by David Lodge
best wishes, Ralph
From: Helen Reed
To: Ralph Messenger
Subject: cold
Date: 10 March 10:31:13
Dear Ralph,
My cold is improving, thanks. Regards to Carrie.
Best wishes,
Helen
Helen, since your feeling better, what about lunch tomorrow? staff house at 12.45? or a pub if you prefer. ralph
Dear Ralph,
I think it would be best if we don’t meet for a while. You have made your feelings very plain. I won’t pretend that I find them repugnant, but I can’t reciprocate.
Best wishes
Helen
helen, that’s ridiculous. i admire your mind as well as your body. i like kicking ideas around with you. ralph
Can’t we kick them around by email?
Helen
ok i was going to put a proposal to you over lunch but here it is. suppose we swap journals? i show you mine and you show me yours – complete, uncensored, unedited. what do you say?
ralph
What an extraordinary idea. I wouldn’t dream of it. My journal is not intended for anyone’s eyes but mine.
Helen
helen, it seems to me that theres an opportunity here. We’ve both been keeping journals since we first met. If we swap we would each get a unique insight into another person’s consciousness. We could compare our responses to the same events. I could literally ‘read your mind’ and you mine.
ralph
Dear Ralph,
I can see what’s in it for you. What’s in it for me?
Helen.
Helen, surely a novelist, especially a woman novelist, should jump at the chance to look inside a man’s head, to see what really goes on in there. It’s not pretty. It’s possible when you’ve read my journal you’ll nver want to speak to me again, but i hope not. i believe that like me you value the truth above all else.
ralph
Dear Ralph,
To surrender the privacy of one’s mind would be terribly dangerous. We all have bad, ignoble, shameful thoughts. The fact that we can keep them to ourselves is essential to civilisation.
Helen
hey i’m not trying destroy civilisation, Helen, i’m just offering you a deal, your thoughts for mine, to further our respective researches into human nature.
Ralph
Dear Ralph,
I’m sorry, but there seems to me something distinctly Faustian about your compact. I smell a whiff of brimstone about it. The answer is no.
Best wishes,
Helen
well it was worth a try.
Ralph
Scene Two
RALPH’s office and HELEN’s flat. HELEN is sitting at her desk, but her laptop is closed. RALPH drops an Alka-Seltzer tablet into a glass of water, drinks, and speaks into his recorder.
RALPH
It’s April the third. I haven’t recorded anything for a while, partly because – (He belches.) Pardon! – partly because I’ve been too busy planning the conference we’re hosting at the end of the semester, and partly because nothing interesting has developed in relation to Helen … It’s a stand-off … I know she fancies me, but her moral scruples prevent her from doing anything about it … Very frustrating … because I still see a good deal of her, and I like what I see, especially in a swimming costume … She’s become a kind of adopted member of the family, comes to the cottage nearly every Sunday, but she sticks to Carrie all the time, or the kids, makes sure she’s never alone with me, especially in the hot tub … She and Carrie go around a lot together … shopping in Harrogate, antique auctions … today they’ve gone to the Turkish baths. What do they talk about? Me, I expect, and her dead husband, what’s-his-name, Martin … I wonder what they say to each other … My best chance of getting anywhere with her will be in the Easter school holiday, when Carrie and the kids are in California visiting her parents … but I need some excuse to see Helen on her own … some way of getting under her guard … Offering to swap our journals was a bad idea, it frightened her off … (He draws a cartoon thought-bubble in the air above his head with a finger.) Thinks! The conference … I could ask her to do the Last Word …
He switches off the recorder and dials a number on his desk telephone. It rings in HELEN’s flat. She picks up the receiver.
HELEN
Hello.
RALPH
Helen, it’s Messenger. How did you and Carrie get on in the Turkish baths?
HELEN (slight hesitation)
Er, fine. It was … a revelation.
RALPH
It’s a wonderful place, isn’t it? They got four stars from … whoever it is that gives stars to spas. Look, I have a favour to ask of you. I want you to do something at the ICSA conference.
HELEN
What’s the ICSA?
RALPH
The International Cognitive Science Association. We’re hosting their annual conference this year, at the end of the semester.
HELEN
What on earth could I possibly contribute to that?
RALPH
Well, that’s what I want to explain – but not over the phone. Could we have lunch sometime?
HELEN (pauses for thought)
All right.
RALPH
Staff House on Friday?
HELEN
Last time you suggested a pub –
RALPH (eagerly)
Would you prefer that?
HELEN
Well, the food at Staff House is not exactly –
RALPH
Absolutely! I know a great little country pub, not far from here … I’ll pick you up at about twelve.
HELEN
Right.
RALPH
See you then. (He puts down the phone, puzzled, but pleased.)
