The Picturegoers

by David Lodge

  And see God made and eaten all day long …

  That was the bald, terrific idea these people asked you to swallow like a pill. Christine Mallory’s fiancé was not a Catholic, and had been taking Instructions. ‘He’s stuck on Transubstantiation,’ Mrs Mallory had said in casual conversation one day. ‘A pity if she can’t have a nuptial mass.’ Speaking for himself, he choked on it.

  The bell rang again, and at last there was silence of a sort, interrupted by an occasional baby’s whimper. Everyone was bowed and hunched, but there was no feeling of worship or devotion. Now here was the large print in his missal:

  WHO THE DAY BEFORE HE SUFFERED TOOK BREAD INTO HIS HOLY AND VENERABLE HANDS, AND WITH HIS EYES LIFTED UP TOWARDS HEAVEN, UNTO THEE, GOD, HIS ALMIGHTY FATHER, GIVING THANKS TO THEE, BLESSED, BROKE AND GAVE TO HIS DISCIPLES, SAYING: TAKE AND EAT YE ALL OF THIS, FOR THIS IS MY BODY.

  The priest stretched up, lifting the Host on high. Mark stared at it, and belief leapt in his mind like a child in the womb. The pale disc was snatched down by the priest, but Mark continued to stare at the space in the air which it had occupied. The chalice rose in its place, containing the consecrated wine, but he could not recapture the extraordinary awareness that had filled his being for a fleeting second. It was as if for an instant the scales had fallen from his eyes, and he had seen how simple it was really, how it all fitted together. But now he was back on the ground again, a little puzzled and disgruntled, like a man who has been ignominiously picked up by a great bird and dumped back in the same place again.

  The bell rang for the sixth time as the priest bowed low. There was an almost audible exhalation from the congregation as the tension was relaxed; people permitted themselves to shift their positions, blow their noses, cough, scold their children. Clare recalled a time when she had resented this relaxation, which seemed to imply that the miracle of the Mass, the miracle of God’s love which had made her heart swell with adoration, was not still continuing on the altar. But now, though she strained towards the elevated Host, saying silently, ‘My Lord and my God,’ her faith was only of the head. In her heart was nothing but a sense of strain and the hollow echo of St Thomas’s words. Devotion to the Blessed Sacrament was like love—you couldn’t explain it or produce it at will; it was just there, or it wasn’t. Sometimes when Mark was rude and indifferent, she just couldn’t recognize him as the person who had enkindled such a flame in her, couldn’t begin to make contact. Suddenly they would be strangers: speaking different languages, they would just stare blankly at each other. The blank face—the blank, pale disc that hovered like an enigmatic moon over the priest’s fingers. In her head she knew that it was Mark, that it was God, but her heart did not thump with the knowledge. She had not felt that excitement at Mass since leaving the convent. Since then, only Mark had given her the same sensation. It seemed one couldn’t have both at once.

  She had scruples as to whether she should receive the Blessed Sacrament while she was in such a cold, loveless disposition. But she had asked Father Francis in confession and he had said yes, many people experienced the same spiritual deadness at times, even the saints, and the sacraments were themselves a means of overcoming this. But she knew that when she returned from the Communion rails, God would only be a slightly sour taste on her tongue; and that when she bowed her head and covered her face with her hands, shutting out everything else, she would be in the hollow cavern of her heart again, asking her own echo the way to God.

  * * *

  The thin, pale sunshine gave little warmth, but it was a welcome extension of the autumn, and unusually fine for the last day of October. Outside the church many parishioners lingered, distributing leaflets and gossiping. Mr Mallory, whose stomach was noisily urging its case for a prompt breakfast, collected his offspring and set off home. Every Sunday morning when his wife woke him he soundly (if silently) cursed his adopted religion; but the hell of getting up when all sensible creatures were lost in lovely sleep, was more than compensated for by the feeling of well-being after Mass, which made him beam and glow like an advertisement for salts—‘It’s Inner Cleanliness that counts!’—and look forward with relish to eggs and bacon with a righteous sense of having earned them, and the lazy hours to follow.

