V

The Kirks and Beamishes have known each other for a very long time, since the days in Leeds, in fact, where Howard and Henry were graduate students together. Over the years in Watermouth they have seen a good deal of each other; it is one of those relationships which, based on an old friendship, keeps on running its course, even though the subscribing parties to it have all changed and have little really to say to each other. The Beamishes have come to the Kirk parties; the Kirks go to the Beamishes’; they talk a lot to one another, over the telephone and in person. There have even been closer intimacies. Once, in the days of 1968, when everything was unsettled, Howard went out to the farmhouse, after a telephone call from Myra. Henry was out teaching an evening class on Conflict in Modern Society, at an adult education centre in one of the nearby seaside towns; Myra was sitting on the sofa crying; Howard went to bed with her. It was a failed, unrepeated occasion; he remembers nothing about the event but the anxiety afterwards, with himself on his knees, naked, wiping all trace of his presence from the bedroom carpet, while Myra made the bed, hoovered the house, emptied the ashtrays and washed all the glasses, to make everything exactly and precisely as it was before. The space between them was growing wide then, and now seems immeasurable; today the Kirks have only to look at Myra, sitting there, a knife in her hand, in that old chiffon party dress no one else in their entire acquaintance would wear, to see how much they themselves have changed, developed, grown up with experience, since they first came to Watermouth. As for the Beamishes, they profess somehow to understand the Kirks, to be privileged intimates; what they do not understand is that the Kirks they understand are people of several protean distillations back, people they themselves cannot remember ever having been.

Meanwhile the Beamishes, like some extraordinary historical measuring rod, have managed to persist just as they were when the Kirks first found them in Watermouth. Enormities have torn through the world, tempers have altered; the Beamishes have become different only by their obstinacy in staying the same, living on in a strange cocoon of odd experience which strains them without altering them. Or have they altered? The Kirks look at Myra, as she cries in their kitchen, her outrage stated. Howard remembers her tearful unease of years ago; he thinks, disconfirmingly, of Henry, and what he has become. For Henry has now grown fat; he has taken to talking in a loud, heavy voice; he has become noticeably lazy. In the department, in the common room, when intellectual matters are discussed, he has acquired a manner of shifting conversation round to questions of manure and pasture and the state of nature in general. When Howard or others try to push him on sociological or political matters, he looks pained. Once, in Howard’s study, as they had gone through finals marks together, he had begun to cry a little and accuse Howard of damaging his career, in ways he could not quite name; Howard, it seemed, by doing what Henry had always intended to do, had stopped Henry from doing it himself. ‘That’s foolish,’ Howard had said; ‘I’ve become foolish,’ Henry had said. And Myra, too, has darkened and become stranger; she noticeably drinks more, and talks frenziedly at parties, as if there were nowhere else in the world to talk. ‘Why?’ he says to her. ‘Why do you want to leave him?’

Myra’s expression is blank but slightly mystified, as if she had not expected such a question; surely the Kirks have an instinctive comprehension of all marital disillusion. ‘I suppose for the most obvious of all reasons,’ she says, ‘I want the chance to exist, which I’ve been denied. I’d like to assert my identity. That is, Howard, if you’ve left me with one.’ ‘Of course,’ says Howard. ‘Where is it, then?’ asks Myra. Barbara says: ‘Myra, has Henry done something to you?’ ‘No,’ says Myra, picking up the knife, and starting slicing at the bread again, ‘he never does anything to me. That’s why he’s so boring. If I were asked to define my condition, I’d say boredom. I’m bored because he never does anything to me, and nor does anyone or anything else. Am I making sense?’ ‘I think so, Myra,’ says Barbara. ‘Doesn’t he sleep with you?’ ‘Oh, it’s not that,’ says Myra. ‘He does, in his own trite way. But, contrary to prevailing opinion, that’s no revelation. Someone should write a book on the boredom of orgasm. Why don’t you, Howard?’ ‘Howard’s not bored,’ says Barbara. ‘Look, have you tried anyone else?’ Myra, her face a little red, looks down at the table. ‘That’s just not the issue,’ says Myra. ‘There’s no one else.’ ‘You’re not leaving him for anyone?’ ‘No,’ says Myra, ‘I’m leaving him for me.’ ‘What will you do?’ asks Barbara. ‘I don’t know,’ says Myra. ‘It’s push, not pull, that’s driving me.’ ‘But what is the issue?’ asks Howard. ‘What is it you want that you don’t have?’ ‘Well, obviously,’ says Myra, with a little impatience, ‘absence from Henry.’

The Kirks, compassionate instructors in the arts of separation, look at each other. ‘I don’t think you’ve told us much yet,’ says Howard. ‘You must have been thinking about this for a long time. You must know what it is your marriage isn’t expressing.’ ‘It isn’t expressing anything at all,’ says Myra. ‘You might say it was silent.’ ‘But you’re not silent,’ says Howard, ‘you’ve something in yourself to be said.’ ‘Yes,’ says Myra. ‘Ouch.’ ‘And Henry?’ asks Howard. ‘Does he feel the same?’ ‘Howard,’ says Myra, ‘have you inspected Henry lately? Don’t you find him banal? Don’t you think really he’s become ridiculous?’ ‘I’ve worried about Henry,’ says Howard. ‘I’m concerned for him.’ ‘Well, can’t you imagine me wanting to be free of him?’ ‘But haven’t you talked about it? A marriage is a thing in common; you have something to do with his nature,’ says Barbara. ‘I think that sounds a nasty question,’ says Myra, ‘as if I’m to blame. But he shapes me much more than I do him. The man shapes the woman. He has the advantages. He sets the pace.’ ‘But you’ve not talked,’ says Howard. ‘No,’ says Myra, ‘there’s nothing to talk about. You always said marriage was an archaic institution. Now you seem to want me to stay with him.’ ‘Oh, no,’ says Howard. ‘Howard doesn’t mean that,’ says Barbara, ‘he just wants to get into the question of where things went wrong.’ Myra begins to cry again. She says: ‘I thought you’d agree with me.’ ‘We’re not trying to stop you leaving him,’ says Barbara, ‘we want you to understand what you’re doing.’ ‘I think I do understand that,’ says Myra, ‘I’m quitting while the going’s good.’ ‘Have you thought of asking what’s wrong with Henry?’ asks Barbara. ‘Trying to help him?’ ‘I’ve been trying to help him ever since we married,’ says Myra. ‘You’ve been married as long as we have. It was the year after, wasn’t it? You know what things are like.’ Howard looks at Barbara; he says, ‘Ah, but ours hasn’t been one marriage. It’s been several.’

