The British Museum is Falling Down

by David Lodge

  ‘Out,’ said the man. ‘She has to collect a wreath.’

  ‘Who for?’ said Adam, eyeing the knife.

  The hairy man was distracted by Virginia. ‘Get back to your room, you,’ he said. Virginia pouted and retreated up the stairs, swinging her hips. ‘Bad lot,’ the man commented. He threw open the door of the sitting-room. The manuscript of Lay Sermons and Private Prayers was on the chair where Adam had left it. ‘You read—I watch,’ said the hairy man. He sat down on the sofa and took out of his pocket a piece of emery paper with which he began to sharpen his knife.

  ‘Where are you from?’ said Adam conversationally.

  ‘Argentina. Mrs said I must not talk. You read—I watch.’

  Adam opened the manuscript at random and stared at it unseeingly for a few minutes. ‘I don’t like reading with someone watching me,’ he said at length. ‘Could you wait outside?’

  ‘No,’ said the hairy man, testing the blade of his knife on his thumb.

  The door opened and Virginia came in.

  ‘I said, get back to your room,’ growled the hairy man. ‘Your ma said you stays in your room till she gets back.’

  ‘All right, Edmundo,’ said Virginia demurely. ‘I just thought I’d tell you there’s an Elizabeth Taylor film on the television.’

  The hairy man stiffened and regarded Virginia suspiciously. ‘I’m not watching telly tonight,’ he muttered. ‘I’m watching him.’

  ‘All right. I just thought I’d tell you,’ said Virginia, making to go out.

  ‘What movie is it, then?’ said the hairy man.

  ‘“National Velvet”,’ said Virginia. ‘Her first big picture—when she was just a girl. Fresh as a flower. Sweet, innocent. You’d love it, Edmundo.’

  ‘I haven’t seen it,’ said the hairy man, licking his lips.

  ‘You could leave the doors open,’ said Virginia. ‘Mr Appleby will be quite safe.’

  The hairy man was silent for a moment. ‘You turn the telly on and go back to your room,’ he said at length. ‘And I’ll see.’

  Virginia went out, leaving the door open. After a minute or two the sounds of hoof-beats and girlish cries were wafted faintly to their ears. Virginia passed in the hall and winked at Adam. They heard her go up the stairs, and her door slammed.

  Two minutes passed: Adam counted them by the mournful tick of the grandfather clock in the hall. Then the hairy man got to his feet. ‘You stay here, right? You want anything, you knock on the wall.’ He demonstrated with the knuckle of his good hand.

  ‘All right,’ Adam said.

  The hairy man thrust the knife into his belt and left the room.

  The clock was striking the quarter hour when Virginia came downstairs again. She poked her head into the sitting-room, her eyes bright.

  ‘Come on,’ she whispered.

  Adam gripped the arms of his chair. ‘What about that man?’ he hissed.

  Virginia beckoned by way of reply. He followed her on tip-toe to the open door of the adjoining room. ‘Look,’ she said.

  Adam peeped in. The hairy man was sound asleep in front of the television set. His mouth was open and he snored gently.

  ‘It never fails,’ said Virginia.

  ‘What about the other two men?’ whispered Adam, as they crept upstairs.

  ‘They’re locked in the basement. Don’t worry about them.’

  ‘Who are they?’

  ‘I told you—butchers.’

  ‘He said he was from Argentina.’

  ‘My father had a meat business there—he brought them over. God knows why—they’re very careless at their job.’

  ‘You mean . . . the fingers?’

  Virginia nodded. ‘Mother runs the business now, though she tries to pretend she doesn’t. Well, here’s my little love nest.’

  She opened the door of a bedroom and switched on the light. Panting slightly from the long climb, Adam went in.

  The room was a teenage slum. The bed, dressing-table and bookshelves evidently provided insufficient surface space for Virginia’s possessions, most of which were strewn over the floor: books, magazines, records, dolls, sweaters, trousers, combs, brushes, cushions, scissors, nail-files, and jars—jars of cold cream, jars of nail polish, jars of bath salts, jars of sweets, even jars of jam. Discarded stockings and underwear had drifted up against one corner of the room. Pinned to the walls were seaside postcards, travel posters, a life-size portrait of the Beatles and a photograph of Virginia in her First Communion dress. It all made her seem much younger than she looked.

