for it, she was throwing it away. He had acquired a pipe, which he had never smoked before, and he got his hair cut like mine. When I first clapped my eyes on this, I thought it was a monstrous joke. But not at all. You’d expect this to be a joke between us perhaps? Or at least an issue? No, it was not mentioned for a long time. Yet everyone noticed it, commented. When I came into a room, or saw him across a street it was like seeing a monstrous caricature of myself.
When someone did finally mention it (my wife, as it happened), and I looked at him, hoping for some comment, he merely nodded, rather impatiently, but not very. With a sort of small frown, as if to say: Oh that, what a detail.
I suppose it may strike you as a detail, too. But I may add that now, years later, people tend to think that it is I who have copied Charles, modelled myself on him. And that fact says everything about how we are both judged. And yes, it rankles.
Now an episode from last summer. It so happened that my wife and I were having a stormy patch. I had been overworking and so had she. We had agreed to spend the summer apart. We knew we were on the slippery slope to divorce. We had quarrelled and talked and made scenes, the usual sort of thing, and I daresay we were as much emotionally worn out as anything. She decided to go to her mother in Scotland, leaving the children with friends—as it happens, the Watkins. Both of whom were towers of strength throughout the whole episode. Charles drove Nancy to her mother. Nancy was in a pretty hysterical state, as she would be the first to admit. Now I find it rather hard to describe what happened in a way to convey its importance. Far from Charles behaving badly, it was the opposite. Nancy says he was kind and helpful. But before they even reached Scotland, she was pretty upset because of his attitude—which was that the whole thing was not very important. He took it absolutely for granted that she would be back with me before the year was out—but that if she were not, what of it? Now I must mention Felicity, his wife. I have a valuable relationship with her. I’ve known her since she was a tiny thing. No, I’m not in love with her, nor ever have been, but we have always known that we are close, and that if neither were married elsewhere, we might well hit it off pretty well. My wife has always known of this, so has Charles, there is nothing to hide.
Before Charles left Nancy at her mother’s he stayed over for two days, and in those days he behaved impeccably, supporting Nancy against her mother, who was cutting up rather, and taking her for walks and so on. But he was making her worse because of his attitude—not making light of the whole drama, on purpose, but it was implicit in his attitude. He spent a whole afternoon, she tells me, pointing out that he might have married her—and I, Felicity, and it would have been the same, and that we all were much too personal about the whole thing. Yes, “we are all much too personal about the whole thing.” He was talking about marriage, after all. After all, we aren’t Hottentots. Anyway, Nancy found herself half crazy, because of Charles. She describes it as feeling as if her entire life was made to look silly, and that she was not any more important than a she-cat or a bitch. Well, she was in a pretty emotional state anyway. In the end she screamed at him to go away and leave her. Of course she apologised afterwards, I insisted on it, for he had been wonderfully kind, as had Felicity. Afterwards my wife said to me that the real crisis that summer was not her leaving me to give us both a rest, but the four or five days in Charles’ company. Any more of him and she would have cut her throat, she says, or could have done if she had been able to believe it mattered whether she did or not.
I’ve chosen this last incident because again it illustrates something pretty fundamental in Charles. It is that he doesn’t even pay lip service to ordinary feelings. Perhaps they aren’t as important as we think. But perhaps I would respect him more for his attitude if I believed there was conflict involved, if he had ever thought it out, or even suffered over it, instead of its being his nature.
Now, a final incident. In spring of this year there was an evening at our house which struck me very unpleasantly indeed, but I suppose I am used to being uncomfortable where Charles is concerned. There were present myself and my wife Nancy, Charles and Felicity, a couple of other members of our team—as I like to call it!—and a visitor from America. Now I don’t like to think that we have to put on a special show for visiting firemen, but on the other hand there is such a thing as tact. Our American visitor was on his first visit to our country, and was hoping to—and may even yet succeed—spend a year with us. Charles behaved outrageously. I thought he was drunk, though he is not a drinker. It is simplest to say that he behaved like an undergraduate, if I may be permitted that oldfashioned comparison, but I am not one to be proud of flattering the youth. Charles was not even witty, which he very often is. He was boorish, badmannered, in a silly sort of way. The classics were “hogwash” and the course of lectures we had drafted together for him “a lot of pigs-swill.” And so on. I’m afraid his epithets were pretty limited, but that is the nature of undergraduate humour.
Now, if I were a reactionary and impervious to new ideas it would be easier to understand, but I am not. I cannot remember ever refusing to listen to Charles or to anyone else when they have a new angle. But to say that everything taught under the heading of Classics is pigsfeed from beginning to end, and never has been anything else, and that we have never had any idea at all of what Plato or Socrates and Pythagoras were teaching—and etc. and so on, that kind of thing—well, I did cut him off short and sharp more than once during the evening, and he went home early. Felicity his wife was annoyed, and did not go home when he did.
