Three Brothers

by Peter Ackroyd

  IX

  A cat may look

  “SEVENTEEN HOURS of supervision?”

  “Mea culpa. But I do have to admit that I am a trifle squashed by the end of term.”

  Daniel Hanway, in the middle of dinner, was listening to a conversation between History and Biology at the high table. After completing his doctorate, he had been elected a junior fellow and deputy supervisor in English at his college.

  Classics now joined the conversation. “I trust that you acknowledge that it is your job.”

  “I would like to say that it is part of my job, as you put it.”

  “But I put it so well.”

  History was short, with a slightly hooked nose, and a mass of fuzzy hair. He looked as if he had experienced an electric shock. Biology was bushy-haired, bushy-bearded and bushy-eyebrowed; he chortled rather than laughed. Classics was more saturnine; he wore a brown corduroy jacket, brown corduroy trousers, a green tie and white shirt. He had several other ties, jackets and trousers of the same colours so that he could remain in costume for his students.

  Mathematics and Philosophy were arguing about the depth of nuclear bunkers. Philosophy “hazarded a guess” at seventy feet, at which Mathematics smiled politely, if mockingly. “Fifty feet?”

  “Oh no.”

  “Thirty feet?”

  “No, no. The figures are quite wrong. Absurdly so, if I may say so.”

  “But wouldn’t I be dead otherwise?”

  “No, not dead at all. Far from it. Very much alive. You need only dig thirty-six inches. The radiation is blown away.”

  History and Biology had moved on. “Oh these skinheads are absolutely ancient. They resemble the Mohocks of the eighteenth century. As Professor Leavis said—”

  “Dr. Leavis.”

  “The mobile vulgus are always with us. What does our colleague from wildest London think of the vulgus?” History addressed the question to Daniel, whose origins in Camden Town were already well known.

  “Odi profanum vulgus,” he replied, “et arceo.”

  “Oh really? Where did you pick up your Horace?”

  “He has been a good friend of mine for years.”

  “Is that so? But do you really despise the crowd?”

  “I despise anyone who cannot think for himself.”

  “So you admire Oswald Mosley?”

  “I know,” Classics said, “let’s look up Mosley in Who’s Who.”

  On returning to his rooms after dinner, Daniel continued his letter to his old schoolfriend Peter Palmer. Palmer had been appointed a junior lecturer in history at Durham University, and they corresponded now on their respective roles. Long-distance telephone calls were so expensive.

  “Yesterday,” Daniel wrote, “the English faculty met for the first time this term. When I say met I mean collided. Someone is teaching structuralism. Someone else is teaching Marxism. And then someone else is teaching old-fashioned lit crit. Did you ever hear of Lionel Manning? He wrote a book years ago on George Eliot. Rubbish, actually. But he’s supposed to be an authority. Whatever that means. He considers himself to be a wit, but he just says absurd things in a high-pitched voice. ‘The French don’t think,’ he said to me, apropos of some existentialist nonsense he had been discussing. ‘The English can’t think. That is why they produce very good novelists.’ You get the general idea. He also has bad breath.

  “You must have heard of Reginald Pearsall. He of the polo-necked sweater and black leather jacket. He has a face like a skull and when he smiles it is positively revolting. Very rigorous. Very low church. He goes on about moral belief and moral certitude. His favourite phrase is ‘what, precisely, do you mean by …?’ He adores George Orwell. A great bore, in other words.

  “I have some younger colleagues. Dominic Tennyson likes to be called Dave. His surname is suspect, too. Could he have changed it by deed poll? He has just published, in The Journal of English Literary Studies, an article entitled ‘The State of Jacobean Coinage with Relation to the Plays of Philip Massinger.’ I’m not making it up. He has a deadly rival in Jeremy Jones. Now Jones has published an essay in some other journal. ‘The Use of the Term “Almighty” in Eighteenth-Century Sermons.’ What is the matter with these people?

  “And then there’s the poet. Paul Wilkin. Remember him?”