Music.
Scene Three
A pub garden. A sunny spring day. RALPH and HELEN are seated at a table, having finished their lunch. Soiled plates, a bottle of wine two-thirds empty and glasses are on the table.
HELEN
‘The Last Word’?
RALPH
Yes, that’s what it’s called in the programme. Every year we invite somebody to the conference who’s not in the cognitive science racket, but who we think might have something interesting to say about consciousness. They listen to all the papers, then at the end of the conference they give us their impressions, and their own point of view. We’ve had a psychiatrist, a quantum physicist, last year we had a Buddhist monk … We’ve never had a novelist. It would be a feather in my cap if you would do it.
HELEN
I couldn’t …
RALPH
Sure you could.
HELEN
Stand up in front of all those scientists? They’d tear me to pieces.
RALPH
No they won’t. They’ll be charmed. Anyway, you don’t have to answer questions.
HELEN
There’s no discussion?
RALPH
No. That’s why it’s called the Last Word.
HELEN
Well, that does make it less intimidating …
RALPH
And it can be as short as you like. Come on, Helen, do this for me. Think of all the hot tubs you’ve had at the cottage. It’s payback time.
HELEN (considers)
Well … all right.
RALPH
Wonderful. Let’s drink to it. (He empties the bottle into their glasses and they drink.) I read one of your books yesterday.
HELEN
Did you?
RALPH
I thought it was time. I’ll have to introduce you at the conference.
HELEN
Which one did you read?
RALPH
The Eye of the Storm.
HELEN
And what did you think of it?
RALPH
To be honest it’s not my kind of thing. It’s what I would call a ‘woman’s book’
– though you’re not allowed to say that any more. But I could appreciate the skill that went into it.
HELEN (with a little bow of the head)
Thank you, kind sir, she said.
RALPH
No, I mean it. You write beautiful sentences. How d’you do it?
HELEN
I read them aloud.
RALPH
Really?
HELEN
Yes. I always tell my students: read your work aloud to yourself before you hand it in. You will hear what’s wrong with it, what needs revising.
RALPH
But there was one scene when I forgot I was reading sentences, when I was really gripped. Towards the end, when the couple are in Paris.
HELEN (laughs, a little self-consciously)
You mean the bedroom scene, with the masks, and the tying up?
RALPH
Yes.
HELEN
I’m afraid that’s most people’s favourite chapter. Apart from my parents.
RALPH
Is it autobiographical?
HELEN
Oh, Messenger, you disappoint me. Everybody asks me that.
RALPH
Well, is it?
HELEN
Martin and I did have a weekend break in Paris once, in a luxury hotel. And in the chest of drawers in the bedroom I found two masks and a coil of silken cord, left behind by the previous occupants. I imagined what they might have done with them …
RALPH
And did you and Martin do anything with them?
HELEN
No. (He looks at her sceptically.) If we did, I wouldn’t tell you. (She turns her face up to the sky.) What a wonderful day! The first real day of spring.
RALPH
Far too nice to go back to work.
HELEN
Yes.
Pause.
RALPH
Are you in a hurry to get back?
HELEN
No, I have a free afternoon.
RALPH
So do I.
Pause.
We’re not far from the cottage here. We could go there and have a hot tub.
HELEN
I haven’t got a swimming costume with me.
RALPH
It’s nicer without one, actually.
HELEN
Yes, I expect it is.
RALPH stares. She meets his gaze frankly.
RALPH
I’ll pay the bill. (He gets up and goes off quickly.)
HELEN remains sitting, and raises her face to the sun, closing her eyes, a faint smile on her lips.
Music.
Scene Four
Evening. RALPH’s office. He is sitting in his swivel chair, speaking into the recorder.
RALPH
April the fifth. A day to remember. This afternoon I fucked one of England’s finest contemporary novelists. That’s how she’s described on the back of The Eye of the Storm. (He picks up a paperback and reads from the back cover.) ‘A novel of exquisite sensibility and artful restraint, by one of England’s finest contemporary novelists.’ The Spectator … Well, she wasn’t at all restrained this afternoon, and I have a love bite on my left shoulder to prove it. She damn nearly drew blood … I’m going to have to conceal it from Carrie until she leaves for California on Monday, and hope to hell the marks fade before she gets back … The first hint I had that I was going to get lucky was when she called me ‘Messenger’ in an easy, familiar way – she’d never done that before. When she agreed to go to the cottage after lunch and skinny-dip in the hot tub, I thought to myself that can only mean one thing … It’s not easy to drive with an erection, you have to lean forward over the wheel with your chin practically on the dashboard … As soon as we got inside the cottage I kissed her and said, ‘Let’s make love.’ ‘I’ve forgotten how to do it,’ she said. ‘I’ll remind you,’ I said, and led her to the bedroom. I didn’t have the faintest idea why she’d changed her mind, but I didn’t want to give her any time for second thoughts. The sex was passionate but brief, perhaps because she hadn’t had any for a long time. She came with astonishing rapidity, like a flash flood, almost as soon as I entered her, and I didn’t hold myself back. I fell asleep immediately afterwards. When I woke, I found she had covered us with a sheet. She was lying on her back, with her head on the pillow, and her face had the soft, blurred look of a satisfied woman. She gave me a strange little smile, both shy and wry. ‘So, how was it for me?’ she said …
Later, when we were naked together in the hot tub, I wanted to have her again, in the bubbling water, under the open sky, but she wouldn’t. I offered to take her into the house and tie her up. That’s when she bit me.
