by David Lodge
‘Alexander!’ hissed Scarlettofeverini. ‘Will you make a mockery of the Papacy that you take the name of the most infamous man who ever disgraced its annals?’
‘Alexander the Sixth was the last Pope to be the father of children,’ replied the Pope, with marble poise. ‘Let us hope that in these more enlightened times Alexander the Seventh may show such a circumstance is not incompatible with the proper government of the Church.’
Alexander the Seventh! Long may he reign!
This evening Sister Maria of the Sacred Heart, housekeeper to the late Pope, came to me in perturbation. It seems the new Pontiff had requested some Scottish delicacy, compounded of egg and sausage, unknown to the kitchen staff. I recommended that the Scottish College be consulted * * *
* * * After only a few days our new Pope has already won the hearts of the Roman people. At first there was a natural suspicion of this unknown Englishman, but the astonishing sight of the Holy Father riding his diminutive scooter through the streets of Rome, skilfully controlling the machine with his left hand while he scatters blessings with his right, his white robes floating in the breeze like the wings of the Holy Ghost, has endeared him to all and sundry. In particular, it is noted with approval that he favours a scooter of Italian design, albeit an antiquated and unreliable model which, with characteristic humility, he declines to exchange for a new one.
Memo: to confess that I broke my fast today to sample the Scottish egg. Tasty. * * *
* * * This morning the Pope summoned the Sacred College to his chamber to read the draft of his first Encyclical. Entitled De Lecto Conjugale, it is concerned with the role of sexuality in marriage and related problems of birth control, world population problems etcetera. The Pope made moving reference to his own wife, who died in her fourth childbirth, and not a few of Their Eminences were to be observed surreptitiously wiping away a tear with the hems of their glowing robes. Scarlettofeverini, however, waxed more and more indignant as the reading proceeded, and could scarce restrain himself from bursting into protest. The Pope concluded by asserting that, in the present state of theological uncertainty, the practice of birth control by any method was left to the discretion and conscience of the Faithful. At the same time he called for the establishment of clinics in every parish to instruct married Catholics in all available techniques.
‘This is paganism!’ Scarlettofeverini erupted, when the Pope concluded. ‘This is a return to paganism. This is the darkest day in the history of the Church since Luther nailed up his ninety-five theses.’
‘On the contrary,’ replied the Pope, ‘We believe We have forestalled a second Reformation.’
‘Luther would have been on your side today,’ snarled the Cardinal, gathering the skirts of his robes preparatory to a stormy exit.
‘Very likely,’ said the Pope, with a smile. ‘Luther was a married man.’
‘I am the thirteenth child of my mother,’ cried the angry prelate.
‘And the father of none,’ returned the Pope dryly.
Tee hee!
Today, after Vespers, Sister Maria asked me what is this birth control. I told her it did not concern her. Still, I suppose I must find out. * * *
* * * The impact of the new encyclical has been prodigious, despite attempts to have it banned in Sicily and Ireland. The Anglican Church has come over to Rome in a body. So many lapsed Catholics are returning to the practice of their Faith that the churches cannot accommodate them. Gloria in excelsis Deo * * *
‘Hallo, hallo, hallo! Dreaming again, Appleby?’
Adam relinquished his vision with regret, and looked up. ‘Oh, hallo Camel,’ he said.
Camel seated himself beside Adam, and pulled out his pipe. Adam said: ‘Do you like cigars?’
‘Why? Have you got one?’
Adam offered him one of the cigars the American had given him. Camel whistled.
‘Where did you get this?’
‘An American I helped out of a phone booth.’
‘Sounds as if you’ve made a useful friend.’
‘If I was the hero of one of these comic novels,’ said Adam, ‘he would be the fairy-godfather who would turn up at the end to offer me a job and a girl. Don’t suppose I shall ever see him again, actually.’
‘You never know.’
‘Anyway, I’ve already got a girl. That’s the whole trouble.’
‘Still, you could use a job.’
‘In America? It costs about five hundred pounds every time you have a baby, doesn’t it?’
