by Paul Ableman
“She’s not drifting? Or rising to meet the seedpods?” I ask.
“The nice man’s a bit cracked,” the woman informs her uncritical son. She is, however, a pleasant, bland woman and quite willing to indulge my vagaries. “Maria’s just an ordinary girl,” she informs me, “but she’s very nice and she’s not very happy. I thought if you were a philosopher—though you sound more like a lunatic—anyway, if you want to meet her—”
And your other friends?” I interrupt. “Do they need philosophy? Does your husband need philosophy? Does he need a rival?”
“Take your hand away!” she exclaims, but then, when she has speedily deposited her son and come to her own rescue, her punitive slap is not very hard. It is, however, purposeful and I realize that it would be difficult to induce her to dally.
“Will you dally?” I ask, without much hope.
“Seriously,” she says, taking up her little sacks of domesticity and preparing to go, “would you like to meet them?”
“Well, if you give me some money.”
“What? I should think not.”
“But,” I protest, “I haven’t got any money. Arthur doesn’t pay me. I can’t wander around until this evening or whenever you want me to meet your friends without money. How can I?”
But now, although still disposed to listen to me, she has become a trifle guarded.
“Anyway,” I revert, “tell me about your other friends. Why do they need philosophy?”
“I don’t know if they need philosophy,” she now pretends. “I don’t know what they need—shooting, I should think, some of them.”
“But what’s wrong with them?”
“Look,” she says, on a note of finality, “if you’re a philosopher, that’s for you to find out. Here,” she sets her bundles down for the last time, produces a scrap of paper and a pencil and writes, “that’s our address—if you want to call some time—and here’s some money—if that little bit is any good to you.”
She takes up her things again and carries them and her uncomprehending child away. After a few steps, however, she pauses and turns back and says:
“And I wouldn’t talk to any more strange women, if I were you. You never know.”
And then the two particles, the native and the stranger, disappear slowly into the expanses.
When they have gone I can not suppress a slight feeling of satisfaction. Cousin Susan and Maria, although they never stated it explicitly, had little confidence in my social abilities. I could tell. Perhaps they did when I was younger and could delight people with simple, childish naiveté, but for a long time now, I feel sure, they have not regarded me as richly endowed with the social graces. And here, on my very first independent encounter for ages, I find myself cordially invited to the home of a celebrated Italian, partly, no doubt, to function in a professional capacity—and that would surprise Susan too—but partly also because my wit and spirits proved irresistible. I examine my retaining fee, a bank-note, my first for a very long time. I wonder whether to spend it on food, or whether to sacrifice the lower to the higher centers and buy a book. A book might prove a useful preparation for the series of consultations I have engaged myself upon, but then physical contentment might be an even more valuable asset. Also, if I decided to buy a book, I should have to seek preliminary advice since that decision would transport me into unfamiliar regions. The lieutenant moved there familiarly but had, I seem to remember, a low opinion of books. Perhaps, disposing of my sum as a bribe, I could induce the manager to write one specially for the occasion. But I have neither of their addresses and even if I had they might have moved and tracing people is the very devil in a city this size.
At this point, I find that my random footsteps have carried me out of the park and, doubtless in subconscious obedience to the stream of my conscious thought, deposited me in front of a new bookshop run by selected, poverty-stricken students under the direct supervision of a governmental department. All my old frustrated rage at the government returns as I study the cunning notices outlining in whimsical but official terms the nature of, and services provided by, this new enterprise.
“It was simple, honest fury,” I inform the student who, having noticed the hostile expression on my face, and fearing for the ornate flow of the decorations, has, very prudently, stepped out of the gush to restrain me. “But never fear—no one knows better than I—bricks, anarchy, all that’s dead, deader than personality which is deader than chivalry.”
The student takes me for a simple fellow and smiles a wry, patronizing but good-natured smile.
“Oh, we’re not too bad, you know,” he suggests, “anyway, I’m not the government. As a matter of fact, none of us are. Some of us detest it. Come in if you like.”
“You’re all poverty-stricken students,” I remark. “Do you ever think about the government? Do you ever consider my unfinished business with the government?”
But he informs me very courteously that he can not accept responsibility for it.
“But come in and look at the books. Anyway,” he concludes briskly when I show no sign of accepting his invitation, “don’t destroy anything. You said yourself anarchy was dead. Fortunatly, there are no bricks around, but for all I know you may have one or a lump of metal on you—remember, it would be better to destroy nothing.”
He returns to the interior of the shop and a few minutes later I follow him.
“You may be wrong,” I begin, but am immediately interrupted.
“Don’t talk to Federico now,” urges a girl-student, or rather a woman of about forty who doesn’t seem much like a student. “You shouldn’t talk to him when he’s bandaging parcels. That’s a particularly dainty volume he’s bandaging for a neglected element.”
“He started it,” I protest. “He came out and suggested that I hurl bricks through the windows.”
“Yes, he’s peculiarly high-strung. But he’s the best scholar on the premises. They say it was a trauma. But I say it’s all traumas. You may guess that I’m reading psychology.”
“And are you fond of him?”
