by Weldon, Fay
Poems are made by fools like me,
But only God can make a tree.
‘Pity he didn’t try a bit harder with the elm,’ said Victor, ‘and make it impervious to Dutch Elm Disease.’ Really, the two of them did not get on. It was a source of sorrow to them both. They were orphaned brother and sister, and should have gone hand in hand, in a perfect world.
Joan Lumb summonsed Muffin from the administration offices, where she was trying to make the word processor allocate rooms on a non-random basis to the seventy-five guests who planned to stay on after the Waterloo Ball on the Saturday night. She needed help, Joan Lumb said, in setting the eleven name places for the Dinner Intime in the dining-room.
‘So important,’ said Joan Lumb, ‘to get the seating arrangements right. A dinner party’s like a cocktail – no matter how good the ingredients, if you don’t stir properly, everything’s wasted.’
She and Muffin stood in the dining-room, while the grandfather clock ticked by the minutes until the guests arrived. Muffin fidgeted, while Joan Lumb put a card here, then changed it for one there, and then stood back to admire the effect, as a stage designer might, the better to admire the efficacy of a set. So much to be done, so little time to do it! But employers are like that: they can seldom, in the employee’s eyes, distinguish the unimportant from the important.
The dining-room was long and low, the walls panelled in Victorian oak. The room should have been handsome, but was not. The sideboards were good pieces, the chairs valuable, but were out of sorts with each other. A central crystal chandelier which would have done well enough in a higher, squarer room, in this one cast uneasy shadows. Faded tapestries lined the walls: they had little merit except age. The archers of Agin-court, the hosts of Thermopylae, the vengeance of Marathon, the fury of Saratoga, all fading gently into the past, stitched long ago by docile female hands, the widows and orphans of the warrior race. Who else but the unlucky sew for a living? And how else but by glorifying the abysmal, can we make the abysmal glorious? The sewers stitched, no doubt, with loving hands, and worshipped their oppressors.
Joan Lumb wore a brown tweed skirt (size 18), and a cream woollen blouse (size 12), brown stockings and rather surprising bright yellow shoes (size 8) with white bows. Her hair, which was brown to grey and usually plainly and sensibly washed and dried, had today been put in curlers, and was now arranged in elegant sweeps and curls about her beak-nosed face. She would, of course, change before dinner, before Murray came.
The sight, indeed even the thought, of Murray made Joan Lumb’s heart beat faster, made her swallow, made her moisten her lips, made her voice rise to a higher pitch. These are the physical effects of love. Where else but in such a man could Joan Lumb find her match? Brave Murray, lonely Murray, steadfast Murray, bearing alone the intolerable burden of secrecy, slipping by stealth out of this country, into that, facing torture, imprisonment, ignominy, death; organising, resisting, linking this cell, that cell, joining together men and women of goodwill, in the secret fight against barbarism, godlessness. Murray was employed sometimes by the CIA, sometimes by MI5, sometimes by more enigmatic folk; but all of whom loved freedom, hated oppression. Others talked, Murray did. Joan Lumb looked into the hearts of other men and saw there poverty, vacillation and shoddiness – a sorry incapacity for fine deeds and a frightening lack of noble aspiration. What was happening to mankind? The past was littered with glorious empires; strewn with great men, heroic deeds – now there was nothing but self-doubt, cowardly words, pacifism, lack of resolve. Only in Murray the man did Joan Lumb catch a glimpse of the greatness which had so illuminated the past. She would die for him, she thought, just as he would die for a cause he believed in. Well, that was woman’s part. They were the hero’s recreation and his inspiration. She wished she had been born a man. Her brother Victor should have been the girl, she the boy.
‘I was afraid there was going to be a real male-female imbalance,’ Joan Lumb said brightly to Muffin. ‘That’s the only trouble with the army: so many more men than women when it comes to dinner parties!’
(You have your troubles, Joan Lumb, I have mine!)
