by David Lodge
“Yeah, come in. Would you switch the light on, please?”
The lights came on and he heard the woman gasp. “Where are you?”
“Under here.” He found himself staring at a pair of thick fur-lined boots and the hemline of a shaggy fur coat. To these was added, a moment later, an inverted female face, scarved, red-nosed and apprehensive. “I’ll be right with you,” he said. “I dropped my cigar somewhere under here.”
“Oh,” said the woman, staring.
“It’s not the cigar I’m worried about,” Morris explained, crawling around under the table. “It’s the rug… CHRIST!”
A searing pain bored into his hand and shot up his arm. He scrambled out from under the table, cracking his head on the underside in his haste. He stumbled round the room, cursing breathlessly, squeezing his right hand under his left armpit and clasping his right temple with his left hand. With one eye he was vaguely aware of the fur-coated woman backing away from him and asking what was the matter. He collapsed into his archchair, moaning faintly.
“I’ll come back another time,” said the woman.
“No, don’t leave me,” said Morris urgently. “I may need medical attention.”
The fur coat loomed over him, and his hand was firmly removed from his forehead. “You’ll have a bump there,” she said. “But I can’t see any skin broken. You should put some witch-hazel on it.”
“You know a good witch?”
The woman tittered. “You can’t be too bad,” she said. “What’s the matter with your hand?”
“I burned it on my cigar.” He withdrew his injured hand from his armpit and tenderly unclasped it.
“I can’t see anything,” said the woman, peering.
“There!” He pointed to the fleshy cushion at the base of his thumb.
“Oh, well, I think those little burns are best left alone.”
Morris looked at her reproachfully and rose to his feet. He went over to the desk to find a fresh cigar. Lighting it with trembling fingers, he prepared a little quip about getting your nerve back after a smoking accident, but when he turned round to deliver it the woman had disappeared. He shrugged and went to close the door, tripping, as he did so, over a pair of boots protruding from under the table.
“What are you doing?” he said.
“Looking for your cigar.”
“Never mind the cigar.”
“That’s all very well,” came the muffled reply. “But it isn’t your carpet.”
“Well, it isn’t yours either, if it comes to that.”
“It’s my husband’s.”
“Your husband’s?”
The woman, looking rather like a brown bear emerging from hibernation, backed slowly out from under the table and stood up. She held, between the thumb and forefinger of one gloved hand, a squashed and soggy cigar-end. “I didn’t get a chance to introduce myself,” she said. “I’m Hilary Swallow. Philip’s wife.”
“Oh! Morris Zapp.” He smiled and extended his hand. Mrs. Swallow put the cigar butt into it.
“I don’t think it did any damage,” she said. “Only it’s rather a good carpet. Indian. It belonged to Philip’s grandmother. How do you do?” she added suddenly, stripping off a glove and holding out her hand. Morris disposed of the dead cigar just in time to grab it.
“Glad to meet you, Mrs. Swallow. Won’t you take off your coat?”
“Thanks, but I can’t stop. I’m sorry to barge in on you like this, but my husband wrote asking for one of his books. I’ve got to send it on to him. He said it was probably in here somewhere. Would you mind if I…” She gestured towards the bookshelves.
“Go ahead. Let me help you. What’s the name of the book?”
She coloured slightly. “He said it’s called Let’s Write a Novel. I can’t imagine what he wants it for.”
Morris grinned, then frowned. “Perhaps he’s going to write one,” he said, while he thought to himself, “God help the students in English 305.”
Mrs. Swallow, peering at the bookshelves, gave a sceptical grunt. Morris, drawing on his cigar, examined her with curiosity. It was difficult to tell what manner of woman was hidden beneath the woollen headscarf, the huge shapeless fur coat, the thick zippered boots. All that could be seen was a round, unremarkable face with rosy cheeks, a red-tipped nose and the hint of a double chin. The red nose was evidently the result of a cold, for she kept sniffing discreetly and dabbing at it with a Kleenex. He went over to the bookshelves. “So you didn’t go to Euphoria with your husband?”
