by Angus Wilson
'What do you mean "yes"?' said her husband sharply. 'You know nothing at all about it. This affirmation of statements of which you are entirely ignorant is among your most irritating habits, Ada. But, for heaven's sake, let us stick to the point we're discussing. If we are to entertain the Graysons this evening - and I've already said that it was necessary - we can at least do it competently. Why you should choose this moment to suggest South African Chablis, I cannot conceive. The Graysons will hardly wish to come out to Wimbledon to drink an Empire wine. What sort of story do you want them to carry back to Manchester?'
'I was only thinking of what you said about economy ..."
'That was on the occasion of the research students' party. Do have some sense of what is fitting. We're not rich people, but there is no need for contrivance. We haven't got large private means like Middleton, but we're not paupers.' Indeed, with his own salary and his wife's private income, they were really very comfortably provided for.
'I shouldn't think that Muriel Grayson would know one wine from another,' said Mrs Clun, stung by the cold into contention. 'She's a very nice, homely Lancashire body, but not stylish at all.'
'That's hardly a matter for you to judge, Ada,' said Professor Clun, beginning at last to feel the cold himself. 'You don't pretend to style, and I shouldn't wish you to do so.' Although, after long years of bullying, his wife had acquired a certain suburban gentility, she had brought him her private income from a distinctly plebeian source. Arthur Clun fully recognized the limits of her achievement and required no more of her. 'Well,' he added, 'I hope that the rest of this evening's entertainment can be left to your own judgement, unless you wish me to contract pneumonia. You may well feel pleased that you have not to travel in a draughty underground train, as I have.'
'Do you really need to go, Arthur?' Mrs Clun asked, hoping that a little cosseting would thaw his mood.
'Has anything I have said suggested that I am making this journey on a frivolous impulse?' he snapped. 'Of course I must be there. You seem to have no sense of my position, Ada. Besides, all sorts of things come up after the lecture. The editorship of the new Medieval History series is on the agenda. Heaven knows what silly suggestions may be made about that. Middleton's well aware that he's past that sort of thing, but if some of those disciples of his, some of his bobby-sox fans' - and he laughed at his little modernism - 'get going, they may over-persuade him. Roberts and Stringwell-Anderson will try hard for it. They know very well that their contributions will have to be confined to scholarship, not to philosophical generalities, if I'm the editor.'
'I'm sure you ought to be,' said his wife with sincere reverence.
'Yes, yes, dear. The occasion is really too obvious to make the observation gratifying. We don't wish to indulge in the sort of domestic billing and cooing that fellows like Roberts go in for, with their wives playing university politics. Besides, you're not a member of the University Press Syndic, so it's irrelevant. Stick to your last, my dear.' He turned to go and then stepped back to give her the customary sharp peck on her cheek. Looking at her scarlet nose, he relented for a moment. 'I dare say you'll be glad when spring comes,' he said, as though paying tribute to the peculiarities of the feeble-minded; but he was immediately embarrassed by the implication of sentiment in his remark. 'Goodbye,' he said, 'and whatever you do, don't fuss this evening.' He set off to walk briskly across the common.
'Whatever you do this evening, Theo, please don't get into a fuss,' said Jasper Stringwell-Anderson. He stretched his long tweed-clad legs across the sofa, reclining on his hip. Then he flicked a piece of fluff from his orange suede strap shoes, as though suggesting the sort of nonchalance he would prescribe.
'My dear chap, what is the good of telling me not to fuss? I'm always in a fuss.' Theo jangled the coins in his flannel-trouser pocket, screwed up his face, and ran his other hand through his wiry black hair, as though he, too, would illustrate the sort of acrobatic muddle he claimed to have been born into. 'Of course, I can be kept under. By a strong hand. Now if only Betty had been able to come this evening, she'd have done it. But, of course, she had to choose this evening to go and see her ruddy mother. The old woman's got a pain. It's her habit at such times.' In his excitement he stuttered more than usual and his Yorkshire accent was almost that which he used when he told funny stories of his home town. 'Betty's fonder of her mother than of me, you know,' he added, by way of explanation.
