IV

But now here it is, the day of beginning again, the day that is written down in so many diaries, and it is raining, and dreary, and bleak. It rains on the shopping precinct, as the Kirks do their early-morning shopping; it rains on the terrace, as they unload the wine and the glasses, the bread, the cheese, the sausages; it rains even on the University of Watermouth, that bright place of glinting glass and high towers, the Kaakinen wonderland, as Howard drives up the long carriage drive that leads to the centre of the site, and parks in the car park. In the rain, busloads of students arrive from the station, descending and running for convenient shelter. In the rain, they unload their trunks and cases into the vestibules of the residence buildings, into the halls of Hobbes and Kant, Marx and Hegel, Toynbee and Spengler. In the rain, the faculty, scattered over the summer, park their cars in rows in the car park and rush, with their briefcases, towards the shapely buildings, ready, in the rain, to renew the onward march of intellect. In the rain, academic Howard, smart in his leather coat and denim cap, humping his briefcase, gets out of the van, and locks it; in the rain he walks, with his briefcase, through the permanent building site that is the university, past shuttered concrete, steel frame, glass wall; through underpasses, down random slopes, along walkways, beneath roofed arcades. He crosses the main concourse of the university, called for some reason the Piazza, where paths cross, crowds gather, mobs surge; he reaches the high glass tower of the Social Science Building. He goes up the shallow steps, and pushes open the glass doors. In the dry, he stops, shakes his hair, looks around. The building has a spacious foyer; its outer walls and doors are all of brown glass; beneath the glass, in one corner, trickles a small water feature, a pool that passes under the wall and out into the world beyond – for Kaakinen, that visionary man, is a metaphysician, and for those with eyes to see, emblems of yin and yang, spirit and flesh, inner and outer, abound in his futurist city. The foyer contains much bustle; there are many tables here; at the tables sit students, representing various societies that contend, in considerable noise, for the attention of the arriving freshmen. Just inside the foyer Howard stands still, looking around; it is as if he is looking for someone, seeking something; there is a task to fulfil.

But he seems not to fulfil it; he walks on. At the tables, two groups, the Revolutionary Student Alliance and the Radical Student Coordinating Committee, have fallen out over a principle; they are busy throwing two lots of pamphlets, each labelled Ulster: The Real Solution, at each other. Howard ignores the altercation; he passes the tables; he goes on into an area of many notice-boards which, just like the tables, advertise much contention, contradiction, concern. Here are notices for all seasons. There are notices designed to stimulate self-awareness (‘Women’s Lib Nude Encounter Group’) and self-definition (‘Gaysoc Elizabethan Evening: With Madrigals’), reform (‘Adopt an Elderly Person’) and revolution (‘Start the Armed Struggle Now?/Lunch-time Meeting Addressed by Dr Howard Kirk’). The invitations are rich, the temptations many; but even this does not seem to be what Howard is looking for. He passes on, towards the main part of the foyer, where the lift shaft is. There is much activity here too. Students crowd round the lift, going to their first meetings of the new academic year with their tutors, crowding in to their first seminars; there are members of faculty busily carrying papers, and registry persons carrying computer printouts, and signs pointing here, and others pointing there. Howard stops here; once again he looks seriously, purposefully around. There is a thing to do; but with whom might it be done? A figure emerges from the crowd; she wears a large wet raincoat; she carries a carrycot. It is one of Howard’s colleagues, a girl called Moira Millikin, unorthodox economist and unmarried mother, notable for her emancipated custom of bringing her infant to class, where it gurgles and chunters as she explains the concept of gross national product to her solemn students. ‘Hello, Howard,’ she says, ‘had a good summer?’ ‘Well, I finished a book, if that’s good,’ said Howard. ‘What about you?’ ‘I got pregnant again, if that’s good,’ says Moira. ‘We’re a productive lot, aren’t we?’ says Howard. ‘I’m glad I found you. I’ve a fascinating piece of news.’ The bell pings above the doors of the lift, in front of which they stand; the doors open, and out walks a man in workclothes, pushing a wheelbarrow in front of him. ‘They push those barrows so that no one can mistake them for students,’ says Moira, ‘that they’d hate.’ ‘Right,’ says Howard, ‘are you going up to Sociology?’ ‘Well, Economics,’ says Moira, ‘back to the grindstone.’ ‘Good,’ says Howard; and they move forward with the surge, into the lift. He and Moira stand against the back wall, with the carrycot between them; the doors close, the lift rises.

