Eating People is Wrong

by Malcolm Bradbury

  ‘Have you seen Emma Fielding?’ he asked Oliver.

  ‘Come and watch me do a seduction,’ said Oliver. ‘This girl has put herself in severe moral danger, and I’m it. Come on, amigo. Tell her what a fine fellow I am.’

  ‘Yes, he is,’ said Louis feebly.

  ‘Good God! Not like that,’ said Oliver. ‘I want her virtue, not her vote. Try some of that old moonlight on the water stuff, or a bit of crap about Ceres and the essential fertility of the world. Come on, man, boost me.’

  ‘I think he’s horrible,’ said the girl, turning her black-painted pout to Louis.

  ‘Luckily for you, I am,’ said Oliver. ‘OK, amigo, slope off now and I’ll get on with my idyll.’

  ‘I’m looking for my partner,’ said Louis.

  ‘Try the river,’ said Oliver.

  Treece came by at this moment, on his way back from the dance floor; his tie had come untied and he looked dismally unhappy. He had been doing the Gay Gordons with Viola. Viola was a little tight, and had refused to walk up and down at the bit where you walk up and down; she just wanted to spin round all the time. Finally, she had fallen down and had had to be taken to the sidelines to recover. Treece had never really wanted to come to the ball in the first place. It was the Vice-Chancellor, who spent the weeks before these student occasions in indefatigable effort, gathering up members of the faculty to go along in order, as he liked to express it, ‘to put up a bit of a show’, who had tempted him here. The Vice-Chancellor, like all vice-chancellors, had clear ideas of what a university should look like, and taste like; vice-chancellors all share in common a Platonic ideal for a university. For one thing, it should be big. People should be coming to look at it all the time. There should be a special place for parking Rolls-Royces. There should be big sports grounds, a science building designed by Basil Spence, and more and more students coming every year. There should be new faculties – of Business Administration, of Aeronautical Engineering, of Sanitation, of Social Dancing. Vice-chancellors want big universities and a great many faculties; professors want small universities and only the liberal arts and pure sciences. Vice-chancellors always seem to win. Seeing Treece now, he left the local dignitaries whom he was buttering up at the bar, took Treece familiarly by the arm, and said jovially: ‘I think the little lady here has set her heart on you, my boy,’ pointing to Viola, who was approaching. ‘Oh, Viola, nice dress; didn’t get that out here in the provinces, I’ll be bound. Changed your hair, too? Like it, Viola, like it.’

  ‘Thank you kindly,’ said Viola in a quaint voice. She turned to Treece and murmured, ‘Christ, can’t we get out of here?’

  ‘Not yet,’ said Treece.

  ‘Come and meet the Lord-Lieutenant of the County,’ said the Vice-Chancellor. ‘Very interested in boys’ dubs. Think he thinks this is one.’

  They went over and met the Lord-Lieutenant, who asked Treece if he rowed. They met the Lord Mayor, who asked Treece if he was active in politics. Town and gown rarely met, and when they did both were embarrassed. Treece now asked the Lord Mayor if he rowed, and whether he had time to read very much. Finally, conscious of having done good, they retired, Viola and Treece, to the bar for a quick drink. It was really the first time he had spoken to Viola since her party. ‘Stuart, you’re getting fat, you know,’ said Viola. He speculated about this strange remark for a moment and then recognized it for what it was, the comment of an eccentric old spinster. He looked at Viola in surprise, and noticed, for the first time, the little lines around her eyes.

  They took their drinks and sat down. ‘You and me last night!’ said Viola, raising her glass.

  ‘It wasn’t last night,’ said Treece.

  ‘Well, whenever it was then,’ said Viola.

  For a moment nothing was said. Then Viola said: ‘Take that squishy-looking cigarette out of your mouth, Stuart, and talk to me properly. Don’t you want to talk to me?’

  ‘Yes, of course,’ said Treece. ‘What shall we talk about?’

  ‘I’ve missed you,’ said Viola.

  ‘Have you?’ said Treece. He wondered what she’d do for herself, and suddenly felt sorry for her future. She had had her hair cut in a new way that made her ears stick out – it was called the gamin look – and it made women look like little boys. He found her appearance affected and annoying, and he didn’t like to see her drunk.