Jasper never knew what to do with these sudden confidences of Theo's. He would not have thought of revealing any personal details of his own life - indeed, he had no personal life to reveal. Like Betty Roberts, he was devoted to his mother, but, since he had no feelings deeper than social or intellectual approval for anyone else, he took such filial devotion for granted in anyone he esteemed worthy of his acquaintance.
'Fussing will only drive Middleton back into his shell. It will annoy Sir Edgar and give Clun every opportunity to shine as the cool-headed administrator.'
Jasper was in something of a 'state' himself and he fancied that lecturing Theo would steady his own nerves. He reached a long arm for a cigarette from a small satinwood box inlaid with mother-of-pearl. It was just out of his reach, and Theo, coming to his assistance, knocked over a lamp and a small saucer. The saucer smashed into irreparable fragments.
'Oh!' cried Theo, 'there you are, you see.'
'Or rather, there was a rather nice piece of Lowestoft,' said Jasper sharply.
'I can't think what you want all this junk for,' Theo stuttered, his eyes blinking through his thick glasses. 'You'll go the same way as Middleton. It's all this picture-collecting that's kept him from doing thé work he should. Good taste and all that doesn't marry with serious thinking. I've always said it...'
'You're working on a false premise if you think that reiteration will persuade me of its truth,' said Jasper testily. He got up and, in going out of the room, pointed to the sofa with its starched white chintz cover and its gold fringing. 'Sit down,' he said. In a moment he had returned with a small jade-green dustpan and brush, and hitching up his trouser creases he knelt and carefully brushed up the minutest pieces of china. Then getting tissue paper and a brown cardboard box from a drawer in the desk, he began to sort the fragments into the paper. He gave the occupation a full, careful, and spinsterish consideration.
'The truth is,' said Theo, 'that it's bad to have money in our job. Surplus wealth may make culture, but it turns scholars into antiquarians. Learning needs decent poverty. They recognized that in the Middle Ages. All this,' and he waved his hand round the elegant room, 'is so much paltry distraction.'
'And wives and children?' asked Jasper, whose nervous tension had found a new, more satisfactory outlet. 'Where do they fit into your romantic, Helen Waddell, view of scholarship?'
'Betty's a great help,' Theo protested, 'when her mother hasn't got a pain.'
Jasper closed the cardboard box and tied it with string, cutting the ends with a small ivory sheathed penknife from his waistcoat pocket. He took out a fountain pen and wrote across the lid 'Fragments of a Lowestoft saucer, broken by Theo Roberts xxii-xii-liv.'
'Now, Theo,' he said, 'we have other things to discuss than your mother-in-law. How are we going to jockey Middleton into accepting the editorship that will undoubtedly be offered to him?'
'I imagine I shall tell him bluntly that he owes it to us all to accept it.'
'And I imagine that his laziness will be proof against the appeal of such sentiment.'
'Then I shall tell him straight out that if he doesn't take this on, he may as well pack up. It'll be Middleton's "Canute", it'll be Middleton the man whose lecture notes and tutorials have inspired two generations; but it won't be Middleton who saved English medieval studies from the dead hand of Clun. He'll die a second-rater who left a tidy little fortune and a bloody gallery of drawings that any other fool with money could have collected. And if he thinks his lecture notes will make him another Acton, good though they are, I shall tell him where he can pu
t that idea.'
'Yes,' said Jasper, 'that's probably the right tone. I think perhaps you had better stick to your Northern bluntness. It has its specious charm for the older generation. I shall use my talents in prolonging the discussion. It's difficult to think what Pforzheim can possibly say that will allow us to discuss for an hour. With God's help, however, and the assistance of dear Rose's idées fixes, we may succeed. Sir Edgar can hardly "pass to other matters" if a good discussion gets going. It would be most impolite to our distinguished visitor, and Sir Edgar's old-world courtesy never deserts him. Luckily there will be a number of talkers there - with half a word about coin hoards we shall have Praed on his feet, and, if Pforzheim idly mentions Roman town survivals, we shall have Grayson giving us what Manchester thinks for at least half an hour.'
'Grayson's a sound man,' Theo said, in tones of heavy reverence.
