Eating People is Wrong

by Malcolm Bradbury

  It was thus that he found himself trudging through the hard rain on the way to Mirabelle’s party, with Emma and Louis at his either side.

  It was impossible to miss Mirabelle’s house, once you got within half a mile of it. It glowed with light, roared with noise, and as they grew nearer they could see people in the garden outside, being sick into the bushes. They rang the bell and Mirabelle opened the door. ‘We brought a friend,’ said Louis. ‘It’s Professor Treece, actually.’

  ‘Oooo,’ said Mirabelle. You could see she thought this a brilliant touch.

  ‘They pressed me,’ said Treece. ‘I mustn’t stay . . .’

  ‘Oh yes, you must; come and see how the other half lives.’ ‘Other half of what?’ asked Treece. They stepped into the hall. ‘Throw your coats on the floor,’ said Mirabelle; and then, after a moment of reflection, she added to Treece: ‘I could hang yours up, sir.’ ‘No,’ said Treece, tossing his coat on to the pile on the floor with the best of them.

  ‘What do you think of my kissing bunch?’ said Mirabelle, gesturing to the decoration of hoops, hung with holly and mistletoe, that hung around the hall light. The mention of kissing roused Louis from his self-engrossment; he looked at Emma; all that was needed was a slight, accurate push that took her sideways and under the hoops and, simultaneously, a lunge forward with his lips, carefully aimed. It was too complicated and he rejected the idea.

  ‘Let me show you the way to the bog, if you get taken short,’ said Mirabelle. ‘It’s the door at the top of the stairs where that man’s lying.’ She led them down the hall. ‘Did you bring a bottle?’ asked Mirabelle. ‘Someone brought a bottle and asked us to fill it.’

  ‘It’s British Wine Port Type,’ said Louis, unwrapping his gift. ‘I got something that everyone was sure to like.’

  They emerged into the living-room, which was filled with people, all packed together so tightly that if someone’s nose itched he had to go outside to scratch it. A large ivy plant, in a bowl, was clinging to the wall; a number of people were clinging to the ivy plant. People sat on chairs, on cushions on the floor, on bookcases. A young serious-looking girl was sitting on the floor in the corner, smoking a large briar pipe and reading the index to the Talmud. A group of deep-chested young men in the corner were singing a song called ‘The Bastard King of England’. In a row on the settee sat three German students, clearly perplexed by the whole business: ‘Is this a typical English party, please?’ they kept asking people. Treece withdrew with his back to the wall and surveyed the throng. Suddenly he felt a sharp pain in his leg; he looked down; a stoutish, beaming girl had pulled up his trousers and was biting him familiarly in the calf. She looked up at him and giggled. ‘Your eyes are like peascods,’ she said.

  ‘Take no notice,’ said another amiable girl. ‘She’s been doing that to all the men.’

  ‘I find it quite painful,’ said Treece.

  ‘What she wants is kissing,’ said the girl. ‘She associates biting with erotic experience, and when her control is lessened she expresses herself sexually on these lines. You should hold her down and kiss her. I’ll hold her if you like.’

  ‘Not me,’ said Treece. ‘Let one of the others do it.’

  Mirabelle came over to them with some drinks. ‘Do you want to go upstairs, Emma?’ she asked. ‘Yes, please,’ said Emma. ‘I’ll come too,’ said Louis, not wanting to be left alone. ‘You can’t go where she’s going,’ said Mirabelle. She turned to Treece. ‘I hope you don’t mind if we sort of pretend you aren’t here,’ she said. ‘I mean, if we don’t let it inhibit us. People shouldn’t be inhibited at parties, I always think. And if you feel uninhibited at all, do join in.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Treece.

  ‘We shan’t hold it against you,’ said Mirabelle. ‘What can I get you to drink?’

  ‘What do you have?’

  ‘Well, most of us are drinking rum and ginger and paprika while it holds out, because someone said it was an aphrodisiac. I don’t suppose it is really. Still you can hope. You know that bit in Macbeth about drink increasing the desire but diminishing the performance. Come on, try it.’

  ‘Me?’ cried Treece.

  ‘Yes, it’ll be interesting to see what happens, won’t it?’

  ‘I’d prefer whisky if you have it,’ said Treece.

  She turned to Louis again. He stood dejectedly against the wall. ‘I’ll bash you if you don’t smile,’ she said. ‘Aren’t you enjoying yourself?’ ‘I always enjoy myself,’ said Louis. ‘But I’m not so sure I enjoy other people.’

