The British Museum is Falling Down

by David Lodge

  ‘Well, we’ve sorted out Mr Alibai’s little problem,’ Pond said. ‘He’s going to work on the influence of the Kama Sutra on contemporary fiction.’

  ‘I envy you,’ said Adam to Mr Alibai, who gave a proud, shy smile.

  ‘I am most indebted . . .’ he murmured.

  ‘Nice chap,’ said Pond, when final handshakes had been exchanged. ‘He’s going to enrol in my Advanced English Course.’

  ‘But he doesn’t need it.’

  ‘No, he doesn’t, but he seems struck on me. It’s a fatal gift I have. By the way, Adam, I was pulling your leg about my limp at lunch time.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Yes, you see Sally and I sometimes take a shower together, and—’

  ‘Telephone for you, Adam,’ said someone.

  ‘Hallo? Is that you, Adam?’

  ‘Don’t tell me, let me guess,’ said Adam. ‘You feel pregnant again.’

  ‘How did you know?’

  ‘It had to be that. The job has fallen through.’

  ‘Oh, darling! And I thought you’d be pleased. Why?’

  The party was breaking up at last, and the corridor was full of noisy people putting on hats and coats. Adam turned a stony gaze upon them, holding his finger to his ear in the attitude of a man about to commit suicide.

  ‘Can’t tell you now. Later.’

  ‘How much later, Adam? Are you coming home now?’

  ‘I have to go to the Museum to pick up my things.’

  ‘But it’s closed by now.’

  ‘No, it’s open late tonight.’

  ‘Well, you’re not going to stay there, are you?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said on a sudden impulse. ‘Yes, I think I’ll stay and do some work. Don’t wait up for me.’

  He put down the receiver quickly, before Barbara could bring any pathos or moral suasion to bear on him. He had reached the moment of decision, and he did not wish to be swayed from his purpose. He would return to Bayswater. He would get his hands on Merrymarsh’s scandalous confessions, and with them he would deal a swinging blow at the literary establishment, at academe, at Catholicism, at fate. He would publish his findings to the world, and leap to fame or perdition in a blaze of notoriety.

  As he walked unsteadily away from the phone, the people in the corridor falling back before him, he thought of himself as a man set apart by a dangerous quest. For what was that house in Bayswater, dismal of aspect and shrouded in fog, with its mad, key-rattling old queen, raven-haired, honey-tongued daughter, and murderous minions insecurely pent in the dungeon below, but a Castle Perilous from which, mounted on his trusty scooter, he, intrepid Sir Adam, sought to snatch the unholy grail of Egbert Merrymarsh’s scrofulous novel? If the success of this quest, contrary to the old story, necessitated his fall from grace in the arms of the seductive maiden, then so much the better. He had had enough of continence.

  Adam swaggered through the doorway intent on a final sherry. He had omitted, however, to remove his finger from his ear. His projecting elbow struck the door jamb, and this trivial collision was enough, it seemed, to level him to the floor. Several departing guests trod on him before Camel and Pond came to the rescue.

  CHAPTER IX

  Human Fertility, formerly the Journal of Contraception.

  Item in the British Museum Catalogue.

  THERE WAS ONLY one shop open in the section of the Edgware Road where Adam had parked his scooter. The window was brightly lit, but it was invisible from a distance of twelve paces on either side. Adam was quite sure of this figure because he had walked past the shop about twenty-five times so far.

  He had sobered up considerably since leaving the sherry party. Camel and Pond had carried him to the Gents and put his head under a cold tap. Then they had taken him to a coffee bar and made him consume a cheese sandwich and three cups of bitter black espresso. Their efforts had been kindly meant, but he rather wished they hadn’t done their work so thoroughly; in the process he had mislaid that happy mood of careless confidence in which his resolution to return to Bayswater had been formed. He struggled in vain to recover the image of himself as a swashbuckling adventurer, bent single-mindedly on his purpose, but prepared to accept imperturbably whatever willing female flesh chance threw in his path. All day circumstances had cracked the whip and urged him through a bewildering variety of hoops, but so far he had not been at a loss for a style in which to negotiate them. Now, when he most needed to assume a ready-made role, the knack seemed to have deserted him. He was alone with himself again, the old Adam, a bare forked animal with his own peculiar moral problem.