'We are considering tactics, my dear Theo, not estimating abilities. The time for that will come if and when Middleton becomes editor. Your estimate of relative "soundnesses",' he spoke the word in inverted commas, 'will be most valuable when we advise him on contributors. Meanwhile, if we can postpone the discussion on editorship, we shall have almost a month in which to work on Middleton, with Christmas and New Year intervening.' Jasper went to the corner cupboard with its painting of ample eighteenth-century goddesses undergoing the polite scrutiny of Paris.
'I wish,' he said, pouring out two white Cinzanos - he allowed no questioning of the Continental form of aperitifs he offered - 'I wish that Middleton had some slight share of his ghastly son's ambition.'
'Well, now, I don't know about John Middleton,' said Theo. 'I think he's a smart chap, you know. Betty and I see him pretty often on television, and he certainly has personality.'
Jasper thought it underbred to be snobbish about television, so he forbore to mention that he had no set. 'An odious, smug personality,' he said.
'Oh, come now,' Theo was exaggeratedly Yorkshire. 'Just because the problems he deals with don't touch your pampered life. He's done a great deal to fight the bureaucrats in this country. I like him, he's against the Cluns.'
Theo was pleased with this application of their professional life to national affairs. He leaned back for Jasper's comment, but none came. Annoyed, he looked sharply at his host and went on: 'I thought it was great of him, resigning from the House of Commons like that. Being an M.P.' s no job for an individualist like him, especially a Labour M.P. He's no planner, he's a good old Tory Radical like Cobbett.'
Once again he waited for a comment, but that too did not come. Jasper, in fact, rather delighted in the fact that Theo, with his working-class background, should be so staunch a Tory, while he had always voted Labour. He felt it brought him into personal contact with the modern topsy-turvy social order. He often quoted it at dinner parties as an instance of modern English life.
'Middleton never speaks of his family,' he said, forgetting that he never spoke of his.
'No,' said Theo. 'Betty met Mrs Middleton once. She and Middleton live apart, you know. She's a Dane or Norwegian or something, anyway Scandinavian.'
'Scandinavian anyway,' said Professor Pforzheim, taking the small carved ivory box to the light of the window. 'Walrus ivory, I suppose. Perhaps Norwegian, no? Of the late ninth century, I may suggest. Perhaps from the Hebrides Islands?' He turned his tall, distinguished figure towards Sir Edgar, and his clear blue eyes smiled in anticipation of applause.
Sir Edgar's heavy grey eyebrows drew together in distaste. The fellow's a mountebank, he thought. We're not playing parlour games. Nobody asked his opinion. All the Germans are the same, histrionic nonsense! Had Pforzheim been other than a distinguished visitor, he would have answered sharply. As it was, he slumped his already hunched shoulders forward and moved to the door of the lecture-room. 'Will an hour be enough for you?' he asked, turning his bald head and looking back over his hump.
With his dwarfish height and his little bent legs he might have been an insect, and Professor Pforzheim, towering above, might have been about to crush him. But the Professor, if not sensitive to the emotions of others, was quickly aware of the response he evoked. Running his long hand through his prematurely grey hair, he laughed, all pearly teeth, a high-spirited, boyish laugh. 'Oh, my God!' he cried. 'I am showing off. That will never do in England.' It was a spontaneous exhibition that had served its purpose on many different occasions. Sir Edgar, however, disliked it even more than his earlier performance. He fell back on the old English courtesy that he had consciously perfected to combat the increasing irritability that came with old age and arthritis.
'My dear fellow, you must excuse the abstraction of a very old man. I oughtn't to be here, you know, no one of eighty should hold any sort of office.' He gave the small, twinkling glance that always charmed, coming out of a face so severe in repose. 'You're perfectly right. It was dug up in Iona in '24. It's one of the few objects I haven't given to the museums. I think the president's room has the right to a little beauty. I've left it to the Association. They'll probably put it in a case, and quite right too. I've always been far too inclined to treat important objects as part of my own petty existence. It's a nice piece though, isn't it?'
'Quite marvellous. And to proclaim its history so easily,' Professor Pforzheim belittled his own performance; 'that for me is a most excellent quality. I have no love of historical puzzles, pieces that do not fit. Things like this Heligoland burial, for example.'
'Ah, I've been wondering about that. You fellows have kept pretty dark about what you've found.' Sir Edgar glanced with amusement at Pforzheim.
