Paradise News

by David Lodge

“This looks exciting,” said Lewis Miller. “What’s going on?”

  Russ Harvey leaned across to explain. “That’s me, being carried out of the sea by Terry and Tony, here. And that’s Cecily, my wife, giving me the kiss of life. Wouldn’t let anyone else touch me, bless her heart.”

  “I learned how to do it in a first-aid course,” said Cecily. “I was in the Rangers. I’ve got a badge.”

  “First thing I remember when I came round, was Cess bending over me, trying to kiss me.”

  “Far out,” said Lewis Miller. “Good as a soap, isn’t it, Ellie?”

  “Could I have that vodka martini?” Ellie said to no one in particular.

  “Coming up!” Roger Sheldrake cried, pushing forward with a trayful of drinks. “Anyone for another Mai Tai?”

  “Then I threw up,” said Russ.

  “God, how gross,” Ellie muttered, averting her eyes from the screen.

  “I wish I’d known you were in Honolulu earlier, Roger,” said Lewis Miller. “You could have talked to my graduate students.”

  “Are you an anthropologist too, then?” Dee asked him.

  “No, a climatologist. Roger and I met at an interdisciplinary conference on tourism.”

  Someone tugged at Bernard’s sleeve. It was Michael Ming. “Excuse me,” he hissed, “but do you get the impression from this conversation that that guy” – he jerked his head in the direction of Sheldrake – “is a college professor?”

  “I know he is,” said Bernard. “Why, what’s the matter?”

  “Only that I don’t usually send college professors complimentary champagne and fruit on a daily basis,” said Michael Ming. “Or send a stretch limo to meet them at the airport. Or have fresh flowers put in their room every evening. I thought he was a journalist.” He wandered away like a man who had been hit on the head by a sock filled with wet sand.

  “Lewis is very big in impact studies,” Sheldrake was explaining to Dee. “He wrote a famous paper showing that the mean temperature of Honolulu rose by 1.5 degrees Centigrade between 1960 and 1980, because of all the trees that were felled to clear the ground for parking lots.”

  “Then Joni Mitchell set it to music,” Lewis Miller joked.

  “Oh, I know that song,” said Sue. She snapped her fingers and sang:

  “‘Paved paradise and put up a parking lot …’”

  “Very good!” cried Lilian Brooks, clapping her hands. “What a lovely voice!”

  “Concrete reflects the heat of the sun, you see. Foliage absorbs it.”

  “Took all the trees and put ’em in a tree museum,

  Charged all the people a dollar and half just to see ’em …”

  Sue closed her eyes and swayed to the rhythm of the song until she fell off her seat. She sprawled on the floor and laughed up at them.

  “You’ve had one Mai Tai too many,” said Dee reprovingly, pulling Sue to her feet.

  “Hey, could you be a little bit quieter?” said Russ. “I want to hear this.”

  On the screen he and Cecily, dressed as they were this evening, were standing with hands joined in front of a smiling Hawaiian man in a white suit. “Do you, Russell Harvey … ” he was saying.

  “Did they get married here in Hawaii?” Lewis Miller whispered.

  “No, they renewed their vowels,” said Sue.

  “Vows,” said Dee. “It’s the Everthorpes who ought to renew their vowels.”

  Sue shrieked with laughter – whether at Dee’s witticism or her own mistake was unclear – and fell off her chair again.

  Ellie drained her drink and stood up. “I have to go now,” she said. “Are you coming, Lewis?”

  “Oh, but you’ve only just come!” Sheldrake protested. “Have another drink. Try a Mai Tai.”

  “I did,” said Ellie. “Once was enough. Lewis?”

  “Roger is leaving tomorrow, Ellie,” Lewis said in a coaxing tone. “We have a lot to talk about.”

  “I thought the four of us might go out to dinner,” said Sheldrake. “Dee and I and you two.”

  “Hawaiian wedding song coming up!” said Brian Everthorpe. Three elderly Hawaiians in matching Aloha shirts appeared on the screen, plucking ukeleles and wailing piteously.

  Sue sat down beside Bernard. “You have to kiss the person next to you at the end,” she confided.

