Cards of Identity

by Nigel Dennis

  ‘Thank God for your high spirits!’ said the captain. ‘I was far down in the dumps. Why was our lady-member not at the session today?’

  ‘Headache. She chose to lie down. Here she comes … It was only a woman’s headache, you know. No pain in the head, or anything like that – just buckled despair in the legs and blue rings round the eyes. Is this a spinet? May I play it?’

  ‘What a very good mood you are in! Good evening, dear! Do sit down. We missed you.’

  ‘I simply couldn’t face a Bitterling,’ explained Mrs Mallet. ‘I thought a shaded room would be much better.’

  ‘But all is well now,’ cried Beaufort, vigorously playing a theme. ‘The shadow has passed. We had feared that I was going to become a father.’

  ‘Good heavens! Have you two been keeping this tormenting fear to yourself – for days, weeks?’

  ‘It’s not something one talks about, you know,’ said Beaufort, ‘even to one’s best friend.’

  ‘It would have been the first time since ’21,’ said the captain. ‘Dr Reingold and Miss Y.’

  ‘My despair was terrible,’ said Beaufort, turning from the spinet. ‘I can’t tell you what I have gone through. Like any expectant father, I first thought of all the things I would have to sacrifice to send it to a public school. That alone was enough to reduce me to tears. Then I thought of all the horrors that would henceforth accompany me through life – the crushing responsibilities, the slow but steady increase in torpor, the decline of the critical and adventurous faculties. It was like the end of the world.’

  ‘And you spared no thought for the wonderful woman who was the principal sufferer in this?’ asked the captain.

  ‘I tried, but it was no use. There was nothing to spare.’

  ‘His selfishness was rocklike,’ said Mrs Mallet, sighing. ‘It bound me to him like cement.’

  ‘Another awful thing about it,’ continued Beaufort, ‘was what the members would have said. I could already hear Shubunkin explaining it all in terms of mysticism.’

  ‘You mean Orfe, do you not?’

  ‘No, Shubunkin. Sex is the only thing that he does not interpret sexually. Orfe, on the other hand, would have blamed it all on sex.’

  ‘We thought Mr Jamesworth would see its statistical necessity, too,’ said Mrs Mallet. ‘After all, charts must rise and fall.’

  ‘And I did not relish the reproach of my old teacher, Mr Harris,’ said Beaufort, ‘who would have blamed me most severely for construing hetaira as matron.’

  ‘It is a pity, really, Beaufort,’ said the captain. ‘You cannot postpone your maturity indefinitely, you know. Sometime in the next year or two you are going to have to give your wonderful talents a decisive bent.’

  ‘I shall see which way the wind blows. I can feel it blowing pretty hard already.’

  ‘Indeed?’

  ‘Come on, now,’ said Beaufort, laying a hand on the captain’s arm. ‘Tell us what’s happening. We’re dying to know. Is the President …?’

  ‘I am afraid so,’ replied the captain.

  ‘Soon?’

  ‘It cannot be long, now.’

  ‘How miserable! I shall miss him horribly.’

  ‘Why? I thought you were much too irresponsible and carefree.’

  ‘I am. It makes me very fond of old people. He’s such an old dear … Well, you’ve quite spoilt the happiness I felt at my own reprieve.’

  ‘You think there is no hope at all?’ asked Mrs Mallet.

  ‘I’m afraid not,’ said the captain. ‘The symptoms are unmistakable. Explanations, protestions, insistence that he is totally unlike any previous president - it’s all there. I’m afraid Nature is going to take her course.’

  ‘We couldn’t keep him as emeritus, or something like that?’ asked Beaufort.

  ‘Don’t be silly,’ said the captain.

  They sat in silence for some time. Eventually, the captain said: ‘I count on you two to keep very steady heads. That’s why I’ve told you. We can’t have the staff disorganized, and events of this kind are soon felt downstairs.’

  ‘They seem peaceable enough at the moment,’ said Mrs Mallet. ‘Quite engrossed in themselves. This play of theirs has greatly excited them, too. The thought of acting, of being other than what they really are, seems to thrill them inordinately.’

