by Unknown
wouldn't have gotten involved.'
'Why, Professor Swallow!'
'I suppose it meant absolutely nothing to you?' he said
'Melanie! My dear girl!' He grasped her fondly with bitterly, hanging his head. The sun had dropped behind the both hands. 'Where have you been? Why did you run rooftops and he shivered in a sudden gust of chill wind off away from me ?'
the Bay. The glory had gone from the afternoon.
' I didn't run away from anybody, Professor Swallow.'
'It was one of those things that happen when you get a
'"Philip", please.'
little high. It was nice, b u t . . . you know.' She shrugged.
' I've just been staying here in the city, with a friend.'
'I know it wasn't very successful,' he mumbled. 'But
'A boy friend ?' he asked anxiously.
give me another chance.'
'A girl friend. Her husband's in jail - he's one of the
' Philip, please.'
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'At least have dinner with me here. I must talk...'
3. Corresponding
She shook her head. 'Sorry, Philip. I just can't. I have a date.'
'A date? Who with?'
'Just a guy. I don't know him all that well, actually, so I don't want to keep him waiting.'
' What are you going to do with him ?'
Melanie sighed.' If you must know, I'm going to help him look for an apartment. Seems his roommate freaked out on Hilary to Philip
LSD and burned their place down last night. See you, Philip.'
Dearest,
' He can sleep in my spare room, if you like,' Philip bid Many thanks for your airletter. We were all glad to hear desperately, clutching at her arm.
that you had arrived safely, especially Matthew, who saw Melanie frowned, hesitated.' Your spare room ?'
pictures of an air-crash in America on television and was
'Just for a few days, while he's looking round. Phone him convinced that it was your plane. Now he's worried by your up and tell him. Then come and have dinner with me.'
joke about living in a house that's going to slide into the sea
'You can tell him yourself,' said Melanie.' He's over there at any moment, so will you please put that right in your outside Modern Times.'
next letter.
Philip stared across the gleaming, throbbing river of cars I expect the girls underneath you will take pity on your to the Modern Times Bookshop, once famous as the head-wifeless state and offer to wash your shirts and sew buttons quarters of the Beat Generation. Outside, hunched slightly etc. I can't see you coping with that washing-machine in the against the wind, hands thrust deep into the pockets of his basement. Incidentally I'm afraid our own washing-jeans, making a bulge like a codpiece, was Charles Boon.
machine is making a terrible grinding noise and the service man says the main bearing is going and it will cost £21 to repair. Is it worth it, or shall I trade it in for a new one while it's still working?
Yes, the view, I do remember it so well, though from the other side of the Bay of course - you remember that funny little attic apartment we had in Esseph. When we were young and foolish . . . Ah well, no point in getting sentimental, with you 6000 miles away, and me with the washing up still to do.
Oh - before I forget - I've not been able to find Let's Write a Novel, either here or at the University. Though I couldn't make a really thorough search at the University because Mr Zapp is already occupying your room. I can't say I took to him. I asked Bob Busby how he was settling in, and he said that very few people had seen much of him - he seems to be a
rather silent and standoffish person, who spends most of his surprise, there are signs of trouble on campus. A bomb ex-time in his room.
ploded in the men's John on the fourth floor of Dealer last Fancy your meeting that rogue Charles Boon on the plane, week, presumably intended to go off while one of your and his being such a success out there. Americans are rather colleagues was taking a crap, but the building was evacuated gullible, aren't they?
as the result of a tip-off. The Hogans invited me to a lousy Love from all of us here,
cocktail party, but I didn't talk to anyone much, it was the Hilary
usual crowd of schmucks plus a new one, Charles Boon of the ditto radio show. Oh yes, I nearly forgot, and I met your opposite number, Philip Swallow. I was somewhat slewed Disirie to Morris
by this time and kept calling him Sparrow, but he took it straight on the stiff upper lip. Jesus, if all the British are like Dear Morris,
him I don't know how you're going to survive. He hadn't even Thank you for your letter. Really. I enjoyed it. Especially the bits about Dr O'Shea and about the four different kinds Coincidence: just as I was writing that last sentence, I of electric sockets in your rooms and the Department notice-looked out of the window and who should be walking up the board. The kids enjoyed those bits too.
drive but Mr Swallow himself. Not so much walking, actually, I guess it's the first real letter I've ever received from you as crawling up on his hands and knees. He'd climbed all the
- I mean apart from scrawls on hotel notepaper about way up here on foot from the campus - said it didn't look so meeting you at the airport or sending on your lecture notes.
far on the street map and he hadn't realized that the road Reading it made you seem almost human, somehow. Of was practically vertical. Turned out he was the guy who course, I could see you were trying like hell to be witty and had called about the Corvair and he'd come to look at it.
charming, but that's all right, as long as I'm not taken in.