‘What were you going to tell me?’ asks Moira, ‘Is it an issue?’ ‘It is,’ says Howard, looking around the lift, and leaning towards Moira, and speaking in a very low voice. ‘There’s a rumour that Mangel is coming here to speak.’ ‘A rumour that who is coming here to speak?’ asks Moira. ‘There’s a rumour that Mangel is coming here to speak,’ says Howard in a very loud voice; students turn and look at him, ‘Mangel. Mangel the geneticist. Mangel the racist.’ The metal box in which they stand creaks its way up the central tower of the building; bells keep pinging, the lift stops, and opens its doors, and disgorges persons, at floor after floor after floor. ‘Oh, that Mangel,’ says Moira, bouncing her baby, ‘Christ, we can’t have him here.’ ‘Well, that’s precisely what I thought,’ says Howard, ‘we really can’t.’ ‘It’s an insult, an indignity,’ says Moira. ‘It’s an outrage,’ says Howard. ‘But who invited him?’ asks Moira, ‘I don’t remember our agreeing to invite him.’ ‘That’s because we never did agree to invite him,’ said Howard, ‘someone must have acted over the summer, while we were all safely out of sight. ‘You mean Marvin?’ asks Moira. ‘I suppose,’ says Howard. ‘Well,’ says Moira, ‘we’re not out of sight now. We all have a say. This passes for a democratic department.’ ‘Right,’ says Howard. ‘I’ll raise it at the departmental meeting tomorrow,’ says Moira, ‘I’m glad you told me.’ ‘Oh, will you?’ asks Howard, ‘I think someone ought to. I thought I might myself, but …’ ‘But you’d rather I did,’ says Moira. ‘Okay.’ The liftbell pings; the doors open at the fourth floor; ‘This is me,’ says Moira. With the carrycot in front of her, she jostles through the crowds; she thrusts herself out of the lift; she turns, and stares back into the crowded interior. ‘Howard,’ she says over the heads, ‘I’ll fight. You can count on me.’ ‘Great,’ says Howard, ‘that’s marvellous.’

The lift doors shut; Howard leans against the metal wall, looking like a man who is no longer looking for someone or something. The doors open again, at the fifth floor; Howard moves to the front, and steps out of the lift, into the stark concourse, for here, high in the building, is where Sociology is. Is, and yet in a sense is not; for no sociologist seriously interested in human interaction could have countenanced the Kaakinen concept at this point. From the lift shaft four straight corridors lead off, at right angles to each other, each identical, each containing nothing but rows of doors, giving or barring access to teaching rooms or faculty studies. There are buildings in the world which have corners, bends, recesses; where seats have been put, or paintings hung on the walls; Kaakinen, in his purity, has rejected all these delicacies. Along the corridors sit many students, waiting to see their advisers on this, the first day of the term. They sit on the tiled floors of the corridors, their backs against the wall, their knees up, their hands holding, or spilling, plastic cups of coffee, obtained from an automatic vending machine next to the lift shaft. The floors smell of tile polish; the corridors are lit only by artificial sodium light. Howard leaves the concourse, and walks along one of the corridors; the students scowl and clown and groan as he passes, and make cracking noises at him with the plastic of their cups. ‘The only activity Kaakinen invented for people to do here, except teach or be taught,’ Henry Beamish had once said, in the old days before the anguishes of 1968, when he was still witty, ‘is a game called Fire. Where you ring the alarm, immobilize the lift, and file slowly down the fire escape with a wet jacket over your head.’ Only Howard, who has a taste for the spare, finds it forgivable; there are merits in the alienation it promotes. He walks on, down to the very end of the corridor; here, at the most inconvenient point, is the departmental office. He pushes open the glass door, and goes inside. Within the big bare room, responsible for the endless documentation that keeps the community humming, are two nice, neat secretaries, Miss Pink from Streatham, Miss Minnehaha Ho, from Taiwan; they sit in their miniskirts, opposite each other, in front of typewriters, their knees just touching. They look up as Howard comes in. ‘Oh, Dr Kirk, what a very fine hat,’ says Miss Ho. ‘Lovely to see your beautiful faces again,’ says Howard. ‘Had a good summer?’ ‘You were on holiday,’ says Miss Pink, ‘we worked.’ ‘It only looks like a holiday,’ says Howard, going over to the long rows of pigeonholes, where the faculty mail is deposited, ‘that’s when the real work of the mind takes place. I come back full of new thoughts.’ ‘The trouble with your thoughts,’ says Miss Pink, ‘is they end up as our typing.’ ‘You’re right,’ says Howard, dropping most of the correspondence addressed to him in a box marked ‘For Recycling’. ‘Rebel. Fight back’. Through the wall can be heard the sounds of intensive industry; the adjoining room is the office of Professor Marvin, the heart of the operation. Telephones click, buzzers buzz, the high voice speaks on the telephone; there is much to be done. ‘What’s this?’ asks Howard, holding up a large grey envelope, one of the university’s official envelopes for committee documents. ‘That’s agenda for the departmental meeting,’ says Miss Ho, ‘very good typing.’ ‘Oh, I’ll read it with scruple,’ says Howard, ‘if you’ve done it. You’ve had your hair styled. I like it.’ ‘He is trying to find something out,’ says Miss Ho to Miss Pink, ‘he always likes my hair when he is finding something out.’ ‘No, I really like it,’ says Howard, ‘look, I’m just glancing at this agenda; you haven’t put Professor Mangel’s name down on the list of visiting speakers.’ ‘It wasn’t on it,’ says Miss Ho, ‘that is why.’ ‘It must be a mistake,’ says Howard. ‘You want me to check with Professor Marvin?’ asks Miss Ho. ‘No,’ says Howard, ‘leave it. I’ll raise it with him myself. Can’t you just add it?’ ‘Oh, no, Dr Kirk,’ says Miss Ho. ‘Agenda approved.’ ‘Of course,’ says Howard, ‘well, type good.’ He goes out of the office; he walks back down the corridor. The squatting students stare at him. Two builders on a ladder are removing a ceiling panel, to gain access to the stark intestines of the premises; the whole tower is in an endless state of semi-completion. He stops in front of a dark brown door; on it is a panel, with his own name on it. He gets a key from his pocket; he unlocks the door; he walks inside.