Myra sits at the table, and contemplates this undoubted truth for a moment. She looks up at the Kirks, standing, one on each side of her, custodians of the coupled relationship, concerned, a striking pair. She says, ‘Oh, you two. I don’t know how you do it.’ ‘How we do what?’ asks Barbara. ‘Have such a good relationship,’ Myra says warmly. ‘I wouldn’t exactly boast,’ says Barbara. ‘Do you remember when Howard and I split up in Leeds?’ ‘Of course,’ says Myra, ‘but you talked to each other and got back together again. You learned to deal with each other. We never will.’ Howard says, ‘Myra, everyone’s life looks more successful from the outside. Ours has been a fight. We’ve had our disasters.’ He takes Myra’s glass, and pours some more wine into it. ‘But you bounce back,’ says Myra. ‘Thanks a lot, love.’ ‘I suppose it’s a question of being determined to keep up with every stage of life,’ says Barbara, ‘of never relaxing.’ ‘You’ve just been more mature about it than the rest of us,’ says Myra. The word ‘mature’ rings pleasantly with the Kirks; they look at each other with some pleasure. ‘I think yours is the only successful academic marriage I know,’ says Myra. ‘What’s wrong with the others?’ asks Howard. ‘You know what’s wrong,’ says Myra. ‘Look around you at all these sad pairs. How can they work? The man goes out to the university, his mind’s alive, he’s fresh with new ideas.’ ‘Sometimes it’s the woman,’ says Barbara. ‘Even the women are men,’ says Myra. ‘He talks all day to pretty students who know all about structuralism, and have read Parsons and Dahrendorf, and can say “charisma” properly, and understand the work he’s doing. Then he comes home to a wife who’s been dusting and cleaning. He says “Parsons” and “Dahrendorf”, and she says “Huh?” What can he do? He either gives her a tutorial, and thinks she’s pretty B minus, or he shuts up and eats the ratatouille.’ ‘She should work,’ says Barbara. ‘Oh, fine,’ says Myra, ‘except she keeps getting older, and the students manage to stay eighteen. And then comes the bit where all your friends start separating and divorcing, because the husbands run off with the alpha students who can say “charisma”.’ ‘Do you think Henry wants to run off with an alpha student?’ asks Barbara. Myra looks at her. ‘No,’ she says, ‘not Henry, he hasn’t that much ambition. He might sort of stumble into walking off slowly with a beta student. Maybe I’d like him better if he did.’

Barbara says, ‘You mean you blame him because he does stay at home.’ ‘That’s right,’ says Myra. ‘Much more of this bloody connubial bliss, and I swear we’ll kill each other, Henry and me.’ Howard laughs; he says, ‘Myra, you really don’t make sense.’ ‘I’m not as clever as you,’ says Myra, ‘but I want to leave him. And I came to you so that you could tell me why and how. You’re experts, aren’t you?’ There is car noise outside in the terrace. ‘Oh, Christ,’ says Barbara, ‘I must go and put on my dress.’ Myra says suddenly, ‘Look, you mustn’t tell Henry I’m leaving him. I haven’t told him myself yet.’ ‘We’ll have to have a longer talk,’ says Barbara. ‘Tomorrow, call me.’ ‘I’ll probably be gone by then,’ says Myra. ‘You won’t,’ says Howard. ‘I mean it,’ says Myra. ‘Yes,’ says Barbara. ‘Go and let them in, Howard.’ ‘Is my face a mess?’ asks Myra, as they hear Barbara’s feet rushing up the stairs. ‘You’re fine,’ says Howard. ‘Do you remember when we slept together?’ says Myra. ‘Yes, we did once, didn’t we?’ says Howard. ‘The only time,’ says Myra, looking at him. ‘The only bloody time I ever did it. I bet you find that extremely ridiculous.’ ‘No, I don’t,’ says Howard. ‘I want to fix my face a bit,’ says Myra, ‘you go and welcome your guests. I hope I’ve not spoiled things.’ ‘Of course not, Myra,’ says Howard, and he goes out of the kitchen and along the cool long hall to the front of the house, to open the door to arrivals.