  It didn’t seem to take Bett the same way though. She always seemed snappy and impatient when she came back from church. Perhaps it was because she went to an early Mass to have breakfast ready for them when they returned; but she didn’t like lying in bed in the mornings anyway, and as he had said many times (admittedly without great enthusiasm) they could quite easily go to Mass together, and wait a little longer for breakfast. No, she liked to hint obliquely that no one’s pleasure or comfort was obtainable without some sacrifice on her part. This morning, as always when they had made love the previous night, she had been short and bad-tempered, complaining of a headache. Often in the past he had tried to keep her in bed in the morning, but always she had pushed off his sleep-drugged advances with a brusque reminder that she had work to do, stubbornly shutting her mind to the tenderness of a few hours before. In the cold morning light the lover died, and the housewife was born again. It had taken him a long time to adjust himself to this, but now it no longer irritated him, and he felt only pity for his wife.

  He took in the familiar surroundings with a refreshed, amused eye. For most people, he reflected, Sunday should be renamed Carday. Cars had replaced gods. With the same heroic self-denial as early church-goers, the car-owners were out in their numbers, washing-down, polishing, tinkering. In the afternoon they would don chamois gloves and make aimless ritual drives into the Green Belt, in-laws glumly ensconced in the back-seat, stopping at the side of an arterial road to circulate solemnly a vacuum flask. Some youths astride shining motor-cycles had congregated outside a closed motor-cycle shop. Mr Mallory heard the mutter of their liturgy as he passed: ‘ … Overhead valves … con-rod … horizontally opposed twin … two-fifty two-stroke … swinging-arm …’ It was like an open-air service.

  They met Damien hurrying to the ten o’clock Mass. His raw, ugly face was still bleeding from two shaving cuts.

  ‘Hallo there, Damien,’ said Mr Mallory. ‘You’re slipping. I thought you usually went to the seven-thirty?’

  ‘I overslept, Uncle Thomas,’ replied Damien liverishly. ‘The London streets are so noisy at nights I find it difficult to get to sleep.’ He hurried on.

  Somehow Mr Mallory couldn’t honestly say he felt any affection for Damien. It wasn’t simply because he was ugly—he knew men equally ugly and ten times more lovable. But because his personality was objectionable one held him responsible for his ugliness—it became impossible to overlook it. He was cold and dank like the inside of a morgue. He had no sense of humour, and he would keep harping on his seminary training instead of thrusting it into the background and making a fresh start. The fellow carried his failure before him like a monstrance.

  His eye fell on Mark, just ahead, clowning to amuse the twins, uninhibited by the glances of passers-by, or by Clare’s mild remonstrations. He was really a very likeable lad, though a bit mysterious and withdrawn at the deepest level. However, for someone supposed to be very clever, he seemed to get a great deal of pleasure out of ordinary things. And he had been a healthy influence on Clare when she most needed it—when that creeping Jesus of a Damien had threatened to infect her with the mildew of his own damp piety. His wife had disapproved of this development at first—he suspected that she had paired off Damien and Clare in her mind—but when it transpired that Mark had been baptized a Catholic, and when he started to go to Mass again, she had become favourably disposed to the idea of their going out together. Personally he thought Bett was counting her chickens. Mark showed no signs of being really inspired with religious enthusiasm, or, for that matter, of having matrimonial intentions where Clare was concerned. Bett just didn’t realize that keeping company was no longer a walled alley leading to the altar. He only hoped Clare didn’t think so.

  * * *

&
nbsp; Mr Berkley blinked resentfully in the morning sunlight. He hated the morning, hated the light. He was a night-bird. He liked to be in a warm, dimly-lit room, thick with cigarette smoke and vibrant with witty conversation, with the dark outside, protective and all-enveloping. He hurried along the deserted early-morning pavements to the cinema. The exit-doors were open to allow the air to circulate. He passed in.