The room is raw in the wet, dull light; it is a simple rectangle, with unpainted breezeblock walls, described in the architectural journals as proof of Kaakinen’s frank honesty. The rooms at Watermouth are all like this, stark, simple, repetitious, each one an exemplary instance of all the others. The contents, standard, are as follows: one black-topped Conran desk, one grey gunmetal desk lamp; one plain glass ashtray; one Roneo-Vickers three-drawer filing cabinet; one red desk chair; one small grey easy chair; one gunmetal wastepaper basket; a stack of four (4) black plastic chairs, their seats moulded to the shape of some average universal buttock; six (6) wall-hung bookshelves. Howard, who likes economy, has amended it very little; the one mark of his presence is the poster of Che, sellotaped to the breezeblock wall above the Conran desk. There are big, bare windows; beyond the windows you can see, dead centre, the high phallus, eolipilic in shape, of the boilerhouse chimney, the absolute focus, the point of maximum architectural eminence, of the entire university, its substitute for a tower or a spire or a campanile. Howard hangs up his coat on the hook behind the door, and puts his hat on top of it, he puts his briefcase down on the desk; he begins, after his absence over the summer, when the room has been in the hands of cleaners only, to re-establish occupancy. He sits down at the red desk chair in front of the black-topped Conran desk, switches on the gunmetal desk lamp, removes the agenda from its big grey envelope, opens the Roneo-Vickers three-drawer filing cabinet, and puts the agenda in a pocket file; scrumples up the big grey envelope, and tosses it into the gunmetal wastepaper basket. This work done, he rises, goes to the window, adjusts the plastic blind, and stares out at the rain, dropping very wetly over the Kaakinen concept that is spread out below, far below him. Down in the Piazza there is a scurrying of students; against the grand style of Kaakinen walk, in the wet, the small personal styles of the people, who always alter from autumn to autumn, in the changing rhythm of human expression, which takes skirts higher or lower, gives faces more hair or less, alters posture and stance. These are matters of serious attention to true cultural inspectors, like Howard; he stands at his window, high in the glass tower, and examines the latest statements on the human prospect.

The university gets bigger, year by year; a new building, a new path, a new stretch of water, takes it inexorably towards its fuller realization. The place has been functioning for only ten years; but in those ten years it has done everything, indeed has enacted the entire industrializing process of the modern world. Ten years ago this stretch of land was a peaceful, pastoral Eden, a place of fields and cows, focused around the splendours of Watermouth Hall, the turreted Elizabethan mansion now screened from sight by the massive constructions that have grown on the pasture and the stubble. At Watermouth Hall, peacocks strutted; so did the very first students, pleasant, likeable, outrageous people, stylists of quite another kind from the present generation, inventors of societies and lectures and concerts, smart souls who, when the photographers from the Colour Supplements came down, as they did all the time in those days, photographed well, and reputedly had all the makings of a modern new intelligentsia. The sun shone regularly then, the same sun that had shone on Edwardian England; the students had their tutorials in the ancient library of the hall, surrounded by busts of Homer and Socrates, by leatherbound volumes scarcely disturbed since the onset of Romanticism, or, in summer, in the box maze, while gardeners clipped respectfully around them. The faculty met ceaselessly, innovating, planning, designing new courses, new futures, new reasons for trips to Italy; endless optimism reigned, and novelty was everywhere, and Kaakinen came, and stared at the grass, and dreamed dreams, while cows peered over the haha at his Porsche. A year later the box garden was gone; in its place was a building, the first of the modern new residences, called Hobbes, with round porthole windows scooping down to the floors, and transparent Finnish curtaining, and signs in lowercase lettering. The feudal era was ending; a year later it was gone for good, when teaching was shifted from Watermouth Hall, which became an office block, devoted to administration, into the bright new buildings, some high, some long, some square, some round, that began to spring up here and there all over the estate. There were two more residence halls, Kant and Hegel; the gardeners, their deference spurned, had gone to greener pastures, while men on brushbearing vehicles swept the new asphalt.

