by Lodge, David
Sitting there, taking it all in with the same leisurely relish as he sucked the fortified black coffee through its filter of whipped cream, Philip felt himself finally converted to expatriation; and he saw himself, too, as part of a great historical process—a reversal of that cultural Gulf Stream which had in the past swept so many Americans to Europe in search of Experience. Now it was not Europe but the West Coast of America that was the furthest rim of experiment in life and art, to which one made one’s pilgrimage in search of liberation and enlightenment; and so it was to American literature that the European now looked for a mirror-image of his quest. He thought of James’s The Ambassadors and Strether’s injunction to Little Bilham, in the Paris garden, to “Live… live all you can; it’s a mistake not to,” feeling himself to partake of both characters, the speaker who had discovered this insight too late, and the young man who might still profit by it. He thought of Henry Miller sitting over a beer in some scruffy Parisian café with his notebook on his knee and the smell of cunt still lingering on his fingers and he felt some distant kinship with that coarse, uneven, priapic imagination. He understood American Literature for the first time in his life that afternoon, sitting in Pierre’s on Cable Avenue as the river of Plotinus life flowed past, understood its prodigality and indecorum, its yea-saying heterogeneity, understood Walt Whitman who laid end to end words never seen in each other’s company before outside of a dictionary, and Herman Melville who split the atom of the traditional novel in the effort to make whaling a universal metaphor and smuggled into a book addressed to the most puritanical reading public the world has ever known a chapter on the whale’s foreskin and got away with it; understood why Mark Twain nearly wrote a sequel to Huckleberry Finn in which Tom Sawyer was to sell Huck into slavery, and why Stephen Crane wrote his great war-novel first and experienced war afterwards, and what Gertrude Stein meant when she said that “anything one is remembering is a repetition, but existing as a human being, that is being, listening and hearing is never repetition;” understood all that, though he couldn’t have explained it to his students, some thoughts do often lie too deep for seminars, and understood, too, at last, what it was that he wanted to tell Hilary.
…
Because I’ve changed, Hilary, changed more than I should have thought possible. I’ve not only, as you know, been lodging with Désirée Zapp since the night of the landslip, I’ve also been sleeping with her quite regularly since the day of my arrest, and to be honest I can’t seem to work up any guilt or regret about it. I should be very sorry, naturally, to cause you any pain, but when I ask myself what injury have I done to you, what have I taken away from you that you had before, I come up with the answer: nothing. It’s not my relationship with Désirée that has been wrong, it seems to me, but our marriage. We have possessed each other totally, but without joy. I suppose, in the thirteen years of our married life, this trip of mine to America has been the only occasion on which we have been separated for more than a day or two. In all that time I don’t suppose there was one hour when you didn’t know, or couldn’t guess, what I was doing, and when I didn’t know, or couldn’t guess what you were doing. I think we even knew, each of us, what the other was thinking, so that it was scarcely necessary for us even to talk to each other. Every day was pretty much like the last one, and the next one was sure to be like this one. We knew what we both believed in: industry, thrift, education, moderation. Our marriage—the home, the children—was like a machine which we served, and serviced, with the silent economy of two technicians who have worked together for so long that they never have to ask for the appropriate tool, never bump into each other, never make an error or have a disagreement and are bored out of their minds by the job.
I see I’ve slipped unconsciously into the past tense, I suppose because I can’t conceive of returning to that kind of relationship. Which is not to say that I want a divorce or separation, but simply that if we are going to go on together it will have to be on a new basis. Life, after all, should go forwards, not backwards. I’m sure it would be a good idea if you could come out here for a couple of weeks so that you could understand what I’m trying to say in context, so to speak, and make your own mind up about it all. I’m not sure I could explain myself in Rummidge.
Incidentally, as regards Désirée: she has no claims on me, nor I on her. I’ll always regard her with affection and gratitude, and nothing could make me regret our relationship, but of course I’m not asking you to come out and join a ménage à trois. I’ll be moving into my own apartment soon…
Yes, that should do it, Philip thought, as he paid his bill. I won’t send it off just yet, but when the time comes, that should do very nicely.
…
“I think one has to accept,” Philip said earnestly into the QXYZ microphone, “that those who originally conceived the Garden were radicals looking for an issue on which to confront the Establishment. It was an essentially political act by the radical Left, designed to provoke an extreme display of force by the law-and-order agencies, thus demonstrating the revolutionary thesis that this allegedly democratic society is in fact totalitarian, repressive and intolerant.”
“If I understand you correctly, Professor Swallow,” said the nasal-voiced caller, “you’re saying that the people who started the Garden were ultimately responsible for all the violence that followed.”
“Is that what you’re saying, Phil?” Boon cut in.
