by David Lodge
At one minute to eleven o’clock, Stigwood and Dickinson are poised tensely behind the one-way window that separates the observation room from the anteroom. Stigwood glances at his watch and nods to an assistant, who presses a button on a console. A trap-door in the floor opens automatically. Slowly Mary’s head and shoulders appear, then the rest of her body, as she climbs the spiral staircase that leads from her dungeon. She looks around, blinking in the bright reflected light, and sees the rose. She gasps, and puts her hand to her heart; then tip-toes towards it, as if it is a living creature that might run away if startled. The scientists watch her, scarcely daring to breathe. It is not the paltry bet of a hundred pounds that concerns them; it is the prospect of professional triumph or failure.
‘Mary.’ Stigwood speaks to her through a PA system, making her jump.
‘Yes?’ She looks round the room, trying to identify the location of the speakers, not realizing that the opaque panel in the wall is a one-way window.
‘What do you see on the table?’
‘A rose.’
‘What colour is it?’
A pause. The longest pause either man has ever experienced in their lives.
‘Red,’ she says.
Stigwood punches the air. Dickinson looks stricken. He snatches the hand mike from Stigwood.
‘How do you know?’ Dickinson asks.
‘It’s the colour of blood.’
‘Blood?’ It is Stigwood’s turn to look dismayed. ‘How do you know the colour of blood?’
Mary blushes. ‘Every woman knows,’ she says.
Stigwood beats his head with his fist. ‘Dammit, we forgot about that!’ he wails.
‘The question remains open,’ says Dickinson with visible relief.
‘Mary,’ says Stigwood, ‘I’m afraid we’re going to have to repeat the experiment with a different colour. Would you please return to your suite.’
‘You said I was going to go out into the world today.’
‘It will only take a few months more.’
Mary takes the rose out of the vase, pours the water on to the floor, and smashes the neck of the vessel against the edge of the table. She holds the jagged edge against her throat. ‘If you bastards don’t let me out of here this minute,’ she says, ‘I’ll show you the colour of my blood.’
17
‘YOU NEED AN algorithm for self-preservation,’ says Ralph Messenger. ‘Mother must love herself as well as her kids if she’s to function effectively. You follow me?’ He is in his office at the Centre for Cognitive Science, giving a supervision to Carl, the German postgraduate student. It is mid-morning on Friday 21st March. Carl nods gravely and makes a note. The telephone rings, and Ralph answers it. ‘Helen!’ he says, in a tone of pleased surprise. ‘Just one moment.’ He covers the mouthpiece with his hand. ‘I think that’s about it for today, Carl. See you same time next week. OK?’
‘Yes, of course, Professor Messenger. Thank you,’ says Carl. He looks a little put out, however, as he gathers up his papers and files.
‘Is this an inconvenient time?’ Helen says anxiously in Ralph’s ear. ‘I’ll call back later.’
‘No, no, it’s OK.’ He waits until Carl has left the room, and closed the door behind him. ‘Just finishing off a supervision,’ he says. ‘What can I do for you?’
‘Well I applied to the University’s Central Computing Services for Email facilities, as you suggested. Lucy does have an Email address at her office, by the way . . .’
‘Good.’
‘And now they’ve sent me a letter with a password and a lot of instructions I don’t understand.’
‘Where are you?’ Ralph says.
‘At number five, Maisonette Row.’
He laughs. ‘Is that what they call it?’
‘No, it’s what I call it.’
‘I’ll come round and sort it out for you,’ he says.
‘You must be far too busy . . . But I thought perhaps one of your young men –’
‘I’ll come in the lunch hour. You’ll need a modem and some software. What’s the make and model number of your computer?’
‘It’s a Toshiba something – let me look . . . “Satellite 210”. Listen, I feel awful, taking up your lunch hour.’
‘Have you got some bread and cheese in your maisonette?’
‘Yes . . .’
‘Then you could give me lunch.’
There is a slight pause, then, ‘Well, all right,’ she says.
