Eating People is Wrong

by Malcolm Bradbury

  ‘No one, surely, would set out to be a social outcast,’ said the girl in spectacles, with a laugh. ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ said Merrick. ‘There are many who like it.’ ‘Besides,’ said the girl, ‘we don’t do funny things.’

  Louis felt extremely rebuffed. ‘I think I’m not without wider experience, in so far as what you say applies to me; not that I want to be hypersensitive about all this. Besides, I spent several years in a girls’ school.’

  ‘And then they spotted you?’ asked Hopgood.

  ‘No,’ said Merrick. ‘You won’t be without experience, then.’

  But Emma Fielding thought these remarks rather unkind; she began to feel about Louis that he was not as black as he was painted. Treece’s nervousness of him seemed to be highly exaggerated; but since he expected her to shepherd Louis, and control his extravagances, she determined to do so – but now for his own sake. ‘I think it’s wonderful to be able to write,’ she said, and Louis, turning amid the laughter, found her pretty face bent in his direction, intense, serious, her dark eyes clouded with thought, her dark, wispy hair falling over her brow, her white teeth shining. ‘You know, what amazes me about writing is this,’ said Emma, ‘what an amazing organization of all corners of the spirit goes on, if you see what I mean, to concentrate on what’s being written. When it’s good, I mean.’

  ‘Well, yes,’ said Louis speculatively; women, he thought, said things like this, of course – it was part of their congenital course towards maternity, their natural proclivity towards the mystic. Yet as a remark it was more than kind; Louis was at least not too pedestrian to see that. He looked at her and grew warm. What if he surrendered to mad passion and kissed the inside of her elbow there, in front of Treece and Merrick, Carfax and the prim virgins of the department? Would he be sent down? Would he be regarded as a lovable literary eccentric? Would his marks in terminal examinations have gone up or down? And if he could have no more kissed her arm than have thrown cakes at Professor Treece, yet it was still the fact that this fresh, vigorous, youthful passion has grown where there was none before. He leaned close to Emma’s ear and murmured, gently, confidingly, ‘I like you.’

  ‘Well, now,’ said Professor Treece all at once; a plate from his lap tumbled to the floor as he rose and was picked up by some student attentive to his chances in examinations, ‘I expect you’ll all want to be getting back.’ Treece wanted to have a bath and cut his toenails. Most people took his point. ‘I suppose we’d better,’ said someone, glossing over what Treece had not even bothered to conceal. ‘Is that the time?’ proffered someone else; and they all began to troop, in little bands, into the hall, carefully avoiding the debris of the accident with the tea trolley. Only Louis lingered; he wanted to talk about literature. ‘Talking of creation . . .’ he began; his voice echoed in an empty room. He rose and went across to the doorway, where in frantic haste everyone was busy with the process of departure. Coats and hats were put on at speed; dishevelled people burst at trotting pace out of the door, uttering terse farewells.

  ‘Such a pleasant evening,’ said Miss Winterbottom to Louis. ‘I don’t know how he can endure on his own like this, do you? What he needs is a nice wife.’ ‘Isn’t he a lovely man?’ remarked the girl in spectacles, while Louis held her handbag as hastily she powdered her nose. ‘I wonder if he realizes how devastating that sort of embarrassed look of his can be?’ ‘I wonder,’ murmured Louis.

  Then Treece was among them once again, ten coats over his arm. ‘Does anyone want to use a cloakroom?’ he asked politely. ‘What for?’ murmured Hopgood to Louis. ‘No, thank you,’ said someone who obviously did.

  Treece was looking for Emma. We all of us have small secrets that we would not wish to have charted up against us in any history of our days, and Treece’s was that, when Emma had told him that, in her crisis with Eborebelosa, she had named him as her suitor, named him surely with consideration, he had felt enormously pleased. It was not a passing gesture; it counted for something, but what? Treece had, of course, absolved Emma from any responsibility concerning Eborebelosa; in fact, when he had returned home, chastened after the driving test, he had written at once to tell her so; and she had written back, telling him that she had already absolved herself, and that, while she still suspected her reasons, each human being had to live a liveable way of life, a modus vivendi, and life with Eborebelosa as his fifth wife was certainly, for her, not that. Treece now wanted to see her and tell her that he thought this reasonable and right. But already she had gone.