“In a sense, yes. But there’s another sense, perhaps a more important one, in which the thesis has been proved right. I mean, when you have two thousand troops camped in this small community, helicopters buzzing overhead all day, a curfew at night, people shot in the streets, gassed, arrested indiscriminately, and all to suppress a little public garden, then you have to admit that there does seem to be something wrong with the system. In the same way, the idea of the Garden may have been a political stratagem to those who conceived it, but perhaps it’s become an authentic and valuable idea in the process of being realized. I hope you don’t think I’ve evaded your question.”
“No,” said the voice in his earphones. “No. That’s very interesting. Tell me, Professor Swallow, has anything like this ever happened at your own University in England?”
“No,” said Philip.
“Thanks for calling,” said Boon.
“Thank you,” said the caller.
Boon flicked the switch that controlled the open line and intoned his station identification into the mike. His left arm was in plaster and bore the legend, “Broken by Arcadia County Sheriff’s Deputies, Saturday May 17th, at Shamrock and Addison. Witnesses needed.” “Uh, we have time for just one or two more calls,” he said. The red light flashed. “Hallo and good evening. This is Charles Boon, and my guest, Professor Philip Swallow. What’s on your mind?”
This time it was an old lady, evidently a regular caller, for Boon rolled one eye in despair at the sound of her slow, quavering voice.
“Don’t you think, Professor,” she said, “that what young folks need today is some college courses in self-control and self-denial?”
“Well—”
“Now, when I was a girl—that was a while ago, I can tell you, heh heh… Would you like to guess how old I am, Professor?”
Charles Boon cut in ruthlessly: “OK Grandma, what is it you’re trying to tell us? A girl’s best friend is N-O spells NO?”
After a brief silence, the voice quavered, “Why, bless my soul Mr. Boon, that’s exactly what I was going to say.”
“What about that, Phil?” said Charles Boon. “You got any views on N-O spells NO as a panacea for our times?” He took a swig from the Coke bottle in front of him, and gave a practised silent burp. Through the glass panel to Boon’s left Philip could see the sound engineer yawning over his knobs and dials. The engineer looked, ungratefully, rather bored. Philip wasn’t in the least bored. He had enjoyed the broadcast enormously. For nearly two hours he had been dispensing liberal wisdom to the audience of the Charles Boon Show
on every conceivable subject—the Garden, drugs, law and order, academic standards, Viet Nam, the environment, nuclear testing, abortion, encounter groups, the Underground press, the death of the novel, and even now he had enough energy and enthusiasm left to find a word on the Sexual Revolution for the old lady.
“Well,” he said, “sexual morality has, of course, always been a bone of contention between the generations. But there’s more honesty, less hypocrisy about these matters than there used to be, and I think that must be a good thing.”
Charles Boon couldn’t stand any more of this. He cut off the old lady and started to wind up the show. The red light flashed again, and he said OK, they would take one last call. The voice sounded distant, but quite clear.
“Is that you Philip?”
“Hilary!”
“At last!”
“Good God! Where are you?”
“At home, of course. You can’t imagine the trouble I’ve had getting through.”
“You can’t speak to me now.”
“It’s now or never, Philip.”
Charles Boon was sitting up tensely in his seat, clutching his earphones with his free hand as if he had just picked up a conversation from outer space. The engineer behind the glass screen had stopped yawning and was making frantic signals.
“This is a private call that’s been put through by mistake,” Philip said. “Please disconnect it.”
“Don’t you dare, Philip,” said Hilary. “I’ve been trying for a whole hour to get through to you.”
“How in God’s name did you get the number?”
“Mrs. Zapp gave it to me.”
“Did she happen to mention that it was the number of a phone-in programme?”
“Eh? She said you were anxious to get in touch with me. Was it about my birthday?”
“My God, I forgot all about that.”
“It doesn’t matter in the least.”
“Look, Hilary, you must get off this line.” He leaned across the green baize table to reach the control switch, but Boon, grinning demonically, fended him off with his plaster cast and made signals to the engineer to turn up the volume. His vagrant eye was shooting in all directions with excitement. “What is it you want, Hilary?” Philip asked anguishedly.
“You’ve got to come home at once, Philip, if you want to save our marriage.”
Philip laughed, briefly and hysterically.
“Why do you laugh?”
“I was writing to tell you more or less the same thing.”
“I’m not joking, Philip.”
“Neither am I. By the way, have you any idea how many people are listening to this conversation?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Exactly, so will you kindly get off the bloody phone.”
“If that’s the way you feel about it… I just hope you understand that I’m very probably going to have an affair.”
“I’m having one already!” he cried. “But I don’t want to tell the whole world about it.”
That finally stopped Hilary. There was a gasp, a silence and a click.
“Terrific,” Charles Boon said, when the red and green lights went out and the mike was dead at last. “Terrific. Sensational. Fantastic radio.”