“No.”
“Why was that?”
The look she gave him couldn’t have been more hostile if he had inquired what brand of sanitary towels she used. “There were a number of personal reasons,” she said.
“Yeah, and I bet you were one of them, honey,” said Zapp, but only to himself. Aloud he said: “What’s the name of the author?”
“He couldn’t remember. It’s a book he bought second-hand, years ago, off a sixpenny stall. He thinks it has a green cover.”
“A green cover…” Morris ran his index finger over the rows of books. “Mrs. Swallow, may I ask you a personal question about your husband?”
She looked at him in alarm. “Well, I don’t know. It depends…”
“You see that cupboard over your head? In that cupboard there are one hundred and fifty-seven tobacco cans. All the same brand. I know how many there are because I counted them. They fell on my head one day.”
“They fell on your head? How?”
“I just opened the cupboard and they fell on my head.”
A ghost of a smile hovered on Mrs. Swallow’s lips. “I hope you weren’t hurt?”
“No, they were empty. But I’m curious to know why your husband collects them.”
“Oh, I don’t suppose he collects them. I expect he just can’t bear to throw them away. He’s like that with things. Is that all you wanted to know?”
“Yeah, that’s about all.” He was puzzled why a man who used so much tobacco bought it in little tiny cans instead of the huge one-pound canisters like the ones Luke Hogan kept on his desk, but he thought this would be too personal for Mrs. Swallow.
“The book doesn’t seem to be here,” she said with a sigh. “And I must be going, anyway.”
“I’ll look out for it.”
“Oh, please don’t bother. I don’t suppose it’s all that important. I’m sorry to have been such a nuisance.”
“You’re welcome. I don’t have too many visitors, to tell you the truth.”
“Well, it’s nice to have met you, Professor Zapp. I hope you’ll enjoy your stay in Rummidge. If Philip were here I’d like to ask you round for dinner one evening, but as it is… You understand.” She smiled regretfully.
“But if your husband was here, I wouldn’t be,” Morris pointed out.
Mrs. Swallow looked nonplussed. She opened her mouth a number of times, but no words came out. At last she said, “Well, I mustn’t keep you any longer,” and abruptly departed, closing the door behind her.
“Uptight bitch,” Morris muttered. Little as he coveted her company, he hungered for a home-cooked meal. He was tiring rapidly of TV dinners and Asian restaurants, which was all Rummidge seemed to offer the single man.
He found Let’s Write a Novel five minutes later. The cover had come away from the spine, which was why they hadn’t spotted it earlier. It had been published in 1927, as part of a series that included Let’s Weave a Rug, Let’s Go Fishing and Let’s Have Fun With Photography. “Every novel must tell a story,” it began. “Oh, dear, yes,” Morris commented sardonically.
And there are three types of story, the story that ends happily, the story that ends unhappily, and the story that ends neither happily nor unhappily, or, in other words, doesn’t really end at all.
Aristotle lives! Morris was intrigued in spite of himself. He turned back to the title page to check out the author. “A. J. Beamish, author of A Fair But Frozen Maid, Wild Mystery, Glynis of the Glen, etc., e
tc.” He read on.
The best kind of story is the one with a happy ending; the next best is the one with an unhappy ending, and the worst kind is the story that has no ending at all. The novice is advised to begin with the first kind of story. Indeed, unless you have Genius, you should never attempt any other kind.
“You’ve got something there, Beamish,” Morris murmured. Maybe such straight talking wouldn’t hurt the students in English 305 after all, lazy, pretentious bastards, most of them, who thought they could write the Great American Novel by just typing out their confessions and changing the names. He put the book aside for further reading. Then he would take it round to Mrs. Swallow one suppertime and stand on her stoop, salivating ostentatiously. Morris had a hunch she was a good cook, and he prided himself he could pick out a good cook in a crowd as fast as he could spot an easy lay (they were seldom the same person). Good plain food, he would predict; nothing fancy, but the portions would be lavish.