For now the university was beginning to secrete its history in clear annual stages, like a tree; and it was, in encapsulated form, the history of modern times. The bourgeoisie rose (Humanities and Natural Science opened their doors); the industrial revolution took place (the Business Building and the Engineering Building were opened); the era of the crowd and the factory arrived (the glass tower of Social Science came into use). The sun shone less often; the students appeared less and less in the newspapers, and looked different, and more confused. The new buildings all had toilets with strange modern symbols of man and woman on them, virtually indistinguishable; the new students came, and they stared at the doors, and at themselves, and at each other; they looked, and they asked questions like ‘What is man, any more?’ and so life went on. Gemeinschaft yielded to Gesellschaft; community was replaced by the fleeting, passing contacts of city life; people came into the university, and disappeared; psychiatric social workers were appointed, to lead them through the recesses of their angst. By 1967, when Howard came, it had been noticed that no given teacher could possibly remember the names and features of all the students he was teaching, nor master in face-to-face contact the number of colleagues he was teaching with. There were those who pined, and said more was worse, more people was worse life; but, as Howard told them, it was simply that the community was growing up. It grew and grew, up and up. In 1968, the year after Howard, full proletarian status was adopted; the students wore work-clothes, and said they were not an élite any more, and cried ‘Destroy, destroy,’ and modern citizenship was established. So it went on; in 1969, existential exposure, modern plight, the contemporary condition of pluralism and relativity, were officially accredited, with the opening of the multi-denominational chapel, named, to avoid offence, the Contemplation Centre; rabbis and gurus, ethical secularists and macrobiotic organicists presided at what was carefully not called its consecration. In 1970 the technotronic age became official; the Computing Centre was put into use, and it began work by issuing a card with a number on it to everyone on campus, telling them who they were, an increasingly valuable piece of information.

And now the campus is massive, one of those dominant modern environments of multifunctionality that modern man creates: close it down as a university, a prospect that seemed to become increasingly possible, as the students came to hate the world and the world the university, and you could open it again as a factory, a prison, a shopping precinct. There is a dining hall with a roof of perspex domes, looking like sun umbrellas, by the manmade lake; there is an Auditorium in the shape of a whale, its hinder parts hung out on an elegant device of metal ropes over the lake; the buildings poke and prod and shine in a landscape itself reconstituted, as hills are moved here and valleys there. Some eclecticism and tolerance prevails; at the Auditorium they perform that week a Marxist adaptation of King Lear, this week a capitalist adaptation of The Good Woman of Setzuan. But a zealous equality prevails in the air, and the place has become a little modern state, with the appropriate services, in all their inconsistency: a post office and a pub and a Mace supermarket and a newsagent stand side by side with the psychiatric service, the crèche, the telephone lifeline for the drug addicts, the offices of the Securicor patrol. The sun rarely shines; the peacocks have gone; the students are not bright originals in the old style, but bleaker, starker performers in the modern play; and when they are photographed by the press, which is rather less often, they appear not in the glossy pages but in the news pages, and upside down, hanging between two policemen. The campus spreads; now and then Air Force planes swoop low over it, as if inspecting to make sure it is still in the nation’s hands, before they sweep on to the woods and cornfields beyond. A plane flies over now, as Howard stares out of his window; down below, in the Piazza, the students criss and cross, this way and that, in elaborate, asymmetrical patterns, ants with serious yet unguessable purposes.

How are they this year? Well, no longer do they look like an intellectual élite; indeed, what they resemble this autumn is rather the winter retreat of Napoleon’s army from Moscow. For in the new parade of styles which undergoes subtle shifts year by year, like the campus itself, bits of military uniform, bedraggled scraps of garments, fur hats and forage caps and kepis, tank tops and denims and coats which have lost their buttons have become the norm; the crowds troop along raggedly, avoiding the paths which have been laid out for them, hairy human bundles fresh from some sinister experience. Like the faculty, the place itself, they look smaller and darker and more worn than they did ten years ago. There is little wonder; much anguish has visited the Kaakinen city. Plagues of boils have fallen upon it; the locusts have eaten at the old dream of a university life totally new, qualitatively fine. In the rain the buildings are black; the concrete has stained, the glass grown dirty, the services diminished. The graffiti experts have been at work, inscribing ‘Stop Police Brutality’ and ‘IRA’ and ‘Spengler Bootboys’ on concrete and steel; there has been a small fire in the library; rapes and muggings occur occasionally in the darker corners of this good society. From time to time the radical passions overwhelm, then subside again; right reason and divine anger, Apollo and Dionysus, contend ceaselessly; suddenly frenzies arise, mouths cry, eyes glare, features distort. There is a student divorce problem, a statistically significant suicide rate. In the Students’ Union voices cry: ‘Woe, woe, the great city.’ As Howard says, the place has grown up. He stares from the window; he takes in its texture. But now, over the wet, futurist place, a strange sound arises. It is the silvery chime of the old stable clock at Watermouth Hall, an eighteenth-century perpetuum mobile marvel that will not be stopped, ringing out the hour of ten. The chimes foolishly chime; Howard turns; there is a knock at his door. ‘Yes?’ shouts Howard, moving away from his windows, ‘Come on in.’