  ‘Louis, you’re so immature,’ said Mirabelle. ‘Have a cigarette.’

  ‘I don’t smoke,’ said Louis.

  ‘Well, try then. It’s a social accomplishment.’

  ‘Very well,’ said Louis. He took one.

  ‘Now,’ said Mirabelle, giving him a light. ‘Suck in.’

  ‘Oo,’ said Louis. ‘You’ve burned all the hairs on the inside of my nose.’

  ‘Well, suck in, stupid. Don’t blow out.’

  ‘I think I’m going to faint,’ said Louis.

  ‘You make such a fuss about things,’ said Mirabelle.

  ‘I just don’t know how people can smoke,’ said Louis. He waved his hand extravagantly, passing the cigarette over a bowl of punch, which promptly caught fire, burning with a tall blue flame. A number of young men came and put water on it and someone fetched his fire extinguisher from his car and put it out. Little was said. Across the room the deep-chested young men were singing ‘Oh, Sir Jasper; do not touch me’.

  Treece was tired of waiting for his drink. He picked up a chianti bottle and began to pour one out, only to find that the bottle was a table lamp with the shade knocked off. He put it back where it came from. More and more people kept swarming into the room; a man who could actually pronounce the name of Faulkner’s county kept pronouncing it. Treece set out to look for a full bottle of something. Two people lay on the settee as he passed, kissing violently, yet holding out with meticulous care their glasses and cigarettes in each outflung hand. The girl recognized Treece. ‘Professor Treece, honey. Professor Treece,’ she said.

  ‘Good evening, Miss Weston,’ said Treece.

  ‘We’re neither of us enjoying this, you understand,’ said Miss Weston. ‘We’re both engaged to other people.’

  ‘Splendid,’ said Treece.

  ‘No, don’t go, Professor Treece, honey,’ said the girl. ‘Come and hold my other hand, you great big pornographic bear you.’

  Treece disengaged himself from the encounter and went on towards the drinks. The three Germans stood in a cluster by the wall, chatting with puzzled expressions among themselves. ‘This is a typical English party, yes?’ asked one of them.

  ‘Of a kind,’ said Treece.

  ‘Of which social class, sir?’

  ‘The thing to do is to look at the bottles,’ said Treece. ‘Bottles are great class-indicators. If more whisky has gone than gin, I should say upper middle.’

  Over at the table beside the class-indicators a serious literary conversation was taking place, Treece found. ‘How is your novel?’ cried a brittle, cultured voice. ‘My novel, did you say, or my navel?’ replied someone. ‘Your novel, old boy,’ said the brittle voice. ‘Well, they’re both suffering from lack of contemplation,’ said the second voice. This was Walter Oliver, the literary enfant terrible of the University, who had once told Treece in a tutorial: ‘The intellectual society in this University is me.’ He nodded amiably at Treece. ‘My trouble is that I only write seventh chapters,’ said Oliver. ‘I have dozens of those. If only I could meet up with a few other fellows who write first chapters . . .’ ‘You should send them to some of these American phoney avant-garde magazines. They specialize in printing seventh chapters. Just write a little introduction saying that the rest of it was stolen by the priesthood.’ Thoroughly embroiled in the literary world (he had been kicked in the groin by a drunken Lallans poet at the Edinburgh Festival), Oliver was the kingpin around which unive
rsity literary life circulated. He was the Editor of the university literary magazine (people kept complaining that it was in the hands of a clique. ‘Who are you calling a clique?’ demanded Oliver) and chairman of the University Literary Society; he was a kind of provincial Ken Tynan. His patronage was positively feudal in character; to be taken up by Oliver (Louis Bates had been taken up by Oliver) was to become his tool. For instance, Bates, who had no powers of extended creation, had been inveigled into starting a novel, so that he could put Oliver into it. ‘I’m watching you,’ said Oliver as the novel progressed. ‘He keeps getting me into little attics with girls and I roll their skirts up and then, for God’s sake, somehow I can’t bring myself to do anything. I shall sue him.’

  ‘Good evening,’ said Oliver. ‘Big wheels here tonight, eh? Spy from the Conservative Party?’

  ‘I got here by accident,’ said Treece.

  ‘Your mummy should have been more careful,’ said Oliver. ‘Give me a cigarette, will you?’

  Treece produced his packet and Oliver took five. ‘I’ll give you these back some day,’ he said.

