On the other hand, at working-class tea shops—there is one in Woolwich that Littlewood frequents—all the customers put sugar in their tea.
If any of this concerns Hardy, he doesn't show it. He pours out. He does not ask for sugar. Come to think of it, has Littlewood ever once seen Hardy take sugar in his tea? It's as if, his whole life, he's been obeying sumptuary laws of his own invention.
“Ramanujan sends his regards, by the way,” Hardy says.
“And how fares Ramanujan?”
“All right, I think. I wish I could get him to concentrate.”
“Don't make him concentrate too much, though. Is he happy?”
“To be honest, he seems a bit depressed. Perhaps it's all the reading he's doing. My hunch is that he's finally recognizing how much he doesn't know.”
“Then maybe he shouldn't read so much.”
“But even if he didn't, he's too intelligent not to see what he couldn't see in India. Now he realizes that he's handicapped. The very thing that was always his calling card—his lack of schooling—he understands now how it's hurt him.”
“What was it Klein said? Mathematics has been advanced more by those distinguished for intuition than by those distinguished for rigorous methods of proof.”
“Easy for Klein to say, with his education.”
“I think we should just leave Ramanujan in an empty room with a slate and let him come up with whatever he likes.”
“If only. The trouble is, he's ambitious. And this in spite of the goddess Namby-Pamby and the dreams and what have you. You know he still keeps pestering me about the Smith's Prize? An undergraduate prize! And he's getting his B.A. By God, he's determined to take that B.A. back to India with him.”
“B.A.s matter in India.”
“So better a B.A. than proving the Riemann hypothesis? Better a B.A. than immortality?”
“But what is immortality?”
“Whoever proves the Riemann hypothesis will be immortal.”
“The difference between a great discovery and an ordinary one is a difference of kind, not a difference of degree.”
“Ah, but is the difference between a difference of kind and a difference of degree a difference of kind or a difference of degree?”
“The answer is elementary.” Littlewood gazes, for a few seconds, into his tea. Then he says, “Hardy, a few years ago—I never mentioned this at the time, but Norton told me you were writing a novel. A murder novel.”
“That's ridiculous.”
“Well, he said that you were. And in it the victim proves the Riemann hypothesis and the murderer steals the proof and claims it as his own.” Littlewood empties his cup. “It's a very good idea.”
“And when am I supposed to have time to write novels?”
“I just wouldn't want you to think, well, that I'd be bothered if you, let's say, based a character on me. Maybe the murderer. You could work in the ballistics angle. And the tiny sigma.”
“Never listen to Norton. Half of what he says is deranged fantasy. We need more milk.” Hardy looks over his shoulder. “I wish I could get that waitress's attention! They're always looking the other way when you want to signal them! I think they do it on purpose.”
“Are you in a rush?”
“No, I just haven't been to the flat yet.”
“Anne is pregnant.”
Hardy pauses; swallows.
“No need to pretend you don't know about us. She told me this morning.”
“Well, I'm not sure what to say … Are congratulations in order?”
“Decidedly not. She won't marry me. She insists on staying with her husband.” He puts his head in his hands. “Oh, Hardy, what am I to do? It's not that I want to marry her, I can't see us living like the Nevilles on Chesterton Road … But I love her. And the child. Is it wrong of me to want the child to know me as its father?”
“No, it's not wrong … Only if she doesn't want to marry you, what can you do?”
“Nothing. I can't do anything.” He runs his fingers through his hair. “Well, that's it. I just needed to tell someone. I hope you don't mind.”
“Of course not.”
Once again, Hardy tries to signal the waitress. He reached out his arm, and Littlewood takes it in his hand; pushes it, gently, down onto the table.
“Not yet. Just a few minutes. Just wait with me a few minutes. I'm hungry.”
Now Littlewood waves to the waitress. She comes instantly.
“Those pastries look awfully good,” he says. “The ones with the sultanas. I'll have one, please. You too, Hardy?”
