by David Lodge
Polly wasn’t Ann Field any more. Now she wrote a weekly column under her own name on the women’s page of a quality newspaper, a column in which radical and progressive ideas were put forward in a subtly ironic style that undermined them even as it expressed them, an effect which perfectly suited the paper’s readership, mostly middle-class professionals and their wives, with leftish views and bad consciences about their affluent life-styles.
Polly herself, who had been an early apostle of the sexual revolution, was beginning to wonder whether things hadn’t gone too far. She had of course been happily doing n things with Jeremy for years, but when he showed signs of wanting to do them with n partners, she jibbed. They received an invitation to a swinging party at a country house owned by a film producer Jeremy knew; he pressed her to go, and sulked when she refused. Anxiously she strove to show more gusto in their lovemaking, proposing games and variations that she knew he liked, though she herself found them a little tedious, bondage and dressing up in kinky clothes and acting out little scenarios – The Massage Parlour, The Call Girl, and Blue Lagoon. These efforts diverted Jeremy for a while, but eventually he began pressing her again about going to swinging parties.
“Why do you want to go?” she said.
“I’m just curious.”
“You want to have another woman.”
He shrugged. “All right, perhaps I do. But I don’t want to do it behind your back.”
“Why do you want to? Don’t we have fun in bed?”
“Of course we do, darling. But let’s face it, we’ve been right through the book together, there’s nothing new we can do, just the two of us. It’ time to introduce another element. you know, sometimes when we’re fucking, my mind wanders completely off the subject, I find myself thinking about shooting schedules or audience ratings. That worries me. And you needn’t look at me like that. It’s nothing personal. It’s the nature of the beast.”
“Beast is the word.” Polly felt a cold dread at her heart. Was it possible that the flame of sex could be kept burning only by the breaking of more taboos? After group sex and orgies, what then? Rubber fetishism? Fladge? Child porn? Snuff movies? “Where does it end?” she said.
“It ends with old age,” said Jeremy. “Impotence. Death. But I don’t intend to give in until I absolutely have to.”
“You don’t think there’s anything after death?”
“You know I don’t.”
“I do.”
“That’s just your Catholic upbringing.”
“I don’t know what’s more frightening, the idea that there’s life after death or the idea that there isn’t,” said Polly. She thought about death a lot these days – had done so ever since her father died the previous winter. It was a sudden death, a heart attack brought on by shovelling snow. She and Jeremy were skiing in Austria at the time and she was delayed getting back to England by blizzards, arriving barely in time for the funeral. So she never saw her father dead, and in consequence was never quite able to believe that he was dead; it was as if he had faded away like the Cheshire Cat, leaving the memory of him, his chuckle, the smell of his pipe tobacco, lingering in the mind, and might rematerialize when one least expected it. Polly decided to make death the subject of her next article, and cheered up immediately. That was in the summer of 1973.
6
* * *
How They Dealt with Love and Death
MICHAEL READ POLLY’S article about death on the train to London, travelling to an appointment with a consultant specializing in disorders of the intestine. After weeks of mute terror contemplating the daily evidence of the toilet bowl, he had confided in Edward, who claimed to have been at college with the best gut man in the business, and fixed up the consultation for him. Michael did not know that the article was written by someone he had been at college with, because Polly used her married name for her by-line, and because the fuzzy, minuscule photo of her that appeared beside it, all tousled bubble-cut and outsize spectacles, did not resemble the Polly he remembered, and because it never crossed his mind that the Polly he remembered could have achieved such fame.
Michael usually looked forward to Polly Elton’s column every Wednesday, but her choice of topic was unwelcome this particular morning, already sufficiently replete with reminders of mortality. It had begun with his collecting a specimen of his own stool, which he had been instructed to bring with him for analysis, in a small plastic container supplied by Edward. This container, which looked rather like the kind you bought ice-cream in at the cinema, and even came supplied with a little wooden spatula (the whole exercise had had a distinctly Dadaist quality) now reposed, wrapped in a plastic bag, at the bottom of his briefcase on the seat beside him.
