After lunch, quite suddenly, the sky clouded over, and a light rain began to fall. It was still raining as Lavinia set out the tea-things for herself and Mr Honeyball. She glanced from time to time out of the window at the garden, where the soft heedless rain went on falling, slanting down between the alleys formed by the low hedges, on to the grass. No wind, she noticed: leaf and flower hung motionless, passive before the rain. Would Mr Honeyball be late? In her pleasurable excitement she visualized him as he would arrive, stepping along the wet paving stones to the door, his narrow shoes gleaming, lightly stepping, his thin pale face and rimless glasses questing alertly, in his hand a slim black briefcase with gilt fittings and clasps. She thought of his meticulous moustache, two narrow slanting lines of dark brown hair, like Ronald Colman’s. It was a sophisticated moustache, and below it Mr Honeyball’s mouth was compressed, patient.
She switched on the radio and like an omen of successful consummation it was one of the old-timers, David Lovejoy, just starting to sing ‘Dangerous Midnight’. Lavinia joined in eagerly, in her slightly clotted soprano, as she moved here and there, setting all in readiness.
Mr Honeyball was not a stranger, exactly, he had visited the school several times in his capacity of Ministry of Education official, three times in the last month, in fact. Donald of course was worried by this; he didn’t like this interest on the part of the Ministry, something about a take-over, but why should the State be interested in a little place like theirs? No, she thought she knew why Mr Honeyball came so frequently, and it had nothing to do with his official function. He came in need. So while not technically a stranger, in the world of romance he was one; in that rainbow-tinted, many-splendoured zone he could be regarded as such, as someone who might suddenly, fulminatingly, be glimpsed among indifferent faces, who might declare himself, and this might happen now, today, because this world of love was a completely different world, where everything began anew.
Cups, saucers, bowl, jug were all deep blue stoneware. Spoon and tongs silver. On the low rectangular pine table the whole ensemble looked tasteful. ‘Borrowed love, stolen kisses, da-dee-da-dee-da.’ David Lovejoy, there was a man for you, none of your unisex persons, tight trousers but what was there inside them? No, not one of that lot. She liked a man who was a real man. Mr Honeyball was slender, he was a different sort, more of a brain worker, but there was a clench and pounce about him, that neatness was fierce, she thought. He could be in one of those films you saw, in some tropical corner of empire. When we had the empire. Not giving in for one second, either to the debilitating climate or the lax ways of the natives. Yearning inside, of course. Repressed and malarial. And so sexy and steamy out there in the bush, on safari, or tea-planting, or one of those Forgotten Men in the French Foreign Legion. Always dress for dinner, and so forth. Well, that was the British way. But my God, she thought, how their sheer appetite must build up over the weeks and months, all pent up inside them. Boundless ambitions possessed Lavinia suddenly. She wished she could multiply herself to satisfy all that need, bear the white men’s burden, patrol the skies like Super-woman, zooming down on desperate men. Mr Honeyball at least she could get to. He has that walk, she thought, as if it were all accumulated inside him, that tense, rather jerky way of walking, the feet flicking outwards, a gait absolutely redolent of sexual energy. There was a lot in the way men walked. Donald had a padding obedient walk, as if he were answering some call…
Well, here she was, perfumed and prepared, ready and willing to assuage Mr Honeyball, turn him into a sated stroller, if only they could get on to those terms. That had been the problem hitherto; things had been kept too formal, too much at a conversational level, with Mr Honeyball shy and neat, not allowing himself to relax even, let alone unbutton. This time, Lavinia had decided, things would be taken a stage further. ‘Once you have found him never let him go.’ A deep-chested man, David Lovejoy. He was a long-distance lorry driver before his leap to fame.
She checked the tea-things once again, while the voice of the former lorry-driver continued, full of power and yearning, announcing the miraculous dream come true, the disappointments of the years expunged, all dross purged in that moment of recognition, and a perfect sexual union to follow, transport upon transport and throe upon throe until the shudders of the last trump. That was the message and he was putting it over well.
Lavinia found herself entirely in accord. That sudden blinding moment that redeems all had been taken for granted since her earliest girlhood, the possibility of it implicit in practically all she had read since then. The words she was listening to, the swirling sweetness of the accompanying strings, were not bemoaning a void but signalling faith in the possibilities of life. On some enchanted occasion one stood before another person and knew. This simple faith had survived all conjugal disillusionment, all knowledge of her own carnality. It was as vigorous now, this warm rainy afternoon, as she set out the tea-things, as it had ever been.
