2

I

EMMA FIELDING put on a wool dress, splashed herself with perfume, and set off for the English Department reception for foreign students. She was a post-graduate student in the department, and was writing a thesis on the fish imagery in Shakespeare’s tragedies; there was quite a lot of fish in Shakespeare, and there was more to it, now it was being at last exposed, than you would have thought, or even Sigmund Freud would have thought. The reason for Emma’s attendance at the occasion was simple; Treece was, not surprisingly, nervous of the reception and wanted to have some reliable people there, and there was no one more reliable in the department than Emma. Treece had, therefore, telephoned Emma and asked ‘if we might trespass on your time and good nature’. If Emma did not have too much of the first, she had an abundance of the second; and so here she was. She was twenty-six, and therefore rather older than most of her fellow-students; older you had to say, and wiser. When you saw her, the word you thought of for her was ‘handsome’; she looked like the photographs you saw of Virginia Woolf, or those tall, brown-eyed fragile English beauties that fill autobiographies these days, the sort to whom it is not absurd to say, deferentially, ‘Do you want to go and lie down?’ for, it seems, even to be what they are is enough to make them look a little tired; life is so intense. Treece did not like beautiful women – he had suffered with them too much, in making the discovery that, in our world, to be beautiful is a way of life, which has its own customs and regulations – but he liked Emma; by not being quite beautiful she seemed to have gained everything.

The reception was being held in a large, dirty room with a splintery plank floor, decorated for the occasion with a large circle of wooden chairs and a large metal tea urn from which Dr Viola Masefield, likewise co-opted for the occasion, was dispensing tea to a variety of nervous students of all nationalities and colours. Treece was there, trying to get everyone to sit down; no one would. ‘Vot’, demanded an extremely stout German student, greeting Emma with a bow as she entered, ‘is your vaderland?’ ‘I’m English,’ said Emma. ‘Oho,’ said the German with great cheerfulness. ‘Then it is your task to entertain me. I am ready.’

‘I’ll bet you are,’ said Emma. She went over to Dr Masefield at the tea urn: ‘Is there anything I can be doing?’ she asked. ‘Just mingle, I think, if you would,’ said Dr Masefield jovially, looking up.

‘I think the English nation is much ashamed that it has imprisoned its great national bard, Oscar Vilda,’ said someone at her side. It was the stout German, who knew when he was on to a good thing.

‘Who?’ asked Emma.

‘Oscar Vilda,’ said the German. ‘As told in the “Ballad of Reading Goal”.’

‘Jail,’ said Emma. ‘Jail; not goal.’

‘Write down, please,’ said the German, taking a piece of paper from his overcoat pocket; Emma did as she was bid.

Professor Treece passed at a trot. ‘Make them take their overcoats off,’ he said. He stopped and came back, painfully aware of his task, which was a word for everyone. ‘Good afternoon, Herr Schumann,’ he said. ‘I hope you’re going to share Miss Fielding with the rest of us.’ He caught Emma’s eye and blushed. ‘Oho, no,’ said the German. ‘As you say, finders, keepers. She is my captive.’

‘Well, Miss Fielding, the long vacation appears to have invigorated you a great deal. How do you do it?’ went on Treece jovially.

‘I went to Italy and got drunk every day on chianti; it’s very therapeutic,’ said Emma.

‘Italy,’ said Treece, who had a far from Lawrentian vision of that country; he regarded it rather as a place where all moral law had long since been overthrown and where a degenerating race was having its last frantic fling. ‘Were you all right?’

‘More or less,’ said Emma.

‘Did you go to Rome?’

‘We did,’ said Emma.

‘There are a great many things of architectural interest in Rome,’ said Treece, ‘and the railway station is one of them.’

‘I have been to Rome,’ said Herr Schumann. The tale he was about to divulge was, however, never told, for at that moment a sudden commotion occurred in a far corner of the room; a Negro student, in an excess of nerves, had spilled a cup of tea over a reader in economics. ‘My word! Eborebelosa!’ Treece said; and he hurried off.

‘You are enjoying this party?’ inquired the German. ‘Yes,’ said Emma. ‘I think it is a very good party,’ said the German. ‘It is permitted to kiss these girls?’

‘I don’t think so,’ said Emma. ‘It’s only the middle of the afternoon, isn’t it?’ ‘You tell me when is the time,’ said the German.

‘I must go and talk to somebody else,’ said Emma, and went over to a group of Indian students gathered in a corner. As soon as she announced her name, a sharp silence fell over the group. Their former animation turned to a comatose contemplation of each other’s shoes. ‘You are a tall woman,’ said someone politely. Silence fell again.

‘“Midwinter spring is its own season”,’ said one of them, a nun, suddenly. ‘You know this quotation, of course, and how pertinent are those words, for now as you see, the sun is shining.’ She pointed to the window.

‘It is of T. S. Eliot,’ said a voice at Emma’s side; it was the German, who had followed her over. ‘“Lean, lean on a garden urn . . .” You know this too?’

Suddenly all the Indians began quoting Eliot. ‘A hard coming we had of it,’ cried one. ‘There were no tigers,’ intoned another contrapuntally.

‘In India,’ said the nun; all the others fell silent, ‘the work of Mr Eliot is very much respected; he is translated; and many people have written his thesis for his doctorate on inclinations of his work.’

‘In Germany too,’ said Herr Schumann.

‘I am a graduate, of course, though it is true I have not yet received my degree certificate, and I too hope to write a doctor’s thesis on the work of your distinguished poet, though he was born in the United States of America, as I expect you know. You understand his work is open to many interpretations. I am a Christian, and his work is open to Christian interpretations.’

‘Yes, so they tell me,’ said Emma.

Herr Schumann turned to Emma and, with an ostentatious bow, said, ‘You permit I bring you a cup of tea.’ ‘Yes, please,’ said Emma, feeling a little tired. ‘And for you also,’ said the German to the nun.

‘Yes, please, and it will be interesting to reflect that the leaf of the tea we are about to drink comes from my own country, and perhaps indeed has been picked by a member of my numerous family. One of the best poets of the part of India from which I come – it is in the north – is at this moment at your Oxford University writing a thesis on the Oriental imagery of the poems of T. S. Eliot, and on the influence of the Upanishads. He has been in correspondence with Mr Eliot himself.’

‘Here is your tea,’ said a voice from behind Emma.

‘And he tells me,’ went on the nun, ‘in a letter that Mr Eliot has shown him the greatest courtesy.’

There was a violent tug at the back of Emma’s dress. ‘Here is your tea,’ said Herr Schumann. ‘Thank you,’ said Emma, taking it.

‘You have been to Germany, then?’ asked the nun of Herr Schumann. ‘I am from Germany,’ said Herr Schumann. ‘What is your reason for coming here?’ asked the nun. ‘It is to learn the English language and to study the literature,’ said Herr Schumann. ‘Germany has many poets,’ said the nun pleasantly. ‘There is Goethe and Heine and Rilke, to name only a few. It is very good of you to come to England, of course, since you were fighting it only a few years ago. It is very civilized of all of us to forget this so easily. I think we are all very developed persons.’