‘Poor old Adam,’ said Camel, drawing appreciatively on his cigar. ‘You really are depressed, aren’t you?’
‘I don’t see the point of my life at all,’ said Adam. ‘The only thing about it that seems really mine is sex—literature has annexed the rest. But sex is my big problem. I don’t have enough of it, and when I do I get sick with worry. For two pins I’d buy twin beds and give myself up entirely to literature.’
‘Don’t do that,’ said Camel.
‘Then I think of people like Pond at it night after night, with text-books open for reference on the bedside table, and it just doesn’t seem fair.’
‘George is an awful liar,’ said Camel. ‘You mustn’t believe all he tells you.’
‘What d’you mean,’
‘Would you like to hear the true story of his limp?’
‘How do you know it?’
‘Oh, it came out over a few more beers. In the pub, after you’d left.’
‘You’re a natural confessor, Camel,’ said Adam. ‘You should have been a priest.’
‘Yes, I’ve often thought I’d enjoy shriving people,’ mused Camel. ‘That’s why I started in psychology when I first came up to college. But I couldn’t do the Maths.’
‘So what’s the true story of Pond’s limp?’ insisted Adam, his curiosity whetted.
Camel exhaled a long plume of blue smoke. The cool breeze off the forecourt blew it back in their faces, surrounding them in an aromatic haze and imparting a smoking-room atmosphere to the chilly, cloistral setting.
‘Well, you know the Ponds have one child, Amanda?’ Camel began.
‘Yes.’
‘For some time they have been considering having another.’
‘Fools.’
‘Have you not observed the unacceptibility of the only child in the contemporary middle-class ethos? Anyway, George and Sally decided to have a second child. But they don’t want more than two.’
‘I should think not.’
‘It is particularly desirable, therefore, that the new infant should be of the male gender. Sally always wanted a boy. George is more concerned with the neatness of the arrangement. No point in duplicating, he says. Now, this is one problem modern science has so far failed to solve. But George, as we know, is as superstitious in sexual matters as he is rational in religious matters. It appears that when they were on holiday in Italy last summer they picked up a bit of local folk-lore to the effect that boys are conceived when the wife is full of desire and the husband fatigued and indifferent, and girls are conceived when the opposite circumstances prevail.’
‘I should have thought it was the other way round,’ said Adam.
‘Quite. The formula has just enough unexpectedness to make it plausible,’ Camel said. ‘Apparently when Italian husbands wish to conceive a boy they visit a brothel before repairing to the matrimonial bed. George thought they ought to follow the prescription faithfully, but Sally wasn’t having any of that. So they worked out an alternative scheme.
‘The day for the experiment was determined by elaborate calculations performed with the aid of a calendar.’
‘Good God,’ Adam interrupted. ‘D’you mean other people go through all that business?’
‘On occasion,’ Camel replied. ‘The fateful day was a Sunday,’ he went on. ‘The idea was to get Sally feeling as sexy as possible and George feeling as exhausted as possible. George complained that it was a pity they hadn’t known about the scheme before Amanda was conceived so that
he could have had his turn at the better half of the deal, but he accepted his role manfully.
‘All day long, Sally lounged about the house in a new negligée she had bought especially for the occasion, while poor old George sweated away in the garden, digging up flower-beds, mowing the lawn and trimming the hedges. At about six, he said that if they didn’t go to bed soon he would fall asleep on his feet; but Sally persuaded him to wait another hour or two, and told him there was a lot of wood in the garden shed which needed chopping. Before she went upstairs to take a leisurely bath, Sally rooted in George’s bookshelves for a sexy book to read in bed, and finally selected a Henry Miller, Tropic of Capricorn I think it was, which she’d heard was highly inflammatory.
‘So, as dusk fell on West Norwood, and the neighbours settled comfortably before their television screens, Sally sat up in bed, bathed, perfumed and powdered, clad in a transparent black nightie, also bought for the occasion, reading Henry Miller; while, in the garden below, George, his hair matted, his shirt soaked with perspiration, furiously chopped wood, swearing occasionally as he nicked his fingers in the poor light.