  The familiar waste-land of the empty auditorium engulfed him with its seedy, oppressive presence. Even in its golden age as a theatre, its morning aspect had imparted the same momentary shock of disillusionment—as a tousled, unpowdered woman to her lover of the night before. But the disgusting habits of cinema-goers had intensified the squalor of the scene. He crunched pea-nut shells under his feet and waded ankle-deep in ice-cream cartons, paper bags, cigarette packets, half-eaten apples. The Palladium was a woman growing old, and since all theatres are coquettes, this was a tragedy. The sunlight that inched its way into the stale gloom shed a tactless illumination on the threadbare carpets, the worn seats, the peeling gilt décor. Like an elderly coquette hiding her wrinkles, she didn’t allow much sunlight into the auditorium, but it was enough to give the game away. Poor old coquette. Nobody would spend any money on her, beyond a splash of cheap cosmetic on the exterior. After being a highly-prized mistress she was now little better than a common prostitute, and her owners were now interested only in squeezing the last drops of revenue from her tired body.

  And there, fittingly ministering to her in her decay, were two old crones, daughters of the game, ex-chorus girls who hadn’t married earls, Dolly and Gertrude. The two old dears slowly but methodically sifted the rows of their debris, creaking and grunting with every movement as if it would be their last. Mr Berkley walked round the back of the auditorium, and stood in the shadow of some curtains.

  ‘Warm today, Gert.’

  ‘Yerse. Better than that cold though.’

  ‘Gerna rain though. It said so on the wireless.’

  ‘Don’t I know it. Alf kep’ me awake orl night with ’is roomatism. I didn’t get a wink. Shokin’ it was.’

  Dolly cackled.

  ‘’Ere, Gert! Can Alf use one of these?’ She held up a contraceptive sheath.

  ‘Oo, Doll! You are rude. You ought to be ashamed of yourself showin’ such a thing to me.’

  Dolly cackled as she dropped it into her dustpan.

  ‘I don’t know what they’ll bring to the pictures next,’ she wheezed. Her cackle turned into a bronchial cough. Gertrude stopped working, and collapsed ponderously on to a seat.

  ‘Ooh, me feet … Yer know, Doll, when I was about fifty, and goin’ through you know what, well this Sunday I was feelin’ there wasn’t much left to go on livin’ for. Fact, for two pins I’d have taken the joint out of the oven and put me ’ead in instead. Well, in comes Alf, with ’is belly full of old and mild as usual, and asks me why do I look as if I’d lost a pound and found thruppence. Well I felt that fed up I told ’im straight out. “Never mind, old cock,” ’e says, “we won’t ’ave to bother wiv French letters now.” Cheered me up somethink marvellous it did.’

  ‘’E’s a good sort, is Alf,’ said Dolly, nodding gravely.

  ‘“Never mind, old cock,”’ ’e says, “we won’t ’ave to bother wiv French letters now.”’

  ‘You don’t still … do you, Gert?’

  ‘What, at our age? It wouldn’t be decent, dearie. Besides, Alf can only just about drag hisself to the King’s Arms and back once a day, and then e’s finished. ’Ow’s your Stan?’

  ‘Oh, can’t grumble. Still ’as trouble passing ’is water, but the doctor give ’im some new medicine. Comes of drinking too much in the past, I told ’im. But ’e don’t listen.’

  ‘What doctor’s that?’

  ‘The young one what took over from old Wilkins.’

  ‘Oo, ’e’s lovely, i’n ’e? ’E’s got such lovely warm ’ands. Old Wilkins used to make me shiver every time ’e touched me.’

  Mr Berkley smiled behind his curtain. A couple of genuine characters. Real Cockneys of the old type, once the music-hall’s main source of supply, and now, like the music-halls themselves, nearly extinct. The good old songs round the pub piano were dying with them. Nellie Dean, Daisy, Knees Up Mother Brown … Humorous, good-natured, industrious, resilient. Vulgar perhaps, but how honest, realistic and uncomplicated Dolly’s and Gertrude’s attitude to sex appeared in comparison to the modern cult of ‘luv’, with its tedious machinery of psychology, pop songs, broken-heart columns and cinematic sex-symbols. Once Dolly and Gertrude had been in the back row of the chorus at the Palladium, and Gertrude had even had a solo spot with a comic song … he had seen a photo of her somewhere as Burlington Bertie … Now all they had to show for it were lumpy figures, thin hair, flowered cotton overalls and carpet slippers, as they swept the scene of their former modest triumphs. It seemed rather pathetic, but they never permitted you to feel sorry for them.