‘Yes,’ said the German. ‘I see you are a nun. I would very much like to be a nun. There are many advantages. Of course, one would have to be a woman.’

Emma suddenly saw once again amid the press the face of Professor Treece, mouthing something in her direction. ‘Ah, Miss Fielding,’ she heard him say distantly. ‘There are . . .’ and at once his voice was miraculously magnified; he had somehow reached her side ‘. . . some people I want you to meet. Try and get them sitting down on chairs,’ he added. ‘Everyone’s standing up, and it’s making things very difficult.’

Suddenly he was high up in the air, standing on a chair. ‘Hello, hello,’ he shouted. ‘Why doesn’t everyone sit down? It’s so much more comfortable.’ No one did; indeed, those who were sitting down became embarrassed about it and stood up. Emma felt Treece’s disgrace hardly. Like most people who speculate about the moral problems of human relationships, Treece was really much worse at them than those who are not moved to cogitate; in his care to offend no one, to be honest and true to all, he moved about in a sort of social badlands, where nothing ever really grew. Intention was all. Sympathy for all these people, for being foreigners – lay over the gathering like a woolly blanket; and no one was enjoying it at all.

Foreign students’ parties were things that, notoriously, didn’t go well; with Treece, to whom disaster was the normal resolution of parties, they went, of course, disastrously. And so at this point on the present occasion there came a striking interruption; and people did not blame life, which could bring such interruptions, but Treece, for not foreseeing them. A group of Negroes, who had been chatting quietly in one corner, dressed in their native robes, had to pray to Allah – or someone like that – in ten minutes’ time and wanted to know where there was a consecrated room. ‘We have no consecrated rooms,’ said Treece, embarrassed. No consecrated rooms! Here, said the world, is a man who gives a party for foreign students and fails to provide a consecrated room. One of the party offered to consecrete one; all he needed, he said, was a room; he could do the rest. ‘Boiling water is necessary,’ he said. Luckily, Viola Masefield had a kettleful. It was finally settled that the Senior Common Room should be consecrated; one felt that there was nowhere worthier of it.

‘Oh, dear,’ said Treece to Emma when they had all gone. ‘One can’t foresee everything, can one? What I was saying was, if I remember rightly, that . . . yes, I want you to meet one of our friends from Nigeria, a Mr Eborebelosa. He’s rather a difficult case, I’m afraid; he’s already spilled a cup of tea over someone in the Economics Department . . .’

Then, suddenly, they all streamed in again, at the trot, the whole consecrating group. There were dogs’ hairs in the Senior Common Room. ‘But we never have dogs in the Senior Common Room, they must be off people,’ said Treece, ‘since people are all we have there.’

The Negroes consulted for an anxious moment, and then resolved to do it in the grounds; and they picked up their kettle and sallied forth. The passing traveller, wending his way along Institution Road, would have been refreshed that day with a strange sight – the sight of a group of Negroes, in long robes, ceremonially pouring hot water over one another and making obeisance on the flagstones of the courtyard.

Meanwhile Treece, trying hard to salvage what he could from the wreckage of the occasion, was endeavouring to introduce Emma to Mr Eborebelosa. ‘I’d like you to meet . . .’ he said tentatively. ‘No, no,’ said Mr Eborebelosa, looking down. Treece turned to Emma and explained in a low voice that Eborebelosa disliked meeting people and had been closeting himself in lavatories to avoid it. Emma, grasping the problem and sincerely wanting to do something to help Treece, approached Mr Eborebelosa again, smiling a generous smile, and his agitation grew so intense that the tea began to splash out of the cup in his hand. Emma gently took it from him, just in time, for Eborebelosa became, suddenly, loose-limbed, stepped backward a pace or two, and fell over on to his bottom. Emma took his arm and helped him to his feet. He was shivering all over. ‘Socially maladept,’ Treece’s phrase for him, seemed a ridiculous understatement. ‘How are you liking England?’ asked Emma sweetly. ‘Not, not,’ said Mr Eborebelosa. ‘But you haven’t seen very much of it, have you?’ she rebuked him. Eborebelosa tried to work up a scrap of indignation: ‘Yes, London, Tilbury dicks,’ said Mr Eborebelosa. ‘Docks,’ said Emma. ‘Dicks,’ said Eborebelosa.

‘This is a good party, I think?’ said a voice by her side; it was of course Herr Schumann. ‘But when do we have the intoxicating liquors?’

‘Leave me alone for a bit, Herr Schumann,’ said Emma. ‘Can’t you see I’m busy with my friend Mr Eborebelosa?’

‘Oh,’ said Herr Schumann. ‘Oho. So that is the way the wind is blowing? That is what brews, I see.’

‘I have friend?’ said Mr Eborebelosa, beaming all at once. He capered about for a moment.

‘You have no taste,’ said Herr Schumann. ‘I would have given you cakes, chocolates, food of all natures; you have been very unwise. I have many friends in positions of great responsibility to whom I should introduce. Beware. Life will slip you by.’

‘I am son of a chief,’ said Mr Eborebelosa. ‘I will give you a goat.’

‘In England, how shall she use a goat? In Europe there is no place for goats. We do not ride on them, we do not drink the milk; goats are defunct. We have gone past the goat. Culture has trod on.’

‘Now, Herr Schumann . . .’ said Emma.

‘Aha, so,’ said Herr Schumann. ‘You are his friend, yet you allow him to think he can purchase with goats. “I want typewriter, how many goats?” You are poor friend, dear woman, I tell you so.’

‘You would like to wear the clothes of my country,’ said Eborebelosa to Emma.

‘This is white woman . . .’ said Herr Schumann; and then, catching a glint in Emma’s eye, he stopped. ‘So, what for do I beat myself to death? Women you must not trust.’

Schumann withdrew in a huff, and Emma and Eborebelosa talked pleasantly on, Emma occasionally proffering the teacup to him so that he might take a sip; soon he calmed down and was able to hold it himself. By the time everyone was ready to disperse, after a hard afternoon, Mr Eborebelosa was becoming enthusiastic about Emma’s smile. ‘I like this smile,’ he kept saying, ‘Do it more.’ Emma, a thoroughly amiable personality, obliged, and Treece kept looking over at the two of them suspiciously as empty grins kept shining forth on Emma’s face. Afterwards, Treece came up and congratulated her on her handling of what he called ‘a difficult case’. ‘I feel really sorry for him,’ said Emma. ‘It’s simply impossible, of course, to respond fairly to him; there’s just no common ground.’ ‘Oh,’ said Treece sharply. ‘I wouldn’t have thought that was true. Indeed, you seem to have disproved it.’ ‘Well, it’s like talking to children,’ said Emma. ‘You get some pleasure out of doing it, but you never really feel you’re exhibiting any part of yourself; just exercising in a void, and that just isn’t good enough for you yourself.’ ‘Oh, you expect too much from life,’ said Treece, adding with a sweet smile. ‘You’re just like me.’