“Yes, I’m very fond of him,” she admits and turns away.
“Look, I know you only want to talk,” begins Federico, turning to me now that he has eclipsed the volume and a messenger is shooting away with it, “and that you’re not really dangerous. But you mustn’t interrupt the work. There’s not much admittedly. Still, they do watch us.” He pauses uncertainly for a moment and then quietly but without embarrassment asks: “What did that colleague, the female one, say to you?”
“She said she was fond of you.”
“Mmm,” he muses. “I think it’s only my background—primitive, dashing romanticism. My name’s Federico. My father emigrated from an uncharted but Spanish speaking island, a damned, messy romantic background altogether what with a mother who built coaches. I’m a statistician you see, and a very able one at that.”
“Is she a student?” I ask. “She seems too old.”
“Mmm, she is a bit, nearly 40 I should think though I never asked her. Well, fact is, she had a rather curious background too. Father who drank and did such things as collect herons. He had the collector’s mania and tried to collect at least little bits of everything. For example, if he couldn’t get the picture, he’d scrape off a bit of pigment. If he couldn’t get the farm, he’d buy a single pig, if he couldn’t manipulate a whole pig, he’d hire veritable battalions of servants to pursue it through Italian gardens, veldt, various structural theories, orchards—”
“On the threshold?” asks the woman, leaning down in order to hear us better. “Did he say, on the threshold? I’d like to—Oh—” she recovers, realizing abruptly, from the blank looks she encounters, that she has mistaken what was said. She inserts a final volume into its place and then comes down the ladder.
“You were listening again,” says Federico, calmly but with a reserve meant to be interpreted as displeasure.
The woman does not reply, but summons a small contingent of s
tudents and begins to assign revised stations. Finally, her self-control breaks down and she summarily despatches a disproportionately large detachment merely to patrol Knitting.
“Yes, of course, that’s partly why I’m here,” she says to Federico and then turns to me. “I’m quite sure you did say ‘threshold’ so wouldn’t it be simpler if you admitted it?”
“Yes, it would be simpler,” I reply, but then add, “No, it wouldn’t be simpler. Anyway you can’t be sure. There are wonders, verbal wonders, everywhere today.”
“Not in this efficiently run establishment,” she avers, and I am compelled to admire the courageous fashion with which she maintains the objectivity essential for debate. Although deeply involved emotionally in the subject, she proclaims, by her lucid poise, the benefit of ages of dialectic tradition. “Not here,” she pursues, but, in spite of her self-discipline, her wanton glance escapes her for a moment to rest on Federico’s face. Then, with an effort, she returns it to mine. “You see we don’t believe in it.”
“I agree with her there,” remarks Federico. “Did you know we were out of glue?”
“Run for glue,” instructs the woman to a small knot of students who are lounging irresponsibly near History.
“Glue?” calls an impertinent one.
“Good God,” exclaims another.
And none of them move. The woman has no alternative but to approach closer to them so that she can exert her authority at closer range. The strain under which she labors is expressed by the weary gesture with which she presses her finger-tips to a point a little polar of the temple.
“She’s laboring under immense strain,” I point out to Federico.
“She’s sturdy,” he assures me, “from a country childhood, catching pigs for her father, administering his piles of stolen wealth, piling up his piles, always with menials beside her. Observe now, how she subdues unruly students.”
“Who’s going for the glue?” asks the woman shortly, having reached the periphery of the grinning, murmuring group of students.
But in a moment it becomes plain that she is going to encounter more difficulty than would have been expected by anyone aware simply of the ostensible issue. A new spirit seems to be abroad in these students and it does not take any very profound understanding to sense that they have decisively rejected the practices of earlier generations. How this will affect the traditional activities and customs of which the community is so justly proud, it is still too early to tell but it is hard to imagine, for example, the lovely and ancient rite of assembling into choirs and chanting sad hymns of endurance being perpetuated by students in this new, self-assertive mood.
“Then you won’t join the chant?” asks the woman.
“You said glue. You said you wanted someone to go for glue.”
“Yes, I meant glue,” she corrects herself, and then, unwisely I can not help feeling, trying to disguise her slip as mere impetuosity, adds, “At least we don’t require chants yet.”
“Would philosophy help?” I ask, deriving from the woman’s stand the courage to step forward and attempt to mediate. “The glue is for sticking or possibly for binding. That’s a sample. Does that help?”
But, other than a few moody glances, my offer secures scant attention. And whether because of its failure in application or because of some genuine perception of its inadequacy, a feeling of shame comes over me. Simple curiosity, however, makes me anxious to stay and learn the outcome of the struggle. But this is not to be. A male student detaches himself from the group and begins to outline for me the scheme of word selection being developed by a totally different department.
“Of course,” he points out, “it doesn’t really affect the sort of thing I’m doing—unless you regard tools, and particularly plumber’s tools, as susceptible to that sort of consideration.”
“Do you work with tools?” I inquire, although still trying to follow the events taking place between the rest of the students and the woman.
