The British Museum is Falling Down

by David Lodge

  It seemed base, somehow, to come daily to this great temple of learning, history and artistic achievement in the same weary, mechanical spirit as the jaded clerk to his city office. But there it was: not even the British Museum was proof against the sedation of routine. Adam pushed listlessly at the revolving doors and crossed the main hall with dogged, unswerving steps. As always, he vowed that one day he would really go and look at the Elgin Marbles, which could be glimpsed to his left, but the vow carried no conviction. The previous year, he and Camel had drawn up an elaborate plan for acquainting themselves with the whole Museum by inspecting one gallery a day in their lunch hour. If he remembered rightly, they had given up after looking at only Japanese armour and Egyptian vases.

  There was one feature of his diurnal pilgrimage to the British Museum that afforded Adam a modest but constant gratification, and that was the fact that, as a familiar figure, he was not asked to show his card on entering the Reading Room. When he passed the door-keeper with just a nod of greeting he assumed, he hoped, an air of importance for the group of casual visitors who invariably hung about outside the door, trying to peer into the Reading Room.

  ‘Could I see your card, sir?’

  Adam, his hand already on the swing door, halted and looked with astonishment and hurt pride at the door-keeper, who grinned and pointed to a notice requesting all readers to show their cards that day.

  ‘The annual check, sir,’ he said, taking Adam’s card from his hand. ‘Ah, two months out of date. I’m afraid you’ll have to go and renew it.’

  ‘Oh look, I’m late as it is this morning. Can’t I do it after I’ve ordered my books?’

  ‘Sorry, sir.’

  Adam dropped his bags with an angry thud at the feet of an Easter Island god, and stumped off to renew the ticket. Near the Elgin Marbles was a heavy door, guarded by a stern-looking porter with a huge key. When notified of Adam’s errand, this official grudgingly unlocked the door, and ushered him into a long corridor. He then rang a little bell, and went out again, locking the door behind him.

  Adam, or A as he would now more vaguely have identified himself, had been all through this before, but could not be sure whether he had dreamed it or actually experienced it. He was trapped. Behind him was a locked, guarded door; in front of him a long corridor terminating in a room. He could not go back. He could not stay where he was—the men in the room at the end of the corridor, warned by the bell, were expecting him. He went reluctantly forward, down the long corridor, between the smooth polished wooden cabinets, locked and inscrutable, which formed the walls, stretching high out of reach. Craning his neck to see if they reached the high ceiling, A felt suddenly dizzy, and leaned against the wall for support.

  The room at the end of the corridor was an office, with a long, curving counter behind which sat two men, neat, self-possessed, expectant. A approached the nearer man, who immediately began writing on a piece of paper.

  ‘Yes?’ he said, after a few minutes had passed, and without looking up.

  A, his mouth unaccountably dry, enunciated with difficulty the words, ‘Reading Room Ticket.’

  ‘Over there.’

  A sidled along the counter to the second man, who immediately began writing in a ledger. A waited patiently.

  ‘Yes?’ said the second man, closing his ledger with a snap that made A jump.

  ‘IwanttorenewmyReadingRoomTicket,’ gabbled A.

  ‘Over there.’

  ‘But I’ve just been over there. He sent me to you.’ Out of the corner of his eye, A saw the first man watching them intently.

  The second man scrutinised him for what seemed a very long time, then spoke. ‘One moment.’ He went over to the first man, and they held a whispered conference, at the conclusion of which the first man came over to A and sat down in the second man’s seat.

  ‘What is it you want, exactly?’ he asked.

  ‘I want to renew my Reading Room Ticket,’ said A patiently.

  ‘You want to renew it? You mean you have a ticket already?’

  ‘Yes.’

  May I see it?’

  A presented his ticket.

  ‘It’s out of date,’ observed the man.

  ‘That’s why I want to renew it!’ A exclaimed.

  ‘When did you last use the Reading Room?’

  ‘Two months ago,’ lied A, cunningly.