On a large, curly-edged plate, blue and white, with a pattern of mandarins and dwarf trees, she laid out the sandwiches, some egg, some ham. She had trimmed off the crusts for the sake of elegance – Mr Honeyball, she had observed, was not by any means a gross feeder, whatever the degree of relish. Around this centre-piece were smaller plates, bearing eclairs, meringues, small amenable doughnuts. Everything was in readiness. David Lovejoy ended on a high note. The music throbbed into silence. A diffident voice with a northern accent spoke briefly of next day’s weather, predicting that it would be unsettled. This was succeeded by another voice, which said, rather sternly, Here are the news headlines: One more victim of last night’s bomb outrage has died in hospital, bringing the total of deaths to twenty-four. The Prime Minister and leaders of the Opposition are due to meet one hour from now to discuss the possibility of forming a Government of National Unity. No statement of the agenda has yet been released, but the Prime Minister himself is expected to make a brief statement after the meeting. Reports still coming in from Bangladesh speak of widespread –
Pouting with boredom and disgust Lavinia switched the set off.
In the Home for Aged Gentlewomen, Mrs Mercer and Mrs Greenepad were listening to the radio too, the latter to the very same news bulletin that had so disgusted Lavinia, the former to ballet music. They each had their own set now: the radio ordered for Mrs Mercer by Lavinia had been delivered some ten minutes previously; and after a brief impromptu dance of delight by the old lady, in which hair-pins and exclamations had been shed all over her side of the room, it had been at once turned on. Now the two old ladies were sitting at opposite ends of the room, each listening with a harassed expression to her own set, each doing her level best to ignore the sounds emerging from the other. Mrs Greenepad, as was her wont, was listening to the news, for pleasurable confirmation that things were falling apart; Mrs Mercer had decided to celebrate her new-found independence by listening to a concert by the B.B.C. Northern Orchestra, leader Paul Beard, which was at present playing Prokofiev’s overture to Romeo and Juliet. Neither of the old ladies was able to enjoy her chosen programme because of the distraction caused by the other. And this distraction was increasing, because each of them kept raising the volume.
Who actually started it was destined to be a source of acrimonious discussion for a long time to come, but Mrs Greenepad was probably the aggressor. Old as she was, long accustomed to unquestioned supremacy and sole control of all transmissions she did not at first fully appreciate the challenge. She had reacted quite uncompromisingly to the swirling of the ballet music by giving her volume control a quarter turn. Her room-mate, determined, after the long years of deprivation, to assert herself, had promptly done the same. Ballet music at a loud volume has a very sinister, threatening sound, and she was beginning to feel frightened, but she was resolved not to give in.
It now seems clear, Mrs Greenepad’s announcer said stridently, that the Town Criers are not the group responsible for the latest bomb outrages. Of the remaining claimants the most likely would appear to be –
Mrs Greenepad, though listening intently, failed to hear the name of the terrorist organization concerned and, in annoyance at this failure, which she attributed to her room-mate’s having turned her set up again, she gave her volume control another quarter turn. At this volume the voice of the announcer was distorted; the moment had been reached when any further buildup would be counter-productive. Mrs Mercer, aware of increased blare from behind her, escalated in her turn – too much, because her hands were trembling, and clumsy in their movements. The music was now thunderous. Mercutio was being slain under circumstances damaging to the eardrums, cymbals crashing and ripping through bull roar of bassoons, drums pounding like Mrs Mercer’s own heartbeats madly amplified. She was badly frightened now and felt a sensation of being drawn in, engulfed in that fury of sound. But she persisted, not really any longer by an effort of will, but because she felt bound to the wheel, and must endure. With the tiny part of her brain not blasted and numbed by the sound, she obliged her head and right hand to move in palsied time to the music, in an attempt to bluff Emily, convey an impression of insouciance.
….reported earlier to have lost an arm, has merely suffered the loss of thumb and forefinger on his right hand. In some cases, owing to extensive facial injuries, identification has not been possible. The Archbishop of Canterbury has described the explosion as an outrage.
About time, about time, Mrs Greenepad thought wildly. About time the church took a hand. The music had subsided considerably. Mrs Greenepad, not knowing this was merely to mark the expiry of Mercutio, and assuming it to be a concession on the enemy’s part, lowered her own set by a quarter turn. Almost at once the music gathered strength again, adequately to represent Romeo’s guilt and rage.
This rage of Romeo’s coincided with Mrs Greenepad’s at what she imagined to be Edwina’s perverse refusal to compromise. She turned up her own set even louder than before, to its maximum in fact. The announcer’s voice now became extremely difficult to make out, so great was the distortion. He was yelling as if he had himself begun to suffer some of the agony he described daily.