  “I’m sorry, but I have work to do,” said Ellie. “I’ll see you later, Lewis.” She swung her plait over her shoulder, like a lioness swinging its tail, and stalked out of the room.

  “Sorry about that, Roger,” said Lewis Miller. He picked up one of the spare Mai Tais and sucked unhappily on the straw. “Ellie and I had a fight before we came out. Things aren’t too good between us at the moment.”

  “Looking forward to going home?” Sue said to Bernard.

  “Well, I’m not going just yet,” Bernard said. “My father’s still in hospital. But to be honest, I’m in no hurry to get back to Rummidge.”

  “Rummidge! Brian’s business is in Rummidge,” Beryl Everthorpe exclaimed.

  With extraordinary speed, and without apparently moving his hands, Brian Everthorpe produced a business card. “Riviera Sunbeds,” he said. “Any time you want a discount, let me know.”

  “What part of Rummidge?” Beryl asked Bernard, and he was obliged to explain while trying to eavesdrop on Lewis Miller.

  “I think she’s getting ready to dump me,” he was saying, “and to level with you, Roger, it’ll be a relief. I miss my kids. I miss my home. I even miss my wife.”

  “We should all exchange addresses, shouldn’t we?” said Beryl. “Could you lend us a pencil and paper?” she asked Linda Hanama, who came up to them at that moment.

  “Sure.” Linda slipped a sheet of blank paper from her clipboard. “I came over to say that you’re being paged, Mr Everthorpe. There’s somebody at Reception to see you. A Mr Mosca?”

  Brian Everthorpe went pale under his ruddy tan and pressed the stop button on the video machine. Sue gave a little squeak of disappointment as the Hawaiian singers disappeared from the screen.

  “Time we were off, love.” Brian smartly ejected his cassette from the video machine.

  “Oh, but we haven’t exchanged addresses,” said Beryl.

  “And we’re not going to,” said Brian Everthorpe, snatching his business card from between Bernard’s fingers. “Goodnight, all.” He bustled the protesting Beryl out of the room.

  “I must be going too,” said Bernard, getting unsteadily to his feet.

  “Aren’t you going to give us a kiss?” Sue asked him, so he did. “If I didn’t have Des, I could fancy you, Bernard,” she said. “Give my best wishes to your Dad.”

  Bernard found himself in the foyer of the Waikiki Surfrider without any clear recollection of how he had got there. He went up to the desk and collected his key. The clerk gave him an envelope containing a printed message from the hotel manager, expressing the hope that he had enjoyed his stay, and reminding him that checkout time was 12 noon.

  “If I wanted to stay on for another year, would you have a room?” Bernard asked.

  “A year, sir?”

  “Sorry, I mean a week.” Bernard shook his head, and banged on it with his fist. The clerk consulted his computer and confirmed that he could be accommodated for another week.

  In room 1509, Bernard took off his shoes and sat on the bed. From the bedside console he turned off all the lights except the lamp over the telephone. He dialled the number of Ursula’s apartment.

  “Where have you been?” Tess said.

  “I’m sorry. I lost track of the time. What is it?” He peered at his watch. “Good Lord, half-past eight.”

  “You sound squiffy. Are you?”

  “I am a bit. They were very generous with the Mai Tais.”

  “I couldn’t wait any longer to eat. I made myself an omelette.”

  “God, I’m terribly sorry, Tess. That’s omelette two days running.”

  “It doesn’t matter. I didn’t want to go out anyway.
I’m packing.”

  “Packing? What for?”

  “I’m flying home tomorrow. I got a seat on a flight at 8.40 in the morning. Can you run me to the airport?”

  “Of course. But you’ve only just got here!”

  “I know, but … I’m needed at home.”

  “Frank phoned, then?”

  “Yes. Bryony has been sent about her business. Patrick keeps waking Frank up in the middle of the night to ask him where I am.”

  “It seems hard. I thought we could be tourists together for a few days. See Pearl Harbor. Go snorkelling. I have a wallet stuffed with discount vouchers for all kinds of things.”

  “That’s nice of you Bernard, but I must go back before Patrick has a fit. You’ll have to bring Daddy home on your own. I spoke to his doctor at the hospital this afternoon, after you left. He thinks Daddy should be able to travel in about a week’s time.” She proceeded to give him detailed advice about travel arrangements until she suddenly stopped herself. “I don’t know why we’re discussing this on the phone. Where are you, anyway?”