He opens the door. Out over the town the sodium lights are lit, and they cast an artificial red tint into the air, illustrating the jagged shapes of the decrepit houses opposite, where no one lives. The bright lights from the windows of the Kirks’ house fall out over the old, broken pavement stones of the terrace, which are drying now, for the rain has stopped. In the terrace a big black Daimler hearse, of rather old vintage, has come to a stop. There are artificial flowers stuck in its elegant silver flower-holders; on the etched glass of the long side window is a sticker, saying, ‘Make Africa Black’. The rear window rises; out slide three young men, all in jeans; two more descend from the front, one wearing a floppy leather hat, the other carrying a guitar. They begin to walk towards Howard’s front door. Now a reconstituted pre-war Standard Eight, in good condition, halts across the street. A thin young man in a black leather jacket gets out of the driving seat, and goes round to the passenger door to draw forth a very pregnant woman, in loose top and trousers. They too cross the street toward the Kirks’ bright house. Behind Howard there is a bustle; Barbara comes hurrying down the stairs, her hair up in a social bun, her healthy peasant bosom thrusting through the lines of a pink velvet Biba dress she has brought back from her most recent trip to London, her face bright. She comes and stands beside Howard in the hall, her hand on his shoulder. ‘First arrivals,’ says Barbara. ‘Come on in,’ says Howard. They stand together, Barbara big and blonde, Howard neat in his turned down moustache. The students come in freely, saying ‘Hi,’ their unfitting shoes flapping on the sealed wood floor. The other couple, a sociologist from Howard’s department, a new appointment, and his very round wife, are more nervous; they stand in hesitation on the threshold, each looking equally weighted by the heavy pregnancy. ‘You must be the Kirks,’ says the sociologist. ‘My name’s Macintosh.’ ‘Come inside,’ says Howard, the manager of this social theatre, ‘I’ll bring some drinks.’ ‘This is nice,’ says Macintosh, looking around, ‘you really know how to live.’ They go through into the living room; Howard gives out drinks; the students sit in a circle on the floor, while the Macintoshes stand, he dour, she sharp with the divine anger of the bright wife.

Outside there are more arrivals; souped-up Minis, beach buggies, psychedelically painted wrecks are drawing into the terrace, the first of many that will park in the broken curve and then in the streets beyond. The people begin to come in; there are people in old suits that look new and new jeans that look old. There are students and youths in Afghan yak, loon-pants, combat-wear, wet-look plastic; bearded Jesuses, long-haired androgynes, girls with pouting plum-coloured mouths. There are somewhat older people, the young faculty, serious young men, bright young women, bearing babies in harnesses on their backs, or in carrycots, slung between them, that are subsequently disposed of in many corners of the house. The groups that began as separate and compartmentalized begin to merge and mix; the few becomes a crowd, and moves from room to room. The students begin to talk to the faculty, and both groups begin to talk to the third, the strangers: a civic leader from the local Pakistani community, a young man in dark sunglasses who owns the town’s sex shop, which is called Easy Come, a Women’s Lib polemicist from London in an Afro fright-wig, a radical Catholic priest and his Ouspenskyite mistress, the man with the Smile badge from the wine store, and, much later, when the performance is over, the entire cast and production staff of the nude touring production of The Importance of Being Earnest, in Watermouth this week. Howard is busy and protean, a knowing host, a master in the enterprise of sociability. Now he stands at the door or circulates carrying a bottle, negotiating contact and association. Now he disappears backstage, to shift a table, open a door, expose a bed, remove a strategic fuse from the fusebox in the hall, to advance the contingent but onward progress of the illusion that is taking place under his guidance. He watches social animation jerk into operation. He sees the dresses flutter, the clothes flash and, with precision, does all he can with light and sound and movement to stimulate the performance. Talk begins to rise in level, to fill all the aural spaces; conjugal loyalties begin to dissipate; peer-group affiliations start to shift; cathexis takes place; people talk to and touch and tease one another.

Now, in the Victorian conservatory at the back of the house, the lights have almost gone out, and rhythmic dancing has started. The group from the theatre arrive, talking very loudly. A local vigilante group, with signs saying ‘Keep Britain Clothed’, have picketed the theatre, and this has made them passionate and argumentative. They have also brought with them several bottles of spirits, which they pass liberally around. Their arrival has the effect of increasing social particle-drift, the patterns of fission and fusion. The party has found new obstacles and options in new places. The collective appetite has struck, as food has been discovered; tables arranged with cheese and pâté have been suddenly cleared. Upstairs, Howard puts a record on a player; downstairs, from speakers in a bookcase, the voice of Joan Baez sounds. Momentarily, another of the impresarios appears; Barbara, in her long pink dress, passes around with olives and pretzels, saying, ‘Eat, I’m a Jewish mother.’ A small, podgy girl named Anita Dollfuss, in her second year, wearing long curled hair with an Indian headband, steel-frame spectacles and a patchwork skirt almost too long to walk in, has arrived dragging a small, brown terrier on a string. Mrs Macintosh, who, having made her timely appearance, has been sagging slowly downwards towards the floor all evening, is put to sleep on a daybed. The rumour has passed that there are drugs upstairs, which has spread the party upward through the house. Someone has gone to fetch a guru who was advertised to be in town, but who will never in fact arrive at the party. A German lectrice in a see-through blouse is being encouraged to take it off. Howard stands at the head of the stairs and surveys the spectacle. ‘My wife and I have an arrangement,’ says a man sitting on the top stair, to a girl. ‘That’s what all the married men say,’ says the girl. ‘This is different,’ says the man, ‘my wife doesn’t know about it.’ The downstairs of the house looks like a vast museum of costume, as if all the forms and styles of the past have been made synchronic and here, in Howard’s own house, have converged, and blurred; performers from medieval mystery plays, historical romances, dramas of trench warfare, proletarian documentaries, Victorian drawing-room farces play simultaneously in one eclectic, postmodern collage that is a pure and open form, a self-generating happening.

