5

THE FALL SEMESTER at Benedict Arnold had not begun; there were four more days of peace before it did. Party and the campus rested on in the summer sunlight, and the mountains sat quietly behind them all. In the university buildings, classrooms stood empty and cavernous, their desks with little curved writing arms waiting to be filled. The soda fountain in the union contained only faculty members in nylon shirts and the campus maintenance men and policemen. In the university bookstore, behind a display of university pennants and sweatshirts with cartoon characters on the bosoms, a single, bored clerk read, for curiosity’s sake, Up from Liberalism, a required text in the sophomore course on International Affairs in the Modern World (Dr Jochum). Only a few small faculty children bathed noisily in the lake. In the driveway of the Sigma Chi house the fraternity’s red fire-engine, an assertive symbol of manhood, awaited the return of the residents from the delectations of the fifty states and Bermuda and Europe. The clean air sang. In the mornings, before the sun grew hot, the day came up fresh, bright and cool. People stirred early; at the Bourbon household Dr Bourbon was up with . . . if not the lark, then the vulture. Clad in a handsome Japanese kimono, carrying about a peanut-butter sandwich, he did half an hour of push-ups on the patio and turned on the sprinklers before going into his study to write, before breakfast, a thousand words of Marston: the Man, the Moment and the Milieu. The keys of the typewriter flicked; the pages of reference books flipped; and new horizons of Marston thinking opened while the sprinklers bubbled outside. The carillon on campus began a morning rendition of ‘Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer’. The garbage cart coasted down the street. In bed James Walker slept further on into the day.

The heat thickened. The mountains grew hazy. Late night adulterers walked quietly home. Crispin, the Bourbons’ maladjusted son, rose, showered, pulled on his Levi’s and a sweatshirt, fixed himself some fruit-juice, got into his hotrod car and roared away in a scurry of dust, heading for town to exercise his devil. The carillon played ‘These Foolish Things’. Walker stirred but slept on. The sun rose higher and the areas of shade disappeared. Mrs Bourbon, in a Japanese kimono that matched Harris’s, got up and went into the kitchen to ladle out breakfast, a feast habitually used by Alphonse and Brandy as missiles in substitute for other forms of communication between them. The carillon rendered ‘Bless You for Being an Angel’. And Walker stirred and began to heave himself into consciousness. The day shone bright into the room, penetrating the vestigial drapes. The light had a colour and vigour that he was not used to and he found himself meeting it – was it the light that did it, or something else? – with expectation. His dreams seemed curiously energetic; his body, this last few days, seemed to be taking on new power. He no longer needed sleep so much; he no longer felt away from where he belonged, and he no longer awoke missing Elaine’s big bulk beside him. In the mountains the train whistles echoed and America seemed to him a landscape of excitement. He got out of bed with some pleasure, ready for the day.

Downstairs he could hear the skillet, frying those absurdly thin rashers of American bacon that crisped into tiny autumn leaves of food, and also a strange booming sound – it was the sound of Dr Bourbon singing lustily to himself at the typewriter. Walker, who had already adopted the American custom of sleeping in his undershorts, and was already viewing his own body with a good deal more interest as a result, padded through to the bathroom and took a shower. It no longer annoyed him; now it cleansed and neatened him. Because it wet his hair, he had resolved to have it all cut short; perhaps that would thicken it up, too, like turf. The extractor fan, whirring mercilessly over his head, no longer irritated him either. When he had showered he stood naked on the bathroom scales and looked at the measure; he was going to watch his weight. He opened the medicine cabinet and took, from among the rows of deodorants and dandruff remover, anti-congestants and purgatives, eyewash and shower talc, Dr Bourbon’s dental floss, now his favourite method of cleaning his teeth. Then he sat on the lavatory pot and lit one of Dr Bourbon’s cigarettes, which lay on the flushing mechanism, and read a few pages of Bourbon’s lavatory book, A. C. Bradley’s Shakespearean Tragedy. Outside, the noises of Alphonse and Brandy, drowning one another in the pool, could be heard and in the distance the carillon played ‘I’m Sitting on Top of the World’. ‘In the circumstances where we see his hero placed,’ he read, ‘his tragic trait, which is also his greatness, is fatal to him. To meet these circumstances something is required which a smaller man might have given, but which the hero cannot give.’ He put a match in the place to mark it and got up, finished his business, and went back into the bedroom. His clothes lay in piles about the room. He put on trousers and a shirt, gazing out as he did so at the high furry peaks in the distance, the sprays of water rising from the sprinklers on the lawn, and the Japanese wind-chimes that tinkled in the breeze where they hung under the house-eaves. When he was dressed, he opened the door and paused for a moment in the corridor, taking a deep breath to ready himself for the generous syrup of American hospitality that he knew was to be poured over his head.

The Bourbons, from the first, had been poised to be kind to him. As soon as he reached the kitchen, Dr Bourbon, Japanese robe open to a furry navel, appeared at the door of his study. ‘Guess that puts me ’bout two thousand wuds ahead this morning, boy,’ he said cheerfully, cracking two eggs into the skillet with a practised and professional motion that came from doing, apparently, all the household cooking. ‘How’d you like ’em? Done both sides?’

‘Right,’ said Walker.

‘Right right,’ said Dr Bourbon, pouring out juice into a beaker. ‘You got to be mighty sharp to git ahead of me. Read plays at all, Mis’ Walker?’

‘Some.’

‘Marston?’

‘No, I’m afraid not.’

‘That’s a mighty underestimated man, that Marston,’ said Bourbon, slapping fat around the eggs with a fish-slice. ‘You read him, boy, you take a look. Immoral, though. That egg look right to your taste?’

‘It looks fine to me.’

Bourbon sprinkled some tabasco sauce over his concoction and put it in front of Walker, still in the skillet. ‘There now, git some of this good grub down you and meet the day right.’

‘Give him a glass of milk, Harris,’ said Mrs Bourbon, who had been operating the dishwasher in another corner of the big kitchen.

‘You want some toast with that?’ asked Bourbon, pouring the milk into a glass.

‘No, thanks,’ said Walker.

‘Yes, give him some French toast,’ said Mrs Bourbon.

As Walker ate they stood around him, high and lanky the one, round and maternal the other, working out his plans for the day. Did he want a freewheelin’ day, just moseyin’ around, or a programmed day, with a picnic and a trip somewhere? Would he care for something on the hi-fi while he breakfasted (Dr Bourbon rushed into the community room to put on Copeland’s ‘Billy the Kid’, which boomed out western euphoria through the seven speakers scattered about the house)? Or would he care to listen to KNOW, the campus radio station (Mrs Bourbon flipped the switch, and Dr Lee Fichu came bubbling through with a sunshine course on astral physics, carefully directed to the taste of fact-oriented morons)? The campus carillon changed to ‘Pale Hands I Loved Beside the Shalimar’; the coffee bubbled in the percolator; the kids made a rumpus in the rumpus room. The warm air soughed on the patio. Too fresh, new and innocent to have any plans, Walker said so. ‘I’ll do what you think,’ he said. The Bourbons strove to commit him to decisions, pointing out, in effect, that America was a democratic country, and it was every man’s task to create his own fate even if he had no background on which to decide it. ‘It’s your choice, Mis’ Walker,’ said Bourbon, looking distressed. Bourbon suggested trips here, Mrs Bourbon suggested trips there. There was Party to see, and the campus, and the county, and the mountains, and the mines, and the ranches, and the state as a whole, and the next state, and the state after that. ‘I leave it entirely to you,’ said Walker.

‘So polite, the English,’ said Mrs Bourbon, adding as an afterthought, to restore community. ‘Aren’t we?’

On the first day they had gone up to the mountains, and had a picnic in the pine forest. ‘We got a course in picnicking at the university,’ said Dr Bourbon. ‘It’s called Geology, but it’s really picnicking.’ Coming back, they stopped on the ridge of the foothill range and looked down upon Party, a green tract in the distance identifiable by the phallic campanile of the university. On the second day they drove the other way, into the shortgrass plains, until the mountains dipped out of sight and the endless flatness that Walker had seen on his arrival became the only landscape. Today, on the third day, Dr Bourbon, forced to make Walker’s decisions for him, revealed that he really had a meeting at the university and ought to go there. ‘Well, I’d love to look around the campus,’ said Walker.

‘Well, right, good,’ said Bourbon. ‘Actually I was goin’ to suggest it, if you’d wanted to do anything else . . .’

They finished breakfast, the Bourbons went into their bedrooms and took off their Japanese robes, and then it was time to go and, Bourbon in Levi’s, Mrs Bourbon in Bermuda shorts, they got into the car and drove into town. On campus great cranes lifted new buildings into place. They drove down fraternity row, past the houses, some castellated and defensible, some modern and indefensible; they looked to be interesting mixtures of formal luxury and informal squalor. Rows of red MGs and white Corvettes were parked outside. ‘All those cars,’ said Walker.

‘You ain’t seen nothin’,’ said Bourbon. ‘Why, most of the brothers ain’t even back yet.’

Further on were the sororities, where brown baked girls in two straps played basketball or sat outdoors reading in aluminium garden furniture. ‘Hang on to him here,’ said Dr Bourbon. ‘Don’t let him leap out the car.’ Then along the campus roads, of which there were several miles, past the lake (‘You might want to do a bit of swimmin’ there, but there are plenty of garden pools among the faculty. Trouble is you got to walk to them’), past the tower of KNOW (‘a truly stimulatin’ project; I reckon that’s made us into a real educated little town’), past the student theatre (‘has its good years and its bad years, guess this is one of its bad years, heh, sweetie?’), the gymnasium (‘we’re mighty proud of the Olympic pool; fact we could put on the Olympics right here’), and the football stadium, where grotesquely shaped monolithic men struggled with padded machines against the fence (‘team’s down a bit this year; they lost their coach, he was bribing high-school kids with cars to come to BAU.’ ‘What happened to him?’ ‘He was demoted to full professor’).

‘What’s that building?’ said Walker, spotting a small version of Caernarvon Castle, dwarfed by the football stadium.

‘I guess that’s the library people keep talkin’ about,’ said Bourbon.

‘He knows it is,’ said Mrs Bourbon. ‘Why, Harris spends a whole lot of time in the library.’

Bourbon stopped the car with a screech. ‘Want to take a look? We got some good stuff here. First Folios, that kind of thing. But you ain’t a Shakespearean, are you?’

‘I’d like to see it,’ said Walker.

‘Harris teaches a one-semester course in library use for entering freshmen,’ said Mrs Bourbon, as they got out. ‘Isn’t that right?’

‘Tellin’ ’em how to find it, mostly,’ said Bourbon. An inscription over the portcullis, one letter obliterated by trailing ivy, declared: A GOOD OOK IS THE PRECIOUS LIFE BLOOD OF A MASTER SPIRIT. At the head of the steps, whereon several students sat smoking, was a large statue, representing innocence, female, naked and immense, taking a draught of learning from a stone jar. On its backside, which faced the visitor, the Greek letters of a fraternity had been inscribed in blue. They went through into the catalogue hall, freshened by air-conditioning, and then, past an elderly attendant female with blue hair, into the stacks. Suction equipment cleansed the air of dust and the only hazard was the perpetual twang of static electricity as they touched the shelves. Finding around him so much scholarship, Walker tasted for a moment the thought of writing one of these big books, solid and reliable, as a symbol of his election into a new community. But his mind, as he thought on, seemed not to be tuned to it. There was a time when novelists could decently write, in six weeks, a small tome on Novels I Love or Sport and the Novel, but those days had passed; now the new academic creator wrote Mimesis or The Road to Xanadu and took it quite comfortably along with his fiction. But he really hadn’t come that far; he didn’t know that much; and a sort of guilt about his lack of competence began to affect him as he stood in the bowels of this new world. ‘Lots of people wukkin’ in here today,’ said Dr Bourbon to him. ‘That’s because the library’s the coolest spot on campus. We made it that way by design. I’m always tellin’ my students, “Use the library; it’s the coolest spot on campus.” We infect a lot of very good kids that way.’ Bourbon’s bumbling scholarship, the foreignness of the students moving about in the stacks, even the fearsome American static electricity, conspired with Walker’s self-consciousness about his own academic qualifications to make him feel a stranger. How could he teach here? What would he do?

