Dick Chomley is the energetic purveyor of a threadbare philosophy, which has the merit of reassuring the spirit of our conformist times. Every now and then we citizens of mature democracies who benefit from a high standard of living, good education and utterly free and reliable news media, wake up and have this scary moment of doubt: Are we selfish? Do we need all this stuff? Do we know what’s going on? Are we perhaps less skilled than our forebears? And, most distressingly, is there any point to this life? At this stage, our perfectly balanced market economies provide us the necessary balm: the Panglossian works of Professor Dick Chomley – Egotism is Nature, Anything You Do Is DNA-Driven, Religion is a Madness and God Got Lost on the Way to the Toilet, all translated into every one of our European languages and many more besides.
He is very prolific but does everything he can to prove his theories wrong. Instead of desperately pursuing his instinctive urge to procreate, he spends most of his time closed up in his study – like a monk in his cell – writing the same book with a different title in the company of two busts, one of Voltaire and one of Einstein. Now you and I, who don’t have a grounding in modern philosophical thought and its various subtleties, think that Voltaire and Einstein were very intelligent men, but Chomley has demonstrated beyond all reasonable doubt that they weren’t that clever, because they said they were Deists, when they really meant to say atheists. Nor does it occur to our dear Panglossian philosopher during his tirades against religions that, if Voltaire believed in anything, he believed in the absolute tolerance of other people’s religious views.
But of course we are talking of a higher truth here, and the higher truth is a scientific one, even when science has absolutely nothing to say on the matter. The history of life is the history of the perfect mechanism of self-interest, and while we might have some sympathy for the deification of Chaos, who previously had a rotten press, are we happy with the deification of Over-Simplification?
Some might find Chomley’s professional life and routine a little dull, but he always appears to be a little excited and desperate to proselytise. His lecture at Oxford University a few months ago was quite typical of his work, but it furnished the opportunity for him to rekindle his acquaintance with Lord Hexham, the remarkable geneticist who studied under Crick and Watson and did so much to establish Britain’s leading role in the field. He continued their work and became something of a populariser during the New Labour years: hence the peerage. This is good for you the reader, and for me: on his own Chomley would provide little entertainment.
There they were: the serried ranks of the fior fiore of British academe, well dressed much as the middle classes were when they went to church in the nineteenth century. Suits were worn, dresses were long, noses were lifted, smiles were well exercised, voices were exuberant, or, to put it in our modern tongue, there was a buzz about the place. Not, I should add, because anyone expected anything original to be said; this was one of those opera houses where the audience is more important than the opera.
Someone very important came on the platform to introduce the speaker. He looked like a boy on his birthday, which must have been exhausting; this effusion is now de rigueur – today, tomorrow and the bloody next day. Whatever happened to old-fashioned English grumpiness? “Your speaker, who is now a household name, is perhaps the academic I most admire in the world,” he said, which left open the possibility of rivals on other planets in our solar system. To be fair, he didn’t use this accolade before every lecture he introduced but he had used it five times in the previous twelve months. “There are several reasons for this: the thoroughness of his research, the impartiality of his analysis, the exquisiteness of his prose, the generosity of his spirit; but, ladies and gentlemen, fellow scientists and fellow academics, surely it is his intellectual integrity that most impresses us.” The applause was rapturous. People discreetly looked around to assess the enthusiasm of the audience, and more than one heart was touched by the silliest of all emotions: envy. “I have known Dick for many years – long before his rise to fame – and I can say without fear of contradiction that his good nature remains entirely unspoilt by success. You see, what’s special about Dick is that he is completely unaware of how much influence he has on the intellectual life of Britain today. I could go on but I won’t, because Dick is quite capable of speaking up for himself. So without further ado, I hand you over to Dick Chomley!”
At that moment, Chomley walked on, nonchalantly grinning at the very important man. They both embraced like old friends who had not seen each other in years, while in fact the same scene had been played out not an hour beforehand in the very important man’s spacious study and followed by fine wines and hors d’oeuvres in the company of the fior fiore of the fior fiore.
