Eating People is Wrong

by Malcolm Bradbury

  ‘But, Emma . . .’

  ‘Please, Stuart, it isn’t any use,’ said Emma. ‘You mean a very great deal to me. I admire you in the way you like to be admired and I pity you in the way you like to be pitied. I don’t mean that cruelly; this is what we share. But you don’t even like me, Stuart, not me.’

  ‘Of course I do. I find that quite absurd,’ said Treece.

  ‘I know you do, because you don’t understand it, but it’s true. Do you know, you’ve never talked to me. You’ve never told me a thing that you think or feel. I don’t know you any better than I did that evening at the Christmas Ball. Why do you keep yourself so apart? Why don’t you trust people? What’s this great sacrifice you make when you consent to be with me? We went down to the pub this evening and what did you do? You didn’t ask me what I wanted; you just bought me gin and tonic because I always drink gin and tonic.’

  ‘What did you want?’

  ‘Gin and tonic,’ said Emma, ‘but I also wanted something else; I wanted to be asked. And then, we have never had one scrap of life together outside my bedroom. There are no cultural experiences we can remember about this. We’ve never existed together. And something else, Stuart, have you ever thought how insulting it might be to me that you can’t wait to get out of the door when you’ve been to see me? You see, your feelings must seem to you so much rarer and richer than anyone else’s. I feel too, you see; we all feel.’

  ‘I don’t know why I was like that,’ said Treece. ‘It bothered me. It wasn’t quite of my volition. I just felt I must get away. I felt that if I didn’t something fatal would happen.’

  ‘Yes, it might; I would have asked you what you were thinking; I would have wanted to talk. You know you never enjoyed it, you never enjoyed me. You never do anything. You always look as though you pretend you’re not here. You never look at me. You’ve never planned one event for us. You’ve never had anything laid on. What there was to be done, I did. You had to have everything suggested to you. A woman needs more than that. She needs to feel safe with a man. Do you know what sticks with me most? You’ve only, ever, used my Christian name once, before tonight, when we’ve been together. I thought you’d forgotten it, and were afraid to ask me. I’ve only once existed as a person to you. That was once, in the Town Hall gardens, when you first asked to kiss me. I said there was nothing special about me and you said: “Emma, there is.” I think you meant it, but whatever it was you saw in me, you’ve forgotten it.’

  ‘Believe me, that’s just not true,’ said Treece.

  ‘Oh, I don’t know, Stuart; perhaps it’s not, but it’s too late now.’

  ‘You’re so unfair,’ cried Treece, ‘because it simply hasn’t been like that. Why, I need you. I can’t live without you.’

  ‘I know you need me, Stuart,’ said Emma, ‘and that’s why I stay with you, because you’d be so lost without me. I enjoyed feeding you. I’m always pleased to see you eating, and being looked after. You need me more than anyone I ever met; you need, just into the void. I truly wish I could say that that were enough. But the simple and honest and open truth is that for me it isn’t.’

  ‘I suppose everything you say about me is the truth,’ said Treece slowly. ‘I’m simply parasitic on other people and compelled to be so by a force I can’t even explain, a lack of responsibility to other people and an inability to form proper relationships. And it’s so cruel, because responsibility and relationships are the things I believe in so deeply; they are all there is. I’ve always believed, you know, in my own goodness, and thought I could never do anything wrong in the things of love. Yet it seems to me that I have.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Stuart,’ said Emma. ‘I didn’t ever mean to say this. I thought things would work themselves out and you’d find someone who could really give you what you wanted and whom you might even love. But I couldn’t help thinking it. It’s different for a woman. Suppose I were pregnant? Then what? What would you do then?’

  ‘Are you?’ cried Treece. ‘Is that it?’

  ‘No, I’m not,’ said Emma.

  ‘I believe I wish you were,’ said Treece. ‘This is a great reversal.’

  ‘Oh, that’s cruel, isn’t it?’ said Emma. ‘You hope that in order to bind me to you when I don’t want to be bound.’

  ‘It’s not really that,’ said Treece. ‘Pregnancy is such a great lesson in the laws of cause and effect; it’s a lesson one needs to learn. That’s why women see things so differently.’