Poor, poor Treece, thought Emma; for she loved to sympathize. Poor man, he has tried to show us all that foreigners aren’t funny; but they are. After all, there was one thing that every Englishman knew from his very soul, and that was that, for all experiences and all manners, in England lay the norm; England was the country that God had got to first, properly, and here life was taken to the point of purity, to its Platonic source, so that all ways elsewhere were underdeveloped, or impure, or overripe. Everyone in England knew this, and an occasion like the present one was not likely to prove that things had altered. I have lived in England, was the underlying statement, and I know what life is like. What you wanted to say to Treece, under such circumstances, was what Machiavelli told his prince: it is necessary for a man who wishes to maintain himself, to learn how not to be good, and when or when not to use this knowledge; here was a time when one withdrew. It was only Treece who could believe that the destiny of nations was being forged in such small and seedy rooms, with no carpet on the floor, and wooden benches for seats. As for the rest of us, we are unerringly provincial, Emma had to concede; this is just the Midlands, and we don’t have to carry the burden of things like that out here.

II

Treece wished that he did not have to stare, all the time, at pretty women; sometimes it seemed to him his one overriding interest. It was not that he willed it like that; it was something that was drawn out of him, and it was in consciousness of facts such as this that he sometimes had to concede that perhaps Freud might be right, and there was a bit of the irrational in man after all. It was the following Saturday, and the occasion was a meeting of the town’s Literary Society, a group of fanciful persons who met monthly to discuss the prosecution of good literature. If an atmosphere of seediness hung over the Society, it was not because of the weakness of its membership; the persons who attended were all worthy personages, not without status in the town, and not without performance; no, the trouble was that, as in all literary discussion, there comes a point where the critical has to give way to personal fondnesses, personal friendships, and this was the point at which the society had stalled. Nowadays, there, nobody said what they thought, for they knew whom they liked, and whom they loathed, and whose toes they wished to spare, and whose to stamp upon. Today, the meeting was addressed by a local writer of children’s books, a stout and hearty personality whose suit looked as though it had been made from the skin of a donkey; and it was this person that Treece had come to introduce. There were people who, in such a context, could introduce, and there were those who could not; Treece was so oppressively one of those who could, none better; so he nearly always did. The room was a big one, and wintry sunlight lay in big pools on the old Victorian carpet; the audience, scattered about the room in armchairs, shimmered in the half-dark of the place; and time seemed to move indolently, slower than the tick of the clock, while the writer spoke on, talking of Piaget and infantile communication. And in the front row, eager, intense, lips half-parted as if in pleased surprise, sat Mrs Rogers, mother of three boys, wife of an accountant, a contributor of short stories to Woman’s Journal, a delight to look upon. It was enough that she existed, felt Treece; he asked no more of her than that. Bronzed, fair, finely dressed, she came each month, and said nothing, and smiled brightly, and scattered approving interest about her; she was a motherly woman, and Treece loved motherly women. He thought of Mallarmé, who had written, surely, about her:

Votre très naturel et clair

Rire d’enfant qui charme l’air.

And the talk went on, and Treece thought, with a little giggle to himself, and with a sense of discovery: Why, women are much more interesting than anything, and I don’t even know why.

The speaker stopped, and Treece thanked him, and asked for questions. ‘I just want to say that I think you’re a very interesting man,’ said a woman from the back. Someone else then asked how many people Enid Blyton were. Mrs Rogers smiled, and said how interesting it all had been, and how all mothers were often frightened to think of the hands they left the writing of children’s books in, but now that she’d seen the speaker, she would have no qualms about letting her children read his work. After this a lady at the back, with a long-drawling voice, said from beneath a large flowerpot hat: ‘Well, I read one of your things, and I didn’t like it.’ ‘Why not, madam?’ said the speaker, a little put out; he was the sort of man that always called ladies ‘madam’, and it brought in the aroma of an ancien régime; one thought of Wells and Bennett and a sort of literary society which was gone – gone, no doubt, for good. ‘I don’t know why,’ said the woman in the flowerpot hat. ‘I just didn’t like it.’ Treece thanked the speaker and brought the meeting to a close. Mrs Rogers beamed sweetly at him as he did so.

It was the custom for the members of the literary society then to retire to the lounge of the Black Swan Hotel, where they took tea together. Shepherding their speaker fondly, they made their way there in cavalcade, past Dolcis and Woolworths and Sainsburys. In the lounge of the hotel were huge leather armchairs that looked like cows; you wouldn’t have thought it odd if someone had come along to milk them. Here they sat and looked at each other. The lady in the flowerpot hat sat down beside Treece and sighed deeply. ‘It’s terrible to be abnormal,’ she said, and heaved another sigh. ‘Did you have an unhappy childhood?’ ‘I had an unhappy maturity,’ said Treece. ‘I had a frankly bloody childhood,’ said the woman. ‘Tell me, do you like this hairstyle? Be frank: I can have it done again somewhere else.’

‘Darling, I was going to ask you what happened to it,’ said a man in a bow tie. ‘You could have fought back. Or did they give you an anaesthetic?’

‘You should have seen what he did to my dog,’ said the lady. She turned again to Treece. ‘I suppose you know lots of writers,’ she said.

‘I know some,’ said Treece, ‘but I think I prefer people.’ This remark was not intended as a sally; Treece quite seriously divided the world into writers, who led life as a conscious effort, and people, who didn’t; sometimes he preferred writers and sometimes he preferred people.

The lady in the flowerpot hat greeted this with a little giggle; then she said, ‘Do you know any of the London crowd?’ This was said so wistfully, with such an air of hope, that Treece was sorry to disappoint her. But really, he had to admit, he didn’t.

‘It’s so difficult if you don’t live in London,’ said the lady in the flowerpot hat. ‘I don’t like London, but I must say I often wish I lived there. It’s so hard to get published if you aren’t in the swim, and can’t butter up the right people. I mean, I have published, but it’s twice as hard as it would be if you lived in London. People don’t ask you for things.’

‘I think it’s much easier now for people from the provinces to publish than it ever was,’ said Treece. ‘Don’t you?’

‘Well, no, I don’t think that,’ said the woman. ‘People seem to think that it was hard, once, for provincial writers to get published, but I don’t think it was any harder then. I think you need to be in London more now than you did in those days . . .’