Now, next day he came to me with a demand that he should be empowered to arrange the coming term’s work according to ideas which I don’t really see much point in elaborating—but suffice it to say that his point of view amounts to damning generations of scholarship out of hand. He said, what was wrong with that? That it is a historical commonplace that ideas valid for centuries can vanish overnight. I may say that Charles is very fond of talking in centuries if not millennia, always the sign of a lazy mind, to my way of thinking. However, I asked him what gave him the confidence—or did I say conceit?—to talk about the work of scholars infinitely better than himself, in such terms. Did he really have no qualms at all. He said no, that it was “perfectly obvious to an unprejudiced mind” that he was right.
I must confess we quarrelled violently. I think it was the first quarrel we have ever had—astonishingly. He was abusive and derisive. Usually of course he is rather bland, or appears to be indifferent. I was patient—I am, in fact, a patient man. He became increasingly unpleasant. You understand that all the time there was the underlying implication that it must be obvious he was in the right and that I could see it if I wasn’t stupid. Finally, I asked him to leave before I lost my temper.
Next morning h
e rang up—as if nothing had happened. No explanation. His manner, as always, was that an unimportant incident was over. Not that he had been in the wrong, no. Not, even, that I was rigidly in the wrong and that he had had to force himself into my mould—though I suppose that was implicit. No, it was that nothing had occurred that was in the least bit important. Yet that was intolerable, because what in fact he had done, and in front of an American colleague who may yet be working with us, was to damn not only our team and its work, and of course our respective careers, his included, but all scholarship in our field to date. Or most of it. And, having done that, and behaved with shocking offensiveness, he was now quite casually arranging to meet me and discuss a series of public lectures which only the day before he had refused to consider at all and about which he had been exceedingly abusive. His manner was appropriate with saying: I’m sorry I was a bit off colour last night, but I had a headache.
I don’t know if I am succeeding in conveying to you the flavour of this particular incident.
I don’t think I can tell you more, though there is an infinite choice of such examples.
I am at this moment in the usual frame of mind when thinking about Charles—he forces me to ask myself what it means to like or dislike a person. We have always been in each other’s lives. We have our friends in common. It is my considered opinion that Charles Watkins is a destructive person. Negative, perhaps, is the better word. I find him a pain in the neck, even, far too often, a bore. I conclude from all this that we do not know very much about human relationships.
Yours very truly,
JEREMY THORNE
P.S.
I do hope you will let me know if there is anything else I can do to help. It goes without saying, I hope, that I would do anything for Charles. An idea has struck me: I don’t know if you have been contacted by Constance Mayne, or if her name has cropped up at all? She has been Charles’ mistress, or perhaps still is. She was one of his pupils. No, I have nothing to complain of in his behaviour, as she did not become his mistress until she had ceased to be his student. And I am not a moralist. I tell you this because I believe his wife Felicity does not know of her existence. If you think it might be of assistance, let me know and I’ll get hold of her address for you. She was in Birmingham when I heard last.
DEAR DOCTOR Y,
Can I “assist” you in “rehabilitating” Charles Watkins? I don’t know. Yes, I do know him, very well indeed. How very tactful you are. I was his mistress. You must know that or otherwise why did you write to me? I would be interested to know who told you, but I don’t expect you will. Well, now, about Charles … he has lost his memory? He can’t remember who he is? I am very sorry to hear it, but how does it concern me? No, don’t think I am being dishonest. I wish it did concern me, but as it happens, I think you should ask his wife Felicity Watkins. I suppose you must have done. Did she tell you to contact me? If so, it is no more than I would expect of her. What I mean by that, specifically, is that it would be so damned high-minded and above every normal human emotion, just like Charles. I am sure these things rub off. They say married people get to resemble each other, but of course I wouldn’t know.
After (believe me) due thought, I am simply sending you the enclosed letter. The letter is one I wrote to Charles. That letter was written after due thought, too. Years of it. What I mean is, I could have written that letter before I did, but I was a fool and didn’t.
I sent that letter (the enclosed one) to Charles at his home address. Not out of spite, but I didn’t have another address. He came posthaste. When I say posthaste, I mean, for him. About ten days went by. He came by train to Birmingham. He brought my letter with him. It was, as it might be, a goodwill visit. He stayed the night. Why not? Old habits die hard. When he left in the morning, the letter was lying on my night-table. The point is, but I don’t expect you to see it as a point, he hadn’t left it there on purpose, or for post-departure comment—we had after all, touched on its contents the night before. To put it mildly. No, he forgot it. It slipped totally out of his mind. So I’m taking this opportunity of returning it to him, via you. He might like to refresh his memory—when he gets it back.