  Paul Wilkin had enjoyed a modest success several years before. He had published his first book while in his twenties, where it had been acclaimed by the usual poetry reviewers as “a startlingly original voice” and “an impressive debut.” On the publication of the second volume, Wilkin was described as “one of the leaders of his generation.” But then of course there came along other young poets, who were reviewed in equally trite and effusive terms. There was never any shortage of praise for first or even second books of poetry. Now in his forties, Wilkin was an envious and distrustful man.

  He had been published once by the famous firm of Connaught & Douglas, before, as he put it, “moving on” to a smaller publisher; yet he had remained a guest at their annual parties for the last fifteen years. So he spoke fondly of “Jack” Priestley, of “Willie” Maugham and of “Wystan.” Of his contemporaries, however, he was scathing and dismissive. He scanned the literary pages of the newspapers and magazines for any mention of his name, and realised soon enough that these references were becoming more and more infrequent. He had a long thin face, and long untidy hair; his mouth was thin and small; his chin was weak, and was emphasised by a narrow moustache.

  At their first meeting Daniel Hanway had professed admiration for Wilkin’s poetry. In truth he regarded it as no more than adequate, and on occasions old-fashioned and mediocre. But Wilkin had been delighted by Daniel’s enthusiasm. Immediately he saw in him a young academic of great promise; in the future, perhaps, he might become influential. He might even be persuaded to write a book about the poetry of Paul Wilkin.

  So Wilkin became very friendly with Daniel. He invited the young man to tea in his rooms, and then eventually to dinner at his house. Wilkin lived with his wife Phyllis, a middle-aged philologist, in a semi-detached house close to the railway station. They had two Persian cats, and the house smelled of damp and pet food. Mrs. Wilkin was a timid and bedraggled woman who hardly spoke at all, but who seemed to look reproachfully at Daniel as she served him small portions of unappetising food.

  Wilkin himself hardly stopped talking. He had a flat expressionless voice, but it had a rasping note when he became angry. He was in turn boastful and querulous, complaining about a certain “bastard” of a reviewer or “prick” of a poet. His conversation settled on his own triumphs and tribulations, with reference to the prizes he had won or the magazines in which he had been published. The literary world, in his conversation, seemed to Daniel to be a vast boxing ring in which “contenders” and “young pretenders” vied for mastery. There were “heavyweights” and “lightweights”; it was a world in which intense rivalries, and enmities, could develop. Somebody had been given a “thrashing” in the Observer, while someone else had been “put down” by The Listener.

  “I settled my account with Hunt,” Wilkin had said to him. He almost spat out the name. “He went for me in the Staggers—” This was the name, among the literati, for the New Statesman. “He tried to demolish me. But I was still standing. Then lo and behold, a book of his essays was published last month. Can you imagine the conceit of it? Collecting your own articles? Anyway as a critic he is complete crap. Complete. So I just pointed out his mistakes. Just left it at that. Did you see the piece in the Journal?” Daniel nodded, although in fact he never read that newspaper. “I made short work of him, I must say. He can’t write. He simply can’t write. I saw him off.”

  “When did he review your book?” Daniel asked him.

  “Oh, three or four years ago.”

  “Graham Maland?” he said to Daniel on another evening. “I wouldn’t trust him as far as I can spit.” Graham Maland was a young novelist who had published three novels within the space of five year
s, all of them widely praised and admired. Wilkin did not reserve his animosity only for his fellow poets. “Have you ever seen him?” Daniel shook his head. “He’s a fat little pudding. Full of suet. And what a shit. I happen to know that he got a ten-thousand-pound advance for his next novel. Ten thousand pounds! It’s ridiculous. Anyway, there’s a rumour going around that he’s a plagiarist. Someone sent the manuscript of a novel to him, and he just copied the plot. That’s what people are saying. And I tell you what. I’m sure he’s queer.”

  Daniel still went to see Sparkler in London, where he lived in a small flat on the same terraced street that Harry and Guinevere Flaxman had once visited. “Would you like to go to a queer pub, Dan?” he asked him one evening.

  “In Limehouse?”

  “No. Across the water. We’ll swim.”

