Thinks...

by David Lodge

  I’m a self-taught two-finger typist, prone to error (for which reason I thank God – and science – for the invention of the word-processor). But some words I always seem to mistype. One of them is ‘science’, which invariably appears on the screen of my computer as ‘scince’, with a reproachful red wiggly line drawn under it by the automatic spell-checker. I duly correct it, but there is something onomatopoeically appropriate about ‘scince’ (pronounced skince) which I am sorry to lose: it expresses the cold, pitiless, reductive character of scientific explanations of the world. I feel this hard, cold, almost ruthless quality in Ralph Messenger. His reaction to Martin’s death, when the subject came up in the course of lunch, was like having a bowl of icy water dashed in one’s face. It shocked and angered me – I almost got up and left him at the table. But I’m glad I didn’t. I might never have seen the Karinthy mural, for one thing. It provoked all kinds of ideas.

  At the end of today’s workshop I distributed copies of the Encyclopaedia Britannica’s article on bats to the students and told them to write a short piece on ‘What is it Like to be a Bat?’ in the style of a well-known modern novelist, for next Tuesday’s seminar.

  Reading through the above, it occurs to me that the only kind of fiction that wouldn’t be open to Ralph Messenger’s objections would be the kind that doesn’t attempt to represent consciousness at all. The kind that stays on the surface, just describing behaviour and appearances, reporting what people say to each other, but never telling the reader what the characters are thinking, never using interior monologue or free indirect style to let us overhear their private thoughts. Like Ivy Compton-Burnett, late Henry Green, some of the nouveaux romanciers . . . But in the end that kind of fiction is dissatisfying – or at least it’s enjoyable mainly as a bracing change from the norm. If novelists stopped trying to represent consciousness altogether, readers would soon get withdrawal symptoms.

  I think I made quite an impression on Ralph Messenger with my word-perfect quotation from The Wings of the Dove. I didn’t tell him that I had used that passage in my seminar the day before, so it was fresh in my memory.

  FRIDAY 28TH FEB. I received today through the internal post an offprint of an article from an academic journal called Cognitive Science Review, and a compliments slip from Ralph Messenger, with ‘This might interest you – RM’ scribbled on it.

  The article is called ‘The Cognitive Architecture of Emotional States with Special Reference to Grief’, written (if ‘written’ is the word, rather than ‘bolted together’) by three male academics at Suffolk University. It begins with a definition of grief: ‘An extended process of cognitive reorganization characterized by the occurrence of negatively valenced perturbant states caused by an attachment structure reacting to a death event.’ So now we know. That was what I went through in the months following Martin’s death: just a spot of cognitive reorganization. The desolating loneliness, the helpless weeping, the booby traps of memory triggered at every step (we watched that TV programme together, we bought that reading lamp together, we – God help me – ate that type of Sainsbury’s fresh-chilled chicken curry together just a couple of hours before the aneurysm struck. Even the newspaper falling through the letter box in the morning would remind me of how we divided it over breakfast, so I switched to another one which I don’t like half as much).

  Halfway through the article was a diagram purporting to represent the architecture of the mind, all boxes and circles and ellipses, thrown into frantic activity (a tangle of swirling arrows and dotted lines) by the reaction of an attachment structure to news of a death event. ‘Attachment structure’ is I suppose the cognitive science term for love.

  SATURDAY 1ST MARCH. Went into Cheltenham today for a little shopping therapy, though heaven knows just getting away from the campus for a few hours is therapeutic enough.

  I’d been in Cheltenham only once before, a few years ago, to do a reading at the Literary Festival, and was hardly there long enough to acquire much sense of the place. This morning I drove helplessly round the one-way streets for some time until I spotted the neoclassical hulk of the Town Hall where they hold the Festival events (a building of dingy brownish stone, with a pompous oversized portico, that looks clumsy against the surrounding Regency terraces of white stucco) and then I knew where I was. I left the car in the first car-park I came to, and made for the town centre.

  It was a cold day, but dry and sunny, and I spent an enjoyable hour or so strolling along the Promenade, browsing in Waterstone’s, buying a blouse in Laura Ashley and a pair of trousers in Country Casuals, having a light lunch in a café served by waitresses in old-fashioned uniforms with little white aprons. I briefly explored a long, two-storied shopping mall discreetly hidden in a parallel street, but quickly retreated from its airless atmosphere and tinkling muzak. I followed a sign to the Art Gallery and Museum, which specializes in the history of domestic art and design – appropriately enough, because everywhere you go in Cheltenham you see restoration and refurbishment of old houses and terraces going on, inside and out, a kind of collective cult of the House Beautiful. There’s some quite interesting stuff about William Morris and the Arts and Crafts movement in the museum, and I bought a few art nouveau posters in the shop to brighten up my living room.