  ‘You haven’t used it since your ticket expired?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘It wouldn’t matter if you had,’ said the man. ‘As long as you’re not lying.’ He tore A’s ticket neatly into four sections, and deposited them in a waste-paper basket. It distressed A to see his ticket torn up. He experienced a queasy, empty feeling in his stomach.

  ‘So now you want to renew your annual ticket?’

  ‘Please.’

  ‘You see, you didn’t make that clear to me just now.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘I assumed you were a casual reader wanting a short-term ticket. That’s why I sent you to my colleague.’ He nodded in the direction of the second man. ‘But when he realised you wanted an annual ticket, he directed you back to me. That is the reason for our apparently contradictory behaviour.’

  He flashed a sudden smile, displaying a row of gold-filled teeth.

  ‘I see. I’m afraid it was my fault,’ A apologised.

  ‘Don’t mention it,’ said the first man, opening the ledger and beginning to write.

  ‘Could I have my new ticket now?’ said A, after some minutes had passed.

  ‘Over there.’

  ‘But you just said you were responsible for renewing annual tickets!’ protested A.

  ‘Ah, but that was when I was sitting over there,’ said the first man. ‘We’ve changed places now. We do that from time to time. So that if one of us should fall ill,’ he continued, ‘the other can cover his work.’

  A made his way wearily to the second man.

  ‘Good morning. Can I help you?’ said the second man, as if greeting him for the first time.

  ‘I want to renew my annual Reading Room ticket,’ said A.

  ‘Certainly. May I see your old ticket?’

  ‘No, the other man—gentleman—has just torn it up.’

  ‘It was an annual ticket you had?’

  ‘Yes. He just tore it up. Didn’t you see him?’

  The second man shook his head gravely. ‘This is very irregular. You shouldn’t have given him the ticket. He’s on short-term tickets now.’

  ‘Look, all I want is to have my ticket renewed. What does it matter which of you does it?’

  ‘I’m afraid I can’t renew a ticket which, as far as I’m concerned, doesn’t exist.’

  A gripped the counter tightly and closed his eyes. ‘What do you suggest I do then?’ he whispered hoarsely.

  ‘I could give you a short-term ticket . . .’

  ‘No that won’t do. I’m working here every day. My livelihood depends upon my being here every day.’

  ‘Then I can only suggest that you come back when my colleague and I have changed places again,’ said the second man.

  ‘When will that be?’

  ‘Oh there’s no telling. You can wait if you like . . . in that room over there . . . you’ll find plenty of people to chat to while you’re waiting . . . your name will be called . . .’

  ‘Are you all right, sir?’

  Adam found himself lying on the floor of the corridor. The doorkeeper and some other people were bending over him with looks of concern. Scattered over the floor beside him were fragments of his expired Reading Room ticket. He rose unsteadily to his feet. His head ached.

  ‘What happened? Did I faint?’

  ‘Looks like it, sir. Would you like to lie down somewhere?’

  ‘No thanks. I’m all right. If I could just get my Reading Room ticket renewed . . .’

  ‘This way, sir.’

  As he stooped to reclaim his bags, which lay, like votive offerings, at the feet of the pagan god, Adam felt
his shoulder clasped in a bony grip.

  ‘And what sort of a time is this, Appleby, to get into the Museum?’

  Adam straightened up and turned.

  ‘Oh, hallo Camel. I got held up by the Beatles. I think they were on their way to open Parliament.’

  ‘Don’t give me any excuses,’ continued Camel in his hectoring voice. ‘Do you realise that there are droves of eager industrious scholars prowling round the Reading Room in search of a seat, while the one I illegally saved for you—’

  ‘I hope it’s a padded one.’

  ‘It is indeed a padded one, which only adds to the offence. . . . Come and have a smoke,’ he concluded, losing the thread of his sentence.

  Adam had given up smoking when Dominic was born but, always eager for distraction, he usually accompanied Camel during the latter’s periodic consumption of nicotine in the Museum colonnade. Conscience pricked him now more sharply than usual.

  ‘Oh look, Camel, not today. I must get on.’

  ‘Nonsense, old boy,’ said Camel, in his bland tempter’s voice, steering the willing Adam towards the exit. ‘You look tired, peaky. A breath of air will do you the world of good. Besides, I’ve just thought of some new legislation that I want to tell you about.’