  ‘Poor old Stuart,’ said Viola; ‘you get such a frightened look when you think you’re committed to something; but don’t worry, you aren’t. I just take a friendly interest in you, though.’

  ‘I know,’ said Treece, ‘and I’m glad you do.’

  ‘But you do like me, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes, of course I do. I’m your friend.’

  ‘Yes, but who isn’t – at least, on your side.’

  ‘Well, I know, but you mean a lot to me, Viola,’ said Treece, ‘and I wasn’t just mucking about that time.’

  ‘However,’ said Viola, ‘it’s stupid to talk about situations of this sort, because when you’ve mulled over them they always seem less satisfactory than they are. Everything has proved that, if you’re careful, actions don’t have consequences. If you changed my life because of meeting me it would wound me. I’d rather change my life to please you, because at least you would have to take the responsibility, and I’ve got nothing to lose. But what can you make of people who don’t make actions of their thoughts? They’re nothing; they’re impotent, they’re invisible. We’re invisible, Stuart; we try to live our lives as though they don’t count, as though they go unnoticed.’

  ‘Yes, that’s true,’ said Treece.

  ‘Of course, it doesn’t worry me,’ said Viola, ‘but you have to know it, don’t you?’ She looked pointedly into her empty glass.

  ‘Another?’ said Treece.

  ‘Please,’ said Viola. ‘Oh, I want to ask you something. Did you send the ghoul down?’

  ‘No,’ said Treece.

  ‘And then you say you’re my friend. I knew you wouldn’t. I forecast this to myself.’

  ‘It simply wasn’t necessary,’ said Treece. ‘He’s going to start work again.’

  ‘I see,’ said Viola. ‘He’s over there by the door now, smelling girl’s ears when they go past. You know, you can’t go on like this. You’re a mess, Stuart. Oh, don’t look like that. I don’t mean any harm, but nothing’s getting anywhere. This department has settled down into staid middle age. So have you. So will I, if I don’t squeal a little occasionally. You’ll come up to my bedroom every Bank Holiday Monday and the students will persuade you to ring your handbells every departmental tea party and you’ll charm all the little girls straight from school for ever and ever, amen. And there we are. What are you doing for Christmas?’

  ‘Conference at Oxford,’ said Treece.

  ‘Oh yes; you told me,’ said Viola. ‘Look, Stuart, I’m feeling randy. Come outside and give me a kiss. See me home. You know what all this has been about.’

  ‘Viola, you’re a little tight, and we’ve got to stay here and be sociable.’

  ‘Just because I fell down and bruised my butt doesn’t mean I’m tight, my pet,’ said Viola. ‘I’m going to have another drink.’

  ‘I’ll join you,’ said Merrick. ‘Hello, Viola. Nice dress, and a new haircut! You do us proud. Fascinating glimpses of lovely white buz. I see in Vogue that the last cry is to have the hair done en bouffon.’

  ‘It wouldn’t suit me; my face is too round,’ said Viola.

  ‘Nonsense,’ said Merrick. ‘It’s not too round, is it, Treece?’

  ‘Drink, Merrick?’ asked Treece.

  ‘I’ll have Dubonnet,’ said Merrick.

  At the bar, Treece, congenitally a person who was always served last, found himself in the centre of a violent contest for attention, for it was now closing time. Beside him was Oliver, the sort of person, it was apparent, who was always served first. ‘Observing all the local idylls?’ asked Oliver. ‘All this lotus-eating. Came for a bit of lotus-eating myself, actuall
y. Did you see that girl I was with? The one in blue? Never saw her before tonight in my life. Bet I get there, though. Here, serve this man next, barman. He’s a professor. Make way for the prof, please. Make way for the prof. New rule: professors served first.’

  ‘Thank you, Oliver,’ said Treece. ‘Let me get yours.’

  ‘Ta, then,’ said Oliver. ‘That’s a gin and lime and a Guinness.’

  Treece got the drinks and turned.

  ‘By the way,’ said Oliver. ‘Don’t forget next term, I’m going to show you the local vie littéraire, the British beats.’

