The British Museum is Falling Down

by David Lodge

‘Bravo!’ said Camel, over Adam’s shoulder. Adam ignored him, and eagerly searched the face of the bald-headed man for some response to his own remarks.

  ‘Would you say,’ said the man at length, ‘that Anus is superior or inferior to C. P. Slow?’

  ‘I don’t know that you can compare them,’ said Adam wearily.

  ‘I have to: they are the only British novelists I have read.’

  ‘Where have you been all the afternoon?’ said Camel.

  ‘I’m not talking to you,’ said Adam, going to the bar and taking another sherry.

  Camel followed him. ‘What have I done?’

  The dry sherry tasted like medicine. He put it down half-finished and tried a sweet one. ‘You betrayed me to that man in the Museum.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  The sweet sherry tasted better, but he was conscious of two quite different sensations in his stomach. ‘When that man was after me, you put him on my track. I saw you.’

  It took a long time before Camel finally identified the man. ‘Oh, him! He just had an application slip you’d filled in wrongly.’

  Adam tried to look Camel straight in the eyes, but Camel’s face kept bobbing about. ‘Are you telling the truth?’ he demanded.

  ‘Of course I am. What did you think he wanted?’

  ‘I thought he wanted to arrest me for raising the fire alarm.’

  ‘Did you? Raise the fire alarm, I mean?’ said Camel with wide eyes.

  ‘Yes. No. I don’t know.’ He told Camel the whole story.

  ‘I don’t think you’ve anything to worry about,’ said Camel in the end. ‘No one’s been asking questions about you. Except Barbara.’

  ‘Barbara?’

  ‘Yes, she came to the Museum, not long after you shot off.’

  ‘I thought I saw her . . . What on earth did she want?’

  ‘It seems they announced on the radio, a bit prematurely, that there was a fire in the Museum, and she wanted to find out if you were all right.’

  ‘Poor Barbara. Was she terribly worried?’

  ‘Well, not when she got there, of course. When she sent in a message for you I went out and took her and the kids for a cup of tea.’

  Adam’s tear-ducts pricked him. He gulped another sweet sherry. ‘Camel, you’re a good friend,’ he whimpered. ‘And Barbara is a good wife. I’m not worthy of either of you.’

  ‘I’m afraid the confessor came out in me again,’ said Camel, with a surprising and rather charming blush. ‘Barbara told me she was afraid she was pregnant again.’

  ‘What shall I do?’ Adam appealed to him. ‘How shall I house it? clothe it? feed it?’

  ‘I was telling Barbara, I think you ought to throw yourself on the mercy of the Department—use this to twist their arm over the job situation.’

  ‘D’you think it would do any good?’

  ‘You have nothing to lose. Listen, do you know how Bane got his first promotion? He was telling me the other day: he’d been an assistant lecturer for six years without murmuring when one day his tank burst and he couldn’t pay the plumber. He rushed straight into Howells’ room and demanded promotion. Howells made him up on the spot and back-dated his pay six months. Seems it had just slipped his mind.’

  ‘Good Lord,’ said Adam.

  ‘Incidentally, now Bane has got this new Chair, there should be a vacancy coming up.’

  ‘There’s the Prof in the corner,’ said Adam, straightening his tie.

  ‘I shouldn’t go directly to him,’ said Camel. ‘Go through Briggs, who knows you better. He has the Prof’s ear too.’

  ‘I don’t know that he has, any more,’ said Adam, remembering the interview at lunch time. ‘I think Bane is the coming man now.’

  ‘Well, please yourself,’ said Camel.

  Adam felt a tug at his sleeve. It was the bald-headed man again.

  ‘I told a lie,’ he said. ‘I have also read the work of John Bane.’

  ‘Which John Bane?’ said Adam carefully. ‘The John Bane who wrote Room at the Top, or the John Bane who wrote Hurry on Down?’

  ‘The John Bane,’ said the man, frowning.

  ‘Someone taking my name in vain?’ boomed the Professor of Absurdist Drama, swooping down on them.

  ‘In bane,’ Adam quipped, and laughed immoderately.

  The professor ignored him. ‘Hallo, Camel,’ he said. ‘How’s the research going?’ Bane was Camel’s current supervisor, the original one having died in office.

  Camel took out his pipe, and began stuffing it with tobacco. ‘I’m working on a new interpretation of The Ambassadors,’ he said.