“Only with one of them—a sort of prong or rake for jabbing unwieldy pipes. It’s undergone an extraordinary development—almost amounting to a revolution—in recent years. There—Farley’s gone.”
This last refers to the position over the glue. The woman, or manageress as I am now compelled to think of her, appears finally to have imposed her will on the group, for a young man can be seen outside looking up and down the street for a source of glue.
“I suppose he’ll find one,” I murmur.
“Yes, I suppose so,” sighs the student, “I’d better return,” and then, casually, as if he were still merely supplying information of general interest, he confides, “I don’t quite trust Fred—that Federico—still —”
“What threshold?” asks the woman, now apparently quite recovered from her—perhaps ordeal whould be too strong a word—from her exertion.
But the student with me merely smiles, lowering his head to shade his secret although allowing a hint of it to escape in the murmured words “Freddy—ask Freddy—” as he returns to his station. He does not return uninterruptedly to it, however, for a large tank flashes a few times and makes him think of his birthday and the refrain is carried through a number of things before petering off. He thus infringes on Microbiology but the established error merely evokes a tolerant rebuke, more, in fact, of a welcomed diversion.
“I note that down,” insists the woman. “Note them all welcoming the diversion. You noted his response?”
“He was flashed at,” I point out. “He had no precedent. Empty balconies. I won’t say—”
“I know,” she concedes, “empty thresholds,” but after a moment’s drawn consideration, her really charming, open, clear, and attractive features relax into a smile. “Well, I don’t know how you came to—after all, you’re only a customer.”
And she looks at me with a hint of merriment buried in the accusation.
“Yes, I am,” I hasten to assure her, “only a customer. Did you think I might be—”
“An inspector?” she interposes, and her face grows more thoughtful again for a moment. “They’re most ingenious—”
“Most ingenious inspectors,” confirms Federico in a hard voice, having come silently up behind her and planted his hands firmly on bright piglets and Dutch girls. “We have had the most ingenious inspectors here. Haven’t we, May?”
“Auntie May,” corrects the woman absently, looking firmly back at him but hollow with apprehension. She nods. “We have,” she agrees, “a number of times. As a matter of fact, I was about to—to explain—”
“To explain about the most ingenious inspectors?” Federico asks meaningfully. Then he looks at me. “Well, sir, you’re a customer—”
“No,” I protest. “I might buy something, it’s true, but I’m not really a customer. Couldn’t you think of me as more like—well, a philosopher— I have some professional engagements—or else—”
“Yes—” He is silent for a moment, his face working, and then precise snorts of laughter escape him, clearing his attitudes so that, a moment later he can laugh quite freely, perhaps for the first time in years. Poor May, helpless now at this revelation, or rather confirmation, of what she must somehow have intuitively perceived ages ago, can only stand making tiny, fond movements with her lips. Finally, she brings out his name.
“Freddy—”
“All right,” he splutters, little convulsions of fury still breaking up through his pleasure. “All right, you can draw me some little lines—or something—Hell, what a stupid—well, I never could—”
With an absurd gesture he sweeps stockades of Drama to the floor.
“I’m quite—really furious,” he informs her. “God! I—I and this bunch of useless meters—look at us—Hell!” he cries. “Damn.”
May sighs, scrawling all the time, without realizing it, over Botany with her blue chalk, and then suggests:
“Perhaps now, you could help this customer?” she glances out at the polished eyes and golden eyes. “Before a real inspecto
r comes. It might happen—oh yes—”
“And dismiss the staff? Let them go?”
“Not yet.”
“All right,” he confirms, and then to me: “What would you like?”
“Well,” I begin, rather embarrassed at the necessity for extricating myself, “I had thought of buying a book, as I mentioned. But now I don’t think I will.”
“All right,” agrees Federico, with a significant look at May. “You don’t want a book, nor have you destroyed anything, nor helped much—and if you are an inspector—”
“I’m not,” I protest. “I should have thought that was obvious.”
“It is obvious,” affirms May.
“All right. She says so—the manageress—what’s the word—”
“Exonerates.”
“Exonerates—dismisses—”
“Exonerates—”
“She now exonerates—”
And then I leave. I leave them the address of the dubious meeting scheduled at the Italian’s house and indicate, with the subtlest of facial gestures, awareness of their stored twine and then depart.
I have hardly regained the street when I am compelled to slip hurriedly around a corner, having noticed Susan out searching for me. She has disguised herself as a bereaved Italian peasant woman and carries a freshly boiled egg beneath her black shawl. Her disguise is both subtle and ingenious and I marvel when I see her carry it to the extent of offering a sprig of aromatic plant to a passing banker. He brushes her aside, his hand brushing through the leaves and doubtless inheriting a faint aroma. And then I see that her legs, in the short interval since I last saw her, have become red and sore and unsalved. And her face is pink and blotchy from habitual drinking. So changed, in fact, do I find her that for a moment I wonder if it can really be Susan.
“Are you really Susan?” I ask, incautiously stepping out of the urinal.
“Yes, my peeky,” she squeals. “Your own Susan, really. Your own twiggady old Susan, with little sprigs of mint. Now you’ll have a little sprig of mint from Susan?”
