by David Lodge
“What were you going to say?”
“No, please—you first.”
“I was going to say,” says DÉSIRÉE, in the darkness, “that before we go any further, perhaps we ought to come to an understanding.”
“Yes!” says Ronald, eagerly, then changes his intonation to the interrogative: “Yes?”
“What I mean is…” DÉSIRÉE stops. “It’s difficult to say without sounding as if I don’t trust you.”
“It’s only natural,” says Ronald. “I feel just the same.”
“You mean, you don’t trust me?”
“I mean there’s something I might say to you which might imply that I didn’t trust you.”
“What is it?”
“It’s… hard to say.”
“I mean,” says DÉSIRÉE. “I’ve never done it with a writer before.”
“Exactly!”
“And what I’m trying to say is…”
“That you don’t want to read about it in a novel one of these days? Or see it on television.”
“How did you guess?”
“I had the same thought.”
DÉSIRÉE claps her hands. “So we can agree that neither of us will use this as material? Whether it’s good or bad?”
“Absolutely. Scout’s honour.”
“Then let’s fuck, Ronald,” says DÉSIRÉE, rolling on top of him.
…
Whheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee! The spin-drier cycle of Hilary Swallow’s washing machine makes a sound not unlike a jetplane, especially when she punches the button to stop the motor, and the piercing whine of the rotating drum dies away, falling in pitch, just like the engines of a jumbo jet when the pilot finally cuts them at the end of a long journey. The similarity does not strike Hilary, as she opens the windowed hatch at the front of the appliance, and lifts out a plaited tangle of damp, compacted clothing, for the sound made by a jet engine is less familiar to her than it is to her husband, who is not present to remark upon the likeness, but is in fact in Greece. Philip’s absence is a source of understandable grievance in Hilary, as she hangs out his shirts, pants, vests and socks in the garden, for it seems as if he is only at home these days long enough to empty his suitcase of soiled linen, and pack it with freshly laundered shirts and underwear, before he is off on his travels again.
“Look, I’m sorry,” Philip had said to her this last time, “but Digby Soames is begging me to go to Greece. I think someone else must have dropped out at the last moment.”
“But why does it have to be you? You’ve only just come back from Turkey.”
“Yes, I know, but I feel I should help the Council out if I can.”
The facts of the matter are rather different. As soon as he got back from Istanbul, Philip was on the phone to Digby Soames begging him to fix him, Philip, up as soon as possible with another lecture tour, conference, or summer school—anything, as long as it was in south-east Europe. He had already arranged with Joy to meet her in Israel during Morris Zapp’s conference on the Future of Criticism, but that wasn’t till August, and he felt that he couldn’t wait that long to see her again.
“Hmm,” said Digby Soames. “It’s an awkward time for Europe, the academic year is almost over. You wouldn’t be interested in Australia by any chance?”
“No, Australia’s too far. Greece would be handy.”
“Handy for what?” said Digby Soames suspiciously.
“I’m doing some research on the classical background to English poetry,” Philip improvised. “I just want an excuse to go to Greece.”
“Well, I’ll see what I can do,” said Digby Soames.
What he was able to do was to arrange a few lectures in Salonika and Athens. “It won’t be a proper specialist tour,” he warned. “We’ll pay your fares but no subsistence. You’ll probably get fees for your lectures, though.”
Philip flew to Salonika via Munich, gave his lectures, and met Joy by arrangement in Athens. While Hilary is hanging out the washing in her back garden in St. John’s Road, Rummidge, Philip and Joy are having a late breakfast on the sunny balcony of their hotel room, with a view of the Acropolis.
“Will your wife divorce you, then?” says Joy, buttering a croissant.
“If I choose the right moment,” says Philip. “I went home with every intention of telling her about us, but when she announced that she wanted to be a marriage counsellor, it just seemed too cruel. I thought it might destroy her morale before she’s even started. Perhaps they wouldn’t even have taken her on. You can imagine what people might say—physician heal thyself, and so on.”