Dr Bourbon continued the tour, pointing out to Walker the shelves devoted to the English literature classification and the special reserve section, into which Walker would put reserved copies of the course books he was going to use. Even this was something about which he had not thought. Did his academic innocence show? Was even the self-centred Bourbon beginning to worry about the man he had brought here? But why worry? Bourbon seemed to accept everything; he took Walker into the undergraduate reading room, where, even now, a few early students on study dates read books with their arms around one another, and was unfazed by that sensuous spectacle; he paid no attention, as he led them back out of the door, to the fact that someone had pasted, on the pudenda of the statue, a notice declaring ‘Made in the Virgin Islands by Virgins’. The world was all one to him. They came back to the car and got in. ‘Lots of folks,’ said Bourbon, letting out the clutch, ‘call Benedict Arnold a play school, figurin’ that our kids just come here for a good time. Course we do have a lot of good sports around here, but that’s only a part of the students’ life around here. I get annoyed when people say our kids don’t learn nothin’. They learn a lot. They teach us and we teach them. We expect ’em to learn a lil and live a lil and play a lil. That’s what a U is for.’

‘I suppose it is,’ said Walker, watching a boy student walking by with a girl student on his shoulders.

‘And over here, right there where those panties are hanging out the window, that’s Thrump Hall, the girls’ dorm. And this here in front of it is student parkin’. President Coolidge was one of the first Prexies in the States to realize that one thing students require of a U is good parkin’.’

They drew up outside the English Department, in its wooden hut. ‘I guess I’ll take the car and go down to the supermarket,’ said Mrs Bourbon.

‘Okay, sweetie, you take a bite downtown somewhere and we’ll git ourselves a snack in the Faculty Club. That way I can introduce Mis’ Walker to a few of the guys. Then maybe you’ll stop by around the middle afternoon and pick us up.’

The car drove off, and Bourbon watched it go, his face dropping as he noticed the damaged rear end. ‘Wonder if Froelich’s in the buildin’ today,’ he said. ‘Come on in and we’ll do a tour around.’ Bourbon pointed out all the salient features of the premises. He showed Walker where the Coke machine was, and where to find the janitor. He took him into the English Office and introduced him to the four secretaries, neat young girls who sat behind typewriters painting their nails and beaming goodwill when people came in. ‘I want you to shake hands with these girls. Kiss ’em if you like. You’re going to depend on them a lot. If they moved out the building would fall down.’

‘Hello,’ said the girls. After Walker had told them how he was liking it over here and the girls had told him how much fun it was to have him here, Bourbon took Walker’s arm and led him to a wall which had been neatly boxed out with a mass of pigeonholes.

‘Here’s where you find your mail,’ he said.

‘Are these all staff pigeonholes?’ asked Walker, for there seemed to be hundreds of them.

‘Oh, er,’ said Bourbon, pleased at his surprise, ‘course most of them is graduate assistants, part-timers. We do a lot with part-timers over here, boy, you know. Comp. and all that.’

‘What’s Comp.?’

‘Well, it’s a course in basic essentials of English we teach to all enterin’ freshmen. Readin’, Writin’, Speakin’ and Listenin’. How to underline. Use of the comma. Speakin’ from the diaphragm. It’s a service course to enable them to communicate with one another without sex, that’s how I always see it.’

Walker found a pigeonhole with his name on it and was surprised to see that it was already filled with letters. ‘I put a telegram in there for you,’ said one of the secretaries, Miss Zukofsky. Walker found the telegram on top and put it in his pocket. Underneath it was a letter, cyclostyled, from President Coolidge, welcoming him to this U and looking forward to many years of happy association and contact. Then there was a cyclostyled invitation to take a season ticket to the auditorium series, which opened in early October with an evening of chamber music by the campus string quartet, the Gold Nugget String Four. There was a map to show him how to find his way about campus. There was a free desk copy of a large dictionary. There was an invitation from the Foreign Students Group, asking him to join and also to put on for them a special supper composed of the endemic foods of his country. There was a letter telling him the number of his office and enclosing a key to it; there was a letter containing parking permission for his car; there was a temporary identification card, with a notice asking him to keep this until he had a permanent identity. There were several social invitations. There was a package of forms which constituted his contract with the university. ‘All the bumf,’ said Bourbon. ‘We got plenty of that. Have to give those IBM machines something to do. I was a number for the IBM. Well, boy, what say we go take a look at your office? We got nice rooms here, but I’m afraid we got to ask faculty members to share. Let’s see, who’d I put you in with?’

They stopped at a door which had Walker’s name at the bottom of a list of four. The other three names were Luther Stewart, William Van Hart, Jnr, and Dr Bernard Froelich; Bourbon read them to him, rather laboriously. ‘Sounds like there’s someone here now,’ he said, and opened the door. Inside there were three persons who were playing a game. Having placed a wastebasket on top of a large bookcase, filled with fat, pretentious texts, they were playing a kind of basketball which involved landing squeezed-up balls of paper in the bucket. ‘Hell, I hope this isn’t a student,’ said Bernard Froelich as they came in; he was standing on a desk reaching into the basket. ‘Oh, hi, Harris! And Jamie, well, good to see you.’

‘So this is what you boys do,’ said Bourbon, standing at the door and looking a little sour.

‘We try to keep in trim,’ said Froelich. ‘Too many constipated teachers around these days.’ He got down off the table and clasped Walker’s arm. ‘Men, I want you to meet our new writer. You all know his name, now this is the face that goes with it. Luther Stewart.’

Stewart was a large, thin young man with a small moustache, wearing a kerchief in the neck of his tattersall shirt. ‘I’m very glad to know you. I’ve got a whole pile of questions I want to ask you sometime.’

‘Fine,’ said Walker.

‘William Van Hart, here,’ said Froelich.

‘How do you do, Mr Walker?’ said William Van Hart, who was tall, elegant and rather sophisticated. ‘Thank God we’ve got someone intelligent out here at last.’

Bourbon, who was still standing in the door, as if he feared to be assassinated if he advanced any further, interrupted: ‘I think we ought to be getting over there to the Faculty Club. You boys will have plenty of time to talk to Mis’ Walker.’

‘We look forward to that,’ said Luther Stewart.

‘See you soon, Jamie,’ said Bernard Froelich. As they walked out of the English Building, and into the heat of the campus at noon, Dr Bourbon said, ‘You know, boy, these young kids come out here from the east, read Cassirer and Buber and all that stuff, they’re pretty darn sure of themselves. They think they’re mighty good. Tain’t always so. I always make it my rule, beware of intellectual arrogance. Now take me, I’m a scholar. That’s what I’ll be hung for. But these boys, know what they are?’

‘No,’ said Walker.

‘Critics!’ said Bourbon in some disgust. ‘That means they can go around spoutin’ their own opinions all the time as much as they want, without ever havin’ to check a fact. Needn’t use the library ever.’

The campus path they had been following now brought them out at the Faculty Club, a small and elegant stone building with a hotel-like marquee over the entrance door. Donnish men, lit by green table-lamps, could be seen discoursing wisely within, and Walker felt, with some nervousness, that he was entering hallowed academic ground. Bourbon held the door open with his foot while Walker passed through, and then led him into the urinal. Here, with one hand against the wall, he sang ‘Git Along Little Dogie’; his good spirits had evidently returned after the short spell of personal doubt. ‘Oh, shoot,’ he suddenly said, ‘fergot to ask Froelich about that rear fender.’ The thought occupied him for a moment. ‘Of course,’ he went on, ‘bein’ a scholar in this country, and this part of the country, it’s a burden, Mis’ Walker, and part of the pain is the problem of not bein’ understood.’ As he spoke he took two ties out of his pocket and handed one of them to Walker. ‘We’re formal here,’ he said. When the ties were on they went through into the lounge. ‘What can I git you to drink?’ asked Bourbon. ‘All we’re allowed to sell here is 2.5 beer. That to your palate at all?’

‘Fine,’ said Walker. Bourbon went over to the bar, where an elegant student in a white shirt and a string tie was pouring beer from cans into glasses. Walker sat in his armchair and straightened the creases in his trousers. Then he picked up the student newspaper from the table in front of him; ‘BAU students arraigned on drug charges,’ said the banner. Suddenly he looked up and there in front of him was Dr Jochum, looking smaller, more American, less sure of himself. Jochum brought back Julie Snowflake and Miss Marrow and a lot of old sensations.

‘Vell, this is a good surprise,’ said Jochum.

‘It certainly is,’ said Walker.

‘And tell me how is Party?’ asked Jochum, sitting down. ‘Is it not all I said it was?’

‘It is.’

‘And is America up to your expectation? Is the freedom all you wanted?’

‘Oh, it’s much too early to say. I haven’t even started being free yet.’

‘And what happened to our little American innocent?’ Jochum asked.

‘Miss Snowflake? Now that I don’t know. I called her in New York but she was away.’

‘Vell, the thing about America is that there is plenty of everything for everyone. That is why we all come here. Is America being a good host to you?’

‘Ah, he can’t answer that,’ said Bourbon, returning with the drinks. ‘He’s house-guestin’ with me.’

‘Oh, then he is being very vell received,’ said Dr Jochum, smiling. ‘Of course it was not this vay, you understand, when I first came. I spoke almost no English. I was another refugee. Who was to pick out Jochum? My books were not translated. I had written no distinguished novels. But America gave me what I did not have; that was a country. So that is why I am grateful.’

‘America’s grateful to you for comin’,’ said Bourbon, very sincerely, as he sat down.

‘Vell, here England’s loss is America’s gain,’ said Jochum, gesturing at Walker.

‘Well, thank you,’ Walker said, ‘but I’m only staying for a year.’

‘No, you vill stay longer,’ said Jochum positively. ‘Where will you find people so nice? And chairs so comfortable to sit in? Does this happen so often?’

‘One can outstay a welcome,’ said Walker.

‘I hope you do not mean me.’

‘No, not at all,’ Walker replied. ‘I’m thinking of myself. I expect I shall end up a perpetual commuter. That’s what happens so often.’

‘Ah, yes, mid-Atlantic man, happy in neither place. Yes, I see that fate for you.’

‘Hi, hi,’ said the voice of Bernard Froelich, beaming as he sat down and joined them. ‘Are they treating you well?’

‘Why, Dr Froelich,’ said Jochum, ‘I don’t believe we’ve encountered one another since I returned from my European trip. Are you vell?’

‘My diseases are under control,’ said Froelich. ‘And how was the European land-mass?’

‘Ah, with Europe, who knows? A little tired, perhaps.’

‘Not what it was when you were there.’

‘No, not what it was at all.’

‘Dr Jochum,’ said Froelich, ‘is an émigré from Poland.’

‘Ah no, there is no such place,’ said Jochum. ‘I am from America only.’

‘That’s right, Jock,’ said Bourbon, looking around the room. ‘Hey, kind of quiet in here today. Wait until the semester starts.’

‘Yes,’ said Jochum, ‘I am waiting. I love these students.’