  ‘I think that’s rather horrible,’ said Emma. ‘Who bears the lesson?’

  ‘I didn’t mean that,’ said Treece. He took her hand. She gave no response. He said: ‘Emma darling, I think you are the one person in the world that I trust. I do mean it. I don’t feel a wild sort of love, I admit. But I want to be with you, and have you there.’

  ‘You’ll find someone,’ said Emma.

  ‘I don’t want someone. I want you,’ said Treece. ‘You see, there were all those other things that we couldn’t forget. Louis Bates and Eborebelosa . . .’

  ‘Why don’t you forget about those two? You can’t do everyone’s living for them,’ said Emma. ‘Really, Stuart, you’re hopeless.’

  There was, suddenly, a knock at the door. Treece could not stir. ‘Let me in, Stuart honey,’ said a voice; it was Viola Masefield’s. Treece sat still in an access of bewilderment. ‘Open the door, Stuart,’ said Viola; ‘it’s cold out here. It’s I, it’s Viola.’

  ‘Will you open it,’ asked Emma, ‘or shall I?’

  ‘Believe me,’ said Treece desperately. ‘This wasn’t arranged.’

  Emma said nothing and opened the door.

  ‘I see,’ said Viola.

  It was all too much for Treece.

  ‘My fault,’ said Viola, and turned to go. ‘I know where I’m not wanted. Maybe I’m stupid or unfair, though, Stuart, but it was too much for me to expect you to tell me? Don’t you think you’re rather a mess? The thing is, Stuart will accept anything. He’s a sort of dustbin of experiences, aren’t you, Stuart?’

  ‘I thought you were rather keen on our friend Willoughby,’ said Treece desperately.

  ‘Any woman can do what she likes with Stuart,’ said Viola contemptuously to Emma. ‘Anyone can. She has only to be cruel to him and he thinks she doesn’t like him. She has only to tempt him and he’ll fall. He’s one of those people who ponder all the time about human relationships, and then leave the others to act. He simply responds to whatever’s tossed in his path. You can play with him so easily. But there’s nothing to bite on; when you seek more, there’s nothing there . . . nothing there at all.’

  To Treece it was the situation, rather than this statement, that made all this almost more than he could bear. As he contemplated the situation he recoiled from the horror of it; it expressed itself to him in these terms, and when they had both gone, and he was left alone, he found the pain of it all suffused him so much that he could have cried.

  V

  On the Monday, Treece went down to the railway station to see Carey Willoughby off. They got on the bus and went upstairs. Willoughby had begged from Treece half a bottle of milk, which he had stuck in his haversack, and somehow the top had become detached, for the liquid slopped out and flowed in a white stream along the aisle and down the stairs. ‘What’s going on up there?’ shouted the conductor. But this did not upset Willoughby.

  They stopped off at a bookshop to get something for Willoughby to read on the train. They saw copies of Willoughby’s novels, which had very contemporary book jackets with the letterpress in a mélange of typefaces and sizes, so that it looked as though the designer had been practising for writing anonymous letters. ‘If you’ll buy them,’ said Willoughby, ‘I’ll write in them; it might be a sound financial investment for you.’ Treece said he had little money with him. ‘You remember that scene in Sartre’s Age of Reason?’ asked Willoughby, putting down his raincoat and picking it up again with two volumes of the Scott-Montcrieff translation of Proust inside. ‘What scene is
that?’ asked Treece, watching this aghast. ‘Never mind,’ said Willoughby. Now there were only six of the twelve blue volumes left on the counter. Now four. Now . . . but one of the set was missing. This did not faze Willoughby; he asked the assistant about it. It was found elsewhere and Willoughby waited until she had gone and then stole that too. ‘Culture should be freely accessible to all,’ he said.

  ‘I’ve often thought that my scruples about stealing books were the only thing that stood in the way of my being a really great scholar,’ said Treece, trying to pass the matter off.

  ‘It’s quite simple,’ said Willoughby. ‘Look, fold up your raincoat like this . . .’

  ‘Oh, no, really,’ said Treece.

  ‘Here, which Lawrence haven’t you got?’

  ‘Etruscan Places,’ said Treece uncertainly.

  ‘Right,’ said Willoughby, and he went and did it with Etruscan Places. ‘Now you try.’