… vultures grey and evil, bellowed the announcer. Dead children wrapped up in – Plasticine? No. Polythene, probably. Aha! Mrs Greenepad screamed to herself. Where did they get the polythene from? Her gender has not so far been revealed to the press, but a statement – Her gender? That couldn’t be right … The music had now got inextricably mingled with the news, forming a crashing, swirling accompaniment to the boom of the words. Mrs Greenepad twisted round furiously, saw her roommate still bravely nodding her dishevelled head to the music. She was unable, however, to see the expression of terror on Edwina’s face …
‘I’ll turn mine down, if you will,’ she screamed at the jigging head.
Mrs Mercer gave no sign. She had not heard. Suddenly a furious knocking began on the right hand wall, as if someone were striking against it with a heavy object. Mrs Oakley from next door. She would be coming in next. No interference, Mrs Greenepad thought dazedly. We’ll fight this out for ourselves. Her eyes and the whole top part of her head were throbbing painfully. She got up, went to the door, resisted the temptation to open it and escape, bolted it, returned to her booming set.
Mrs Mercer saw nothing of this action. She had not heard the knocking either, or if she had, had assumed it to be some activity of the drums. Romeo was on the point of putting paid to Tybalt. She was shudderingly attached to her set now, by some terrible current which would not release her. Her mouth was open, her eyes were glazed, the jigging of her head had become quite involuntary.
The man, thought to be an Indian, took a – Bakshish? Backseat? He told the driver – Taxi … Indian youth told the driver … burial crowd, ground … thought the man … funeral. Carrying a suit chased? case … driver what appeared to be the body of a child … white darling. Darling? Towelling … Wrapped up in white towelling …
‘Turn your set down,’ screamed Mrs Greenepad. Mrs Mercer did not hear her. There was a violent knocking at the door. Mrs Greenepad’s set emitted a fizzing sound, then a loud pop, and fell silent. An acrid smell of burning filled the room. Mrs Mercer, aware of the sudden cessation of sound behind her, made a great effort and with trembling hands, too dazed to feel triumph, turned her set off.
The Briefing Session was held in a long, narrow room with a highly polished rectangular table going down the middle. This room was known as the Committee Room, and used by Cuthbertson for all gatherings of staff. He was sitting in his customary position now, at the head of the table with Bishop on his right. On the wall behind him was a full-length portrait of a man in mortar-board and gown, standing in a pose of affable dignity, holding in his hands a scroll. This was a portrait of Cuthbertson in his capacity as Founder.
Now, about to set things in motion, he looked with a certain wariness at the little group of waiting faces. My staff. He felt for the moment no power to utter words that might be to the purpose. The water carafes and glasses gleamed along the table, well polished, he noticed, and properly set out. Bishop’s doing … The glasses were reflected in little pools along the surface of the table.
‘Is everybody present?’ Cuthbertson said.
‘I believe so, yes, Mr Cuthbertson,’ Bishop said deferentially. He never used his first-name privilege when there were others present.
‘Ah,’ Cuthbertson said, then paused, his attention again helplessly trapped among the reflections from the glasses, gleaming yet firm-edged, a series of precisely delimited pools of light. The bay below possessed precisely this quality of pallid radiance. But the room itself was blanched, shadowless. The throats of the daffodils deep yellow, clamorous … Somebody down the table spoke in a low voice. Feet shifted. Bishop shuffled papers, glancing about. The phone on Cuthbertson’s right rang suddenly, starling everyone. Cuthbertson picked up the receiver, inclined his head to it – he had a curiously suppliant way of speaking into the telephone.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Yes?’ For some moments he could not understand what the call was about, then he realized that it was his secretary, speaking about a plumber who had just arrived. Cuthbertson’s mind cleared. He remembered the insidious, the impermissible dripping of the bathroom tap. A man had come to repair it. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Show him straight up to the bathroom, will you, Miss Naylor?’
He replaced the phone, cleared his throat, and raised his face in a blind but dominating manner. ‘There are one or two things,’ he said slowly, ‘that I wish to bring to your attention, particularly as regards the ceremony this afternoon. By the way, I’d like a word with you, Mr Mafferty, when this Briefing Session is over.’
‘Right you are,’ Mafferty said.
‘It is the ceremony later this afternoon,’ Cuthbertson said, transferring his gaze from Mafferty with something of an effort, ‘that I want to talk to you all about. I am particularly anxious that everything should go smoothly. Last time there were not enough chairs provided.’ He looked at Bishop, who nodded and wrote something down.
‘That’s the kind of thing that gets us into a bad odour,’ Cuthbertson said. He looked down at the paper before him. ‘There are twenty-five students receiving the B.A., fifteen receiving the B.Sc., three M.A’s, two Ph.D’s and one Professor Emeritus – that is Mr Austin, who in my opinion has a brilliant future before him.’