The door opens slowly; two students stand in the frame. They are girls, one neat and bra-less, the other fat and dressed in a long, Victorian-style dress. Howard has not taught them before, but they are both immediately recognizable as Watermouth types, bright and anxious looking, ringed under the eyes, entering rooms cautiously; Watermouth is notable for experimental forms of teaching that often resemble physical assault. ‘Dr Kirk,’ says the braless girl. ‘We’re minors,’ says the fat girl. ‘We’re yours,’ says the bra-less one. ‘You’re minors and you’re mine,’ says Howard. ‘That’s it,’ says the fat girl. ‘You want to do sociology,’ says Howard. ‘Well, we have to do sociology,’ says the bra-less girl, ‘to be frank.’ ‘Don’t you want to?’ asks Howard. ‘Why do they make us?’ asks the fat girl. Howard takes the girls across to the window; he shows them the glass and concrete view; he tells them about Gemeinschaft to Gesellschaft; he says, ‘How else could you know why the world has become what it is?’ ‘Is that what it’s about?’ asks the bra-less girl. ‘That’s right,’ says Howard. ‘Well, that’s everything, isn’t it?’ asks the bra-less girl. ‘Exactly,’ says Howard. ‘Ooooo,’ says the fat girl, standing on Howard’s other side. ‘What’s that?’ asks Howard. ‘Over there,’ says the fat girl, and she points her finger out over the gloomy campus, ‘I can see where I live.’ ‘Where?’ asks Howard. ‘I’m in Hegel,’ says the girl, ‘but the roof leaks.’ ‘Dr Kirk, who was Hegel?’ asks the bra-less girl. ‘Ah,’ says Howard, ‘You see, you do need to study sociology.’ ‘Did he know a lot?’ asks the bra-less girl. ‘He did,’ says Howard, ‘but his roof leaks.’ ‘You know more,’ says the fat girl. Howard laughs; he steps back into the centre of his room, and arranges two of his plastic chairs, so that they form a triangle with his own desk chair. In the plastic chairs he puts the girls; in his desk chair he puts himself; he talks to them, he tells them about their work for the term, he sets them some reading, he advises them on the purchase of books, he asks the fat girl to write him an essay for next week. The girls get up, and go. ‘He didn’t tell you who Hegel was,’ says the fat girl, as they walk off down the corridor. ‘Hey,’ shouts Howard, after them, ‘Come to a party, eight o’clock tonight at my house,’ ‘Ooooo,’ says the fat girl.

And so the morning passes. At home, domestic Barbara unwraps cheeses, and cuts sausages, and tidies the house; in his rectangular room Howard sees students, old ones and new ones, sets essays, recommends courses, sets reading, asks for essays, invites them to his party. The stable clock chimes; the rain falls. At twelve-thirty there is no knock on his door; he takes his leather coat from the peg, and descends, down the lift, into the complexities of the campus. The student hordes pass, to and fro, across the Piazza; Howard walks through them, a contemporary stylist himself, and makes his way to the Students’ Union building. There are many services for a Howard to perform in a modern society; he has now another duty. The Revolutionary Student Front, that vague, contentious coalition of Marxists and Maoists and Marxist-Leninists and Revolutionary Socialists, has its inaugural meeting of the term; Howard, busy in the world as well as in the mind, has agreed to address it, to help it recruit. In more plastic chairs, in a tiny room in the Union, a group of students sits. The rain splashes on the windows; a pop group rehearses in the next room. A student called Peter Madden, who, if this uncertain consortium believed in having a leader, would be it, leads him to the front of the group. Madden wears denims and hostile, one-directional sunglasses; he stands and says a few words, explaining the purpose of the group, its relevance and its ire, to the newcomers. There are not many there, for it is early for issues and political discovery, and they are solemn, like a class. Howard stands up; the faces look. He leans with one hand on the arm of a chair; he glances out of the window at the futurist city; he begins to speak. He offers a calm analysis of the socio-political situation in which, he says, we find ourselves. We are in a world of late capitalism, and capitalism is an over-ripe plum, ready to fall. It is cracking, bursting, from its inner contradictions; but who, from its fall, will benefit? How can the new world come?

