by Olivia Fane
‘That’s very good, Henrietta, thank you. If you could just stop there a moment,’ said Dr Marius. ‘Jane, Samantha, would either of you like to comment on what you’ve heard?’
‘It just proves the rich have always been wicked. Just killing your baby like that,’ said Jane.
‘It was an ancient form of abortion, that’s all,’ suggested Samantha and in fact, rather kinder. The baby can fight back, well, sort of. Be rescued, anyway.’
‘Yes, rescued by a pimp, great life. I’d prefer to have died of exposure myself,’ argued Jane.
‘Why,’ asked Dr Marius, and it was really a question to himself, ‘are we beguiled by innocence?’
‘Are we?’ asked Samantha. ‘Speak for yourself. Innocence doesn’t move me.’
‘Come on, Sam,’ said Jane, ‘name me a book or a film that’s any good which doesn’t have an innocent protagonist. If the hero knows everything on day one, there’s no movement, no story.’
‘Why do we like stories about innocent people becoming less innocent? Liaisons Dangereuses: we are appalled by the behaviour of the Marquise de Merteuil and Valmont, yet simultaneously drawn to the story, as though in the end everyone must be corrupted like us. Now wait, I have here the account of how Daphnis loses his virginity…’ Henrietta found the appropriate page of her essay. ‘Now, the two would-be lovers don’t know what to do. They have all these sexual feelings and they don’t know what to do with them, so the nymph Lycainon does the handsome Daphnis a favour and seduces him. Longus writes, “She ordered him to sit as near to her as he could and to kiss her with the sort and number of kisses he was accustomed to, and, as he was kissing, to embrace her and to lie on the ground. When he had sat down and kissed her and lain down, she discovered he was ready for action and erect. First, she raised him from this position lying on his side; then she skilfully spread herself underneath; and led him to the road he had long sought. Then she did nothing strange. Nature herself taught what else had to be done.”’
‘That gets my vote,’ said Samantha.
Jane said, apropos of nothing, ‘Someone’s written on the back of the loo door in our corridor, ‘Cancer is nature’s way of saying “no”.’
‘And sex is nature’s way of saying “yes”,’ said Samantha.
‘Only if there are babies,’ said Henrietta.
‘Are you saying,’ asked Thomas, ‘that if there’s no possibility of pregnancy the sex isn’t natural?’
‘That’s exactly what I’m saying,’ insisted Henrietta. ‘I’m a Catholic, and though I don’t agree with the infallibility of the Pope, I happen to think on this point he’s right.’
‘That is so stupid,’ said Samantha.
‘At school we were taught that sex had to do with gametes and zygotes and the like, in other words making babies. Everything else is about human beings rubbing each other up for pleasure, an entirely different occupation, which has nothing to do with sex at all.’
‘What about homosexuals?’ asked Samantha, intrigued.
‘That’s exactly my point.’ Henrietta was getting up steam. ‘They’re just human beings who like rubbing up against people the same sex as they are. And they shouldn’t be called ‘homosexuals’, they should be called something like ‘quasi-sexuals’, because they behave as though they’re having sex, when scientifically speaking, they are absolutely not. Is there a biology text-book in the land which had a picture of two male organs engaging in mutual arousal? Of course not! Homosexuality is about culture, nothing more, nothing less.’
‘But they’ve found a gene,’ said Samantha, ‘I know they’ve found a gene!’
‘And one day they’ll find a gene that’ll prove once and for all why some people prefer spinach to asparagus. So what? And perhaps they’ll find some people who have memories of being force-fed spinach in their high-chairs. So what? Except they might not like spinach when they grow up. How can we even begin to differentiate between our genetic predispositions and reactions to childhood experiences? And my argument is, so what? Nature, nurture, culture, who cares? I’ve got a fact for you. Of the eight Ptolemys who ruled Egypt, four married their full sisters.’
‘And do you say, “so what?” to that as well?’ asked Samantha.
‘I’ve been brought up in the West. I have a natural aversion to incest. But if I had been brought up to imagine one could do no better than sleeping with one’s brother… well, who knows? I was brought up a Catholic, and it worked on me. I never rebelled. Perhaps I am just… not rebellious, and would have found my brother perfectly attractive in second century Egypt. Who knows? Who cares?’
‘How can you say “Who cares?” when it’s all we do care about. Aren’t you interested in twin studies and stuff?’
‘They’re a load of crap. Expose identical twins to two middle class families in the same country and of course they like the same clothes, films etc. But who’s done a twin study that leaves one child in Acton and takes the other to some Amazonian tribe? My point is this, nature without nurture doesn’t exist for us humans. It’s the wrong question.’
‘And what is the right question?’ asked Jane.
‘It’s human nature to want to be taught. We have big brains, that’s what they’re for. And that’s the point; Daphnis and Chloe don’t even know how to have sex if they’re not explicitly taught what to do. Nature gets us nowhere. Nature is a false God.’
‘Of course they would know. This is fiction, right? Their bodies would just tell them.’
‘You know, I don’t think they would,’ said Henrietta.