…
The weather forecast had predicted sunny spells, and the first of them woke Morris early, shining straight on to his face through the thin cotton drapes. Sunny spells. “Who is casting these sunny spells?” he used to ask his Rummidge acquaintances. “What kind of a witch wastes her time casting sunny spells?” Nobody else seemed to think it was funny, however, and now even he was getting used to the quaint meteorological idiom. “Temperature about the seasonal average.” “Rather cool.” “Scattered showers and bright periods.” The imprecision of these terms no longer bothered him. He accepted that, like so much British usage, it was a language of evasion and compromise, designed to take the drama out of the weather. No talk of “lows” or “highs” here: all was moderate, qualified, temperate.
He lay on his back for a while, eyes closed against the sunlight, and against the almost equally blinding floral wallpaper adorning the walls of the Swallows’ guest room, listening to the house rousing itself for a new day, the whole structure stretching and groaning like a flophouse full of old men. The floorboards creaked, the plumbing whined and throbbed, doorhinges squeaked and windows rattled in their frames. The noise was deafening. Morris added his quota with a prolonged fart that nearly lifted him off the mattress. It was his customary salute to the dawn; something about Rummidge, the water probably, gave him terrible wind.
His ears twitched at the sound of a footfall on the landing. Hilary? He leapt out of bed, rushed to the window, flung it open and furiously flapped the bedclothes.
All wasted effort. The feet belonged to Mary Makepeace: he recognized her heavy pregnant tread. For a moment he’d thought Hilary had relented and was going to slip into his room for a quick roll in the hay before reveille. He slammed the window shut and hopped shivering back to bed. How close, actually, he’d come to getting into the sack with Hilary last night.
She’d been blue because it was her birthday and Swallow hadn’t sent her a gift, not even a goddam card. “When I don’t want them he sends me roses by Interflora, then he goes and forgets my birthday,” she complained with a crooked smile. “He’s hopeless about things like that. Usually the children remind him.” To cheer her up, Morris invited her out for a meal. She demurred. He pressed. Mary supported him, also Amanda. Hilary allowed herself to be persuaded. Took a shower, washed her hair, and changed into a fetching black maxi that he hadn’t seen before, with a low-cut neckline that showed off the smooth creamy texture of her shoulders and bosom. “Hey, you look terrific,” he said sincerely, and she blushed right down to her cleavage. She kept fiddling with her shoulder straps and hitching a shawl round her shoulders until she’d had a second dry martini, after which she leaned negligently forward across the restaurant table and didn’t seem to mind his taking long appreciative looks down inside her dress.
He took her to the one tolerable trattoria in Rummidge, and afterwards to Petronella’s, a small club in a basement near the station where they usually had decent music and the clientele were not too oppressively adolescent. This evening the entertainment was provided by a so-so folk-blues group called Morte D’Arthur with a wistful girl singer who sang pastiches of recordings by Joan Baez and other vocalists of that ilk; but it could have been worse, a heavy rock band for instance which Hilary wouldn’t have liked at all. She seemed to enjoy herself, anyway, looking round at the Tudor-adobe decor wonderingly, and applauding enthusiastically after each song, saying, “I never knew there were places like this in Rummidge, however did you discover it?” He didn’t like to point out that Petronella’s and a dozen places like it were advertised every evening in the local paper, it would have seemed like a put-down, but it was a fact that Hilary and her peer group simply didn’t see most of what was happening in the city around them. There was, believe it or not, a Rummidge scene of sorts, though you had to search quite hard for parts of it—the gay clubs, for instance, or the West Indian dives in the Arbury ghetto—but there were other parts, almost as interesting, that were accessible enough. For instance, the cocktail bar of the Ritz, Rummidge’s best hotel, on a Saturday night, when the car-workers gathered with their wives and girlfriends for the conspicuous consumption of alcohol. However high the hotel pegged its prices in an effort to maintain a classy atmosphere, the car-workers could match them. They gathered round the tables or perched at the bar, the women balancing their huge beehive wigs, towering like cumulus cloud above their stocky, broad-shouldered escorts who sat stiffly, calloused horny hands sticking out of their sharp new suits, ordering round after round of daiquiris, whisky-sours, White Ladies, Orange Blossoms, and special inventions of Harold, the prize-winning barman—Mushroom Cloud, Supercharger, Fireball and Rummidge Dew… “I’ll take you there some time,” he promised Hilary.
“Goodness, you do seem terribly au fait with everything, Morris. Anyone would think you’d lived in Rummidge for years.”
“Sometimes it feels like that,” he joked mildly.
“You must be looking forward to going back to Euphoria.”
“Well, I don’t know. I’ll be sorry to miss the first Rummidge Grand Prix.”
“Surely the climate… and your family?”
“I’ll be glad to see the twins again. But it may be the last time. You know Désirée wants a divorce.”
Hilary’s eyes filled with ginny tears. “I’m sorry,” she said.
He shrugged and put on his stoical, weary, Humphrey Bogart expression. There was a rose-tinted mirror behind Hilary’s head in which he was able to make small, unobtrusive adjustments to his face when he wasn’t occupied in looking down Hilary’s neckline.