Joy bites into her croissant and chews meditatively. “What are your plans?”
“I thought,” says Philip, squinting in the sun at the Acropolis, already teeming with tourists like a block of cheese being devoured by black ants, “that we might hire a car and drive to Delphi.”
“I don’t mean this weekend, idiot, I mean long-term plans. About us.”
“Ah,” says Philip. “Well, I thought I wouldn’t say anything to Hilary until she’s well settled into her training for marriage guidance. I think that when she feels she’s got a purpose in life, she’ll be quite happy to agree to a divorce.”
“And then what?”
“Then we get married, of course.”
“And settle where? Not Rummidge, presumably.”
“I haven’t thought that far ahead,” says Philip. “I think I could probably get a job somewhere else, America perhaps. My stock has gone up rather surprisingly, you know, just lately. One of the Sundays even mentioned my name in connection with this UNESCO Chair of Literary Criticism.”
“Would that be in Paris?” says Joy. “I wouldn’t mind living in Paris.”
“It can be anywhere you like, apparently,” says Philip. “But it’s wishful thinking, anyway. They’d never appoint me. I can’t think how my name got into the paper.”
“You never know,” says Joy.
…
Far away in Darlington, Robin Dempsey has also been reading the Sunday papers.
“HALLO, HOW ARE YOU FEELING TODAY?” says ELIZA.
“TERRIBLE,” Robin Dempsey types.
“WHAT EXACTLY DO YOU MEAN BY TERRIBLE?”
“ANGRY. INCREDULOUS. JEALOUS.”
“WHAT HAS CAUSED YOU TO HAVE THESE FEELINGS?”
“SOMETHING I READ IN THE NEWSPAPER ABOUT PHILIP SWALLOW.”
“TELL ME ABOUT PHILIP SWALLOW.”
Robin Dempsey types for twenty-five minutes without stopping, until Josh Collins wanders over from his glass-walled cubicle, nibbling a Kit-Kat, upon which Robin stops typing and covers the computer with its plastic hood.
“Want some?” says Josh, offering a piece of the chocolate-covered biscuit.
“No, thank you,” says Robin, without looking at him.
“Getting some interesting stuff from ELIZA, are you?”
“Yes.”
“You don’t think you’re overdoing it?”
“Overdoing what?” says Robin coldly.
“No offence, only you’re in here morning, noon and night, talking to that thing.”
“It doesn’t interfere with you, does it?”
“Well, I have to be here.”
“You’d be here anyway. You’re always here.”
“I used to like having the place to myself occasionally,” says Josh, going rather red. “To work on my own programs in peace. I don’t mind telling you,” he continues (it is the longest conversation Josh has ever had with anyone). “That it fair gives me the creeps to see you hunched over that VDU, day in and day out. You’re becoming dependent upon it.”
“I’m simply doing my research.”
“It’s called transference. I looked it up in a psychology book.”
“Rubbish!” shouts Robin Dempsey.
“If you ask me, you need a proper psychiatrist,” says Josh Collins, trembling with anger. “You’re off your trolley. That thing”—he points a quivering finger at ELIZA—“Can’t really talk, you
know. It can’t actually think. It can’t answer questions. It’s not a bloody oracle.”
“I know perfectly well how computers work, thank you,” says Robin Dempsey, rising to his feet. “I’ll be back after lunch.”
He leaves the room in a somewhat flustered state, omitting to switch off the VDU. Josh Collins lifts up the plastic hood and reads what is written on the screen. He frowns and scratches his nose.
…
Delphi, like the Acropolis, is crawling with tourists, but the site is proof against their intrusion, as Philip and Joy agree, taking a breather halfway up the steep climb from the road, and looking down on the Sacred Plain far below, where the Pleistos winds through multitudinous olive groves to the Gulf of Corinth.
“It’s sublime,” she says. “I’m so glad we came.”
“Apparently the ancients thought this was the centre of the world,” says Philip, consulting his guidebook. “There was a stone on this site called the omphalos. The navel of the earth. I suppose that great cleft between the mountains was the vagina.”
