Campus Trilogy : Changing Places; Small World; Nice Work (9781101577127)

by Lodge, David

  “I’m a shadow,” said Robyn. The man looked mystified, and slightly awestruck, as if he thought the word denoted some kind of supernatural messenger. “Thank you,” he said.

  …

  To avoid running the gauntlet of the machine shop again, Robyn made her way back to the car park by going round the outside of the building, but the paths were covered with drifting snow and the going was difficult. She got lost in the labyrinth of yards and passageways that separated the numerous buildings, many of them apparently disused or derelict, that covered the factory site, and there was nobody around to direct her. At last, after about twenty minutes’ wandering, her feet soaking wet inside her leaking boots, and her leg muscles aching from wading through the snow, she arrived at the car park outside the administration block, and found her car. She brushed a thick layer of snow from its windows, and, with a sigh of relief, got behind the wheel. She turned the ignition key. Nothing happened.

  “Fuck,” said Robyn, aloud to herself, alone in the middle of the frozen car park. “Bum. Tit.”

  If it was the battery it must have finally given up the ghost, because there wasn’t even the faintest wheeze or whisper from the starter motor. Whatever it was, she could do nothing about it herself, since she hadn’t the remotest idea what went on under the bonnet of the Renault. She got wearily out of the car and tramped across the car park to the reception lobby, where she asked the receptionist with peroxided hair if she could phone the AA. While she was dialling, Wilcox passed in the corridor beyond, saw her, checked, and came in.

  “Still here?” he said, lifting an eyebrow.

  Robyn nodded, holding the receiver to her ear.

  “She’s phoning the AA,” said the peroxide blonde. “Car won’t start.”

  “What’s the problem?” said Wilcox.

  “Nothing happens when I turn the key. It’s completely dead.”

  “Let’s have a look at it,” said Wilcox.

  “No, no,” said Robyn. “Please don’t bother. I’ll manage.”

  “Come on.” He jerked his head in the direction of the car park. “You won’t get the AA to come for hours on a day like this.”

  The engaged tone bleeping in Robyn’s ear confirmed the good sense of this judgment, but she put down the receiver reluctantly. The last thing she wanted at this juncture was to be under an obligation to Wilcox.

  “Don’t you want to get your overcoat?” she asked, as they passed through the swing doors into the freezing outside air.

  Wilcox shook his head impatiently. “Where’s your car?”

  “The red Renault over there.”

  Wilcox set off in a straight line, indifferent to the snow that covered his thin black shoes and clung to his trouser bottoms.

  “Why did you buy a foreign car?” he said.

  “I didn’t buy it, my parents gave it to me, when they changed it.”

  “Why did they buy it, then?”

  “I don’t know. Mummy liked it, I suppose. It’s a good little car.”

  “So’s the Metro. Why not buy a Metro if you want a small car? Or a Mini? If everybody who bought a foreign car in the last ten years had bought a British one instead, there wouldn’t be seventeen per cent unemployment in this area.” He made a sweeping gesture with his arm that took in the wilderness of derelict factories beyond the perimeter fence.

  As a subscriber to Marxism Today, Robyn had suffered occasional qualms of guilt because she didn’t cycle to work instead of driving, but she had never been attacked for owning a foreign car before. “If British cars were as good as foreign ones, people would buy them,” she said. “But everyone knows they’re hopelessly unreliable.”

  “Rubbish,” said Wilcox. Roobish. “They used to be, I grant you, some models, but now our quality control is as good as anybody’s. Trouble is, people love to sneer at British products. Then they have the gall to moan about the unemployment figures.” His breath steamed, as though his anger were condensing in the frigid air. “What does your father drive?” he said.

  “An Audi,” said Robyn.

  Wilcox grunted contemptuously, as if he had expected no better.

  They came up to the Renault. Wilcox told her to get in and release the bonnet catch. He opened the bonnet and disappeared behind it. After a moment or two she heard him call, “Turn the ignition key,” and when she did so, the engine fired.

  Wilcox lowered the bonnet and pushed it shut with the palm of his hand. He came to the driver’s window, brushing snow from his suit.

  “Thank you very much,” said Robyn. “What was it?”

  “Loose electrical connection,” he said. “Looked as if someone had pulled out the HT lead, actually.”

  “Pulled it out?”

  “I’m afraid we get a bit of vandalism here, and practical joking. Was the car locked?”