  ‘Are they interesting?’ asked Treece, picking up one of the drinks from the tray and drinking it. Treece found himself speculating about his relations with Oliver (of course Treece found himself speculating about his relations with anyone, for the mysteries of human contact were, to him, so profound, that he wondered how he ever did it, how he went out and had relations at all). The way in which he was affected by Oliver was in the splendid freedom of Oliver’s existence; the barriers, the bolts and bars, that one discerned on every side, were invisible to Oliver. He was not awed by professors or barmen or moral codes or any of the things that limited, for Treece, free access to the world. He patted him on the shoulder in a very amiable sort of way, and drank the last drink off the tray. He then went back to the table and Merrick said: ‘Viola went off outside with someone from French. Have a tiggy?’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Treece, rather relieved about losing Viola. It was a Turkish tiggy. What had happened with Viola that evening seemed to Treece rather disastrous, and it was this curiosity of his strained relationship with Viola that was to act as a solvent in a situation that was to develop later in the evening.

  ‘Do you like this tie?’ asked Merrick. Treece looked him up and down. Merrick always looked as though he had just that moment dismounted from a horse: his clothes were always cavalrytwill-y, trousers with sixteen-inch cuffs, the standard wear (at this time) of the Guardsmen/Stockbroker/Underwriter smart set, though already the teddy boys were being imitative and spoiling things. You could always tell that Merrick went off to Cambridge or London for his clothes – ‘even for his socks and pants’, Viola once avowed. Whenever Treece talked to Merrick, he was reminded of that Poet Laureate who confessed that his idea of Heaven was to sit in a garden and to receive constant telegrams announcing alternately a British victory by sea and a British victory by land. Merrick was so Establishment that it just was not true; he was one of the Old Boy system who had somehow just not known quite enough Old Boys to get a Cambridge fellowship, or into the Diplomatic, and so he had missed the gunboat and was left, continually mystified, among people that no one really mixed with at all.

  ‘It’s a very nice tie,’ said Treece.

  ‘It’s a mistress tie,’ said Merrick. ‘Why is it that one’s mistresses always give one ties?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Treece, who didn’t. Merrick was, in his romantic way, a sort of professional co-respondent; he was in bed so often that the wonder was that he didn’t have bed sores. From behind, someone tapped him on the shoulder. It was Oliver. ‘Do you happen to have any contraceptives on you?’ he asked confidentially.

  Merrick promptly opened up his wallet and went carefully through it. ‘Should be able to oblige, old boy,’ he said.

  ‘Good,’ said Oliver. ‘Always wanted to do it outside, you know, ever since I read Sons and Lovers.’

  ‘No, sorry, old boy. I’m out,’ said Merrick. ‘I didn’t think I’d be coming tonight.’

  Treece took out his wallet and looked in it; if he hadn’t been drunk he would have been shocked, and if he hadn’t been drunk he wouldn’t have tried to pretend he had any, when he most certainly hadn’t.

  ‘Don’t let me take your last,’ said Oliver.

  ‘Sorry, I haven’t,’ said Treece, slapping his wallet to.

  ‘Just have to risk it,’ said Oliver, departing.

  ‘I say,’ said Merrick. ‘I thought you brought me a drink?’

  ‘I must have drunk it myself,’ said Treece.

  ‘Well, that’s a bit thick, old chap. The bar’s closed now.’

  ‘Sorry,’ said Treece.

  ‘Never mind. I say, absolutely ducky pianist, isn’t he? Have you seen the local jazz band? You should. All trad stuff, of course, and straight off the records. But then there is no English culture left, is there?’

  Viola now came back into the bar with the fat little lecturer from French. ‘How about a round on the Ford Foundation?’ she cried to the man from French, who had a grant from that institution. ‘The bar’s closed,’ said Treece. ‘Nonsense,’ said Viola. ‘Don’t you be so easily put off.’

  The French lecturer went over to the bar.

  ‘Soon they’ll be having all these research foundations in England too,’ said Treece, ‘as part of the conspicuous consumption of industry. It seems the next stage in the democratic process. You’ve got the Nuffield Foundation; next it will be the Marks and Spencer’s Foundation, the Chappie Dog Food Foundation, the C. and A. Modes Foundation . . .’

  ‘The Strodex Foundation Foundation,’ said Viola; she was really very drunk. They were all really very drunk. Looking around, Treece felt upset nearly to tears by the sort of wanness of the milieu, by the Violas and the Merricks, by everything.