  ‘Do you think we may have to leave here earlier than we planned?’ asked Beaufort.

  ‘It would not surprise me,’ said the captain.

  ‘What a shame! After all our hard work…. Tell me, did you see this coming?’

  ‘Only now, when I look back. And don’t grieve for the work we put in here. It will take its place in the chain of events. Nothing is ever wasted. The course is always predetermined.’

  *

  All the bells began to ring, the light on the bulletin board, as arranged by the Electrical Committee, flashed on and off, alternately illuminating and extinguishing the large words typed beneath:

  DOG’S WAY: A Case of Multiple Sexual Misidentity

  by

  Dr Alexander Shubunkin

  A stream of members poured down the corridors; but only when most of them were in their seats did a sort of cortège conspicuously appear, leading, or bearing, yesterday’s victim, Dr Bitterling. It was clear from the way they towed and coaxed him into a seat that they intended to take the fullest advantage of his injury: their expressions were those of devoted friends suddenly possessed of a most-grindable axe. The doctor, for his part, played his active, though supine role to perfection: unable to speak, he worked his lips with passionate intent and bestowed thankful pats on his helpers. Around his neck they hung a sheaf of blank paper and a pencil on a string: he was thus attired when the President raced in and assumed his dais.

  So loudly did he bang his gavel that all talk ceased abruptly. Only Mr Harcourt, slower of response than his colleagues, was trapped with the end of a sentence ringing through the silence.

  ‘Did you say something, Mr Harcourt?’ demanded the President, looking straight over the top of Dr Bitterling’s head.

  ‘Not above a whisper,’ said Mr Harcourt.

  ‘Then why are you blushing?’

  The members, who couldn’t resist feeling better when one of their number was shown to be worse, forgot about poor Dr Bitterling and stared at Mr Harcourt. He, unfortunate man, had actually turned quite pale; but as a result of the President’s words the blood was now rising slowly over the brink of his pate.

  ‘A damned good start!’ the captain whispered to Beaufort. ‘I take my hat off.’

  The President continued: ‘I heard the word “string”, did I not, Mr Harcourt? What have you to tell us about string? Are you an authority on string?’

  ‘It was strings, not string,’ said Mr Harcourt.

  ‘The plural is of even greater interest. The word that goes with it is “pulling”, is it not?’

  ‘Not always,’ said Mr Jamesworth, smiling winsomely. The denial made him Mr Harcourt’s champion; the smile provided him, he hoped, with a means of dismounting if the battle were too hot. ‘There’s also tangled, multi-coloured, and knotted,’ he said.

  ‘Indeed, Jamesworth?’ replied the President, baring his own teeth in a full-dress smile. ‘You think, then, that Harcourt’s very ordinary mind shares with yours associations of an involved and brilliant kind?’

  The members, delighted to have a second and better victim, laughed most heartily and looked at the President with respect. Mr Jamesworth fell back on the worst and most-degrading phrase: ‘I only said …’ he said.

  ‘Jamesworth only said,’ cried Mr Harcourt desperately, ‘that there was something … that I had a feeling …’

  ‘About what did you, of all people, have a feeling?’ asked the President, raising another laugh.

  ‘It was only a very trifling one. I just said, in quite a low voice and without any confidence, that I had a feeling about this house – a feeling that someone or something was …’

  ‘Pulling strin
gs?’

  ‘Well, frankly, yes.’

  ‘Do you still have this feeling?’

  ‘Oh, Lord, no. It came and went like a flying-saucer.’

  ‘We are glad to hear that, Mr Harcourt. It is not a feeling we encourage in this Club, is it?’

  ‘Certainly not.’

  ‘We don’t want trails of disquiet left by mysterious projectiles, do we?’

  ‘Indeed we don’t.’

  ‘I imagine, sir, that it was a simple case of evasion,’ said Mr Jamesworth, hoping to recoup favour. ‘Harcourt got one of his nervous spasms and tried to project it on the house.’

