It was against this sort of background that moments like the reception for foreign students, or Treece’s responses to provincial life, took their shape. Being a liberal, after all that, meant something special; one was a messenger from somewhere. One was, now, a humanist, neither Christian nor communist any more, but in some vague, unstable central place, a humanist, yes, but not one of those who supposes that man is good or progress attractive. One has no firm affiliations, political, religious, or moral, but lies outside it all. One sees new projects tried, new cases put, and reflects on them, distrusts them, is not surprised when they don’t work, and is doubtful if they seem to. A tired sophistication runs up and down one’s spine; one has seen everything tried and seen it fail. If one speaks one speaks in asides. One is at the end of the tradition of human experience, where everything has been tried and no one way shows itself as perceptibly better than another. Groping into the corners of one’s benevolence, one likes this good soul, that dear woman, but despairs of the group or the race; for the mass of men there is not too much to be said or done; you can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear. Persons tie themselves into groups, they attach to this cause and then to that and, working with these abstracts and large emotions, they rush like a flock of lemmings, into the sea to drown themselves. What can one do? One gives, instead, teas for foreign students, teas which say, in effect, ‘Foreigners are not funny’. And even that is hardly true. Treece wanted to hear no more of the departmental reception; far from proving that foreigners were as normal as you or me, the occasion had been a subject of public amusement and complaint ever since; a letter had appeared in the local evening paper about the religious rites that had taken place on the University’s front lawn, asking if young girls were safe any more, and a Frenchman had been arrested afterwards for urinating against a tree on Institution Road. He had telephoned the Vice-Chancellor from the police station, to enlist his aid: ‘C’est moi,’ his rich French voice had announced in the Vice-Chancellorial ear. ‘J’ai pissé.’ Moreover, Treece’s fond hope that Emma Fielding’s kindness at the departmental reception would dissuade Mr Eborebelosa from hiding out in the lavatories was answered; Eborebelosa forsook the lavatories for another cause, the pursuit of Emma Fielding.
Every morning since the reception he had sought her out in the refectory, whither she retired, along with her fellow-students, for coffee and conversation, those two eighteenth-century graces, now equally ersatz in the twentieth. He would pass back and forth behind her stool, remarking finally, as he came up close, ‘How do you do. You do not want me to sit here.’ ‘I do,’ said Emma, who in this situation had little choice of words. ‘Come and sit down.’ Eborebelosa would rest his bottom precariously on an adjacent stool; she would introduce him to the people present; conversation would continue and Eborebelosa would sit silently, nodding his black head in a somnolent fashion, until at last he would stir from his speculations to poke Emma in the ribs and say, ‘You do not want me to talk with you.’ ‘Yes,’ she would say. ‘I do. What do you want to say?’ ‘You do not want to hear it,’ Eborebelosa would say, ‘and a silence is golden.’ And, eyeing each other warily, into silence they would both subside.
IV
‘It’s an extremely difficult examination,’ Ian Merrick, MA, Lecturer in Philology, was saying to Treece when Emma Fielding entered Treece’s office for her tutorial. ‘My word, is it?’ demanded Treece, concern bursting out on his face like spots. ‘Do you think I shall pass?’
‘No one ever passes first time,’ said Merrick, sitting on the desk. ‘The real problem is the practical part . . .’
Treece noticed Emma standing there. ‘Do sit down, Miss Fielding,’ he said. ‘I shan’t be a minute.’
‘Yes,’ said Merrick; ‘there’s no problem about the theoretical stuff, of course; that’s simply a question of mugging up the notes. But when it comes to practical performance, they’re very sticky.’
‘Oh, my goodness,’ said Treece.
‘Have you got a crash helmet?’ asked Merrick.
‘For a motorized bicycle? Oh, really old boy . . .’