‘Then, curious things began to happen. Exhausted as he was, George found that the unwonted exercise and fresh air of the day had given him a feeling of health and vigour that he had not experienced for years. As he worked with demonic energy in the gathering dusk, the thought of Sally waiting for him upstairs, stretched out languorously on the four-poster bed in the warm, rosily-lit bedroom, excited him. Even the rank odour rising from his own perspiring body gave him a strange feeling of brutal animal joy. He began to think they would have to change their plans. Still grasping his chopper, he entered the house with the intention of consulting Sally.
‘Meanwhile, back at the boudoir, Sally had been having trouble with Henry Miller, whom she found emetic rather than erotic. Reading on and on with appalled fascination, she was filled with a deepening disgust for human sexuality. With a shock, she realised what was happening to her: she no longer had any inclination for intercourse that night. She threw down her book and jumped out of bed, determining to seek in George’s library something more conducive to the arousal of passion—Fanny Hill, perhaps.
‘Sally reached the head of the staircase just as George reached the foot. At the sight of her husband, tousled, dirty, breathing hard, wielding a chopper, Sally froze. For George, the spectacle of Sally, prettily discomposed, standing against the light in her black transparent nightie, was too much. Gone were all thoughts of conceiving children, male or female. George lunged up the stairs intent on nothing less than rape. With a faint scream, Sally fled to the bedroom, George hot in pursuit. Whether from exhaustion or excess of passion, however, he stumbled, tripped, and fell to the bottom of the stairs, the chopper inflicting a slight flesh-wound on his thigh.’
‘Hence the limp?’
‘Hence the limp. Needless to say, no amorous dalliance took place that night. What makes George madder than anything, apparently, is all the wood he chopped. He’d completely forgotten that they had oil-fired central heating.’
Adam had ambivalent feelings about the story of Pond’s limp. On the one hand, he was bitterly envious of those who enjoyed such confidence in the control of conception that they had reached the point of wanting to plan sexes; on the other, he took a certain heartless pleasure in the fact that those who had reached such refinements in the ordering of their sexual lives were not immune from humiliation and defeat. On balance, he had to acknowledge that Camel had managed to cheer him up, and he followed his friend into the Museum with almost a springy step. Unfortunately, he made the mistake of phoning Barbara again. She was a long time answering the phone.
‘What is it now, Adam?’ she asked wearily.
‘Nothing, darling. I just thought I’d ring up and ask how you were feeling.’
‘I’m feeling lousy.’
‘Oh. No developments?’
‘No. Mary Flynn has gone, and I’m lying down.’
‘How was Mary?’
‘She depressed me. First thing she said when she came to the door was, “Don’t tell me: you’re pregnant.”’
‘Oh my God. Why did she say that?’
‘I don’t know. She thinks she’s pregnant again herself, so perhaps she was just trying to cheer herself up. Actually, we were both crying most of the time she was here.’
‘But she must have had some reason for saying that.’
‘There’s a certain look in the eyes of women who think they’re pregnant. No, two looks: the smug, happy look, and the desperate unhappy look. I have the desperate unhappy look.’
‘So you do think you’re pregnant, then?’ said Adam miserably.
‘I don’t know, Adam. I don’t know any more. I’m sick to death of the whole business.’
‘Why don’t you have a frog-test? Then at least we’d know where we stood. It’s the waiting that gets you down.’
‘Dr. Johnson said last time he wouldn’t prescribe any more tests—not on the National Health, anyway. Besides, by the time the result came through, I’d know anyway.’
Damn! damn! damn! With this unspoken expletive, Adam marked every step he took down the steep and dangerous staircase that led to the Readers’ lavatory. Camel had often told him how, some years before, this convenience had been closed for renovation, compelling scholars belatedly aware, as they rose from their desks to consult the catalogue, of full bladders, to walk a painful distance to the public lavatories in the main building. When the Readers’ lavatory was open again, nothing seemed changed, except that the urinal had been raised on a marble plinth, thus ensuring the collision of the unwary head with the cisterns fixed to the wall. Camel had discovered, however, that this alteration could be turned to advantage: by resting one’s forehead gently against the cistern while relieving oneself, a refreshing coolness was communicated to the aching brow. Adam now followed this procedure as he straddled his legs and unzipped his fly. His head needed soothing. Damn, damn, damn. Another child. It was unthinkable. Not all that again: sleepless nights, wind, sick; more nappies, more bottles, more cornflakes.