  ‘You are very talkative this morning, Jamesworth,’ observed the President. ‘Perhaps you would like to ask Dr Shubunkin to put aside the history on which he has worked for so long in order that you may address the session impromptu?’

  This was well received by members, and above all by Dr Shubunkin. Both Beaufort and the Captain were impressed and looked at the wiry, confident President with affectionate respect.

  ‘It had been my intention to start this session off with a few words of praise for you all,’ said the President, pacing the dais. ‘Despite interruption, it remains my intention. A week ago, you were a pretty sorry sight, gentlemen. You were pale, tremulous, excitable, utterly at sea in this place. Today, you are a ruddy, capable body of men, at ease with yourselves, and perfectly at home. The change in your condition is all the more marked in that it is not shared by yesterday’s speaker, who has clearly lacked the stuff and stamina that distinguish the rest of you. However, none of us worries very much about him, any more than we do about the man who fumbles idly with the gas-cock or points a revolver at his head with the safety-catch on. Such a feigned suicide, we know, is a mere gesture, no more than a passing glance through a dark window. And so, gentlemen, I ignore this crippled trifle and press on to congratulate you. I am proud to preside over so stout a body. We have now only to clap upon the strings of Mr Harcourt a mute borrowed from Mr Jamesworth, and all will be well indeed.’

  Clapping and laughter followed. All eyes were fixed admiringly on the President, who strode his elevation like a mannequin in sables.

  ‘Let us now,’ he said, ‘proceed to business. I have only a few more words to say and they are as follows … Last night I lay awake and thought about Dr Shubunkin. I recalled his previous histories. I recaptured as best I could their characteristics – their beautiful naturalness, their marvellous economy, their amazing penetration into the minds of others. Then, I was about to go to sleep when it suddenly occurred to me that by dwelling on these aspects of Shubunkin I had blinded myself to the man. With shame, I recalled that this wise and brilliant doctor was also a most lovable and admirable human being – the type we often saw in our younger days on the cinema-screen – devoted, dutiful, and handsome. If we have not always realized this, it is because Dr Shubunkin’s field is human nature at its most sordid. Sex, a subject which most of us are only too happy to avoid, has been quietly and scrupulously taken over by this gentle, modest scientist. Daily, he plunges his hands into the sulphurous pit and brings them out as white as snow. Only the dedicated are permitted to do this – and Shubunkin has paid for his dedication. We watch him run through his manifold tics, which break from his nervous system much as sparks break in erratic order from aligned combustion units. We note his singular habit of scraping his left eye-tooth with the bloodstone of his signet-ring; we hear his tinny laugh and shrink from his grin. But these, we know, are not the real Shubunkin, who lives beneath these configurations like a gold thing beneath a habit of dross. Gentlemen, let us salute Dr Shubunkin, the model investigator of our times, the untarnished road-maker, the throbbing liver encased in chromium-plate, the prober into the Place of the Skull. Without him and others like him, we would be living in a very different world.’

  The members, having excoriated two, were now in the mood to applaud one, and they hailed Dr Shubunkin with claps and cries. The Shubunkin clique, in particular, went half-mad with enthusiasm and pressed their leader’s hands, which had gone soft and damp with astonishment. Indeed, the doctor was so taken aback that he added a score of brand-new twitches to his usual repertoire, ran through them twice like lightning, and, when at last he rose to speak, did so with an amiable look of hubris oblige.

  DOG’S WAY: A Case of Multiple Sexual Misidentity

  What fun it was in those dear, bygone days to hear mother and father talk sex! ‘Let’s always,’ my father told her, ‘speak frankly about sex before the child, so that we don’t give society a maladjusted dwarf.’ These words are my earliest recollection: I think I was about three at the time. They impressed me because I hated the thought of becoming a maladjusted dwarf, and it seemed that conversation about sex, whatever that might be, was the one thing that would make me grow. So it was not many years before I believed that spoken sex was the same thing as religious salvation and that though people went to it on Sundays and supplicated it at bedtime and even before rising in the morning, it was not a thing which had anything to do with the body. I think I imagined sex as a kind of doctor sitting on a cloud – one whom my father and mother had known very well and whose memory they were determined to perpetuate.