Treece had the wit to perceive that this topic was a matter of something more than passing interest to his companion, that they had touched on the soul of something; and it was not difficult to see what it was, for Treece knew reasonably well the sort of surburban milieu in which the woman circulated; and he also knew some of her work, which was poetry of a sound and intense kind. There exists a vast subculture of literature in England, of writers working on a part-time basis and circulating their work in closed circles, such as this very literary society; their work is good, but little known, and is lacking simply in the intensity and originality of that of the committed artist. ‘Here’s the tweeny,’ said the lady in the flowerpot hat; and tea was brought.

‘Where’s Mrs Rogers?’ said Treece as he spied around the circle present and noticed the sad omission.

‘She has to go home and get tea ready for her boys,’ said the man in the bow tie. ‘She’s a dear woman. Have you seen any of her stuff?’

‘She writes as though she’s just come in out of the dew,’ said the lady in the flowerpot hat. ‘I once went to her house and she said, “Have you seen our goblin?” and, do you know, I wasn’t in the least surprised. It’s the one place where you wouldn’t be. The goblin turned out to be a make of vacuum cleaner, but, you know, if it had been a real one I should have accepted it just as simply.’

There were times when Treece felt more at home in the pellucid air of the provinces than anywhere he had been in his life before; the conversation lapped on in little wavelets and the stout businessmen passed and repassed outside the door and the buses screeched outside the windows. One felt cosy. England expanded and became a continent, and all that lay outside was infinitely remote; England contracted and became an islet, and all that lay inside was sound and secure. ‘Sugar?’ said the lady in the flowerpot hat. ‘Yes?’ asked Treece; he thought she was being fond, but she was simply pouring out his tea. He didn’t take sugar, but the mistake was too complicated to explain. ‘How many lumps?’ ‘One, please,’ said Treece lazily; he had stretched out his legs and was now practically lying down. ‘Nonsense, you can’t taste one; I’ve given you three,’ said the lady in the flowerpot hat. She handed him the cup. ‘You know, you’re as lean as a rake,’ she said. ‘You need fattening up. Doesn’t your wife feed you?’ ‘I’m not married,’ said Treece. ‘I think that’s disgusting,’ said the lady in the flowerpot brightly. ‘Don’t you?’ She turned to everyone else: ‘He says he’s not married.’ ‘Well, it’s not a matter of principle,’ said Treece. ‘I’ve wanted to marry, a great many times; I always seem to be asking women to marry me. After all, there are things a wife can do that not even the best of housekeepers can manage. But they won’t marry me.’

‘What nonsense,’ said the lady in the flowerpot. ‘Let’s see, who do we know?’ ‘Why won’t they marry you?’ asked someone else. ‘Well, I can see their point,’ said Treece. ‘I must be about the least desirable bachelor I’ve ever come across. I just don’t seem to have the attributes women like in a man – a car, a television set, you know.’ ‘We’ll find somebody,’ said the lady in the flowerpot hat.

The Secretary of the Society was a stout little man named Schenk, who sold carpets. ‘It’s six o’clock,’ he now said. ‘They’re open.’ ‘Who are?’ asked the lady in the flowerpot. ‘The bar is,’ said Mr Schenk, who was an organizing genius; for instance, the Society always had a poetry weekend, at some country house devoted to conferences, and Schenk not only managed to get hold of the most distinguished speakers, but, simply in order to give the thing more tone, he used also to persuade the AA to cover three or four counties with large yellow marker signs saying poetry conference. The group rose and made their way into the bar, which was quaint and old-fashioned; there were post-horns on the wall, and yards of ale. Businessmen chatted about wool and cotton, and county young men, in blazers and cavalry twill trousers, teased sweet girls with plummy accents and short hair. The countryside around was hunting country. They sat down in Windsor chairs and ordered. Treece now found himself next to Butterfield, the man who ran the Department of Adult Education. Butterfield, who had got the job because at the interview he claimed that he had once taught an all-in wrestler to love Shakespeare (he was, Butterfield explained afterwards, a very literate all-in wrestler), always described himself as ‘a pleb’; it was his ambition to retire and keep a pub somewhere. Academic life at once charmed and bored him; he liked, as he said, to be in the vicinity of a university, but not too firmly anchored to it. He used to go over to Cheltenham most weekends; he was having an affair with a very slick and sophisticated woman who had a hairdresser’s shop. The woman had now decided that she wanted to marry Butterfield, and he was having rather a bad time; he had told the woman, falsely, that he was already married, and she now wanted to meet his wife so that they could decide between them who was to have him. ‘She’s here,’ said Butterfield. ‘She’s rampaged all over the town, looking for my wife. If you should come across her, don’t tell her I’m single. That would be the finish.’ Butterfield, who, rumour had it, had fathered two children by his hairdresser, didn’t look any too worried; he was splendidly aware of his ability to cope with the most extreme situations. ‘I’m a bit of a rat, aren’t I?’ said Butterfield. ‘Still, they say the strongest human instinct is self-preservation, and once they get the noose round your neck, you can never get it off.’

‘. . . I always feel that reading does much more good to others than it does to me,’ Treece found a stout elderly lady saying to him good-naturedly, as she sipped a gin and orange.

The children’s novelist now leaned over. ‘Do you read much children’s literature, Professor?’ he asked. ‘I don’t,’ said Treece. ‘I think you’re ignoring, if you don’t mind my saying so, a very fruitful field for study,’ said the novelist. ‘I’m sure you’re right,’ said Treece, ‘but the trouble with me is that I have a sophisticated mind. Was it Chesterton who said he didn’t like children because they smelled of bread and butter? I dislike them because they aren’t grown up.’

‘But aren’t you charmed by their innocence?’ asked the lady in the flowerpot hat.

‘But innocence is in the eye of the beholder, isn’t it?’ said Treece, ‘and in any case innocent is the last thing that children are. I think they’re cruel and savage. If I had any children, I’d lock them up in a cage until they could prove that they were moral creatures. That’s because the only interesting thing about man, to me, is that he’s a moral animal; and children aren’t.’

‘I can see now why you aren’t married,’ said the lady in the flowerpot hat. ‘Of course, you’d soon change your mind if you had any children.’

‘Besides, children are like old people; they’re culturally disconnected,’ said Treece.

‘You think that children should be seen and not heard then?’ asked the novelist.

‘I don’t approve either category,’ said Treece. He was growing expansive, more and more so as the day wore on; he thought the bit about not being married was funny enough, funny but true, but that all this was funnier still. However, no one seemed very amused. He realized that he was in a mood of almost manic elation and irresponsibility, and that he would have to pay for it all with a countervailing depression. ‘Of course,’ he said, concluding the topic, ‘what you don’t realize is, I’m a bastard.’

The lady in the flowerpot hat had sweet little ears, and Treece was just taking a really good look at them when Butterfield turned around to him, and said, ‘Mr Schenk asked me to have a word with you about the poetry conference. He wanted to know if you’d be prepared to speak at it again this year. He wanted you to talk on poetic drama.’

‘Very well,’ said Treece, looking at the ears. ‘I’m quite prepared to do it.’