  Louis permitted himself to leave fast. ‘Thank you very much, professor,’ he said, hovering in the hope of some final blessing. ‘Good night, Bates,’ said Treece; bath and not benediction was what was in his mind. ‘A most pleasant evening,’ went on Louis tentatively; the girl in spectacles pulled warningly at his coat. ‘Don’t slip in the drive,’ said Treece. ‘It’s turned rather icy.’ Aware of strong pressures against him, Louis gave ground. His purpose changed; now what he wanted was to find Emma Fielding. She seemed to have disappeared completely. ‘Oo, I’m cold,’ said Miss Winterbottom pleasantly. ‘I can’t talk to you now,’ said Louis.

  Hopgood was saying: ‘I was sitting next to Carfax. His stomach never stopped rumbling all the time we were there.’ ‘His wife doesn’t feed him properly,’ said Miss Winterbottom. ‘It was like a ball rolling very slowly down a bagatelle board until it reached the bottom,’ said Hopgood. ‘Then it would somehow go back to the top again.’

  They emerged into the road and then Louis saw Emma, in the distance, riding away on her bicycle. ‘Lend me your bike,’ he said to Cocoran. ‘No,’ said Cocoran. ‘I don’t lend it.’ ‘You’re so naïve,’ said Louis spitefully, and he set off hastily down the road in pursuit of the red tail light. In another moment it was gone from view. Ah,’ sighed Louis, and he turned his footsteps homeward. As he walked, frost biting his ears and fingers, the collar of his long overcoat turned up, he devoted himself to reflection on the events of the evening. For the most part, the people he met had been passers-by; that is, he did not see them as a source of profound sympathies, or in any context wider than the immediately social. To experience people in the context of their full humanity, their whole width of being, was a rare and moving experience; none the less, he had experienced it, and with no less a quantity than Emma Fielding. Parading on through the streets of the municipality, he shortly came to the house at which he lodged. The household – a Mr and Mrs Hopewell, and dog – were sitting in the lounge in silence, contemplating the crumbs of their existence with an admirable solidity. Louis went into the kitchen and made himself a cup of the malty night beverage he always took before retiring. A man has to coddle himself when there is none to do it for him. Then he went upstairs, opened the door of his room, put on the light, shut the window firmly and drew the curtains, for he did not like draughts, took off his overcoat and placed it on the bed as an extra blanket, for he did not like cold, stored away in a drawer two lumps of sugar he had captured at Treece’s, went to the bathroom, sat on the toilet, used it and flushed it, washed, cleaned his teeth, and squeezed out a facial blemish, returned to his bedroom, shutting and bolting the door, stripped off his pyjamas, which were rather tatty, sat on the bed and scratched his athlete’s foot, and climbed into bed. As he lay there in the darkness, shivering with cold, he thought to himself, I am a lover. He tasted the role for a moment or two; it wasn’t all it was said to be. He was not a ladies’ man; indeed, he was not anyone’s man. But passion visited him from time to time, as it does do most of us, and he had a disposition which laid him open to falling in love quite frequently with persons whom he had never seen before and was not likely to see again. He was not even sure, at times, that success in love was what he wanted; that took you on to the next stage, and this was the one he liked. But now (his face beamed in the darkness) there was Emma. Quite, quite different. Did he want her? Yes he did. Did he love her? Yes yes yes. Did she like him? He rather fancied that she did. He would write to her, or seek her ou
t, tomorrow. And he fell asleep in the warmth of two delightful thoughts: ‘I am in love with Emma’ and ‘Won’t she be pleased when I tell her.’

  III

  A day or two later Treece took his driving test again. It was the same examiner and, Treece felt, rather a strange relationship was growing up between them; it was as if both of them realized that they would both be at this little job for a long time, and had better face up to the fact. ‘I like your tie,’ said the examiner when Treece turned up again. It was a frosty day and Treece’s ears were cold. He slapped them a few times. ‘I feel nervous again,’ he said. ‘If it hadn’t been for all that twisting last time, the clutch cable wouldn’t have snapped. Look, I’ve got it again.’ He held out his hands, which were vibrating hysterically. ‘Now, now, take it easy,’ said the examiner. ‘I’m not going to chop off your head, you know.’ They went out into the road. The bicycle stood there, seedier-looking than ever. ‘I want you to go up the hill on this,’ said the examiner, ‘and come down towards here, making the appropriate signals as you go. We’ll try the emergency stop; I’ll step into the road and you stop as you would if I was an ordinary road user.’