  ‘It’s not a question of how to do it,’ said Treece. ‘I could find a way. It’s a question of why – of finding a philosophical framework to put it into. At least you’ve achieved that, but I haven’t, you see.’

  ‘Really, you thirties men, you’re all puff,’ said Willoughby. ‘Leavis was right; you’re all arrested at the undergraduate stage.’ Luckily, his books began to slip and they had to go out.

  At the station Treece bought a platform ticket to accompany Willoughby on the platform; Willoughby bought one too. He got in a first-class carriage and sat down. ‘Might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb,’ he said. He handed Treece his Etruscan Places. ‘Thank you,’ said Treece. ‘For your next birthday,’ said Willoughby.

  The train began to move. ‘Hey,’ said Willoughby out of the window. ‘What was the name of that chick with the big behind?’

  ‘Do you mean Viola? Viola Masefield?’

  ‘Give her my love, tell her I’m mad about her,’ said Willoughby. ‘And . . . Oh!’ he shouted as the train gathered speed and Treece trotted along beside, ‘don’t expect a nice, middle-class, bread-and-butter note, you know, because you won’t get one.’

  Treece walked slowly back down the platform. He felt terribly, terribly old, and quaintly set in his ways. He was of the old guard now. His visions, which he had cherished so sturdily, believing them absolutes, were going out now. Somehow his time had slipped by and they had gone beyond him, the new men; though whether things were better he doubted, though he tried hard to be fair. He went home, wrapped up Etruscan Places, and posted it, anonymously, back to the bookseller. He thought about the Proust, too, and looked up the value in a bookseller’s catalogue and posted that too, in coin of the realm; it hadn’t been his fault, but he was a liberal and had to carry other people’s burdens if they hadn’t got the capacity to carry them for themselves. If it didn’t disturb Willoughby’s conscience, then that was not Treece’s affair; but he had been there and he had to square it.

  9

  I

  A FEW WEEKS later a distinguished event took place in the world of letters; for the poems of Louis Bates that Carey Willoughby had taken off with him were published in a leading literary magazine. Emma Fielding had not spoken to Louis Bates for months, but when she read the poems she saw that they were, in a curiously detached and self-analytical way, good, and she determined to tell him so. She saw him next on the occasion of the Departmental Trip to the Stratford Memorial Theatre at Stratford-on-Avon, for each year in the late spring a block of seats was booked, and a coach hired, and the larger part of the department transported itself to Stratford for the afternoon and evening. Louis, who was liable to stomach disorders, arrived at the coach early in order to capture the most medically advantageous seat. It was a cool, clear morning, with spring much in the air. The coach filled up with students, in their summery clothes, carrying picnic baskets. It was as if they had all come out of hibernation newly; this was the sort of thing that charmed Louis, and he took off his long brown overcoat and tossed it gaily on the rack. Presently he noticed Emma getting on to the coach, her clothes pleasant, but not too elegant, her eyes dark but tired-looking, for she always seemed to be in a state of some nervous tension. She came up the coach and noticed him. ‘Congratulations on your poems,’ she said warmly. ‘They were good.’ ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ said Louis, who did, and he added smartly, ‘This seat is vacant.’ She sat down and they began to talk, he telling her about how difficult it was to get clothes that really fitted him, how buses always made him sick, how hard it was to be of the poetic temperament. He had a kind of self-consciousness, it seemed to Emma, that made his conversation highly unnatural, as if he sought affection from every heterosexual discussion.

  The coach moved off and away through the spring landscape. In the front four seats, reserved for the members of the faculty, she could see Stuart’s sleek head and, next to him, Merrick, while in front of them sat Viola and Dr Carfax. She felt painfully sorry for Treece. She had not seen him since the evening at the weekend conference; she was not sure whether, really, she had wanted to end it all so sharply, but it really had to happen.

