He continued to stare at the ceiling as he answered. “Not really. No, I haven’t. At least, not quite like this.”
“Well, it would have been a bit different in your case.”
He looked at her coolly. “Why do you say that?”
She blushed. “Sorry, I wasn’t thinking. Of course it’s the same for everyone.”
The coolness he had shown vanished. When she looked at him, she suddenly saw only regret.
“I’ve never been there,” he said quietly. “I’ve never had what you’d call a love affair.”
“But …”
“No, I mean it. People think that everybody has been involved with somebody else, whatever their nature. They find it inconceivable that one might go through life never finding anybody. But you know something, Caroline? I think that’s far more common than you would ever imagine. There are plenty of people in that position.”
Impulsively, she reached out and took his hand. It seemed the most natural, the easiest thing to do, and it seemed easy for him too.
“Poor James,” she whispered.
He smiled at her weakly. “Yes, poor James.”
For a few minutes they sat there, not speaking, and not really looking at one another either. Their hands remained together, though, and when she squeezed his gently, in sympathy, he returned the pressure. It was as if signals were being exchanged in the night, in a time of war, perhaps—flashes of light in the darkness, one in answer to the other, messages that confirmed the presence of human sentiment, as feeling responded to feeling.
After a while, she gently relinquished her grip. She leaned over towards him and whispered, although there was nobody else in the flat, nobody who would hear, “Why don’t we go to Paris together?”
His eyes widened. “Paris?” The italicised emphasis was perfect, she thought; just right.
She had no idea why she had said this. “Sorry,” she whispered. “Very cheesy.”
“Cheesy! It’s not cheesy.” He paused. “It’s exactly the right thing to do, Caroline. Paris! Of course.”
“We could go on the Eurostar,” she said.
It was a lame thing to say, enough to shatter the magic of the moment, but James was not deterred: there was nothing wrong with the Eurostar.
“There are some Bonnards I want to see there,” he said. “We could look at them together.”
She nodded her agreement; the Bonnards would be nice. But as she stood up and went to look out of the window, she thought: That’s the problem—that’s exactly the problem! Paris was more than Bonnard, at least for most young couples planning un week-end. Far more.
26. Applied Ethics
WHEN JAMES LEFT Corduroy Mansions that afternoon he did not notice the taxi drawing up a few yards away. There was no particular reason to notice it; London taxis are ubiquitous, barely noticeable other than when sought out, and often becoming completely invisible then. And his mind was on other things, preoccupied with thoughts of Paris and Bonnard, and—although not to the same degree—of the time he had spent with Caroline. There was also, of course, the memory of the lemon gems; those delicacies had left a lingering taste in his mouth, a vaguely lemony sensation that reminded him of a childhood holiday in Cyprus, where the hotel had a lemon grove in its grounds, and … No, he would not revisit the lemon grove.
So James did not see a middle-aged man struggling to get out of the cab while holding what seemed to be a dog’s bed under one arm and the end of a leash in the other hand. The man, William French, MW (Failed), succeeded in getting himself out of the taxi and then, laying the dog’s bed down on the pavement, began to tug on the leash. The dog at the other end seemed reluctant to move, but eventually, after a few increasingly firm tugs, jumped out of the cab and sat obediently at the man’s feet. The fare was paid and the cab moved off into the traffic.
From his position on the pavement, seated at the feet of a human being whom he had only just met but instinctively liked, Freddie de la Hay, Pimlico terrier, sniffed at the air. He had a very good nose—a trained nose, in fact, because before he had been acquired by the opinionated columnist Manfred James, he had been employed as a sniffer dog at Heathrow Airport. He had been good at his job, but had been dismissed as part of an affirmative action programme when it had been discovered that all the dogs at the airport were male. After this matter had been raised by a local politician, it was announced that there would be a policy of equal opportunity for female sniffer dogs—an absurd notion that had provoked outraged rants in those newspapers given to such things. But for some, at least, the point raised by this exercise was a valid one. Should one treat animals fairly?
The question was a serious one. The Heathrow issue had caught the attention of at least one moral philosopher concerned with the rights of animals—a weighty matter that was increasingly, and deservedly, the subject of philosophical discussion. Most of this writing was of one view: causing pain or distress to an animal was wrong—as even the Struwwelpeter, that none-too-gentle children’s classic, recognised in its story of Cruel Frederick. Frederick, the taunter of the good dog Tray, was bitten for his gratuitous cruelty, to the delight of all; a fate that could have been so much worse, bearing in mind what happened to Augustus in the same book, and to the digit-deprived victims of that thinly disguised castration figure, the tailor with his large scissors, the bane of those who sucked their thumb.
But if the inflicting of physical pain was generally, if not universally, disapproved of, then what of wrongs of a lower order, such as unfairness in treatment? The moral philosopher who seized on Freddie de la Hay’s case as an illustration for his paper, “Justice and Injustice Between Species,” suggested an example of two dogs and one biscuit. It was typical of the dilemmas beloved of moral philosophers, being set in a world which is recognisably our own, but not quite. Mother Hubbard, the owner of two dogs, has only one dog biscuit in her cupboard. Her two dogs, whom she does not love equally, are at her feet, eagerly anticipating the treat. What should she do? Should she break the biscuit into two equal parts and give each dog a morsel, or may she give the biscuit to the dog she prefers?