Usually, Michael looked forward to one of his occasional trips to London as a little holiday, a day off the leash, a minor feast of misrule. The best kind of errand was a meeting with one’s editor (Michael’s volume of essays, Moving the Times: Religion and Culture in the Global Village, had received respectful, if sparse, reviews, and the publishers had commissioned him to write a textbook on the mass media for the growing “liberal studies” market) followed by a long expense-account lunch in a Soho restaurant, with plenty of booze before, during and after. Then it was pleasant, stumbling sated and tipsy out of the restaurant in mid-afternoon, and bidding farewell to one’s host, to slip into the stream of London pavement life, drift anonymously with the idle, unemployed, sightseeing, windowshopping crowd, eye the goods and the girls, browse in the record shops, buy remaindered books in Charing Cross Road, and then rest one’s feet watching the latest sex-instruction film, before catching the early evening train back to the Midlands. But travelling to the metropolis with a lump of your own shit in your briefcase took all the zest out of the excursion; you could hardly look forward to a day of irresponsible self-indulgence while inhaling the reek of your own corruption – for, unless he was very much mistaken, the container was exuding a distinct niff, in spite of its allegedly air-tight lid. What with that, and the prospect of a painful and undignified rectal examination at the hospital, and the constant obsessive fear of being told that he had cancer of the bowel, the last thing he needed that morning was a lay sermon by Polly Elton on the subject of death. “Is Death The Dirty Little Secret Of The Permissive Society?” the article was headed. Restively, he let the paper fall to his lap, and observed with some surprise that the seats around him, nearly full when he boarded the train, were now empty. He opened the briefcase experimentally, and hastily closed it again. The dirty little secret of the permissive society was right there.
It was a warm day, and the smell got worse and worse as his journey proceeded. He crossed London feeling like a leper. In the crowded Tube fellow-passengers quickly cleared a cordon sanitaire round him. People on the platform where he changed trains began frowningly to inspect the soles of their shoes. Having time to kill before his appointment, he sat for a while in a square in Bloomsbury, with his briefcase on the bench beside him, and it seemed as though the very pigeons strutting on the path veered away from his poisoned ambience. A madman or drunk in a ragged overcoat, hair matted, eyes wild, sat down beside him and thrust under his nose a magazine open on coloured photographs of naked girls with their legs apart. “Disgusting, that’s what I say!” he shouted. “Filthy cunts, showing off their cunts like that, there should be a law.” He brought his whiskered face confidentially close to Michael’s and leered, revealing a few yellow stumps. His breath stank like a lion-house. “You know what I’d like to do to teach those cunts a lesson?” he said. “I’d –” Then the smell from Michael’s briefcase hit him, and his head jerked back. He wiped his nose on the back of his sleeve, sniffed incredulously, and shuffled off, muttering to himself.
The man had left the magazine behind, and Michael leafed through it. His professional eye noted the trend towards masturbation poses in the pictures, pseudo-documentary in the stories. He skimmed an article on the pornographic movie industry in California. “Standby studs are
often used for penetration shots,” he read. Would have been the job for me once, he thought with rueful irony, remembering how he used to walk about London with an almost permanent erection. Now he clung to Miriam in bed more like a child than a lover, nuzzled and caressed her like a baby wanting to crawl back into the womb, his penis limp and discouraged. “What’s the matter?” she would say. “D’you want to make love?” “No, I don’t feel like it. I’m worried about my guts.” “See a doctor then.” “Maybe. I’ll see. Just let me hold you. It helps me get to sleep.” But Miriam had got tired of being treated like a dummy or doll and threatened to move into another room if he didn’t get some advice from Edward. Which had brought him to this square in Bloomsbury.