  There were, of course, plenty of unfaithful husbands in literature: modern fiction, in particular, might be described as a compendium of advice on the conduct of adultery. But he couldn’t, off-hand, recall one who, distracted and frustrated by the complexities of the married relation, had sought relief in the willing arms of another woman only to find himself trammelled by the very same absurd scruples from which he had fled.

  He paused yet again in front of the shop window. The defective neon sign above it flickered dimly in the fog: URGICAL GO DS. He had need of the urgical gods—he longed to be possessed by the spirit of Dionysian abandon; but this shrine did not throw him into a transport of profane joy. On the contrary, he eyed the contents of the window with feelings of disquiet and repugnance. Sexual Happiness Without Fear was the title of one of the books for sale. But it was not only the two flanking volumes, The History of Flagellation and Varieties of Venereal Disease, which gave the cheerfulness of the first title a forced and hollow note. It was also the trusses, elastic stockings and male corsets, displayed on pink plastic limbs that were oddly like the gruesome votive objects, signifying cures, that hung in the side-chapels of Spanish churches. Still more it was the abundance of little boxes, jars and packets, these guaranteeing a spectacular development of the bust, those offering new hope to the older man, others more enigmatically labelled, containing, as he knew, the instruments of carefree pleasure, but bearing trade names suggestive of medicaments. The whole display was decidedly detumescent in effect, projecting a vision of sexuality as a universal illness, its sufferers crippled hypochondriacs, trussed and bandaged, anointed with hormone cream, hipped on rejuvenation pills, who owed their precarious survival entirely to artificial aids and appliances.

  He turned away and recommenced his pacing of the pavement. There was no doubt, he thought wryly, that the conditioning of a Catholic upbringing and education entered into the very marrow of a man. It unfitted him for the prosecution of an affaire with the proper gaiety and confidence. The taking of ‘precautions’ which was, no doubt, to the secular philanderer a process as mechanical and thoughtless as blinking, was to him an ordeal imbued with embarrassment, guilt and superstitious fear; and one which, Adam now saw, might easily come to overshadow in moral importance the act of sexual licence itself.

  Perhaps, he tried to persuade himself, his anxiety was misplaced. Virginia was surely the kind of girl who felt under-dressed if she wasn’t wearing a diaphragm. Couldn’t he safely leave that side of things to her? But something told him she was not as experienced as she pretended—how could she be, with that old dragon, her mother, breathing down her neck? Besides, after Barbara’s proved incompetence to operate the Safe Method successfully, he no longer trusted women in the conduct of such matters. One slip on Virginia’s part and nine months from now he might be the unwilling father of not merely one but two new offspring.

  The possibility smote him with such appalling force that he all but abandoned the enterprise there and then. But somehow he couldn’t contemplate going home with nothing to cheer him in the face of looming domestic problems. The events of the day lay about him like ruins. Though he had selfishly occupied a seat in the Reading Room since the morning, he hadn’t opened a single book; furthermore, he had thrown the British Museum into panic and disorganisation, falsely suspected a friend of treachery, lost a job after enjoying it for ten minutes, and disgraced himself in the eyes
of the Department. Overshadowing and darkening all these setbacks were the prognostications of another addition to the Appleby family. If he could return home with Merrymarsh’s secret manuscript, that at least would be something achieved, something to go to bed on, dreaming of a brighter future.

  It wasn’t, in other words, simple lust that had driven him thus far towards the house in Bayswater; it was the lure of a literary discovery. Virginia was just a contingency—though not entirely regretted, he had to admit. In fact, to be quite honest, he looked upon her in the light of a bonus: if the question of Merrymarsh’s manuscript hadn’t arisen, he wouldn’t for a moment have entertained the idea of jumping into bed with her; but if jumping into bed was the only way of getting his hands on the manuscript . . . well, he was only human. Either way, of course, it was what Father Bonaventure would have called a grave sin; but he was in no mood to let that deter him—indeed he looked forward to the experience of being a Sinner in full-blooded style with a certain grim satisfaction. The advantage of the present circumstances was that they permitted him to feel the victim of an almost irresistible temptation which was not of his seeking. And a small voice inside him hinted that if he was going to be unfaithful to Barbara, if he was going to have one wild fling at forbidden fruit, then he could scarcely do so with greater ease, secrecy and freedom from remorse than now.