‘Especially the ladies,’ said Froelich.

‘That’s right,’ said Jochum, ‘I vant to marry every damn one of them.’

‘You should, Jock,’ said Bourbon.

‘Oh no, von at vonce, please, I am not a young man,’ said Jochum. ‘Actually I often am vondering why I stay single. Perhaps I should find a nice little American vidow off the cover of the Saturday Evening Post to sew all these buttons on. And to mend the socks. Still, as Johannes Brahms, you vill remember, said, “It is impossible to live with a voman together.” ’

‘Nonsense, Jock,’ said Bourbon. ‘Every man ought to be married. Gives him a stake in sumpn. My lady’s been with me twenty years now. Ain’t nothin’ like marriage, is there, Mis’ Walker?’

Walker tried not to notice the glint in Jochum’s eye as he said, non-committally, ‘I suppose not.’

‘What about the merits of unwed fornication?’ asked Froelich. ‘That has a lot of rewards and a few less of the penalties.’

‘Dr Froelich, I don’t like to hear a married man and a member of the faculty talkin’ that way,’ said Bourbon, ‘and that reminds me ’bout sumpn else I wanted to ask you . . .’

‘Yes, fine,’ said Froelich, ‘but do you mind if I take a rain-check? My meal ticket’s standing over there by the dining room waiting for me.’

‘These young radicals,’ said Bourbon when Froelich had gone.

‘Yes, vell, I must go too,’ said Jochum, standing. ‘Vell, my good friend, it has been good to see you. Now we must arrange to meet. I have a nice little apartment, I do my own cooking, and it is a temptation to extend the range of dishes if I have a visitor. That is why you must come.’

‘I’d be glad to,’ said Walker.

‘You are vitness, Harris,’ said Jochum, leaving.

‘There goes a great scholar. And a great American,’ said Bourbon. ‘Well, now, boy, there are a whole bunch more people I ought to have you meet. Now . . .’

At this moment there was an interruption in the doorway; a flotilla of men in dark suits, all walking at the same speed and very close to one another, as for protection, came in. At their centre was a craggy-faced, healthy fellow who clearly functioned as their leader. ‘Well, Mis’ Walker, you’re very fortunate,’ said Bourbon, getting up. ‘I want to try to have you meet a very important person indeed. That’s the President himself.’

‘Which president?’ asked Walker.

‘President Coolidge, President of this U,’ said Bourbon, leading Walker across the room and breaking into the flotilla.

President Coolidge’s face beamed automatically as Bourbon introduced his guest. ‘Ah yes, Walker, our literary man,’ he said, putting out a hand to crease one of Walker’s affectionately.

‘Pleased to meet you,’ said Walker, on his best behaviour.

‘Look,’ said the President, making a decision of evident political import, ‘let’s have lunch together.’

‘That’s a real honour,’ said Bourbon in Walker’s ear. ‘He don’t even take lunch very often.’

The cavalcade moved into the dining room, where a waitress rapidly cleared a table. The President seized her arm. ‘I’m going to take a peanut-butter sandwich,’ he said, ‘but I want to see these important men tie into something really good. Steak, fellers? Steak all round.’

The President sat down and the group sat about him, allotting places according to their relative importance. ‘Here, Walk,’ said the President, patting the seat next to him. ‘You know? As soon as I met you, I thought, here’s a man who has a real resemblance to my favourite Englishman. Know who I’m talking about, Walk?’

‘No,’ said Walker, ‘I don’t.’

‘The Duke of Windsor. Ever met him?’

‘No,’ said Walker.

‘I’ve had the honour a couple of times. See the resemblance, Har?’

‘No, cain’t say I do,’ said Bourbon, seated on Walker’s other side.

‘I see it,’ said one of the other men.

‘Let me introduce you to all these good fellows,’ said the President. There was the Dean of Men; the Fundraising Secretary and an assistant described as ‘a computer man’; and there was a reporter from the Party Bugle. ‘We’re very proud,’ said President Coolidge, ‘to have Mr Walker here from England as our Creative Writing Fellow. He’s a fictionalist and is responsible for many very fine books.’

This said, the President suddenly stood up. The rest of the group rose and Walker made it too, just before the President said ‘Benedictus Benedice’ and sat down again. The steaks had arrived, and a rather regal-looking peanut-butter sandwich, crowned with cress. ‘I guess we have this written down some place, Walk,’ said the President, ‘but tell me – are you from Oxford?’

‘No, I’m not, exactly,’ said Walker, exploring a strange fruit compote frozen in gelatine, which had been placed on top of his steak.

‘My favourite university,’ said the President, ‘I often wish Benedict Arnold resembled it more.’

‘Why?’ said Walker.

‘I often think, if we only had a river here . . .’

‘You have a lake, haven’t you?’

‘Oh yes, a lake. But what’s a lake, compared to a river? If you had to choose, which would you pick?’

‘I suppose I might pick a river,’ Walker admitted.

‘Spender, Stephen Spender,’ said the President, ‘isn’t he an English writer?’

‘Yes.’

‘Friend of yours?’

‘Never met him.’

‘Nice man. Know Durrell?’

‘No.’

‘Oh. Snow?’

‘No, I don’t know any of that lot,’ said Walker.

‘Sir Charles gave a lecture here last year. Very good. Remember that, Har?’

‘Yes,’ said Bourbon, ‘very good, but the freshmen didn’t understand it.’

‘And where do you come from in England, Walk?’ asked the President. Walker thought a moment and remembered. ‘Nottingham,’ he said.

‘Well, that’s a real coincidence. My seven-year-old daughter has a bicycle that was made right there in your city.’

‘So have I,’ said Walker.

‘A bicycle?’ cried President Coolidge. ‘Well, isn’t that something?’

‘Yes, I go chugging all over the place on it.’

‘You artists,’ said President Coolidge.

‘I didn’t think there was anything strange about a bicycle.’

‘Well, only kids and college students ride bicycles in America. We have a car civilization over here. Drive-in movies, drive-in banks, drive-in drive-ins, you don’t really need to get out for anything.’

‘I was only saying to Dr Bourbon how many cars the students seem to have. Particularly sports cars.’

‘Well,’ said President Coolidge, flashing his bright smile, ‘you see, Walk, we have one substantial advantage out here. That’s our climate. It happens to be very healthy, like Switzerland. In fact I’m in the habit of calling Party the Geneva of the States; to people who have travelled a lot. We get a good many faculty and students just for that reason. They love our air here. Someone once said it was like – wine.’ The analogy came so freshly from Coolidge’s lips it seemed to have been minted anew.

The man from the Party Bugle leaned across the table. ‘I’d like to ask you, how’d you like Party? Nice place?’

‘It seems to be,’ said Walker.

‘You bet it is,’ said the reporter. ‘Find the people warmhearted and kind, the best of American folks?’

‘Yes, they seem that way to me.’

‘They are, the greatest people on God’s earth. Well, let me ask you this, what brought you over here to Party?’

‘I was asked.’

President Coolidge leaned over and intervened smilingly: ‘Mr Walker is an English angry young man. We had a very interesting lecture on the Angry Young Men. By a Professor L. S. Caton, just passing through, didn’t we, Har?’

‘Mostly ’bout Amis, though,’ said Bourbon.

‘Well, let me ask you this,’ said the man from the Bugle. ‘You’ve just been described to us, right, as an angry young man. Now, are you still angry now you’re over here?’

‘I never was angry,’ said Walker.

‘But there’s nothing makes you angry in Party?’

‘No.’

‘So you find things better here in Party than they are at home; is that right?’

‘No, I don’t feel so concerned about the problems of this country because I haven’t been here long enough to know what they are.’

‘But there are a lot of things you don’t like about England, right?’

‘Yes, some.’

‘So there’s no place like home but I like it here better? Well, thank you. You just gave us a real good story.’

‘You’re not going to print all that?’ cried Walker. But the President, who had finished his sandwich, got up. ‘Been nice to know you, Walk, see you again. Don’t hurry boys, finish up that good steak . . .’

‘Oh, I’m through,’ said the Dean of Men; ‘Me too,’ said the Salaries Accountant. The reporter snapped his notebook shut. A moment later Walker and Bourbon sat alone at the table, surrounded by unfinished beef.

‘There goes a great administrator,’ said Dr Bourbon, ‘and a great American.’ Walker, sculpting large pieces out of his steak, said nothing. He was worrying about America, and him in it. He was not used to a public manner, in others or in himself. He had never consciously had a public thought, and when he met men like President Coolidge he thought of them as actors, role-players. But such men seemed naturally at home here; indeed, all around him were people who were inviting him to be an actor himself. The invitation said, Be an Englishman, Be a Writer, Tell Us Your Beliefs, Reveal to Us Your Thoughts. He had a kind of intrinsic scepticism about such things, and it occurred to him to wonder whether this was a personal or a national trait. Was he being inadequate, or was he being English? It was obviously better for him if people believed the latter, and though he wasn’t prepared to make this into a moral excuse he was certainly not prepared to become an American. These doubts about his competence in this new world brought into relief the basic problem, the question of his duties here, and whether he could fulfil them. He decided to ask Bourbon about this. ‘Actually,’ he said, ‘I wonder whether you could tell me about my teaching and so on here?’

Dr Bourbon screwed up his paper napkin, wiped his moustache with it, then put it into his empty coffee cup, for coffee had been served along with the steak. ‘Surely, Mis’ Walker,’ he said, ‘I been thinkin’ about that. Let’s go back to my office. Talk about these formal things better in my office.’ They walked back across the campus to the temporary structure of the English Building. Outside it, a co-ed on a bicycle nearly ran Walker down; she fell off and smiled brightly at him from the floor. Her skirt was above her knees and Walker looked down into it and said, ‘Hi.’ This made him feel that he was getting closer to American life and he followed Bourbon into his office with less unease. ‘Sid down, Mis’ Walker,’ said Bourbon, lifting a pile of PMLAs, from a chair. Walker sat down and looked around while Bourbon went round to the far side of his big desk. The room was lined with bookcases, holding large American academic volumes and long runs of scholarly periodicals. They were dusty and some were tumbling from the shelves; in two or three cases the runs were supported in position by old boots or items of Mexican pottery. Dr Bourbon sat down in his chair and, opening a bottom desk drawer, put his feet into it. ‘Waal,’ he said, ‘first of all I’d like to welcome you formally to this department. We hope you’ll be happy with us. Lot of people are. Some aren’t. We want you to be one of the happy ones. Waal now’ – he picked up a yellow notepad from amid the desk papers – ‘I’d like you to tell me a few things ’bout yourself. You know about us. You’ll find in all that paper we gave you all there is to know ’bout our courses here and suchlike. Now we have to get to know you. Ph.D?’

‘Pardon?’ said Walker.

‘Do you have your Ph.D?’

‘No.’

‘Oh look, I got a file on you here some place.’ Bourbon’s head disappeared below the desk. ‘Done any university teaching before?’ said his voice.

‘No, none.’

‘Well, let’s see,’ said Bourbon, bringing up a file and opening it. ‘We usually ask our Creative Writing Fellow to do six hours a week. That don’t seem too much to you, does it?’

To Walker, who had nothing to compare it with, it seemed unbelievably pleasant, and he said, ‘No.’

‘We usually expect him to take one graduate course and one undergraduate course in creative writing, they meet twice a week, and one other course. We ought to talk about the other course . . .’

‘What are the creative writing courses like here?’ asked Walker.

‘The usual kind of thing.’

‘What’s the usual kind of thing?’

‘You ain’t done this kind of thing before?’

‘No, we don’t have creative writing, as such, in English universities.’