  I walked back along the Promenade, past the splendid Regency facade of the Municipal Building, past the Italianate Neptune fountain foaming and glistening in the sun, past the Imperial Gardens, past the Queen’s Hotel, serene, white and majestic like a pre-war Cunarder at its moorings, to Montpellier Street, which Caroline Messenger had recommended to me, and which indeed proved to be charming, its boutiques, specialist shops and galleries snugly housed in a well-preserved Georgian thoroughfare. There’s a wonderful rotunda at the top modelled on the Pantheon in Rome which has been very elegantly turned into a Lloyds bank.

  I was thinking to myself, how agreeable this is, what a nice time I’m having, but there’s one thing missing – someone to share it with, or report it to; and as I had that thought, gazing abstractedly into the window of a health-food shop, and feeling a cold qualm of incipient depression, who should emerge from the shop, heralded by the ping of an antique doorbell, but Carrie herself, like the answer to a prayer. She was dressed in a bright red topcoat, her blonde hair was long and loose under a mohair knitted cap, her cheeks glowed rosily, and her sickle lips opened on perfect teeth smiling broadly in recognition. She invited me back to her house for a cup of tea, and I accepted with only the polite minimum of hesitation.

  Carrie had parked her car in a nearby residential street, Lansdown Crescent, a superb sweeping curve of terraced town houses. ‘Nicholas Beck has bought one of these,’ Carrie said. ‘He’s doing it up exquisitely. Very elegant of course, but not really convenient for modern family life. Lots of stairs, no garages, no gardens to speak of.’ I said that was usually the case in spa towns, where everything was built for rental. ‘You’re absolutely right,’ she said, as she drove away. ‘Our yard is rather small for the size of the house, but it serves its purpose. And we have a cottage in the country about half an hour away, near Stow, which we use at weekends. You must visit.’

  The Messengers live in a part of the town called Pittville, after the developer Joseph Pitt who laid it out in the 1820s. ‘Sounds like “Pitsville” to an American ear,’ said Carrie. ‘You can imagine how my friends back home laugh when I tell them where we live.’ But I imagine she has the last laugh when they visit her. Pittville is a delightful garden-city estate of fine houses and elegant terraces, set in landscaped parkland surmounted by a vast neoclassical spa. Apparently you can still take the water in the Pump Room there, unlike in the Lloyds bank. The Messengers’ house is a magnificent double-fronted detached villa in Greek Revival style, with a pair of massive Corinthian columns that rise through two stories. In gleaming white stucco it resembles a vast old-fashioned wedding cake, but there’s nothing absurd or vulgar about it, the proportions are so perfect. In the drawing room Carrie poured Earl G
rey from a Queen Anne teapot into Spode chinaware, and offered me toasted teacakes and home-made strawberry preserve. She is one of those impressive American women who seem to know how English life should be lived rather better than we do – and she has the means to set an exacting standard in practice. The house is beautifully decorated and furnished in appropriate style, right down to the repro brass taps in the downstairs cloakroom and the Early Victorian rocking horse in the family room. Carrie said Nicholas Beck helped her to acquire the choicest pieces of furniture, driving round the local countryside to auctions and antique shops being his favourite occupation. The numerous paintings on the wall, mostly American primitives and minor French impressionists, were however collected by Carrie herself. She did graduate work in art history, she told me, writing her dissertation on Berthe Morisot ‘before she was rediscovered’. A small oil by Morisot, of a young girl reading, is her most treasured possession – and must indeed be worth a fortune now.

  The youngest of their four children, Hope, was in the family room when we looked in, sprawled on a bean bag, watching a Walt Disney video on a portable television: a pretty, freckled, mopheaded eight-year-old in brightly patterned leggings, who grinned and said ‘Hi’ when I was introduced, exposing an orthodontic brace. The eldest child, Emily, seventeen, a tall, handsome, Californian-style blonde who takes after her mother, came in while we were having tea, with a new pair of shoes she had just bought. I wondered if the high heels and platform soles were really a good idea, given her height, but kept my counsel. Carrie didn’t turn a hair when it transpired that the shoes had cost £89. Having noticed my shopping bags, mother and daughter persuaded me to display my modest purchases, and we had the kind of pleasantly trivial women’s conversation about clothes and fashion which I haven’t had since Lucy left home. When Emily was out of the room for a while, Carrie told me that she was her daughter by her first husband, from whom she is divorced. Emily has retained a perceptible American twang, whereas the other children speak with English accents.

