“It’s a new Polish thing at the South Bank place. It’s called Bread and Violets, and it’s supposed to be extremely important as an example of Gomulkaite artistic freedom. Parts are said to be almost surrealist.”
“I thought surrealism was supposed to have been over years and years ago.”
“But don’t you see? It’s extremely important as a cultural indicator. As you know, Poland isn’t at all the same as Russia, and——”
“But I still don’t see what’s so interesting about reviving a disgraced kind of aestheticism, or anti-aestheticism, or whatever it was. Or am I thinking of Dada?”
“I wouldn’t say that surrealism has ever been exactly dead,” said David. “Its influence unquestionably lingers on, anyway. And what are you going to call Max Ernst?”
“I’m not going to call him anything, David. You aren’t answering my question. What’s so splendid about the Poles turning surrealist at this stage of world history?”
“It means they have artistic freedom. That could be very important.”
“Surely,’’ said Harold, “it’s what they do with their freedom that matters? I mean, supposing all the painters started going Salvador Dali, would you regard that as very important?”
“In a way, yes, it could be. But that’s not the point. The point is, and I don’t see why you’re being so dense about it, that the Polish film-makers have artistic freedom.”
“But that doesn’t mean it’s going to be a good film.”
“True. But it’s much more likely to be a good film, surely you’ll agree to that? If they have artistic freedom, I mean.”
“No, I don’t think I do agree,” said Harold. “I should say, at a guess, that ninety per cent of the best art in the world has been produced by people who weren’t allowed to do what they wanted.”
“I think that’s an absurd exaggeration.”
“And I think you’re going to see this film for the wrong reasons.” Harold leaned across the table at David, pointing his knife, and said, “I think you’re going for political reasons. I’m not sure that I approve. I’m not sure you have your ideology straight. I think you may be very confused, very confused indeed, about your motives for going to see this film. I suspect that you are a wishful-thinking capitalist hyena of liberal tendencies that you don’t know what to do about. I think your liberal tendencies are like a tail, and that they trip you up all the time. Because secretly you’re just a hyena. A hyena, David.”
David looked startled.
“And furthermore,” said Harold, “if I were you I’d sit on that tail of yours all the way through the film. Or give it to Brenda to hold.”
“Do try not to be so disgusting, sweet,” said Helen.
“A simile, just a simile. No obscenity intended when I started it.”
“Well, we must go,” said David. He rubbed the back of his neck and said, “I’d like to talk to you about all that some time, Harold. I think you’re wrong, but it’ll take too long to tell you why. You see, what you call liberalism, I’d call humanism, to start with. There’s a tremendous confusion between the two these days.”
“Come on,” said Brenda. “If you don’t want to see the film, I do. It’s got a terrific man in it, blond and sexy. Ursula Manners saw it and said she couldn’t follow the plot she got so excited.”
“There probably isn’t a plot,” said Harold, “if they’ve gone surrealist. Sheer bourgeois decadence. I don’t know what’s happened to the People’s Republics these days.”
David and Brenda went out, and Helen said, “What did you want to go and offend David like that for?”
“I didn’t offend him, he was terribly pleased, couldn’t you tell? Anyway, I don’t like him.”
“You are awful, sweet,” said Helen. She fiddled with a knife and some orange peel. “I say, Harold.”
“Yes?”
“You never gave them a chance to tell you. Brenda and David have decided to get married.”
She didn’t look at him, but he could see her eyes blinking with excitement and her cheeks were rather flushed. Dennis was right, she was exactly like Little Miss Muffet. Which made Harold a horrible hairy-legged spider.
“God almighty,” he said.
“Now don’t be stupid. They’re obviously going to be very happy. They’re ideally suited.”
“That’s true enough. No, it isn’t. Brenda deserves something a good deal better than that.”
“Harold, you are absolutely impossible sometimes.” He thought for a moment that she was going to cry, but she didn’t, instead she said, “I think it’s marvellous.”
“What made them decide so suddenly?”
“David’s got a raise. They think they’ll be able to manage, with what she earns to help out, till David’s finally established. And that will only be a year or two now.”
“And I suppose you’ll be a bridesmaid. Lucky old you.”
“There’s no need to be so utterly foul about it.”
“I’m not being foul. I’m appalled.”
“Well, why are you appalled?” she said, and now she did begin to cry. “What have you got against people getting married anyway? Do you think everyone’s as—bloody as you?”
“Now, listen, Helen, I’ve told you, the firm doesn’t like people to get married till they’re established.”
“You’ve never said anything about getting married when you are established, either.”
That, he thought, is perfectly true. He watched her biting her lip and blowing her nose and trying to stop crying, and there was something about her that made him feel very sorry for Helen indeed. She was a nice girl, that was her trouble. She had good legs and terrible hair, she cooked well but couldn’t ever let herself go, she would make someone a marvellous wife, as long as he was always absolutely faithful in word, look and deed to her, never asked her to go to bed with him during daylight hours, never said, “Oh, to hell with the dinner, let’s have another drink”, and was generally as nice and decent and clean-living as she would have been if she hadn’t met a skunk like Harold Barlow. He was responsible for her mousiness, in a way: she would have been mousy in the long run, of course, but she would at least not have given into mousiness so soon if she hadn’t been incapable of thinking of more than one man at a time. Things being what they were between them, she could only do what was natural for her—go through all the motions of being a married woman, that is to say, becoming mousier and mousier. It was all terribly sad, and Harold tried to feel guilty, but he couldn’t.