‘Oh, that’s right,’ said Bourbon. ‘Course I was in England, I told you. Well, the graduate course is writing pomes and novels. Plays are Drama and Theatre Arts; you don’t touch plays. Pomes, well, tell ’em how to write pomes. Novels, well, construction and plottin’ and characterization and thematic unity or design and keepin’ the reader interested. Tell them what James said. Tell them what Wolfe said. Show the kids how you do things. We give an MA in creative writin’ here. That means they can write a novel or book of pomes in partial fulfilment. Tell them about that. You’ll find we got some good kids here. Make ’em great, Mis’ Walker, make ’em great.’

‘Just in the graduate course?’

‘Well, undergraduates, you have to go more careful there,’ said Bourbon, taking out his pipe and lighting it. Blossoms of smoke grew around his head. In the next office the typewriters of the secretaries clacked. ‘That’s more manuscript mechanics and typin’ and the blessin’ of creativity. Then a bit later in the year get them writin’ short stories and pomes. That’s the way it’s been done in the past. But those are your courses, Mis’ Walker. We want you to give what you want to give. Now there’s one other thing, we usually ask our creative writer to give a public lecture to folks, folks from the university and outside it, durin’ the first semester. You’ll see some posters up about it if you look around. We didn’t trouble you for a subject, so we took the liberty of calling it “The Writer’s Dilemma”. So you can talk on anythin’.’

‘Will there be a lot of people?’

‘Well, Mis’ Walker, you’re a good writer, you’ve got a lot of press publicity locally since we appointed you, you should get maybe a thousand people. It’s an occasion we all look forward to. So you might be thinking about that. And now that leaves us with the other course for the year. Lot of writers in the past have taken a course on a specialty, but we talked this over in the department, Mis’ Walker, and we wondered whether you’d care to do a Comp course. We like to give everyone in the faculty an experience of Comp.’

‘That’s Reading, Writing, Speaking and Listening?’

‘Yeah, it’s one of the most valuable services we do here. Lot of these kids come here, Mis’ Walker, from all kinds of little red schoolhouses all over the state. We’re financed in part from state funds, that’s people’s money, and we don’t impose strict entrance requirements on in-state students. Fact is, almost any student who has the gumption to actually find out where the U is is admitted. Well, I’ll tell you, some of these kids, I mean they’re all good kids, but they’ve not had the schoolin’. Some of ’em can hardly write their names in the dust with a stick. That means if they’re going to get any benefit out of a U at all, and by that I mean intellectual benefit, they’ve got to be taught to communicate. So here in the English Dep. we run these courses for entering freshmen, tellin’ the kids how to talk and write and pass messages on and avoid parkin’ where it says “No Parkin’”. It’s a very valuable function for English in the technological world of today, and I don’t mind tellin’ you, Mis’ Walker, it’s sometimes the only way we have of presentin’ English as a university subject at all to the other departments like Science and Business. A lot of folks who come here from Europe think that literature has a kind of status in its own right, but I don’t mind admittin’ to you I think they got a case, but it ain’t an easy case to present always. But tell the U that you’re teachin’ scientists to talk to one another and teachin’ business majors to write memos and reports and they listen to you, because they know that’s important. So I figured I’d put you down for two hours a week of Comp, because you ought to see that course and because anyway a couple of graduate students from out east we hired got theirselves fixed up elsewhere and I got to assign eight sections to regular faculty. I think you’re goin’ to find that a fascinatin’ course, Mis’ Walker. Teachin’ the comma and all.’

The door opened and Mrs Bourbon came in. Her Bermuda shorts ought to have looked out of place in the room, but they didn’t. ‘Waal, we’re all set, sweetie,’ said Dr Bourbon, taking his feet out of the drawer and getting up. Walker followed them both to the car, and on the way Bourbon tapped a printed placard on the noticeboard. It said, ‘James Walker, British novelist and angry young man, will speak Wednesday, December 1, Fogle Auditorium, on The Writer’s Dilemma.’ A small passport photo, which Walker had submitted earlier in the year, had been blown up and set at the side of the legend, revealing traces of acne and wrinkle that he never before knew he possessed. The lecture worried Walker, because of its size and the fact that he had no notion what to say. His absence of literary ideas and beliefs had never been an issue to him before, but now, faced with the need to testify, he felt a blankness where his standards ought to be. More and more it occurred to him that in the public sense he wasn’t a writer at all. He was just a half-writer, a man who simply wrote, and it wasn’t going to do out here. The challenge to be himself excited him a bit, but depressed him rather more. He sat between the two Bourbons, the sun-visor shielding him from the afternoon glare, and tried to urge himself into growth. There was an impulse there, he found, an impulse that came from the uneasiness he had felt when, looking around this university, gazing at its students, listening to Bourbon talk, he had recognized that literature and literacy didn’t have the same permanence in this new world he had come to that he had always believed them to have in his old one. The winds of change, the winds of democracy and technology and an inhuman future, were blowing hard in these western plains, with its few bare sticks of civilization. There was testimony to be given. But the desire to give it didn’t entirely quench another feeling – the feeling that the lecture itself was something of a breach of hospitality. It had been foisted on him. He didn’t, he couldn’t, he shouldn’t be expected to do things like that. He sat still and said nothing until the car reached the ranch house and they all got out.

After they had taken the supermarket sacks into the kitchen, Walker went straight to his bedroom. He wanted to read the letters, open Elaine’s telegram, know the future. The bundle of papers in his pocket had much to tell him. But when he opened the bedroom door, something had happened. The contents of his suitcases had been up-ended on the bed, and the two Bourbon twins, evident executors of the deed, were in the room. Brandy stood in front of the mirror wearing one of his sweaters, which came down to her feet. Alphonse had knotted all his ties together and was using them to pull one of the cases after him round the room. The experiences of the day suddenly crystallized into irritation.

‘Get out of here, you little fiends!’ he shouted.

‘Nerh,’ said Alphonse. Walker took Alphonse by the ear and led him out into the passageway. ‘Lemme go,’ said Alphonse, but Walker didn’t, so he said, ‘Do you want me to grow up repressed?’

‘I don’t think I want you to grow up at all,’ said Walker grimly.

Alphonse looked frightened and kicked Walker on the shin. ‘It’s my house,’ he said, ‘I can do what I like here.’

‘I know it’s your house,’ said Walker, ‘but let me tell you something. You’re a child, and a child is a pretty stupid thing to be. Don’t come back to me until you’re socially responsible. And that goes for Brandy too.’ Alphonse began to cry; since he had never actually seen him do this before, Walker felt a certain satisfaction, until a shoe thrown by Brandy hit him in the small of the back. He went back into the bedroom and got hold of Brandy’s ear. ‘Now stay out of here and leave me alone,’ he said, ‘I’ve got some work to do.’

He sat down at the desk and felt almost gay. It was the first time he had asserted himself for a while, and it gave him great pleasure. He was in a very positive mood as he took out the morning’s post and laid it out in front of him. The telegram seemed to promise another step in freedom; it was impossible to imagine, as he looked at it, that the world wasn’t even more his oyster, that Elaine hadn’t cut the cords that bound. But she hadn’t; the message said: DON’T BE SO DAFT STOP LOVE STOP ELAINE. The trouble with Elaine, thought Walker savagely, crumpling the telegram, is that she can’t take anything seriously. Nothing, for her, was really meant. She treats me like a small boy, Walker thought to himself, she doesn’t want me to grow up. But his were rightful claims, good claims. Grow he would, and free was what he intended to be. He could see a real prospect of that now, an infinity of futures. He lived now in an expanding universe, an America. It was not the country’s democracy, or its permissive child-rearing, or its wild technology, that gave the hope, but something grander and vaguer. It was that unformed, freestyle landscape and the hints of mountain beyond. Vague, yes; but not daft.

Walker dropped the telegram into the waste-basket, a Mexican pot that stood beside the desk, and turned to look at the documents of his new aspiration, the introductory papers to the university, which said Welcome and Hi there and Good to know you. Here were identification cards and keys to unknown doors and passports to park and eat. He thumbed through wads of American-size quarto paper, packed with mimeographed promises and instructions. Here were his teaching materials. The creative writing classes were documented with a list of last year’s assignments, mainly reading assignments in texts with titles like Write That Novel and The Path to Poesy. The real bulk was the documentation on Course 101, Composition, T–Th 10–11 a.m., on which a mass of intellectual energy had clearly been expended. ‘There is no course more important than this in the university,’ said an opening brief by Bourbon. ‘We like to think all who teach it are good 101 citizens, thinking and working as a team, believing with such men as Sapir, Hayakawa, Wittgenstein and Margaret Mead that to learn one’s language is to GROW, not just in thought and organization, but in emotions and response to LIFE. People with linguistic skills live better. They also know how to write a good business letter.’ The course’s first aim, Walker read, was to reduce the students’ most serious errors of grammar and mechanics to a reasonable minimum; there were seven basic grammatical errors (GROSS ILLITERACIES), so abhorrent as to win an automatic F for Fail on any student theme. The Gross Illiteracies consisted of such syntactical follies as The Unjustifiable Sentence Fragment (‘I came to college. Having graduated from High School.’), The Fused Sentence (‘His bus was late he missed his train.’), and the Dangling Modifier (‘If thoroughly stewed, the patients will enjoy our prunes.’). To help students write their themes and so involve themselves in the penalties, they were given the stimulus of a Freshman Reader, composed largely of articles on ‘My Most Unforgettable Teacher’ and ‘My First Day in College’. Walker dug further into the pile, turning over the sheets, signing various contractual forms (LAST NAME: GIVEN NAME: ETHNIC GROUP). One paper was of a kind that worried him. It was headed ‘Oath’, and had to be signed before a public notary. Walker read it through again and went and knocked on the door of Dr Bourbon’s study.

Bourbon had put on his oriental robe and was bent over his typewriter, making the keys rattle with two infinitely busy fingers. ‘Howdy,’ he said, stopping work.

‘It’s about this,’ said Walker, handing him the form.

‘Oh, the loyalty oath,’ said Bourbon, looking at it.

‘Do I have to sign it?’

‘Well, yes, sure, we get state funds here and that means that the state legislature can ask us to give a signature to our loyalty.’

‘Even if one isn’t an American citizen?’

‘Well, it don’t mean nothin’, it’s just a formality.’

‘Like the liquor store oath?’

‘That’s right, everyone signs it. The commies all sign it. Only people who don’t sign it are New York liberals and they don’t teach so good anyway.’

‘What happens to them?’

‘Well, we can’t appoint ’em. Have to ask them to go home. Most of ’em don’t like it here anyway. Miss the bagel shops, I guess.’

‘So I have to sign it.’

‘Well, you don’t want to overthrow the government by force, do you, Mis’ Walker?’

‘Not at all.’

‘Waal, I don’t think I quite see your problem,’ said Bourbon, putting a sheet of carbon between two clean sheets of typing bond.

‘It’s just that I’m a British citizen. I shouldn’t be signing an oath of loyalty to another government.’

‘Don’t think they’ll let you back?’ asked Bourbon. ‘Thought we was in alliance.’

‘Oh, we are, as far as I know. No, I’m trying to define a scruple.’

‘Well, I’m not sayin’ I agree with this here oath,’ said Bourbon, ‘but it just don’t make no difference. No, take my advice, you just sign it and fergit about it, Mis’ Walker. Don’t mean nothin’.’

At this moment the telephone on Bourbon’s desk rang; he picked up the receiver and listened to it. Then he reached out and passed the piece of bakelite over to Walker. ‘For me?’ said Walker, surprised, ‘I don’t know anyone.’

‘Someone askin’ fer you.’