He speaks on; he generates images of violence. The faces stare, as he talks of armed struggle, the need for unity, the claims of blood and force. The dark portrait builds up, to the room’s consent. He stops speaking; he invites discussion; the minds contemplate the techniques of bloodshed, the degree of warfare, the bright new reality at the end of it all. Afterwards they go quietly from the room; the pop group raises the decibels in the next room. In the cafeteria, over a salad plate, Howard says to Peter Madden: ‘Not too many there.’ ‘You don’t radicalize people by talk,’ says Peter Madden, ‘you get them in by action.’ ‘That’s right,’ says Howard. A girl called Beck Pott, in denim, her fair hair done up in twists, says: ‘Have you got some action?’ ‘I don’t know,’ says Howard, ‘Moira Millikin told me this morning that Mangel might be coming here to speak.’ ‘You have to be joking,’ says Beck Pott, ‘everybody’s so low-profile these days you can’t get a fascist to perform a fascist action.’ ‘Why don’t they repress us the way they used to?’ asks Peter Madden. ‘There’s your problem,’ says Howard, ‘so you have to go for the soft liberal underbelly. Find where they’re tolerant and go for that. Mangel tempts them to tolerance.’ ‘But what makes you think they’ll invite him?’ asks Beck Pott. ‘I expect they will,’ says Howard. ‘Well, great,’ says Beck Pott. ‘Buy me a beer, Howard. You’ve got more money than me.’ ‘Give her the money,’ says Peter Madden, ‘she can fetch it herself.’ ‘I’ll get it, I’m going,’ says Howard. ‘Look, come to a party at my home tonight.’ ‘Okay,’ says Beck Pott.

‘Myra and I are looking forward very much to the party at your house tonight,’ says Henry Beamish, a few minutes later, as they meet each other getting into the lift in the Social Science Building. ‘We always look forward to your parties.’ ‘Well, good,’ says Howard, ‘it should be a lively evening. We’ve asked everybody.’ ‘You always do,’ says Henry, standing inside the box, and pressing the wrong button; the lift begins to descend, irrevocably, into the basement of the building, where the rubbish is kept. ‘Yours are the most interesting parties we go to.’ The lift doors open; they stare at dustbins. ‘How’s Myra?’ asks Howard, pressing the right button. ‘Oh, well, you know,’ says Henry. ‘No,’ says Howard, as they rise. ‘She’s all right,’ says Henry. ‘She’s just bought a new Miele dishwasher. How’s Barbara?’ ‘Ah, Barbara,’ says Howard, ‘she’s fighting back.’ ‘A good girl,’ says Henry. ‘Ah, well, term again, thank the Lord, I don’t have to do any more to my book.’ ‘You’re writing a book, Henry?’ says Howard, as the lift stops. ‘That’s good.’ ‘I thought I’d do a book,’ says Henry, ‘I’ve nothing to say, of course. Ah, here we are. Take care, old boy.’ ‘I will,’ says Howard. ‘Till tonight,’ says Henry, disappearing down one of the corridors on the fifth floor. Howard walks along the facing corridor; he goes back to his room. And now there are more students to see, letters to write, memos to dictate to Miss Ho, who sits in the grey chair, and takes shorthand from him. After this he goes to the library; the computer issues him some books; he carries them back to his room, and packs his briefcase. Then, with a good start to the new term behind him, and the joy of the party ahead, he goes out to the car park. It is just before five o’clock, on the day that Flora, and so many others, have noted in their diaries, that he gets back to the house in the terrace, and walks through the cool hall into the kitchen at the back.

In the days when the Kirks had remodelled their house, they had worked with particular dedication at the kitchen, since they both had to spend so much time there. They did it out in pine and rush; the long table is scrubbed pine, the shelves on the walls are pine, there are pine cabinets, and pine and rush chairs, and rush matting on the floors. Barbara stands amid this, in front of a vinyl wallpaper celebrating the bulbous lines of onions and garlics; she is wearing a striped butcher’s apron, and making pâté. The children are here too, filling bowls with nuts and pretzels. ‘I said come back about four,’ says Barbara, as Howard kisses her lightly on the cheek. She wipes the cheek with the back of her hand; she looks at him. ‘I’ve had a busy day,’ says Howard. ‘I’m sure,’ says Barbara. ‘Don’t tell me about it. It’s clearly set you up in a big way, and I’m not interested in other people’s happy times right now.’ ‘You’re late, Howard,’ says Celia, ‘that was naughty.’ ‘Well,’ says Barbara, ‘there are the following things to do. Wipe the glasses. Open all the bottles of wine; there’ll not be time for doing that later. I should pour out a few dozen glasses full. Put out ashtrays; I’m not having dirty rugs, and for some reason students have started throwing cigarette-ends on the floor.’ ‘They always did,’ says Howard, ‘we didn’t care, once.’ ‘Well, we do now,’ says Barbara. ‘And then arrange the house the way you want it, sociologically speaking, for all that there interaction you’re always talking about. You also need a bath and a change. Especially if you propose to be intimate with anyone other than myself. I’ve had a wearying, infuriating day, Howard, I think you should know. I’ve had Rosemary on the telephone twice; I’m sure she’s going crazy. I think my period’s starting, too, isn’t that great? And Anne has left.’ ‘She has?’ asks Howard, wiping glasses with a cloth. ‘Before she washed the dishes from last night, not after,’ says Barbara. ‘She’s gone back to her flat.’ ‘I thought she’d help out today,’ says Howard. ‘Oh, you pushed her on her way this morning, didn’t you?’ asks Barbara. ‘Everyone exploits somebody.’ Howard begins to take out a row of bottles from one of the cardboard cases, and put them on the long table. ‘No, not there, somewhere else,’ says Barbara, ‘I’m occupying that space.’ She puts some long French loaves on the table, and begins slicing them neatly, putting the cut pieces into a rush basket. Howard stands by the kitchen cabinets; he takes the corkscrew from the pine drawer, and begins expertly opening bottles, one after another. The children run over, and begin to lick the pulled corks; the Kirks’ party begins to take its shape.