  Virginia switched on the bedside lamp and turned off the main light. She locked the door and put her arms round Adam’s waist. ‘Isn’t this fun?’ she murmured, nestling up to him.

  Adam was still holding the manuscript of Lay Sermons and Private Prayers, and he clasped it to his chest as a buffer between himself and Virginia. ‘The papers,’ he said.

  Virginia pouted and disengaged herself. ‘I’m not going to let you read them here,’ she said. ‘You can take them away. Time’s too precious.’

  ‘You promised to let me see them,’ he said.

  ‘Just a peep then.’ She went to a cupboard and took out a hat-box, which she presented to Adam with a curtsy. He opened it, and took out a sheaf of letters rolled up in an elastic band and a thick exercise book. Both letters and book were charred at the edges, and a few flakes of burned paper fell back into the box as he lifted the documents out. He removed the elastic band with great care.

  ‘I can’t see properly,’ he complained. ‘Turn the light on again.’

  ‘Sit on the bed,’ said Virginia.

  He went over to the bed and sat down near the lamp. Virginia joined him and began taking off her stockings. But he was soon lost in his discovery.

  And it was a discovery. The letters were important only as verifying Virginia’s story about Merrymarsh and her mother. Some of them were love letters, written in a mawkish sentimental style with a lot of baby-talk; others were brief notes, assignations, cancellations. But the book—the book was quite another matter. Adam riffled the pages with gathering excitement.

  Entitled Robert and Rachel (pseudonyms for Merrymarsh and Mrs Rottingdean) it told, in the form of Robert’s journal, the story of a middle-aged man’s first love affair. Robert was a bachelor, a man of letters with a modest reputation, a popular apologist for Catholicism. At the age of forty-eight he had nothing to look forward to but a repetition of his existing routine, a gentle decline into the tranquillity of old age, a pious death, respectful obituaries in the Catholic press. Then, by a train of circumstances which seemed improbable though evidently based on fact, he was left alone in his country cottage for several days with a young girl, the niece of his housekeeper. One day he blundered into a room where she was bathing herself. He had never seen a grown woman naked in his life before, and the sight unleashed in him an overpowering desire of which he had never dreamt he was capable. After prolonged and feverish skirmishing, hampered by inexperience and guilt on both sides, they became lovers. Then the housekeeper returned, the niece had to return to London. He begged her to marry him, but she refused, saying they would never be able to respect each other after what had passed. He followed her back to London, and they resumed the relationship, now as mistress and keeper . . .

  At this point the story broke off. There had evidently been another exercise book which had been burned. It was a great pity. Robert and Rachel wasn’t quite a literary work of art: it was feeling crude and unrefined, turned out clumsily from the rough moulds of real experience. There was a kind of embarrassment, a shamefulness in the confessions, from which no detail was spared, of a man whose sexual desire was ignited for the first time at the very moment when his sexual vigour was declining. It wasn’t really art, and of course it hadn’t been intended for publication; but it was unquestionably the best thing Egbert Merrymarsh had ever done. That description of the young girl, for instance, standing nude in the tin tub, her hair falling to her waist . . . As Adam turned
back to read the passage again, the manuscript was snatched from his hands.

  ‘That’s quite enough,’ said Virginia.

  Adam’s protest died in his throat. Virginia was sitting beside him, quite naked.

  ‘You don’t really want to go through with this, Virginia?’ Adam pleaded, pacing up and down the room.

  ‘You promised.’

  ‘No, I didn’t really promise . . . Anyway, your mother may come back at any moment. And that man—’

  ‘She’s gone to a wreath maker in Swiss Cottage and she’ll be gone hours in this fog.’

  ‘What does she want a wreath for, anyway?’

  ‘For Merrymarsh. I think she has a little wreath-laying ceremony in store for you.’

  ‘Good Lord! Where is he buried?’

  ‘You’re deliberately wasting time, Adam,’ she accused him. ‘I’ve kept my side of the bargain. Now it’s your turn.’

  ‘But why? Why? Why pick on me? I’m not the kind of man you’re looking for. I’m no good in bed. I don’t have enough practice.’

  ‘You look kind. And gentle.’

  Adam looked at her with suspicion.

  ‘Have you . . . that is . . . are you a virgin?’