‘Hello,’ said Walker into the phone.

‘Hi, Jamie, how are things?’ said a voice.

‘Who is that, please?’

‘Bernie,’ said the voice.

‘Who?’

‘Bern Froelich,’ said the voice.

‘Oh, hello, Bernard.’

‘Hi!’ said Froelich. ‘I want you to come over to dinner tonight. I have some people I want you to meet.’

‘Oh, I can hardly do that, the Bourbons are expecting me here.’

‘Ditch them.’

‘I can hardly do that.’

‘You don’t want to come?’

‘Yes, I’d be happy to, at longer notice.’

‘Well, tell Harris you’ve been invited to my place and you want a pass-out.’

‘But Mrs Bourbon’s in the kitchen cooking a meal now.’

‘You’re willing to come if I can fix it?’

Walker looked at Bourbon, who was putting paper in his typewriter and affecting not to be listening. ‘I don’t have transport,’ said Walker.

‘I’ll fix that,’ said Froelich. ‘Just say you’ll come.’

‘Well . . .’ said Walker.

‘Is Harris there?’

‘Yes.’

‘Okay, just put him on.’

‘It’s Dr Froelich,’ said Walker to Bourbon, ‘he wondered whether you’d have a word with him.’

Bourbon reached out for the phone. ‘Bernard,’ he said. He listened for a while and said ‘I guess so’ a couple of times. ‘You want me to drive him over there?’ he asked at one point. ‘Okay, I’ll have him there right on seven,’ he finally said. ‘Oh, Bern, before you ring off, I want to ask you a question about the fender . . . Rung off,’ he said, turning to Walker. ‘Well, he wants you to meet someone. Says it’s important, it’s a dinner date. I’m going to drop you by at seven.’

‘I’m sorry if it’s any inconvenience to you,’ said Walker. ‘Actually I tried to put him off . . .’

‘Well, that’s Bern,’ said Bourbon. ‘Meant to ask him about the fender on my car. Rung off.’

‘I’d better go and get ready,’ said Walker, getting up.

‘Waal, boy, you don’t worry your head ’bout that oath,’ said Bourbon. ‘Could look into it for you, if you like.’

‘Yes, I’d be very grateful,’ said Walker.

‘’Kay, boy,’ said Bourbon, flapping his oriental robe, and then he added, putting his big head down, and looking shy, ‘Mind if I ask you a question, a friendly question?’

‘Do,’ said Walker.

‘You ain’t a communist, are you, Mis’ Walker?’

‘No, not at all, I’d call myself a liberal.’

That word seemed to depress Bourbon a little, and his moustache dropped as his mouth went down. ‘It’s just that you realize it could look a little funny if you refused to sign this thing.’

‘Funny for a British citizen? Because that’s the point. Though I must say I don’t much like the assumptions behind it. I thought the McCarthy days were past.’

‘Oh, this ain’t nothin’ to do with that nut McCarthy.’

‘But that’s nothing to do with me, that’s your problem. Mine is simply that, well, the word loyal never did have a lot of place in my vocabulary, but if I’m loyal to anything I’m loyal to, well, Britain, I suppose.’

‘Well, fine, and I want you to know I respect your scruples. You gave me your word that you wasn’t a commie, and I’ll believe that until something convinces me different. But you got to watch the impression you make around here, Mis’ Walker. Like with kids for instance, you mustn’t go around beating up kids. Alphonse told me you just grabbed him by the ear.’

‘Oh, he told you that, did he? Well, I didn’t like to complain about him and Brandy, but they were both interfering with my things.’

‘Waal, you know how it is, Mis’ Walker, they’re just kids, healthy normal kids. We think a lot of our kids round here. It’s their life, Mis’ Walker, it’s their life. Mustn’t go around attacking folk’s kids, whatever you do at home. And, since we’re speaking frankly, Crispin just came by and told me somethin’ mighty disturbin’.’ Bourbon stopped, looked grave, and ponderously lighted his pipe. ‘Course,’ he went on, smacking his lips round the stem, ‘I know writers are mighty unusual people, and if I may say so, you look to me like one of the nicest we’ve had here. That’s why I’d be sorry to lose you on the oath issue. But Crispin says he heard you were divorcin’ your wife. Is that true, Mis’ Walker?’

Hearing a public statement of his private deed, Walker felt deeply uneasy; he had never thought of this as a matter for others: but ‘I suppose it is,’ he said.

‘Well, that’s your own problem, Mis’ Walker. I always say marriage is like fishin’. Some folk are always content with what they caught, and some always figure there’s a better one that got away. But I’d say this. I know there’s a lot of divorcin’ and humpin’ goes on here, and Party looks like a kinda progressive sort of town. But there’s a lot of folk, responsible decent folks, who still look on marriage as a sacrament. My lady and me been together for twenty years. So don’t let this atmosphere go to your head. If you take my advice you’ll think it over, Mis’ Walker, for the sake of yore little lady and for yore own. Mrs Bourbon and I, we was just sayin’ last night, you’re a mighty nice fellar and we don’t want to see you make a bad start. I’m saying this all in friendship, Mis’ Walker.’ Dr Bourbon was now so embarrassed that he had nearly slid down from view behind his desk, and so Walker said nothing except ‘Well, thank you’ and went back to his room, the unsigned loyalty oath in his hand. He sat at the desk and looked at the place on the form where his signature ought to be; then he took out a piece of paper and wrote, Dearest Elaine, I know what I said was a surprise, but you must believe that I meant it all. I am asking you for my freedom, because . . . But no more words came, and he stopped and looked out of the window. The sun was tipping down below the mountains, and there were great creases of shadow in the foothills. In Bourbon’s study the typewriter was rattling again, but Walker looked inward and couldn’t find a word to say.

‘They chose a mighty funny place to live,’ said Dr Bourbon, stopping his car at the end of the Froelichs’ drive. On campus, the campanile was chiming; Bourbon’s sense of time was impeccable. Walker got out and stumbled up the steps on to the porch.

‘Hi, come on in,’ said Patrice, coming to the door. She saw Bourbon, shadowy in the car, and shouted, ‘Come in for a while, Harris?’

‘No, I gotta get back to a steak,’ boomed Bourbon. ‘Give me a call when you’re ready for me to pick him up.’

They stood for a moment on the porch to watch Bourbon roar away. ‘I see someone hit his rear fender,’ said Patrice. ‘Well, now, want me to take your jacket?’

‘Oh, no, that’s all right,’ said Walker.

‘I’m all alone,’ said Patrice. ‘Bernard had the Naughtys, that’s Robert and Eudora Naughty, drive him out to the package store. We were right down on liquor, and our car’s at the repair shop. Actually, that’s nice, because I can get to talk to you. Sit down.’

Walker sat in one of the tangerine canvas chairs and looked around the room. ‘There’s a little gin and some vermouth,’ said Patrice, rattling bottles. ‘How about a martini with the proportions reversed? That sound exciting? Still, I guess it’s just an English gin and It.’

‘Oh, that’ll be fine,’ said Walker.

‘We were in England, you know. How is it?’

‘Oh, fair to middling.’

‘Fair to middling. Funny how you all talk the same. You know, I ought to tell you about the Naughtys. We wanted you to meet them because we figured you’d be getting the wrong impression of Party from Dr Bourbon and his set. They’re the old guard, you know. Been here for ever and are still living in the old America. Mrs Bourbon once asked me where I bought my antimacassars.’

‘Yes, they are a bit that way,’ said Walker. ‘Dr Bourbon is worried that I’ll get off to a bad start. Because I tweaked Alphonse’s ear.’

‘Yes, well, the Naughtys aren’t that way a bit. Bob’s from Chicago, a real union background. They’re both liberals. You know, the type who make their own shoes. They have a baby called Buber, after Martin Buber, and they don’t put diapers on it because they don’t want to repress it.’

‘I think I know,’ said Walker.

‘Bob teaches political science. He’s trying to organize the faculty, get them unionized. So they can have strikes and go picketing and have mob violence like everybody else does.’

‘It sounds like fun,’ said Walker.

Patrice brought the drinks over and sat down on the divan. She was dressed in the same shift dress that she had worn the previous time he had come to the house and met her. But her dark hair was done differently, pulled up into a French pleat at the back. She had dark, intense eyes. She sat and put her head on her hands and looked at him. Like many American women, she sat closer and looked longer than he expected. He found this both pleasant and uncomfortable, for it brought to his attention things he wasn’t quite ready to notice – that she had freckles on her arms, that the loose dress fell into a good shape because of the lines of the body inside it, that she had a very full and attractive mouth and an active and mobile face. She said, ‘You know, this is interesting, because I’ve just been reading through all your novels. Bernie made me read them when we knew you were coming because he said I ought to know what you were like.’

‘And did they tell you?’

‘Not too much, no, they didn’t. Well, now, do you want me to tell you what I thought of them or not?’

‘Yes, I’d be interested.’

‘I’ll tell you sincerely.’

‘Do.’

‘Well then, sincerely. I thought they were great . . .’

‘But you have another candidate for the fellowship.’

Patrice laughed. ‘Well, I thought they were sort of confused, disoriented, a bit too obviously uncommitted. I don’t know. They didn’t seem to say enough or know enough about life; you know, not enough authority.’

‘Oh, well, you did find out a lot about me.’

‘And there’s something else. They didn’t have very much affection, feeling. Maybe it’s just very American of me to say this, but I think people are less rational, and communicate more, have more intuitions about one another, than your characters do. Your books give me the feeling that you felt a bit exhausted, just living; as if you didn’t want to do anything or know anyone, and had just given up and decided to drink yourself to death in a corner.’

‘Well,’ said Walker, ‘I suppose I do think something like that.’

‘Don’t you like people?’

‘Oh yes, but they are a terrible expense of spirit. Sometimes I wonder whether they’re worth the effort.’

‘Well, we won’t let you believe that here,’ said Patrice, looking at him intensely. Walker looked back. Her clean modern style of being, her very American willingness to talk and debate about the inner life, which Walker wasn’t used to putting into words, made him feel much more at ease than he had all day.

‘That’s what I came here for,’ he said.

‘We’re going to redeem you? Oh, that’s nice. And how will you know when you’re redeemed?’

‘Ah, now that I can’t tell. I’ve had truths come to me before. And a lot of old garbage most of them turned out to be.’

‘A wary man. Well, fine, you’ve come to the right place. I know Bernie’s been working on a big plan for redeeming you. Are you pleased?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘You know it was Bernie who got you out here?’ asked Patrice. She put her feet up on the divan.

‘Yes, I heard that,’ said Walker. ‘They say he’s writing a book about me. Which makes me not want to do anything at all.’

‘Oh, it’s not a book, it’s a chapter. You overrate yourself. Anyway, it should give you some leeway for action.’

‘Yes, just a bit.’

‘He likes you,’ said Patrice, ‘so you don’t really have much of a chance. When Bernie likes someone they’re through. He likes me, too. Being liked by Bernie is a full-time job in itself. He’s so hostile to the people he likes.’

Walker sipped his drink and looked at Patrice. Then a car stopped outside and he felt indignant. There were footsteps on the porch and people came into the hall. ‘Hi hi,’ said Froelich, coming in carrying two large clinking paper sacks. ‘Stand up and be introduced to these people we’ve dragged out here to meet you.’ Robert and Eudora Naughty came in; they were both tall, and blond, and very healthy, and they were both wearing jeans and white sneakers. Both of them put out long arms to be shaken.

‘Glad to know you,’ said Bob. ‘We got enough bottles to make this an all-night session.’

‘I’m sorry we’re late,’ said Eudora.

