The History Man

by Malcolm Bradbury

  'You've got to make your choice,' says Howard. 'Where you are. Who you're with. Whose story you accept.'

  'I like to be fair,' says Miss Callendar. 'You can't be,' says Howard. 'Do you know where you're going? You're going his way. You'll end up just like him.'

  'What do you mean?' says Miss Callendar. 'Look at this room you've shut yourself up in,' says Howard. 'It speaks what you are.' Miss Callendar looks round her room, at the chintz armchairs, the standard lamp, the prints on the walls. 'It's a very convenient room,' she says. 'It's a faded place,' says Howard, 'somewhere where you can hide, and protect yourself against anything that's growing now. Life and sexuality and love. Don't you hide?'

  'I like to be a little elusive,' says Miss Callendar. 'He's destroyed himself, and you will too,' says Howard. 'You'll dry up, you'll wither, you'll hate and grudge, in ten years you'll be nothing, a neurotic little old lady.'

  'It's a very nice room,' says Miss Callendar. Howard says: 'Freud once gave a very economical definition of neurosis. He said it was an abnormal attachment to the past.' Miss Callendar's face is very white; her dark eyes stare out of it. 'I don't want this,' she says, 'I can't bear this.'

  'You've got to forget him,' says Howard, putting his hand over the hand that holds the little glass snowstorm, 'You've got to be with me.'

  'I shouldn't have let you in,' says Miss Callendar. 'What did you do to him?'

  'I'm not interested in him,' says Howard, 'I'm interested in you. I have been all along.'

  'I don't want you to be,' says Miss Callendar. 'Is that your bedroom in there?' asks Howard. 'Why?' asks Miss Callendar, lifting a sad, crying face. 'Come in there with me,' says Howard. 'I don't want to,' says Miss Callendar. 'It's all right,' says Howard. 'He's not there. He's gone to see the Vice-Chancellor.'

  'I don't want it,' says Miss Callendar. 'Another Miss Phee, getting the help.'

  'Oh, you're more than that,' says Howard. 'Not a sub-plot,' says Miss Callendar. 'The thing it's all been about,' says Howard. 'Come on.'

  He puts his hand on her arm. Miss Callendar turns, her dark head down. 'Yes,' says Howard. Miss Callendar moves toward the brown-stained bedroom door; she pushes it open and walks into the room. It is a small room, with, against one wall, a very large wardrobe; the bed is bulky and high, and has a wooden head and foot. On it is a patchwork quilt; Miss Callendar straightens it. Outside the window is a little garden, on the slope; Miss Callendar goes to this window, and pulls across the heavy plush curtains. The room now is nearly dark. Still standing by the curtains, away from him on the other side of the bed, she begins, clumsily, to remove the trouser suit; he hears the whisper of cloth as she takes things off. 'Can I put the light on?' asks Howard. 'No, don't, you mustn't,' says Miss Callendar. The clothes fall off onto the floor; her body is white in the faint light. She moves from her place; the bed creaks; she is lying on top of the quilt. His own clothes are around his feet. He climbs onto the bed, and touches with his hand the very faintly roughened softness of her skin. He feels the coldness of his hand on her, and a little pulling shudder, a revulsion, in the flesh. His hand has found the centre of her body, the navel; he slides it upward, to her small round breast, and then down, to her thighs. He feels the springs of response, tiny springs; the stir of the nipple, the warmth of the mucus. But she scarcely moves; she neglects to feel what she feels. 'Have you done this before?' he whispers. 'Hardly ever,' she whispers. 'You don't like it,' he says. 'Aren't you here to make me?' she asks. He kneads and presses her body. He lies over her, against her breast, and can feel the rapid knocking of her heart. In the dark he moves and feels the busy, energetic flesh of himself wriggling into her, like a formless proliferating thing, hot and growing and spreading. Unmitigated, inhuman, it explodes; the sweat of flesh, of two fleshes, is in the air of the dark room; their bodies break away from each other.

  Miss Callendar lies with her face away from him; he can smell the scent of her healthy shampoo close to his face. 'I shouldn't have let you, it's wrong,' she whispers. 'It's not wrong,' he says. How can he have thought her quite old, when he met her first? Her body against him feels very, very young. He whispers, as to a child, 'Promise me you'll not think about him again, act for him again.' Miss Callendar keeps her head turned away; she says, 'That's what it was for.'