Chomley then walked to the lectern. He reverently placed his heavy tome of Darwin’s Collected Works on it, and opened the work at the first coloured marker. He looked up, catching the light from the stained-glass windows of the old university. He stared fixedly as though gathering his energies for an onerous but unavoidable task, and then started to read in a slightly monotonous tone. The lesson for the day was from The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex:
“Darwin was quite specific about evolution within the human species, and I think we should be bold enough to take note of this. We live in a highly civilised era and sometimes we are overly sensitive about some issues. This is what he wrote, ‘Nor is the difference slight in moral disposition between a barbarian, such as the man described by the old navigator Byron, who dashed his child on the rocks for dropping his basket of sea-urchins, and a Howard or a Clarkson; and in intellect, between a savage who uses hardly any abstract terms, and a Newton or Shakespeare. Differences of this kind between the highest of men of the highest races and the lowest savages, are connected to the finest gradations. Therefore it is possible that they might pass and be developed into each other.’
“Clearly we are an evolving species and we need to help those who are not the ‘highest of men’ and are not from the ‘highest races’, although we would prefer to put it less starkly: ‘those whose cerebral functions are not so highly developed’ and ‘those whose ethnic DNA types present some limitations’. In other words, we have to have concern for the genetic health of our populations.”
Some of those whose cerebral functions were highly developed were finding it difficult to follow Chomley’s argument. One man scratched his thigh vigorously. A prim lady with round glasses coughed as she tried to follow the journey of a ladybird around the velvety collar of the man sitting in front; was there a point to all this expenditure of energy? she asked herself. A stout and jowly man kept slipping into the most pleasurable sleep and subsequently snoring, while his wife used the sharpness of her elbow to wake him temporarily. A serious-minded scientist who had pumped Chomley’s hand vigorously and repeatedly when they met over the fine wines and hors d’oeuvres could not keep his eyes off the clock. A young, obese woman was fidgeting in spite of her cumbersome frame, because she felt sure that she had detected a significant flaw in the great man’s argument. The immensity of this truth was agitating her and she wanted to communicate it immediately to everyone else in the room and indeed to all humanity. Various other manifestations of restlessness and inattention were occurring around the room, but the speaker seemed unaware as he leapt erratically from one obsession to another. Sometimes there seemed to be little connection between them, but everything he said led to one great truth: we are all perfectly made machines that are constantly evolving and designed not by God but by survival of the fittest, or rather we are constructed by the perfectly made machine of natural selection, which surely must be one of our new gods. Perhaps amongst that crowd of well-protected and, some might say, highly pampered genes with good chances of selection as their bodies warmed the cold and ancient stones that, over the centuries, had heard all manner of fashionable truths, whilst the faces of the speakers never seemed to change, there lurked a murderer, but I doubt he had a murderous face. The man in the tweed jacket and designer glasses, with an air of studied nonchalance, the academic smile of knowing appreciation and the stare of utter absorption in the arguments expounded by Dick Chomley, was probably thinking about his lover or whether he could keep up with the mortgage payments. He played the part too well. So what could natural selection do with this lot? It no doubt worked quite well, when we were all hunter-gatherers or when we were our missing ancestors, competing in the same way within the same environment, but now? It would require omniscience to understand this wonderful, talented and idiotic jumble of humanity. We need a little more than is dreamed of in your philosophy, Dick Chomley.
“Michelangelo may well have been a Christian – there wasn’t really any choice at the time – but his Christianity did not create his art.” Dick Chomley must use the same history consultants as Hollywood: Michelangelo was not only a Christian, but one of the fanatical “Spirituals” who caught the attention of the Inquisition. Some felt that his art reflected his heretical views. But if Christianity, according to Chomley, can take no credit for Western civilisation, it seems a bit unfair for him to argue that those great works of art the Church didn’t commission would have been ruined by their commissioning of it.
He furthered his attack on the monotheist religions by quoting particularly bellicose adherents from each one; the more peace-loving and just loving examples were not referred to. He ended his speech with a fine example of his sophisticated rhetoric: he invited deluded believers everywhere “to dream on”.
As soon as that injunction was made to no one in that room, because it was directed at the stupid who live elsewhere, the very important man returned to the platform, hugged Dick Chomley again and, turning to the audience, lifted Chomley’s hand in the air as though he were a prize-fighter. And the prize-fighter was ecstatic. Ecstasy, however, did not cloud his intellect; even as the applause lifted him on a wave of joy, he scanned the crowd for faces he might know. He found them, but his vision leapt on past them: he wasn’t fishing for tadpoles. Then he saw Lord Hexham and immediately he left the platform and pushed his way through the pressing throng, one part of which was heading towards him loud with congratulations while the other part was heading for the exit. Regrettably Lord Hexham was in the second category. Clearly he would have to be a little rude if he were to catch up with his prey. “Thank you, thank you, I’m in a bit of a rush, I’m afraid.” An elderly woman with a sad and reflective expression was gushing her praise: it appeared that she was no longer afraid of death after having heard his lecture. He never grasped the content of her words but pushed her gently aside, while nodding his regrets. Fortunately she took no exception to the idea that this modern thinker had no time for her; that seemed entirely understandable to her, even proper. As a pilgrim might stare at a holy man, she rapturously focused on his back whilst he struggled with the scrum.