  He wondered if he was going to be ill. The sensation of being in the world, in this spot, suffused about him in a dull wash, and all at once he thought of a sentence out of Thomas Mann, and he thought of himself reading the sentence, as he did when he talked on D. H. Lawrence, to bored students in a lecture-room. The sentence was this: ‘In an age that offers no satisfying answer to the eternal question of “Why? To what end?”, a man who is capable of achievement over and above the expected and average modicum must be equipped either with a moral remoteness and single-mindedness which is rare indeed and of heroic mould, or else with an exceptionally robust vitality.’ Perhaps there were some people like that; but here there were, really, no heroes and no vital men, and one simply filled in time.

  This was no thought to be bringing to realization amid the entertainments of an evening like this, Treece told himself. ‘I feel sick,’ said a girl behind him. ‘Try and hold it till we get outside,’ said her escort. At the bar the lecturer in French was in the middle of a fracas with the barman, who was washing up the dirty glasses. At this moment Treece noticed Emma Fielding coming into the bar, and he felt relieved of his disgust. He went over to her; she looked over her shoulder. ‘Good evening,’ he said. ‘Are you having a good time?’

  ‘Well, I don’t really like these hops very much, but I’m certainly having a time. One sees life.’

  ‘Are you alone?’ asked Treece.

  ‘I came with a friend, but she got picked up.’

  ‘Oh, dear.’

  ‘No; she was pleased.’

  ‘I mean for you.’

  ‘I thought you’d gone looking for him, or the other one,’ said a loud whisper from Emma’s other side. It was Louis Bates.

  ‘Good evening, Miss Fielding,’ said Viola, returning to the group. ‘I like your dress. Good evening, Mr Bates,’ she added, observing this unwelcome figure in the group. ‘Mr Bates, Mr Bates, what does that word remind me of?’

  ‘Don’t be naughty,’ said Treece in Viola’s ear; he had an instinct for these things, and knew that Viola was determined to be very brilliant at Louis’s expense. This opening sally had already gone down very well, and Viola was ready for more.

  ‘You know, Miss Fielding, I’ve often thought: you would be pretty if you stood up straight. Your eyes are lovely. You really don’t make the most of yourself. You don’t rate yourself high enough. You go about with quite the wrong sort of people. You’re a mature woman; you need a more adult society; you’d flourish in it.’

  ‘Well, thank you,’ said Emma, taken aback.

  ‘You must come to one of my parties,’ said Viola. ‘They’re rather fun. Even Stuart likes them, and that is something of a
commendation, isn’t it, Stuart darling?’

  ‘I suppose it is,’ said Treece.

  ‘I worked this afternoon,’ whispered a dull voice in Treece’s ear. ‘Oh, you might as well enjoy tonight, Bates,’ said Treece generously. ‘I don’t want you to think . . .’ murmured Louis.

  ‘I didn’t know you two were so intimate,’ said Viola, interrupting. ‘Tell me, how’s the flageolet, Mr Bates? Mr Bates once told me that he has a flageolet, and goes down by the canal and plays Benjamin Britten-y tunes beginning with “Heigh-ho”. Wasn’t that what you told me?’

  ‘Something like that,’ said Bates.

  ‘And the embroidery . . . it was you who did embroidery?’ went on Viola.

  ‘Oh, no,’ said Bates.

  ‘Or am I confusing you with Ivy Compton-Burnett?’ asked Viola. ‘Tell me, Mr Bates, how is your chest? Don’t show it to me; just tell me.’

  ‘It’s a bit nasty,’ said Bates.

  ‘I’m sure it is,’ said Viola. ‘Mr Bates hasn’t been well since I’ve known him. Were your parents old when they had you?’

  ‘Yes; they were,’ said Bates.

  ‘You can always tell,’ said Viola. ‘Well, let that be a lesson to us . . .’ This was a reference to one of Treece’s own jokes, which he had shared with Viola; and the reference involved him and made him feel very guilty. Viola had said too much, and he tried to tempt her away.

  ‘Stuart is afraid, Mr Bates, that I find you too attractive,’ said Viola. ‘He is really very protective towards you. You must be grateful to him.’

  ‘I am, very,’ said Louis.