  ‘Oh, all right, just for a minute.’

  ‘You may entertain that pretence if you wish,’ said Camel sardonically, now sure of Adam’s company.

  ‘It’s too cold out here,’ complained Adam, as they emerged into the raw, damp air. ‘Why don’t we have a coffee in the cafeteria instead?’

  ‘I detest the cafeteria, as you well know. The Museum has degenerated since the cafeteria was introduced. When I started my research, we had no such luxuries. There was nowhere to go for a smoke—nowhere, mark you, in the entire building. You had to go out on to the colonnade, even in the bitterest weather. We had several cases of frostbite, I remember,’ he went on, in his old soldier’s voice, ‘in the winter of ’57 . . . Scholars brought back frozen stiff, pipe-stems bitten through. Had to thaw ’em out in the North Library. You youngsters have no idea.’

  Camel (whose surname fitted so perfectly his long, stiff-legged stride, humped shoulders and droll, thick-lipped countenance, that it was generally taken to be an inspired nickname) did not seem to be particularly old, but he had been doing his Ph.D. thesis as long as anyone could remember. Its title—‘Sanitation in Victorian Fiction ’—seemed modest enough; but, as Camel would patiently explain, the absence of references to sanitation was as significant as the presence of the same, and his work thus embraced the entire corpus of Victorian fiction. Further, the Victorian period was best understood as a period of transition in which the comic treatment of human excretion in the eighteenth century was suppressed, or sublimated in terms of social reform, until it re-emerged as a source of literary symbolism in the work of Joyce and other moderns. Camel’s preparatory reading spread out in wider and wider circles, and it often seemed that he was bent on exhausting the entire resources of the Museum library before commencing composition. Some time ago a wild rumour had swept through Bloomsbury to the effect that Camel had written his first chapter, on the hygiene of Neanderthal Man; but Camel had wistfully denied it. ‘I’m the modern Casaubon,’ he would say. ‘Don’t expect progress.’ He had no Dorothea to support, however, and earned enough by teaching evening classes in English to foreign students to keep himself.

  ‘Well, what’s your new legislation, then?’ Adam enquired, as they seated themselves on a grimy wooden bench, flecked with pigeon droppings, at the extremity of one wing of the colonnade. He and Camel had devised a game, now of long standing, entitled, ‘When We Are In Power’. This consisted in their imagining themselves to enjoy absolute political power, and thus the freedom to impose any law they liked upon the community—an opportunity which they would exploit not for the purposes of any crude self-advantage, nor to promote a programme of large-scale and idealistic reform, but merely to iron out the smaller inequalities of life, overlooked by the professional legislators, and to score off sections of the populace against whom they had a grudge, such as taxi-drivers, generals and scooter-manufacturers.

  ‘Well, I’ve been thinking,’ said Camel, plugging his pipe with tobacco, ‘that it’s time we turned our attention to the private motorist. Now what would you say is the greatest injustice in that area?’

  ‘They have cars, and we haven’t.’

  ‘Yes, of course. But When We Are In Power, we shall have cars ourselves. But you’re on the right track. Has it occurred to you why so many people, of no apparent distinction in life, are able to run cars? And not just old, wheezing, corroding, bald-tyred, unreliable vehicles such as you or I may, with luck, look forward to owning after many years of labour, but shiny, new, powerful models straight out of the showroom?’

  Adam thought for a moment, and remembered his father-in-law.

  ‘Because they get them from their firms?’

  ‘Right. Now—’

  ‘You want to abolish firms’ cars?’

  ‘No, no. That’s much too crude. You’re losing your finesse, Appleby. We must keep within the bounds of possibility.’

  ‘You could prohibit the use of business cars for pleasure.’

  ‘Too difficult to enforce, though I did consider it for a while. No, what I hit upon was this: All cars supplied by commercial firms, government authorities, or other institutions, must have painted on them, on both sides, the name of the firm, authority or other institution, together with the appropriate trade mark, symbol, coat-of-arms or iconic representation of the product.’

  ‘Marvellous,’ said Adam.