Muffin wore jeans and sneakers and a fluffy green sweater, which made her blue eyes bluer and her fair hair fairer; her bra did not properly contain her bust. Joan Lumb wished Muffin would hurry up and get married, so she could employ someone smaller and neater. She had taken on Muffin for Muffin’s father’s sake, when he was handling the estate of her late husband, Lieutenant-Colonel Sir Aubrey Lumb. Muffin’s father had proved drunk and incompetent; the estate yielded a quarter of the amount it should; she had taken her business elsewhere and still she was landed with Muffin, who ate more food than was reasonable, and kept her electric blanket on all night, and treated the Academy word-processor as if it could think for itself, which only a fool would do.
‘I wish you wouldn’t wear jeans,’ said Joan Lumb. ‘If a woman isn’t a proper woman, how can a man be a proper man? Surely this is the root of many of today’s troubles!’
‘My jersey’s fluffy,’ said Muffin. ‘Won’t that make up for it?’
‘Good heavens,’ said Joan, ‘by a proper woman I don’t mean someone fluffy. I mean someone with dignity and proper standards.’
‘Well, anyway,’ said Muffin, ‘I’m changing for dinner. Nobody can see.’
‘God can see,’ said Joan Lumb, ‘and I can see you. And the servants, most certainly, can see.’
Oh, they saw, they saw! The Shrapnel Academy employed a host of servants of every race except Caucasian. They came as supplicants from India, Pakistan, Mexico, Indonesia, Puerto Rico, Sri Lanka, Cuba, Nicaragua, seeking shelter, food, employment. Few had visas which would stand careful inspection. Behind them they left parents, spouses, children, friends: each life a reproach to a wicked God, the God that Joan Lumb loved. They saw, they watched, they waited! Dark eyes glowed, bright or sombre, sulky or docile, watching and observing, but what sense did they make of what they saw? Did they so much as include Muffin in the human-race? This untidily bodied white woman who left her dirty knickers on the floor and her soiled Tampax in the bin. (She couldn’t use the WC. Notices saying ‘Disposable does not mean flushable’ could not forever be ignored.) This young woman who fornicated freely with her secret lover, at all times of day or night, without ritual, without shame, like an animal? It could hardly matter how she clothed her legs, she was so far beyond disgrace. Yet they admired her, how could they not; the unbearably privileged are much admired: admiration is a healing emotion. Why else do the elderly die of hypothermia blessing the Queen? the soldier expire from his wounds whilst praising his general? Admiration of the lucky! Luck, luck: luck is the God of the luckless. Muffin was lucky. The servants were not. How could they not admire her, even while they despised her?
What are we to do? What, as Lenin asked, is to be Done? Why, get on with the story.
‘I should never have asked the girl from The Times,’ said Joan Lumb. ‘I did it on impulse. But that’s me all over – impulsive!’ She misjudged herself, but who doesn’t?
‘Her voice on the telephone,’ Joan Lumb complained, ‘was not at all promising. No girl of good family talks like that.’
On hearing from Muffin that the Features Editor of The Times was on the phone, Joan Lumb had grabbed the instrument in her eagerness to talk.
‘It’s quite trendy,’ said Muffin, ‘not to talk posh even if you are.’
‘Not with that particular nasal twang,’ said Joan Lumb. ‘No, she comes from the Inner City. She simply won’t fit in. She will be ever so intellectual and ever so plain. I should never have asked her. Who will I sit her next to? What a puzzle!’
‘So long as she doesn’t knock the General in the interview,’ said Muffin, ‘I don’t suppose it matters.’
‘My dear Muffin,’ said Joan Lumb, ‘I hardly imagine The Times has been infiltrated by beatniks, peaceniks and subversives. You do have a brain, I suppose. Please use it!’
Muffin sulked. Joan Lumb didn�
��t notice.
‘I have to get back to Room Allocation,’ said Muffin. The sooner she finished the more time she would have with Baf. She licked her full lips with her pink tongue.
‘Don’t do that,’ said Joan Lumb. ‘You’ll chap your lips. Now who is this Bella whatsit the General’s bringing? Perhaps she could sit next to the girl from The Times? Heaven knows what she’s like either, or why I should be expected to have her at my dinner table! What’s the matter with his wife?’