‘He also wondered if you knew of any . . . well, the phrase he used was “Big Name”, who’d come down and speak to them.’

‘Had he anyone in mind?’ asked Treece, swinging his leg idly.

‘Well, he wanted Eliot, or perhaps a Sitwell.’

‘We shall have to see,’ said Treece.

Meanwhile, Mr Schenk had been trying to talk everyone into going to see the nude show at the variety theatre; he said that anyone who was interested in society or in our contemporary estimate of the worth of man should go. ‘Yes, let’s, just for fun,’ said the lady in the flowerpot hat; you knew this was her phrase. One or two of the ladies said they had to go and feed people. ‘You must come,’ said Schenk. ‘We want to watch the expression on your faces.’ Butterfield was equally keen. ‘It’s not that I have a sociological interest,’ he said. ‘I just like nude shows.’ ‘This is fun,’ said the woman in the flowerpot, as they drank down their glasses and off they all went. ‘If only Mrs Rogers could have been here,’ said Treece. They went in cavalcade through the streets to the theatre and in the interval Treece kissed the woman in the flowerpot hat on each pretty ear, just for fun. He found he was liking the provinces more and more; it was something less than London, but it was also itself.

III

Of all the problems that nibbled at Treece’s mind and brought him to anxiety, there were none sharper than his worries over status. The catechism began simply: what, in this day and age, was the status of a professor in English society, and what rewards and what esteem may he expect? Secondly, and to add another dimension, what was the status of a professor in the humanities, in England, in this day and age? Third, what, then, was the status of a professor in the humanities at a small university in the provinces, in England, in the present age? It could not be denied that all the forms of social stratification, once solid, were liquefying in the torrid heat engendered by reforming zealots like himself. Treece had to admit that, if it became a choice between being respected too much and not at all, he would, in spite of his liberal pretensions, rest easier in spirit under the former régime. And, to sum the matter up, what emerged for Treece was that to be a professor, of the humanities, at a provincial university, in England, in the nineteen-fifties, was a fate whose rewards were all internal, for in the matter of social status he was small enough beer. A man who had a fondness for human manners, the local manners of circles and groups that are formed by a traditional accretion of associations, he sought to follow the given manners for himself, to live within them in no spirit of cheap emulation, but with the zest of one who believes that manners are an access to morals, and that manners pursued with passion never atrophy. Such was the passion with which Treece queried whether it was proper for him to possess, as he did, a motorized bicycle; and a somewhat seedy late Victorian house; and an account with the Post Office Savings Bank, because it was always useful to be able to go and draw out a few pounds, anywhere; and a National Health Service doctor, because you paid once to be ill, anyway, and Treece was never ill enough, in the course, it seemed, of any given year, to make those weekly payments a fair bargain in his case; and pyjamas bought at Marks and Spencers, because they seemed just as good as more distinguished garb, though perhaps less well-cut around the crotch; and paperback books, because you could possess more (though you had to go, always, to the library to provide references for scholarly articles from the hardbound editions). On the other side of the coin, however, to point up that, even in the fluidity of the contemporary English social scene, not all is lost, Treece wore an establishment shirt, made to measure for him, usually in blue or grey fine stripe, with three loose collars; a suit, also made to measure for him, from a small local tailor, with pockets at the back of the trousers, and the side, and the front (this for the wallet), and a buttonhole for the passage of a pocket watch; and braces, because one did, though belts were pleasanter. Treece’s answer to the problem of what is à propos for the person that, in terms of social status, he supposed himself to be, was that if most of what he had was à propos, and a little was flagrantly not à propos, then society would grant his recognition of the fact that here was a problem, and that, for the future, it was an open problem. A partial immersion in professorship was really the most the world could hope for from Treece, and it accepted that.

Treece was no aesthete, no exotic; his driving forces were self-discipline and moral scruple, or so he was disposed to think. He had no time for the pleasurable, only the necessary. For instance, he spent most of his time in his office, having painful encounters with students, who wanted him to read stories they had written about sensitive youths, pining for a new world, or inquired at what sort of shop one could buy books, or wanted to know whether he collected dinner money – although he would much rather have hidden behind the door or in a book cupboard. People always thought he had been to Oxford or Cambridge, that he was that sort of man. But he had gained his wisdom at the University of London, which is a very different thing; he had gone to university not to make good contacts, or to train his palate, or refine his accent, but rather to get a good degree. He had had to give up punting, which he enjoyed, because to punt one had to punt from one end or the other, and one end was the Oxford, the other the Cambridge, end. So much of the world was like that too. The same sort of people wondered too about his regiment, which they supposed would be the Guards. In fact, during the war Treece had been a member of the London Fire Service, putting out fires with Stephen Spender. People supposed, likewise, that his family would be a sound one, his father an artist, or a bibliophile, his mother at home on a horse. In fact his father had had a wallpaper shop, and when, once, he had told his father that it was wrong that people’s relationships should be those of buyers and sellers, his father had gazed at him blankly. What else could they be? Treece was never ashamed that his background was of this sort; but he was surprised by it; it was not what he would, if he had met himself as a stranger, have expected.

Of Treece’s formative years, which were the nineteen-thirties, of those busy days when to be a liberal was to be something, and people other than liberals knew what liberals were, of this period Treece had one sharp and pointed memory, that cast itself up like a damp patch on the wall of an otherwise sturdy house, a memory of a time when late one night – indeed, at the two o’clock of one early morning – he had gone from the room he rented in Charlotte Street because he had had a row with the woman he was living with. On the night in question, Treece, then a research student with holes in his underpants and not a change of socks to call his own, was determined to leave Fay, in part because she did not like his poetry, but also because he knew that she did not trust him, since, with the cunning of females who know what faculties are of most or least worth in their prey, she had observed that he was a person without a firm, a solid centre; he was easily blown or altered. On this topic they had exchanged acrimonious words, and Treece had hurried forth into the dark street, pausing only to dress and snatch up his thesis, which reposed, well-nigh completed, at the side of the bed. Coming along the Soho street, wearing a leather jacket and a most determined visage, Treece had met a friend of his, a speedway rider of strong and engrossing character. He was a communist and, unlike Treece, took an active part in the political life. The two withdrew to an all-night café and Treece, pressed to account for his presence abroad, told him of the row with Fay; he said he was fed up with her and didn’t wish to go back. The speedway rider observed that severed links were the order of the day; he had finished his job and was going away, probably abroad; and he asked Treece to come with him. I have no money, said Treece; whereat, from all over his leather jacket, the speedway motorcyclist produced wads of pound notes, all his savings, which he had withdrawn. But as they talked, through the night, Treece began to think about Fay again, and how warm it was in bed. Finally, uncertainly, he went back to Fay, receiving a poor welcome; she had hoped, she said, that he meant it. Some time later Treece learned that his friend had in fact been on his way to Spain, where he had fought; and later still he heard that he had died heroically holding a solitary machine-gun position which had finally been wiped out accidentally by planes on his own side. When Treece heard all this, he felt that, if only the man had said that it was to Spain that he was going, he would surely have gone; afterwards he wondered whether he would; from time to time he certainly wished that he had.