  ‘Oh?’ said Bane, tweaking the wings of his bow tie. He was in full fig this evening, wearing a corduroy jacket with wales so wide and deep that Adam imagined they must have a special purpose, like the indentations of snow-tyres.

  ‘You remember how Strether refuses to tell Maria Gostrey the nature of the manufactured article on which the New-some fortune is based?’

  ‘I do indeed,’ said Bane. Adam could not resist stroking the sleeve of his jacket, but the professor shook his hand off irritably.

  ‘And you recall that James, quite typically, refuses to tell us what it is?’ Camel went on. Bane nodded, and removed himself from Adam’s reach. People nearby pricked up their ears and began to drift towards Camel, who was always a draw. ‘Strether describes it as a “small, trivial, rather ridiculous object of the commonest use,” but “wanting in dignity.” Scholars have argued for years about what it could be.’ Camel paused to light his pipe, holding his audience in suspense. ‘Well, I’m convinced that it was a chamber pot,’ he said at last.

  The girls among his listeners giggled and nudged each other. This was what they had come to hear.

  ‘Once you see it, it becomes a symbol as important as the bowl in The Golden Bowl,’ said Camel.

  ‘Very interesting,’ said Bane. ‘And what do you think, Mr Appleby?’

  ‘I think it was contraceptives,’ said Adam.

  There was a little shocked inspiration of breath among the girls. Bane flushed and stalked away. Camel took Adam to one side.

  ‘I think you’d better stick to Briggs,’ he said.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ Adam complained. ‘Isn’t everyone entitled to his idée fixe? Anyway, you can’t describe a chamber pot as small.’

  ‘Bane thought you were getting at him,’ said Camel. ‘He was the one who stopped the College barber selling french letters.’

  ‘Oh well,’ said Adam. He took a medium sherry this time, hoping to effect some kind of reconciliation between the two sensations in his stomach.

  ‘Hallo, Appleby.’ It was Briggs. ‘How are things with you?’

  ‘Terrible,’ Adam said. Camel beat a tactful retreat.

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry to hear that. Blocked on the thesis?’

  ‘Blocked on everything,’ said Adam. ‘Except paternity. My wife’s going to have another baby.’

  ‘Oh, congratulations. Your first?’

  ‘No, our fourth.’

  Briggs looked grave.

  ‘I’m desperate,’ Adam said. ‘I can’t get on with my work because I’m worrying all the time about my family. Our flat is full of beds already and I have nowhere to study. The children need new shoes and the electricity may be cut off at any moment. Yesterday the youngest child developed a rash: we think it’s rickets.’

  ‘Dear me,’ said Briggs. ‘This is very distressing.’ He bit his lips and pulled on the lobes of his ears.

  Adam raised his glass and drained it dramatically. ‘This is my farewell to the academic life,’ he said. ‘Tomorrow I shall burn all my notes and take a job on the buses.’

  ‘No, no, you mustn’t be so impulsive,’ said Briggs. ‘I’ll see what I can do.’

  ‘What I need is a job,’ said Adam firmly.

  ‘I’ll see what I can do,’ Briggs repeated. ‘Don’t do anything rash.’

  Adam watched him push his way through the throng towards Howells. As was his
custom on such occasions, the Head of Department sat in a corner of the room with his back to the company, drinking with his constant companions, the two technicians who operated the professor’s pride and joy, a computer for making concordances. Only senior members of staff generally ventured to approach this tiny court. Occasionally they would introduce some exceptionally promising post-graduate, but there were many students present who, when they eventually left the Department with their Ph.D’s, would only be able to say, with Moses, that they had seen the back parts of their Professor.

  ‘I have decided to change the subject of my thesis,’ said a voice at Adam’s right ear. It was Mr Alibai.

  ‘I’m sure you’re wise,’ said Adam. ‘I couldn’t see much future in Shani Hodder. Who was she, by the way?’

  ‘She was an Anglo-Indian novelist. I should be most grateful if you would kindly suggest an alternative.’

  ‘What about Egbert Merrymarsh?’ said Adam. ‘I could put you on to some interesting unpublished stuff of his.’ Mr Alibai looked blank. ‘He was a minor Catholic novelist and essayist,’ Adam explained.

  ‘I would prefer someone with Indian connections,’ said Mr Alibai.

