The Kennedy Moment

by Peter Adamson

  Stephen, looking startled, gave an over-theatrical look around the empty Buttery, as if shocked at the vulgarity. When Michael continued to look him steadily in the eye he shrugged, turning his mouth down at the corners. ‘As I said, conventional minds and moralities find it difficult to encompass such a thought but, looked at objectively, it seems to me—’

  ‘It seems to me, Stephen, that it’s something that could only be contemplated by someone who’d never been on a smallpox ward.’

  The first hour or so of Sunday morning passed inconsequentially, much of it consumed by Stephen’s exposition of the theory of false consciousness. The others listened with what Toby, perched once more on the window seat, considered undue attention. On the other hand, he was quite happy for Stephen to take centre stage, hoping that they could reach the landfall of lunch without any discussion of the role of advertising in advancing human well-being.

  By eleven o’clock the five had relocated to the Senior Common Room, where a flask of weak coffee and a plate of digestive biscuits passed for college hospitality. The others were examining the portraits on the walls when Seema, mindful of Hélène’s breakfast-time fairy tale, carried her cup to stand with Michael in front of the glass-fronted bookcase.

  Michael looked up from the brass plaque he had been reading. ‘Copy of every book written by a member of the college over the last five hundred years.’

  Seema sipped her coffee. ‘Are you planning on going straight back, Michael?’

  ‘No, I’m taking tomorrow off.’

  She looked at him in the old teasing manner, a poor proxy now for intimacy. ‘So it’s a myth that Michael Lowell never takes any leave? And where are you off to, may I ask?’

  Michael thrilled to the smile playing at the edges of her eyes, but cringed inwardly at having to confess his plan. ‘It’s just the Monday, then back to Geneva. I’ve always wanted to see Jenner’s place in Gloucestershire.’

  ‘Jenner, as in Edward Jenner? Jenner as in the discoverer of vaccination?’

  ‘It’s an important—’

  ‘So let’s see what we’ve got here.’ Seema replaced her coffee cup in its saucer. ‘You’re taking a day off, probably the first in years, and what you’re planning to do with it is go on a pilgrimage to the place where vaccination started?’

  ‘I suppose you could call it that,’ said Michael, with the rueful look which had always been the counterpart to her teasing.

  Hélène was heading towards the door but Seema took her arm as she passed. ‘Have you heard where Michael’s taking his vacation this year, Hel?’

  Hélène joined them, more than willing to join in any teasing that was going. ‘He’s taking a vacation?’

  ‘It’s not exactly a vacation.’

  ‘Tuscany? Vegas? A Caribbean island?’ Seema was addressing only Hélène. ‘None of the above. After much deliberation and counting the pros and cons on his fingers, he’s decided on a day trip to see Dr Edward Jenner’s house in, let’s see, Gloucestershire, I think he said it was. Where the first child was vaccinated in – when was it Michael?’

  Michael knew he was digging himself deeper in. ‘1796.’

  ‘1796,’ Seema repeated the date with satisfaction.

  ‘Jenner’s house?’ Hélène pretended puzzlement, leading him on. ‘What’s to see, Michael?’

  Michael sighed. ‘Well, there’s a small museum with the original surgical instruments …’

  ‘Surgical instruments.’ Seema spoke in a flat tone. ‘And will that be the highlight, then?’

  Michael shook his head, smiling. ‘Okay, I’m out of here.’

  ‘In Gloucestershire.’ Hélène ignored him, as if discussing a patient with Seema, who took her arm as they joined the others filing out into the weak sunlight of the quad.

  Back in Stephen’s rooms, the talk had appeared to be ambling rather aimlessly towards a lunchtime parting of the ways, until the moment when their host again called them to order. ‘To be serious for just a moment or two longer,’ he began, ‘I think we should perhaps just touch on a topic we all seem to have been at some pains to avoid.’ In the silence that followed, Stephen turned in his chair and peered over his spectacles at Toby. ‘Not to put too fine a point upon it, Tobe, what the fuck are you doing in advertising?’