It was against this sort of background that moments like the reception for foreign students, or Treece’s responses to provincial life, took their shape. Being a liberal, after all that, meant something special; one was a messenger from somewhere. One was, now, a humanist, neither Christian nor communist any more, but in some vague, unstable central place, a humanist, yes, but not one of those who supposes that man is good or progress attractive. One has no firm affiliations, political, religious, or moral, but lies outside it all. One sees new projects tried, new cases put, and reflects on them, distrusts them, is not surprised when they don’t work, and is doubtful if they seem to. A tired sophistication runs up and down one’s spine; one has seen everything tried and seen it fail. If one speaks one speaks in asides. One is at the end of the tradition of human experience, where everything has been tried and no one way shows itself as perceptibly better than another. Groping into the corners of one’s benevolence, one likes this good soul, that dear woman, but despairs of the group or the race; for the mass of men there is not too much to be said or done; you can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear. Persons tie themselves into groups, they attach to this cause and then to that and, working with these abstracts and large emotions, they rush like a flock of lemmings, into the sea to drown themselves. What can one do? One gives, instead, teas for foreign students, teas which say, in effect, ‘Foreigners are not funny’. And even that is hardly true. Treece wanted to hear no more of the departmental reception; far from proving that foreigners were as normal as you or me, the occasion had been a subject of public amusement and complaint ever since; a letter had appeared in the local evening paper about the religious rites that had taken place on the University’s front lawn, asking if young girls were safe any more, and a Frenchman had been arrested afterwards for urinating against a tree on Institution Road. He had telephoned the Vice-Chancellor from the police station, to enlist his aid: ‘C’est moi,’ his rich French voice had announced in the Vice-Chancellorial ear. ‘J’ai pissé.’ Moreover, Treece’s fond hope that Emma Fielding’s kindness at the departmental reception would dissuade Mr Eborebelosa from hiding out in the lavatories was answered; Eborebelosa forsook the lavatories for another cause, the pursuit of Emma Fielding.

Every morning since the reception he had sought her out in the refectory, whither she retired, along with her fellow-students, for coffee and conversation, those two eighteenth-century graces, now equally ersatz in the twentieth. He would pass back and forth behind her stool, remarking finally, as he came up close, ‘How do you do. You do not want me to sit here.’ ‘I do,’ said Emma, who in this situation had little choice of words. ‘Come and sit down.’ Eborebelosa would rest his bottom precariously on an adjacent stool; she would introduce him to the people present; conversation would continue and Eborebelosa would sit silently, nodding his black head in a somnolent fashion, until at last he would stir from his speculations to poke Emma in the ribs and say, ‘You do not want me to talk with you.’ ‘Yes,’ she would say. ‘I do. What do you want to say?’ ‘You do not want to hear it,’ Eborebelosa would say, ‘and a silence is golden.’ And, eyeing each other warily, into silence they would both subside.

IV

‘It’s an extremely difficult examination,’ Ian Merrick, MA, Lecturer in Philology, was saying to Treece when Emma Fielding entered Treece’s office for her tutorial. ‘My word, is it?’ demanded Treece, concern bursting out on his face like spots. ‘Do you think I shall pass?’

‘No one ever passes first time,’ said Merrick, sitting on the desk. ‘The real problem is the practical part . . .’

Treece noticed Emma standing there. ‘Do sit down, Miss Fielding,’ he said. ‘I shan’t be a minute.’

‘Yes,’ said Merrick; ‘there’s no problem about the theoretical stuff, of course; that’s simply a question of mugging up the notes. But when it comes to practical performance, they’re very sticky.’

‘Oh, my goodness,’ said Treece.

‘Have you got a crash helmet?’ asked Merrick.

‘For a motorized bicycle? Oh, really old boy . . .’

‘Well, you have to show willing. I know it looks ridiculous. I always say they should make them look like bowler hats, and then a gentleman could wear them as well.’ Merrick, if he was anything, was a gentleman. He was, it always seemed to Treece, a typical Cambridge product gone to seed; he was the bright young man of fifty, handsome, fair-haired, bursting with romantic idealism, the sort that nice girls always loved, the sort that had gone off in droves to fight the First World War. There was something passe and Edwardian about Merrick. He was conceited, cocksure, a public school and Cambridge Adonis fascinated by what he called ‘the classical way of life’. Treece privately described him as a Rupert Brooke without a Gallipoli, and this was really almost fair; he seemed as if he had outstayed his lease on the earth, and now his romanticism was turning into a kind of Housman-like light cynicism, his open and frank assurance curdling, his Grecian-god looks becoming almost grotesque with wrinkles. He reached into his waistcoat pocket and took out a gold cigarette case: ‘Gasper?’ he said. He would, naturally, wear a waistcoat; cigarettes he would call, of course, ‘gaspers’. He smiled brilliantly at Emma and put his cigarette case before her; you felt that, like Bulldog Drummond, he would say, ‘Turkish on this side; Virginias on that.’ ‘I’m sorry; I should have offered them to you first,’ was what he actually did say. ‘You must make your presence felt, my dear.’

‘To revert to this driving test . . .’ said Treece.

‘Well, as I say, you mustn’t feel too disappointed if you don’t pass first time. They throw the book at you. They failed me for not giving proper signals. I was sticking my arm out as far as the bloody thing would go. But no, they expect you to lean so damn far out of the car that the examiner has to hold on to your feet. They just don’t like passing people.’

‘This is only a bicycle,’ said Treece.

‘It makes no odds, old boy,’ said Merrick. ‘They’re even worse with those things. If you pass on that it means you’re entitled to ride a bloody great motorcycle. That’s why they’re so rough. Believe me, no one passes first time. I’ve taken it four times with my motor-mower and I haven’t passed yet.’ Merrick got up off the corner of the desk and began to depart. ‘Anyway, good luck,’ he said. He nodded affably at Emma and went out. ‘Bye-bye, old boy,’ he said.

Treece, who was to take his driving test that afternoon, was already in a high state of tension; he peered through a haze of distress at Emma Fielding, sitting there in her chair, her intense black eyes fixed upon him. His stomach felt weak; he wanted to lie down. ‘Pleased to be back?’ he asked. ‘Well, not really,’ said Emma frankly.

‘Well, how’s the thesis coming along?’

‘I’m afraid it isn’t, really,’ said Emma. ‘I haven’t been able to get anything done over the vacation. I’ve been away; and then coming back was so unsettling; I always get dreams of glory whenever I go abroad, and England is something of a shock when you come back to it. It’s all so matter-of-fact.’