‘Yeah, it was our fault. We were supposed to be picketing this barber shop till five, but the guy stayed open longer than usual,’ said Bob Naughty.

‘Well, it shows we’re cutting into his custom,’ said Eudora.

Froelich, unpacking bottles, said, ‘Don’t apologize. He’d much rather have had another hour with Patrice.’

‘Yeah, that’s right. Well, I apologize for being so early.’

‘Can we bring this conversation down to chair level?’ said Froelich.

‘Won’t you take off your jacket, Bob?’ said Patrice.

‘Sure. If you ask me,’ said Bob; ‘I’ll take anything off.’

‘How about you, Mr Walker?’ asked Patrice.

‘Yes, I will now,’ said Walker.

‘That’s a neck-tie and a jacket,’ said Froelich. ‘We’re getting there.’

Then they all sat down and Froelich went into the kitchen to mix martinis. Walker, politeness itself, said, ‘Why are you picketing?’

‘Oh,’ said Bob, ‘this guy doesn’t like cutting spade hair.’

‘We sent in three different negro boys and he refused them,’ said Mrs Naughty.

Patrice went into the kitchen and came out with a bowl of tomatoes and a cheese dip, into which they started popping the tomatoes. ‘You have this problem in England?’ asked Eudora Naughty.

‘Well, we do, yes, a little.’

‘I read your books,’ said Eudora Naughty.

‘Don’t talk about his books,’ said Froelich, handing round martinis. ‘He has a very big ego but he’ll be tired of his books at the end of a week. Talk about yourself.’

‘Okay,’ said Eudora. ‘What about?’

‘You ought to know. Tell him about your childhood. Tell him about your prolapsed uterus. He knows all about him. He knows how good he is.’

‘Know anything about American politics?’ asked Bob Naughty.

‘No, I don’t,’ said Walker.

‘What about your politics back home?’ said Bob. ‘Which ticket do you vote?’

‘Guess,’ said Froelich.

‘Socialist?’ said Bob.

‘Yes,’ said Walker, ‘rather unwillingly.’

‘Why unwillingly?’ said Bob.

‘Oh, because I don’t like any of the futures they have waiting for us. Any of them.’

‘Are you a member of the British Labour Party?’

‘No, I’m not.’

‘Why not?’

‘Well, I don’t think I could approve of a party that took in people like me,’ said Walker.

Froelich laughed and said, ‘There you have a definition of English liberalism.’

‘A divided man,’ said Bob Naughty.

‘The point about England is that everyone is a liberal,’ said Froelich, ‘they all listen to one another and everyone who thinks knows everyone else who thinks. That’s why there’s no radical right in England.’

‘What is the radical right?’ asked Walker.

‘Oh,’ said Bob, ‘the people who believe that God is a communist because he made other countries besides America. You’ll meet up with a lot of politics here. I don’t know whether you know this, but in this country university administration is considered a public matter. Not just the right but the left, the unions, get involved. And then there’s a whole bunch of contenders inside the university as well. Who was it defined American society as a variety of contending views raised permanently to a shout?’

‘Me,’ said Froelich.

‘What kind of views?’ asked Walker.

‘Well,’ said Froelich, ‘one of the things about American politics is the wide spectrum of opinion.’

‘A spectrum with every colour except red in it,’ said Bob Naughty.

‘So the Yipsuls – that’s the Young Socialists – won’t talk to the Young Democrats, and spend all their time attacking Castro. The people you dislike most are the people nearest to you, and you form alliances with the extremists at the other end. The Young Conservatives on campus just published a manifesto which said they were against governmental interference, and not just against fluoridization and Medicare, they were against government interference with premarital intercourse, and government interference with drug-taking, and homosexuality . . .’

To Walker this was all intensely confusing. He disliked politics because he disliked the political imagination, which divided and hated and judged. He resented the loyalty oath, but that was an individual and not a political resentment; in fact, to hate it was to attack politics, where they tried to impinge on the kind of personal life he wanted to lead himself and wanted others to lead with him. Politicians would say that that, too, was a political belief; but then, they said everything was. He believed in democracy and liberalism because they diminished political belief and stressed individualism and debate. People over politics; that was Walker’s cry. Present company, the pacts and alliances of those he knew, the prods of friendship and the probings of sexuality and the pursuit of inner vision, these things seemed the only possible reality. None of the organizations and schemes that politics proposed for the future had any charm whatsoever; wherever he looked, he saw a promised attenuation of the kindness and personal space and individual freedom that seemed to him the real and worthy core of living. What if his gestures in that area were poor and confused, and the wake behind him was scattered with blunders; only open space and private people made sense. Froelich and Naughty went on talking; Walker, following a more natural and ready line of interest, looked at Patrice, curled on the end of the divan, her shoes off, her hair coming out of the French pleat, and thought about the politics of sexuality and personal relationships. They talked about some current campus scandal; the local police had raided a student party and found a group of people smoking pot. ‘Half of them were Young Conservatives and the other half were anarchists,’ said Naughty. ‘That’s the kind of alliances you get.’

‘The point is,’ said Froelich to Walker, ‘that American politics isn’t a dichotomy or Zweischpitten. It’s a Fünf or Siebenschplitten.’

‘We forgot to mention the émigrés,’ said Bob Naughty.

‘Like your friend Jochum,’ said Froelich. This brought things home a bit and Walker said, ‘Who are they?’

‘Oh, they’re a bunch of refugees from Hitler and Stalin who are so anti-communist they want to pass an ordinance against wearing red underwear,’ said Bob Naughty. ‘They’re running a campaign to have Russia put back the way it was before the 1917 Revolution.’

‘Is Dr Jochum one?’ asked Walker.

‘Well, for instance,’ said Froelich, ‘he gives lectures to the women’s clubs around attacking the communists for cutting down the plane trees in Prague.’

‘How about dinner?’ said Patrice.

Outside, on campus, the carillon was ringing out nine, and Walker realized he was very hungry indeed. The steak with the President had been more of an ordeal than a meal, and Walker hadn’t eaten much of it anyway: he was a slow eater, and if he talked, he lost pace. ‘Oh, let’s have another drink,’ said Froelich.

‘I’ll get them,’ said Patrice. ‘Then we ought to eat.’

‘Well, you’ll have to make another pitcher of martinis,’ said Froelich, ‘unless anyone wants another thing. How about it, James?’

‘Oh, I don’t mind,’ said Walker, ‘anything.’

‘Got any varnish?’ said Bob Naughty.

Patrice went into the kitchen, and Walker watched her, looking at the delicate back of her neck. He felt rather exposed when she was absent, and he took out his cigarettes and passed them around. ‘Oh, are these English cigarettes?’ said Eudora Naughty. ‘I don’t smoke for survival reasons, but may I take one to keep?’

‘Do,’ said Walker.

‘The handing around of cigarettes in England is an interesting ritual,’ said Bob Naughty. ‘Anyone know why?’

‘Of course,’ said Froelich. ‘It’s because you’re offering something valuable. In America cigarettes are so cheap it’s like offering people one peanut. In another way it’s a form of niggardliness. The English are niggardly.’

‘Okay, Bernie,’ said Patrice.

‘No, goddam it, this is important,’ said Froelich. ‘Here you have a spectacular English niggard. Sociology demands we seek out his values.’

‘Goddam it, Bernie, you’re just a goddam walking megaphone.’

‘Yeah, well, we all know that. Now put your knees together and let’s listen to Mr Walker, the well-known niggard, goddam it. All we want to do is to get at some truth around here. Okay?’

‘You know, Bernie, I’ve finally found out what it is with you. You talk to people as if they were a group.’

‘Well, they are a group. Mr Walker here is an English group of one. Now I’m going to ask him some questions because I ask the right questions and everyone else asks the wrong questions because they aren’t going any place. Okay, now all I want to know is, why do the English like their fathers?’

‘I didn’t know they did,’ said Walker.

‘Sure they do,’ said Froelich. ‘English history is all about men liking their fathers, and American history is all about men hating their fathers and trying to burn down everything they ever did. I hate my father. Patrice spits on her father. Bob throws rocks at his. That’s the way we change the society every generation. It’s called the Pursuit of Happiness or the American Dream. Why isn’t there an English Dream?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Walker, ‘perhaps there was once.’

‘Right,’ said Froelich. ‘You see what we all need to know is that this man doesn’t believe in anything. And that’s because he’s an Englishman. Ask him where he stands and he’s polite and non-committal. You see, James, what I’m telling you about is the difference between English liberalism, of which you’re an example, and American liberalism, of which I’m an example. Bob here’s a sort of example, except he thinks you can make people do things by shouting the word goodness at them. I’m explaining to you why you’re here.’

‘Well, now he’s here, let’s give him some dinner,’ said Patrice. ‘We’ve cooked him a dinner and he’s goddam got to eat it.’ They moved to table. It was a card table with Japanese plate mats on it. Patrice had served roast beef, red with gore, and a salad; that was all. There was Californian red wine to drink. It was very good indeed. While they ate, the Naughtys talked for a bit about the parking problems they were having at the nudist camp they both frequented. After a while, Froelich said, ‘Well, how are the Bourbons looking after you, James?’

‘Oh, quite well,’ said Walker, ‘very luxuriously.’

‘Are you staying at the Bourbons’?’ asked Naughty.

‘He’s a dimwit,’ said Eudora Naughty.

‘No, he’s not,’ said Froelich.

‘He’s a dimwit,’ said Eudora.

‘No, he’s a dullard.’

‘He’s a dullard who, if he worked hard, could be a dimwit,’ said Eudora.

‘He’s a nice old guy who doesn’t know what’s happening,’ said Froelich. ‘He’s fought a good deal for English here. It’s never been a popular department and that means you need an advertising man like Bourbon. It’s like the ads for aspirin. “Now here are three apparently similar products. Watch this simple laboratory test. French has sediment. Business Administration has sediment. But English – no sediment.” ’

‘Why don’t you elect a different head now?’ asked Naughty.

‘Oh, that will come. He knows that. That’s why he’s frightened of me. The people he’s frightened of he calls New York liberals. He calls me that. Even though I’m from Medford, Oregon.’

‘I like him too,’ said Eudora, ‘he’s so anal. I mean that as a compliment – he’s so orderly and all.’

‘He’s your daddy,’ said Froelich. ‘No, he’s doing fine.’

‘What I can’t understand, Bernie, is why he hired you,’ said Bob.

‘He hired me because he’s on the right side. You’ve heard him. “We got a very liberal department here. We got a Quaker and a New Critic and a Catholic Aristotelian and a New York liberal and a Buddhist Leavisite. Course we can’t hire this man ’cause we’ve already got one Buddist Leavisite and now here comes another guy, he’s a Buddhist Leavisite too. Throw the whole department out of kilter. Still, I’ll recommend him to a friend of mine, head of a department in the middle west, don’t believe they got a Buddhist Leavisite.” ’

‘Oh, Harris is all right,’ said Patrice. ‘Mr Walker said he’d had a bit of trouble with him, though.’

Walker blushed and looked down at the beef, so much redder than he was. ‘What kind of trouble?’ asked Froelich.

‘Well,’ said Walker, ‘he thought I was getting off to a bad start. It was a mixture of things really. I twisted the ear of one of the twins, and then I’m, well, getting divorced . . .’

‘Wow,’ said Bob Naughty, ‘you really are hitting at all his verities.’

‘You didn’t tell me that,’ said Froelich reproachfully. ‘Why are you doing that?’

‘Oh, we don’t get on,’ said Walker. ‘We just don’t seem very happy . . .’

‘You’re English, aren’t you?’ asked Froelich. ‘The English, don’t believe in happiness. I thought England was a family-oriented society. Marriages stayed together and people went to prostitutes.’