  The brutality of the question seemed to freeze the atmosphere, and in a few more seconds one or all of the others would no doubt have found a way to come to the defence of the figure slumped on the sofa. But Toby was in need of no such assistance. ‘I’m glad you asked me that, sunshine. I had a tiny suspicion you might.’

  Stephen peered again as Toby showed no signs of continuing, ‘Well?’

  ‘Well, sausage, I’ll do my best to provide an answer with the appropriate intellectual depth.’

  Michael smiled at Toby’s way of emphasizing irony by leaning harder on what was left of his Australian accent. Hélène turned away from frowning at Stephen and spoke in a deliberately affectionate tone. ‘But just tell us how you got into it in the first place, Toby.’

  ‘That part’s easy enough.’ Toby scratched the back of his head, looking round with his habitual, slightly bemused expression. ‘After we all split, I thought I’d look for some kind of a temporary job. Pay for a little round-the-world writing trip was the idea, as I remember it. Anyway, I happened to be schmoozing at some weekend house party and happened to be talking to a bloke who happened to be from back in Townsville who happened to be the managing director of a big London ad agency. Turned out we’d both brought our Stuart Sturridge cricket bats over on the boat and never got to use them. Well, that was enough for a little drinkie or two, and when I told him what I was doing he said, “No dramas, mate, come and park your bum with us for a couple of months”. First week I was there I had a couple of little ideas for TV spots. Clients happy. Boss tickled. Did I want a permanent job? Thought I might stick it out for six months, grub together enough to go round the world twice. Two years and a couple of promotions later I’d grubbed up enough to go into orbit. Never looked back, really. Or, in my case, never looked forward.’

  He settled back in the sofa again, looking up at the ceiling. Hélène was the first to reply. ‘Strange how decisions that seem so insignificant at the time can set the course. Do you feel trapped, Toby?’

  Toby was forced to recognize her tone as ‘fond’. ‘Well, haven’t helped myself. Made a few little mistakes along the way, as a matter of fact. Cracked on to the lovely Michelle at a photo shoot. Wanted to be kept in a manner to which she’d never before been accustomed. Next thing you know – IMF-size mortgage, plus a little place in the Chilterns for weekends, and certain other aspects of the normal lifestyle in the advertising world also not cheap. Re-mortgage to pay for a little divorce. But, no dramas, job still ripping along, promotions, bonuses, share options, all the things we used to dream about when we were young. Got myself hitched again. Putting in pretty long hours as well by then, believe it or not. Not always easy making sure you get the credit for everything everybody else does in a place as big as that.’

  ‘Be serious for a minute, Toby.’ It was Seema now who was sympathizing.

  Toby thought for a moment. ‘Serious. Well, seriously then, sweetheart, why I’m in advertising is just a combination of whatever little talents I happen to have and whatever little opportunities happened to have wandered my way, plus a double shot of fecklessness and the need to earn a crust, which over the years appears to have become a fairly thick crust.’

  Hélène saw her opportunity. ‘That’s not so different from any one of us. The same things pretty well explain what we’ve all ended up doing.’

  ‘But it is a little different, ta, sweetie. It’s different because you all have that other little ingredient in the mix. A cause, I think it’s called.’ He sank back, pushing his legs out again into the centre of the circle. ‘And with your gracious permission I’ll shut up now – I’d hate you to think I had a serious side.’

  Stephen and Michael began to speak a
t the same time, but it was Michael to whom the others turned. ‘Three things to say about that, Toby.’ He cringed inwardly as his right hand grasped the first finger. ‘Hélène’s right. Talents, opportunities, need to earn a living. Explains most of what we’re all doing.’ Toby was about to protest but Michael had a firm grip on the next finger. ‘Second, easy to exaggerate what you’re calling “a cause”. Remember Florey – guy who got the Nobel Prize for penicillin? Everyone said he’d done it for humanity, but he wasn’t having any of it. Said it was the excitement of the chase, the fascination of the science. Said the fact it was of some use to the world was all very gratifying but it wasn’t really what pushed him on.’