‘Well, you have to show willing. I know it looks ridiculous. I always say they should make them look like bowler hats, and then a gentleman could wear them as well.’ Merrick, if he was anything, was a gentleman. He was, it always seemed to Treece, a typical Cambridge product gone to seed; he was the bright young man of fifty, handsome, fair-haired, bursting with romantic idealism, the sort that nice girls always loved, the sort that had gone off in droves to fight the First World War. There was something passe and Edwardian about Merrick. He was conceited, cocksure, a public school and Cambridge Adonis fascinated by what he called ‘the classical way of life’. Treece privately described him as a Rupert Brooke without a Gallipoli, and this was really almost fair; he seemed as if he had outstayed his lease on the earth, and now his romanticism was turning into a kind of Housman-like light cynicism, his open and frank assurance curdling, his Grecian-god looks becoming almost grotesque with wrinkles. He reached into his waistcoat pocket and took out a gold cigarette case: ‘Gasper?’ he said. He would, naturally, wear a waistcoat; cigarettes he would call, of course, ‘gaspers’. He smiled brilliantly at Emma and put his cigarette case before her; you felt that, like Bulldog Drummond, he would say, ‘Turkish on this side; Virginias on that.’ ‘I’m sorry; I should have offered them to you first,’ was what he actually did say. ‘You must make your presence felt, my dear.’
‘To revert to this driving test . . .’ said Treece.
‘Well, as I say, you mustn’t feel too disappointed if you don’t pass first time. They throw the book at you. They failed me for not giving proper signals. I was sticking my arm out as far as the bloody thing would go. But no, they expect you to lean so damn far out of the car that the examiner has to hold on to your feet. They just don’t like passing people.’
‘This is only a bicycle,’ said Treece.
‘It makes no odds, old boy,’ said Merrick. ‘They’re even worse with those things. If you pass on that it means you’re entitled to ride a bloody great motorcycle. That’s why they’re so rough. Believe me, no one passes first time. I’ve taken it four times with my motor-mower and I haven’t passed yet.’ Merrick got up off the corner of the desk and began to depart. ‘Anyway, good luck,’ he said. He nodded affably at Emma and went out. ‘Bye-bye, old boy,’ he said.
Treece, who was to take his driving test that afternoon, was already in a high state of tension; he peered through a haze of distress at Emma Fielding, sitting there in her chair, her intense black eyes fixed upon him. His stomach felt weak; he wanted to lie down. ‘Pleased to be back?’ he asked. ‘Well, not really,’ said Emma frankly.
‘Well, how’s the thesis coming along?’
‘I’m afraid it isn’t, really,’ said Emma. ‘I haven’t been able to get anything done over the vacation. I’ve been away; and then coming back was so unsettling; I always get dreams of glory whenever I go abroad, and England is something of a shock when you come back to it. It’s all so matter-of-fact.’
‘That’s the problem with vacations,’ said Treece. ‘It’s a good thing you’re back, really. After all, the function of a vacation is regenerative, not luxurious. It’s to restore our equipment so that we can live our ordinary lives the better. Do I look pale?’
‘A bit,’ said Emma.
‘I feel queer,’ said Treece: then, with a briskness he didn’t feel, he added, ‘Well, when are you going to let me have something written down?’
‘Next time,’ said Emma.
‘Good,’ said Treece. ‘Well, come and see me when you’ve something on paper.’ He rose, but Emma was not so easily got rid of. ‘There’s something I wanted to talk to you about,’ said Emma. ‘It’s a personal matter really, and I suppose it’s something I ought to clear up on my own. I mean, I suppose it’s one of the risks one takes just in being a woman, and one ought to know how to cope with the situation. After all, women are always being pursued, and the
y ought to learn to live with it, and be pleased, not sorry.’
‘What is it?’ said Treece.
‘Well,’ said Emma, ‘you remember that Negro student that you introduced me to at the departmental reception.’
‘Mr Eborebelosa?’