Lord Hexham was already in the car park when Chomley caught up with him, a little out of breath and suddenly a little embarrassed in his lordship’s presence. “Lord Hexham, James,” he puffed, “you must excuse me, but I didn’t want to let you go without having a word. So good of you to come.”
Hexham, who was already stooping to get into his car, straightened up and examined the speaker he’d been listening to for an hour, as though he didn’t know him.
“So very good of you to come. Really,” stammered the ex-prize-fighter.
“Chomley,” Hexham smiled, now the hierarchy of their relationship had been established, “good speech.”
“Really?” asked Chomley brightly. “So good of you to say so. You know how much I value your opinion. I couldn’t believe it when I saw you. I just had to speak to you.” He didn’t appear to have finished, but he had run out of words.
“Chomley, what can I do for you?” said the other.
“Well, why don’t we go for a meal?”
“Hasn’t the rector organised something for you?”
“Oh yes, there is an official dinner,” Chomley said grandly. “But I’d prefer to have lunch with you. I know a really good restaurant.”
If Hexham was flattered, he showed no sign of it. “Well, I don’t see why not.”
“Oh James, that’s very good of you. I know you’re such a busy man.”
“Yes, so it’ll have to be a short one.”
“Of course.”
As soon as the two men had sat down in the restaurant and ordered their meal, Chomley was keen to start. He was like a student at his viva, only he was asking the questions to impress rather than answering them. “So what do think of this business about building another university chapel? You’d think there were enough of them already.”
Hexham looked uninterested and sipped his wine. “Just nonsense,” he said eventually.
“And how about these people who say that there’s no conflict between science and religion?”
“Do they?”
“Yes, you know. Science tells us who we are and religion tells us what we’re for. That kind of rubbish.”
“Exactly. Rubbish. Why should we be for anything? We’re the products of evolution – or in other words, the products of our own desires. At this very moment, I’m for a damn good meal.”
Chomley laughed too much, while Hexham ignored him and sipped his wine like a man who has just delivered the final word on a subject.
“A damn good meal” – well, that sums up very well what life is for in the cruder forms of materialist philosophy. The trouble with the scientific approach is that it’s right about the material world, but dumb when it comes to the areas it cannot deal with, particularly the riddle of consciousness, the “ghost in the machine”: intellectual conversations between Hexham and Chomley never get past guffawing and caricature.
There was silence for a bit and then Hexham said, “Got any children, Chomley?”
“No, I’m not married,” came the reply. Chomley had a curiously dated sexual morality for a modern man – almost that of a fifties vicar.
“Come come, Chomley, think about your genes.”
Chomley was not enjoying the conversation: “Never met the right woman, I suppose.”
“Children, not all they’re cracked up to be,” said the lord. “The instinct might be good for the species, but they’re a pain in the arse when it comes to bringing them up.”
“James, I’m sure you don’t mean that.” Chomley, on the other hand, knew very well that Hexham had an only son of twenty-two who had just graduated at Oxford with a first-class degree in modern languages – French, Russian and Arabic.
“My son,” Lord Hexham said, while fighting with a slice of beef that would not yield, “is such a fool. He could have taken his Arabic studies further for his Ph.D. It’s a growth industry, I told him – anti-terrorism studies and all that. You’ll get the ear of the powerful. You’ll get rich. Do you know what he said?”
“It’s terrible that youth won’t listen. We were the same, I suppose,” Dick glowed at his own modesty and self-knowledge. “What did he say?”
“He said he liked the idea of Arabic – but only to investigate the works of some thirteenth-century Sufi poet nobody has ever heard of; unfortunately his great love was Pushkin and he was determined to do a Ph.D. on some of his minor works.”
“No chance of anti-terrorism studies there,” Chomley smiled, “no peaceful career in the diplomatic service. What a waste of talent, eh? Bad luck, we all have to put up with a bit of that. He might come right later.”