Howard walks down the stairs in pleasure, feeling the dull and contingent reality of things mysteriously transformed. He looks at these people, instinct with the times, and feels their newness, their possibility. He goes from mouth to mouth in the crush, looks into eye after eye, hunting the contemporary passion. ‘Would that be an authentic kind of guilt?’ asks someone. ‘That marvellous surrealistic sequence in colour towards the end,’ says someone else. Downstairs Mrs Macintosh has some time back declared labour pains; there has been much fuss as she has been driven off to hospital in the Standard Eight. The divine anger of wives has sensed a case of suppression; anxious about her interrupted career in social work, which is being sacrificed for mere child-bearing, they are becoming neurotic about their own careers as well. Meanwhile her husband, Dr Macintosh, has returned to the party; he sits in the hall by the telephone, with his own bottle, an object of curiosity and contemplation. At the front door, Anita Dollfuss’s small, brown, untrained terrier has bitten the ankle of a new arrival: the arrival is Henry Beamish, who has come on foot, looking dishevelled, wearing a big bush hat, and having the manner of one fresh from a dangerous safari. He is taken upstairs for antisepsis, his hat still on and tipped over one eye. ‘Sit, Mao,’ says Anita Dollfuss to the dog. In the living room, faces and voices throw violent sound around; it is the noise of man, growing. ‘Kant’s version of the inextricable entanglements of perceptual phenomena,’ says someone. ‘I’m low because I’m high,’ says someone else. By the wall Barbara is talking to a small, dark girl standing by herself, in a white hat and a dark blue trouser suit. ‘What kind of contraceptive do you use?’ asks Barbara socially. ‘What about you, Mrs Kirk?’ says the girl, who has a mild Scots accent. ‘Oh, I’m Pill,’ says Barbara, ‘I used to be Bung but now I’m Pill. What’s your method?’ ‘It’s called Brute Force,’ says the girl. ‘The devious workings of the totalitarian mind,’ says someone. ‘You’re trying to confuse me and fuck up my head,’ says someone else. Empty glasses prod at Howard, as he passes on his way to the kitchen to fetch more bottles.

In the crush, a hand plucks at his sleeve. He looks down into the face of a thin, dark-eyed girl; it is one of his students, called Felicity Phee. ‘I have a problem, Dr Kirk,’ she says. Howard pours some wine into her glass, and says, ‘Hello, Felicity. What’s wrong this time?’ ‘I always have a problem, don’t I?’ says Felicity. ‘That’s because you’re so good at solving them.’ ‘What is it?’ asks Howard. ‘Am I a sexist?’ ‘I doubt it,’ says Howard, ‘with your radical record.’ Felicity is well known for keeping advanced company; she appears now cleaner, now dirtier, now saner, now more psychotic, according to the group she happens currently to be running with. ‘I’m in a hang-up,’ says Felicity. ‘I’m tired of being lesbian. I’d like to be with a man.’ ‘You were very anti-male last time we talked,’ says Howard. ‘Oh, last time we talked,’ says Felicity, ‘that was last term. I was coming to terms with my sexuality then. But now I’ve found that my sexuality isn’t the one I’ve come to terms with, if you can see what I mean.’ ‘Oh, I can,’ says Howard. ‘Well, that shouldn’t be a problem.’ ‘Oh, it is, Dr Kirk, Howard,’ says Felicity Phee. ‘You see, the girl I’m with, Maureen, says it’s reactionary. She says I’m collapsing into a syndrome of subservience. She says I have a slave mentality.’ ‘She does,’ says Howard. ‘Yes,’ says Felicity, ‘and, I mean, I couldn’t do something reactionary, could I?’ ‘Oh, no, Felicity,’ says Howard. ‘So what would you do?’ says Felicity. ‘I mean, if you were me, and belonged to an oppressed sex.’ ‘I’d do what I wanted to,’ says Howard. ‘Maureen throws shoes at me. She says I’m an Uncle Tom. I had to talk to you. I said to myself, I have to talk to him.’ ‘Look, Felicity,’ says Howard, ‘there’s only one rule. Follow the line of your own desires. Don’t accept other people’s versions, unless you believe them true. Isn’t that right?’ ‘Oh Howard,’ says Felicity, kissing him on the cheek, ‘you’re marvellous. You give such good advice.’ Howard says: ‘That’s because it so closely resembles what people want to hear.’ ‘No, it’s because you’re wise,’ says Felicity. ‘Oh, boy, do I need a flat male chest for a change.’

He goes through into the kitchen. It is filled with people; a male human leg protrudes from under the table. A baby lies asleep in a carrycot on top of the refrigerator. ‘Is it your view that there is a constant entity definable as virtue?’ asks the Pakistani thought leader of the advanced priest, in front of the globular wallpaper. The record player roars; the booming decibels, the yelps of a youthful pop group on heat, bounce round the house. Howard takes some of the bottles of wine, dark red in the glass, and uncorks them. A stout, maternal girl comes into the kitchen and picks up a baby’s bottle, which has been warming in a saucepan on the cooker. She tries the contents by squirting them delicately onto her brown arm. ‘Oh, shit,’ she says. ‘Who’s Hegel?’ says a voice; Howard looks up, and it is the bra-less girl who had come to his office that morning. ‘Someone who …’ says Howard. ‘It’s Howard,’ says Myra Beamish, standing beside him, her wig tipped slightly to one side, laughing enormously. She has her arm around Dr Macintosh, who still holds his bottle. ‘Oh, Howard, you give great parties,’ she says. ‘Is it going well?’ asks Howard. ‘Oh, great,’ says Myra, ‘they’re playing “Who am I?” in the living room. And “What are the students going to do next?” in the dining room. And “I gave birth at three and at five I was up and typing my thesis” in the hall.’ ‘There’s also a thing called “Was it good for you, too, baby?” in the guest bedroom,’ says Macintosh. ‘It sounds like the description of a reasonable kind of party,’ says Howard. ‘How does someone as beastly as you manage to make life so nice for us?’ asks Myra. ‘It’s zap,’ says Howard. ‘It’s zing,’ says Myra. ‘It’s zoom,’ says Macintosh.