“If it makes you feel any better,” he said, “I hope they’ll be madly happy together and have twenty-five golden-haired blue-eyed geniuses for children.”
This produced a complete collapse. Helen jumped up from her chair and ran into her room. There was a grating noise, as of a lock being turned.
It was too late, though, Harold thought, lighting a cigarette. She couldn’t lock herself away from him now, he was too necessary to her, he’d been too unpleasant to her for too long for her to be able to forget the idea of their getting married. And it wasn’t this sort of thing he’d intended at all. He had looked forward to a nice romping affair, not this steady routine. It had only been going on for nine months, too, though it felt like ten years. Nine months. A neatly ironic length for a totally sterile relationship. Well, if she couldn’t give him up, he could easily give her up. And why hadn’t he? Why hadn’t he seen that it was all terrible, pitiable, absurd, and almost sadistic?
I’m an idle and indolent idiot, that’s why. I never took her seriously, so I treated her the way an Edwardian toff would have treated a shop-girl. Except I didn’t have the imagination to realize what I was doing. Cheaper and cleaner and cosier than a tart. And she’s not a shop-girl, she’s a decent English virgin who happens to have lost her virginity.
The door was unlocked and Helen came back into the room.
“I’m sorry about that, Harold,” she said in an artificially bright tone. “I think I must have been working too hard
recently.”
“I think you probably have,” said Harold. “Look, Helen, I know I’m a shit and I’m sorry about it, but we’d better get this over once and for all.”
“Don’t talk like a film,” she said tiredly. “I know you’re not going to marry me, it’s quite obvious. I don’t know why I didn’t see it before.”
“Well, I’m not, no.”
They looked at each other in silence, then Harold said, “Let’s do the washing-up, shall we?”
“You needn’t bother. Brenda and I will do it. We’ve done it before.”
“Helen, please don’t be awful.”
“I couldn’t be awful if I tried,” she said, “and if you don’t know that, then you’re not what I take you for.”
“All right, then,” said Harold. “I suppose I ought to be going. Thank you for the dinner. And I’m sorry I was late.”
“That’s all right.”
“Would you like me to send back your letters or anything?”
“You needn’t bother.”
“All right. Good-bye, then.”
“Good-bye.”
She saw him to the door, and he moved as if to give her a friendly kiss on the cheek.
“I’d rather you didn’t, if you don’t mind.”
“Not at all.”
“Good-bye.”
“Good-bye.”
He felt she was watching him all the way down the stairs, but when he got to the bottom and looked up she had gone in and shut the door. He wasn’t sure whether to feel enormously relieved or self-accusing, and it wasn’t until he had started the Lambretta that he realized that it had been Helen, not he, that had broken it off.
He accelerated violently towards Victoria Street.
Six
“WHY THE BLOODY HELL you can’t get yourself a telephone, I really do not understand,” said Dennis Moreland.
Harold, who was still in his pyjamas, let him in and said, “I shall move out of this hole soon.”
“Sooner than you think,” said Dennis, “if I have anything to do with it.” He stopped on Harold’s landing and looked with disgust at the banisters. “Good God, cobwebs.”
“There’s no harm in spiders. If you leave them alone they’ll leave you alone, too. What do you want?”
“Have you got any coffee?”
“I can make some.”
“I had a terrible night last night. I was being What The Young Man of Britain Thinks About World Problems for an American television programme. I have no idea what ought to be done about Berlin, have you?”
“Not at this hour of the morning.”
“It’s eleven o’clock. Just what I said about Berlin. ‘Berlin,’ I said, ‘represents the eleventh hour for Western Man.’ That shook them. At least they all nodded and agreed.”
“I don’t know how you can stand it,” said Harold. “Don’t you ever feel you’d like to talk about something you know about?”
“Not really, no. I don’t know about anything, really. Or rather, I don’t care about anything enough to want to talk about it. I just want to talk.”
“Yes,” said Harold. “So I’ve noticed.”
“I don’t know what you’ve got to be so snarky about, you empire-builder without an empire.”
“You used that last week.”
“Ah, it’s an article now. I’ve said ‘I have a young friend’ —I like that ‘young’, don’t you?—‘a young friend who feels restricted by modern England. Let’s call him Harold Barlow —that’s not his real name. He——’”
“I shall sue.”
“Well, let’s have some coffee first. I’ve come to invite you out to lunch, by the way. You’d better shave, and wash that guck out of the corners of your eyes, and put on a suit.”
“Why? I’m on holiday, as of five o’clock yesterday. I shall not be taken to lunch if I don’t want to go.”
“You do want to go. I’ll fix the coffee. Is this the kind that perks or the kind that drips or the kind that you just pour boiling water on?”
“It’s Nescafé, and think yourself lucky.”