“Pushkin was part negro,” Lord Hexham said, as though this was relevant.
Chomley, who was a little more politically correct, blushed and momentarily lost his smile. “The liberal establishment,” he started off on another tack, “are to blame; they have always oversold the arts and humanities, while belittling the scientific community. That’s why your son didn’t know where to take his linguistic talents.”
Lord Hexham looked at him blankly, and he was not a man to be sidetracked by dull and specious arguments. “Of course, he’s a deviant anyway.”
Chomley froze and wondered if anyone could overhear. “Deviant?” he whispered.
“Yes, deviant,” Lord Hexham boomed. “Homosexual, queer… as bent as a nine-bob note… or whatever you want to call it.”
Chomley was now very uncomfortable. “I didn’t know your son was gay.”
“Gay? Gay? There’s nothing particularly gay about being a nancy-boy.”
Chomley looked around in terror. This was a smart restaurant in Oxford, not a gentleman’s club. Hexham had never had a sense of place or decorum. Was there a gene for decorum? Even though his lordship was renowned for being outspoken, Chomley decided to take a stand. But he did so hesitantly, because he valued the lord’s friendship and the doors it could open – not to mention the fearsome aggression the man exuded quite naturally, as though his genes had been modified by those of a rhinoceros. “Nowadays, we don’t …”
“Nowadays,” Hexham roared, “nowadays? I don’t care a damn about nowadays. Science hasn’t got anything to do with passing fads. Christ, man, you’re all theory and no practice. Aren’t you the one banging on about how we need to pass on our genes? That’s the motivation of all we do. Well, not much chance of that in the case of my gay son. And he didn’t get it from me, I can tell you that. My wife is – always was – a little androgynous, you know. Not her fault, and she always supported me in everything, so I don’t criticise her too much.”
“Quite right,” said Chomley stupidly – suffering for his stupidity the moment it spilt out.
“Of course,” his lordship continued unperturbed, the idea his conversation could cause offence never having occurred to him, “I do have a son who’ll continue the paternal line.” He paused to smile, revealing the importance this fact held within his mind.
“Another son?”
“Yes, yes,” Hexham seemed to awaken from a pleasant reverie, “wrong side of the blanket, you know.”
Chomley didn’t. In part he was flattered that his lordship wanted to open up, and in part he was terrified by the insaneness of his fellow diner’s stream of consciousness. “Really,” he stammered.
“Yes,” Hexham seemed to be speaking to no one in particular, “he lives on what can only be called a sink estate – with his mother, a hellish woman who has poisoned the boy against me. For Christ’s sake, I forked out enough money over the years – enough to buy a second home somewhere, but they just stay put and piss it against the wall. The money was supposed to keep her quiet, but then she turned up at our door two months ago, screaming and shouting.”
“Life is quite complicated,” said Chomley in the manner of a child who has just been told that Father Christmas doesn’t exist.
“Bloody right! At least my one is – can’t speak for anyone else.”
“I’m so sorry to hear this, Jim,” Chomley adopted a quiet confidential tone and daringly shifted from “James” to the more familiar “Jim”.
“I don’t want your pity, Chomley,” his lordship retorted irritably.
Chomley was beginning to regret pursuing Hexham across the car park in order to buy him lunch, when a sumptuous lunch was offered him by the university authorities where he would have been the guest of honour. He might also have asked himself why he did it, and the answer is far from obvious: about as imponderable as the existence of God, for which the arguments against each of the opposing hypotheses are equally strong, and arguments for each of them equally weak. Actually not quite as imponderable as that, but still imponderable. Why would a man abandon comfort and praise to seek the company of a man who treats him with disdain? He certainly got no financial gain out of this transaction, quite the opposite. He had foregone good food someone else paid for to get good food for which he would have to pay all his royalties from a small Latin-American country. Was he in love with Hexham or at least sexually attracted to him? Now I know that many of us believe that ultimately all our actions are governed by sex, though not necessarily reproductive sex – enjoyable sex with the least chance of reproduction, whatever the biological drives. I don’t really know what Chomley’s sexual proclivities are.
What do you mean, that’s not good enough? You feel you really ought to know? What is this modern obsession with knowing what people get up to in bed? Clearly you, dear reader, are one of those who believe that sex trumps everything else.