  The very elements seemed to have conspired to draw a discreet veil round his moment of decision. The Edgware Road was eerily silent and deserted. Occasionally the hush was dissipated by a bus, crawling by in low gear, its windows becoming palely visible as it drew level, only to fade again almost immediately. At long intervals a pedestrian, coughing and muffled in scarves, stumbled past and was swallowed up in the anonymity of the fog. If he could not find the courage now to embark on an amorous adventure, what chance was there of his ever doing so in more normal meteorological conditions? It was now or never. Adam braced himself and stepped purposefully towards the shop.

  As he did so he heard the sound of footsteps on the pavement behind him. He was tempted to stop and skulk against a wall while the pedestrian passed on, but knew that if he hesitated again he would never recover his resolution. He accelerated his pace, but the footsteps followed suit. He broke into a trot, and heard his pursuer coughing and panting as he strove to overtake. The brightly-lit glass door of the shop loomed up suddenly, and Adam reached for the latch. As he did so, a heavy hand caught him by the shoulder, and he froze in the attitude of an arrested thief.

  ‘Excuse me, sir,’ said an Irish voice, ‘but am I anywhere at all near the Marble Arch?’

  ‘Keep going, and you’ll come to it,’ Adam replied. He averted his head from his questioner as he spoke, but his attempt to disguise his voice was unsuccessful.

  ‘Glory be to God, is it yourself, Mr Appleby?’ said Father Finbar.

  ‘Were you going in here, Mr Appleby? Don’t let me stop you.’

  ‘Oh, it’s all right, Father—’

  ‘I’ll come in with you. I wouldn’t mind getting out of this fog myself, for a minute or two.’

  ‘Let me show you where Marble Arch—’

  ‘Tell me inside, Mr Appleby. Mother of God, did you ever see the likes of this weather?’

  Father Finbar took Adam firmly by the arm and led him, struggling feebly, into the shop. A small, dapper man with a toothbrush moustache was sitting on a stool behind the counter, reading a newspaper. He got to his feet with a discreet smile of welcome. As Father Finbar unwound his scarf and revealed his dog-collar, the man’s smile slowly hardened into an unnatural grin, a rictus of shock behind which feelings of incredulity, curiosity and fear seemed to be struggling for ascendancy. Father Finbar rattled on comfortably.

  ‘Did I never tell you, Mr Appleby, I have a cousin who’s at the Oratory up at Brompton there and being up in Town today, and having the afternoon to myself which doesn’t happen very often I thought I’d take the opportunity of dropping in on him. But it was a bad move and no mistake. I’ve been waiting since five for the fog to clear and I’m blessed if I don’t think it’s worse now than it was then. So I decided to hoof it in the end. Shocking weather, mister,’ he concluded, addressing the man behind the counter, who responded by nodding his head several times, his countenance still distorted by the vacant grin. ‘I suppose you think I shouldn’t be complaining about fog with the brogue on me, but Irish mist is a different proposition entirely. You could stand a broomstick up in this stuff and it wouldn’t fall down. Bad for business too, I suppose?’

  ‘Can I do anything for you gentlemen?’ said the man.

  Father Finbar looked expectantly at Adam, who raked the shelves desperately for some innocuous purchase. His eyes lighted thankfully on a carton of paper tissues.

  ‘Kleenex, please. The small packet.’

  ‘Sixpence,’ said the man.

  ‘Aye, the fog gets right up your nose, doesn’t it. Filthy stuff, I’m half choked m’self,’ said Father Finbar. ‘Could I have a packet of throat lozenges?’ he said.

  ‘We don’t stock them,’ said the man.

  ‘Don’t stock them?’ Father Finbar repeated, looking round him in surprise. ‘This is a chemist’s shop, isn’t it?’

  ‘No—’ the man began.

  ‘It’s only a step to the Marble Arch, Father,’ said Adam, cutting in swiftly and loudly. ‘Then you can walk down Park Lane to Hyde Park Corner and along Grosvenor Place and that brings you to Victoria, and if I were you—

  ‘Aye, I’ll be on my way in a moment,’ said Father Finbar. ‘You know Adam—you don’t mind if I call you Adam?—you know I’m very glad we bumped into each other, because I’ve been thinking about that most interesting conversation we had this morning.’