At 12.45 Ralph knocks on the front door of Helen’s maisonette and is admitted. She leads him from the minimal lobby into the living-room. He puts down his briefcase, and looks round. ‘I don’t think I’ve been in one of these before,’ he says. ‘It’s quite cosy, isn’t it?’
‘I’ve done my best,’ she says, gesturing at the rubber plants, the art nouveau poster prints on the walls, the brightly coloured cushions and throws on the sofa and easy chair. ‘But it has severe limitations.’
‘Won’t you show me round?’
‘This is it, really. It’s open-plan.’
‘But there’s an upstairs,’ he says, peering up the open staircase that rises from one side of the living-room.
‘It’s hardly worth seeing,’ she says. ‘But if you want to . . .’
‘Well, as a member of Senate, I should know what kind of accommodation we offer visitors like you.’
Helen leads him up the staircase, and stands on the tiny landing. ‘My bedroom,’ she says, opening a door. He crosses the threshold and looks round a small room furnished with a dressing table, a fitted cupboard, and a double bed placed against the wall under a sloping ceiling and dormer window. The bed is neatly made and the doors and drawers of the furniture closed. Apart from a small pile of books on the bedside table, few of Helen’s possessions are visible.
‘All very tidy,’ he says. ‘If I were living here on my own it would be a complete tip within a week.’
‘Habit,’ Helen says with a shrug. She indicates the second door off the landing. ‘Bathroom and loo in there.’
‘May I see?’
Helen opens the door of the bathroom for his inspection, catches sight of a pair of panties on the floor beneath the towel rail and darts in to snatch them up. Ralph smiles but does not comment.
‘That concludes the tour,’ she says, dropping the panties into a cylindrical polyamide container with a cork lid that doubles as a laundry basket and stool. He turns and precedes her down the stairs.
‘D’you want to have lunch now, or do the Email first?’ Helen says, indicating with one hand the table, already laid for lunch on a red linen cloth, and with the other the desk, with her laptop open and switched on, weaving a lazy screensaver pattern.
‘Let’s do the Email first,’ he says. ‘Then we can relax.’ He takes a boxed modem and two floppy disks from his briefcase and sits down at the desk.
‘Shouldn’t I pay you for this stuff?’ she asks.
‘No. The software is free.’
‘The modem, then.’
‘Compliments of the Centre.’
‘I think I should pay.’
‘It would cause me, or rather Stuart Phillips, an awful lot of trouble to invoice you.’
Helen gives in. ‘All right, then. Thanks.’
‘What password did they give you?’ Ralph asks.
Helen consults a sheet of paper. ‘“Highjump” for the dialup service, and “lipstick” for the Email.’
‘Hmm, quite good.’
‘Good?’
‘Easy to remember.’
‘What are yours?’
‘I don’t need a dialup password,’ he says, ‘because I have direct access to the network, even at home. And I shouldn’t really divulge my Email password.’
‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ she says, embarrassed. Then she adds, ‘But you know mine, now.’
‘I couldn’t demonstrate how it works otherwise. You can always change it later.’
‘No, I’m not really bothered.’
‘It’s “backpack”, actually,’ he says.
‘I really didn’t want to know,’ she says. ‘I wish you hadn’t told me.’
‘I wouldn’t want you to think I don’t trust you,’ he says.
‘“Lipstick” and “backpack”,’ Helen muses. ‘It sounds as if Computer Services are prone to gender stereotyping.’
‘No, it’s quite random,’ Ralph says. ‘They have a list of words and just dish them out on demand.’
He shows her how to dial up the University network, and how to send and receive Emails. He enters Lucy’s Email address in Helen’s Nickname file, and then his own. ‘D’you want to call me “Ralph” or “Messenger”?’ he asks.
‘“Messenger”, she says, after a moment’s thought.
He watches and guides her as Helen hesitantly sends a two-line message to Lucy, asking her to confirm that it has been received. Helen presses the ‘Send’ button and the text of her message disappears in the blink of an eye.