He stood up and tossed the magazine into a litter basket, strongly tempted to do the same with the contents of his briefcase. What would it be like to be told you had a terminal illness, he wondered. Not that he expected to get a definite diagnosis this afternoon, but the impending appointment at the hospital concentrated the mind wonderfully on such questions. Would it make the idea of death any more real? Odd how, though one knew one was going to die eventually, one never quite believed it. Impossible to believe, for that matter, that all these people in the square (it was the end of the lunch-hour and the paths were crowded) would all be dead sooner or later. If there were ten million people in London, all of them dying sooner or later, how was it you hardly ever noticed them doing so, how was it they weren’t falling dead in the streets, jamming the roads with their funerals, darkening the sky with the smoke of their cremations? Holding the briefcase well away from his side, he set out for the hospital.
The people he asked for directions in the labyrinthine corridors of the vast building did not linger to give them with any great detail, and it was some time before Michael found the Pathology Lab and handed over his noisome package to a beautiful blonde laboratory assistant whose courteous smile collapsed into an expression of uncontrollable dismay as she took it between an exquisitely manicured finger and thumb. Sorry, he wanted to say, sorry my shit smells so awful, sorry you’ve got to have anything to do with it, but I’ve come a long way and its been fermenting in my briefcase for hours. As he fled, it crossed his mind that perhaps the whole errand was a practical joke by Edward, that no one in his right mind would try and carry a tub of fresh faeces a hundred and thirty miles across England by Inter-City and London Transport, unless it was hermetically sealed. Perhaps the whole thing was a hoax. Perhaps there wasn’t even a consultant.
But there was, though Michael had to wait a long time to see him: a plump, cheerful man, very carefully shaven, who was reassuring, diagnosed colitis, was confident of clearing it up with cortisone and a diet. Michael felt life and hope flowing back into him; he left the hospital in a carefree, happy mood, stood on the pavement outside blinking in the sunshine, rejoining the living.
He was in the vicinity of his old college. The buildings had scarcely changed, but the students going in and out of them looked very different: hairy, denimed and with more experienced-looking faces. A girl passed Michael with a teeshirt bearing the legend “I AM A VIRGO (This is a very old teeshirt)”. Like many of the girls, she was not wearing a brassiere, a new fashion still rarely to be seen in the provinces. Earth has hardly anything to show more fair, Michael reflected, than a fine pair of tits oscillating freely under clinging cotton jersey. With delight, he realized that he was interested in sex again, and began to make plans for a celebration with Miriam that night.
On his way to the Tube, he called in at the bookshop which he had patronized as a student, to check whether they had Moving the Times in stock. The shop had vastly expanded its floor space, and he had some difficulty in locating the appropriate section, reluctant to ask for help in case he had to buy a copy of his own book or reveal the narcissistic nature of his interest in it. At last he found two copies on a high shelf in Sociology, and as he took one down a familiar voice behind him said: “Michael! As I live and breathe.”
With a guilty start, he turned to find Polly smiling at him through outsize spectacles.
“Polly!” he said. “Good Lord, you’re Polly Elton!”
“That’s right. Do you read me? How nice! Have I caught you gloating over your own book? Actually, I thought it was awfully good, so did Jeremy, that’s my husband, you ought to meet him, he’s in television.”
“Jeremy Elton – yes, I know his work. Very good.” (This was not strictly true. Michael did not think Jeremy Elton’s programmes were particularly good; but then, neither did Jeremy think much of Michael’s book. “Academic claptrap,” had been his verdict when Polly passed it to him.)
“It’s so good to see you after all these years,” said Polly. “Let me pay for these and then let’s have a drink or something.” She was carrying a large pile of books by Kate Millett, Germaine Greer and other feminist writers. “I decided it was time I really got to grips with the women’s movement,” she said, plonking the books down on the table in the wine bar where they ended up. “I always used to say that I didn’t need Women’s Lib because I was liberated already, but now I’m not so sure. Does, er, I’ve forgotten your wife’s name.…”
“Miriam? She’s interested, but the pro-abortion thing puts her off.”
“Ah, yes,” said Polly. “You’re still practising Catholics, then?”
“I suppose,” said Michael. “What about you?”