  Treece adjusted his goggles and climbed aboard. Up to the top of the hill he went, signalling with his arms for the most trivial reasons; around he turned, and down he came. Suddenly, out from behind a car, a figure stepped. Treece squeezed the brakes, the bicycle skidded, and then he hit him. His clipboard and hat hurled into the air. It was the examiner.

  He’d spoiled his suit, but otherwise he was all right – right enough to go on with the test. Treece had a graze down his nose, but that was nothing. Afterwards, when it was all over, Treece asked: ‘Did I pass?’ ‘Knocks me arse over tip, and then wants to know if he’s passed,’ said the examiner laughing delightedly. He was getting really fond of Treece. ‘Let me know how much it costs to have that suit cleaned,’ said Treece. ‘See you again,’ said the examiner. ‘Yes,’ said Treece. ‘See you again.’

  Solace was what Treece wanted at this point; and solace he was offered, for as he chugged off down the High Street who should he see, gazing into the window of an antique shop, but Emma Fielding. He pulled into the kerb and uttered her name. She turned and, on seeing that it was he, came over to his side. ‘What have you done to your nose?’ she said. ‘I’ve been taking my driving test,’ said Treece, taking out his handkerchief and wiping the graze. ‘Did you pass?’ asked Emma. ‘I didn’t,’ said Treece ‘and if the truth is to be expressed I never shall. That is what I have to understand and come to terms with.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Emma.

  ‘I wondered if I could trespass on your time and good nature,’ said Treece. ‘I was just going to have some tea. Will you join me?’

  ‘I have to get some vegetables,’ said Emma. ‘They sell them off cheap in the evening, and prudence is a virtue that my mother taught me.’

  ‘What were you looking at so concernedly in that window?’ asked Treece.

  ‘There’s a harmonium in there that I’m very fond of,’ said Emma.

  ‘You are fond of music,’ said Treece politely, wheeling his bicycle through the streets, ‘or just of musical instruments?’

  ‘Both,’ said Emma. In fact for her, the harmonium brought back the recollection of a happy period in her youth, when her mother had played at the harmonium on quiet evenings, and she and her sisters had sung. The pursuit had a quaint and foreign flavour about it. What perhaps struck home sharpest was the name of this instrument, which expressed precisely that quality, of harmony, which Emma sought from life. Life as she now led it was perpetually restless, searching, inharmonious; nothing was resolved and there were no firm rocks to settle on. To go home – that was Emma’s one desire, but there was no home. It had broken up long ago.

  The housewifely aspect of marketing was not lost on Professor Treece, who was interested in the flavours of separate sorts of experience. To pass among the wooden stalls of the market, lighted with heavy yellow-hazed lamps, while the evening airs of the town gathered round its grey buildings in a twilight mist, was a pleasant sensation. It may be, said Treece, that one feels much like this when one is married; he was thinking, specifically, of the heavy bag of potatoes which he was carrying; it was a cosy kind of experience. Things like this had not, for Treece, lost their cultural novelty. Presently they retired to the Kardomah Café and, on the first floor, found a table overlooking the square. It was filled with housewives and clergymen, biting delicately on crumpets.

  ‘I always have tea in town on Mondays,’ said Treece, as they sat down, ‘because I teach an evening class at the Adult Education Centre here.’

  ‘Do you enjoy teaching adults?’ asked Emma.

  ‘Sometimes I think I prefer them to university students; they know what you mean when you talk about life.’

  ‘Do you like talking about life?’ asked Emma.

  ‘It’s the only way I can get my own back on it,’ said Treece. ‘And after all its behaviour is scandalous enough. I’m glad I saw you, because I’ve been wanting to talk to you,’ said Treece. ‘I wanted to ask you what happened about Mr Eborebelosa. I felt I . . . well, stepped wrong over that.’