‘That’s the problem with vacations,’ said Treece. ‘It’s a good thing you’re back, really. After all, the function of a vacation is regenerative, not luxurious. It’s to restore our equipment so that we can live our ordinary lives the better. Do I look pale?’

‘A bit,’ said Emma.

‘I feel queer,’ said Treece: then, with a briskness he didn’t feel, he added, ‘Well, when are you going to let me have something written down?’

‘Next time,’ said Emma.

‘Good,’ said Treece. ‘Well, come and see me when you’ve something on paper.’ He rose, but Emma was not so easily got rid of. ‘There’s something I wanted to talk to you about,’ said Emma. ‘It’s a personal matter really, and I suppose it’s something I ought to clear up on my own. I mean, I suppose it’s one of the risks one takes just in being a woman, and one ought to know how to cope with the situation. After all, women are always being pursued, and they ought to learn to live with it, and be pleased, not sorry.’

‘What is it?’ said Treece.

‘Well,’ said Emma, ‘you remember that Negro student that you introduced me to at the departmental reception.’

‘Mr Eborebelosa?’

‘Yes,’ said Emma. ‘Well, I thought about this very carefully before I decided to mention it to you, but he really has gone too far.’ She explained that one morning, in a pause in conversation in the refectory, Eborebelosa had announced, spluttering on the synthetic coffee, that he was in love with Emma and wanted to make her his fifth wife; he was, he said, prepared to give up entirely intimate relations with the other four; he was jaded with black girls; he wanted only Emma. He further claimed, Emma told Treece, that, because of some action which she could not identify, she was actually engaged to be married to him. ‘This is interesting,’ said Treece. ‘I wonder if it was your holding his teacup for him at the reception? Isn’t there something about that in The Golden Bough?’ – and up he bobbed, to look for it on his shelves. He’s so annoying, Emma thought. Was it worth going on? But she did. When she had told him that she could not marry him, Eborebelosa had become indignant and, waving in the air a box which, he said, contained his grandfather’s skull, which he wanted her to have, he said he was a chieftain’s daughter (‘Chieftain’s son,’ Emma had corrected him, reflecting as she did so that this was the sort of role she had in mind in relation to him), that she could have as many goats as she wanted, that if she wanted anyone killed she had only to say. ‘You see,’ said Emma, ‘there simply is no common ground. And then he did this awful thing.’ ‘Great Scott!’ said Treece, forgetting about The Golden Bough.

‘Well, he got the idea that I was engaged to someone else, and he said he was going to kill him. He comes up to me every day, grinning like mad, asking if he’s dead yet.’

‘And is he?’

‘Is who what?’ asked Emma.

‘Is this man you’re engaged to dead?’

‘Well, there isn’t anyone. I had to invent someone.’

‘You shouldn’t have done that,’ said Treece.

‘I know,’ said Emma Fielding. She looked downcast; she bent her head; and then, Treece noticed with horror, there was a bright crystal tear in each of her eyes. She hadn’t meant to tell this bit, for how guilty she felt about it. Oh, she had never meant to lie; it wasn’t as if it was an ordinary lie, which would have been bad enough; she was lying to a member of a race which had been lied to too much already. If he ever found out, he would surely take it as an insult to his colour, though it had been meant to spare him. But, in any case, was it, for a liberal-minded person, fair even to spare him? Would one want to spare a white person like that? Yet if one told him what one would tell a white person – ‘I don’t love you’ – wouldn’t this seem like an attack on his colour? And if he had been a white person, wouldn’t one perhaps have married him?

‘Oh,’ she sobbed, ‘it’s so difficult.’

Treece, watching her body shake with sobs, got up and popped halfway round the desk; then he thought better of it, and popped back. Someone might come in and catch him at it. ‘Now, now,’ he said from his safe distance.

‘That’s not all, either,’ said Emma. ‘It was you. It’s you he’s sticking pins into an image of.’

‘What do you mean?’ demanded Treece.

Well,’ cried Emma, ‘I said I was engaged to you. It had to be someone he was scared of, you see. So I thought of you.’

‘Did you, by Jove?’ said Treece.

‘You don’t understand,’ said Emma accusingly. ‘This is the sort of thing that only happens to women. Men don’t see this dilemma. One is congenitally a woman, you know; one tries not to be, but it’s a condition of one’s humanity. But his being a Negro makes everything so much worse. It’s not just a question of doing what a woman ought to do, is it?’

‘No,’ said Treece.

She blew her nose. ‘Well, then,’ she said. ‘And that’s why I came to you, because it isn’t just a personal problem, and I can’t handle it on my own. I mean, it is very flattering, to be admired by someone out of a different culture. But you see – if I turn away from him it won’t just seem like a simple rejection, will it?’

Treece pondered a moment. ‘Well, will it?’ demanded Emma, and Treece found that her eyes, sprouting tears, were gazing accusingly at him, as if he were to blame, as if he were the cruel arbiter of dilemmas of this sort (which, in a sense, he had to admit, he was). ‘He’ll think, won’t he, that I’m discriminating against him because of his colour.’

‘And you aren’t?’ asked Treece, taking strength.

‘Oh, oh, I don’t know,’ said Emma. ‘But I couldn’t marry him. I don’t want to.’

‘But you must give him a fair deal, now, mustn’t you? That’s all that’s necessary. Have you thought it through in the way that you would have if he were a white suitor?’

‘Well, how do I know, because he isn’t,’ said Emma. ‘White suitors don’t try to give you their grandfather’s skull. And when one’s getting married one has to take things like that into consideration. I mean, it does matter, doesn’t it?’

‘But have you even thought of the matter as a feasible possibility?’ asked Treece. ‘At least you have to do that, don’t you?’

‘I suppose so,’ said Emma.

‘I think you do,’ said Treece. ‘In many ways, Eborebelosa is an admirable man. His ways are not our ways, but that doesn’t mean they’re any worse.’ Treece weighed this for a moment, and then added, scrupulously (scrupulously was his word), ‘Or any better. He does have the advantage of national vigour on his side; he’s close to his roots, you know. That should appeal to a woman, shouldn’t it? I mean, he’s extra-ordinarily male, vital, in a way . . . well, you’ve read Lawrence. He deserves to be considered on his merits.’

‘Yes,’ said Emma. ‘Yes.’ A brave smile shone through the tears. Treece felt as though he had put the case rather well, had given her something to think about. That was his job.

‘Are my eyes terribly red?’ asked Emma.

‘No,’ said Treece, adding, as if he were her father, somebody’s father, ‘Sit here for a minute; and stop rubbing them.’ Treece tried to think of something nice and warming to say; but he could only, really, think of one thing. This was the driving test.

‘Oh, I wish I hadn’t to take my driving test,’ he said; somehow, after the tears, it didn’t matter about telling Emma. ‘I hate that machine. You know I get off it every time shaking like a leaf. It’s full of vibration. It has a life of its own. I dream about it in bed at night.’