‘Hear, hear,’ Bishop said. ‘A first-class brain.’
‘All these students are paid-up, all have attended regularly and applied themselves. I should like the ceremony to be conducted with dignity and decorum. I should like all the staff to wear their gowns. You have gowns, I issued you with gowns, so there is no excuse for not wearing them. Last time a member of staff appeared in a polo-neck sweater. Many of our students are from the emergent nations, I hardly need to remind you of that, and I should like them to carry away with them a proper sense of our older established civilization, the way we do things here, in the old country.’
‘The old firm,’ Bishop said.
Cuthbertson paused, looking at his second-in-command. ‘I don’t want anything to miscarry this time,’ he said.
‘Quite so,’ Bishop said, continuing to make notes.
‘It is their crowning moment, remember that,’ Cuthbertson said. ‘Walking up to the platform, the Union Jack draped over the table, shaking hands with me, the Principal, receiving their hard-earned qualifications amidst the plaudits of their fellows …’
He looked from face to face, launched at last, his eyes humid behind the glasses. None of the teachers quite met his gaze.
Lavinia went over to the large oval mirror on the wall, and surveyed herself, holding her face at various angles to the glass so that the light would fall on it in different ways, and she could check that her make-up was evenly applied, no tell-tale smears or blobs, no inexplicable suffusions, no hint of the hectic.
She saw nothing amiss. Her eyes were bright, her face had the composure of recently made-up faces. Her dress too she thought suitable to the occasion, white linen, very thin, indeed partially diaphanous, square at the neck in peasant style, and cut very low. She was wearing a bra of daring design, which drew her breasts together while actually containing only the lower halves of them.
She spent some time practising in front of the mirror, rehearsing poses that might be employed while entertaining Mr Honeyball. She thrust her shoulders back and raised her head mirthfully, thus forcing her breasts forward and causing the naked nipples delectably to press and prick against the thin material of her dress. That might be an appropriate response to any little witticism Mr Honeyball might utter. Alternatively, by leaning forward, as one might in offering a sandwich, she exposed her cleavage, a deep, smooth, creamy-white cleft. She had always, from a girl, had this creamy, satiny skin, absolutely flawless, all over her body.
She was heartened and encouraged by these exercises. When she could think of nothing else to do she dabbed a little more scent on her bosom and throat. She waited. She thought for a while about being forty, and about the people who were coming to her fancy-dress party that evening. Then she thought about Walter, their former gardener. He was a tall young man with reddish hair and pale blue eyes and a habit of whistling to himself as he went about his work, but his distinguishing feature, and one she had been quick to discern, was an imbalance in his trouser front, indicative of permanent semi-erection. How Donald, with his passion for symmetry, could have engaged a gardener with a permanent bulge on the left side of his trouser front had always been something of a mystery.
One day, in early spring, tulip-time, we had been married five years that March … pleasurably Lavinia embarked upon the familiar narrative. By dint of going over the incident in her mind she had shaped it into a gossipy sort of anecdote. I was telling him, telling Walter, my plans for the herbaceous borders. I had this idea of lupins, all different coloured lupins, massed together down the centres, lovely flowers, so English, and pansies at the edges. With pansies and lupins you couldn’t want for colour, could you? Maybe some of those French marigolds mixed in. I like a show, I like a good show of colour. I was explaining this to Walter when he suddenly put a hand on the small of my back. Some force outside myself made me go right on talking. If I had allowed a silence to develop, I don’t think he would have had the strength of character to proceed. I went right on talking. I was telling him to bank up the earth in the middle, to get a nice sloping effect, when he started pushing me along towards the tool-shed. He kept saying ‘Yes, ma’am,’ just as if nothing was happening, and I went right on talking about the herbaceous borders. All the time we were walking to the toolshed, a distance of some fifteen yards I was going on telling Walter that I wanted the flowers in ranks, I wanted a tiered effect, so it was important to … ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘Yes ma’am.’ He put me up against the back of the toolshed. Don’t forget, I said, I want lupins, don’t you go putting gladioli in. The buckle of his belt hurt my stomach, and that was the only thing of a personal nature I said to him then or ever, you’ll have to remove your belt, I said, and he did so. He had me standing up against the toolshed. I was fully clothed except for my knickers; those he took off. I was still going on about the lupins, though by this time finding it difficult to control my breathing. I couldn’t stop, I thought it might break the spell, as if somehow it was all the talk of herbaceous borders that had inflamed Walter in the first place and was now adding fuel to his libido. I was still trying to tell him about the lupins while he was actually … I’ve never been able to view lupins since in quite the same way. It was lovely.
Lavinia pressed hands against hot cheeks. She did not want to look red. Mr Honeyball would be here soon.