  As dusk turned to darkness outside, Carrie drew the heavy velour curtains and pressed a button at the side of the hearth to ignite the simulated-coal gas fire – a concession to modernity which she sought to mitigate by mentioning that they had a real hearth fire at ‘Horseshoes’, Horseshoes evidently being the name of their country cottage. Then Ralph came in with his two sons, Mark (fifteen) and Simon (twelve) – though they were introduced to me as ‘Polo’ and ‘Sock’. All the children have nicknames whose derivations were explained to me in due course. ‘Polo’ is a contraction of ‘Marco Polo’, and ‘Sock’ is derived from ‘Socrates’, assigned to Simon because of his propensity for asking questions. Hope is known as ‘Kitten’ because of her petite build, and Emily as ‘Flipper’ because of a childhood passion for dolphins which she has long outgrown. Needless to say all these nicknames, like those on the computers in the Holt Belling building, were assigned by Ralph. It seems to be his way of stamping his personality on his domain. He also calls Carrie ‘Blondie’ from time to time. Perhaps she and the children call him ‘Messenger’ in mild retaliation.

  Simon and Mark immediately went off to the kitchen to forage for food, unwinding long striped scarves from around their necks. They had been to Bath to watch a rugby match. ‘Male bonding,’ Ralph said to me with a grin. ‘Carrie thinks it’s very important.’ He was in high good humour, and seemed pleased to find me in his house. ‘You like going,’ said Carrie, hitting him lightly on the shoulder. ‘Well I used to play when I was young,’ he admitted, and I could imagine him, head down like a bull, his broad shoulders locked in a scrum, thrusting and pushing in the mud. He is a very physical person – kissed Carrie when he came in, gave Emily a hug, and set Hope on his knee – and they responded with unselfconscious pleasure to his touch. I couldn’t help comparing in retrospect the restrained body language of our own family life. Martin and I rarely hugged the children once they were out of infancy; they seemed to find it embarrassing – or was it we who were inhibited? We didn’t hug each other much, either, now I came to think of it, unless we were actually making love. I was suddenly filled with regret and remorse at the thought of all the neglected opportunities for touching each other, lost now for ever. I envied the Messenger family their easy physical intimacy, touching, squeezing, patting, leaning against each other . . . Then I remembered seeing Ralph kissing Marianne Richmond, and reflected that there is a price to be paid for everything. At least I never had to worry about Martin’s fidelity.

  Ralph offered drinks and I accepted a small sherry, saying that then I would have to be off. I had no urge to leave the cosy room, but I didn’t want to outstay my welcome. ‘We’re dining out tonight, otherwise I’d have invited you to take pot luck with us,’ said Carrie, as if reading my thoughts, and I believed her. ‘Are we dining out, Blondie?’ said Ralph, frowning. ‘You know we are, Messenger,’ said Carrie. ‘At the VCs.’ ‘I forgot,’ he groaned. ‘Come to lunch at Horseshoes tomorrow,’ Carrie said to me. ‘Or next Sunday.’ I would have loved to accept the invitation for tomorrow but some silly genteel principle of reserve made me defer the pleasure for another week. They really are an extraordinarily nice and hospitable couple. Perhaps when you’re so rich and fulfilled it’s easy to be nice to other people. Or perhaps – an even more cynical thought – it’s a way of converting other people’s envy into gratitude.

  When I rose from my chair to go, Ralph asked me where I was parked, and insisted on driving me there, warmly seconded by Carrie. I submitted gracefully. In the car (a big Mercedes estate) I thanked him for sending me the offprint. He asked me what I thought of it. I said I had found it rather alienating, the jargon and the diagrams seemed so remote from the actual experience of grief.

  ‘It’s only a model,’ he said.

  ‘But if you want to make a robot that really feels grief . . .’

  ‘Oh, that was just a debating point.’

  ‘You mean it’s not really possible?’ I said.

  ‘It’s possible,’ he said. ‘But it would be a hugely expensive and time-consuming project, and what use would it be – a robot whose cognitive functions could be drastically disturbed by random events – just like a human being?’

  Then what was the point of the article, I asked.

  ‘The mind is a virtual machine. Sometimes you can learn a lot from studying a machine when it’s malfunctioning, even in theory.’

  ‘Is that what grief is, then?’ I said. ‘A malfunction?’ I didn’t really want to get into an argument after receiving so much kindness from him and Carrie, but I couldn’t keep an ironic tone out of my voice, and he gave me a quick appraising glance.

  ‘Well,’ he said. ‘It’s hard to see what it’s for, in evolutionary terms. I mean, compared say with jealousy – which is equally disabling, equally unpleasant, but has an obvious function. Ensuring that no other male impregnates your mate.’

  ‘What about female jealousy?’ I asked

  ‘Very similar: it secures the male’s exclusive interest in feeding and protecting her offspring. You could say, I suppose,’ he continued, as if thinking aloud, ‘that the desire to avoid the pain of bereavement is an incentive to look after one’s mate and offspring. But there are already enough other powerful incentives to do that. And anyway, knowing that you did everything possible to avoid being bereaved doesn’t seem to alleviate the pain when it happens.’

  ‘And sometimes there is nothing you could have done to avoid it,’ I said with feeling, but he didn’t seem to register my allusion to Martin.