  “Maybe not every door. Anyway, thanks very much. I hope you won’t catch cold,” she said, encouraging him to leave. But he lingered by the window, inhibiting her from winding it up.

  “I’m sorry if I was a bit sharp at the meeting this afternoon,” he said gruffly.

  “That’s all right,” said Robyn; though it wasn’t all right, she told herself, it wasn’t all right at all. She fiddled with the choke button to avoid having to look at him.

  “Only sometimes you have to use methods that look a bit dodgy, for the good of the firm.”

  “I don’t think we should ever agree about that,” said Robyn. “But this is hardly the time or the place…” Out of the corner of her eye she saw a man in a white coat floundering through the snow towards them, and in some intuitive way this increased her anxiety to be off.

  “Yes, you’d better be on your way. I’ll see you next Wednesday, then?”

  Before Robyn could reply, the man in the white coat had called out, “Mr. Wilcox! Mr. Wilcox!” and Wilcox turned to face him.

  “Mr. Wilcox, you’re wanted in the foundry,” said the man breathlessly, as he came up. “There’s been a walkout.”

  “Goodbye,” said Robyn, and let out the clutch. The Renault shot forward and slewed from side to side in the snow as she drove fast towards the gates. In her rear-view mirror she saw the two men hurrying back towards the administration block.

  PART III

  “People mutht be amuthed. They can’t be alwayth a learning, nor yet they can’t be alwayth a working. They an’t made for it.”

  CHARLES DICKENS: Hard Times

  1

  “The drive back was quite horrendous,” said Robyn. “Swirling snow. Roads like skating-rinks. Abandoned cars strewn all over the place. It took me two and a half hours to get home.”

  “God,” said Charles sympathetically.

  “I felt absolutely exhausted and filthy—my feet were soaking wet, my clothes reeked of that ghastly factory, and my hair was full of soot. All I wanted was to wash my hair and take a long, hot bath. I’d just eased myself into it—oh, what bliss!—when the doorbell rang. Well, I thought, too bad, I’m not going to answer it. I couldn’t imagine who it could be, anyway. But the bell went on ringing and ringing. I began to think perhaps it was a real emergency. Anyway, after a while I couldn’t stand it any longer, lying there and listening to the bloody bell, so I got out of the bath, dried myself after a fashion, put on a bathrobe, and went downstairs to open the door. Who d’you think it was?”

  “Wilcox?”

  “How clever of you to guess. He was in a towering rage, pushed his way into the house most rudely, and didn’t even bother to wipe his feet. They were covered in snow, and left great wet footprints on the hall carpet. When I took him into the living-room he even had the cheek to look round and say to himself, loud enough for me to hear, ‘What a tip!’”

  Charles laughed. “Well, you must admit, dear, you aren’t the world’s tidiest housekeeper.”

  “I never claimed to be,” said Robyn. “I have more important things to do than housework.”

  “Oh, absolutely,” said Charles. “What did Wilcox want, then?”r />
  “Well, it was about Danny Ram, of course. It seems that as soon as I left he told his workmates what the management were up to, and they all walked out in protest. It was pretty silly of him, actually. I mean, it didn’t take Wilcox long to work out who had tipped him off.”

  “So Wilcox had come straight round to complain?”

  “More than complain. He demanded that I go back to the factory next morning and tell Danny Ram and his mates that I’d made a mistake, and that there was no plot to sack him.”

  “Good Lord, what a nerve! Would you move over a bit?”

  Robyn, who was lying naked, face down on the bed, wriggled over towards the centre of the mattress. Charles, who was also naked, knelt astride her legs and poured aromatic oil from Body Shop onto her shoulders and down her spine. Then, capping the bottle carefully, he put it aside and began working the oil into Robyn’s neck and shoulders with his long, supple, sensitive fingers. Charles had come to stay for the weekend following Robyn’s visit to Pringle’s, and this was their customary way of rounding off Saturday evening, after an early film at the Arts Laboratory followed by an excellent cheap supper at one of the local Asian restaurants. It began as a real massage, and turned almost imperceptibly into an erotic one. Robyn and Charles were into nonpenetrative sex these days, not because of AIDS (which to heterosexuals was only a cloud on the horizon, no bigger than a man’s hand, in the winter of 1986) but for reasons both ideological and practical. Feminist theory approved, and it solved the problem of contraception, Robyn having renounced the pill on health grounds and Charles regarding condoms as unaesthetic (though Robyn, like the thoroughly liberated young woman she was, always had a packet handy should the need arise). At the moment they were still at the non-erotic stage of the massage. The bedroom was dimly lit and cosily warm, the radiators being supplemented by an electric fire. Robyn supported her head, turned sideways, on a pillow, and conversed with Charles over her shoulder, as he rubbed and stroked.