  'It's for your good,' says Howard. 'Those things you said,' says Miss Callendar. 'What about them?' asks Howard. 'You said them just to get inside me.'

  'I think you'd have let me, in any case,' says Howard. 'It was bound to happen.'

  'Historical inevitability,' says Miss Callendar. 'There was an ending. I was it.'

  'That's right,' says Howard. 'Marx arranged it.' After a moment, Miss Callendar turns her head; she says, 'Marx said history is bunk.'

  'That was Henry Ford,' says Howard. 'No, Marx,' says Miss Callendar. 'Oh, yes?' asks Howard, 'where?'

  'A late insight,' says Miss Callendar, turning her body over to face him. 'It's my field,' says Howard. 'Blake for you, and Marx for me.'

  'I'm right,' says Miss Callendar, 'it's a critical ambiguity.'

  'If you want,' says Howard. 'Was I awful at it?' asks Miss Callendar. 'It's like golf, you need plenty of practice,' says Howard. 'We can arrange it.'

  'You're so busy,' says Miss Callendar, 'and George will be on duty again.'

  'Oh, I don't think so,' says Howard, 'I think we can deal with him.'

  XIII

  And now it is the winter again; the people, having come back, are going away again. The autumn, in which the passions rise, the tensions mount, the strikes accumulate, the newspapers fill with disaster, is over. Christmas is coming; the goose is getting fat, and the papers getting thin; things are stopping happening. In the drives the cars are being packed, and the people are ready, in relief, to be off, to Positano or the Public Record Office, Moscow or mother, for the lapse of the festive season. There are coloured lights along the promenade, now on, now of, according to the rhythm of the power strikes; Nixon is back in office for a second term, and there is talk of seasonal truce in Ulster. Mock fir trees decked with empty tinsel packages stand in the pedestrian precincts where the shoppers crowd and generate minor economic boom among consumables; there are train crashes and plane crashes, as there always seem to be over this season. Snow flurries over the sea; people assume cheeriness; telephones ring to transmit Yuletide compliments. The Kirks, that well-known couple, catch the mood and decide to have a party. They have, actually, had a party at this point in time, the end of the autumn term, the first term of the year up at the new university spreading on the hill, for the past two winters. But it is hardly a tradition with them, and can hardly be, for who can predict ahead of time the strifes and dissentions, the fallings out and the fallings in, that will come upon a group of intelligent people like this when they get together to generate the onward march of mind, the onward process of history. In any case the Kirks are, of course, enormously busy people, with two full lives, and two separate diaries; they are not in the house together very much; there is little space for planning and conversation, with so much in the world to do. But as it happens they do find themselves in the house together, in that last week of term; and though the strife has been considerable, the term wearing, and their own relationship uncertain, for when one is up the other is down, yet some atavistic instinct manages to seize them. They look at each other, with natural suspicion; they examine the mood and the milieu; they say, but not very certainly, 'Yes.' And then they fetch the common household diary-Howard had fetched it last time, so Barbara fetches ' it this-and they sit down together with it, in the pine kitchen, and inspect the busy pages. There is a free date that suits them both quite equally, and does not affect their separate plans. They seize it; the date is Friday 15 December, the last day of the term.

  After the instinct about the party has come to them, an instinct so tentative and uncertain that neither is quite sure whom to blame for it, the Kirks go together into their livingroom and pour themselves out a glass of beer eac
h, and they begin to plan it. It is a small inspection of their present relationships; and it becomes quickly clear that it will be a thinner, smaller party than their last one, held at the beginning of this same term, when the prospects were pleasing and the future full of options. For wear and tear have overtaken the Kirks, and their friendships, and their friends. There have been splits and dissensions, and changes of partner and changes of alliance; new divorces pend, new political associations burgeon. He no longer speaks to her; they no longer speak to them; it is not easy to plan a party, unless one is very au courant with movement and mood, but the Kirks have a way of being that, and they build up their list accordingly. There are people who, it can be taken, will not now come when summoned by the Kirks; there are people the Kirks will not now summon under any circumstances. The people are already in the process of leaving, for the final week of term is a reading week, and many students have surreptitiously disappeared, and some faculty; there are many with other commitments, caucuses, or affairs. There will be, therefore, no ministrations from Flora Beniform, for she has been absent for the last three weeks; fieldwork in West Bromwich, where there has been a significant outbreak of troilism, has called her away. There will be no Roger Fundy, for he is committed in London that day, appearing before magistrates on a charge of assaulting the police, a consequence of a recent Grosvenor Square demonstration against Cambodian policy. There will be no Leon, for Leon is touring with Much Ado About Nothing in Australia, and no avant-gardists from the local theatre, for the cast of Puss in Boots is not Kirk company. But there are others, a bouncing if battered crew of survivors, for the radical cause at Watermouth this term has had its victories, and there is every reason to appear in good humour. So the wind beats on the windows, and the night comes in fast; the lights flicker in the broken houses across the streets; the Kirks sit in their corduroy Habitat chairs, and name names and plan delights; the party takes on its modest shape.