  ‘I thought you’d like it,’ said Camel, with shy pride.

  ‘It’s a classic. It’s founded on a simple desire for truth. No one can object.’

  ‘But how they’ll hate it! Just imagine any suburban street after the law is passed,’ said Camel, gloatingly. ‘All those sleek new cars with “Jeyes Fluid” or “Heinz 57 Varieties” plastered all over them.’

  Adam giggled. ‘My father-in-law travels in fertiliser.’ He added anxiously: ‘Shouldn’t we specify a minimum size for the lettering?’

  ‘A good point. Six inches, would you say?’

  ‘Nine.’

  ‘Nine.’

  They sat, sniggering quietly to themselves, for several minutes.

  ‘You’re looking better,’ said Camel, at length. ‘You did look queer just now.’

  ‘I had a queer experience,’ said Adam, deciding to confide in Camel. ‘. . . And this morning on my way to the Museum,’ he concluded. ‘I met Mrs Dalloway grown into an old woman.’

  Camel regarded him with concern.

  ‘I say, you want to watch this, you know. Are you overworking?’

  Adam uttered a hollow laugh. ‘Does it look like it?’

  ‘Something else worrying you, then?’

  ‘Something else is always worrying me.’

  ‘Barbara’s not pregnant again?’

  ‘God, I hope not; but she felt sick this morning.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Camel.

  As they re-entered the Museum, Adam asked Camel casually, ‘By the way, what date was it that we came round to you?’

  Camel consulted his diary. ‘The 13th. Why?’

  ‘Oh, nothing. You must come round to us soon. Look, I’m just going to ring Barbara. Don’t wait.’

  ‘You know Appleby, I don’t think you’re going to get as far as the Reading Room today.’

  ‘I won’t be a moment.’

  To Adam’s annoyance, Mrs Green answered the phone.

  ‘Oh, hallo Mrs Green. Could I speak to Barbara, please?’

  ‘Is that you, Mr Appleby? Did you get your letter?’

  Adam had completely forgotten the letter. He patted his pocket. It was still there.

  ‘Yes, I did, Mrs Green, thank you. Is Barbara there?’

  ‘I’ll call up the stairs.’

  While he was waiting for Barbara, Adam took out the letter and inspected
it with renewed curiosity. He was trying to open it with one hand, when Barbara picked up the phone.

  ‘Hallo, Adam?’

  ‘Hallo, darling,’ said Adam, thrusting the letter back into his pocket. ‘How are you feeling?’

  ‘Oh, all right.’

  ‘No queasiness?’

  ‘No. Only a little.’

  ‘You do feel queasy, then?’

  ‘Only a little. Look, Adam—’

  ‘Camel says we had those drinks with him on the 13th. Where does that come in the temperature chart?’

  ‘Look, Adam, I can’t discuss that now.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I just can’t. And it’s absurd anyway.’

  ‘You mean Mrs Green is listening?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘All right. I’ll ring back later. But just check on the 13th, will you?’

  ‘No, I won’t.’

  ‘How are the children?’ Adam asked, pretending he hadn’t heard.

  ‘What do you mean? How are the children? You saw them less than two hours ago.’

  ‘It seems longer than that.’

  ‘Adam, are you feeling all right?’

  ‘I’m fine. I’ll ring back. Oh, I had a letter today.’

  ‘Who from?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Adam, you’re not all right.’

  ‘Yes I am. I haven’t had time to open it. It’s been a terrible morning. I’ll ring back.’

  ‘Adam—’

  ‘’Bye, darling.’ Adam put down the phone, and took the letter out of his pocket. Someone tapped on the window of the telephone kiosk. It was the fat man with the fat cigar he had seen in the limousine. Adam opened the door.

  ‘If you’ve finished in there,’ said the fat man, waving his cigar, ‘I have an urgent call to make.’ He spoke with an American accent.

  ‘Yes, I’ve finished,’ said Adam, emerging from the kiosk. ‘If you don’t mind my pointing it out, you’re not allowed to smoke inside the Museum.’

  ‘Is that so? Thanks for the tip. Do you have any small change?’