‘Yes,’ said Emma. ‘Well, I thought about this very carefully before I decided to mention it to you, but he really has gone too far.’ She explained that one morning, in a pause in conversation in the refectory, Eborebelosa had announced, spluttering on the synthetic coffee, that he was in love with Emma and wanted to make her his fifth wife; he was, he said, prepared to give up entirely intimate relations with the other four; he was jaded with black girls; he wanted only Emma. He further claimed, Emma told Treece, that, because of some action which she could not identify, she was actually engaged to be married to him. ‘This is interesting,’ said Treece. ‘I wonder if it was your holding his teacup for him at the reception? Isn’t there something about that in The Golden Bough?’ – and up he bobbed, to look for it on his shelves. He’s so annoying, Emma thought. Was it worth going on? But she did. When she had told him that she could not marry him, Eborebelosa had become indignant and, waving in the air a box which, he said, contained his grandfather’s skull, which he wanted her to have, he said he was a chieftain’s daughter (‘Chieftain’s son,’ Emma had corrected him, reflecting as she did so that this was the sort of role she had in mind in relation to him), that she could have as many goats as she wanted, that if she wanted anyone killed she had only to say. ‘You see,’ said Emma, ‘there simply is no common ground. And then he did this awful thing.’ ‘Great Scott!’ said Treece, forgetting about The Golden Bough.
‘Well, he got the idea that I was engaged to someone else, and he said he was going to kill him. He comes up to me every day, grinning like mad, asking if he’s dead yet.’
‘And is he?’
‘Is who what?’ asked Emma.
‘Is this man you’re engaged to dead?’
‘Well, there isn’t anyone. I had to invent someone.’
‘You shouldn’t have done that,’ said Treece.
‘I know,’ said Emma Fielding. She looked downcast; she bent her head; and then, Treece noticed with horror, there was a bright crystal tear in each of her eyes. She hadn’t meant to tell this bit, for how guilty she felt about it. Oh, she had never meant to lie; it wasn’t as if it was an ordinary lie, which would have been bad enough; she was lying to a member of a race which had been lied to too much already. If he ever found out, he would surely take it as an insult to his colour, though it had been meant to spare him. But, in any case, was it, for a liberal-minded person, fair even to spare him? Would one want to spare a white person like that? Yet if one told him what one would tell a white person – ‘I don’t love you’ – wouldn’t this seem like an attack on his colour? And if he had been a white person, wouldn’t one perhaps have married him?
‘Oh,’ she sobbed, ‘it’s so difficult.’
Treece, watching her body shake with sobs, got up and popped halfway round the desk; then he thought better of it, and popped back. Someone might come in and catch him at it. ‘Now, now,’ he said from his safe distance.
‘That’s not all, either,’ said Emma. ‘It was you. It’s you he’s sticking pins into an image of.’
‘What do you mean?’ demanded Treece.
Well,’ cried Emma, ‘I said I was engaged to you. It had to be someone he was scared of, you see. So I thought of you.’
‘Did you, by Jove?’ said Treece.
‘You don’t understand,’ said Emma accusingly. ‘This is the sort of thing that only happens to women. Men don’t see this dilemma. One is congenitally a woman, you know; one tries not to be, but it’s a condition of one’s humanity. But his being a Negro makes everything so much worse. It’s not just a question of doing what a woman ought to do, is it?’
‘No,’ said Treece.
She blew her nose. ‘Well, then,’ she said. ‘And that’s why I came to you, because it isn’t just a personal problem, and I can’t handle it on my own. I mean, it is very flattering, to be admired by someone out of a different culture. But you see – if I turn away from him it won’t just seem like a simple rejection, will it?’
Treece pondered a moment. ‘Well, will it?’ demanded Emma, and Treece found that her eyes, sprouting tears, were gazing accusingly at him, as if he were to blame, as if he were the cruel arbiter of dilemmas of this sort (which, in a sense, he had to admit, he was). ‘He’ll think, won’t he, that I’m discriminating against him because of his colour.’
‘And you aren’t?’ asked Treece, taking strength.
‘Oh, oh, I don’t know,’ said Emma. ‘But I couldn’t marry him. I don’t want to.’
‘But you must give him a fair deal, now, mustn’t you? That’s all that’s necessary. Have you thought it through in the way that you would have if he were a white suitor?’
‘Well, how do I know, because he isn’t,’ said Emma. ‘White suitors don’t try to give you their grandfather’s skull. And when one’s getting married one has to take things like that into consideration. I mean, it does matter, doesn’t it?’
‘But have you even thought of the matter as a feasible possibility?’ asked Treece. ‘At least you have to do that, don’t you?’
‘I suppose so,’ said Emma.