  Toby held up both hands in a gesture of scepticism. ‘Don’t tell me it’s not part of it, Michael. Just listening to you and Hel yesterday …’

  ‘I’m not saying it’s not part of it, but those of us who can earn a living doing something we believe in shouldn’t pretend it’s the only reason we’re doing it.’

  Hélène jumped in.

  ‘Absolutely right, Michael. Or that we’re more virtuous.’ Toby gave her a look which said he was refraining from comment.

  ‘It wouldn’t be like you to forget your third point, Michael?’ Seema was looking at him in the affectionate, amused way that again brought memories flooding back.

  He returned his hands to the arm of his chair. ‘Third, it’s worth saying that, one way or another, all of us apart from Toby are paid out of the public purse. And there wouldn’t be any public purse without commerce, and that includes advertising.’

  ‘And your point?’ said Stephen, as if what Michael had said were too obvious to be dwelt on.

  ‘My point is that it would be a particularly unpleasant form of hypocrisy if those of us who are paid out of the public purse to work on “causes” were to hold in contempt the commercial activities that make it possible.’

  Toby was surprised to find himself close to tears for the second time that weekend, though he needed no reminding of why Michael was his friend.

  8 | A circle completed

  Toby unfastened his seat belt, lit a cigarette, and resigned himself to a ten-mile crawl. The reunion had been a mistake, a reminder only of what had been lost. And ahead now stretched only another week of breakfasting alone, knotting up the pastel ties, summoning the energy for the expected bonhomie as he strode into the office, flirting ever more pathetically with the secretaries. To make the prospect even more depressing, tomorrow was what Madison Avenue insisted on calling ‘Blue Sky Monday’ – a whole morning of meetings that were supposed to encourage ‘out of the box’ thinking, most of which, in Toby’s experience, should have been kept firmly inside whatever box might be available. He drew greedily on the cigarette and thought about switching lanes as the traffic again came to a stop. Was the bored-looking guy in the Ford Cortina also heading back to another soul-sapping week? And the sour-looking girl gripping the wheel of the little yellow Fiat 850 coupé? The city would have been spread out ahead of him by now, but for the fumes of a thousand cars distorting the view.

  He flicked on the radio. The US President was apparently fishing in Pennsylvania, something the commentator seemed to think he would soon have a lot more time for. Would she even give him a second thought on her flight across the Atlantic? He tugged on the handbrake again. She had invited him, perhaps only half-jokingly, to visit her in Africa. He punched another pre-set and began tapping the wheel to a track from Urban Cowboy. Well, why not? Fly out for Christmas. No warning. Just appear. Total surprise. Better than pulling crackers on his own in Ealing. He prodded the cigar lighter on the dashboard, deciding to allow himself another cigarette on account of the traffic. Might even stop him making a fool of himself at the office party. Warmer, too. Place was probably fifty clicks south of Woop Woop but there was sure to be an Intercontinental somewhere. Feebly cheered, he released the handbrake and eased towards the North Circular, heading towards a city that crowded in on him under leaden skies.

  Stephen sat alone in his college rooms. The idea of leaving Oxford had been a spur-of-the-moment thing, but for the last hour it had been putting down a few tentative roots. Maybe a change was just what he needed. At any rate there would be no harm in going over for a week or two, looking up Myron, checking out the options. Longer, if necessary. After all, he could afford it. And surely in the States a professorship somewhere would be his for the asking.

  One or two students were heading towards the Buttery for afternoon tea as he looked down on the college lawns, the peace and calm of it all interrupted only by the slow tolling of the chapel bell, marking the passing of each hour as it had done for four hundred years.

  Seema looked at her watch. Still only two hours in. She had refused her dinner tray and had been trying to get to sleep. But the cabin lights were not yet dimmed and no one in the seats around her had settled for the night. She rubbed her wrists. Apart from renewing her friendship with Hélène, the weekend had been a disappointment. She closed her eyes, but shutting out the world seemed only to increase the roar of the engines. What had she been hoping for? Some opening? Some closure? But Michael had been determined to keep his distance. And so it had all been up to her. But how could she have made any move when she was not certain of her own feelings? And how could she know her own feelings if they were not to spend any time together? And then suddenly it was all over, and there was only the tedium of the 747’s tireless push toward home.