Well I would tell you, if it sounded at all interesting, but, it seems, Chomley’s sexual drive is so weak that even the omniscient narrator cannot detect it. Suffice it to say that it does not appear to be the motivation that sent him rushing madly out of the lecture hall to collar his lordship. Did he do it because he wanted the man’s assistance to further his career? Surely not. His career is made, and there are many others perfectly willing to assist him further. Success breeds success, almost by itself, and does not require Chomley’s erratic behaviour to sustain it.
We’re almost convinced that Chomley’s behaviour is not based on any motivation at all, and that makes him appear endearingly eccentric. We love an eccentric precisely because eccentrics undermine the kind of arguments put forward by people like Chomley. There remains however one final doubt: what if Chomley pursues Hexham, because Hexham disdains him and does so with a certain panache that Chomley cannot accept. Chomley is intelligent enough to see that there is no evidence that Hexham will change his ways, and that very probably Hexham treats absolutely everybody with the same disdain. There is nothing rational about Chomley’s behaviour, and the trigger may well reside in his unconscious, but I think we can now put our finger on it. For Chomley, Hexham is a challenge, and human beings love a challenge, which is odd because it almost always involves putting our lives and therefore our sexual organs at some small or great risk. Chomley’s behaviour towards Hexham is therefore further evidence against Chomley’s own arguments. Did I say that Hexham might well treat everyone with the same contempt?
A tall man in a fashionable suit was walking briskly through the restaurant, and his handsome, youthful face was betrayed by some slight greying around the temples. He had a strong muscular build, but nothing excessive: the kind of build that can be inherited but not acquired by endless workouts in the gym. Some would define the look as patrician, but his father was a miner and his mother worked for the union. There was no aggression in his movement, and there was an attractive stillness about his personality.
“Well, well,” said Lord Hexham, as the man was passing their table, “the liberal establishment disdains even to acknowledge our existence.”
The man turned and smiled: “Oh Jimmy, I never saw you there. How are you doing? It’s a long time since I saw you last. Everything okay, I hope.”
The man was about to go, but Hexham wouldn’t let him: “Come, come, Johnny, you said it was a long time. Chomley here has chosen a damn good wine; pull up a chair!” And then as an aside to Chomley, he added, “Perhaps you should order another bottle.”
The man assessed the situation ruefully and quickly made his decision: his smile beamed and he grabbed a chair from another table and sat down almost in a single movement. “Delighted to,” he said. He put out his hand to Chomley and said, “I’m John Hestlethwaite, one of Jimmy’s old sparring partners.”
Chomley was never good at judging these situations, but he found the intruder obnoxious for reasons that weren’t entirely clear. With all the gravitas he could summon up, he pronounced, “Dick Chomley, scientist and author.”
“Of course, Egotism is Nature.”
“Yes,” said Chomley proudly, even preeningly, the memory of the ovation he had recently received reviving in his brain, “did you read it?”
“Oh yes, hugely entertaining, although I can’t share all your opinions.”
“Well, of course, arts and humanities are a little resistant.”
“Arts and humanities?” said Hexham. “The man’s a nuclear physicist. They say he’ll be a Nobel Prize winner. But he’s also a ghastly pinko-liberal, isn’t that right, Johnny?” And he clapped the man on the back for good measure.
Chomley blushed.
“So what have you boys been talking about?” Johnny said, a little condescendingly, while tapping his wedding ring against his glass of wine.
“This and that. Pushkin,” said Chomley.
“Pushkin?” said Johnny, sitting up with genuine surprise. “What interested you in him?”
“He was part negro,” said Hexham.
“And Lord Hexham’s son is going to do his Ph.D. on Pushkin, and Lord Hexham would prefer him to do something that would lead to a good job,” Chomley clarified.
“Oh, I get it,” said Johnny, “Lord Hexham has been coming out with his racist theories. Come on, Jimmy, do you never give up? So what’s your latest: the blacks are responsible for your son’s academic choices? Must be a plot. So, yeah, Pushkin was one-quarter black and he founded a literature. I would have thought that would be something you’d want to keep quiet about, Jimmy, given your views on the matter. Well consider this: his African grandfather was a mathematical genius and Peter the Great’s adopted son. And there weren’t that many Africans living in Russia at the time.”
“Statistically insignificant,” Hexham replied, his face darkening.
“Well, we all know your idiotic views on miscegenation. I hate to tell you, Jimmy, but it works like this: if you’re a European and you worry about your children’s genetic health, then you should marry a Nigerian, and if you’re an African, you should marry a Swede or anybody else who is genetically distant from you. More generally of course, you should marry, if marry you must, anyone you want – someone you love, someone from your own community, of the same religion, whatever makes you and that other person comfortable.”