‘I think you do,’ said Treece. ‘In many ways, Eborebelosa is an admirable man. His ways are not our ways, but that doesn’t mean they’re any worse.’ Treece weighed this for a moment, and then added, scrupulously (scrupulously was his word), ‘Or any better. He does have the advantage of national vigour on his side; he’s close to his roots, you know. That should appeal to a woman, shouldn’t it? I mean, he’s extra-ordinarily male, vital, in a way . . . well, you’ve read Lawrence. He deserves to be considered on his merits.’
‘Yes,’ said Emma. ‘Yes.’ A brave smile shone through the tears. Treece felt as though he had put the case rather well, had given her something to think about. That was his job.
‘Are my eyes terribly red?’ asked Emma.
‘No,’ said Treece, adding, as if he were her father, somebody’s father, ‘Sit here for a minute; and stop rubbing them.’ Treece tried to think of something nice and warming to say; but he could only, really, think of one thing. This was the driving test.
‘Oh, I wish I hadn’t to take my driving test,’ he said; somehow, after the tears, it didn’t matter about telling Emma. ‘I hate that machine. You know I get off it every time shaking like a leaf. It’s full of vibration. It has a life of its own. I dream about it in bed at night.’
‘Why not get rid of it?’ said Emma.
‘It’s a challenge, you see. They shouldn’t make people take these cruel little tests, it’s so belittling.’
‘Well, you do,’ said Emma.
‘Yes, I know, but it isn’t the same, is it? I wasn’t at all nervous when I took my Ph.D. The thing with this one is that you aren’t being judged on your own terms. I’m an expert in English literature, and they’re going to ask me questions about street signs. It’s a field outside the ones in which I have control, you see. I shall expose myself, I know.’
‘It isn’t so very hard,’ said Emma.
‘You’ve taken it, then, have you?’
‘Yes,’ said Emma.
‘And passed?’
‘Yes,’ said Emma.
‘Oh, well,’ said Treece, ‘perhaps you have a mechanical mind. What I’m getting at is how cruel life is in the spheres of it in which you aren’t influential. You think you have a protected corner, and you’re safe; but once you emerge from it, war is declared. You think life is ideal, so long as you can pursue it along the lines you favour; and then it suddenly comes upon you that it isn’t, it’s corrupt, that the area in which you are resolute, and make decisions, is so very small. And now and then life goes to work to remind you of it.’
‘Yes, I know exactly what you mean,’ said Emma. ‘The blind, uncontrollabl
e forces of the universe break through, suddenly, the great overpowering energies of the world. As in Moby Dick.’
‘Quite,’ said Treece. ‘And the question remains: is it right to stay in the protected corner, where things are controllable, or should one venture out, and start again in a new world, where things are strenuous, and reclaim something else from the wild?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Emma. ‘How does one decide? One concludes, I suppose, that one world is worth more, I imagine, and opts for that.’
‘It isn’t even as simple as that,’ said Treece, morosely; the discussion was affecting him profoundly; these were his corns that they were treading on. ‘Because when one ceases to cultivate one’s own garden, then one ceases to be influential. There’s so much to lose, not in goods, but in manners, patterns of living. Outside those that one has, one is nothing – one is a buffoon. Like Mr Eborebelosa. He’s not funny on his native heath – but here! No, there’s nothing really you can do; for then the abrasion itself becomes a dominant condition of life, and one gives more time to it than it deserves. And one has to commit oneself to actions that perhaps are not right – or they might be right for you, but not for other people.’ He stood up and walked over to the door, taking a black cycling coat from a hook on the back of it. ‘It’s a problem, Miss Fielding,’ he said, putting on the coat. ‘It’s a problem.’ On the hook there also hung a pair of cellophane goggles, and these he seized and pulled down over his eyes, ruffling his hair wildly as he did so.
‘Well, you look your normal self now,’ he said, presuming on their intimacy. His eyes crinkled into a smile behind the cellophane. ‘I hope it will all come out all right,’ he said, ushering her out of the door and following her down the corridor. Notices flapped on the boards like great birds as they swept past them.
‘And good luck for your driving test,’ said Emma.
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