by David Lodge
I said I didn’t want any more hassle over the divorce, and offered him a straight 50/50 split of our joint property, and shared custody of Roxy. I don’t doubt that he’ll agree, when he’s got over the shock of being turned down.
I don’t know yet whether I want to marry you, dearest Bernard, but I intend to find out, by getting to know you better, and that strange-sounding place where you live. I suppose if I married you, I’d have to live there, wouldn’t I? Well, I’m ready for a change from Hawaii, and Rummidge would certainly be a change. But I have to stay here at least another year, and maybe two, until Roxy is through high school, and depending on whether or not she decides to go and live with her father next year. Nothing is fixed, nothing is definite – except that I’ve booked a seat on a charter flight to London Heathrow, December 22nd – can you meet me at the airport? (Don’t bother with a lei.) Whatever happens, ours is going to be a relationship of long chaste separations and short passionate cohabitations for some time, my dear, but better that than the other way round.
All my love,
Yolande
Inside the envelope was a small, stencilled booklet with the liturgy of the Hawaiian Folk Mass, and a sheet of paper with a photocopied page from the Reader’s Digest. A quotation from Miguel de Unamuno’s The Tragic Sense of Life had been marked with green highlighter:
In the most secret recess of the spirit of the man who believes that death will put an end to his personal consciousness and even to his memory forever, in that inner recess, even without his knowing it perhaps, a shadow hovers, a vague shadow lurks, a shadow of a shadow of uncertainty, and while he tells himself: “There is nothing for it but to live this passing life, for there is no other!” at the same time he hears, in this most secret recess, his own doubt murmur: “Who knows? …” He is not sure he hears aright, but he hears. Likewise, in some recess of the soul of the true believer who has faith in the future life, a muffled voice, the voice of uncertainty, murmurs in his spirit’s ear: “Who knows? ….” Perhaps these voices are no louder than the buzzing of mosquitoes when the wind roars through the trees in the woods; we scarcely make out the humming, and yet, mingled with the roar of the storm, it can be heard. How, without this uncertainty, could we ever live?
Bernard folded up the flimsy sheets of writing paper and put them back in the yellow envelope, with the booklet and the photocopy. He smiled up through the shimmering flamy leaves of the copper beech at the blue sky. The leaves rustled in the breeze, and one or two fluttered down like tiny tongues of fire. He stayed in this posture, head thrown back, arms stretched out along the back of the bench, for some minutes, in a happy reverie. Then he got to his feet and walked briskly back to the College building, suddenly consumed with an intense desire for coffee. Pushing through the swing doors into the Senior Common Room, he nearly collided with Giles Franklin on his way out.
“Hallo again!” said Franklin, holding open the door for Bernard to pass. He added jocularly, with a glance at the envelope in Bernard’s hand, “Good news or bad?”
“Oh, good,” said Bernard. “Very good news.”
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Author’s Note
Many people have generously helped me with factual information relevant to the background of this novel, the characters and incidents of which are imaginary. I am especially grateful to: Nell Altizer, Ruell Denney, Dennis Egan, Celia and Maxwell Fry, Tony Langrick, Paul Levick, Victoria Nelson, Norman Rowland and Marion Vaught.
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Published by Vintage 2011
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Copyright © David Lodge, 1991
David Lodge has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser
First published in Great Britain by Secker & Warburg in 1991
The quotation from ‘This Be The Verse’ is reprinted by permission from Faber & Faber Ltd, from High Windows by Philip Larkin; the lines from ‘Big Yellow Taxi’ by Joni Mitchell (© Warner Chapell Music Ltd) are reproduced by permission.
The name WALKMAN (See here) is a registered trademark of the Sony Corporation and is used here by kind permission.
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ISBN 9780099554233