The author of “Justice and Injustice Between Species” began his analysis of the case by changing the dogs into children, a trick that would normally challenge even the most skilled stage magician, but which, for a philosopher conducting a thought experiment, is as easily done as said. A parent would be making a grave mistake were she to give a whole biscuit to a favoured child and none to another, but does the same rule apply to the owner of an animal? The answer will obviously depend, the author—a consequentialist—said, on the consequences of this act of preference. The favoured dog will be happy enough, but his unlucky companion will surely feel disappointment at not being given his share; that is, of course, if he has a notion of sharing, which, being a dog, he will not. So one must avoid, the author pointed out, any suggestion that the less fortunate dog will feel that he has been the victim of injustice. There is no such thing in the mind of a dog.
Or is there? A distinguished legal philosopher, making a point about the difference between the unintentional and intentional causing of harm, once said that even a dog could tell whether a kick from its owner was intended or unintended. If this is the case, then surely it suggests that there is in the canine mind some notion of desert, which has some connection with fairness.
The debate continued over several issues of a learned journal until the editor drew a line beneath it, with a masterly summing up of the unresolved issues raised by the case. Freddie de la Hay was, of course, quite unaware of his celebrity. Philosophers were, to him, the same as all humans: luminous higher beings, dispensers of favours and makers of rules, guardians of the cupboard in which he knew his own dog biscuits were stored. When he lost his job at Heathrow, it meant a shrinking of his universe, from one of suitcases and noise to one of a house in Highgate with a master who seemed bent on making him do things that he had no wish to do. But he did them, for he was an obedient dog—he had been ta
ught to comply at the airport—and he wanted only to please. So when he was instructed to treat cats with respect by the distinguished columnist, he did as he was bade.
Now, on the pavement outside Corduroy Mansions, he looked up at his new master and awaited his instructions. And when he spotted a movement on the other side of the road, he took no notice. That it was a cat was neither here nor there. He would not try to chase it, nor even growl. That was in the past, somewhere in the scheme of things of the old Freddie de la Hay. He would not growl. He would not.
27. On the Train
AT THE SAME MOMENT that William stood outside Corduroy Mansions with Freddie de la Hay at his side, Berthea Snark, psychoanalyst and near-neighbour of Corduroy Mansions, was arriving at Cheltenham station on the 3:15 from Paddington. It had not been a peaceful journey, thanks to a person opposite her who was engaged in a lengthy telephone call, oblivious of the fact that she was imposing her conversation on others. Berthea had struggled in vain to shut out the banalities this conversation inflicted upon her—the one-sided discussion of social events and the affairs of others. She had glared at the noisy passenger but had been greeted with a cool stare in response. Eventually she had moved seats, to what she hoped would be the quieter end of the carriage, only to find herself faced with a man whose false teeth were loose, and who sucked air through puckered lips, occasionally opening his mouth to allow the top set of teeth to fall forward before being pushed back into position with his tongue.
She closed her eyes. The carriage was full on this popular Friday afternoon train and she would not find another seat. By shutting out the sight of the man opposite, she was at least spared his unfortunate dentures. But that meant that she could not read, and closing one’s eyes was unquestionably a form of denial, something she was committed to criticising in others. No, one could not go through life with one’s eyes closed, tempting though such a solution might be.
She thought of a paper she might write for one of the journals, a paper she would call “The Eyes-Closed Society.” It would be about the way in which bad behaviour in others was increasingly forcing people to pretend that parts of reality did not exist. It was an interesting theme, and she could develop it by exploring its social and political ramifications. As we became more burdened with distressing information—global warming, growing material need, the inevitability of a major flu epidemic and so on—the temptation simply to turn away became greater and greater. And so we denied the uncomfortable, the distressing—like those people who denied global warming. And so … She stopped. The observation was hardly original. People had always denied unpalatable truths. T. S. Eliot had written something about that, had he not? “Go, go, go, said the bird: human kind / Cannot bear very much reality.” To say something original, she must come up with a prescription. Such books—and her article had now become a book—had to have some neat conclusion, some observation or insight that made people say Ah! when they read it. That man who wrote The Tipping Point knew all about it. People said Ah! when they read about tipping points. And presumably he too had experienced a tipping point when his tipping-point book reached its tipping point.
But Berthea could not conceive of what she would say about denial, beyond pointing out that it happened. She could emphasise that one should not deny, but everybody knew that anyway. Could she say, then, that denial was a good thing? That would be original at least. And then, when challenged in interviews—she would be invited onto all the best chat shows—she could simply deny that she said it in the first place, thereby making a very vivid point about denial.