Howard picks up the new bottle, and returns to the living room. He bears the libation about, hoping for transfiguration to follow. ‘Is his vasectomy reversible or not?’ asks someone. ‘Tell him you’re coming to Mexico with me,’ says someone. A fat girl with chopped-down hair, lying on the floor, looks up at Howard and says: ‘Hey, Howard, you’re beautiful.’ ‘I know,’ says Howard. Across the room Barbara is ministering with nuts and pretzels. ‘All right?’ asks Howard, approaching her. ‘Good,’ says Barbara. He carries the bottle over to a corner of the room, where, in a cluster, stands a group of bearded Jesuses and dark, sunglassed faces, students from the Revolutionary Student Front. They look aggressive and they stand in a rather tight circle; ‘We only want to destroy them,’ Peter Madden is saying in a loud voice. ‘It’s not personal.’ Somewhere in the middle of the circle is a human figure, smaller than the others. It wears a white hat. ‘Can I ask you just one wee question?’ asks the figure in the middle, in a female, faintly Scots voice. ‘Don’t you think that politics is really just about the lowest form of human knowledge? Lesser than morals, or religion, or aesthetics, or philosophy. Or anything that’s concerned with real human density?’ ‘Christ, look,’ says Peter Madden, who stands there in his gunmetal sunglasses, ‘all forms of knowledge are ideological. That means they are politics.’ ‘Are reducible to politics,’ says the female voice. ‘Can be rendered down, like soup.’ Beck Pott is there, in a combat uniform with a ‘Rocket Commander’ patch sewn onto the shoulder, and with a white silver peace symbol hanging on a chain around her neck; she turns and finds Howard behind her, coming with the bottle. ‘Who is this crazy doll?’ she asks. ‘She says we don’t need a revolution.’ ‘There are people who think like that,’ says Howard. ‘I don’t understand them,’ says Beck Pott. ‘There have to be,’ says Howard; ‘if there weren’t, we wouldn’t need a revolution.’ ‘You’re right there, Howard,’ says Beck Pott, ‘right.’ Howard offers the bottle to the girl in the middle of all this; she wears a blue trouser suit and a neat scarf, and is much too formal for the party. ‘A wee drop,’ says the girl. ‘If you’re not the solution,’ says Peter Madden, ‘you’re part of the problem.’ ‘It would be terribly arrogant of me to believe I was the solution to anything,’ says the girl. ‘Or you, too, for that matter.’

Howard turns, with his bottle, and goes back through the house, to the gaunt, flowerless Victorian conservatory at the back of it. The pink sodium lights of Watermouth shine in through its glass roof; this is now the only illumination. The place booms with violent sound. Dancers sway their bodies; a baby, high up in a papoose-rig, jogs on the back of a noisy daddy. The German girl in the see-through blouse has started, in a corner, with a group of men around her, to take it off. She lifts it upward, over her head, and it whirls in the air above them for a moment. It is hard to get through the crowd. ‘Who’s Hegel?’ says someone. It is impossible now quite to tell who are faculty, who students, who strangers, who friends. The social mix has remixed itself. The music thumps in the half-dark; bodies gyrate, and minds are sacrificed to beat. The Catholic priest’s Ouspenskyite companion is close by him, on the floor, demonstrating bodily positions from an exercise she has recently learned. The German girl has joined the dancing, and is gyrating in front of him, her big breasts bouncing, a mobile Aryan sculpture of the New Woman. ‘This is heuristic, ja?’ she says to Howard. ‘Ja,’ says Howard. ‘Gesundheit.’ Howard looks at the moving spectacle; as he watches, he sees the silvery twirl of a glass as it spins from a hand and crashes to the floor. The fragments disappear under the busy feet. ‘Are all these persons intellectuals?’ asks the Pakistani thought leader of the Catholic priest. ‘The orgy is replacing the mass as the prime sacrament,’ says the priest. ‘Is this an orgy?’ asks the Pakistani. ‘There are better,’ says the priest. But not for Howard; what he sees in front of him is man free, free of economic timidity, sexual fear, prescriptive social norms, man cocky with the goodness of his own being. Now food, drink, and Barbara all seem to have disappeared, but no matter. The party is now totally self-governing, feeding on its own being.

He walks back through the house. The party is busy everywhere; everywhere, it seems, but by the wall in the living room, where a large circle of space has cleared around the dark girl in the trouser suit and the white hat, who stands, one leg crossed over the other, holding up a veined marble egg that is part of the mantelpiece decor, and inspecting it with a fastidious expression. Her air is that of a figure in a Victorian painting, portraying, in rococo fashion, innocence. Her clothes have a formality which makes it impossible to judge her age, and therefore guess whether she is a teacher or a student. Howard takes the bottle over to her, and puts it to her glass. ‘Just a very, very tiny drop,’ says the girl. ‘Enough.’ ‘Come along and meet some people,’ says Howard; he puts his hand on her arm. The arm, surprisingly, resists. ‘I’ve met some,’ says the girl, ‘now I’m digesting them.’ ‘Are you enjoying yourself?’ asks Howard. ‘I’m enjoying myself fine,’ says the girl. ‘I’m enjoying some of the other people as well.’ ‘But not all of them,’ says Howard. ‘I’m very discriminating,’ says the girl. ‘What’s your name?’ asks Howard. ‘Oh, I’m invited,’ says the girl. ‘Everyone’s invited,’ says Howard. ‘Oh, that’s good,’ says the girl, ‘because I wasn’t invited. I was brought by someone who’s gone.’ ‘Who’s that?’ asks Howard. ‘He’s a novelist,’ says the girl. ‘He’s gone home to write notes on it all. Were you invited?’ ‘I invite,’ says Howard, ‘I’m the host.’ ‘Och,’ says the girl, ‘you’re Dr Kirk. Well, I’m Miss Callendar. I’ve just joined the English Department. I’m their new Renaissance man. Of course I’m a woman.’ ‘Of course,’ says Howard. ‘That’s good, because I like women.’ ‘Aye, I’ve heard about that,’ says Miss Callendar, ‘I hope you’re not wasting any of your valuable time trying to get after me.’ ‘No,’ says Howard. ‘Good,’ says Miss Callendar, holding up the marble egg, and looking at it. ‘I just love small objects like this, I could hold it for hours. Am I keeping you from your party?’