  It was crowded and noisy. They went up to the bar where two middle-aged men were standing, identically dressed in dark slacks and scarlet blouses; both had a small scarf tied around the neck. “I’m Pooky,” one of them said, “and she’s Spooky.” They were heavily made-up, but no amount of powder or mascara could conceal the years of humiliation and panic.

  Daniel looked down the other side of the bar. A young man, wearing a black leather jacket, was talking over his shoulder to someone whom Daniel could not see. “If you come near me one more time, you bastard,” the young man was saying in an off-hand manner, “I’m going to break all of your fingers.”

  “That one over there?” Spooky was talking to Sparkler. “Oh she’s been around for years. Her trousers are so tight you can see her piles.”

  “He’s got a boner.”

  “Everyone gets a boner in here. You should go into the gents.”

  “Who’s your thin friend?” Pooky asked Sparkler.

  “Dan.”

  “Danny Boy. Oh Danny Boy, the pipes, the pipes are calling.” Pooky had a pleasant baritone voice. “Can I hold up your umbrella, Danny?” Daniel looked perplexed. “It’s just a camp. What do you do, Danny Boy?”

  “I’m a teacher.”

  “Ooh, Miss Comprehensive. Do you fancy chicken?”

  “Under-age boys,” Sparkler told him.

  “No. I don’t.”

  “No harm in asking. A cat may look at a queen. And I know what you do, Sparkie. I’ve heard all about you. From a certain older gentleman.”

  “Oh yes? Who?”

  “He is known to us as the bony queen of nowhere.”

  “I know exactly who you mean.”

  “Oh my gawd.” Spooky raised a glass to his lips. “Here she is.” An old man, wearing a tweed suit and red jumper, was approaching them. “Good evening, cunt face.”

  “Hello, pussies.” He had a distinguished, if slightly fruity, voice. “Good evening, Sparkie boy.”

  “Evening, major.”

  The major’s rheumy eyes travelled in Daniel’s direction. “Who is this one?”

  “A friend.”

  “A friend? Oh well done, Sparkler. Have a banana.” It was clear that the major believed Daniel to be more a customer than a friend. “Anyone seen Tony Cointreau?”

  “Over there.” Spooky nodded in the general direction of the dance floor. “Looking for trade.”

  Tony Cointreau was wearing a square pork-pie hat made out of leather, a loose-fitting shirt and torn jeans embroidered with stars. He never stopped moving, swivelling his hips, tapping his feet, half-turning. “That young man,” the major said, “gave me crabs.”

  “You shouldn’t be sleeping with rent, you old cunt. Apologies, Sparkler.”

  “No offence. No offence.”

  “But at my age—”

  “At your age you should be dead.”

  Tony Cointreau came over to them. “More old queens than in Westminster Abbey.” The remark was ignored. It had been made before. “Whose round is it?”

  “Yours, you silly slut.”

  “Do you know what I fancy?” Pooky asked no one in particular. “A nice bit of black cock.”

  The major turned round from the bar. “Yum yum. Sloppy seconds for me, please.”

  Two men were kissing in a corner, inviting looks of disapproval or envy. The whole darkly lit space was filled with looks, glimpses, sneaks, peeps, glances, winks, nudges, touches, strokes, nods interspersed with grins and smiles. The air was filled with the smell of beer and leather and cigarettes. Daniel enjoyed his time with Sparkler.

  “Why not come to a party in London?” Wilkin was sitting with Daniel in the cafeteria of the English Faculty. “I can’t promise you’ll enjoy it. But you may meet some interesting people. It’s the annual bash of Connaught & Douglas.” Daniel accepted the invitation readily enough. He was intrigued by the prospect of seeing what Wilkin called “the literary mob.” “I’ll tell you what,” Wilkin told him the following morning. “We’ll have lunch with some chums first. They always meet on Fridays.” Daniel then learned that there was a lunch club of young writers and journalists known as the Ancient Druids after the public house in which they met.