  It was one of those fresh days of spring when the thin sun lights up the dulled grasses and brittle hedges, bringing out birds and the early buds. ‘It is most certainly a smashing day,’ said a Pakistani student across the aisle from Emma. ‘Yes,’ said Emma. ‘And I am much relishing the thought of seeing the work of Shakespeare. People find it odd that I, as a Pakistani, should study English. They ask: “Do you not think you are out of touch with the cultural tradition concomitant to this study?” I always reply: “That is a very interesting question, but you forget one thing: I am a human being, or if I am not, then I understand them. That is all that is necessary.” You remember the tale of Nero, who built an immense palace, with gold and jewels and perfume always in the air. He said: “Now at last I can live like a human being.” That is a very interesting story about human beings. Yet for him to live as a human being, many other persons were prevented from living as human beings, the people he taxed and made to work. So, then, I deduce, to live as a human being is to live as a god; therefore we must live as something less than human beings. Human beings are very rare things, therefore; most of us are just people. I am just people. But I understand human beings.’

  ‘That’s very good,’ said Emma.

  The bus stopped, for it was intended that the journey should include visits to churches of some interest. The dedicated ones examined the church fabric while a recalcitrant few examined the fabric of the public house. Some of these grew a trifle merry as the day wore on. Meanwhile, at each church Merrick would mount into the pulpit and give an account of the history of the building. As some of his audience grew more jovial his temper grew shorter. ‘Damnation,’ he cried at last. ‘Don’t you know how to behave in the House of God!’

  They arrived at last at Charlecote, where they were to visit the house and where Merrick wanted to demonstrate an interesting rare stile. ‘Here’s something,’ he said from the front of the coach. ‘This uncommon stile. I think there are only about five of them in the country. It looks like part of the fence, yet it collapses at a touch to let the passer-by through. Would you mind demonstrating it for us, Stuart?’

  ‘Very well,’ said Treece. He climbed down into the road. ‘Now see if you can find it,’ cried Merrick. Treece bumbled along the lane, but no stile could he see. Merrick got down and showed him. He returned to the coach and said that he was going to ask Treece to demonstrate how the stile worked. ‘Push down,’ cried he. Treece, taking his cue, heaved sturdily upwards. It wouldn’t come. ‘Push down,’ cried Merrick again. Up, up, up Treece tugged. Finally, Merrick got down and showed him. Treece looked so miserable that Emma’s conscience overflowed.

  Now the flotilla proceeded along the long driveway into Charlecote. It was a high and civilized scene, with the house standing square at the end of the lane of trees and the deer and sheep grazing under the foliage, in the faint spring shadows. Here one could live like a human being. But to do so one must cut
oneself apart from the rest, and be the one and only human being for miles around. The choice between the two ways of being a human being seemed to Emma to be the great dilemma. The parkland and the grazing cattle were a fundamental part of one’s Englishness. It was the highest civilization of a liberal and refined race that was commemorated in this parkland and this house and this tamed countryside. There were two ways of being civilized: that way, which the world no longer permitted, and the way that one hoped would emerge when a whole race shared the benefits that once went only to a special few. For this way, someone had to suffer; a whipping-boy had to be found. Humanity is hung around everyone’s neck, but we seek ourselves to live in a kind of moral and human suspension; we appoint other people to be the victims. One never quite comes to care entirely for others, for they haven’t you inside them, and you are a special case.

  Emma, as the guide showed them about the house, felt a weight of blame, a kind of universal guilt for all the things ever been and ever done. She looked out over the landscape, by Capability Brown, and felt full of the pain of living when all that this stood for was simply a little corner in her very English soul.

  II

  What can one do, in a place as extravagantly English as Stratford, but take tea and then go on the river? This was what Emma had resolved to do. However, descending in the bright sun of the coach park, she found Louis at her ear; he was determined not to lose her now. He asked her what she was going to do, and she told him. ‘Let me take you to tea,’ he said, ‘if I’ve got enough money.’ He emptied out his pockets. ‘I think so, if we don’t have anything cooked,’ he said. Louis tried to tempt her into a milk-bar, but she refused and said she was quite prepared to pay for herself; but she wanted to go somewhere more . . . Elizabethan. They did, and Louis banged his head on a low beam; he really was a modern man, and Elizabethan houses were built for rather smaller people.

  They ordered tea and cakes, and Louis began to giggle. ‘What was wrong with Prof Treece this afternoon?’ he asked. ‘“Pull it down,” Merrick kept shouting, and there was Treece heaving upwards for all he was worth.’