After a while, Howard leaves the kitchen and begins to go around the house. He is a solemn party-giver, the creator of a serious social theatre. Now he goes about, putting out ashtrays and dishes, cushions and chairs. He moves furniture, to produce good conversation areas, open significant action spaces, create corners of privacy. The children run around with him. ‘Who’s coming, Howard?’ asks Martin. ‘A whole crowd of people,’ says Howard. ‘Who?’ asks Martin. ‘He doesn’t know,’ says Celia. Now he goes upstairs, to pull beds against the walls, adjust lights, shade shades, pull blinds, open doors. It is an important rule to have as little forbidden ground as possible, to make the house itself the total stage. And so he designs it, retaining only a few tiny areas of sanctity; he blocks, with chairs, the short corridor that leads to the children’s rooms, and the steps that lead down to his basement study. Everywhere else the code is one of possibility, not denial. Chairs and cushions and beds suggest multiple forms of companionship. Thresholds are abolished; room leads into room. There are speakers for music, special angles for lighting, rooms for dancing and talking and smoking and sexualizing. The aim is to let the party happen rather than to make it happen, so that what takes place occurs apparently without hostly intervention, or rather with the intervention of that higher sociological host who governs the transactions of human encounter. He goes into the bathroom, to check there; Barbara lies, big and naked, in the bath, in a plastic showercap, reading Cohn’s The Pursuit of the Millennium. She says: ‘Howard, I want you to know this. I’m having my Biba weekend in London, Anne or no Anne. I know you’d like to fix that, but you won’t.’ ‘Fix it?’ says Howard in innocence. ‘Of course you should go.’ ‘Then find me someone to replace Anne,’ says Barbara, ‘so I don’t worry about the kids all the time.’ ‘No, you mustn’t do that,’ says Howard. ‘But can I count on you? Will you really do it?’ asks Barbara. ‘Yes,’ says Howard. ‘I’m a fool,’ says Barbara, ‘I should find someone myself. Rosemary would come.’ ‘Magical Rosemary,’ says Howard, ‘fresh from the shed down the garden.’ ‘That’s not funny,’ says Barbara, heaving in the bath. ‘I just meant there are better choices,’ says Howard. ‘I’ll find someone.’ ‘Not too pretty,’ says Barbara. ‘Oh, no,’ says Howard. ‘I want to enjoy myself,’ says Barbara, ‘my God, after four weeks close to you, I need it. Mind, I want to come out now.’ ‘Oh, you look good,’ says Howard, as Barbara steps from the bath. ‘Don’t touch,’ says Barbara, ‘get on getting ready.’

Howard goes on getting ready; later, he takes a bath himself. Afterwards, he walks back to the bedroom, a room that he has rearranged for the evening, and changes, putting on clean jeans, a purple vest shirt. Then he goes downstairs, and there is someone with Barbara in the kitchen. It is Myra Beamish, sitting at the pine table, slicing and breaking the long loaves of French bread. She looks up at him in the doorway; she is wearing a fluffy pink chiffon party dress, and her hair is neater and fresher and darker than usual; Howard realizes she is wearing a wig. ‘Oh, Myra,’ he says. ‘Hello, Howard,’ says Myra, ‘I hope you don’t mind, I came early. I knew Barbara would be glad of some advance help. She has so much to do.’ ‘That’s good,’ says Howard, ‘how would you like a drink.’ ‘Oh, Howard,’ says Myra, ‘I would most certainly love a drink.’ A row of glasses stands ready poured and waiting for the evening; Howard picks one up, and carries it over to Myra, who smiles at him, and says ‘Ta.’ ‘Where’s Henry?’ asks Howard. ‘Who knows?’ says Myra. ‘Who knows about Henry?’ ‘I thought you might,’ says Howard, sitting down. ‘Does Barbara know all and everything about you?’ asks Myra. ‘I don’t,’ says Barbara. ‘Nothing.’ ‘Then why should I be expected to know about Henry?’ ‘Oh, you’re not,’ says Barbara. ‘I haven’t seen you since before the summer,’ says Myra. ‘What did you do over the summer? Did you go away?’ ‘No, we didn’t,’ says Barbara, ‘we stayed right here, and Howard finished a book.’ ‘A book,’ says Myra, ‘Henry tried to write a book. A very profoundly solemn book. On charisma.’ ‘Fine,’ says Howard, ‘Henry needs another book.’ ‘Howard, Henry needs more than a book,’ says Myra, cutting bread. ‘I must say I like your books better.’ ‘You do?’ asks Barbara. ‘Especially the sex one,’ says Myra. ‘The only thing I never understand about that book is whether we could do all those perverse sex things now, or whether we had to wait until after the revolution.’ ‘Christ, Myra,’ says Barbara, ‘nothing in consenting sex is perverse.’ ‘What’s more,’ says Howard, ‘they are the revolution.’ ‘Oh boy,’ says Myra, ‘you have such terrific revolutions. You’ve really improved revolution’s image.’ ‘I try,’ says Howard.