The daydream ended, and so, eventually, did the journey. The man with the ill-fitting teeth had dozed off and remained asleep until shortly before Cheltenham. Berthea looked out of the window at the passing countryside. London seemed so far away, almost a different country from this world of fields and narrow lanes and slower lives. She thought: What if I packed everything up and came to live out here, perhaps sharing with Terence? She was on her way to spend the weekend with her brother, Terence Moongrove, who had more than once suggested that she might care to share his house in Cheltenham. It was easily large enough for two, he said, and she could even have a separate entrance if she wished. She had declined his offer, although it distressed her to do so. Terence was lonely—he was one of the loneliest men she knew—and it would have meant so much to him to have her living with him.
But she could not. She was a psychoanalyst, and she imagined that it would take time to build up a practice in a place like Cheltenham. She knew that there was an Institute of Psychotherapy in the West Country—she had met some of its members at conferences—but was there enough neurosis to keep them all going? Human unhappiness, of course, was universal, but somehow she imagined that it did not occur with quite the same intensity in the little villages that the train was flashing past. What was there to be anxious about out here? Why feel inadequate or troubled when nobody was paying much attention to you because the hay had to be got in or the cows milked, or whatever it was that people did in such places? If they did any of that any more, she reflected; or were they all plugged into the Web, running hedge funds from the ends of these little lanes?
Of course, Cheltenham was slightly different. It was a place where people went to the races or retired to or came to make and sell pottery. And not all of these people would be free of the neuroses they had brought with them from somewhere else. So perhaps she might not be completely without something to do after all.
But no, she could not share with poor Terence. And if she sold up in London and bought her own house here, then Terence would simply be in and out of her door every day. And he had a habit of just sitting there, going on and on about Nepal or his collection of amulets or whatever it was that he was enthusing over at the time. Sacred dance, she remembered, was his current interest. He had got hold of a book by a Bulgarian mystic called Peter Deunov, who had developed a system of dance called paneurhythmy. He had gone to Bulgaria, she believed, and danced on a mountain there; she had received a postcard which simply said “Love in the morning,” and, beneath that, “Terence.”
She smiled as she alighted from the train. Dear Terence. For all his faults, he was her brother, and he meant well, even if it was sometimes rather difficult to work out exactly what it was that he meant.
28. Beings of Light
TERENCE MOONGROVE, searcher after truth—and self—had parked his Morris 1000 Traveller in the spot where he always collected his sister, Berthea Snark, when she came down to Cheltenham to visit him. She knew where to look, and spotted him immediately and waved to him as he sat in the car, his large round spectacles catching the light. Her wave was the signal for him to sound the horn of the ancient vehicle.
“I’ve had a very difficult trip down,” she said as she eased herself into the passenger seat of the half-timbered car. “The woman opposite me insisted on conducting a conversation on her mobile phone in a very loud voice, as per usual.”
“Very tiresome,” said Terence, reaching forward to turn the key in the ignition. “Such people really are the end, aren’t they?”
“And then I changed seats and found myself opposite a man who sucked air through his false teeth,” Berthea went on. “He did that until blessedly he fell asleep.”
“Terribly tiresome,” said Terence. “Still, here you are, and you can put your old feet up and nobody is going to talk on a mobile or suck air through his teeth. I promise.”
Berthea reached out and touched her brother appreciatively on the arm. “Thank you, dear. You are an oasis, you know. A real oasis.”
He may have been an oasis, but she was not entirely sure whether she approved of the reference to her old feet. Chronologically, her feet might have been slightly older than his, she being a few years his senior. But even if her feet were in their early sixties, they were, she felt, in rather good shape for their age. The problem with Terence, she thought, was that he had not aged along with everybody else. He imagined that life was yet to happen, wh
ereas in fact it had already largely happened for him.
These thoughts were nothing new to Berthea. And that, she reflected, was the central stumbling block in her relationship with her brother. They were exactly where they had always been—as siblings often tended to be in their relations with one another. She saw it so often in her professional life—people came to her with the emotional baggage of family relationships and, on analysis, this was found to be baggage they had been bearing all their lives. They thought the same things about their brothers or sisters that they had thought when they were ten, twelve, eighteen, twenty-six, forty—and so on. Nothing changed.
The Morris moved off, its tiny engine labouring as Terence moved through the gears.
“I’ve made a leek pie for tonight,” he said. “And we can have a glass of my latest batch of elderflower wine. Very tasty.”
“Perfect,” said Berthea.
“And then tomorrow morning you might care to join me for my paneurhythmy,” he continued. “Forty-five minutes. That’s all.”
Berthea looked steadily ahead. “Your sacred dancing? This Bulgarian stuff?”
“Precisely,” said Terence. “I have looked up what time dawn may be expected tomorrow, and we must be ready to align the meridians and chakras. The Beings of Light will be in attendance.”
Berthea looked out of the window. She was not sure who the Beings of Light were. Were they residents of Cheltenham or were they, as Terence himself might put it, resident on some other plane not immediately visible to us?
“I shall do my best,” she said. “Although you will have to explain things to me, Terence. My rather literal mind, I’m afraid, precludes my full participation.”
Terence smiled benignly. “Peter Deunov met many who felt the same way,” he said. “They inevitably stayed to dance. Many of them danced until they could dance no more, and were absorbed by Spirit.”
Corduroy Mansions Page 10