  ‘Ah, there you have me,’ Adam sighed.

  ‘Or some unquestionably major figure. I thought the symbolism of D. H. Lawrence . . .’

  ‘I have a feeling it’s been done,’ said Adam.

  ‘Could I have a word with you, Appleby?’

  Briggs was back again. He drew Adam aside, conspiratorially. ‘There will be a vacancy coming up in the Department, as it happens,’ he murmured. ‘I’ve spoken to the Prof and he seemed quite favourably disposed.’

  ‘That’s wonderful,’ said Adam. ‘I didn’t even know he knew who I was.’

  ‘I put in a strong plea on the grounds of your . . . personal circumstances,’ said Briggs. ‘But there’s no possibility of starting before next October.’

  ‘Well, I can just about hang on till then,’ said Adam. ‘I can’t thank you enough.’

  ‘Don’t go away,’ said Briggs. ‘I’ll try to find an opportunity of getting him to speak to you.’

  ‘Well?’ said Camel, coming up as Briggs sloped off.

  ‘It’s unbelievable,’ said Adam. ‘Briggs seems to think that he’s got me the job.’

  ‘Good,’ said Camel. ‘I told you it was worth a try.’

  Adam took another medium sherry by way of celebration. ‘All shall be well and all manner of things shall be well,’ he intoned happily. There was no need for him to return to the devious paths of Bayswater. He could forget the whole upsetting episode, settle down comfortably to work on his thesis again, and learn to be a kind and understanding husband. ‘I’m going to phone Barbara,’ he told Camel.

  It took him a long time to get to the door. The sherry glass he held in his extended hand seemed, like a vain and overbearing dancing partner, to lead him through a series of involved looping movements, sudden changes of direction, rapid shuffles and dizzying spins. On all sides a babble of academic conversation dinned in his ears.

  ‘My subject is the long poem in the nineteenth century . . .’

  ‘Once you start looking for Freudian symbols . . .’

  ‘This book on Browning . . .’

  ‘Poe was quite right. It is a contradiction in terms . . .’

  ‘. . . the diphthong in East Anglian dialects . . .’

  ‘. . . everything’s either round and hollow or long and pointed, when you come to think about it . . .’

  ‘. . . is it called The Bow and the Lyre or The Beau and the Liar . . .?’

  ‘So that’s what op. cit. means!’

  ‘. . . sort of eeeow . . .’

  ‘. . . hasn’t published a thing . . .’

  ‘. . . “eighteenth-century gusto,” and it came out “eighteenth-century gas-stove” . . .,

  ‘No, like this: eeeow . . .’

  ‘. . . waited three years for something to appear in Notes and Queries . . .’

  ‘If it had been “nineteenth-century gas-stove” I might have got away with it . . .’

  ‘. . . then the editors changed and they sent it back . . .’

  ‘I thought it was short for “opposite” . . .’

  ‘. . . eeeow . . .’

  Three of the young men present were writing academic novels of manners. From time to time they detached themselves from the main group of guests and retired to a corner to jot down observations and witty remarks in little notebooks. Adam noticed one of them looking over the shoulders of the other two, and copying. He felt a tug at his sleeve.

  ‘Mormon Nailer—’ the bald-headed man began.

  ‘Sorry,’ said Adam. ‘I have to make a phone call.’

  A public phone was fixed to the wall of the corridor just outside the room in which the party was being held. Its little helmet of sound-proofing scarcely diminished the roar of conversation, and Adam held a finger in his left ear as he waited for Barbara to answer the phone. When she did so, her voice was unexpectedly sprightly.

  ‘Hallo, darling,’ she said. ‘It’s nice to hear your voice. I thought I was a widow this afternoon.’

  ‘So I hear. I’m sorry I missed you.’

  ‘Never mind, Camel was sweet and gave us tea. Where were you all the afternoon, anyway?’

  ‘Oh, er, I was out . . . researching. Listen, I have good news.’

  ‘What kind of research?’

  ‘It’s a long story. I’ll tell you later. How are you feeling?’

  ‘I’m feeling much better.’

  ‘Better?’ he echoed her uneasily.

  ‘Yes, I went over the charts again and I convinced myself we made a mistake. I felt better immediately. Adam, I’m sure I’m not pregnant.’