  They travelled together on the train to London. “Did you know,” Wilkin said, slapping his leg with his hand, “that Jemimah Slater is in trouble for plagiarism? She wrote an article for Eighteenth Century Studies on a possible source for The Rape of the Lock. It turns out that she got it all from a postgraduate thesis she was supervising. It couldn’t happen to a nicer girl, could it?”

  “Will she be suspended?”

  “Oh no. She’ll get away with it. It will be hushed up. It always is. That’s the way they operate.”

  “They?”

  “Did you see that piece on Tom Eliot by Gardiner? Gardiner gave me a good review once. Fine critic.”

  By the time they arrived at Liverpool Street Daniel was exhausted.

  They took the underground to Tottenham Court Road; from there it was a short walk to the Ancient Druids in Poland Street. They entered the pub and walked up a steep staircase to a small dining room on the first floor. Already sitting at the table was a burly young man introduced to Daniel as Denis Davis. He was an American or Canadian (Daniel did not know which) who had come to London to earn his living as a poet and literary journalist. He greeted Wilkin warily, and looked with suspicion on Daniel. “You Cambridge types scare the shit out of me,” he said cheerfully. “You are so moral. So analytical. Frank Leavis still rules. Is that right?”

  “I am not a Cambridge type,” Wilkin replied. “I happen to teach there. That’s all. And Dr. Leavis has retired.”

  Then there entered the room a young man with round spectacles, and a diminutive moustache. Wilkin introduced him to Daniel as Clive Rentoul, who specialised in interviews for the arts and books sections of the Globe. Both Davis and Rentoul were wearing turtle-necked sweaters. Daniel began to regret his suit, white shirt and tie.

  The next arrival was Virginia Crossley, a young novelist who had been at Oxford with Clive Rentoul. She seemed to Daniel to be shy but not at all ill at ease; she observed intently everyone around her. The last to arrive was Damian Etheridge, announced to Daniel as the literary editor of the Chronicle. He sat next to Daniel at the table. “Daniel Hanway,” he said. “I’ve heard of you.”

  “You have?” Daniel was flattered.

  “And I know another Hanway. I wonder if you are related.”

  “Who is it?”

  “Harry Hanway. Our deputy editor.”

  “He’s my brother.”

  “Oh is he? Your brother is doing very well. He is about to marry the proprietor’s daughter.”

  It was Daniel’s turn to be surprised. “Is that so?” He had not forgotten meeting Hilda Nugent with Harry in the Camden park, four or five years before.

  “And she’s the only child. If you know what I mean.” He rubbed his thumb and forefinger together.

  “Graham Maland?” Clive Rentoul was saying in an incredulous tone. “A marginal figure. A Little Englander. He’s not a serious writer.”

  “The serious writers,” Denis Davis said, “are Joe Heller
and Saul Bellow. Maybe Mailer. They’re the heavyweights. Saul is superb. And Jerry of course.”

  “Jerry Lewis?” Crossley asked him in what she thought was an ironic manner.

  “Jerry Salinger. Raise high the roofbeam, carpenters. Great steal from Sappho.” Daniel had no idea what he was talking about; he suspected that Denis Davis had none, either. “The Americans are the future. I want to say—”

  “Oh,” Rentoul said. “What do you want to say?”

  “Have you ever thought of reviewing?” Damian Etheridge asked Daniel. “I’m always looking for new talent for the book pages.”

  “I would be happy to try. I don’t know if I would be any good at it—”

  “Nothing to it. I’ll send you some new novels. Have a go at them.”

  “You’re very pleased with yourself, aren’t you?” Virginia Crossley was leaning towards Damian Etheridge.

  “I don’t think so, Virginia.”

  “Why are you giving novels to someone you have just met? Excuse me, I think you should show a little more respect for fiction.”

  “Respect?”

  The others sensed the beginning of an argument, and looked uneasily towards Virginia and Damian. “And you review five or six at a time. As if they were tins of baked beans.”

  “There are just so many of them.”

  “I waved a flag,” Denis Davis said to her, “when I read your piece in the Standard.”

  This seemed to mollify her. “The one about new fiction?”