  After a while, Barbara rises, and goes to the door of the living-room. 'Felicity,' she shouts into the complex acoustics of the hall, 'Howard and I are busy planning this party. I wonder whether you'd mind bathing the children tonight?'

  'Yes, I do mind,' shouts Felicity from somewhere, probably the lavatory, where she spends much time, 'I'm tired of being exploited.'

  'I don't know what's the matter with Felicity,' says Barbara, sitting down again in the corduroy chair. 'Never mind,' says Howard, 'I think she's in another crisis.'

  'I expect you stopped laying her,' says Barbara, 'you might have thought of me.'

  'I try to do my best,' says Howard, 'but there's so much.'

  'Yes, we gathered,' says Barbara, 'from Carmody's camera.'

  'What about the Beamishes?' asks Howard. 'Or is it Beamish and Beamish?'

  'They're together,' says Barbara, 'they have been ever since Dr Beniform went away. But would they come if you invited them?'

  'Henry's a friend of mine,' says Howard. 'Still?' asks Barbara. 'After Mangel? I can't imagine he ever wants to see you again.'

  'Oh, Henry sees the other point of view,' says Howard. But there is good reason to wonder, for, if the high point of radical success in the term was the occasion of the Mangel lecture, it did not go exactly well for Henry. For the department did issue its invitation to Mangel, and there was much dissent among the faculty, and much resentment, and the news penetrated with great and mysterious speed to the radical student groups on campus who, having already managed two sit-ins, felt in great strength and in a mood of unprecedented cooperativeness one with another. They put up many posters, and held many meetings, some addressed by Howard, that martyr of Carmodian persecution; on the day of the lecture a great crowd gathered, outside the Beatrice Webb Lecture Theatre, where the event was to take place, chanting and angry. Professor Mangel had indicated in advance that his topic would be 'Do Rats Have "Families"?', but this was found a typical liberal evasion, and indignation ran the higher, and many bodies lay down and obstructed all the entrances to the room, while massive and hostile forces assembled inside, making the radical point with roars and posters.

  'It was Henry's own fault,' says Howard, recalling the famous victory. 'He was determined to be provocative. Henry makes accidents.'

  'There are people who feel he was the only one who behaved decently,' says Barbara. 'Christ, Barbara,' asks Howard, 'are you going soft in your old age?'

  'I didn't like it,' says Barbara. The unfortunate thing was that the task of introduction had fallen to Henry; it should more properly have gone to Professor Marvin, but he had suddenly confessed himself afflicted by an alternative engagement, in Edinburgh, giving a lecture on messianism, or failing that to Mangel's old pupil, Dr Beniform, but she had been claimed by the demanding affairs of West Bromwich. In the event, it was Henry, who, that day, had stepped carefully through the bodies, and entered the forbidden space of the Lecture Theatre. 'Why didn't he just tell them what had happened?' asks Howard. 'Oh, you'd have been disappointed if he had,' says Barbara. For Henry had stood at the podium, stark with his bandaged arm; he had said, politely, 'I ask you all to disperse.' Peter Madden had pushed in front of Henry; he had announced to the audience, 'This lecture is forbidden by radical opinion.' The audience had roared its assent, 'Forbidden, forbidden,' and 'Fascist, fascist,' and then Henry had been unwise. He had pushed Peter Madden aside with his good arm; he had waved his bad one; he had shouted, 'You're the fascists; this is a crime against free speech.' Then the crowd had pushed and jostled; Melissa Todoroff, noticeable in the audience for her poster 'Hysterectomize Mangel', had thrown a bread bun at Henry; this had unleashed the forces, who surged onto the podium, and knocked Henry's unsteady body down, and somehow, in the mêlée, trampled him underfoot. In their anger they had then rushed to his office, left unlocked; they had pulled open the filing cabinets, and tipped out or stolen the papers; they had broken the silver-framed mirror; they had poured tea out of the Teasmaid over the Norwegian rugs, and then smashed the Teasmaid; they had tossed his research notes into the mess.