The party booms around them. Howard stares at Miss Callendar, who is somehow outside it. She leans against the mantelpiece, her white hat shading solemn, dark brown eyes that look back at him. Behind her, over the mantelpiece, is a domed, round mirror; Howard sees that they are both reflected in it, on the tilt, portrayed at a foreshortened angle, as in some conscientious modern film. There is her dark head, capped with its white decorated hat, the nape of her neck, her tapering long blue back; there is himself, facing her in the adversary position, his economical, fierce-eyed features staring; beyond them both is a realm of space, and then the moving manikins of the party. ‘You were in a fight with the revolutionaries,’ says Howard. ‘That’s my trouble at parties,’ says Miss Callendar, ‘I get into fights.’ ‘Of course,’ says Howard, ‘for perfectly good reasons these kids don’t trust anyone over thirty.’ ‘How old do you think I am?’ asks Miss Callendar. ‘I don’t know,’ says Howard, ‘you’re disguised by your clothes.’ ‘I’m twenty-four,’ she says. ‘Then you ought to be one of them,’ says Howard. ‘How old are you?’ asks Miss Callendar. ‘I’m thirty-four,’ says Howard. ‘Oh, Dr Kirk,’ says Miss Callendar, ‘then you oughtn’t.’ ‘Oh,’ says Howard, ‘there’s also the question of right and wrong, good and bad. I choose them. They’re on the side of justice.’ ‘Well, I can understand that,’ says Miss Callendar. ‘Like so many middle-aged people, you’re naturally envious. All this youth charms you. I’m sure you’d allow it anything.’ Howard laughs; Miss Callendar says, ‘I hope you don’t think I’m rude.’ ‘Oh, no,’ says Howard. ‘For the same reason, I’d allow you anything.’ In the corner of his eye, Howard sees the movements of the party; hands are touching breasts, partners are transacting, couples are disappearing. ‘You would?’ says Miss Callendar. ‘I thought you were trying to make a rebel out of me.’ ‘I am,’ says Howard. ‘But what could I rebel about?’ ‘Everything,’ says Howard. ‘There’s repression and social injustice everywhere.’

‘Ah,’ says Miss Callendar, ‘but that’s what everyone’s rebelling about. Isn’t there anything new?’ ‘You have no social conscience,’ says Howard. ‘I have a conscience,’ says Miss Callendar. ‘I use it a lot. I think it’s a sort of moral conscience. I’m very old-fashioned.’ ‘We must modernize you,’ says Howard. ‘There,’ says Miss Callendar, ‘you won’t allow me anything.’ ‘No,’ says Howard. ‘Why don’t you let me save you from yourself?’ ‘Och,’ says Miss Callendar, ‘I think I know just how you’d go about that. No, I’m afraid you’re too old for me. I never trust anyone over thirty.’ ‘What about men under thirty?’ asks Howard. ‘Oh, you’re prepared to vary, if necessary,’ says Miss Callendar. ‘Well, I don’t trust many under it, either.’ ‘That doesn’t leave you much room for manoeuvre,’ says Howard. ‘Well, I don’t manoeuvre much, anyway,’ says Miss Callendar. ‘Then you’re missing out,’ says Howard. ‘What are you frightened of?’ ‘Ah,’ says Miss Callendar, ‘the new man, but the old techniques. Well, it’s been very nice talking to you. But you’ve got a lot of people here to look after. You mustn’t waste your time talking to me.’ Miss Callendar puts the marble egg back in the basket on the mantelpiece. ‘They’re looking after themselves,’ says Howard. ‘I’m entitled to find my own enjoyment.’ ‘Oh, I could hardly claim to be that,’ says Miss Callendar, ‘you’d do much better elsewhere.’ ‘I also ought to save you from your false principles,’ says Howard. ‘I may need it one day,’ says Miss Callendar, ‘and if I do, I’ll promise to let you know.’ ‘You need me,’ says Howard. ‘Well, thank you,’ says Miss Callendar, ‘I take your offer of help very kindly. And Mrs Kirk’s offer to take me to the family-planning clinic. You all offer a real welcome at Watermouth.’ ‘We do,’ says Howard. ‘An entire service. Don’t forget.’

Howard walks back into the party; Miss Callendar remains standing by the mantelpiece. Someone has gone out and found more to drink; there is a more subdued air now, a softer sexual excitement. He passes through the bodies, face to face, rump to rump. He inspects the scene for Flora Beniform; there are many faces, but none of them hers. Later on, he is up in his own bedroom. There is deep and utter silence here, except for the sound of an Indian rage, playing on a record player in the corner. The curtains are pulled shut. The spotlight over the bed has been moved from its usual downfacing position, and made to shine upwards at the ceiling; some coloured material, the pink of what is probably a blouse, has been wrapped around it. The bed, with its striped madras cover, has been pushed away from its central place, and is in a corner of the room, under the window. Around the room in the quiet, a circle of people are sitting or lying, touching or holding each other, listening to the rhythm and movements of the music. They are a group of formless shapes, with heads jutting, hands reaching out, held together by arms that thread from one shape to the next. Joints are passed from hand to hand; they light with a red glow as someone draws, and then they fade. Howard takes in the wordless words of the music; he lets his own room grow stranger and stranger to him. Barbara’s housecoat and her caftan, hanging on the hook behind the door, change colour and transpose into pure form. The shine of the misshapen handles on the old chest of drawers, bought in a junk shop when they were furnishing the house, become a focus of colour, a bright, mysterious knot. The wine and the pot make rings inside his head. There are faces that take shape and dissolve in the watery light: the faces of a girl with freaked green eye-rings and white powdered cheeks, of a boy with a skin that is the shade of wet olive. A hand waves idly near him, at him; he takes the joint; retains the hand, turns to kiss the unsexed face. His mind relishes ideas, which rise like smoke, take shape as a statement. The walls shift and open. He gets up and goes, past hands and bodies and legs and hips and breasts, onto the landing.