*
The plumber’s name was Adams. He was a stoutish, thick-necked, censorious man in early middle age, with a high colour and a more or less permanent look of indignation. This deepened as he was shown up to the bathroom by Miss Naylor whose miniskirt, preceding him up the stairs, revealed practically all there was of her shapely, silk-clad legs. The lubricity aroused in Mr Adams by this sight was at once, by some chemical change, converted into disapproval, he being a man whose impulses and passions had over the years got hopelessly mixed up with the habit of denigration; so much so that a sort of instantaneous transference was effected whenever, as now, he was vouchsafed more than his usual visual ration of the female form. He followed the secretary’s legs up the stairs, lusting and disapproving in equal measure.
His sense of Miss Naylor’s brazenness was reinforced by the luxurious softness of the carpeting under his heavy shoes, and by the obvious expensiveness of all the fittings and furnishings that met his view. He hoisted his bag of tools, looking grimly upwards at the backs of Miss Naylor’s thighs. He noted red-shaded wall lamps on the landing. Call this place a school? Not on your nelly. He was a reader of the Sunday Press, he knew about dens of vice. This was a high-class bordello. Plenty of money about. Not short of a bob or two. Probably cost you a week’s wages just for a quick bash. The thought envenomed his already strong feelings of disapprobation. When the revolution comes, he thought, the real revolution, we’ll clean up places like this, vicious smears on our civilization, and make sure we get fair shares for all …
He followed the secretary along a passage, past a picture of wild horses tossing their manes, past a number of closed doors. A tall pale man passed them silently, with a sidelong glance from prominent, yellowish eyes.
‘Who was that, then?’ Mr Adams said, drawing alongside the secretary. ‘One of your clients, was it?’
‘A student,’ Miss Naylor said. ‘From the Middle East.’
Pull the other one, Mr Adams thought. That man had a sated look. Bloody foreigners, coming here, taking advantage of the fall in the pound.
‘Oh, yes?’ he said, in a tone that conveyed disbelief.
‘Here we are,’ Miss Naylor said, opening a door. She preceded him into the pink and black bathroom. ‘It is the hot-water tap on the bath,’ she said.
Mr Adams had been further offended by the colour-scheme. He looked at the tap, which dripped steadily and obviously into the bath. The sight of it confirmed his unfavourable opinion of the place. People who admitted openly to faults in their water-systems he regarded with suspicion anyway. Any man not hopelessly corrupt would have rolled his sleeves up and had a go at this himself. ‘I would not of known that,’ he said.
‘What?
‘That it was the tap. I might of spent the whole afternoon searching out the trouble.’
His sarcasm effected no change in Miss Naylor’s features. ‘You’ll be all right, then, will you?’ she said, lingering at the door, touching her hair with silver-tipped fingers.
‘All right?’ Mr Adams said, looking at her with his habitual indignation. ‘Yes, I should think I’ll be all right here. I can always have a wash and brush-up, if I come to the end of my resources, like.’
Miss Naylor turned indifferently away and disappeared through the door. Mr Adams’ face relaxed with sour satisfaction. That had put her in her place a bit, he thought. Showing off her arse like that. Probably one of the call-girls, if the truth was known. He turned and regarded the offending tap.
‘Leave it to me,’ Bishop said, busily writing. ‘Leave it to me. Have no fears about the seating arrangements.’
‘If there is nowhere to sit,’ Cuthbertson said, ‘they might move about, start congregating in groups. You see the dangers?’
‘Discipline, they lack discipline,’ Bishop said. ‘That is what they are deficient in. You can’t blame them. They haven’t had the benefit of our institutions. That sort of discipline and self-control – why, it takes generations to produce that.’
‘We can impart something of it,’ Cuthbertson said. ‘We can sow the seed. I am just an old-fashioned patriot, really. People say this country’s voice no longer carries the same weight, that we are no longer pre-eminent in the councils of the world. And this may be true in a temporary sense. But one thing we have got, something that can’t be taken away from us, something that doesn’t depend on overseas possessions or military power, and that is moral influence. Moral influence. The influence of our great past, our civilized standards. These graduates of ours go forth to the four corners of the earth, bearing our standards, to make a play on words …’
‘Ha, ha,’ Mafferty said, anxious to get into the Principal’s good books again.
Cuthbertson regarded him without expression.
‘It is a great thought,’ Bishop said, also looking at Mafferty.
‘To take one example,’ Cuthbertson said, ‘among many. There is a delegation from Turkey due to arrive later this afternoon. These are people interested in, ah, founding private universities in their own country. They come to us for guidance. I shall be showing them round. They will form certain impressions. That is what I mean by moral influence. It is a great trust.’