‘Why not get rid of it?’ said Emma.

‘It’s a challenge, you see. They shouldn’t make people take these cruel little tests, it’s so belittling.’

‘Well, you do,’ said Emma.

‘Yes, I know, but it isn’t the same, is it? I wasn’t at all nervous when I took my Ph.D. The thing with this one is that you aren’t being judged on your own terms. I’m an expert in English literature, and they’re going to ask me questions about street signs. It’s a field outside the ones in which I have control, you see. I shall expose myself, I know.’

‘It isn’t so very hard,’ said Emma.

‘You’ve taken it, then, have you?’

‘Yes,’ said Emma.

‘And passed?’

‘Yes,’ said Emma.

‘Oh, well,’ said Treece, ‘perhaps you have a mechanical mind. What I’m getting at is how cruel life is in the spheres of it in which you aren’t influential. You think you have a protected corner, and you’re safe; but once you emerge from it, war is declared. You think life is ideal, so long as you can pursue it along the lines you favour; and then it suddenly comes upon you that it isn’t, it’s corrupt, that the area in which you are resolute, and make decisions, is so very small. And now and then life goes to work to remind you of it.’

‘Yes, I know exactly what you mean,’ said Emma. ‘The blind, uncontrollable forces of the universe break through, suddenly, the great overpowering energies of the world. As in Moby Dick.’

‘Quite,’ said Treece. ‘And the question remains: is it right to stay in the protected corner, where things are controllable, or should one venture out, and start again in a new world, where things are strenuous, and reclaim something else from the wild?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Emma. ‘How does one decide? One concludes, I suppose, that one world is worth more, I imagine, and opts for that.’

‘It isn’t even as simple as that,’ said Treece, morosely; the discussion was affecting him profoundly; these were his corns that they were treading on. ‘Because when one ceases to cultivate one’s own garden, then one ceases to be influential. There’s so much to lose, not in goods, but in manners, patterns of living. Outside those that one has, one is nothing – one is a buffoon. Like Mr Eborebelosa. He’s not funny on his native heath – but here! No, there’s nothing really you can do; for then the abrasion itself becomes a dominant condition of life, and one gives more time to it than it deserves. And one has to commit oneself to actions that perhaps are not right – or they might be right for you, but not for other people.’ He stood up and walked over to the door, taking a black cycling coat from a hook on the back of it. ‘It’s a problem, Miss Fielding,’ he said, putting on the coat. ‘It’s a problem.’ On the hook there also hung a pair of cellophane goggles, and these he seized and pulled down over his eyes, ruffling his hair wildly as he did so.

‘Well, you look your normal self now,’ he said, presuming on their intimacy. His eyes crinkled into a smile behind the cellophane. ‘I hope it will all come out all right,’ he said, ushering her out of the door and following her down the corridor. Notices flapped on the boards like great birds as they swept past them.

‘And good luck for your driving test,’ said Emma.

Treece paled, but regained his composure. Students swept round them as they stood still in the middle of the corridor. ‘Oh,’ said Treece. ‘There’s something I wanted to ask you.’ He began to fiddle with his clothes, right there in the middle of the corridor, in a most alarming way; is he going to do it here, in public, to compromise me? Emma wondered. But it was nothing like that at all; Treece’s black motorcycling coat was covered with great zips, which he kept undoing, thrusting his hand inside, in order to produce, after a great deal of struggle, simply a diary. ‘I wonder if I could trespass on your time and good nature again,’ said Treece. ‘I’m giving a little tea next Friday for the first-year honours people, at four, and I wondered if you could come along.’

Both of them realized, simultaneously, that this was how it had all started last time; after playing with the thought for a moment, both politely ignored it. ‘I’d be pleased to,’ said Emma. ‘Nothing formal, you understand,’ said Treece, looking down gratefully at her through his goggles. ‘It would be pleasant and I thought too that you could act as a sort of bridge between them and me.’

‘I suppose I could,’ said Emma, pocketing any expectations of the evening; no-man’s-lands were notoriously difficult to populate. ‘Well, I must be on my way,’ said Treece, doing up his zippers; and with one more nod and a smile apiece, both went their ways to their respective problems.

Treece went out to his bicycle, in the middle of the back wheel of which sat a squat black engine. He climbed aboard and drove off, his L-plates fluttering in the October wind, the engine puttering down there in the wheel behind him. ‘Mind,’ cried a nervous old man as he whistled past. A drizzling rain was splashing coldly on his face and misting his goggles. Treece scarcely noticed, for he was still within the warmth of the little encounter. Emma Fielding was a sensitive and mature woman, careful of the feelings of others, and what he was wont to call ‘a very worthwhile person’: if anyone had asked for a reference, that was what he would have said. Sensitive, intelligent, scrupulous, liberal-minded (and pretty, too – one had better not forget that), she was just the sort of person to marry Eborbelosa. Why, then, had she rejected him? Perhaps he was being unfair – and then he saw that he was, of course. Why had he been feeling so offended? As if it was he who had been rejected? Because it was he who had been rejected; this had been the thought nagging at the back of his mind. His motives were far from pure; it was his protest on behalf of the international spirit, his cry for foreign races, that he felt had been turned down. All that Emma was doing was conceiving the matter in simple human terms; she was all that he thought she was; she had simply wanted to do as little harm as possible. Like so many liberals, he had conceived of actions in terms of ideas, when there was nothing in the action but pure action. As soon as he observed the treacherous nature of the moral stance he had taken, he was bathed in apology. Of course she didn’t have to marry Eborebelosa, not if she didn’t want to.

Treece found the driving test office and went in to look for the examiner. He was a tired-looking little man with a suspicious face, and he was clutching a clipboard. ‘Heyup,’ he said. ‘You’re early.’ ‘I know this is just a gesture; I know you don’t pass anyone first time,’ said Treece to him, politely. ‘Where’s your vehicle?’ asked the examiner. Treece took him outside and showed him the bicycle. ‘Right,’ said the examiner. ‘I want you to go down the hill and then round the block back here, giving the appropriate signals as you go.’ Treece let in the clutch and drove off. He turned the corner at the bottom of the hill and ran over a policeman’s foot. The policeman stopped him and told him that the next time he saw him riding like that he’d have him at the police station so fast his feet wouldn’t touch the ground. Treece looked back; the examiner seemed to be out of sight. As he got into the heavy traffic of the Market Square his nerve started to go. Then, suddenly, the clutch cable snapped. Treece tried to get started again, nervously, for he was at the central point of five intersecting roads, and traffic was piling up around him. It was no use. There was only one thing to do, and Treece did it; he lifted the bicycle up and carried it to the kerb. He looked around for the examiner, who had said he would be in the crowd. ‘Are you taking my driving test?’ he kept asking little men in the press. Then, to the right, he saw the clipboard. He went up to the examiner and told him what had happened. ‘Did I pass?’ he asked.