He opens the door of the toilet. There is a run of water, and a voice that says: ‘Who’s Hegel?’ He shuts it again. The house is quieter now, the party dissipated from its noisy social centre into numerous peripheries. He goes down the stairs. Macintosh sits there, and next to him Anita Dollfuss and her little dog. ‘The baby,’ says Howard. ‘It hasn’t started yet,’ says Macintosh, ‘they think it was all some kind of false alarm.’ ‘But there is a baby in there?’ ‘Oh, yes,’ says Macintosh, ‘there’s one there all right.’ ‘There’s a rumour that Mangel’s coming here to lecture,’ says Howard. ‘Good,’ says Macintosh, ‘I’d like to hear what he’s got to say.’ ‘That’s right,’ says Howard. In the living room the faces have all changed; none of them does he recognize. A six-foot woman lies asleep under a five-foot-six coffee table. A man comes up and says: ‘I was talking to John Stuart Mill the other day. He’s gone off liberty.’ Another man says: ‘I was talking to Rainer Maria Rilke the other day. He’s gone off angels.’ Howard says, ‘Flora Beniform?’ ‘Who?’ asks one of the men. There is a space by the mantelpiece where the girl stood: Miss Callendar. Myra Beamish comes out of the kitchen, her hair tipped yet further over. ‘You didn’t tell Henry,’ she says. ‘I didn’t tell anyone,’ says Howard. ‘It’s our secret,’ says Myra, ‘yours and mine and Sigmund Freud’s.’ ‘He won’t tell either,’ says Howard. ‘I was talking to Sigmund Freud, the other day,’ says a man. ‘He’s gone off sex.’ ‘Mmmm,’ says Myra Beamish, kissing Howard. ‘Mmmmmm.’ ‘Why don’t you write a book about it, and shut up?’ says someone. ‘Howard, do you think it’s really true that fully satisfying orgasm can alter our consciousness, as Wilhelm Reich says?’ asks Myra. ‘I’ve got to play host,’ says Howard. He leaves the living room. He moves the chair that blocks the staircase down to his study, and goes down the steps.

Above him he can hear the feet of the party pounding. He has had a thought about his book. The book begins: ‘The attempt to privatize life, to suppose that it is within single, self-achieving individuals that lie the infinite recesses of being and morality that shape and define life, is a phenomenon of narrow historical significance. It belongs to a particular, and a brief, phase in the evolution of bourgeois capitalism, and is the derivative of peculiar, and temporary, economic arrangements. All the signs are that this conviction about man will soon have passed away.’ He opens the door of the study; the glow of the sodium street lighting falls crazily over the walls, the bookshelves, the African masks, sliced through with lines of shadow from the basement railings. The light is off; he realizes, suddenly, that someone is in the room, sitting in the canvas chair in the further corner. He puts on the light. Half-sitting, half-lying in the chair, her dress awry, the manuscript of the book on the floor around her, is Felicity Phee. He says: ‘How did you get here?’ ‘I knew you had a study down here,’ she says, ‘I wanted to find it. I thought you were busy with the party.’ Howard stares at her: at her anxious white face, at the mottle of spots above her breasts, visible where her dress falls forward as she leans towards him, at her tight-knuckled hands and bitten nails. He says: ‘Why? What were you after?’ ‘I wanted to know what you were like when I don’t see you,’ she says, ‘I wanted to look at your books. See your things.’ ‘You shouldn’t,’ says Howard, ‘you just get caught.’ ‘Yes,’ says Felicity, ‘Is this your next book? I’ve been reading it.’ ‘You’d no business to do that,’ says Howard, ‘it’s not quite finished. It’s private.’ ‘The attempt to privatize life is a phenomenon of narrow historical significance,’ says Felicity. ‘Why are you doing this?’ asks Howard. ‘I’ve made you my subject of research,’ says Felicity, ‘my special option.’ ‘I see,’ says Howard. ‘You’re my tutor, Howard,’ says Felicity Phee, her face screwed up, ‘I’m in trouble, I’m not right. You have to help me.’

Howard walks across to his desk, and reaches across it, to draw the curtains. He looks out onto the railings, the area wall, the gaunt outlines of the houses opposite outlined against the pink urban sky. Someone is leaving the house. The figure comes directly in front of the window, by the railings, and looks down into the basement. It is alone, it wears a white hat and a blue trouser suit. Miss Callendar, who looks immensely tall when seen from below, unlocks from the railings and carefully detaches a high, elderly, black bicycle. Her cheeks look flushed, and she appears to be beaming a private smile to herself. She offers a small wave of recognition to Howard; then she tugs her white hat straight, slides a leg across the bicycle, and sits up on the high saddle. She pushes forward and pedals off, in furious motion, a frenzy of uncoordinated forms, back stiff, knees jostling, her legs going up and down, as she disappears through the dereliction towards wherever she lives. ‘Who’s that?’ asks Felicity. ‘She’s someone new in English,’ says Howard. ‘You were talking to her at the party,’ says Felicity. ‘You like her.’ ‘Were you watching me upstairs too?’ asks Howard. ‘Yes,’ says Felicity. Howard draws the curtain across. He says: ‘What’s the matter with you, Felicity?’ ‘You must help me, help me,’ says Felicity. ‘What’s wrong?’ asks Howard, sitting in the other canvas chair. ‘How am I ever going to get out of this screwed-up, stinking, shitty, uptight me?’ asks Felicity. ‘Why am I stuck in this beastliness of self?’ ‘Aren’t we all?’ asks Howard. ‘No,’ says Felicity, ‘most people get out. They have other people to get them out.’ ‘Don’t you?’ asks Howard. ‘Maureen?’ asks Felicity. ‘She’s a thug.’ ‘I thought you were going to find a man.’ ‘Yes,’ says Felicity, ‘I meant, of course, you.’ ‘You did?’ says Howard. ‘As you knew,’ says Felicity. ‘No,’ says Howard.