His eyes as he spoke were on Mafferty, who did not feel comfortable under this regard but tried to gain ground by nodding earnestly and repeatedly.
‘Well,’ Cuthbertson said, and once again it was something of an effort to look away from Mafferty’s nodding face, ‘before we break up … You have no further business, Mr Bishop?’
Bishop shook his head, pushing out his lips in the judicious pouting expression he used to denote complete mastery of a situation.
‘There are one or two things I should like to say,’ Cuthbertson said. He cleared his throat and reared up his head until his neck was at its fullest stretch. ‘If I could revert,’ he said, ‘briefly, to the presentation ceremony due later this afternoon …’ He paused. There was nothing, really, to say. Everything had been gone into, every detail planned. The ceremony would follow the usual procedure. But he wanted the reassurance of feeling that his staff was behind him, on this important occasion.
‘We are only as strong,’ he said, ‘as our weakest member. I would like you to remember that. I want to feel that you are behind me, to a man. “United we fall, divided we stand.” No, wait a minute, I’ve got it wrong.’
The slip routed him completely. He looked from face to face, attempting laughter. ‘It’s the other way round,’ he said. ‘Divided we fall.’ The blood beat in his temples. The faces of his staff began to caricature themselves before his eyes. All their expressions seemed slowly to intensify, as if in this wilful manner they were hinting at hidden, more profound divisions. Bishop’s face furrowed deeper in the travail of pointless, unproductive cerebration; Beazely’s sagged with bland self-complacence; Binks’ grew sharper-nosed, more acquisitive. All, all of them grew momently more hideously themselves.
The sense of danger, dreadful danger, returned to Cuthbertson; the certainty that these people, like all groups, were a threat to peace and order, unless they could be controlled, dominated, organized. He closed his eyes for a moment. Into his dazed and almost paralysed mind there came the vision of Bishop as he had stood that morning awaiting orders: jacket; white collar and plain tie; fawn trousers; suede footgear. He opened his eyes again. It struck him suddenly, with immense force, what a motley crew his staff was, all so differently attired.
‘Well,’ Bishop said, regarding the chief anxiously, ‘if there is no further business, we could perhaps – ’
‘One moment,’ Cuthbertson said loudly. ‘Just one moment.’ There was deep silence in the room. The surface of the table continued to deploy its tricky pools of light. ‘What I must insist on is standards,’ Cuthbertson said. Dimly, beyond the barriers of the present he glimpsed a possible state of being for himself, longed for and dreaded, destructive freedom, violent peace, paradoxes that his mind sheered away from.
‘Standards,’ he said. ‘All around us, on every side, there are the foes to civilization, those who would undermine our standards, there are people and ideas whose very existence is a threat to the social fabric. And I am using that term in the very widest possible sense …’ It seemed to him as he spoke that his words were forming the only track in a wilderness of silence. So long as he went on talking there was a way to follow. At the outer edges of his words vast deserts of silence began. This slender track of speech was threatened at every smallest pause by thick drifts of silence. In the effort to prevent this obliteration he found himself talking faster and faster … ‘Academic standards, the highest possible critical standards, such as I like to think we enforce here, in this, ah, enclave, but there are other standards too, standards of dress, I often feel besieged as I go about my work here, yes, it is the only word, besieged by these forces militating against standards, you did not know that while you are teaching I am constantly patrolling, did you, no, you didn’t know that, yes, I maintain an unremitting vigilance, yes, it is the only word, I often feel that the smallest relaxation on my part would result in engulfment, and that is what I want of you that you continue to give me your support, help with the sandbags, of course, I speak metaphorically …’
Cuthbertson laid a hand on his heart in a dramatic gesture very unusual with him. He was breathing heavily, and his eyes behind the heavy glasses were wide and staring. Once more, like pain gathering, he felt the possibility of violence and freedom. ‘Give me your loyalty,’ he said. ‘The least you can do. Loyalty to me. To me. I would like to see male members of staff dressed as follows: dark jacket or blazer, white shirt, tie of a plain colour. I do not specify the colour …’
‘More tea?’ Lavinia said tenderly, rising and holding out her hand for Mr Honeyball’s cup, remembering to lean towards him at the same time, with her left elbow tucked well into her side.