He had been fumbling unsuccessfully in his groin for some moments, and was beginning to suspect that he had been drugged and castrated at some earlier point in the day, when he remembered that he was wearing Barbara’s pants. Hastily adjusting his dress, he retired to the privacy of a closet. Squatting there, his ankles shackled in nylon and lace, Adam wondered how they would accommodate another baby in the flat. It comprised only two rooms, plus kitchen and bathroom. One of the rooms had originally been a living-room, but this had long ago become Adam’s and Barbara’s bedroom, while the children occupied the other. This seemed the logical and inevitable design of a good Catholic home: no room for living in, only rooms for breeding, sleeping, eating and excreting. As it was, he was compelled to study in his bedroom, his desk squeezed up beside the double bed, constant reminder of birth, copulation and death. But what would happen now, for a new child could not be accommodated in the children’s room. They would have to take it into their own room. Where, then, would he study? Perhaps he could sit in the bath, with a board across the top . . . But the taps dripped all the time. Besides, the bathroom was the busiest place in the house. They would have to move. But they couldn’t move. Nowhere could they find a bigger flat in London at even double the price. He would have to leave home to make room for the incoming child. Not that he could afford separate accommodation, but perhaps he could live in the Museum, hiding when the closing bell rang and dossing down on one of the broad-topped desks with a pile of books for a pillow.
Damn, damn, damn. Adam plodded up the steep staircase, and returned to the Reading Room. He met the eye of the man behind the Enquiries desk, who gave him a smile of recognition. Enquiries he would like to make passed through Adam’s head: where can I get a three-bedroomed flat at £3 10s od per week? What is the definition of a long sentence? Would you like to buy a secondhand scooter? What must I do to be saved? Adam returned the smile wanly
and passed on.
He paused beside a shelf of reference books, and took down a rhyming dictionary.
I always buy a Brownlong chair . . .
Air, bare, bear, care, dare, e’er, fair, fare, glare, hair, hare, heir, lair, mare, pair, rare, scare, stair, stare, ware, wear, yare.
It’s just like floating in the air
Another chair I couldn’t bear
And then I sit and stare and glare
Like a lion in his lair
Or a tortoise crossed with hare
Or a horse without a mare
Or a man who’s got no heir
Or an heir who’s got no hair
Hypocrite lecteur! mon semblable, mon frère!
Adam replaced the rhyming dictionary, and moved on. Publish, Briggs had said, publish your piece on Merrymarsh. Little did he know it had already been rejected by nine periodicals. It was no use trying to publish criticism, unless you had a name, or friends. Discovering original materials was the only sure way. ‘A Recently Discovered Letter of Shelley’s’. ‘Gerald Manley Hopkins’ Laundry Bills’. ‘The Baptismal Register at Inverness’. That was the sort of thing. Even unpublished manuscripts of Merrymarsh would do the trick, thought Adam, as he slumped into his seat before a heap of Lawrence.
At that moment he simultaneously remembered the strange-looking letter he had received that morning, and knew what it was about. He dug out the envelope, and feverishly tore it open. A rapid perusal of its contents confirmed his intuition.
Dear Mr Appleby,
Thank you very much for your letter. I am delighted to discover that there are still some young people in the world today who are concerned with the higher life, and still interested in the writings of dear Uncle Egbert. I have often tried to get my daughter to read his charming fantasies, like The Return of Piers Plowman and The Holy Well, but she is all too typical of the younger generation.
You ask if I have any unpublished manuscripts or letters of Uncle Egbert’s. It so happens, I do have some papers of his which he gave me just before his death. I should think they would be of the greatest interest to a serious-minded young man like yourself. If you would like to see them I should be only too pleased.