Let us answer the question for her, since Muffin won’t. The very same things that were the matter with Lord Nelson’s wife; age and respectability. Emma Hamilton, Nelson’s mistress – for there is only very little fairness in this world – got asked almost everywhere. She was always fun, and dressed up, or rather down, after dinner, and did Greek poses on marble tables, prettily and scantily draped. Lady Nelson would never have done a thing like that.
‘She’s only his secretary,’ said Muffin, relenting. ‘The General must be over seventy. I’ve arranged for the chauffeur to have a meal in his room. He might feel awkward in the Servants’ Hall.’ She meant that he was white and the servants were not. ‘If you like, I could arrange for Bella Morthampton to do likewise.’
‘I wouldn’t want to offend the General in any way,’ said Joan. ‘This country owes so much to him I’m sure we can overlook a peccadillo or so. He did particularly ask for Bella to sit next to him.’
‘Perhaps he needs her to cut up his meat.’
‘Perhaps,’ said Joan. ‘Of course he can’t dictate to his hostess and expect to get away with it altogether!’
Muffin perceived that it was unlikely that Bella Morthampton would be sat next to the General. And she knew better than to suggest that she should sit next to Baf, or that would never happen either.
Muffin peered out from between the damask curtains. The fabric was a rather dismal faded maroon, braid trimmed. And not gracefully faded, at that, but more as if a host of insect pests had first nibbled and gnawed at the surface and then bleached out the colour by sucking it up as mosquitoes suck blood.
‘Supposing we’re snowed in. What fun!’
‘We can’t be,’ said Joan Lumb, flatly. ‘God wouldn’t allow it.’ Muffin went back to her office and the word processor.
8
The telephone rang in Muffin’s office. It was Panza Jordan, the tutor in communications, who lived with his computers in the old summer house in the Academy grounds. He was coming to dinner, but wanted more. Give an inch, others will take an ell!
‘Muffin,’ he said, ‘can you fix me up a room in the house for tonight? Snow’s forecast; in fact, it’s already beginning. If the line comes down, and it may, I don’t want to be without electricity. You know how I hate to be cold.’
‘Of course,’ said Muffin, and told Joan.
‘That man’s frightened by his own shadow,’ said Joan Lumb, who was still changing place names. ‘Scared of a little cold and dark! I wouldn’t have asked him to dinner either, but I had no option. All he’ll do is talk about Artificial Intelligence and bore the pants off everyone. Give him Tiglath-Pileser.’
‘I don’t think the heating’s working properly in Tiglath-Pileser,’ said Muffin.
‘I’ve had it seen to,’ said Joan Lumb, though Muffin knew well enough she hadn’t.
Rooms of any significance in the Shrapnel Academy were named after famous battles, kings or generals. These two latter were often the same thing: it being the custom of hereditary rulers to take over not just the running of the country, but its army as well. Consider the exceptional line of English royal generals – Richard the Lionheart, Edward I, Edward II, the Black Prince, Henry V – all related! Perhaps God had a hand in it? Perhaps the Divine Right of Kings is not to be sneezed at?
The Emperor Tiglath-Pileser III came to the Assyrian throne in 745 BC, and is reckoned the first of the military genii. He it was who had the idea of organising the entire state around a permanent regular army. Under his guidance, the principal business of Assyria became war. Its wealth was sustained by booty from plundered neighbours, and its prosperity – which was great – by the general activity engendered by energetically servicing an army. Tiglath-Pileser set about refurbishing his entire army. Out went the iron weapons, in came the bronze! Better, lighter, faster, tougher! It is of great benefit to any nation to introduce new weapons and systematically improve them. Not only does it increase the general prosperity – the creation of work, in any above-subsistence society, creates wealth – and bring about a technical superiority above other nations (at least until they catch up), but keeps the soldiers busy and on their toes, in periods of peace, learning how to use them.
Reader, do not skip. I know you want to. So do I. What has this ancient person to do with anyone? Surely his very name prevents him being taken seriously! Tiglath-Pileser III! But do remember – what went before so very much informs what goes on now. If Joan Lumb and the Management Board of the Shrapnel Academy think the Emperor Tiglath-Pileser warrants a room named after him, albeit neglected and chilly, by God he deserves our attention.