“Oh, I’m beyond the pale. Jeremy’s divorced, for one thing.”
“Well, that needn’t make any difference these days.”
“Really? You mean the Church accepts divorced couples?”
“Well, not officially. But if you don’t make an issue of it, the chances are your PP won’t either.”
“Goodness, things must have changed a lot in the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church.”
“They have.”
“I ought to write a piece about it,” Polly mused.
They split a bottle of Liebfraumilch between them before they separated, kissing each other on both cheeks and promising to keep in touch. “You and Miriam must come and stay one weekend,” said Polly. Michael said that they would love to, if they could find someone to look after the children. “Bring them, bring them!” cried Polly. “We have ponies and things to amuse them.” She managed to say this without appearing to show off, but she had obviously made it, Michael reflected, into a world not only of affluence but also of smartness, sophistication, cultural chic. She looked surprisingly good, too: still plump, but shapely, her complexion creamy, her curls lustrous, her clothes smart and new but obviously not “best”. Her blouse was open at the throat just one button more than was strictly necessary, one button more than Miriam would have left unfastened.
As the effect of the Liebfraumilch evaporated on the journey home, Michael’s spirits drooped. Polly had made him feel threadbare and provincial, awakening in him appetites so long and deeply repressed that he was surprised at the fierceness of the pangs: a longing for fame, success, worldly goods. The life he and Miriam had made for themselves seemed suddenly drab and petty: the earnest discussion groups, the cosy liturgies, the food cooperatives and the sponsored walks for Oxfam and its Catholic equivalent, CAFOD. What did it amount to, after all? What trace did it leave on the public consciousness?
Catching sight of his face reflected in the train window, as the sky darkened in the east, blurred and distorted and looking like a disappointed pig, he cut short this sulky stream of consciousness and delivered a self-reprimand: how fickle you are! This morning all you wanted was a clean bill of health, but no sooner do you get it than you’re dissatisfied again. You should be celebrating your reprieve, not bemoaning your lot.
For a joke, and also to excite himself, Michael phoned Miriam from the station and told her to have her knickers off when he got home.
She did not seem amused. Sounds of riotous children chasing each other up and down the stairs dinned in the background. “We’ve got Angela’s children for the night,” sh
e explained. “Her father’s been taken ill and she’s driving up to Liverpool. Dennis is away on business.” When Michael got home he found Miriam tired and harassed. Angela’s Nicole was disturbed by the sudden disappearance of her mother and clung to Miriam. She wouldn’t settle to sleep until they took her into their bedroom, so there was no lovemaking after all that night.
Before he retired, Michael phoned Edward to tell him what the consultant had said.
“Jolly good,” said Edward. “And did you remember to take the specimen?”
“Yes,” said Michael. “Didn’t half make me unpopular on the train, too.”
“Why, how much did you take?”
“Well, I more or less filled the container.” At the other end of the line Edward spluttered and snorted. “Why, how much should I have taken?”
“Just enough to cover the end of the spatula.”
“Bloody hell,” said Michael. “Now you tell me.”
Angela’s father had been admitted to hospital complaining of pains in his back and chest. The doctors made various tests and X-rays and told him it was bronchitis. They told his wife that it was lung cancer, advanced and inoperable. Hence the distraught phone call which had brought Angela rushing up the M6. She found a melancholy family council gathered in the little parlour behind the shop: her mother, two sisters and two brothers, including Tom, now a curate in a parish on the other side of the city. Their Dad would be coming home the next day and they would have to look after him until he was too ill to stay out of hospital. The question was, should he be told?
“How long …?” somebody wondered. The doctor hadn’t been specific. A matter of months rather than weeks. One could never be sure. “Who would tell him?” “I couldn’t, I just couldn’t,” said their mother, and wept. “I would,” said Angela, “if we agreed that was the right thing to do.” “Why tell him?” said the youngest sister. “It would just be cruel.” “But if he asks …” said another. “Are you going to lie to your own Dad?”