‘Well,’ said Walker, ‘I must be getting Americanized. And then I think I offended him over the loyalty oath . . .’

‘Boy,’ said Bob Naughty, ‘is that thing still around?’

‘Of course it’s around, goddam it,’ said Froelich. ‘Don’t pretend you didn’t sign it.’

‘I don’t remember,’ said Bob.

‘Everybody signs it. The only people who don’t sign it don’t come. The commies sign it. The rightists sign it. The only people who don’t sign it are people who don’t think the question should be asked anyway, and we never see them.’

‘I don’t think it should be asked,’ said Bob.

‘Well, okay, so you’re a hypocrite,’ said Froelich. ‘I’m a hypocrite.’

‘I thought that it was wrong of me, as a British citizen, to sign an oath of loyalty to another government,’ said Walker. ‘My motives weren’t any more complicated than that.’

‘You know, Bernie,’ said Bob, ‘that’s quite an argument.’

‘Sure it is, just keep it as simple as that.’

‘Of course,’ said Walker, ‘Bourbon said the oath was only nominal, a safeguard.’

‘That’s right,’ said Froelich. ‘If you overthrow the American government by force, they’ve got a comeback: they can take your job away.’ He cut some more meat and said, ‘How about seconds?’

‘Thank you,’ said Walker, putting out his plate.

‘Well, what are you going to do?’ Bob Naughty asked, looking excited about all this.

‘Well,’ said Froelich, ‘think it through. He doesn’t sign it. He’s not a citizen; his loyalty is required elsewhere; he’s got an absolutely sound reason for standing out.’

‘Okay, then people get hold of it and it becomes a big story. Won’t they ask him to leave?’

‘We could come in on that,’ said Froelich.

‘I thought I might sign,’ said Walker.

‘Well, the only reason I could think of for signing is that you’re a communist and you want to teach some subversive materials,’ said Froelich.

‘No, I’m not, my subversion is all in favour of literature.’

‘Why not do this? Just put in a protest to the President of the University? Get him to give you an answer, a ruling. It’s going to trouble him, that’s all we want.’

‘You shouldn’t ask him that,’ said Patrice.

‘Sure, he’s a decent man, he likes performing moral actions,’ said Froelich.

‘The only problem,’ said Walker, ‘is that like everyone else I don’t know what a moral action is any more. I’m away from my household gods; I’m living in a world of someone else’s ethics; I don’t know what I’m saying or doing when I say or do. How am I qualified?’

‘You’re a man, that’s all,’ said Froelich.

‘Well, who isn’t? What do I have? If I had a moral life I wouldn’t be here. I’m here for the confusion. So why me? Why here?’

‘You didn’t stand,’ said Patrice to her husband. ‘Why should he?’

‘I did stand. I crossed my fingers when I signed it,’ said Froelich. ‘No, look, this is the point, friends. Because you’re from outside, because there’s no cause or flag you’ve got to wave except a simple matter of principle that has to do with the one thing you are, which is that you’re English – that’s the only existence you’ve got, pal – you’re the man. The finger points, James.’

‘I don’t know,’ said Walker.

‘It points, buddy,’ said Froelich. ‘A time to choose.’

Patrice came out of the kitchen with a cheesecake. ‘I only have a fish-slice to carve it with, is that okay?’ she asked.

‘Oh, fine by me,’ said Walker.

‘See, you can make decisions,’ said Froelich.

All the things that were being said to him disturbed Walker very much, though he tried not to show it. He had always tried to preserve in himself that little slender growth of concern, a dangerous taste for good humane doing. It was his most precious possession and he didn’t care, therefore, to bring it out too often. It seemed to him that he lived in a primitive world, in which this thing he stood for had little place. People believed in the broad sweeps of history, not in moments of individual decision. Walker could take history, and he could leave it alone. He was nervous now because here was a political matter, a public matter; and he felt he was being invited to do something rather improper, to perform an indecent exposure of his moral core on the platform and the stage. And expose it, too, in a world of political nuances he didn’t understand and couldn’t control.

All his values were private values, he believed; if he had political faiths, he had them because they ensured privacy and independence and personal survival, and he had never known what it was to think of himself as an agent in a cause. He was just James Walker, naked as they come; all else was pretence and role-playing. But now the invitations were flowing. Tell us your beliefs, your truths, your commitments. Noticeably, in the last days, he had begun to feel the robe of Englishness. Little shivers of nationality, almost of patriotism, came to him now and then in moments when he thought, They do things better at home or There’s wisdom in the way we manage.

A sort of pride came now and then when Mrs Bourbon spoke of English child-rearing, when the university teacher in New York called up the English moral life, when Bourbon talked of the marginality of literature. His own notions, primal and personal as they were, took on a location and a source. When people said to him, ‘You English are so polite,’ he felt he carried the quality of a nation. When he was asked to be loyal elsewhere, he had reacted with the statement of another loyalty, one he had never before known he possessed.

‘Of course, you know the background to all this,’ said Froelich. ‘They used these oaths to press charges of perjury against faculty members with a past, in the McCarthy days. Some universities used to have microphones hidden in the classrooms during classes in those days. I wasn’t here then, but it was fought hard here, and the oath was amended. There was a Democrat president then, and he came out on the good side. Then when we got a Republican administration in the State he was eased out, you know? But the atmosphere’s more liberal now. They even have intellectuals in government. Pouring into the White House waving Dombey and Son.’

These evocations suddenly sounded a chord on Walker’s liberal heart-strings; he said, ‘All right, I’ll fight it.’

Patrice said, ‘You think about it, Mr Walker. Don’t let these hustlers talk you into anything you don’t want to do. Let’s move back to the chairs and I’ll serve coffee and cookies.’

They moved, and Froelich put on the phonograph a record of Cynthia Gooding. The wires around the room twanged; the two speakers boomed; the singer sang Scottish folk-ballads about lords poisoning one another; and Patrice brought in the coffee, which was served in pots that had once held Keiller’s Dundee Marmalade. ‘We brought these back home with us, we thought they were so beautiful,’ she said.

‘They’re great,’ said Eudora Naughty.

‘Marvellous,’ said Walker politely.

‘That means he hates them,’ said Froelich, ‘because he knows what they’re used for.’

‘He said they were marvellous, goddam it,’ said Patrice.

‘Sure he said they were marvellous,’ said Froelich, ‘but how do you know he means what he says?’

‘Why did he say it, then?’

‘Because he’s polite. The English are polite by telling lies. The Americans are polite by telling the truth.’

‘Oh, fix some drinks,’ said Patrice.

‘Build us a martini,’ said Bob Naughty.

‘Am I houseboy round here?’ asked Froelich.

‘That’s right,’ said Patrice.

‘Okay, you two want martinis? How about you, James?’

‘I’ll have a Scotch,’ said Walker.

‘How do you like it?’

‘Oh, neat,’ said Walker. ‘It’s the only way to drink it.’

‘Is that right?’ said Eudora Naughty. ‘Look, Bernie, let me try that.’

‘You’ll take one gulp and pull your pants off, honey. You know how you get when you drink.’

‘Sure she will, give it to her,’ said Bob. ‘I like her in that mood.’

Froelich went off into the kitchen, and Patrice said, ‘He’s manic tonight.’

‘He’s a great guy,’ said Eudora.

‘He’s a hundred per cent ego,’ said Patrice. ‘Look, Mr Walker, don’t you let him pressure you like that. He just likes to run the whole show. You do what you want. I think it’s crazy to get mixed up in these schemes of his. He’s probably working to destroy the whole goddam university.’

‘Somebody ought to fight this one again,’ said Bob Naughty. ‘Bernie’s right.’

‘You admire that man too much,’ said Patrice.

‘He’s a squirrel,’ said Eudora. ‘He collects nuts.’

‘Well, okay,’ said Bob, ‘but he knows what he’s doing.’

‘Well, I don’t know what he’s doing.’

‘I’m pissing in the drinks,’ said Froelich from the kitchen. ‘You know what I think? I think Mr Walker there wants to go to bed with my wife.’

‘Well, who doesn’t?’ said Bob Naughty.

‘What do you think, spicejar?’

‘I think you’re going crazy,’ said Patrice.

Froelich came in with the drinks. ‘Did I ever tell you about all my wife’s lovers?’ he said, handing the drinks round with overtly meticulous care.

‘You’re drunk, Bernie,’ said Patrice. ‘You’re so high it just isn’t true.’

‘Hi hi,’ said Froelich, ‘and these lovers work in relays and come up the drainpipes the minute I go out that door. They’re even wearing out the brickwork.’

‘This is a total lie,’ said Patrice.

‘Oh, don’t believe her, believe me.’

‘Why?’

‘Because I’m more interesting,’ said Froelich. ‘You didn’t answer Mr Walker’s question, spicejar.’

‘I didn’t hear any question,’ said Patrice.

‘He’s too shy to ask it. He’s an Englishman and that means he’s polite.’

‘You should take some lessons,’ said Patrice.

‘Well, answer the question, please, baby, and quit stalling. Mr Walker is a normal healthy human animal with the usual male appendages and the impulse to go to bed with you has possessed him. Actually he’s crazy. But we can’t help that, can we, Eudora? Eudora and I are going to kiss one another for the next couple of minutes, so just get a good conversation going and don’t pry.’

‘Well, honey,’ said Eudora.

‘It’s your left ear that’s always attracted me, baby,’ said Froelich. ‘Take a look at that lobe. It’s the sexiest lobe in town.’

‘I’m glad you appreciate it,’ said Bob.

‘Bob, I’ve been taking a statistical survey around here, and figures prove that you’re kind of the odd man out in this ménage. So why don’t you go boil up some more coffee?’

‘I’d love some coffee, Bob,’ said Eudora.

‘Now will you two kids in the back seat pay attention to each other and leave us to our business?’ said Froelich.

Walker said, ‘Well, this is quite a party,’ to Patrice.

‘It’s Bernie’s favourite kind of party,’ said Patrice.

‘And what about you?’

‘Well, I don’t know, that’s how it goes.’

‘Why don’t we take a walk outside?’

‘I’ll get some real shoes,’ said Patrice.

Outside, on the block, it was dark. Sprinkler hoses hissed in the silence. ‘Why are you divorcing?’ asked Patrice.

‘Oh, we’ve grown away,’ said Walker.

‘What’s your wife like?’

‘A nice girl. Very nice. Big and good looking.’

‘She work?’

‘She’s a nurse.’

‘Does she nurse you?’

‘Well, that’s exactly it,’ said Walker. ‘What about you? Do you work?’

‘I have a job in admissions on campus,’ said Patrice.

‘Like it?’

‘Oh, it’s kind of fun. I run around a lot.’

They passed a house where there was a student party, to judge from the hail of beer-cans that came thumping out of the window. ‘Sounds like fun,’ said Patrice. ‘Maybe we should try it.’

‘No, let’s just walk,’ said Walker. ‘It’s nice out here with you.’

‘It’s nice out here with you too,’ said Patrice.

Walker turned so that he stood in front of Patrice, and lifted up her face to kiss her. She put her arms round him and said, ‘Well, hi hi.’

‘Hi hi,’ said Walker.

‘You should have got your jacket,’ she said. ‘You’ll catch cold.’

‘No, I’m fine.’

Patrice ran her hand through his hair and said, ‘I like doing that. I love English hair, it’s so long. They’ll cut it off when you go to the barber shop. For me, don’t let them. Take a stand.’

‘I will,’ said Walker, kissing her again. He grew so engrossed that he failed to hear the car that drew up beside them. ‘Hey,’ said a voice. It was a police cruiser with a big red pimple light on the roof.