  ‘Nonsense!’ he shouted. ‘Of course you’re pregnant!’ A couple who were leaving the party gave him odd looks as they passed.

  ‘What do you mean, Adam?’

  ‘I mean, you’re so long overdue, and felt sick this morning,’ he continued, in more controlled tones. ‘Sure signs.’

  ‘But I ate my breakfast in the end.’

  ‘Yes, but only marmalade. I distinctly remember it was only marmalade. It was a craving.’

  ‘Adam, you sound as if you wanted me to be pregnant.’

  ‘I do, I do,’ he moaned. ‘I’ve just talked Briggs into getting me a job in the Department. But he’s only doing it because he thinks we’re going to have another baby!’

  ‘Oh,’ said Barbara.

  ‘That was my good news,’ he said bitterly.

  Barbara was silent for a few moments. Then she said, ‘Well, look, if it’s absolutely essential for us to have another baby to get this job, we can easily arrange it.’

  He considered the idea for a few moments, and found it repellent. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Falling for another baby and getting a job in consequence is a pleasant surprise. But having to conceive another baby to get a job is quite another matter. No job is worth it.’

  ‘I agree,’ said Barbara. ‘But what will you do?’

  ‘I’ll just have to bluff it out,’ said Adam. ‘I can always say you had a miscarriage, I suppose.’

  When Adam returned to the party he found Camel talking to Pond.

  ‘Hallo, what are you doing here?’ he said.

  ‘Camel invited me to drop in,’ said Pond. ‘Lot of wogs you have here.’

  Adam looked round nervously for Mr Alibai and located him on the other side of the room. The Indian interpreted his look as a summons, and came over.

  ‘You have a subject for me?’ he said eagerly.

  ‘No, but I want you to meet Mr Pond,’ said Adam. ‘He is a great expert on Anglo-Indian relations.’

  ‘I am most honoured,’ said Mr Alibai, extending his hand to Pond. ‘How do you do?’

  Adam drew Camel aside. ‘Look, it seems Barbara may not be pregnant after all.’

  ‘Congratulations,’ said Camel.

  ‘Yes, but what shall I do about this job?’

&nbs
p; ‘Say nothing, old chap. If you have to show up with four children on occasion, you can always borrow one.’

  ‘Ah, there you are, Appleby,’ said Briggs. ‘The Prof would like to have a word with you.’

  Camel gave Adam an encouraging pat on the shoulder, which Briggs observed suspiciously. ‘I hope you haven’t been talking about this matter to anyone, Appleby,’ he said, as he steered Adam across the floor. ‘There are all kinds of forces at play in the academic world, as you will discover for yourself. Discretion is vital. Mum’s the word.’

  Adam fought back an urge to confess that mum wasn’t the word. He stood behind Howells’ broad back, dry-mouthed and trembling, as Briggs stooped to whisper in the professor’s ear. Howells turned his big, bloodshot eyes upon Adam.

  ‘It’s Appleby I wanted to see,’ he said to Briggs.

  ‘This is Mr Appleby, Prof.’

  ‘No, Briggs. This is Camel.’

  ‘I assure you—’

  ‘It’s Appleby I want, Briggs. The one who’s working on sewage in the nineteenth century or some such thing. Bright man—Bane told me about him. You’ve got them mixed up.’ He gave a short, barking laugh, and turned back to his cronies. ‘Tell Appleby I want to see him,’ he threw over his shoulder.

  ‘I’ll tell him,’ said Adam, speaking for the first time.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Briggs, as they walked away. ‘There seems to have been a misunderstanding.’

  ‘Forget it,’ said Adam.

  Briggs bit his lip and pulled violently on the lobes of his ears. ‘Someone I could mention has been intriguing behind my back,’ he muttered.

  Adam went over to Camel. ‘Well?’ said Camel.

  ‘Congratulations,’ said Adam.

  Camel raised his eyebrows.

  ‘Howells wants to see you.’

  ‘Me?’

  ‘Your name is Appleby, isn’t it?’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘You’re writing a thesis on sanitation in Victorian fiction?’

  ‘You know I am . . .’

  ‘Well, you’ve got a job. Howells is waiting to bestow it on you.’

  Camel lolloped across the room, pausing occasionally to cast a quizzical, distrustful glance at Adam. Adam waved him on impatiently. He turned back to the bar, where Pond was discoursing to Mr Alibai with every sign of friendly animation.