“You’ve got a one-track mind,” says Joy.
“Is that fair?” says Philip. “Last night I sucked your ten toes, individually.”
“There’s no need to tell everyone in Delphi,” says Joy, blushing charmingly.
“Give me a kiss.”
“No, not here. The Greeks don’t approve of people kissing in public.”
“Not many Greeks about,” he comments, which is true enough. The coaches that line the road below them have brought tourists of almost every nation except Greeks. Nevertheless Philip is surprised and somewhat disconcerted to be greeted, in the sanctuary of Apollo, by an elderly lady wearing a broad-brimmed straw hat tied under her chin with a chiffon scarf, and carrying a shooting stick.
“Sybil Maiden,” she reminds him. “I attended the conference you organized at Rummidge.”
“Oh, yes,” says Philip. “How are you?”
“Very well, thank you. The heat is rather trying, but I have just cooled my brow at the Kastalian spring—most refreshing. This is also a great help.” She pulls apart the handles of her shooting stick and, planting the point in a crevice between two ancient blocks of stone, seats herself on the little leather hammock at the top of the implement. “They laughed at me at first. Now everybody on the course wants one.”
“What course is that?”
“Literature, Life and Thought in Ancient Greece. We have come from Athens for the day by charabanc—or so I call it, to the intense amusement of my fellow students, most of whom are Americans. They are all at the splendidly preserved stadium, further up the hill, running round the race track.”
“Running? In this heat?” Joy exclaims.
“Jogging, I believe they call it. It seems to be an epidemic psychological illness afflicting Americans these days. A form of masochism, like the flagellantes in the Middle Ages. You are Mrs. Swallow, I presume?”
“Yes,” says Philip.
“No,” says Joy simultaneously.
Miss Maiden glances sharply from one to the other. “There used to be an inscription on the wall of the temple here, ‘Know thyself.’ But they did not deem it necessary to add, ‘Know thy wife…’”
“Joy and I hope to marry one day,” Philip explains, in some confusion. “My personal life is in a transitional state at the moment. I’d be grateful if you would not mention our meeting here to any mutual acquaintance in England.”
“I am no tittle-tattle, Professor Swallow, I assure you. But I suppose you have to protect your reputation, now you are so much in the public eye. I read a very flattering item about you in one of the Sunday newspapers recently.”
“Oh, that… I don’t know where the journalist got the idea that I was in the running for the UNESCO chair. It was the first I’d heard of it.”
“Ah yes, the Siege Perilous!” Miss Maiden holds up a hand to command their attention, and begins to recite in a high, vatic chant:
“O brother,
In our great hall there stood a vacant chair
Fashioned by Merlin ere he passed away,
And carven with strange figures; and in and out
The figures, like a serpent, ran a scroll
Of letters in a tongue no man could read.
And Merlin called it, ‘The Siege Perilous,’
Perilous for good and ill; ‘for there,’ he said,
‘No man could sit but he should lose himself.’”
Miss Maiden drops her hand, and cocks her head interrogatively in Philip’s direction. “Well, Professor Swallow?”
“It sounds like Tennyson,” he says. “Is it from ‘The Holy Grail,’ in the Idylls?”
“Bravo!” exclaims Miss Maiden. “I respect a man who can recognize a quotation. It’s a dying art.” She dabs her brow with a dainty pocket handkerchief. “Everybody was talking about this UNESCO chair at Amsterdam recently. A most tedious conference in other respects.”
“You seem to travel about the world a great deal, Miss Maiden,” Joy observes.
“It keeps me young, my dear. I like to know what’s going on in the world of scholarship. Who’s in, who’s out.”
“And who,” says Joy impulsively, “do you think will get the UNESCO Chair?”
Miss Maiden closes her eyes and seems to sway on the fulcrum of her shooting stick as she considers the question. “The most surprising person,” she says in a slurred voice. “It always is in these cases.”
Fearing that she is about to faint, Philip steps forward to lend his support, but Miss Maiden suddenly opens her eyes and straightens up. “I think I’ll go back to the charabanc,” she says. “It’s air-conditioned. So nice to have met you both.”