So it was too bad I'd met him at the Hogans because of And I'm not. Are you receiving me, Morris? i AM NOT
course I had to tell him all about Nader etc. And naturally TAKEN IN.
enough he decided against it. Actually, I felt kind of sorry I'm not going to change my mind about the divorce, so for him. Apparently he's already been conned into renting a please don't waste typewriter ribbon trying to make me.
house built on a slide area so if he'd bought the Corvair he'd And for that matter, don't abstain from sexual intercourse have been a pretty lousy actuarial risk whether he went out on my account, either. There was a hint to that effect in or stayed at home.
your letter, and I'd hate you to feel, when you return, that It is very quiet and pleasant here without you, Morris. I you'd thrown away six months' good screwing for nothing.
have turned the TV to the wall, and spend a lot of time A propos of that, isn't the Lotus Europa you've ordered a reading and listening to classical music on the hi-fi -
somewhat^oang car for you ? I saw one in downtown Esseph Tchaikovsky and Rimsky-Korsakov and Sibelius, all that yesterday and, well, frankly it's just a penis on wheels, isn't Slav romanticism you made me feel ashamed of liking when it? As regards the Corvair, I didn't forget to put a card in we first met.
the Co-op last week, but there's been only one inquiry so far and unfortunately I was out. Darcy took the call and God The twins are fine. They spend a lot of time holed up knows what he told the guy.
together somewhere and I expect they are experimenting The Winter quarter begins this week and, surprise, sexually but figure there's nothing I can do about it. Biology i« their great passion at the moment. They have even de-ISO
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veloped an interest in gardening, which I have encouraged, and I'd hoped that the roses would have been some assurance naturally, by donating a sunny corner of our precipitous that I was alive and kicking and thinking of you. Instead of yard. They send you their love. It would be hypocritical of which they seem to have had the opposite effect. I confess I'd me to do the same.
put back a fair amount of gin the night before, and perhaps Desirec
the roses were a morning-after act of atonement. The cocktail party was given by Luke Hogan, the Chairman of the PS. No, I haven't seen Melanie around. Why don't you Departme
nt, whose wife enlisted my help in coaxing Charles write to her yourself?
Boon to come and be lionized, an irony I could have done without. Among the other guests was Mrs Zapp, extremely tight, and in a highly aggressive mood. I didn't take to her Hilary to Philip
at all, but since then, through an odd coincidence, I've had Dearest,
to revise my estimate somewhat in her favour. I followed up A man from Johnson's came round this morning with an advertisement for a second-hand Chevrolet Corvair, a huge bunch of red roses which he said you had sent by which turned out to be the Zapps' second car. But when Interflora. I said there must be some mistake because it Mrs Zapp recognized me she told me that the Corvair is wasn't my birthday or anything, but he wouldn't take them considered an unsafe model, and very honestly advised me back to the shop. I phoned Johnson's and they said, yes, not to buy it.
you had ordered them. Philip, is anything the matter? It's The Zapps live in a luxurious house, in some disarray not like you. Roses in January must have cost the earth.
when I called, at the top of an incredibly steep hill. There They were hothouse, naturally, and are dying already.
are two young Zapps, twins, called rather preposterously Did you get my last letter about not being able to find Elizabeth and Darcy (Zapp is a Jane Austen man, of course Let's Write a Novel? It seems a long time since we heard from
- indeed the Jane Austen man in the opinion of many). The you. Have you started teaching yet?
gossip here is that their marriage is breaking up, and Mrs I met Janet Dempsey at the supermarket and she said that Zapp intimated as much to me, so I suppose that might Robin was determined to move if he doesn't get promotion account for her rather off-putting manner, and his too, by this session. But surely they can't give him a senior lecture-the sound of it. The divorce rate is fantastically high here.
ship before you, can they? He's so much younger.
It's rather disturbing when one is used to a more stable Write soon, love from
social environment. So is the way everybody, including Mrs Hilary
Zapp, uses four-letter words all the time, even in front of their own children. It's a bit of a shock at first, hearing P S . The noise from the washing-machine is getting worse.
faculty wives and nice young girls saying 'shit' and 'fuck', as one might say' Gee whizz', or ' darn it'. Rather like one's first week in the army.
Philip to Hilary
I confess I had something of the raw-recruit feeling when I Darling,
went to meet my classes for the first time this week. The I was stricken with guilt as soon as I saw your second air-system is so different, and the students are so much more letter this morning. Mea culpa, but it has been a rather hectic heterogeneous than they are at home. They've read the week, with the term, or quarter as they call it, beginning; most outlandish things and not read the most obvious ones.
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123
'
I had a student in my room the other day, obviously very please, and offer to come down a couple of hundred dollars.
bright, who appeared to have read only two authors, Offer green stamps and a tankful of gas, too, if that will help.
Gurdjieff (is that how you spell him ?) and somebody called Desir6e, your letter did nothing to lighten a heavy week.
Asimov, and had never even heard of E. M. Forster.