‘Ah, thank you.’ Honeyball handed over his cup with a pinched white smile. He had been from the start both flattered and alarmed by the emphatic hospitality Mrs Cuthbertson had displayed towards him. He took out a white handkerchief, shook if briefly, folded it again into a neat triangle, and brushed at each side of his moustache to remove any lingering crumbs. He also, while Lavinia was busy pouring tea, used the handkerchief to dab at cheeks and brow. He was finding it distinctly hot in the room, a heat compounded, thickened, by sweetish odours. Honeyball’s nostrils twitched puritanically. Mrs Cuthbertson, he had realized, applied perfumes to her person, and these then became something else, an element in a new compound, mingling with the transpirations of her body. His nostrils twitched again, apprehensively. This thought about the perfume was an unusual kind of thought for him, and he was struggling to get it into shape, express it to himself in the careful formal English he generally used in official communiqués, notes and minutes; watching, meanwhile, from his place on the sofa, his slim, unrelaxed back thrust against velvet-textured cushions, his buttocks dangerously deeply ensconced in the yielding stuff of the sofa; watching Lavinia’s form in side view as she occupied herself with the tea-things, the clinging material of her dress shaping itself around the voluptuous contours on her body.
Why had she asked him? He had thought at first pleasurably, that it was to plead with him not to recommend Cuthbertson for the take-over. She did not know, of course, that decisions of that kind did not rest with him. He was merely a cog in the Ministry machine, he merely made reports. It was on the basis of many reports, and on general expediency, that the decision, if there was a decision, would be made. He had said nothing of this to Cuthbertson, because it had been Eric’s express instruction not to, and in any case he enjoyed the sense of power which prolonging Cuthbertson’s anxiety conferred on him. He had been hoping Mrs Cuthbertson would plead with him on her husband’s account, then he could have begun the delicate process of bargaining for a rent-free office in the School. If only, tonight, at the party, he could whisper to Eric that it was as good as settled! Then, surely, he too would qualify for a citation … But the several allusions, which, in order to give her an opening, he had made, she had ignored or carelessly dismissed. Obvious, then, that she had other ends in view … She was turning to him now with his tea. Smiling. Fine figure of a woman, he told himself uneasily. What would Eric have said, how would Eric have managed things?
‘Here we are.’ Lavinia advanced upon him, bearing the steaming cup. ‘Do you mind the music?’ she said. ‘I can turn it off if you like.’
‘Pray don’t do anything of the sort,’ Honeyball said, raising a slim hand in protest.
‘I like a bit of background music,’ Lavinia said, rather vaguely. The music so far had not been very suitable. One or two raucous groups, then some negress plangently bewailing her lot. None of it very conducive to the languorous mood she was aiming at. But things were improving now. It was excerpts from The Desert Song. Apparently there had been a reissue.
‘I didn’t hear who the singer was,’ she said. ‘Did you? It doesn’t sound like the tenor who did it on the original one, does it? More nasal somehow. What was his name, do you remember?’
‘I’m afraid not, the name escapes me,’ Honeyball said. Mrs Cuthbertson was wearing open-work sandals, and he had just noticed, with a distinct shock, that her toenails were painted scarlet, in a highly barbaric manner. She had excellently shaped feet, excellent. The veins rather prominent. Fine figure of a woman. He drank his hot tea with injudicious haste, scalding his mouth slightly. He gasped a little, opening his mouth to let cool air in.
‘Takes you back a bit, doesn’t it?’ Lavinia said, noticing nothing of this. ‘My goodness.’ She laughed and touched her hair, as if those days still needed living up to. ‘Not that I saw the original show, of course.’ She laughed again.
Mr Honeyball stared blankly at her for some moments, then with a shaft of insight saw what needed to be said. ‘Saw it?’ he said. ‘I should think not. You weren’t born then.’ He smiled thinly, pleased with his graceful compliment, worthy, he thought, of Eric himself.
‘I wouldn’t go quite so far as that,’ Lavinia said. She smiled tenderly at Mr Honeyball, and crossed her legs with a certain carelessness. ‘Don’t forget you’re coming to my party tonight,’ she said.
‘As though I could forget,’ Honeyball said, keeping up the tone.
‘I did tell you about the masks, didn’t I?’
‘Yes. I have my costume all prepared.’
‘Don’t tell me what it is; it’s bad luck. No one will know who anybody is, until we all unmask at midnight. You can guess, of course. No harm in guessing.’
‘I think it’s a marvellous idea,’ Mr Honeyball said.
Lavinia raised her head alertly. ‘It is Richard Tauber,’ she said. ‘That is who it is. Beautiful voice, hasn’t he?’
‘He has indeed,’ Mr Honeyball said. ‘Very mellow.’ He did not care for music of any kind.
‘It was Sigmund Romberg who wrote the music. The director was a man named Fink. I knew all their names at one time. I still think it’s the best musical that’s ever been. So romantic, you know. I think a good musical should be unashamedly romantic, don’t you?’ She gave him a meaning look. ‘I am very romantic in my outlook,’ she said.