  “I stopped somewhere on the way home. I won’t be long.”

  He rang off and dialled Yolande’s number.

  “Hi,” she said. “How was your day?”

  “I don’t know where to begin.”

  “How did the reunion go?”

  “Rather drunkenly.”

  “Drunkenly? You mean they let you drink booze at St Joseph’s?”

  “Oh, you mean Daddy and Ursula? That went fine. Sorry, I’m a bit confused. I’ve just been to a party, I thought that was what you meant, a party for all the people on the package holiday. They’re going back tomorrow. Probably on the same flight as Tess, come to think of it.”

  “Tess is going back to England tomorrow?”

  “Yes.” He gave her a brief account of Tess’s reasons.

  “Well, it’s her life,” said Yolande. “Personally, I think she’s putting it back in hock. But Ursula and your father got on OK?”

  “Yes. All reconciled, all forgiven. Ursula is content. I told her you would visit her at Makai Manor when I’ve gone. I hope that was all right?”

  “Sure, I’d be glad to.”

  “And I told her she should leave her money to Tess’s Patrick.”

  There was silence at the other end of the line. Then Yolande said, “Why did you do that?”

  “I know you said I shouldn’t. But somehow it was such an extraordinary day, such a satisfying achievement to bring Daddy and Ursula together again, that it seemed important that I shouldn’t benefit materially from it. It’s probably very silly of me.”

  “It’s probably why I love you, Bernard,” Yolande said with a sigh.

  “In that case, I’m glad I did it,” said Bernard. “Oh, and by the way, I met your husband tonight.”

  “What? You met Lewis? How? Where?”

  “At this party. He’d been invited by a chap called Sheldrake.”

  “I don’t believe it. Did you speak to him?”

  “We were introduced, by Sheldrake. I didn’t let on that I knew you, of course. He seemed to be having a row with his girlfriend.”

  “She was there too? Ellie?”

  “For a while. Then she walked out in a huff.”

  “Tell me more!”

  “There isn’t much more to tell. He said he thought she was getting ready to leave him.”

  “He said that?”

  “Yes. And he said he missed you. And the house. And the children.”

  There was another silence at the other end of the line. “Is your sister listening to this, Bernard?” Yolande said at length.

  “No, no. I’m calling from the Waikiki Surfrider. Which reminds me, I have to extend my reservation on the room, or check out, by tomorrow morning. What do you think? I mean, it’s been exciting meeting you here, secretly, anonymously, but I wonder, now that, you know, now that our relationship is more … well, normal, I wonder whether it wouldn’t feel a bit queer going on meeting here … It’s been like a kind of capsule, a bubble in time and space, this room, where there’s no gravity, where the normal rules of life are suspended. Do you know what I mean? And now that Tess is going home, perhaps we could use the apartment. I don’t think I’d feel awkward about that now. What do you think?” He came breathlessly to a halt.

  “I think we’d better cool it, Bernard,” said Yolande.

  “Cool it?”

  “Put our thing on hold. I need time to absorb what you’ve just told me.”

  “So shall I check out of the room?”

  “Yeah. Do that.”

  “All right, I will then.”

  “Look, this doesn’t mean I don’t want to go on seeing you.”

  “Doesn’t it?”

  “Not at all. We can do other things together.”

  “Like Pearl Harbor and the Polynesian Cultural Center?”

  “If you insist. Bernard, you’re not crying, are you.”

  “Of course not.”

  “I believe you’re crying, you big booby.”

  “I’ve had rather too much to drink, I’m afraid.”

  “Bernard, you must understand. I’ve got to think about this new stuff about Lewis. I wish you hadn’t met him. I wish you hadn’t told me.”

  “So do I.”

  “But you did, and I can’t just ignore it. Shit, now you’ve got me crying too. It’s that incorrigible honesty of yours that’s the trouble.”

  “Is that what it is?”

  “Look, I can’t talk any more. Roxy has just come in. I’ll call you tomorrow, OK?”

  “All right.”