“No, I wouldn't—” He coughs. “Oh well, why not?”
“Very good, officer,” the waitress says to Littlewood, backing away, her eyes on his face.
And Littlewood winks.
11
FROM THE TEA SHOP, Hardy turns left and walks to the Underground station. In his pocket is a letter from Thayer. Not much of a letter; then again, Thayer's letters never contain much beyond the basic information (when he has a leave coming up, which day he plans to be in London) and the basic question: at what hour might he call at Hardy's flat “for tea”?Whether Thayer employs this euphemism for the benefit of the censors or to satisfy some standard of his own, Hardy does not know; he only knows that he finds this whole business of answering Thayer's letters—the reply sent to a military address, and consisting solely of a suggested hour for the “tea” appointment, as if he were some benevolent great-aunt—as exciting as it is annoying.
In any case, the system seems to work. Twice, now, they have convened at the flat in Pimlico for early afternoon assignations. The first time Hardy was anxious; he actually took the trouble to purchase biscuits, to boil water and put out the tea things, all of which turned out to be quite unnecessary. No tea was poured. Instead Thayer, almost the instant the door was shut, hurled himself into Hardy, enveloped him in the woolly, wet stink of his greatcoat, pressed his mouth into Hardy's mouth, so that their teeth knocked. Then they were on the floor, clothes were being pulled off so roughly Hardy could hear buttons breaking. That Thayer, as it turned out, wanted to be buggered came as no surprise. Keynes had alerted him to the curious fact that nearly all the soldiers home on leave wanted, when they met up with queers, to take the passive role. “Mind you, I'm not complaining,” Keynes said, “only it does strike one as a bit strange, doesn't it? I'd have thought they'd want to do the buggering, so that they could tell themselves they weren't 'really’ queer, that they were simply taking advantage of an opportunity, cheaper than whores and all that—but no.” Instead, it seemed that they wanted, as one of Keynes's paramours phrased it, “to see what it felt like.” It was as if, after so many weeks in the trenches, after taking lives and nearly dying, they required a more extreme variety of erotic stimulation than ordinary intercourse could provide. Nor was Hardy unwilling to oblige when Thayer got on his knees and thrust his rear end in the air—this despite the fact that, though he had admitted this to none of his friends (not even Keynes), he had never actually engaged in buggery before, his sexual repertoire having been limited to some of the various unnamed “acts of gross indecency” that the law punished with a less severe sentence. Wanking and sucking, though in Hardy's case, much more of the former than the latter, due to his mother's inculcation in him of the belief that germs enter mostly through the mouth. Gaye had laughed at him for that.
And what would Gaye have thought had he seen him that first afternoon with Thayer, on his own knees and thrusting away while Thayer writhed and grunted under him? Indeed, he must have been doing a fairly decent job of the thing, from the way Thayer moaned and swore—so decent a job that for a moment he wondered whether he might not, after all, try having it on with a woman. But no. What he really enjoyed wasn't the fucking itself so much as the obvious paroxysms of pleasure that Thayer was experiencing. Thayer disengaged himself, turned on his back, put his legs on Hardy's shoulders. Now the scar from the shrapnel wound was just to the left of Hardy's mouth—red and jagge
d—and as he plunged into Thayer he could not help running his tongue along the length of it. Thayer howled, shot off. Hardy shot off too. “Damn,” Thayer said, pulling himself back along the length of the floor with his elbows. “My damn leg.”
“Did I hurt you?”
“No, it's just the position I'm in.” Then he stood. He seemed far more naked in the wake of the act than he had in the course of it. “May I wash now?” he asked. And Hardy said that yes, of course he could wash.