There was a knock at his door. “Come in,” he called, expectantly, hoping that Mrs. Swallow had repented and returned to invite him to share a chicken dinner. But it was a man who bustled in, a small, energetic, elderly man with a heavy moustache and bright beady eyes. He wore a tweed jacket, curiously stained, and advanced into the room with both hands extended. “Mmmmmmmmner, mmmmmmmmmmmmmmner, mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmner,” he bleated. “Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmner mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmner Masters.” He pumped Morris’s hands up and down in a double handshake. “Mmmmmmmmmner Zapp? Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmner all right? Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmner cup of tea? Mmmmmmmmmner jolly good.” He stopped bleating, cocked his head to one side and closed one eye. Morris deduced that he was in the presence of the Head of the Rummidge English Department, home from his Hungarian pig-shoot, and was being invited to partake of refreshment in the Senior Common Room.
Evidently the return of Professor Masters was the signal for which the rest of the faculty had been waiting. It was as if some obscure taboo had restrained them from introducing themselves before their chief had formally received him into the tribe. Now, in the Senior Common Room, they hurried forward and clustered around Morris’s chair, smiling and chattering, pressing upon him cups of tea and chocolate cookies, asking him about his journey, his health, his work in progress, offering him belated advice about accommodation and discreetly interpreting the strangled utterances of Gordon Masters for his benefit.
“How d’you know what the old guy is saying?” Morris asked Bob Busby, a brisk, bearded man in a double-breasted blazer with whom he found himself walking to the car park—or rather running, for Busby maintained a cracking pace that Morris’s short legs could hardly match.
“I suppose we’ve got used to it.”
“Has he got a cleft palate or something? Or is it that moustache getting between his teeth when he talks?”
Busby stepped out faster. “He’s a great man, really, you know,” he said, with faint reproach.
“He is?” Morris panted.
“Well, he was. So I’m told. A brilliant young scholar before the war. Captured at Dunkirk, you know. One has to make allowances…”
“What has he published?”
“Nothing.”
“Nothing?”
“Nothing anybody’s been able to discover. We had a student once, name of Boon, organized a bibliographical competition to find something Gordon had published. Had students crawling all over the Library, but they drew a complete blank. Boon kept the prize.” He gave a short, barking laugh. “Terrific cheek he had, that chap Boon. I wonder what became of him.”
Morris was pooped, but curiosity kept him moving along beside Busby. “How come,” he gasped, “Masters is Head of your Department?”
“That was before the war. Gordon was extraordinarily young, of course, to get the Chair. But the Vice-Chancellor in those days was a huntin,’ shootin’, fishin’ type. Took all the candidates down to his place in Yorkshire for a spot of grouse-shooting. Naturally Gordon made a great impression. Story goes the most highly qualified candidate had a fatal accident with a gun. Or that Gordon shot him. Don’t believe it myself.”
Morris could keep up the pace no longer. “You’ll have to tell me more another time,” he called after the figure of Busby as it receded into the gloom of the ill-lit car park.
“Yes, good night, good night.” To judge by the sound of his feet on the gravel, Busby had broken into a trot. Morris was left alone in the darkness. The flame of sociability lit by Masters’ return seemed to have gone out as abruptly as it had flared up.
But the excitements of the day were not over. The very same evening he made the acquaintance of a member of the O’Shea ménage hitherto concealed from his view. At the customary hour the doctor knocked on his door and pushed into the room a teenage girl of sluttish but not unsexy appearance, raven-haired and hollow of cheek, who stood meekly in the middle of the floor, twisting her hands and peeping at Morris through long dark eyelashes.
“This is Bernadette, Mr. Zapp,” said O’Shea gloomily. “You’ve no doubt seen her about the house.”
“No. Hi, Bernadette,” said Morris.
“Say good evening to the gentleman, Bernadette,” said O’Shea, giving the girl a nudge which sent her staggering across the room.
“Good evening, sir,” said Bernadette, making a clumsy little bob.
“Manners a little lacking in polish, Mr. Zapp,” said O’Shea in a loud whisper. “But we must make allowances. A month ago she was milking cows in Sligo. My wife’s people, you know. They have a farm there.”