‘Christ,’ says Felicity, ‘you showed much more curiosity about that girl there than you show about me.’ ‘Which girl?’ asks Howard. ‘The one who went.’ ‘I hadn’t really thought about her,’ says Howard. ‘Have you really thought about me?’ asks Felicity. ‘Thought what about you?’ ‘Well, my curiosity in you. My coming to see you so much. All the unhappy things I’ve told you about. Didn’t those things affect you?’ ‘Of course,’ says Howard, ‘as a tutor and a teacher.’ ‘Those are just roles to play,’ says Felicity, ‘I’ve been asking for something better than that. For a year I have. I’ve concerned myself with you. I’ve not just been watching you to write an article. I want you to concern yourself with me.’ ‘Let’s go upstairs,’ says Howard, ‘there’s a party.’ Suddenly Felicity pushes herself forward out of her chair, and is on the floor beside him. Her face is distorted and her mouth open. ‘No,’ says Felicity, ‘you’re my tutor. You’re responsible for me.’ ‘I think you’re mistaking how far the responsibility goes,’ says Howard. ‘Are you frightened of me?’ asks Felicity. ‘Not a bit,’ says Howard, ‘you’re just offering too much.’ ‘Aren’t you lucky?’ asks Felicity. ‘Won’t you take it?’ ‘I get a lot of offers,’ says Howard. ‘You remember what you told me,’ says Felicity. ‘Follow the line of your own desire. Do what you want.’ ‘But your desire has to connect with other people’s desire,’ says Howard. ‘Can’t you make it?’ asks Felicity. ‘Can’t you try and make it?’ ‘I ought to see what’s happening upstairs,’ says Howard. Felicity pushes her hand in between his legs. ‘Forget what’s happening upstairs,’ she says, ‘do something for me. Help me, help me, help me. It’s a work of charity.’

What is happening upstairs is something that Howard will hear about only the following day. A window smashes in one of the small bedrooms, along a corridor where silence reigns; the cause is Henry Beamish, who has put his left arm through and down, and slashed it savagely on the glass. Only a few people hear this, and most are heavily occupied; but someone is curious enough to look into the little bedroom where he is, and see him, and lift him from the debris around him, and call others. Someone else, the girl who thinks about Hegel, sets off to look for the host of the evening. Someone else, Rosemary, sets off to look for Barbara. But they are neither of them to be found, and nor, for that matter, is Felicity Phee, or young Dr Macintosh. It is lucky that there is someone to take charge; it is Flora Beniform, who has arrived at the party, the date of which she has inscribed in her diary, very late. Indeed a day late; for she has come back on the midnight train from London, where she has been listening to a new paper on female schizophrenia at a seminar at the Tavistock Clinic. But she is an able and reassuring woman, and everyone feels that she is the one to cope: she manages a tourniquet; she sends someone to ring for an ambulance. ‘We’ve had people looking all over the house,’ says a thin faculty wife, sensible and sober because it is her turn this time to drive the car home through the police traps of early-morning Watermouth. ‘No one can find Howard or Barbara anywhere.’ ‘I’ve no doubt they have their own fish to fry,’ says Flora. ‘Well, you can’t hold the hosts responsible for everything that happens at a party like this. It might have been better to look for Myra.’ ‘I think she’s down in the kitchen,’ says the faculty wife. ‘Find her,’ says Flora, ‘but look at her first, and don’t bring her up here unless she’s sober and rational.’ ‘Is it serious?’ asks the faculty wife. ‘Fairly,’ says Flora. A solemn student has found a broom and a dustpan, and he sweeps away the broken glass under the window, and around Henry. ‘Steady,’ says Flora. ‘Oh, God, I’m ridiculous,’ says Henry, on the floor. Myra comes in, clutching her sequinned handbag, her coiffure now very tipsy, and looks at Henry, at Flora. She says: ‘I hear Henry’s done something else silly.’

‘He’s hurt himself quite badly,’ says Flora. ‘I don’t know how, I wasn’t here. He’ll have to go to the casualty department and have this stitched.’ ‘I expect he was trying to make me feel sorry for him,’ says Myra. ‘I’m not sure we’re interested in your response at this moment,’ says Flora. ‘You’re over-acting, it’s a nuisance.’ ‘What are you doing, Henry?’ says Myra. ‘Go away, Myra,’ says Flora, ‘I’ll take Henry to the hospital. I’ve been there many times. Why don’t you go back home and wait for him?’ ‘I might,’ says Myra, ‘I might.’ The ambulance arrives, with a flashing blue light, and so a lot of people help in the task of carrying Henry, who keeps groaning, down the staircase. Their feet thump heavily on the woodwork, and down in the basement study Howard hears the thunder of noise. The flashing light is shining bluely in through the curtains, casting strange shapes across the bookcases and the masks. But Howard, who is busy, does not properly see it, or interpret it. ‘They seem to be enjoying themselves,’ he whispers into the ear of Felicity Phee. Felicity, underneath him, whispers, ‘I am too.’ ‘Good,’ says Howard. ‘And you?’ ‘Yes,’ says Howard. ‘Not very much,’ says Felicity, ‘but I’m glad to have what you find you can give me.’ ‘It’s the very usual thing,’ says Howard. ‘No,’ says Felicity. The ambulance klaxon sounds out in the terrace as it drives off. ‘Drugs squad,’ says Howard. ‘No, lie still, stay there,’ says Felicity. ‘I thought something had happened, I should have been around,’ Howard will say in the morning, when Flora tells him what it was that had happened. But Flora will also explain what is clearly true: that, at parties, everyone has his own affairs to attend to, and should be presumed to be attending to them, just as Henry, in his way, also was. For people are people, and parties are parties; especially when they happen to be at the Kirks’.