  ‘Good morning, ladies,’ said Mr Berkley, stepping forward.

  ‘Mornin’, Mr Berkley,’ they answered. Gertrude rose from her seat with dignity.

  ‘I was just takin’ the weight off my feet, Mr Berkley. They’re swollen somethink shocking,’ she explained.

  ‘I’m so sorry to hear that, Mrs Halibut,’ said Mr Berkley sympathetically. ‘Have you anything for me this morning?’

  ‘Only this glove,’ said Gertrude, drawing a man’s black kid glove from some hidden recess in her attire. A few rows down Dolly was hard at work. ‘Well!’ she exploded indignantly. ‘Just look at this, sir. Don’t it make you wild.’

  He inspected the badly-slashed seat.

  ‘Hmm. Made quite a mess of it, hasn’t he. Why d’you think they do it?’

  ‘It’s them young Teds, sir, you mark my words. A lot of ’ooligans what’s got nothink better to do. Ooh, if I caught them, I wouldn’t arf box their ears. They wouldn’t do it again in an ’urry.’

  Mr Berkley shook his head sadly.

  ‘Well I’d better go and make a note of it. Good morning, ladies.’

  ‘Good morning, Mr Berkley.’

  As he climbed the stairs to his office he inspected the glove in his hand. Black was an unusual colour for a man’s glove. A clergyman perhaps. A clergyman’s gage.

  * * *

  The front door slammed shut, and cut off abruptly the babble of the family’s voices. They were going to Benediction. In the silence that followed their departure the muffled movements of the other occupants of the house became surprisingly audible. Reluctantly Mark opened Klaeber’s forbidding edition of Beowulf, and propped up Clark Hall’s translation in front of him. No work done that day. He would have to grind on till one o’clock. It was an agreeable house to live in, but the atmosphere was not conducive to study. Always you felt the warmth and humanity pulling you downstairs like a magnet.

  Another Sunday had almost passed; another pleasant, uneventful Sunday. Uneventful—yet, as he recalled the day’s happenings, they stung his memory with tiny, pleasant sensations, tastes, smells: there was the taste of eggs and bacon which really did break a fast, the scent of the first cigarette, and the agreeable weight of the Sunday paper in his hands.

  After breakfast he had flattered his ego by assisting Patricia with her homework. Though teaching was so wretchedly paid, he was beginning to think that it was the only possible profession for him—passing on information to others gave him such profound pleasure. Patrick, crouched over his books at the other end of the table, never asked his advice; but then Patrick had always been faintly hostile and jealous of a masculine encroachment on a territory that had been his alone since the departure of the two eldest boys. Not that Mark had minded in the least. In fact he found Patrick’s grim determination not to be charmed rather amusing. Though there had been something a little strange about Patrick that day. He had been very quiet. He hadn’t, as was his practice, eaten a second breakfast when the rest of the family returned from the nine-’o-clock Mass. He hadn’t joined them i
n their walk that afternoon. He was nursing some secret or other …

  Later in the morning he had accepted Mr Mallory’s offer to buy him a drink in the plain, four-square, oddly restful pub at the end of the road. They had talked about cars, of which Mr Mallory was a salesman. They discussed very thoroughly the merits of the Bentley Continental, with all the candour and eloquence of two men who would never conceivably own one. Nevertheless Mark wondered why, since he was in the trade, Mr Mallory did not own even a modest vehicle.

  ‘Very simple, Mark. Couldn’t afford it. Can’t run eight children and a car. They’ve all had good schooling, and there was James’s training—you’re expected to contribute something. But I’ve no regrets—I don’t really want to own a car. Too much worry and hard work looking after it. Why, wouldn’t have a moment’s peace on a Sunday, what with tinkering all morning and driving all the rest of the day.’