Jane objected. ‘What about the bit where Chloe keeps saying she wishes that she were Daphnis’s pipe so she could lie in his mouth all day long and be played by his fingers? That’s fairly explicit, isn’t it?’
‘I liked that bit, very sexy,’ agreed Samantha.
‘That’s not nature, it’s art, Longus’s art. A charming metaphor, to titillate his readers. What we’ve been reading is second century pornography. And all the rules are in place, the rules of that particular culture at that particular time. If the story were a play rather than a novel, it would be a pantomime, and the audience would be shouting graphic instructions on what the innocent couple should be doing next. It’s a knowing, clever piece of literature. So if you ask, Dr Marius, whether purity and innocence are necessary bedfellows, the answer is yes, and Longus knew it, but he never got there, he never persuades us, because he himself was neither.’
Suddenly the three of them looked at Dr Marius, and it was clear that he hadn’t been listening to a word. He looked at his watch and said, ‘Goodness, is that the time?’
The hour was up. The three looked at each other and, without saying a word, packed up their bags and left him in peace.
Though, of course, peace it wasn’t. Thomas was wondering exactly when it was that eros had changed its meaning, from passionate and particular love to sexual desire. For Plato had used the word in its former sense, and Longus in its latter. Both, supposedly, reflected social realities, in the same way as ‘making love’ in the nineteenth century meant something different to ‘making love’ in the twentieth. And our minds fall in with these different meanings, which determine our ways of thinking, so that those who use the words ‘make love’ believe that love and sex are necessarily part of the same package. But are they, in truth? What is the reality out there when we take away the words to express it? I desired my wife, I never loved her. I never even knew her, but like a sleepwalker I thought that love must be the name for the feeling, because modern language hints that that’s the case. We all live in doublespeak; it’s not the case that there are rulers who know the truth and who lie in order to rule. We are all in thrall to a language which does not necessarily reflect what is really out there, and we are obedient to it.
That is why innocence is beguiling. The innocent aren’t steeped in hackneyed words and hackneyed thought. For them, everything is fresh and new and possible, before society socializes them and holds them in its vice. That’s w
hy I like the boy. That’s why I need him. He’s still on the outside. In a way, he’s like me. A teenager, my soul-mate. It’s truly pathetic. But have I ever found a friend at school, or kept one? Or from my undergraduate days? Or from Warwick? Was I even friends with my wife? The truth is, at thirty-five years old, I’m lonely. There is no one in whom I can confide, not a soul. I’ve wasted every second of this life. I used to think I was so clever, but the last laugh is on me.
It wasn’t true that Thomas Marius didn’t have friends; he was both esteemed and liked by several of the Fellows in Corpus, and they’d noticed he’d been ‘out of sorts’ for some weeks. And in fact it was the Master, of all people, a benign and gentle man who treated his Fellows as an extended family, who suggested to the Chaplain and reader in Theology, the Reverend Dr. Justin Phipps, that he approach Dr Marius and discover why he seemed so ‘heavy laden’.
The Reverend Phipps was a gentle, wise and approachable man, a clergyman of the old school who wore both his weight (substantial) and his dog collar with pride, and he dutifully contrived to be sitting next to Thomas the following evening at High Table. Seventy undergraduates dressed in black scholars’ gowns stood to attention while a Latin benedictio was said; seventeen portraits of previous masters gazed down upon them from oak-panelled walls. The atmosphere was solemn, even devout, but at High Table at least, broken by the conversation.
‘Aren’t you fed up,’ asked a Dr Peter Campbell, specialist in medieval history and plainsong, ‘with the M11?’ Dr Campbell was sitting to the other side of Dr Marius, and had been sitting in traffic jams all day. ‘It claims it takes you to London but it leaves you in a backwater in God knows where, is it Walthamstow?’
Thomas looked up from his quail stuffed with apricot and said, ‘I can’t say I get up to London much.’
‘“Get up” or “go down”, why is it that we never know which to say?’
‘I’m sorry?’ Thomas asked his neighbour, politely.
But though Thomas had little interest in the matter, a sociology don sitting opposite overheard Dr Peter Campbell and had sat up to attention.
‘Are you going to suggest, Peter, there is a right answer? Then I refute you.’
‘Of course there is a right answer.’
‘And would the upstanding people of Cambridge be aware of this right answer, and put it to good use?’
‘That’s irrelevant,’ insisted Dr Campbell. ‘Ignorance is no excuse.’
‘Sometimes,’ dared the sociology don, ‘I use the one phrase, and sometimes the other.’
Dr Campbell rose to the bait; the don might have hit him for how shocked he looked. ‘So how do you determine which one to use, if you don’t know the truth of the matter?’
‘It’s a question of mood,’ continued the sociology don. ‘There’s more power behind the phrase, “go down”. If I’m feeling more than London, if I’m feeling London needs me, i.e. if I’ve been invited to speak at some function or other, or as an adviser on some inner city problem, then in those circumstances I tend to say, “I’m going down to London”. If, on the other hand, the occasion is more whimsical, when London remains the big city and I, merely the small visitor, I might say – might, mind you, there’s no rule I follow – I might say “get up” or “go up” or even simply “go”.’