‘Theoretically it could be in Australia already,’ Ralph says. ‘Though probably it will be held up by congestion in the system. She should get it today, though.’
‘It’s amazing.’
‘And all for the cost of a local call. By the way, always write your letters before you dial up. You’ll save a lot on your phone bill that way.’ He shows her how to do this.
‘Thank you very much,’ she says. ‘I think that’s about as much as I can take in at first go. I’ll put the soup on for lunch.’
‘I hope you haven’t gone to a lot of trouble,’ says Ralph. ‘When I said “bread and cheese” I meant just that.’
‘Well, basically that’s what it is,’ Helen says. ‘With a little pâté, and a green salad.’
‘And soup.’
‘And soup. While I’m heating it up, you might like to look at some new work by my students,’ says Helen. She gives him the three best pieces about Mary the Colour Scientist.
Ralph sits in the easy chair and reads through the manuscripts, chuckling occasionally, as Helen goes to and fro between the kitchenette and the table. ‘You’ve certainly got a lot of mileage out of the Karinthy mural,’ he says, as he finishes his reading.
‘So have the students,’ she says. ‘I must say I’m quite impressed by the way they’ve responded. Some of them have made a real effort to research the scientific stuff – this batch in particular.’
‘Up to a point,’ he says. ‘But they’re pure fantasy.’
‘Well of course they are,’ says Helen. ‘But isn’t the original thought experiment a fantasy?’
‘Well, yes,’ Ralph says. ‘But it makes a serious philosophical point which these stories don’t begin to address.’
‘They’re not trying to address it. I didn’t ask them to address it,’ says Helen. ‘They’re using the story of Mary to defamiliarize something we take for granted, the perception of colour, which is what good writing always does. And they’re also rather cleverly imitating certain literary models, by the way . . .’
‘Yes, I did recognize the Henry James . . . And I got the Gertrude Stein at the end . . . They’re very well written, I grant you. But they all demonize science – did you notice? The scientists are always the baddies – imprisoning, exploiting, depriving poor Mary. Even killing her in one case.’
‘But it’s inherent in the original thought experiment,’ Helen says. ‘That’s the first thing any normal person would think when they heard it for the first time – the terrible plight of this poor girl, shut up in a totally monochrome world from infancy to adulthood, just to satisfy scientific curiosity. The soup’s ready if you’d like to sit down.’
The soup is tomato and basil, served with a whorl of sour cream on top and warm ciabatta.
‘Mmm, delicious,’ Ralph says, after his first sip. ‘This isn’t out of a tin, or a carton.’
‘No,’ says Helen. ‘The kitchen is equipped with a blender, fortunately.’
‘And what a selection of cheeses!’ he exclaims, glancing at the cheeseboard.
‘It’s just what I happened to have in the fridge,’ she says. ‘What would you like to drink? Mineral water?’
‘Have you got a beer by any chance?’
Helen looks downcast. ‘I don’t keep beer, I’m afraid. I don’t drink it myself. There’s a bottle of Beaujolais, if . . .’
‘Why not?’ he says. ‘I don’t usually drink wine in the middle of the day, but what the hell – it’s Friday. And I think it would be an insult to drink mineral water with that Stilton.’
So Helen fetches the bottle of Beaujolais Villages, and Ralph opens it with an old-fashioned corkscrew and pours two glasses. ‘Cheers,’ he says.
‘Cheers,’ she says. They eat in silence for a few moments. Then, ‘How’s Carrie?’ Helen asks.
‘Very well, thank you. Is her novel any good? You can be quite honest, I shan’t tell her what you say.’
‘I think it’s promising,’ Helen says. ‘Definitely promising.’
‘Great,’ says Ralph. ‘It’s just what Carrie needs, a project of her own that’s really fulfilling. This Beaujolais is really very decent. May I?’ He lifts the bottle.
‘Of course.’
Ralph tops up their glasses. ‘Are you working on anything yourself at the moment?’ he asks.
‘No.’