  “Goodnight, then, dearest Bernard.”

  “Aloha,” he said.

  She laughed uncertainly. “Are you going native on me?”

  “Hallo, goodbye, I love you.”

  4

  “THE QUESTION FACING the theologian today is, therefore, what can be salvaged from the eschatological wreckage?

  “Traditional Christianity was essentially teleological and apocalyptic. It presented both individual and collective human life as a linear plot moving towards an End, followed by timelessness: death, judgment, hell and heaven. This life was a preparation for eternal life, which alone gave this life meaning. To the question, ‘Why did God make you?’ the Catechism answered, ‘God made me to know him, love him and serve him in this world, and to be happy with him for ever in the next.’ But the concepts and images of this next world which have come down to us in Christian teaching no longer have any credibility for thoughtful, educated men and women. The very idea of an afterlife for individual human beings has been regarded with scepticism and embarrassment – or silently ignored – by nearly every major twentieth-century theologian. Bultman, Barth, Bonhoeffer, Tillich, for example, even the Jesuit Karl Rahner, all dismissed traditional notions of personal survival after death. For Bultmann, the concept of‘translation to a heavenly world of light, in which the self is destined to receive a heavenly vesture, a spiritual body,’ was ‘not merely incomprehensible by any rational process’ but ‘totally meaningless.’ Rahner said in an interview, ‘with death it’s all over. Life is past and it won’t come again.’ In print he was more circumspect, arguing that the soul would survive, but in a non-personal, ‘pancosmic’ state:

  the soul, by surrendering its limited bodily structure in death, becomes open towards the universe and, in some way, a co-determining factor of the universe precisely in the latter’s character as the ground of the personal life of other spiritual corporeal beings.

  This, however, is mere metaphysical doodling. It expresses a preference for a decently abstract concept of the afterlife over a crudely anthropomorphic one, but it is not an afterlife that anyone would eagerly look forward to, or be martyred for.

  “Of course, there are still many Christians who believe fervently, even fanatically, in an anthropomorphic afterlife, and there are many more who would like to believe in it. Nor is there any shortage of Christian pastors eager to encourage
them, some sincerely, some, like the TV evangelists of America, with more dubious motives. Fundamentalism has flourished precisely on the eschatological scepticism of responsible theology, so that the most active and popular forms of Christianity today are also those which are the most intellectually impoverished. The same seems to be true of other great world religions. In this, as in so many other areas of twentieth-century life, the lines of W. B. Yeats hit the nail on the head:

  The best lack all conviction, while the worst

  Are full of passionate intensity.”

  Bernard glanced up from his script to check whether the twenty-odd students in the room were still listening. He was not a good lecturer, he knew that. He could not maintain eye contact with his audience (the slightest flicker of doubt or boredom on their faces would bring him to an abrupt halt in mid-sentence). He could not improvise from notes, but had laboriously to write out the entire lecture in advance, which meant that it was probably too densely packed to take in easily through the ear. He knew all that, but he was too old a dog to learn new tricks; he just hoped that the careful preparation he put into his lectures compensated for the dullness of their delivery. This morning only three or four of the students looked as if they had switched off. The others were looking attentively at him, or writing on their notepads. They were the usual mixed bag of diploma students and casual auditors: missionaries on sabbatical, housewives doing Open University degrees, RE teachers, some African Methodist ministers, and a couple of worried-looking Anglican nuns who, he was pretty sure, would soon be switching to another course. It was only the second week of term, and he knew hardly any of their names yet. Fortunately, after this introductory lecture, the course would proceed in seminar format, which he much preferred.

  “Modern theology therefore finds itself in a classic double bind: on the one hand the idea of a personal God responsible for creating a world with so much evil and suffering in it logically requires the idea of an afterlife in which these things are rectified and compensated for; on the other hand, traditional concepts of the afterlife no longer command intelligent belief, and new ones, like Rahner’s, do not capture the popular imagination – indeed, they are incomprehensible to ordinary laypeople. It is not surprising that the focus of modern theology has turned more and more upon the Christian transformation of this life, whether in the form of Bonhoeffer’s ‘religionless Christianity,’ or Tillich’s Christian existentialism, or various types of Liberation Theology.