Barbara gets up from the table. She says: ‘Howard’s books are very empty but they’re always on the right side.’ ‘They’re nice books,’ says Myra, ‘I can almost understand them. More than I can say of Henry’s.’ ‘Perhaps that’s what’s wrong with them,’ says Barbara. ‘Of course, they sell very well.’ ‘What’s the new book, Howard?’ asks Myra. ‘What are you abolishing now?’ ‘People,’ says Barbara. ‘Barbara doesn’t understand this book,’ says Howard. ‘She’s such an activist she thinks she can dispense with theory.’ ‘Howard’s such a theoretician now he thinks he can dispense with action,’ says Barbara. ‘Why don’t you tell Myra what’s in the book? It’s not often you meet someone who’s really interested. You are really interested, aren’t you, Myra?’ ‘Of course I am,’ says Myra. ‘It’s called The Defeat of Privacy,’ says Howard. ‘It’s about the fact that there are no more private selves, no more private corners in society, no more private properties, no more private acts.’ ‘No more private parts,’ says Barbara. ‘Mankind is making everything open and accessible.’ ‘Even me?’ asks Myra. ‘Oh, we know all about you,’ says Howard. ‘You see, sociological and psychological understanding is now giving us a total view of man, and democratic society is giving us total access to everything. There’s nothing that’s not confrontable. There are no concealments any longer, no mysterious dark places of the soul. We’re all right there in front of the entire audience of the universe, in a state of exposure. We’re all nude and available.’ Myra looks up; she says, with a squeak, ‘You mean there isn’t a me any more?’ ‘You’re there, you’re present,’ says Howard, ‘but you happen to be a conjunction of known variables, cultural, psychological, genetic.’ ‘I think that’s intellectual imperialism,’ says Myra. ‘I don’t think I like your book, Howard.’ Barbara says, ‘But who is this me you’re protecting? Isn’t it just the old bourgeois personality cult, the idea that the individual just isn’t accountable? Isn’t that what the world’s found the need to get away from?’

Myra casts her eyes, rather theatrically, around the kitchen, looking at the shelves with their Caso Pupo goblets, their French casseroles, their fish dishes, their dark brown pot labelled Sel; she says, with some dryness: ‘Well, it must be very nice to feel you’ve transcended bourgeois individualism. I can’t say I have.’ ‘But tell us more about this self you’ve got in there,’ says Howard. ‘There’s a busy, active agent, with will and motive and feeling and desire. But where does it all come from? Genes, culture, economic and social potential. It acts out of specified forces under specified conditions.’ ‘I thought you always reckoned we were free,’ says Myra. ‘I thought this was the big Kirk message.’ ‘Ah, the big Kirk message,’ says Barbara. ‘The point is, the self is in time, and it changes in time. The task is to realize our selves by changing the environment. To maximize historical potential to the uttermost.’ ‘By being nude and available,’ says Myra. ‘When history’s inevitable,’ says Howard, ‘lie back and enjoy it.’ Myra burst into laughter; she says, ‘That’s just what you are, Howard. An historical rapist. Prodding the future into everyone you can lay your hands on.’ ‘How true,’ says Barbara. ‘Oh, come on, Howard,’ says Myra, ‘of course there’s a me. I’m in here, I know.’ ‘What’s it like, Myra?’ asks Howard. ‘It’s not you, and it’s private, and it’s self-conscious, and it’s very bloody fascinating.’ ‘Oh, Myra,’ says Howard. Myra suddenly puts down the knife; her laughter has gone. She says: ‘There’s a me, and I’m sick of it.’ The Kirks look at her; they notice that a long streak of a tear has established itself on Myra’s nose. Barbara sits down next to her; she says, ‘What’s up, Myra?’ Myra reaches into the handbag she has brought, an old party handbag from the days when there were party handbags, black with cracked sequins sewn onto it. She takes out a green square of Kleenex and puts it to her nose. She says: ‘Actually, Kirks, I didn’t come here just to help you cut bread. I came because I want you to help me. I want to tell you something. Before Henry gets here. I’m separating from him.’ Barbara says: ‘You, Myra?’ Myra sniffs. She says, ‘I know I’m an old bourgeois individualist who’s not supposed to freak out. But, God, I need help. And I knew just who to come to. I thought, the Kirks. They’re such a great couple.’ The Kirks, the great couple, stare at each other, and feel like a couple. ‘Of course we’ll help,’ says Barbara, ‘we’ll do everything we can.’