And afterward—then he wanted the tea. That was the oddest thing. You might have thought he'd have tried to get out of there as fast as he could, that shame or horror at his own gluttonous passivity would have overwhelmed him. Nothing of the kind. Instead he put his uniform back on, and they sat down to tea and biscuits, and Thayer talked. He talked once again about his sisters, and his parents, and about a girl named Daisy with whom he had for some years had, well, they had known each other for some years and, though nothing had been put into words or writing, it was sort of understood—but now, with the war, was it fair of him to marry her if the likelihood was that he would leave her a widow? But if they waited until the war was over—and who could guess how long that would be?—it would be rather late to start a family, wouldn't it? And he wanted children. He wanted a boy, whom he would name Dick, for his friend Dick Tarlow.
Hardy listened. They might as well have been in the hospital again, with the rain coming through the blinds and the cricket field outside. Then Thayer stopped talking, and looked at his watch, and said, “Well, I'd best be going. I've got to catch the train for Birmingham.” And he got up, and Hardy got up, and they walked to the door, where Thayer put on his greatcoat and turned to him. What Hardy hadn't realized at the hospital was how tall he was. “Look,” Hardy said, “won't you take some—” He was reaching for his wallet. Thayer stopped his hand; shook his head no. “Please,” Hardy said.
“No,” Thayer said. And held out his hand. They shook hands manfully. Suddenly Thayer pulled him close again, kissed him hard enough this time to draw blood. “Ta-ra” was his last word, along with a military salute, before he turned on his heels and went hobbling down the stairs.
This happened twice more. Then, yesterday, another letter arrived. Telegrams were exchanged. Today their appointment is set for two o'clock, and Hardy is eager to get to the flat, to prepare the bed and himself before Thayer arrives.
From Ramanujan he has picked up the habit of going everywhere by tube. Now he descends at Russell Square, rides the Piccadilly Line to South Kensington, then switches to the District, which he takes to Victoria. At the station he buys a packet of biscuits (Bath Oliver, the kind, he has learned, that Thayer likes best) as well as some flowers to put in the vase on the kitchen table. It's a sunny afternoon, albeit a cold one, and while the prospect of seeing Thayer fills him with what he would be willing to call joy, nonetheless an awareness of trouble in the world, in his life, in Littlewood's life, darkens his humor. Increasingly, it seems that one only has these brief moments, and then trouble comes again. And what intensifies his joy at seeing
Thayer, every time he sees Thayer, is of course the blessed fact that Thayer isn't yet dead.
Some crocuses are blooming in St. George's Square. Removing his gloves, he bends down and picks a few, which he adds to the bouquet he's purchased, then trips up the stairs to the flat. He is whistling— what? Something silly, something he must have heard on the wireless somewhere:
For Belgium put the kibosh on the Kaiser;
Europe took the stick and made him sore;
On his throne it hurts to sit,
And when John Bull starts to hit,
He will never sit upon it anymore.
He checks his watch. One-thirty. Only a half an hour, then, to wait until Thayer rings his bell.
He opens the door. A woman screams. From the doorway to the kitchen, Alice Neville stares at him, her hand on her chest.
12
“GOOD GOD ,” Hardy says.
“You terrified me,” Alice says.
“What are you doing here?”
“Didn't Gertrude tell you?”
“Tell me what?”
“That I've been staying here.”
“She most certainly did not.”
“Since last week,” Alice says. “She said she wrote to you and told you—”
“Gertrude knows I don't always read her letters.” (It's true; a side effect of working with Littlewood.)
Alice begins to weep very quietly. “I warned her that this might happen,” she says. “I told her you wouldn't like it once you found out.”
“Oh, for God's sake—”
“But she said it was as much her flat as yours, and so long as I was sleeping in her bedroom—and that you only come on weekends, while on the weekends I go back to Cambridge—”
“I don't only come on the weekends. What kind of absurd notion is that?” (But it's true that the last time he saw her, he told Gertrude he was only coming up on the weekends.)
“Then you must ask Gertrude.”
“Oh, for heaven's sake. Please stop crying.”
She does not stop crying. She takes a handkerchief from her pocket and brings it to her nose. And in the meantime, absurdly, Hardy is still standing in the vestibule, with the door open, and the neighbors, for all he knows, listening in.