  ‘Oh, it’s not worth talking about,’ said Adam deprecatingly, edging towards the door.

  ‘Oh, but it is. It was most in-ter-est-ing. I’m thinking you feel the Church is too hard on young married folk—’

  ‘Oh no, no, not at all!’ Adam protested. He opened the door, but Father Finbar showed no inclination to budge.

  ‘Don’t leave the door open, please,’ said the man behind the counter. ‘It lets the fog in.’

  ‘That’s right, just hold your horses, Adam,’ said Father Finbar. He turned to the man. ‘You don’t mind us taking a breather here for a moment, do you, mister? An empty shop is bad for trade, isn’t that right?’

  ‘It’s the other way round in my line of business,’ said the man, who seemed to be recovering his self-possession. He looked suspiciously at Adam and Father Finbar as if he suspected he was the victim of a hoax.

  ‘Is that so?’ said Father Finbar curiously. ‘Now, why would that be the case?’

  ‘What were you saying about our conversation this morning, Father?’ said Adam, leaping desperately from the frying pan to the fire.

  ‘Ah, yes, now where was I? I was meaning to say, Adam, that you mustn’t think the Church forbids birth control just to make life harder for young couples.’

  ‘Of course not—’

  ‘It’s just a matter of teaching God’s law. It’s a simple question of right and wrong . . .’ His voice, which had been so far mild and gentle, suddenly rose to the pitch of a pulpit-thumping tirade. ‘CONTRACEPTION IS NOTHING LESS THAN THE MURDER OF GOD-GIVEN LIFE AND THE PEOPLE WHO MAKE AND SELL THE FILTHY THINGS ARE AS GUILTY AS THOSE WHO SUPPLY OPIUM TO DRUG ADDICTS!’ he roared.

  ‘Here,’ said the man behind the counter. ‘You can’t say things like that to me.’

  ‘This is a private religious discussion,’ Father Finbar retorted with a fierce look, ‘and I’ll thank you to keep your opinions to yourself.’ He turned back to Adam. ‘Did you know,’ he went on in a vibrant whisper, ‘that the manufacture of contraceptives is an industry so vast that no one can even make a guess at the profits? that the whole dirty trade is so covered up with shame and secrecy that these profiteers don’t even pay taxes? that the whole affair is actively encouraged and supported by the Communists to sap the vi
tality of the West.’

  ‘No,’ said Adam, keeping his eye on the man behind the counter. He was surreptitiously using the telephone, and Adam had no doubt that he was calling the police. ‘Don’t you think we’d better be going, Father?’ he pleaded.

  ‘Perhaps so,’ said the priest, raising his voice. ‘Some people in this world don’t like to hear unpleasant truths.’ When they were outside on the pavement he said to Adam: ‘You know, I shouldn’t be surprised if our man back there didn’t deal in the things himself.’

  ‘No!’ said Adam.

  ‘Oh, yes. I shouldn’t be surprised at all. Under the counter, you know, under the counter . . . And what are you doing here, Adam?’

  ‘I was just buying some paper handkerchiefs,’ said Adam, eagerly brandishing the evidence under the priest’s nose. He broke open the packet and blew his nose vigorously.

  ‘No, I mean what are you doing in the Edgware Road?’ Lost your way?’

  ‘Oh. No, I was on my way to . . . some friends. In Bayswater.’

  ‘They must be very good friends to keep you out on a night like this. I’m off home myself. It’s going to be a long walk, but I have my rosary in my pocket so the time won’t be wasted. Is this the way to the Marble Arch? Good night then, and God bless you.’

  ‘Good night, Father.’

  Adam watched the priest melt into the fog. For some reason his broad-brimmed trilby was the last feature to disappear from sight, and for a second or two Adam had the impression that a disembodied hat was sailing gently down the Edgware Road. Then the hat was gone. Adam tip-toed to his scooter and pushed it softly in the opposite direction.

  Adam knocked on the front door, but it was the hairy man who opened it. ‘Come in,’ he said. In his mutilated left hand he held a long knife.

  ‘I’ll come back later,’ said Adam.

  ‘No. Mrs said you must come in.’

  Adam glanced over the man’s shoulder and saw Virginia on the stairs. She nodded vigorously and beckoned. Adam stepped hesitantly over the threshold. ‘Where is Mrs Rottingdean?’ he asked.