'I do not care for premature publication, you know, Sir Edgar,' the visitor said, and his manner, for so charming a man, was quite stiff.
'Oh, quite right, my dear chap,' said Sir Edgar. 'Well, we'll know when we're intended to, no doubt. I liked your article on the functions of the Carolingian Chancellery. We've got a young chap from Leeds working on the same thing at the moment. He'll be here this evening. I think he's got a bone to pick with you. Something to do with your interpretation of the seals. So we'll give you a bit of a run for your money. By the way, don't hesitate to carry on beyond the usual hour if you want to. We normally have a short Association business meeting after the discussion, but I wouldn't be sorry to postpone it. I get very easily tired these days, you know. So use all the time you want.'
Once again Professor Pforzheim ignored his chairman's references to procedure. 'Sir Edgar,' he said, in that abrupt, overloud tone that people so often use when they have made up their mind to speak, 'will there be Press here this evening?'
'Oh! I expect so. The Times and the Guardian usually send chaps along. Stokesay was a bit of a national figure, you know. Are you going to say anything about him this evening? It's usual, of course. But you don't have to.'
'But of course,' said Professor Pforzheim, 'I shall pay tribute to his great historical work. I do not think it will be exact if I make mention of his political work - as a foreigner.'
'Oh, no, my dear fellow. Certainly not. Not "exact" at all.' Sir Edgar was delighted that his question had so quickly elicited what he wished to know. He always faced the Stokesay Lecture more easily if he knew that no reference would be made to the founder's unfortunate last years. 'Quite candidly, the old chap made an infernal nuisance of himself with all that...' His voice tailed away as he realized that 'pro-German nonsense' would not be exactly polite to his guest.
'By the way,' said Professor Pforzheim, 'are the Melpham objects on exhibition still?'
'I don't know,' said Sir Edgar. 'I haven't looked at 'em for years. I don't care for these nonesuches, and Eorpwald's tomb is one of them. Anyway, I never look at anything that isn't beautiful these days unless duty compels me, and I haven't touched the seventh century for years. I expect you'll find them in the gallery, though you never know now; they change things about so much in all these museums. All this display fidde-faddle. Educating the public and so on. We're back to the Prince Consort. Anyway, Cuspat
t'll produce the things for you, if you want to see them. What's the interest in Melpham, anyhow? Stokesay said all there was to say about it. How does it go? "We may search all the annals of the English conversion until the end of time before we find a spirit so strange, a character so enigmatic as Eorpwald, the Janus-headed missionary of East Folk. This man, so learned, so credulous..." I forget how it goes on. I had a wonderful memory once. Could recite you hundreds of the old man's purple passages. But you'll find it all in his Conversion of England; the serious stuff's in the E.H.J, for '13, and he wrote it up again in '22.'
'Yes,' said Professor Pforzheim, as though in answer to a too-often-repeated story.
'Ah, Middleton!' said Sir Edgar with pleasure. He liked Gerald Middleton at all times and especially when he promised relief from a Hun visitor. 'You know Middleton, Pforzheim, don't you?'
'We have not met since before the war,' said Professor Pforzheim. He was careful not to bow but to shake hands.
'You were not at Florence in 1950, Professor Middleton, nor again at Vienna last year?'
'No,' said Gerald Middleton. 'I'm too old really for international congresses, and certainly too lazy.' His voice, though drawling, was warm and deep.
'Oh, you are quite right, I am sure,' said Professor Pforzheim, and he smiled sophisticatedly to show his superiority to congresses. 'One hears only platitudes. Nevertheless,' he added, 'there is always a certain stimulus about the interchange of ideas.'
'Ah, yes, the interchange of ideas.' Gerald Middleton reiterated the phrase, and his handsome, sensual face with its contour-map of lines and furrows assumed a perfunctory gravity in courtesy to foreign pomposity. 'The trouble is, of course, when, like me, you haven't any to interchange. However, there's always the scandal, isn't there?'
'Ah!' said Professor Pforzheim. 'Alas, we historians have so little scandal. We are not palaeontologists to display our Piltdowns.' He gave a sly look: 'Albion perfide,' he said in a guttural French accent. There was nothing, he always believed, Englishmen liked so much as a joke against themselves.