  ‘Quite so,’ he said. ‘All these funerals you see on television after terrorist bombs, earthquakes, and so on. People beside themselves with grief. Weeping, wailing, thrashing about. It’s all so excessive, so disproportionate to any possible evolutionary payoff. As Darwin said, “Crying is a puzzler.”’

  I was struck by the phrase: ‘Crying is a puzzler.’ Ralph said it was in Darwin’s notebooks somewhere. He promised to look up the passage for me.

&nbs
p; When we reached the car-park he politely got out of the car and offered to escort me to mine, but I said it wasn’t necessary and this time I got my way. We shook hands, and I had a fleeting presentiment that he was going to kiss me on the cheek, but he didn’t.

  6

  ONE, TWO, THREE, testing, testing . . . There’s no need to test this gadget, you can see the words appearing right in front of your eyes on the screen, but I’m making an audiorecording at the same time so I can go over the text later and put in the dots for pauses . . . I’d no idea this voice recognition software was so good . . . You’d think a Centre for Cognitive Science would have the latest dope on such things but to my amazement when I asked around there wasn’t anyone on the staff who actually owned such a program or had any experience of using one . . . They seemed to think it was some kind of toy, something you might buy at Dixon’s for your kids at Christmas but nothing of serious interest, just shows you how conservative and blinkered academics are . . . Anyway, Voicemaster arrived on Friday and I spent a few hours training it. I had to start by reading a couple of passages, one from Lewis Carroll another from the Times, so it could learn my accent . . . It produces a fair amount of gibberish at first, but you correct it on screen and gradually it learns your way of pronouncing vowels, which is the main variable, and by the end of the day it was only making about one mistake every other line, which isn’t bad, in fact a lot more accurate than my typing . . . The software works by matching your input of phonemes against a database of frequently occurring collocations . . . so a free association monologue is just about the most difficult possible task because the context keeps changing . . . The program is also a bit prudish . . . refused to transcribe the word ‘fuck’ at first . . . came up with all kinds of alternatives, ‘suck’, ‘ruck’, ‘tuck’ etcetera . . . but I’ve taught it to talk dirty. So here we are . . . It’s Sunday 2nd March, 8.45 a.m., yes 8.45 . . . because Carrie got a bit stroppy when I told her on the way home from the VC’s last night that I . . . God what a boring evening that was . . . the Richmonds were there but no opportunity for a quick snog with Marianne . . . at one point she gave me the eye as she went out to the toilet but I took no notice, what did she think I would do, follow her out and knock on the door of the loo to be let in . . . ? She’s getting reckless, Carrie might easily have intercepted that glance, fortunately she was gossiping with Lady Viv at the time . . . I was talking to Stan . . . Sir Stan and Lady Viv, what a pair of names for a Vice Chancellor and his consort, sounds like a music hall act . . . But he told me that Donaldson has accepted the honorary degree which is good news, highly chuffed apparently, that should help with our funding . . . Anyway . . . I’m here at this ungodly hour because Carrie got a bit stroppy when I mentioned I was coming in again this morning to continue the experiment. ‘Don’t you spend enough hours in that place already, for God’s sake?’ Fair point I had to admit, but I was itching to try out this software on a stream of consciousness exercise, so I promised I’d go in first thing, be back home by ten in time to drive to Horseshoes, the kids are never up before then anyway on a Sunday . . . Of course I could load the software on to my computer at home and use it there, but I would feel inhibited, afraid someone might overhear, given the sort of thing that seems to pop into my head when I’m idly ruminating . . . even though they’d have to creep up the staircase and put their ear to the door . . . the fact is you feel very vulnerable, exposed, speaking your private thoughts aloud, you need to be quite confident nobody could possibly overhear . . . So here I am at my desk in my office at the Centre once again, a mug of cappuccino with cinnamon no sugar beside me, but this time wearing a headset with microphone just in front and to one side of my mouth as per instructions and ready to go . . . I’ll only correct major errors as I go along, the text can be tidied up later . . . In the car just now it occurred to me that it might be interesting to do not another random dip into the stream of consciousness, but a specific exercise of memory. Of course in a sense all consciousness is memory, we can’t be conscious of the future, though we might try to predict it, and we aren’t even conscious of the present strictly speaking, because mind states always lag behind brain states as that chap, neuroscientist, what’s his name . . . Libet, he showed that conscious awareness of a decision to act always lags behind the associated brain activity by about half a second . . . so in a sense every moment of our lives is already in the past when we experience it . . . you might say consciousness is a continual action replay . . . But I’m talking about long-term memory, I’m going to try and recall an experience distant in time and see or try to see from the transcript how the mind recovers . . . recuperates . . . reconstructs the past and the extent to which shorter-term memories triggered by association interfere with or interact with this process . . . So what shall it be? What long-term memory shall I try to activate?