  She flushed. ‘Of course not.’

  ‘How old are you?’

  ‘Nineteen.’

  ‘That’s a lie.’

  ‘Seventeen.’

  ‘How do I know whether to believe you? You might be a minor for all I know.’

  Virginia climbed on to the bed and took down her First Communion picture. She pointed to the record of her age and the date at the bottom.

  ‘All right, so you’re seventeen,’ Adam said. ‘Doesn’t that picture make you feel any shame?’

  ‘No,’ said Virginia.

  ‘Well, for God’s sake put some clothes on,’ said Adam. ‘You make me feel cold.’

  Virginia’s response was to light the gas fire. ‘Is that all I make you feel?’ she said, a little sadly, as she crouched over the fire.

  ‘No,’ Adam admitted, watching the reflected glow of the gas fire deepen on her skin.

  She came towards him radiantly. ‘Take me, Adam,’ she whispered. She took his hand and placed it over her breast. Adam groaned and closed his eyes.

  ‘I can’t, Virginia. I daren’t. I haven’t . . . taken precautions.’

  ‘Don’t worry about that, darling,’ she murmured in his ear. Her breath made his skin tingle. With his free hand he began to stroke her back.

  ‘You mean . . .’ he said hoarsely, letting his fingers slide down her spine.

  ‘I don’t mind taking a chance.’

  He opened his eyes and jumped back. ‘Are you mad?’

  She came after him. ‘I don’t, really I don’t.’

  ‘Well, I do,’ Adam said. He sat down, feeling faint. He had nearly lost control that time. He racked his brains for some further means of procrastination. ‘Have you got a thermometer?’ he said.

  ‘Yes, I think so. Why?’

  ‘If you really want to go through with this, you’ll have to take your temperature.’

  ‘You are a funny man.’ With an air of humouring him, Virginia rummaged in the drawer of her dressing-table and withdrew, from a jumble of broken combs, broken jewellery, broken fountain-pens and broken rosaries, a miraculously unbroken thermometer. He took it from her and, having shaken down the mercury, slid it under her tongue.

  ‘Sit on the bed,’ he ordered.

  She looked like a naughty child, sitting there naked with the thermometer in her mouth. Adam drew up a chair and took a paper and pencil from his pocket.

  ‘Now, how long was the shortest of your last three periods?’ he enquired.

  Virginia spat out the thermometer. ‘I haven’t the foggiest,’ she said. ‘What is this all about?’

  Adam replaced the thermometer. ‘I’m trying to determine whether this is a safe time for relations,’ he explained.

  ‘Not very romantic,’ Virginia seemed indistinctly to say.

  ‘Sex isn’t,’ he snapped back. He plucked the thermometer out and examined it. ‘97.6,’ he announced, and wrote the figure down. He stood up and began to collect the Merrymarsh papers with the air of a doctor at the end of a consultation. ‘Now, if you’ll just go on taking your temperature every night and drop me a line when it rises sharply for three consecutive days, we’ll see what we can do.’ He gave her a bland smile.

  Virginia jumped off the bed.

  ‘You beast, you’re just teasing me.’

  ‘No, no, really.’ He backed away.

  ‘Yes you are. I’ve lost my patience, Adam.’

  ‘Honestly, Virginia, it would be the height of folly—’

  He reversed round the room, with Virginia in hot pursuit. Stockings entangled themselves round his ankles, and jars rolled under his feet. The back of his knees struck the edge of the bed, and he toppled back on to the counterpane. Virginia gave a little shriek of glee and threw herself upon him. He felt her fingers undoing his belt, and his trousers slowly receding. He struggled to retain them, but, on a sudden inspiration, desisted.

  ‘Oh,’ said Virginia. She got up and stepped back. ‘Oh,’ she said again. She snatched up a dressing-gown and held it in front of her. ‘What are you wearing those for?’

  Adam stood up, and his trousers fell to his feet. He fingered the lace on Barbara’s pants. ‘I’ve been trying to tell you all the evening,’ he said in a broken voice. ‘I’m . . . funny that way. I told you I wasn’t the kind of man you’re looking for.’

  Virginia put on the dressing-gown and knotted the cord. ‘You mean, you’re really a woman?’ she said, with wide eyes.

  ‘No, no! I’ve got three children, remember.’