Morris gathered that Bernadette had come to live with the O’Sheas as domestic slave labour, or “Oh pear” as O’Shea preferred to phrase it. As a special treat the doctor had brought her along this evening to watch the colour TV. “If that’s not inconveniencing you, Mr. Zapp?”
“Sure. What is it you want to watch, Bernadette, ‘Top of the Pops’?”
“Er, no, not exactly, Mr. Zapp,” said O’Shea. “The BBC 2 has a documentary on the Little Sisters of Misery, and Bernadette has an aunt in the Order. We can’t get BBC 2 on the set downstairs, you see.”
This was not Morris’s idea of an evening’s entertainment, so having switched on the TV he retired to his bedroom with a copy of Playboy that had caught up with him in the mail. Stretched out on the penultimate resting place of Mrs. O’Shea Sr. he ran an expert eye over Miss January’s boobs and settled down to read a photo-feature on the latest sports cars, including the Lotus Europa which he had just ordered. One of the few satisfactions Morris had promised himself from his visit to England was the purchase of a new sports car to replace the Chevrolet Corvair which he had bought in 1965 just three days before Ralph Nader published Unsafe at Any Speed, thus reducing its value by approximately fifteen hundred dollars overnight and depriving Morris of any further pleasure in owning it. He had left Désirée with instructions to sell the Corvair for what she could get for it: that wouldn’t be much, but he would save a considerable amount on the Lotus by taking delivery in England and shipping it back to Euphoria himself. Playboy, he was glad to note, approved of the Lotus.
Returning to the living-room to fetch a cigar, he found O’Shea asleep and Bernadette looking sullenly bored. On the screen a lot of nuns, photographed from behind, were singing a hymn.
“Seen your aunt yet?” he inquired.
Bernadette shook her head. There was a knock on the door and one of the O’Shea children stuck his head round the door.
“Please sir, will you tell me Dad Mr. Reilly phoned and Mrs. Reilly is having one of her turns.”
Such summonses were a common occurrence in the life of Dr. O’Shea, who seemed to spend a fantastic amount of time on the road—compared, anyway, to American doctors, who in Morris’s experience would only visit you at home if you were actually dead. Roused from his slumbers, O’Shea departed, groaning and muttering under his breath. He offered to remove Bernadette, but Morris said she could stay to watch out the programme. He returned to his bedroom and after a few minutes heard the sound of plainson
g change abruptly into the driving beat of a current hit by the Jackson Five. There was still hope for Ireland, then.
A few moments later he heard footsteps thundering up the stairs, and the sound of the TV reverted to sacred music. Morris went into the living-room just as O’Shea burst in through the opposite door. Bernadette cowered in her seat, looking between the two men as if calculating which one was going to beat her first.
“Mr. Zapp,” O’Shea panted, “the devil take me if I can get my car to start. Would you be so good as to give me a push down the road? Mrs. O’Shea would do it, but she’s feeding the baby at this minute.”
“You want to use my car?” said Morris, producing the keys.
O’Shea’s jaw sagged. “God bless you, Mr. Zapp, you’re a generous man, but I’d hate to take the responsibility.”
“Go ahead. It’s only a rented car.”
“Aye, but what about the insurance?” O’Shea went into the matter of insurance at such length that Morris began to fear for the life of Mrs. Reilly, so he cut the discussion short by offering to drive O’Shea himself. The doctor thanked him effusively and galloped down the stairs, shouting over his shoulder to Bernadette that she was to leave Morris’s room. “Take your time,” said Morris to the girl, and followed him out.
Between giving Morris directions through the badly-lit back streets, O’Shea complimented Morris extravagantly on his car, a perfectly ordinary, rather underpowered Austin that he had rented at London Airport. Morris tried with some difficulty to imagine the likely reaction of O’Shea when he drove up in the burnt-orange Lotus, with its black leather bucket seats, remote-control spot lamp, visored headlights, streamlined wing-mirrors and eight-track stereo. Mother of God, he’d have a coronary on the spot.