Tiglath-Pileser III lived in the pre-gunpowder age known as the Age of Muscle. In those days you just hit (with a club, or blunt sword) or slashed (with a sharp sword) or pierced (with a pointed sword) or, more safely, hurled heavy rocks or sharp sticks from a distance by means of a sling or bow. You could reckon casualties on an abacus. But Assyria’s enemies – and of course Assyria had enemies, even before it started its unpopular scavenging habits. As individuals we have enemies, so how can any State not? The State is only ourselves, writ larger – were naturally sensitive to this development in weapon technique. They had to do better themselves – a yet more supple sword, a yet slimmer arrow – seeing the process as self-defence and themselves innocent of any aggressive intent. And Assyria, in its turn, then felt obliged, for survival’s sake, to outdo its enemies. (The guiltier a nation is, of course, the more paranoic it feels. Just as an unfaithful husband is all too ready to believe his wife an adulteress.) This lethal march forward, this Progress by Weapon, step by innocent step, walking through the Age of Muscle, running through the Age of Gunpowder, leaping and bounding through the Age of Technology towards the Age of Megadeath, was started long ago by Tiglath-Pileser III, when he had his bright idea and refurbished his army with weapons of bronze.
Thank you, Tiglath-Pileser! Hail and farewell!
But hold on a moment, before you go. May we also congratulate you upon your mastery of the politics of terror? Most armies are cruel enough, and ferocious enough (and how can they not be, why should they not be, since their major purpose is the pleasure of sanctified slaughter) but you really knew what you were doing. You calculated. When your troops – and they would march out in armies 50,000 strong – captured a city they would kill everyone in it, every man, woman and child, in the most disagreeable way they could think of. Pulling, twisting, wrenching, crushing, searing. Or, if they needed slaves, they would carry entire populations away into captivity. The memory lingers on. You are not forgotten, Emperor Tiglath-Pileser III. At the going down of the sun we will remember you! Byron helps, as poets do.
‘The Assyrians came down like the wolf on the fold,’ he wrote,
‘And their cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold –
And the sheen of their spears
Was like stars on the sea
Where the blue waves roll nightly
On deep Galilee—’
Lovely!
Of course civilisation has come a long way since then, as we shall see, if only in the ingenuity of its weapons. And computers, of course, are needed to measure deaths. You could not conveniently do it on an abacus; you can calculate almost anything on an abacus of course: it just takes a long time. Your own death would intervene before you’d finished the calculation.
9
Sergei Wootton was the next to appeal to Muffin for help. He was the lecturer in Liberal Studies, who had his rooms in the Folly at the bottom of the West
Garden. His voice was high and querulous. It was about to snow. He too wanted a room in the house for the night. His light and heating would go off. It had happened before and would happen again.
‘Give him Alexander,’ said Joan Lumb.
‘It’s supposed to be haunted,’ said Muffin. ‘You know how nervous Mr Wootton is!’
‘Mr Wootton has no business being nervous,’ said Joan Lumb. ‘A man who believes in ghosts is not fit to teach our students. There are plenty of others looking for his job if he doesn’t want it. Such a pity he’s coming to dinner. He’ll talk about the library in Alexandria all night and no one will understand a word he’s saying. I know Murray simply hates it when people talk about art.’
‘I don’t believe in ghosts,’ said Muffin sensibly, ‘but it is true that Alexander has a rather peculiar atmosphere. It’s always cold, no matter how you turn up the heating.’
‘It’s a corner room,’ said Joan Lumb briskly. ‘There is no room for superstition in the army. At least I had the sense to invite Victor, who is always sensible about everything! Though I’m in two minds about Shirley. She will ask perfect strangers what sign of the Zodiac they were born under. Perhaps I’d better sit her next to Sergei. They can sop up each other’s nonsense. But that means you won’t be able to sit next to Baf. I expect you want to.’
‘Good heavens,’ said Muffin prudently, ‘I see more than enough of Baf!’ Though she didn’t, she didn’t! She would like to see Baf, be with Baf, thirty-six hours out of every twenty-four, if that could have been managed. ‘Anyway,’ she added, ‘I don’t think Alexander’s made up.’