Dr Campbell was too dumbfounded to reply, and muttered to himself, ‘The arrogance of it!’
But a Dr Gareth Pettigrew, who, as Director of Studies in Modern Languages, was working on a linguistic history of the romance languages, entered the fray at full throttle. ‘Guy!’ he exclaimed, ‘How can you use language so disrespectfully? The only phrasal verb which is grammatically correct in this instance is “to go up”. There are precisely three towns in England to which one “goes up”, Oxford, Cambridge and London, regardless of one’s original geographical point of departure.’ Dr Pettigrew’s expression said, ‘Take that!’; Dr Campbell, who was sitting next to him, nodded happily.
‘Does a rule continue to be a rule when so few people know it?’ asked Guy. ‘Language is use, and all that. Wittgenstein was right.’
‘Ah, Wittgenstein,’ said another Fellow, further up the table, and the conversation shifted. Thomas rose to none of it, but sighed over the little bones that were congregating on the side of his plate.
‘How did you find the quail?’ asked the good, gentle chaplain of his neighbour.
‘Was it quail?’ asked Thomas, ingenuously, suddenly remembering the stoical robin who lived in the poplar tree outside his house.
‘The meat was a bit tough, you’re right, but a good wine, don’t you think? ’93 was a good year for Chablis.’ The Reverend Dr Justin Phipps put on his glasses to survey the wine label. ‘I don’t think I know that particular vineyard. Good wine, though.’
‘Yes, it is good,’ said Thomas, absent-mindedly.
‘So how’s the term been going so far? How’s the lecture course?’ inquired Dr Phipps, kindly.
‘I’m not giving a lecture course,’ said Thomas.
‘It’s been abysmal weather, hasn’t it? Do you think that’s why there are now only six undergraduates in the whole of Cambridge who wish to learn about the first hundred years of Christianity? I began the course with a healthy twenty-five, but I’ve convinced myself that it’s the rain and cold that’s been keeping them from pounding on the doors.’ It was evident from Dr Phipps’ drawn eyebrows that he hadn’t quite convinced himself.
‘You’re probably right,’ said Thomas diplomatically.
Two slim, pretty Brazilian girls in pencil black skirts and white blouses took their plates away and smiled deferentially. Some moments later Thomas and Justin Phipps were confronted by bowls of crème brulée. Justin visibly relaxed. ‘Ah, my favourite!’ he exclaimed happily.
‘I’ve never been much of a pudding man, myself,’ said Thomas, ‘Here, the portions are terribly small, you have mine.’
‘No, no! I resist! Quite delicious, but too many calories!’ There was a pause, while Thomas tapped the caramel crust with his spoon, and Justin savoured every spoonful as though it were the most delectable pleasure he knew.
‘So, Thomas, what is the equivalent of a good pudding to you?’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘What earthly pleasure do you enjoy?’
‘What are you getting at?’ asked Thomas, for the question seemed to require the answer ‘sex’ and yet he knew the chaplain well enough to know this wasn’t the answer he wanted.
‘Thomas,’ sighed Justin, ‘We all need earthly pleasures, you know.’
Thomas looked astonished; and in exasperation at his lack of progress, Justin suddenly blurted out, ‘I notice you seem to be a little under the weather, recently, Thomas, not your usual, cheery self…’
‘Have I really ever seemed cheery to you, Justin? So odd, I’ve never thought of myself as cheery.’
‘Perhaps “cheery” is the wrong word. What I mean is,’ said Justin, surprised at feeling his cheeks burn, ‘you seem a little, how should I say, burdened by something. You know, I’m a good listener. If you ever feel you need to get something off your chest…’
‘It’s a strange expression, isn’t it, “getting something off your chest.”’
‘I think it’s quite an accurate one, don’t you?’
‘There’s a good line in Virgil,’ said Thomas, ‘Mitte hanc de pectore curam, literally, “Send this care from your chest”. In your experience, Justin, as the college Chaplain and counsellor, do the cares of the soul gather in the chest or the forehead?’
‘I believe that the cares of the soul lie very much in the chest. Virgil is right, and God can meet those cares. But the cares of the body, an anxiety about an illness, for example, or even financial concerns, these seem to lie in the forehead. It’s strange, but of course in my profession, and particularly when I was a young curate at St Pauls’, I was often called out to see to the needs of the ill and the dying, and while it was still possible to survive, all that person’s energies
were centred on “Who shall I see? Where shall I go? Who will know the right medicine?” God never had a look in. But as the illness progressed, yes, a few would be angry, very angry… But most of us, I assure you, become strangely calm, their cares desert their minds and enter their hearts, and the heart is the ante-room to God, and the heart’s prayer is the truer and is always heard.’
‘It must be wonderful to have faith,’ sighed Thomas.
‘I think our hearts always have faith, even if our minds don’t know it.’
‘And our bodies?’