Sorry I can’t be of any use.
With my good wishes,
CONSTANCE MAYNE
DEAR CHARLES,
Don’t be alarmed, this isn’t one of those drivelling slobby wet letters I wrote you when you decided you’d had enough of me. No fear. I’m very far from that now. I woke up this morning and thought it was three years this June since you left me.
The thought of you
So sweet and true
For dreary years
Has been boo hoo.
Boo hoo, boo hoo, boo hoo. BOO!
It occurred to me that far from boo hoo, far from it, I was in a good old paddy, a good old rage. Fury. It occurs to me Charles Watkins that what I feel for you is not boo hoo at all, I hate you. More than that, I simply can’t get over your sheer damned preposterousness.
Now let me tell you a tale.
There was once an earnest idealistic young student taking Literature and Languages, who went, God help her, to a lecture, an Introduction to Old Greece, and heard a mad professor claim that there was only one literature and one language, namely Greek, (Ancient, not Modern). And such was his persuasive force that this stupid student dropped her lovely useful literature and French and Spanish and Italian, and went over to Useless Old Greece, just because this professor said so. Three years passed while this stupid student sweated and got full marks all for the sake of an approving smile or two from the Mad Professor. The day she heard she had got her B.A. behold, it happens this Silly student is in London and there is the Mad Professor giving a lecture on the television about Greece, the Cradle of European Civilisation. Intellectual this and Moral that, and so it went on, but not one word about, it occurs to silly Female Student, Women, let alone Slaves in that paradise of Moral Superiority, Ancient Greece. Stupid student got into a taxi as the lecture was ending on the telly, and went to the B.B.C. and he came out of the building, looking oh so Classical and Woolly, rough tweeds, pipe, rugged charm, the lot, she said to him, In all that there was not one word about either Women or Slaves. To which the Mad Professor returned: Oh, is that you Connie? Well done! Congratulations on your results! Well, you are concerned about Women and Slaves are you? What are you doing about them? It took the Stupid Student five dazzling dizzying seconds to get his drift, and she said to him, Right, you’re on. At which she refused to go back to University to get her M.A. and probably on to Ph.D. and so on ad infinitum but she went off to Birmingham, got a job in a factory, with women making plastic containers for detergents, found they were indeed Slaves while being Women, and she made scandals and fusses with the management, became a shop steward and a communist and three years later went to Cambridge to confront the Mad Professor with the news. Very well, then, I’ve done it, she cried, and told him the tale, three years hard, but very hard, but very very hard, slogging, hard intolerable bloody work for the plastic-detergent-container-making women of Birmingham, and he took his pipe out of his mouth and said: Well done! And then he said: Let’s go to bed.
Yes I do know whether to laugh or to cry. This morning I am laughing and God knows it is about time.
So the love of the century begins, in Birmingham for the most part, but a busy and popular Professor of Classics with a wife and two sons hasn’t all that much time left over for amusements, and the Silly Shop Steward hardly ever sees her Love. In the meantime this same Stupid Shop Steward has a beau, a Steady, a faithful love, being the Shop Steward on the Men’s Component’s Floor, where Men make plastic containers for transistor radios, for since they are Men and therefore more advanced and evolved, they can put on those difficult buttons and screws and handles and things, much more tricky than detergent containers. This faithful and loving swain gets the boot from the Silly Shop Stewardess, because of the Love of the Century. Forlorn and alone she says Boo hoo, Boo hoo, marry me, and
he says, the Mad Professor says, Don’t be absurd. But what about your vows, your love, your passion, she cries? He says, anyone who believes a word anyone says in bed deserves what she gets.
How’s that for a Professor?
But I’ve twice changed my whole life for you, she cries, sobbing, weeping, wailing.
No one asked you to, says he, taking the pipe out of his mouth for the purpose.
What shall I dooooooo, she wails. I’ve lost my true real right love, the Shop Steward, and I can’t have you, my life is empty and I want a Famileee.
To which he replies, Well, what’s stopping you?
You’d think the girl would have learned by now? You would, wouldn’t you?
Well, now. You’ll remember that bit, if you have time to remember at all, as a lot of very sloppy letters from me. But actually what was happening was that I was thinking, Well, what is stopping me? For as it happens I was pregnant, but only half knew it.
So I went back to Birmingham, had a fine bouncing son, eight pounds, two ounces, keeping my job more or less throughout and with the aid of some kind and loving plastic-container packers and—that was two years ago.
Boo hoo, boo hoo, all the way.
Yes, the child is two and his name is Ishmael, how do you like that?
No, I don’t want a damned thing from you. Nothing. If you want to see the boy, fine. If you don’t, fine.
Briefing for a Descent Into Hell Page 19