  With an effort she stretched down to wrap the flight blanket round her legs and feet against the icy air from the emergency door. Still more than four hours to go. Plus probably two more getting back into Manhattan on a Sunday night. She bit her lip. New York would be getting ready for Christmas: little white lights on the trees down the Avenue of the Americas; men with fingerless gloves roasting chestnuts in Washington Square; families from Pennsylvania and New Jersey crowding up against the window displays at Macy’s; and the usual rather cheerless Christmas tree in the vestibule of the History Faculty. The captain’s voice, so deliberately bored, informed them that the cabin lights were about to be dimmed. It would be the third year she had spent Christmas on her own. How had it happened that they had not spent even five minutes together? There had still been something there, she had been sure of it. So why had he made no move to walk with her even once? Was Hélène right? Was he frightened to get closer?

  Even through the sleep mask she could still see the jumping light of the film, her head beginning to ache in earnest. She should go to the back of the airplane and drink several of those little paper cups of water. She pushed the mask up to see the light already beginning to fade over the vastness of the Atlantic. Heading in the opposite direction, another jet trailed a disintegrating chalk mark across the darkening blue. It had been great to see Hélène, even if it had brought her guilt closer, made her feel she really wasn’t doing all that much with her own life. Most of the time, researching and teaching the history of slavery felt like it was worthwhile. But compared with what Hélène was doing it seemed comfortable, disengaged. Should she have just taken his arm as they left the hotel, as she had that first evening? Could they have dinner together in New York? Keep it light? Stay away from the top of that slope that could lead to so much hurt?

  Michael Lowell was neither a self-important nor a fanciful man, but he could not entirely rid himself of the thought that a circle was in some way being completed as he laid a hand on the altar rail. After a moment he raised his head from the most modest of memorials – ‘Edward Jenner: the discoverer of vaccination 1749-1823’ – to see the great east window depicting in stained glass the dozen-or-so healing miracles of Christ.

  No one knew better that victory over smallpox had been achieved by thousands of immunization managers, technicians, health workers, trainers, vaccination teams. But modesty could not deny him his place near the centre of it all, there on the sixth floor of the World Health Organization headquarters where a small team of nine had co-ordinated the hunting down o
f the virus in one country after another until the disease that had killed as many as five hundred million people in the twentieth century – many times more than all the wars – was finally gone from the world. Gone, that is, apart from the samples stored in icy stillness in those two bio-safety laboratories on either side of the Cold War. And this greatest of all victories for public health had begun here, in this dark, obscure place that also seemed suspended in a winter stillness. They had been heady days. And if smallpox could be defeated, so the argument had run, then why not polio, measles, tetanus, diphtheria? He did not need to stand here by Edward Jenner’s tomb to be reminded how sloppy this line of thinking was.

  He left by the ancient lych-gate, his dissatisfactions merging as the light fell over a country churchyard. Back in his rented car, he sat for a while before starting the engine, hands on his lap, listening to the great silence. But it was pointless: pointless to tell himself to forget her when he hadn’t come near to doing that in twenty years.

  Hélène looked down on her third continent in four days, or at least on what she could see of it through the cloud which covered much of Eastern Canada. Further north there had been the pristine vastness of the Arctic, but as the plane had begun its descent to Montreal her homeland had appeared murky and uninviting. Behind lay images of Africa’s endless warmth, and of Oxford’s autumnal light, and of the disturbing reappearance of Toby Jenks in her life. And before her … a homeland she hardly knew.

  The plane lurched downwards in the heavier air. Should she have been a little bit more open, given his protestations of seriousness more benefit of the doubt, instead of slamming the door in his face? Was it out of a hopeless loyalty to Fabrice? Or a weak, panicky determination to preserve her own equilibrium?