“You’re not seriously suggesting people should still let their religion decide who they marry?” asked Chomley.
“I didn’t use the word ‘should’. I don’t care a damn who people marry. It would be good for society if more marriages were happy, but no one can know what’ll work and what won’t. It’s a lottery, like most things in life. But I don’t see why a shared religion shouldn’t count, if it matters to the people in question. Some couples marry because they both like ballroom dancing or holidays in Italy or films by Laurel and Hardy. There are all tastes. I’m an atheist, but I have no desire to proselytise my atheism.”
Chomley went silent.
“You see what he’s like, Chomley,” said Hexham, “the swine drives me crazy with his pinko ideas. I think he just likes winding me up.”
“Listen, guys, my guests are beginning to arrive; I’ve got to leave you, but it’s been great to have this little chat.” Johnny turned to Chomley and smiled his well-judged, attractive but inscrutable smile, “Fancy meeting the great Dick Chomley. A real pleasure, and good that you’re doing so well. I wanted to go to your lecture of course, but I had prior teaching commitments I simply couldn’t get out of.” He shook Chomley’s hand politely and Hexham’s with a degree of warmth. “Goodbye, you old bastard,” he said, “I’ll see you soon, no doubt.”
“You can count on it,” Hexham replied, “and I might just give you that slap around the head. You’ve been looking for it for long enough.”
You might think that the drivel Chomley and Hexham speak is harmless drivel, but it’s not. When two influential people meet in a bar or restaurant to talk drivel, it is always important drivel. A Spanish philosopher once said that what intellectuals say in one generation will become common parlance in three or four generations’ time. Nietzsche’s glorification of war led a few decades later to a terrible slogan: “War: the only way to clean up the world” and a decade or two after that the world wars started. The racist theories being unearthed by Neo-Darwinism could lead us down the same route that Gobineau’s did. The victims might be different, but the results the same. Perhaps for now we can fight them with patience, argument and good manners, as Johnny Hestlewhaite did, but these will not always work.
When their eyes met after Johnny’s departure, both Chomley and Hexham felt a degree of embarrassment. It would have been interesting to see how their conversation would have developed from there, but quite suddenly they were aware that someone had sat down on Johnny’s chair. Chomley looked at the young man in his late teens and recognised his features. He then looked at Hexham and even he could read the conflicting emotions in his lordship’s expression: anger, pride and perhaps even love.
“Chomley, let me introduce the son I was telling you about: he’s called Trevor. A chip off the old block, don’t you think?”
“Yes,” Chomley muttered.
“What can I do for you, Trevor?”
“I’ve been looking for you all over the place. They said you were at the lecture, so I went down there and saw your Mercedes – so I waited in the car park – then this gentleman came up just exactly when I was about to approach you – I followed you to the restaurant, but didn’t have the guts to go in – I went back to the car park and there was lots of people running round looking for your Professor Chomley – so I went back to the restaurant – this time I went in and blow me, this other geezer comes up and sits down – they let me stay and I waited for him to finish – well, here I am.”
“They’re probably after your blood, Chomley,” said Hexham, without a trace of regret. However, there may well have been a suggestion that he would like to be left alone with his son. If there was, Chomley did not detect it.
All three sat in silence. Chomley was curious, the young man clearly had something difficult to say and Hexham appeared to be in shock, but he was the first to speak: “This is a pleasant surprise, but I sense there is a reason. You’re not in trouble, are you?”
Trevor visibly relaxed: “Not at all. Quite the opposite. Basically, I’m in love.”
Lord Hexham would never have made such an announcement to his father, when he was in his teens, and here was this son he barely knew telling him about his intimate emotions. He was both repelled and attracted by this news.
Trevor was now smiling innocence: “I have a picture of her.” He opened his wallet and took out a small photograph, which he handed to his father.
Lord Hexham stared at it in stunned silence for at least a minute: “She’s very pretty,” he said, passing the photo to his fellow diner, “don’t you think, Chomley?”
Chomley too seemed a little surprised or possibly bemused.
“Where’s she from?” asked Hexham.
“Chad.”
“Chad? Very interesting. Pushkin’s grandfather is thought to have come from Chad.”
Trevor pushed his confusion away and pursued the purpose of his visit. “We’ve a lot to celebrate. She has just got her Indefinite Leave to Remain.”