“You really must brace yourself up, Harold. Living in a slum is all very well, but at least you should live in it, not just fade into the background. Go and get dressed. Does Nescafé explode if you put milk and sugar in it?”
“There’s some sugar, but I haven’t got any milk.”
“Christ, what a way to be a bachelor.”
When Harold came back from the bathroom, Dennis was drinking coffee and trying to read one of Harold’s books.
“I told you to get dressed.”
“I’ve been shaving.”
“Why are all the pages of your books stuck together? Is it a neurosis? Or a selfconscious attempt to fart in the face of literature?”
“There was a fire upstairs last week. The water came down here.”
“Excuses,” said Dennis. “Nothing but excuses. Go and get dressed. An old school tie, if you have one.”
“I don’t.”
“Then College. Anything with a clubby look. What about that Dining Club we were members of?”
“All right. But it has chef’s hats all over it.”
“Perfectly all right. But hurry. There’s an exhibition of pictures I want to glance at on the way.”
“Coffee, please. And you’re sitting on my socks.”
“Good God, do you always undress in the kitchen?”
“No. But I did last night.”
“Last night? Weren’t you at Helen’s?”
“No. Give me my socks.”
“Do you mean to say that you’ve given her up at last?”
“It was mutual. She gave me up actually. She said she knew I wouldn’t marry her. I was burning her letters last night, when my feet began to itch, so I took off my socks. Is there anything else you want to know?”
“Why did you burn her letters?”
“Well, I started by trying to read them, but the water had got to them, and in a fit of temper I burnt them. Her handwriting wasn’t very good at the best of times.”
“You should have kept them.”
“I don’t see why.”
“Your biographer, of course. What is he going to do for your first big love?”
“It wasn’t a big love, it was a sordid little lust.”
“Now don’t be cruel to yourself. Go and get dressed. These socks are awful. Put on clean ones, dark and serious. Clean white shirt.”
“Yes, nanny.”
It didn’t occur to Harold to ask where they were going until they were in Dennis’s red TR3 and flouting the rule of the road down Knightsbridge.
“We’re lunching at White’s, as the guests of Edward Dangerfield, my uncle. Remember what I told you: no limp wristwork, no knowledge of painting.”
“But I have no intention of going to America.”
“I know that. It’s just to show him that I’m trying. What I want you to do is to pretend to be very interested. You can write to him later and say how sorry you are. It’s most unlikely that he’ll think you suitable, anyway. So don’t worry.”
“It seems slightly dishonest.”
“Not at all, not at all. He’s my uncle, remember. Pretend you’re a small boy being taken out by a school-chum. Gobble up the strawberries.”
“Well, I shall tell him I don’t think the firm will like it if I go. I mean, it’s all very well, but he can’t expect someone to give up a perfectly good job and risk his whole chance of becoming well-established just to please the sentimentality of a millionaire. It’s not as though I had auburn hair, and he was going to leave me a couple of hundred thousand pounds because I reminded him of his father.”
“I thought you were bored by your work.”
“Of course I am. That doesn’t mean to say I’m going to give it up. I’ve got to live.”
“If only you did,” said Dennis. “I could get you a screen-test if you wanted one. You’d make a good announcer on I.T.V. ‘This is the news, and here is Harold Barlow coc
king it up again.’ From that you might graduate to panel games, and eventually you could be the Gilbert Harding of your generation.”
“I do wish you would stop talking about generations.”
“It’s my business. Some men talk about movements in the boiler-making industry, others about generations.”
“You’re a parasite,” said Harold.
“I know that. But I’d rather do anything than work. Wouldn’t you, honestly?”
“Yes.”
They came to the gallery where the exhibition was being held. The pictures were flat grey and green abstracts, with titles like “No. 2, 1957”. Harold quickly tired of them, while Dennis stood in the middle of the room and talked to the man who ran the gallery. Harold could hear them saying “Plasticity” to each other. He looked at a piece of sculpture that stood in a corner. It was a small spiky animal with a tiny head and very long legs. Its tail stuck out straight behind it. He found it rather attractive. It was aggressive, hard, rather ugly, and full of spite about the world, he thought. He wondered how much it cost.
“Very nice,” said Harold.
“I think ‘plasticity’ is the word,” said Dennis.
“Yes,” said the man. He was wearing a light green tweed suit and a buff tie, and his shoes needed cleaning.
“How much is that animal thing in the corner?” said Harold. “The sculpture, I mean?”
“Oh, I’m not really sure,” said the man. “Just a moment.” He went into a room at the back of the gallery.
“For Christ’s sake, you don’t want to buy it, do you?” said Dennis. “Never ask a price. I can almost always get things cheaper. And what on earth do you want it for? What is it, anyway? An armadillo? I’m quite off anything realistic. Abstract art is so much easier to evaluate.”
“Why?”
“Well, you can say what you like, and no one can really contradict you.”
“I think you’re immoral.”
“I only wish I was,” said Dennis.
“It’s a hundred and fifty guineas,” said the man, coming back. “It is nice, isn’t it? We have it left over from his show a couple of months ago.”
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