“Look, there's no need for this. Please just—just don't wail.” He shuts the door behind him; hangs his coat on the peg; steps past her into the kitchen and lays the flowers, in their wet wrapping of newspaper, on the table. “I can't bear wailing.”
“And how do you think I feel? Here I am, minding my own business, when the door flies open and you—I could have been in my dressing gown.”
“A good thing you weren't.”
He sits down. She remains standing.
“Why are you here, anyway?” he asks.
“I'm working with Mrs. Buxton,” she says.
“Mrs. Buxton?”
“The ‘Notes from the Foreign Press,’ in the Cambridge Magazine. I'm one of her translators.”
“What language?”
“Swedish and German.”
“Swedish! Where on earth did you learn Swedish?”
“In Sweden, as it happens. I spent some time there as a girl. My mother's half-Swedish. I speak French too, but Mrs. Buxton needs more help with the German than the French, because she publishes more from the German press and she's got a surfeit of French translators. Gertrude's working with her, too. Gertrude's doing French.”
“I had no idea.”
“If you'd bothered to read her letters, you'd have known everything.”
Hardy looks at the table. Now that he understands why Alice is in London, he feels a little ashamed at his reaction to finding her in the flat. After all, he can't help but appreciate Mrs. Buxton. Her column in the magazine is practically the only place you can find out what's actually going on in the world. “An intrepid lady,” Russell said the other night in Hall, “and doing a great service, providing an alternative to that bilge in the Times.” So if Alice is working for Mrs. Buxton—well, he has to applaud her.
“Won't you sit down?” he asks.
“No, thank you.”
“Or I could make some tea.”
“Or I could make some tea.”
“Whichever of us makes it, some tea might be in order.”
“I'll make it.” Alice moves toward the stove, where she fills the kettle, femininity trumping ownership.
“And where do you do all this translating?” he asks after a moment.
“Much of it I do here,” she says. She is dry-eyed now. “Though generally I'm in Golders Green in the mornings. That's where the Buxtons live—Golders Green. It's their HQ. I go and collect the articles that Mrs. Buxton has assigned me, and then either I work there—if there's space, it can get awfully crowded—or I take my work and come back here. I've a desk set up in Gertrude's room. With dictionaries.”
“You mean you're here
all week? How long has this been going on?”
“Just a week now. We all need work to do, Mr. Hardy. Especially at this dark hour.”
“Yes, but how does Neville feel about your being gone?”
“He understands. I have to do my part.”
“But doesn't he mind your not being there?”
She wipes her hands on a dishcloth. “Really, Mr. Hardy, there's no need to drop such unsubtle hints,” she says. “It is obvious that my presence here displeases you. Very well, then I—”
“No, it's not that.”
”—then of course I shall, at my earliest convenience, seek other accommodations. However, given the hour, and the fact that the magazine goes to press tomorrow and I've an article due in the morning, I trust you'll give me leave to pass one more night under your roof.”
“It's fine, please—”
“In your sister's bedroom, of course, for which, I should add, I pay her rent.”
“Mrs. Neville, please. It's fine. It's fine if you stay here. I didn't mean—it was just a bit of a shock for me as well, seeing you there, I—I didn't expect it.”
She remains by the stove, back erect, while the kettle sings.
“Needless to say I wouldn't think of doing anything that might interfere with your liberty or incommode you.”
“You're not putting me out. Gertrude's right, usually I am only here on the weekends. Today's an exception. And of course I'm a great admirer of Mrs. Buxton—everyone admires Mrs. Buxton—and I want to do everything I can to support her, and you, in a very noble effort.”
“For which, needless to say, we receive no financial recompense.”
“Needless to say.”
“Well, I'm relieved that you see it that way.” She switches off the kettle; pours the hot water into the pot. “And of course it goes without saying, Mr. Hardy, that I shall stay out of your way. Once I've had my tea I'll lock myself up in Alice's bedroom. I'll be as quiet as a mouse. You won't even know I'm here.”
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