  ‘Well, the position now is really rather more complicated,’ said Emma with a smile, ‘because now someone else wants me to marry him, and I don’t want to, so I begin to feel that if I ought to marry Mr Eborebelosa then probably I ought to marry him too. With Mr Eborebelosa it’s his colour, and with this other one it’s his class, that come into the picture. As he told me in a letter, with class you need a lot of good-will.’ Emma was referring to the fact that she had received two letters from Louis Bates, in which he had confessed his mad passion and sought to drag her some way towards the altar. These letters had been so pompous and ill-considered in tone, and so unrelated to effective action, that it was impossible for Emma to think of them without either annoyance or amusement. ‘Perhaps’, said Emma, being a little over-bold, ‘the best thing to do would be to decide which one I like least – and then marry him.’ Treece peered about him, as if he could see words written on the air, and he looked severely at them; it was not at all funny. Obviously what people had to do in this sort of situation was to summon up all their reserves of goodwill and honest feeling, and get this thing sorted out.

  ‘You know,’ Emma said, ‘I did go over the whole thing very carefully and seriously. You must do me the justice to think that I try to do the right and honest thing.’

  ‘But I do think that, Miss Fielding,’ said Treece, with a pleasant, approving smile. ‘I respect your choices.’

  ‘This really upsets me, to be honest,’ said Emma. ‘Am I some sort of Belle Dame Sans Merci, who tempts people into love without having the least capacity to respond with any? Of course, everyone thinks his behaviour has been sound and honest, and if people only wouldn’t be so blind, they’d see it’s absolutely right that you should have committed the murder, or stolen the money, or performed the adultery. But I don’t think I’m deceiving myself like that, Professor Treece; I honestly don’t.’

  ‘And I don’t either,’ said Professor Treece.

  Emma looked out of the window, feeling shaken and disturbed. Outside the dusk was creeping up between the market stalls, and it was beginning to rain. The winter weather was really coming; afternoon rain dripped off the roofs, blustery winds buffeted the black, leafless trees, and people went by in their raincoats, looking enclosed and self-contained.

  Treece scratched his ear uneasily. ‘I want to tell you’, he said, ‘that I felt I’d misled you in my little conversation, last time we talked. I suppose you’re right in accusing me of underestimating your integrity.’

  ‘Well, I didn’t really do that,’ said Emma, ‘but, you know, I’m twenty-six. It’s a terribly old age. I can’t afford to make any more mistakes. I try to be fair to people and things, but I want to be fair to myself as well.’

  ‘Yes, I know,’ said Treece, ‘and I . . . well, I apologize.’

  ‘
Well, what is it, then?’ said a brisk voice; it was the waitress. Treece’s head bobbed up. ‘What will you have?’ he said to Emma. ‘Just tea and toast,’ said Emma. But Treece was obviously going to take the amount she ate as an index of the degree to which she accepted his apology; he pressed her to more and more.

  ‘The trouble is’, said Emma, when the waitress had gone, ‘that with one’s behaviour one doesn’t know what to believe.’ Believe, believe, who said believe? Treece’s eyes seemed to say; here in my universe there is someone who talks of believing!

  ‘Do you believe?’ asked Treece.

  ‘No; I don’t really believe; I just do things,’ said Emma. It was only men, Emma considered, who believed in things; women recognized that being a woman was way of life enough.

  ‘Do you believe?’ asked Emma.

  ‘I believe, I suppose, in my way; I believe in scrupulousness in the face of action. You know, I’ve spent all my life trying to understand the relationship of action and consequences. I wonder if I shall ever learn – I find myself singularly obtuse. But the two seem in such different spheres – actions are in time and consequences are in suspension.’

  ‘I know what you mean, and in a way I’d say the same,’ said Emma. ‘But at the same time you aren’t really saying anything, are you? Not about the world. I mean, where do you take your values from, and how does this apply to other people?’

  ‘But it doesn’t,’ said Treece, ‘and it isn’t a valuable position. You mistake me if you think I’m trying to elevate it into a public philosophy. All I’m saying is that I don’t believe in public philosophies, that I want to live according to my own lights, and that I don’t want to change anyone else.’

  ‘But you did, with me,’ said Emma.

  ‘That’s true,’ said Treece, ‘and I’ve repented. But . . . if people can believe in God, so much the better; they have a code they can, and ought to, live by.’