  “You refused, I presume?” said Charles.

  “Well, yes, at first.”

  “Only at first?”

  “Well, after a while he stopped trying to bully me, when he saw that it wouldn’t do any good, and began to use real arguments. He said that if the walkout settled into a strike, the whole factory would be brought to a standstill. The Asian workers are very clannish, he said, and very stubborn. Once they get an idea into their heads, it’s hard to shift it.”

  “Racist talk,” said Charles.

  “Well, I know,” said Robyn. “But they’re so Neanderthal in that respect, the whole management, that after a while you only notice the grosser examples of prejudice. Anyway, Wilcox said a strike could drag on for weeks. The foundry would stop supplying the machine shop. The whole factory would grind to a halt. Midland Amalgamated might decide to cut their losses by closing it down altogether. Then hundreds of men would be thrown out of work, with no hope of getting another job. All because of me, was the implication. Of course, I told him it was his fault in the first place. If he hadn’t plotted to trick Danny Ram out of his job, none of it would have happened.”

  “Quite,” said Charles, running the edges of his hands up and down Robyn’s vertebrae.

  “He had got me a bit worried, though, I must admit. I mean, I’d only intended to put Danny Ram on his guard, not to provoke a major industrial dispute.”

  “Did Wilcox admit he was in the wrong?”

  “Well, exactly, that was crucial. I said to him, look, you’re asking me to lie, to say something I said was untrue, when it wasn’t. What are you going to do?”

  “And what did he say?”

  “‘Anything, within reason.” So I said, all right, I want an admission that it’s immoral to get rid of a worker the way you proposed to get rid of Danny Ram, and I want an undertaking that you won’t do it again. Well, he looked pretty sick at that, but he swallowed hard, and agreed. So I reckon I achieved something at the end of the day. But what a day!”

  “Do you trust him to keep his word?”

  Robyn considered this for a moment. “Yes, I do, as a matter of fact.”

  “In spite of the way he was going to treat the Indian?”

  “He honestly didn’t see it was immoral, you know, until I protested. It’s not uncommon, apparently, to get rid of people like that. There’s no procedure for remedial training. If someone’s promoted to a higher-level job, and they’re not up to it, there’s no way of dealing with the problem. Don’t you think that’s incredible?”

  “Not really, it applies to several full professors I can think of at Suffolk,” said Charles. “Except you can’t fire them.”

  Robyn sniggered. “I know what you mean… Anyway, I got him to agree to fix up Danny Ram with some special training.”

  “Did you, by golly!” Charles paused in his ministrations, with a hand on each of Robyn’s firm round buttocks. “You really are a remarkable girl, Robyn.”

  “Woman,” Robyn corrected him, but without rancour. She was pleased with the success of her story and the heroic role she had fashioned for herself in it. She had concealed from Charles some qualms of conscience about collaborating in the cover-up about Danny Ram. As a piece of action in a Victorian novel she might have judged it harshly as a case of one bourgeois supporting another when the chips were down, but she had persuaded herself that it was for the greater good of the factory workers—not to save Wilcox’s skin—that she had lied; and the conditions she had imposed on Wilcox were a guarantee of her good faith.

  “So that was the story we agreed on: I would tell Danny Ram that I’d got the wrong end of the stick at the meeting, and misunderstood the discussion, which was really about the need to give him special training, not to sack him.”

  “And did you?” Charles now dismounted from his position astride Robyn’s legs in order to massage them. He kneaded the backs of her thighs and stroked the muscles of her calves, he flexed her ankles, scratched the soles of her feet and, gently parting the interstices of her toes, moistened the hollow spaces between them with with his oiled fingers.