  Some confusion arose, however, when I went to school. We attended church every morning, where I regarded the service as a kind of sex. But in the breaks many odd things were whispered to me which I took to be a secret form of religion. I was puzzled, but decided simply not to think about it too much, because a craze for religion is not a healthy thing in childhood. I didn’t say anything to my father and mother either, because when you know your parents treasure something, you hate to disappoint them by saying you don’t know what it is. In short, I was just like any other child except that I took for granted that sex was a philosophy invented by a friend of my father’s.

  My parents did their best to teach me. They walked about stark naked whenever they could: I can remember coming home on a cold winter’s day and my dear father divesting himself of every stitch. Yes, there were giants in those days.

  When I was being pubescent, both my parents were killed in a railway accident. Dr Shubunkin tells me that this is the railway accident that has carried-off thousands of obtrusive parents ever since Stephenson introduced ‘The Rocket’: before then, he says, it was done with landslides. I wish he had been present to point this out to me when I looked down on those poor, mutilated bodies, fully-clothed for once. It would have made all the difference to know that these corpses were expressions of an old literary tradition and not my parents at all.

  I passed into the care of a minor aunt. At least, I think she was an aunt, though I remember calling her Nunk. I am unsure because it was at this time that I began to treasure the words which were my father’s only bequest to me. ‘Always remember,’ he had said, ‘that there is no such thing as pure male or pure female. Some wear skirts and some wear pants, but this is only convention. Every man is stuffed with womanly characteristics, every woman is fraught with man. The gap between the powder-puff and the cavalry moustache appears wide but is really a hair’s-breadth. I tell you this so that when you grow up and find yourself behaving oddly, as I trust you will, you will know that it is quite apropos. After all, think of dogs.’

  Religion, conversation, and dogs – these were now my idea of the what’s-what of sex. I tried occasionally to fit these puzzling pieces together, but in the end decided to wait till I was older. My aunt encouraged me in this. Knowing what my parents’ view of sex had been, she had braced herself for shocks. Now, I heard her whistle while she shaved.

  She was carried off by consumption, just before the war began. Dr Shubunkin says that this is usually the fate of those who have lost relatives in a railway-accident. There is little point, he explains, in retaining in the flesh one who works much better, from a case-history point-of-view, as a distorted image. The whole world of today, he says, as its painters show, is composed of such ghosts, and the sooner we get rid of actual people the be
tter we feel.

  When I filled out the application-form for war service I wrote against the word SEX, ‘Church of England’. The kindly sergeant kept insisting that this was an improper statement, but when I stood on my principles and refused to alter it he took me to discuss the matter with a young officer, who did his best to persuade me that my obstinacy obstructed the war-effort. ‘You’ve no idea,’ he said, ‘how much classifying becomes necessary in a war. I’m sure your father was right about dogs, but that was in peacetime.’ When I asked him, caustically, if the behaviour-pattern of dogs underwent a sudden, patriotic change when the drums began to roll, he answered firmly that from an official point-of-view it did. I could, he said, take my choice: be a male or a female for the duration and thereafter be as androgynous as I pleased. ‘A pretty pickle we would all be in,’ he declared, ‘if everyone started putting dog-notions on to application forms. I am fully in sympathy with you, because I know how hard it is nowadays to define just what one really is. Our fathers, or mothers, whichever they were, had no such problem to face: it existed, of course, but was not yet recognized. But this is not a defined age, such as theirs was, which means that we who live in it must be all the more definite if we are going to achieve any kind of stability. That is why we have so many forms to fill out, why all the questions seem to have been chosen as a challenge to our ingenuity, and why the world has suddenly become overrun with experts who devote their lives exclusively to defining the indefinable. So if you don’t want to decide on a sex yourself, I’ll refer you to a competent chap who knows about these things and can take the plunge for you.’

  I must have looked alarmed at this suggestion, because he added hastily: ‘My dear girl, please don’t think I’m going to send you for some distressing physical check-up. We live in a wiser England than that, young fellow. You will be defined on wholly immaterial grounds.’