Chomley was still examining the picture of a smiling young woman in European dress standing in front of a large building, probably an educational establishment. Forgetting the sound advice to keep quiet in all family situations, he allowed himself to say, “Another asylum seeker, then.”
“And you have a problem with that?” Hexham boomed.
“What the hell!” said Chomley, “you’re hardly the one to …”
“I don’t know what you’re going to say, Chomley, but you’d better not say it. And if you’ll excuse me, I have a few things I want to say to my son.”
He turned to his son and said, “This is fantastic news, Trevor. And it’s great that you felt you could tell me. You want some help – probably financial. I hope that’s what it is, because I can tell you now that it’s not a problem – not at all. Does she have legal costs?”
“No, she got assistance on that, and we dealt with the rest. No, it’s nothing as serious as that. It’s just that I’d like to take her on holiday. I’d like to take her to Italy. I’ve always wanted to go, and she has had such a tough life. And for the last two years we couldn’t go outside London together.”
“Is that all?” said the beaming Lord Hexham, “then I’ll write the cheque immediately.” Clearly delighting in his own generosity, he took out his chequebook and his fountain pen. His handwriting was laborious, contributing to the suspense that led up to the final flourish of his signature. He tore it off and handed it to his son, who stared at it in disbelief.
“My God, that’s too much, Dad. We could stay in five-star hotels for a month with that.”
“Then stay in five-star hotels,” his father laughed. “All you have to do is come and see us at our home when you get back. Bring your girlfriend. We’ll be delighted to see her. Don’t worry about my wife. She has known about your existence for years, and got over it long ago. She’s a good woman and she’ll welcome you with open arms. As will your brother. This is wonderful news.”
“I don’t know what to say,” said Trevor.
“Then don’t. Just get out of here. Have fun. And make sure you come and see us. You know that’s what I’ve always wanted. We want to see you both, remember. Go where you want, and have an adventure. And get the hell out of here, and don’t keep the lady waiting.”
The boy left. The father watched him go all the way to the restaurant door, and then turned back towards Chomley. “Well, that’s a turn-up for the books,” he smiled.
Chomley was glum and feeling excluded. More seriously he hadn’t understood the nature of the encounter he had just witnessed. “Lord Hexham, I can’t say there’s a lot of intellectual coherence in the way you live your life.”
“Listen Chomley, that’s all very well but you can take your intellectual coherence and stick it up your arse. Has anybody told you you’re a monomaniac and a bore? I don’t care about what I used to say. I like this girl and I like her for a very selfish reason: she has brought me together with my son. He never asked me for anything before; that was always his mother’s fault. I had to go and see him – beg him – and he was sullen and distrustful. And now he’s come to see me of his own free will and he’ll come again if I play my cards right. I was wrong, Chomley; is that what you want to hear? What’s Chad to my sons? It’s just down the road. My father would have been angry if I’d married a Scot or an Irishwoman – definitely an Irishwoman. The world has changed and I’m just a silly old fool. I’m just a molecular biologist, a very good one but not God Almighty. What do I know? You think I’m a racist, because I said all those things about the intelligence of negroes. Well, you’re right: that is racism, but at least I said what I thought – more because of the weight of my upbringing than any intellectual thing.”
“Am I interested in your family life?” Chomley asked with unfamiliar steel and his sarcasm underscored.
“No, this isn’t about my family life any more; it’s about intellectual method. In those drab little books of yours with their quite unscientific methodology – if you don’t mind me saying – you fail to understand that in those areas of human thought we can only hope to organise our ignorance and give it a little shape. That’s a huge task, and the results have to be modest. What I do and Johnny does is science and the results are very concrete. In other areas of my life, theory is one thing and experience another, and experience has the upper hand. When he showed me the picture of that girl, I knew that I wanted to help her too. Maybe the relationship won’t last; young love rarely does, but I won’t be the one to drive her away and she’ll be the means by which I get my son into my life.”
He stood up, gathered his things together, and smiled at Chomley: “I can be an arse, I know. You’ve had a rotten time. There’s more to life than a good lunch, and a good lunch is not primarily the food on the table; it is the sum of the relationships that surround it. Do you want me to pay the bill?”
Hexham practically danced out of the restaurant.
Chomley paid at the desk near the door, lifted his coat from the rack and slipped it on as he stepped out onto the street. There was a fine drizzle which, given his mood, depressed him. Hexham, presumably, had found it refreshing.