“Are you sure you can manage the steps on your own?” says Philip.
“Perfectly well, thank you,” says Miss Maiden. “Goodbye, goodbye!”
They watch her carefully descend the winding steps towards the road where fleets of sightseeing buses are drawn up.
“Strange old girl,” says Philip. “But you’ve got to admire her spirit.”
“The most surprising person could be you,” says Joy.
…
In Darlington, it is a fine summer evening. The raw, unfinished campus looks almost attractive in the mellow evening light, though nothing can make the Computer Centre look other than an ugly prefabricated hut. Through its open windows carry the sounds of summer pursuits, the pock pock of tennis balls bandied to and fro on the nearby courts, the occasional cry of Howzat? from the playing fields, and the sounds of guitars and harmonicas from an impromptu al fresco singalong down by the artificial lake. The two men inside are, however, oblivious to these noises. One watches the other, who watches a screen. The dialogue represented there reads as follows:
R.D.: I’M NOT FEELING ANY BETTER.
ELIZA: WHY IS THAT?
R.D.: THIS BUSINESS ABOUT PHILIP SWALLOW.
ELIZA: TELL ME ABOUT PHILIP SWALLOW.
R.D.: I ALREADY TOLD YOU ABOUT HIM.
ELIZA: IS THERE ANYTHING YOU WOULD LIKE TO ADD TO YOUR PREVIOUS REMARKS?
R.D.: SWALLOW EPITOMIZES THE UNFAIRNESS OF LIFE TO ME. AT RUMMIDGE HE GOT THE SENIOR LECTURESHIP I SHOULD HAVE GOT. THEN HE GOT THE CHAIR THERE BY A LUCKY FLUKE. NOW HE’S HAVING A GREAT SUCCESS WITH THIS PATHETIC BOOK ABOUT HAZLITT.
ELIZA: TELL ME ABOUT HAZLITT.
R.D.: I’M NOT INTERESTED IN HAZLITT. I HAVEN’T EVEN READ SWALLOW’S ROTTEN BOOK. I DON’T NEED TO. I SAT THROUGH ENOUGH TEDIOUS EXAMINERS MEETINGS WITH HIM TO KNOW WHAT IT’S LIKE. THE IDEA OF HIS BEING A SERIOUS CANDIDATE FOR THE UNESCO CHAIR IS PREPOSTER OUS.
ELIZA: I WOULDN’T SAY THAT.
It is this last line of the dialogue that Robin Dempsey has been staring at, transfixed, for the last ten minutes. Its appearance made the hairs on the back of his neck bristle, for it is of an entirely different order from anything ELIZA has produced until now: not a question, not a request, not a statement about something already mentioned in the discourse, but an expressio
n of opinion. How can ELIZA have opinions? How can she know anything about the UNESCO Chair that Robin himself doesn’t know, or hasn’t told her? Robin is almost afraid to ask. At last, slowly and hesitantly, he types:
WHAT DO YOU KNOW ABOUT IT?
Instantly ELIZA replies:
MORE THAN YOU THINK.
Robin turns pale, then red. He types:
ALL RIGHT, IF YOU’RE SO CLEVER, TELL ME WHO WILL GET THE UNESCO CHAIR
The screen remains blank. Robin smiles and relaxes. Then he realizes that he has forgotten to indicate the end of his message with a punctuation mark. He presses the period key. On the screen, the letters rippling from left to right faster than thought, appears a name:
PHILIP SWALLOW.
Robin Dempsey’s chair keels over and crashes to the floor as he starts to his feet and staggers backwards, staring aghast at the screen. His face is ashen. Josh Collins comes out of his glass cubicle.
“Anything wrong?”
But Dempsey stumbles past him, out of the building, without a word, his eyes fixed, like a man walking in his sleep. Josh Collins watches him leave, then goes across to the computer terminal, and reads what is written there. If Josh Collins ever smiled, one might say he was smiling to himself.