  ‘I didn’t know you were writing a novel,’ said Treece.

  ‘Well, somebody had to. Nothing was being done. It’s a good one too. You want to keep in with me; I’m on the way up. Man told me the other day I was a great man. It’s true. And the cock crew three times. The trouble is if you don’t write these poor-young-bugger novels no one will look at you. I’m an old-fashioned moonlight-on-the-water-and-meanwhile-in-my-lady’s-boudoir man myself. I got arrested at the Ronald Firbank stage. I’m the missing link in the evolution of the twentieth-century novel. Besides, I’m too busy to waste my time writing. I just talk about it.’ It was indeed surprising that Oliver had reached such a position of literary eminence without actually having produced one piece of written work that anyone had read. He simply talked about books that no one had read.

  ‘You don’t know who’d put up a bit a money for an interesting commercial speculation?’ he asked.

  ‘I don’t think I do,’ said Treece. ‘What is it?’

  ‘Well, I was thinking of starting a correspondence course for people who are socially mobile. It’s called Room-At-The-Top, Limited. It’s to enable people to fit easily into any socket in the social scale – what shoes to wear, what books to read, whether to be sado-masochistic or anal-erotic, whether to know what words like that mean. Things to say for all occasions at different class levels. How to have opinions if you’re a Man in the Street in a television interview – this sort of thing.’

  ‘I don’t know who’d help, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Might interest the Sociology Department,’ said Oliver. ‘They could probably get a Rockefeller Grant.’

  ‘I doubt it,’ said Treece. ‘Well, I’m pleased someone here is writing a novel . . .’

  ‘You know,’ said Oliver, ‘if you’re interested in the provincial literary scene, I can smuggle you into a local literary cabal of some passing interest. They meet at the Mandolin every week.’

  ‘Where’s the Mandolin?’

  ‘It’s the espresso bar. It works without steam. You ought to come.’

  ‘I’d like to, actually,’ said Treece.

  ‘Good, I’ll let you know then,’ said Oliver. He smiled pleasantly, shut his eyes, and slid slowly down the wall, in a stupor.

  ‘Leave him,’ said Mirabelle, passing by. Across the room someone had splashed gin all down the wall. In the corner Louis Bates, who had been nervously dismantling and reassembling his fountain-pen, was rejoined by Emma.

  ‘Where have you been, if it isn’t a rude question?’ he demanded, surly at her long neglect of him.

  ‘I’ve been in the lavatory, if it isn’t a rude answer,’ said Emma.

  ‘You were a long time,’ said Louis.

  ‘I’m not going to have you timing me every time I go to the lavatory,’ said Emma.

  ‘You know I came here to be with you. It certainly wasn’t for the party. You don’t care anything for me, though; you make that quite apparent.’

  ‘You shouldn’t take yourself so seriously,’ said Emma. ‘I’d hate you to think I was cruel, but really you behave absurdly.’

  ‘Good evening, you remember me? I was with you before at a party,’ said the stout German student, Herr Schumann. ‘You like this party?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Emma. ‘Do you?’

  ‘It was my hope that some discussion of literary subjects would take place, but it does not matter. We are all happy, I think.’

  ‘I’m not,’ said Louis Bates.

  ‘You don’t find it difficult to understand what people are saying?’ asked Emma.

  ‘Oh no, I understand very well. I think parties are alike in all countries. In my country we have bathing parties, where all go naked into the water. I am very fond of such parties. Perhaps we all might make one day a bathing party. Also in Germany there are parties of homosexuals, which no doubt there are here also. Coelum non animum mutant qui trans mare currunt. You speak Latin, I think.’

  ‘I understand,’ said Emma.

  ‘I like parties. However, in England it is not often I am to parties.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘The evenings I am so busy.’

  ‘What do you do in the evenings?’

  ‘The evening,’ said the German, ‘I sit babies.’

  ‘It’s a pity you didn’t sit some tonight,’ said Louis.

  ‘I bring you a drink?’ said the German. Emma asked for a gin and lime and Herr Schumann departed.

  ‘How could you be so awful?’ said Emma. ‘How do you think he feels now?’

  ‘How do you think I feel now?’ demanded Louis. ‘I didn’t come hobing dat ve should dalk about liderature. I came to talk to you. I don’t understand this. Have I got something my best friends won’t tell me about? Why is everything I do wrong? Why am I everybody’s whipping-boy? What is it about me that makes eggs addle when I cook them, cars go wrong when I get in them?’