Music.
Scene Five
HELEN’s flat. She is typing on her laptop. She stops, and speaks as before.
HELEN
It’s some time since I made an entry in this journal. A journal is a kind of mirror in which you look at yourself every day, candidly, unflinchingly, and tell yourself the truth. I haven’t felt like doing that since Messenger and I became lovers. I was afraid it might awaken scruples of conscience and inhibit my pleasure. So I tried describing what had happened in the third person, free indirect style, as if I were a character in a novel.
She makes some keystrokes on the laptop and the printer extrudes a printed sheet. She takes it and reads it aloud, perhaps like an author giving a public reading.
‘For that was what she had become, a woman of pleasure, a woman of easy virtue, a woman no better than she should be – or so she would have been described in the pages of an old novel. Not in a modern one, of course. She was only doing what everybody else was doing, evidently: fulfilling her desires, making hay while the sun shone, squeezing every drop of joy from her body before it was too late, because, as they said, “This is the only life you will have.” And she couldn’t regret it, it had been so exciting. Nerve-racking, too, at times. Carrie’s absence had made it possible, but there was always the risk that someone would notice Messenger visiting her block of flats with surprising frequency, or see them out together in some compromising situation. One day he took her to a Stone Age burial site on the top of a hill, and nothing would satisfy him but to spread his cagoule on the side of the barrow and copulate with her like a Stone Age man taking his mate, short and sharp. She had scarcely pulled up her knickers and brushed down her skirt when a party of ramblers with maps and walking sticks came by, smiling and saying “Good afternoon”.
‘For herself, she much preferred to make love indoors, on a bed, behind drawn curtains, and to sleep afterwards, sated and exhausted. He was surprisingly strong in the arms and shoulders, and flipped her this way and that, over him and under him, like a wrestler practising ‘holds’. Sometimes it seemed to her that he wanted to reduce her to a helpless quivering bundle of sensation, until she could bear no more, slapping the mattress like a beaten wrestler.’
Hmm. Rather warm. I never wrote anything like that before.
She puts down the sheet and resumes typing on the laptop for a while, then stops.
Am I falling in love with this man or is it merely lust? It was lust when I agreed to go back to the cottage with him that day. I was still reeling from Carrie’s revelation, in the cooling room at the Turkish baths, that she is having an affair herself. She didn’t tell me who with, and I didn’t want to know. I think she was trying to encourage me to get over my celibate mourning for Martin – not guessing that the only man in the world I want to go to bed with is her husband. Who the very next day offered me a second chance to do so. I didn’t hesitate. If Carrie was deceiving Ralph, why shouldn’t I deceive Carrie? Just once, I thought to myself, just this once. Only to find myself swept off my feet by the force of a man’s passion. We haven’t done anything these past two weeks except look for opportunities to make love – he’s coming today in his lunch hour. But tomorrow Carrie is coming home from her trip to California, and I have to ask myself: what future is there in this adventure?<
br />
The doorbell chimes. She quickly switches off her laptop, waits to see that it shuts down, and closes it. The doorbell chimes again as she goes out to answer the door.
Coming!
Scene Six
HELEN’s flat. RALPH comes out of the bedroom, doing up the buttons of his shirt and tucking it in, followed by HELEN, in dressing gown, carrying his jacket.
HELEN (hands him his jacket)
Will you be late for your Senate meeting?
RALPH
It doesn’t matter. I’m sorry, Helen.
HELEN (smiles)
It’s all right.
RALPH
I don’t know why it happened …
HELEN
Don’t worry about it. (lightly) Perhaps we’ve been overdoing it –
RALPH
Nonsense.
HELEN
Or perhaps …
RALPH
What?
HELEN
Nothing.
RALPH
What? (HELEN is silent.) You think it’s because Carrie is coming back, don’t you?
HELEN
Perhaps.
RALPH
Well, it’s not.
HELEN
But it’s going to make a difference.