‘Did you want us?’ said Walker.

‘What’s going on here?’ said the cop.

‘We were just taking a walk,’ said Walker.

‘Where’s your car?’

‘I haven’t got a car.’

‘Come here and talk where I can hear you,’ said the cop. ‘What are you playing at, walking around this time of night?’

‘It’s a nice night.’

‘Yeah, beautiful, stars, moon, all the usual crap. I don’t like to see people walking around at night. I get the idea they’re up to somethin’. Got any identification? What about you, girlie?’

‘I live right up the block,’ said Patrice.

‘Oh yeah?’

‘Right back there where that light is.’

‘Well, let’s see some identification.’

‘I don’t see why,’ said Walker. ‘We weren’t doing anything.’

‘Look, bud, I already seen you doin’ sumpn. Now come on, no lip, or I’ll take you in for drunken driving.’

‘I don’t even have a car.’

‘Look bud bud, if I take you in for drunken drivin’ you were drunken drivin’, car or no car. Where’s your identification?’

‘I don’t have any.’

‘A funny guy,’ said the cop.

‘I’m just a visitor here.’

‘Yeah, where are you visitin’ from?’

‘England.’

‘Oh, you’re from England? Hoity toity. And what about you, girlie? Are you a limey too?’

‘No, I told you, I live right up the block.’

‘You’re a resident.’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, I’ll tell ya sumpn, girlie, I don’t like to see a resident screwin’ with these foreign kids. Why don’t you stick with a good American boy? What’s wrong with American boys?’

‘Nothing,’ said Patrice. ‘This man’s just a friend.’

‘Yeah, I saw what kind of friend. Well, let me see you go right back in there where you live. And, girlie . . .’

‘Yes?’ said Patrice.

‘Keep your screwing in-state, okay?’

‘I don’t think you should talk like that,’ said Walker.

‘Come on,’ said Patrice. ‘Don’t talk back. This isn’t an English bobby.’

‘That girlie’s talking sense, Limey,’ said the cop. ‘Now beat it. And you, Limey.’

‘But he’s no right . . .’ said Walker.

‘Whyncha take the potatoes out your mouth when you’re talkin’?’

‘Now just a minute . . .’ said Walker.

‘Come on, for Christsake, Mr Walker,’ said Patrice.

‘I ought to write down that name,’ said the cop, ‘’cause I don’t remember too good. But maybe I’ll remember. Okay, walk. And don’t forget I’m cruising right behind you and I want to see you go into that premises. You’d better really live there, lady.’

‘It’s like a fascist state,’ said Walker, as they turned round and went back.

‘Oh, he thought we were students.’

‘Is that the way they treat the students?’

‘Well, the cops don’t like the university kids. They give them a lot of work. Then there’s this drugs thing. It’s made them a bit too smart.’

‘I’ve a good mind to complain.’

‘The police chief’s worse than that guy.’

‘Sitting there, holding on to that gun, just playing around with us. What was it all for?’

‘Oh, people don’t walk in America. And you talk funny. And he’s just plain exercising power.’

‘He looked like an executioner.’

‘Well, we have executioners,’ said Patrice. ‘It’s a violent country. That’s why you have to be careful with this oath thing. What do you know about America?’

‘I know, but that’s a simple matter of principle.’

‘Only it’s not so simple.’

They were on the porch; Patrice waved to the cruiser, which had turned round and was moving along very slowly at the kerb edge. She opened the door and the cop suddenly gunned his engine and roared away. Inside, Froelich and Eudora had disappeared and Bob Naughty was lying full length on the divan, with his shoes off and a martini in his hand.

Walker found his drink and picked it up. ‘Let’s have some music,’ said Patrice. ‘Why don’t you go and pick a record you like and play it for us, Mr Walker? They’re through there in the bedroom.’

When he got into the bedroom Walker heard heavy breathing. ‘I was looking for a record,’ he said into the darkness.

‘Hi hi,’ said Froelich, ‘grab the pile from down there by the door.’

‘Got them,’ said Walker.

‘Bysie, bysie,’ said Froelich. Walker went back into the living room to discover the lights were off and there was heavy breathing here too.

‘I got the records,’ he said.

‘Great,’ said Bob. ‘Strike a match and put something on. Music to screw by.’

‘How about the 1812 Overture?’ said Walker.

‘God, no,’ said Bob. ‘What are you, a militarist?’

‘There’s the Appassionata,’ said Walker.

‘We ought to talk to Mr Walker,’ said Patrice.

‘Oh, come on, you’ve got a whole year to talk to Mr Walker.’

‘Well, look, here’s a stranger in a foreign land. I guess if I’m going to neck, I’d rather neck with a stranger in a foreign land. It’s more pathetic.’

‘Oh, God,’ said Bob.

‘Where are you, Mr Walker?’ asked Patrice.

‘I’m by the record-player. I can’t work it.’

‘Come over here.’

Walker moved forward and stumbled over some shoes. His hand went into a potted plant and prickles stuck in his palm. He crawled the last bit to the divan. ‘Hi hi,’ said Patrice, ‘give me a kiss.’

Suddenly there were three faces together, breathing heavily over each other. ‘Hey, easy,’ said Bob, ‘keep it heterosexual.’ Walker found Patrice’s face and kissed it.

‘You have parties like this in England?’ asked Bob Naughty.

‘I can’t remember any,’ said Walker.

‘Whose hand is that?’ said Patrice.

‘Why these speculations about identity?’ said Bob Naughty.

‘I like to know whose hands are in my dress,’ said Patrice.

‘Not mine,’ said Bob.

‘Well, it’s not mine,’ said Walker.

‘It must be your own,’ said Bob, ‘unless there’s another guy here we haven’t identified yet.’

‘It’s you, Bob, cut it out,’ said Patrice. ‘Why don’t you make some drinks?’

‘James hasn’t made any drinks yet.’

‘Well, I want him here.’

‘See,’ said Walker.

‘Maybe I should hit him,’ said Bob.

‘No, make some more drinks,’ said Patrice.

‘I don’t even want a goddam drink.’

‘Well, I do and James does,’ said Patrice. ‘A beer and a Scotch. A neat, tidy Scotch.’

‘Let the guy on top of the pile do it,’ said Bob. ‘I’m parked where I can’t get out.’

‘So we’ll all get up,’ said Patrice.

‘Oh Jesus,’ said Bob. He got up and stumbled into the darkness. They heard him open a door and Froelich’s voice said, ‘Bysie, bysie.’

‘Hell, wrong door,’ said Bob. Patrice put her head against Walker’s and said, ‘Hi hi.’

‘Hi hi,’ said Walker. ‘Patrice, I was wondering . . .’

‘What?’ said Patrice.

‘Is dandruff infectious?’

‘You got dandruff?’

‘Yes. And America seems to make it worse.’

‘Well, treat it,’ said Patrice. ‘I’ll give you something you put on it in the shower.’

‘That’s very kind of you.’

‘Oh, you got friends here.’

‘I see I have,’ said Walker, putting his hand where Bob’s had been. ‘Mine,’ he said. Patrice pressed the hand and said, ‘It doesn’t have a wedding ring.’

‘Men don’t wear them in England.’

‘Oh no, I know that,’ said Patrice. ‘Is that because they don’t need them, they’re so good, or because they refuse to be tied down?’

‘The second.’

‘Oh, those poor English women,’ said Patrice. ‘Why don’t they stand up for themselves?’

‘Who wants them standing up?’ said Walker.

‘I wonder if you’re a very nice man.’

‘I wonder myself.’

‘Maybe you do have a mind of your own.’

‘You have very smooth skin,’ said Walker. ‘Is it brown in there?’

‘I’ll show you sometime,’ said Patrice. The carillon on campus rang out two, and Patrice said, ‘Those Bourbons will wonder where you got to.’

‘I’d better call them and explain.’

‘Great, let’s call them up and say Nerh,’ said Patrice. ‘Nerh, Harris, and another big Nerh for the rest of the family.’

‘Oh, don’t get up,’ said Walker.

‘Sure, don’t you want to do it?’

‘No, not really, on reflection,’ said Walker. ‘I’m staying with them, you know.’

‘I know, it’s crazy,’ said Patrice.

The door of the bedroom opened and Bernard Froelich stumbled out. ‘Hi hi,’ he said. ‘How goes it?’

‘Fine, Bernie, fine,’ said Patrice.

‘Eudora wants to hear the bongos,’ said Bernard, ‘so I said we’d beat out something. Ever play the bongos, Jamie?’

‘No,’ said Walker.

‘There seems to be a lot of goddam things that you ain’t never done,’ said Bernard.

‘I know, but I’m learning.’

‘Here, give him the drums,’ said Froelich. ‘Now beat them out, boy.’

Walker put the drums on the floor in front of him and hit them. ‘No, not like that, goddam it,’ said Froelich. ‘Put them between your knees. Sit on the floor. That’s it, now, beat ’em.’ Walker began drumming. The noise pleased him and he tried some syncopations. ‘Beat ’em, boy,’ cried Froelich. Walker unfastened his tie and opened up the front of his shirt, and then set to again. ‘Come on, come on,’ cried Eudora. Walker maddened to the rhythm. Sweat poured down his body. ‘Take off his shirt,’ said Eudora.

‘It’s like King Lear, over again,’ said Froelich. ‘Oh, boy, now you’re a negro.’ The telephone rang. Froelich answered it and said, ‘It’s the neighbours. They’re going to call the cops.’

‘Ring them back and say Nerh,’ said Patrice.

‘We’ll have that prowl-car back,’ said Bob Naughty. Walker stopped drumming.

‘Oh, that was great,’ said Patrice.

‘Why don’t we get out of here?’ said Bob.

‘That’s right,’ said Walker, ‘I’d better be getting home.’

‘No, come on, let’s get breakfast some place. It’s already dawn.’

When they got out to the car, the light was coming up. A bird was singing in a tree. The fresh pink light was rising over the shortgrass plain and picking out the undulations over toward the mountain. The peaks showed faintly. Walker got in the back with Patrice and held her hand as they drove through the empty streets of Party. ‘I feel like we were driving west,’ said Bob Naughty. ‘What time do we hit Amarillo, Texas?’ They found a diner on the edge of town and ordered eggs. The bright sunlight slanted in now through the windows, and outside the town’s garbage trucks were meeting together. There was the dust of sleeplessness in Walker’s eyes and he began to nod over his eggs.

‘You were really turned on with those drums,’ said Patrice.

‘I’m tired now,’ said Walker.

‘Okay, come on, I’ll drive you back to this Bourbon place. Where is it?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Walker. ‘Out in the country somewhere.’ They drove back through the fresh morning light. The Bourbon house was shuttered and silent. ‘Thanks,’ said Walker, getting out. He walked toward the house.

‘We’ll wait until you get inside,’ said Froelich. Walker tried the front door; it was locked. He was about to turn and go back home with Froelich when it opened silently and Dr Bourbon, in his Japanese kimono, stood sadly on the step. ‘I was sittin’ up in a chair waitin’ for you,’ he said. ‘Thought you didn’t have transportation. Was waitin’ for you to call.’

‘Sorry I’m late,’ said Walker.

‘Then I heard the car. Figgered for a moment it was prowlers. Nearly shot you all up.’

‘I’m glad you didn’t.’

‘Is that Bernard Froelich out there?’ asked Bourbon. ‘Wanted to ask him ’bout my fender.’ But as he spoke, the car gunned and drove off. Walker, watching it, saw Patrice’s hand waving at him through the rear window. Then they were gone and a solemn Dr Bourbon ushered the guilty Walker indoors.