  “Absolutely. The next morning at seven-thirty sharp, Wilcox was at my door again, with his enormous Jaguar, to drive me to the factory. He didn’t say a word to me for the whole journey. Rushed me into his office, with the secretaries and so on all skipping out of his way like frightened rabbits, and goggling at me as if I was some kind of terrorist he’d put under citizen’s arrest. Then he and two of his cronies took me to a special meeting with the Asian foundry workers, in the canteen. There must have been about seventy of them, including Danny Ram, in their ordinary clothes, not overalls. Danny Ram gave me a scared kind of smile when I came in. There were some whites there too. Wilcox said they were shop stewards come to observe, deciding whether to make the strike official. So I said my piece to Danny, but really to all of them. I must say it stuck in my throat when I had to apologise, but I went through with it. Then we withdrew into another room, the canteen manageress’s office I think it was, while the Asians deliberated. After about twenty minutes they sent a delegation to say that they were prepared to go back to work providing Danny was guaranteed his job back after retraining and on condition they were given five minutes paid washing-up time at the end of their shift. Then they went out and Wilcox and his cronies went into a huddle. Wilcox was furious, he said the washing-up time business had nothing to do with the original dispute, and that the shop stewards had put them up to it, but the other two said that the workers had to get something out of the walkout or they’d lose face, so they should settle. After a while Wilcox agreed to offer two minutes, and finally settled for three, but with ill-grace I must say. After all, I had lied to get him off the hook, and I didn’t like doing it, but I didn’t get a word of thanks, or any other kind of word. He stalked out of the room after the meeting without so much as a goodbye. The Personnel Manager drove me back to the University, an incredibly boring man who talked to me all the time about his Irritable Bowel Syndrome. I got back to the Universit
y just in time for a ten o’clock tutorial on Middlemarch. It was a rather weird feeling, actually. I thought it must be like coming off a night shift. The day was just starting for the Department, the students were still yawning and rubbing the sleep out of their eyes, but I felt as if I had been up for hours and hours. I suppose I was emotionally drained by the drama of the meeting and the negotiations. I had a ridiculous urge to tell the students all about it, but of course I didn’t. I don’t think it was one of my better tutorials, though. My mind was on other things.”

  Robyn fell silent. The massage had reached its erotic stage. Without being prompted, she rolled over on to her back. Charles’ practised index finger gently probed and stroked her most sensitive parts. Quite soon she reached a very satisfying climax. Then it was Charles’ turn.

  Robyn’s massage technique was more energetic than Charles’. She splashed oil all down his back and began to pummel him vigorously with the edges of her palms. “Ow! Ooh!” he exclaimed pleasurably, as the rather plump cheeks of his buttocks vibrated under this assault.

  “You’ve got a horrible pimple on your bottom, Charles,” she said. “I’m going to squeeze it.”

  “Oh, no, don’t,” he groaned. “You hurt so when you do that.” But the note of protest was partly feigned.

  Robyn pinched the pimple between her two forefingers and pressed hard. Charles yelled and his eyes filled with water. “There, all gone,” said Robyn, swabbing away the residue of the pimple with a piece of cotton wool. She stopped pummelling, and began to stroke and smooth the backs of his thighs. Charles stopped whimpering into his pillow. He closed his eyes and his breathing became regular. “Will you go back next week?” he murmured. “To the factory, I mean?”

  “I shouldn’t think so,” said Robyn. “Turn over, Charles.”

  2

  At about the same time that evening, Vic Wilcox was restively watching television with his younger son, Gary, in the lounge of the five-bedroomed, four-lavatoried neo-Georgian house on Avondale Road. Marjorie was upstairs in bed, reading Enjoy Your Menopause, or, more likely, had already fallen asleep over it. Raymond was out boozing somewhere with his cronies, and Sandra was at a disco with the spotty Cliff. Gary was too young to go out on a Saturday night and Vic was… not too old, of course, but disinclined. He did not care for the noisy, false bonhomie of pubs and clubs; he had always regarded the cinema as primarily a convenience for courting couples in the winter months, and had ceased to patronise it shortly after getting married; and he had never been a theatre- or concert-goer. When he worked for Vanguard, he and Marjorie had belonged to a rather gay crowd of other young managers and their wives, who used to meet regularly in each other’s houses on Saturday nights; but it turned out that there was a lot of hanky-panky going on at those parties, or after them, or in between them, and the circle eventually broke up in an atmosphere of scandal and recrimination. Since those days, Vic had moved on and up the career ladder to a point where he seemed to have no friends any more, only business acquaintances, and all social life was an extension of work. His idea of pleasure on a Saturday night was to sit in front of the telly, with a bottle of scotch conveniently to hand, watching “Match of the Day,” and discussing the finer points of the game with his younger son.