  ‘Then why . . .?’

  ‘Religion has played havoc with my married life,’ he explained. ‘If sex can’t find its normal outlets . . .’ He shrugged, and snapped the elastic on Barbara’s pants.

  The silence that followed this confession was broken by a sudden uproar from downstairs. ‘Mother!’ said Virginia. She opened the door and hung over the bannister. Holding his trousers up with both hands, Adam followed her.

  At the bottom of the stair-well, Mrs Rottingdean could be seen haranguing the hairy man, who was rubbing his eyes stupidly and trying to evade the blows aimed at his head. Mrs Rottingdean was carrying an immense wreath of holly and yew, which she finally pulled over the man’s head. She unlocked the door leading to the basement, and the other two men tumbled out, wielding meat-axes. With dramatic gestures Mrs Rottingdean urged them up the stairs.

  Adam fled back to the bedroom. Virginia followed and locked the door.

  ‘What shall I do?’ said Adam frantically.

  ‘There’s a fire escape,’ said Virginia, throwing up the sash of her widow. ‘I’ll say you went hours ago, while Edmundo was asleep.’

  ‘And the papers?’

  ‘You can keep them,’ said Virginia dejectedly. ‘I don’t suppose I’ll have another chance to use them.’

  Adam scooped up the papers and stepped to the window. ‘I’m sorry, Virginia,’ he said, and implanted a chaste kiss on her forehead.

  Virginia sniffed. ‘And I did so want to be the first sixth-former in St Monica’s to do it,’ she said.

  ‘So you are a virgin after all?’

  She nodded, and two tears trickled down her cheeks.

  ‘Never mind,’ said Adam consolingly. ‘There’ll be other opportunities.’

  Mrs Rottingdean’s myrmidons pounded up the last flight of stairs. ‘You’d better go,’ said Virginia.

  As Adam stepped on to the fire escape, his trousers slipped down again. To save time, he took them off and wound them round the Merrymarsh papers. The fog coiled damply round his bare legs, but he was grateful for its cover. As he cautiously descended the ladder he was conscious of re-enacting one of the oldest roles in literature.

  CHAPTER X

  Now I find the evenings intolerable after the British Museum closes; and thi
nk you might let me have something to read by way of change.

  BARON CORVO (Letter to Grant Richards)

  ADAM CRAWLED WEARILY into the Reading Room just as the bell stridently announced that the Library would close in fifteen minutes. As he sank on to his padded seat everyone around him began standing up, pushing back their chairs, yawning, stretching, sorting their papers and arranging their books. Many of them had been there all day: their countenances were fatigued but contented, conveying the satisfaction of work well done—so many books read, so many notes taken. Then there were the Night People of the Museum—those writing books or theses while holding down day-time jobs. Hurrying from their offices to the Museum through the rush-hour, pausing only to snatch a quick meal at Lyons, they worked through the evening with fierce and greedy concentration. Now they looked reproachfully at the clock, and continued reading even as they stood in line to return their books. Adam felt an imposter in this company, especially when they stood respectfully aside as he carried his huge, tottering pile of unread Lawrentiana to the central counter.

  ‘I want to reserve them all,’ he said, and returned to his desk to collect his belongings. A man tapped him on the shoulder and waved an application slip.

  ‘Mr Appleby, isn’t it? I think you’ve got the press-mark wrong on this one.’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ said Adam, taking the slip. ‘Thank you. I’ll see to it tomorrow.’

  The desk next to his was vacant. Camel had gone home. But he had left a note for Adam.

  The job I have been offered is a fiendish plot to make me finish my thesis. Bane just told me I shall be on probation until I get my Ph.D. Doubtless I shall be the first university teacher to retire while still on probation.—C.

  Adam smiled, and lifted his duffel-coat from the back of the seat. Another note fell out of the hood.

  A new proposal for the statute book—Academic Publications Act: ‘The Government will undertake to subsidise the publication of a monthly periodical, about the size of a telephone directory and printed in columns on Bible paper, which will publish all scholarly articles, notes, correspondence etc. submitted to it, irrespective of merit or interest. All existing journals will be abolished. This will eliminate the element of invidious competition in academic appointments and promotions, which will be offered to candidates in alphabetical order.’ (With your initials you shouldn’t have any trouble.)—C.