‘Not writing anything at all?’
‘Nothing. Apart from my journal.’
‘A journal?’
‘I haven’t been able to write fiction since Martin died,’ she says.
‘I see.’ Ralph cuts himself another slice of Stilton. ‘So you’re keeping notes on all of us, then?’
‘No, no,’ says Helen, looking slightly flustered. ‘Certainly not.’
‘You mean to say that there’s nothing about me in your journal?’ he says, smiling and looking her in the eyes. ‘I should feel quite humiliated if I believed that.’
‘Well, inevitably . . . there are references to people whom I’ve met here . . . people who’ve been kind to me, as you and Carrie have, but . . .’ Helen lets the sentence die. ‘It’s just a way of keeping my writing muscles exercised. They atrophy otherwise. I try to write something every day. It doesn’t matter what it’s about.’
‘I started keeping a kind of journal too, recently,’ he says.
‘Did you?’ It is Helen’s turn to look intrigued.
‘It began as a bit of research into consciousness, as a first person phenomenon. The idea was to generate some raw data. I just dictated my thoughts into a taperecorder as they occurred to me.’
‘“Let us record the atoms as they fall upon the mind in the order in which they fall.”’
‘Just so. Who said that?’
‘Virginia Woolf.’
‘I bet she didn’t, though. I bet she jiggled the order about to suit herself.’
‘Yes, she probably did.’
‘And described it all in very beautiful, much-revised prose.’
‘Yes. But she aimed to produce the illusion –’
‘Ah well, I wasn’t trying to produce an illusion, I was after the real thing,’ says Ralph. ‘It’s difficult though – impossible, really. The brain does a lot of ordering and revising before the first words come out of your mouth.’
‘So you abandoned the experiment?’
‘No, I still dictate something every now and again. It’s become a habit.’
‘Are you keeping notes on me?’ she asks.
‘Yes,’ he says, without hesitation.
‘Then we’re even,’ she says, draining her glass. Ralph stretches across the table to refill it. ‘No more,’ she says, but does not prevent him. He empties the remainder of the wine into his own glass.
‘I’m glad you invited me round today,’ he says. ‘I thought you were offended with me.’
‘Why should you think that?’
‘Well, after our conversation at the party, in my study . . . And then the next day at Horseshoes you seemed to be avoiding me.’
�
��I would hardly have come to Horseshoes if I had wanted to avoid you.’
‘Yes, I cheered myself up with that very thought,’ he says.
There is a brief pause while Helen digests this remark. ‘Would you like some coffee?’ she says.
‘In a minute. Let’s enjoy the last of the wine.’
Helen sips and swallows. ‘I’m not going to be fit for anything this afternoon,’ she says. ‘I shall fall asleep.’
‘What a good idea,’ says Ralph, smiling cheekily. ‘I wouldn’t mind a siesta myself.’
‘Haven’t you got work to do this afternoon?’ she says in the same light tone.
‘All I’ve got is a boring committee meeting which I should be very glad to skip,’ he says. ‘We could go upstairs into that cosy little bedroom of yours and have a nice lie-down.’
Helen swirls the wine round slowly in her glass. ‘I told you, I don’t want to have an affair with you, Ralph.’
‘Why don’t you?’
‘I don’t approve of adultery.’
‘Well, as long as it’s not because you don’t find me attractive,’ he says. Helen is silent. ‘I find you very attractive, Helen. In fact, I think I’m falling in love with you.’
‘You must fall in love very easily,’ she says dryly. ‘Were you in love with Marianne?’
‘That was just fooling around, I told you. We started to snog once at a party, when we’d both had a bit to drink, and then it became a kind of private game between us, to do it every time we met socially. We never spoke about it. It made the dullest dinner party quite exciting. It was the emotional equivalent of bungee jumping – you had the sensation of reckless abandon, but really we were both safely tethered. There was no question of our going further than snogging. When I fall in love, I want to make love,’ he says, looking earnestly into her eyes. ‘And I believe I’m a good lover.’