  Now the German was back.

  ‘You are hot?’ he asked of Emma, inclining from the waist. ‘Will you come with me into the garden for fresh air?’

  ‘Am I invisible?’ demanded Louis. ‘Can’t you see me here? She’s with me.’ The German looked at him and departed.

  ‘I’m going to talk to someone else,’ said Emma, ‘since you find it so difficult to behave like a civilized person.’

  ‘No, don’t leave me,’ said Louis, grasping her by the arm. ‘Let go,’ said Emma, prising his fingers from her.

  ‘Damn,’ said Louis furiously. ‘You said damn,’ said a voice at his side; it was the girl who had been smoking the pipe and reading the Talmud. She wore black woollen stockings and a folk-weave skirt. Louis decided to make Emma jealous, and he sought something to say to the girl. He remembered Dale Carnegie and asked about her hobbies. ‘I collect conches,’ said the girl, puffing on her pipe. ‘Can anyone do it?’ asked Louis seriously, ‘or do you have to be childish?’

  Meanwhile Emma had slipped away, out into the garden, which smelled freshly of the recent rain. In the darkness she saw someone coming towards her. It was Walter Oliver. Without speaking he put his arms around her and began to kiss her. He smelled of sick. She pushed his arms away and freed herself. ‘Why not?’ said Oliver. ‘It’s only little old me.’ ‘No,’ said Emma. ‘Sex rules the world, you know,’ said Oliver. He put his arms around her again and at this moment Louis, who had been looking everywhere for Emma, stumbled upon them. He looked at them in horror. ‘I just came for some fresh air,’ he said. ‘The fresh air’s over there,’ said Oliver.

  Treece nodded pleasantly to Louis as he went back inside. ‘All right?’ he asked. ‘Not feeling sick?’

  ‘No, thank you,’ he said. When Emma came in a moment or two later, a few spots of rain beaded in her hair, she found Louis waiting for her in the kitchen.

  ‘What are you up to?’ he demanded. ‘Is it just everybody except me?’

  ‘You know it’s not,’ said Emma, s
tarting to cry a little. She felt hideously ashamed of herself.

  ‘He’s only playing with you, Emma; I’m not. I’m serious . . . What is it about me?’

  ‘Oh, please don’t keep on,’ said Emma.

  ‘No; I want to know. This is important to me. I have all the big virtues, don’t I? Aren’t I honest, fair, reasonable? I know I lack the small virtues, charm, good manners, pretty speeches. But are those all that count with you?’

  ‘Oh, I hope not,’ cried Emma. ‘The trouble is one does like charming people better than good people. It’s a hideous truth; it’s a moral corruption. But it’s so. Look, Louis, I’m like most women; I have my limitations. I’m just practical. I’m damned if I’m going to live in some mean little house all my life. If you marry me, you do it to make me happy, to take me away from the things that depress me, not to make life harder to bear. I don’t want marriage to be the end of my life, but the beginning. Marriage isn’t suicide, you know. I know it can destroy, but not me, please. I have immortal longings, I suppose. So you see.’

  ‘I see,’ said Louis. ‘People like me don’t matter, because we don’t say things out of a handsome enough face or with a charming enough voice. Have you ever thought that your distrust of me might come from a deficiency in you?’

  ‘Yes, I have,’ said Emma, ‘but it doesn’t do you any good to point it out.’

  ‘You don’t know what you do to me. You show everyone I’m unlovable. People would like me more if you could love me.’

  ‘This conversation’s getting us nowhere,’ said Emma.

  ‘Won’t you give me one little kiss?’

  ‘No,’ said Emma. ‘No.’

  ‘You kissed him.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Louis, no.’

  Watching him go off in his dejection, she felt herself suffused with pain; yet as he went, his shoulders exaggeratedly drooped, there was an air of falsity about his actions which lay behind all he did. He didn’t really know what was happening to him. Even so, Emma had to feel ashamed; she had dismissed him far too easily, had as good as said that he didn’t count for much. Wanting to live her life with point and relevance, she found herself looking for meanings under stones; she saw what she had done as an ethical decision. She had rejected a great deal that was worthy under the personal detestation that she confessed she felt for Bates. By being such an awful person, he had driven her to something for which she could not now forgive herself. Back in the living-room there was hardly anyone left. All the bottles were empty save one – the British Wine Port Type that Louis had brought.