  'He needn't have been provocative,' says Howard, 'he could simply have told them about Mangel.'

  ' Myra says he was afraid they might cheer,' says Barbara, 'and that he couldn't have borne.' In fact it was not until the next day, when Henry was in hospital, that the news about Mangel became known; of the many there that day, only Mangel had neglected to come, having died, the evening previous to the lecture, of a heart attack, in his London apartment. 'Let's ask him, anyway,' says Howard, 'it will give him a chance to make his peace.'

  'The more we go into this,' says Barbara, 'the more I feel the last thing we need is a party. I think it's a very doubtful celebration.'

  'You thought that last time,' says Howard, 'and it cheered you up.'

  'My God, Howard,' says Barbara, 'what in hell do you know about my cheerfulness or my misery? What access do you have to any of my feelings? What do you know about me now?'

  'You're fine,' says Howard. 'I'm appallingly miserable,' says Barbara. 'Tell me why?' asks Howard. 'I prefer not to,' says Barbara. 'Okay,' says Howard, 'you need a party.'

  'My God,' says Barbara, but they go on planning, and talking. A bit later on they go out into the hall, and one stands by and the other makes calls, and then they reverse roles, for the Kirks do everything together and in fairness. Sometimes the telephone is not answered, and sometimes the answer is a refusal; but there is, as they surmise, the human stuff ready and available to be a party, a seasonal, Christmas party. 'It'll be fine,' says Howard. Afterwards they eat, and later they go to bed, and lie on each other. 'What you need is a break,' says Howard afterwards, 'there's just been too much happening.'

  'To you,' says Barbara, 'not to me. Name one thing that in any good sense has lately happened to me?'

  'Go up to London and shop,' says Howard. 'Buy presents.'

  'There's nothing there,' says Barbara, 'nothing at all there.'

  And the days go by, and Howard tidies up at the university, setting vacation essays, inviting
the students who still manage, somehow, to be about to his party, and then it is the morning of Friday 15 December. The Kirks rise, early and together, they go down the stairs and into the kitchen. Felicity Phee, who still sleeps in their guest bedroom, is sitting at the pine table, dark-eyed, in her drawstring top and long skirt, eating toast; the children are somewhere, she does not know where. 'It's a pretty busy day,' says Barbara, 'I hope you can give me a hand.'

  'Actually I'm packing,' says Felicity, 'I think you've had all the help from me you want.'

  'But how will I manage tomorrow?' asks Barbara. 'Tomorrow will sort itself, Barbara,' says Felicity, 'you'll manage. I'm sure there's always someone who'll do all those jobs just so they can have the marvellous company of the Kirks.'

  'Have we upset you, Felicity?' asks Barbara. 'Well,' says Felicity, 'I suppose a person always has to keep moving on. I'm just into something else. I'm joining a Hare Krishna community.'

  'Oh, Felicity, that's not you,' says Barbara. 'I don't think too much is known around here about what's me,' says Felicity, 'I've done a lot for you both. I mean, I have, haven't I, Howard?'

  'Yes,' says Howard, 'a great deal.'

  'Well, you sort of hope to get something out of that, and if it doesn't work out, well, you have to keep moving. That's Dr Kirk's advice. He likes people to keep moving.'

  'Oh, good,' says Barbara, 'you've discussed it.'

  'I mean, I don't say there's so much that's smart about his advice,' says Felicity, 'but that's his job, and I suppose he sort of knows something about it. Maybe.'

  'You're angry with us, I'm sorry,' says Barbara. 'It's all right,' says Felicity, 'you're just not my kind of scene any more.'

  'Anyway, stay for the party,' says Howard. 'Maybe I will,' says Felicity, 'if you mean just be around. I mean, not work. Just enjoying myself.'