It isn't true after all that there are no students at British I'm teaching two courses, which means I meet two groups universities: this week they returned from their prolonged of students three times a week for ninety minutes, or would Christmas vacation. Too bad, I was just beginning to get the do if it weren't for the Third World Students' strike. There's hang of things. Now the teaching has thrown me back to a student called Wily (sic) Smith, who claims he's black, square one. I swear the system here will be the death of me.
though in fact he looks scarcely darker than me, and he Did I say system ? A slip of the tongue. There is no system.
pestered me from the day I arrived to let him enrol in my They have something called tutorials, instead. Three creative writing course. Well, I finally agreed, and then on students and me, for an hour at a time. We're supposed to the first occasion the class met, what d'you think happened?
discuss some text I've assigned. This, apparently, can be Wily Smith harangued his fellow students and persuaded anything that comes into my head, except that the campus them that they must support the strike by boycotting my bookshop doesn't have anything that comes into my head.
class. There's nothing personal in it, of course, as he was But supposing we manage to agree, me and the students, on kind enough to explain, but it did seem rather a nerve.
some book of which four copies can be scratched together, Well, darling, I hope the length of this letter will make up one of them writes a paper and reads it out to the rest of for my remissness of late. Please assure Matthew that my us. After about three minutes the eyes of the other two glaze house is not about to slide into the sea. As to Robin Demp-over and they begin to sag in their chairs. It's clear they sey, I think it's unlikely that he'll get a senior lectureship have stopped listening. I'm listening like hell but can't
<• I
this year, promotion prospects being what they are at understand a word because of the guy's limey accent. All too Rummidge, but not through any competition with me, I'm soon, he stops. 'Thank you,' I say, flashing him an appre-afraid. He has published quite a lot of articles.
ciative smile. He looks at me reproachfully as he blows his All my love,
nose, then carries on from where he paused, in mid-sentence.
Philip
The other two students wake up briefly, exchange glances and snigger. That's the most animation they ever show.
When the guy reading the paper finally winds it up, I ask for comments. Silence. They avoid my eye. I volunteer a Morris to Disirie
comment myself. Silence falls again. It's so quiet you can All right, so you're determined to divorce me, Desiree. OK, hear the guy's beard growing. Desperately I ask one of them so you hate my guts, but don't break my heart. I mean, a direct question. 'And what did you think of the text, Miss punish me if you must, but there's no need to be downright Archer ?' Miss Archer falls off her chair in a swoon.
sadistic about it. Unless you're joking. You're joking, yes?
Well, to be fair, it only happened once, and it had some-You didn't really throw away the chance to sell the Corvair thing to do with the kid's period that she fainted, but some-to Swallow? You didn't actually advise him NOT to buy it?
how it seemed symbolic.
Swallow - very probably the only prospective purchaser of Believe it or not, I'm feeling quite homesick for Euphoric a used Corvair in the State of Euphoria. If by any chance State politics. What this place needs is a few bomb outrages.
Mr Swallow is still thinking it over, get on the phone at once, They could begin by blowing up the Chairman of the 124
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1
English Department, one Gordon Masters, whose main content merely to pour scorn on my arguments and my interest is murdering wildlife and hanging the corpses on the evidence and my accuracy and my style, to make my walls of his office. He was captured at Dunkirk and spent article out to be some kind of monument to imbecility and the war in a PO W camp. I can't imagine how the Germans perversity in scholarship, no, he wanted my blood and my stood him. He runs the Department very much in the spirit balls too, he wanted to beat my ego to a pulp.
of Dunkirk, as a strategic withdrawal against overwhelming Of course I need hardly say that the author was complete-odds, the odds being students, administrators, the Govern-ly out of his mind, that his account of my essay was a traves-ment, long hair on boys, short skirts on girls, promiscuity, ty, and his own arguments riddled with false assumptions Casebooks, ball-point pens - just about the whole modern and errors of fact that a child could have seen through. But, world, in short. I knew he was mad the first
time I saw him, but - this is the turn of the screw - there's nothing I can do or half-mad, because it only shows in one eye and he's about it. I mean I can't write to the TLS saying, in the cunning enough to keep it closed most of the time, while he usual style, 'My attention has been drawn to a review pub-hypnotizes the faculty with the other one. They don't seem lished in your journal four years ago . . .' I should just look to mind. The tolerance of people here is enough to turn ridiculous. That's what bugs me about the whole business -
your stomach.
the time-slip. It's only just happened to me, but to everybody If you notice a certain acidity in my prose today, and else it's history. All these years I've been walking around hypothesize some wound inflicted on that tender plant, my with a wound I never knew had been inflicted. All my pride, you wouldn't be far wrong, Desiree, my dear. I was in friends must have known - they must have seen the knife the Library today, looking through the files of The Times sticking out between my shoulder-blades - but not one Literary Supplement for something, when quite by chance I sonofabitch had the decency to tell me. Afraid I'd bite their turned up a long review of that Festschrift for Jackson fucking heads off, I suppose, and so I would have done, but Milestone that I contributed to in '64, remember? No, of what are friends for anyway? And my enemy, who is he?
course, you make a point of forgetting anything I have Some PhD student I flunked? Some limey scholar whose written. Anyway, take my word for it, I wrote a dashing book I chewed up in a footnote ? Some guy whose mother I piece on 'ApoUonian-Dionysian Dialectic in the novels of ran over in my car without noticing? Do you remember, Jane Austen' for this collection, but for some reason I had Desiree, any exceptionally heavy bump in the road, driving never seen this particular review before. Naturally I somewhere four or five years ago ?