‘My friend, Eric,’ Honeyball said quickly, scenting an opportunity, ‘Eric Baines, who you have been kind enough to ask to your party tonight, he is a very romantic person, too. He listens a lot to the music of Gilbert and Sullivan. He is a very fine man, I’m sure you’ll like him. He’s a real patriot. You’ll hardly believe this, but at present he has absolutely nowhere to – ’
‘I would call that more operetta myself,’ Lavinia interposed, rather sharply. She did not really like Mr Honeyball praising another man to her. It showed a generous nature, of course, but he should be promoting his own interests. All the same, this Baines sounded an interesting person.
‘Well, the years pass,’ she said. ‘We can’t put the clock back.’
Nothing if not sensitive, Mr Honeyball had noticed the change in Lavinia’s tone, the slight note of reproof. She was obviously not ready yet to lend an ear to Eric’s predicament. Selfish cow, he thought with a spurt of vindictiveness. A great man like Eric. Cautiously he sought again that vein of gallantry which had seemed so successful. ‘The years have wrought no loss to you, dear lady,’ he said. From the depths of the sofa he inclined his narrow head with timid courtesy. ‘They have given you dignity,’ he said, ‘without detracting from your bloom.’
Lavinia smiled dreamily at him, in an effort to live up to this. She felt however that things were not really moving to any sort of climax, nothing was coming to a head. Mr Honeyball was constantly defusing things with his elaborate language and old-world courtesy. He was also half-submerged in the sofa, and there seemed no immediate way of getting at him. They might go on like this for the rest of the afternoon.
She surveyed Mr Honeyball thoughtfully. It was shyness, of course. Underneath, she felt sure that he was rearing to go. Interiorly speaking, he was rampant. Look at the way he was sitting, rigid backed, tense, as if coiled for a spring. Like a beast of the jungle, some questing predator. His knees were pressed together, and the creases in his trousers made sharp, fierce lines.
‘Milk?’ she said, with a peculiar emphasis, leaning towards Mr Honeyball, with the milk-jug poised above his cup. This posture, by allowing the loose dress to fall away in front, revealed the full glory of her upper breasts, which were presented some eighteen inches from Mr Honeyball’s eyes, in all their scented, slightly heaving nudity – a devastating effect she was hoping, and one which, in any case, rendered her hospitable question distinctly ambiguous.
Mr Honeyball pressed his back against the sofa. His forehead felt clammy, and the sides of his nose prickled. Overt sexuality in women had always frightened and repelled him. ‘Just a little,’ he said, looking fixedly at the jug in his hostess’s hand. ‘Just a drop.’ In self-protection, in the evasive energy his mind had to summon to escape from the effulgence and blandishment of that bosom, he recalled the sequence of names his hostess had uttered in connection with Desert Song.
‘Ironical,’ he said, raising his fragile-seeming head in pride and contempt. He was wedged now in the corner of the sofa, so that he felt secure at least from rear or flank attack. He looked beyond Mrs Cuthbertson, at the gold and black stripes on her wallpaper.
‘What is?’
‘Those names,’ he said.
The yearning voice of the sheikh came over to them, full of a desolation far beyond the words it was uttering:
One alone, to be my own
I alone to know her caresses
‘What do you mean?’ Lavinia said. ‘I don’t quite see what you mean.’ She rose from her place and sat down beside Mr Honeyball on the sofa, thus entrapping him still further in his corner.
This would be a wonderful world for me,
If you were mine alone,
sang the lonely tenor. Lavinia moistened her lips, looking wide-eyed at Mr Honeyball.
‘Romberg, Fink,’ Mr Honeyball said, and the names were a bitter incantation against the pressure of Lavinia’s thigh. He compressed his lips. The skin above his cheek-bones tightened. He shifted, reducing the pressure slightly. ‘They write music about the desert and the outdoor life,’ he said. ‘What do they know about it?’
‘Who?’ Lavinia was bewildered. ‘Who are you talking about?’ she said.
‘All those people are Jews, you know.’ Mr Honeyball was now again very strongly aware of his hostess’s musky odour. He said desperately, ‘What do they know about camping out and roughing it? Hiking, and biking, all the things that have made this country what it is. What do they know about it?’
‘What about Israel?’ Lavinia said. ‘Plenty of desert and outdoor life there.’
‘Impressarios,’ Mr Honeyball said, as if he had not heard. ‘Do you mean to say you are not aware of it?’ He felt for his handkerchief again, and wiped the sides of his nose. ‘You should hear Eric on the subject,’ he said. ‘My friend Eric Baines.’ He was moved. His eyes met hers almost with boldness. ‘Everywhere,’ he said. ‘They are everywhere. In all our vital nerve-cells. Do you mean to say you hadn’t realized it?’