changing-places-david-lodge

by Unknown

  I see I've slipped unconsciously into the past tense, I suppose be-

  garden, then you have to admit that there does seem to be

  cause I can't conceive of returning to that kind of relationship. Which

  something wrong with the system. In the same way, the idea

  is not to say that I want a divorce or separation, but simply that if we

  of the Garden may have been a political stratagem to those

  are going to go on together it will have to be on a new basis. Life,

  who conceived it, but perhaps it's become an authentic and

  after all, should go forwards, not backwards. I'm sure it would be a

  valuable idea in the process of being realized. I hope you

  good idea if you could come out here for a couple of weeks so that you

  don't think I've evaded your question.'

  could understand what I'm trying to say in context, so to speak, and

  'No,' said the voice in his earphones. 'No. That's very

  make your own mind up about it all. I'm not sure I could explain

  interesting. Tell me, Professor Swallow, has anything like

  myself in Rummidge.

  this ever happened at your own University in England ?'

  Incidentally, as regards Disirie: she has no claims on me, nor I on

  'No,'said Philip.

  her. I'll always regard her with affection and gratitude, and nothing

  * Thanks for calling,' said Boon.

  could make me regret our relationship, but of course I'm not asking

  'Thank you,' said the caller.

  you to come out and join a menage a trois. I'll be moving into my

  Boon flicked the switch that controlled the open line and

  own apartment soon. ..

  intoned his station identification into the mike. His left arm Yes, that should do it, Philip thought, as he paid his bill. I was in plaster and bore the legend, 'Broken by Arcadia won't send it off just yet, but when the time comes, that County Sheriff's Deputies, Saturday May 17th, at Shamrock should do very nicely.

  and Addison. Witnesses needed.'' Uh, we have time for just one or two more calls,' he said. The red light flashed. 'Hallo 196

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  and good evening. This is Charles Boon, and my guest, flashed again, and he said O K , they would take one last Professor Philip Swallow. What's on your mind ?'

  call. The voice sounded distant, but quite clear.

  This time it was an old lady, evidently a regular caller, for

  'Is that you Philip?'

  Boon rolled one eye in despair at the sound of her slow,

  'Hilary!'

  quavering voice.

  * 'At last!'

  'Don't you think, Professor,' she said, 'that what young

  ' Good God! Where are you ?'

  folks need today is some college courses in self-control and

  'At home, of course. You can't imagine the trouble I've self-denial ?'

  had getting through.'

  •Well-'

  'You can't speak to me now.'

  'It's now or never, Philip.'

  'Now, when I was a girl - that was a while ago, I can tell Charles Boon was sitting up tensely in his seat, clutching you, heh heh . . . Would you like to guess how old I am, Pro-his earphones with his free hand as if he had just picked up a fessor?'

  conversation from outer space. The engineer behind the Charles Boon cut in ruthlessly: ' O K Grandma, what is it glass screen had stopped yawning and was making frantic you're trying to tell us? A girl's best friend is N-O spells signals.

  N O ? '

  'This is a private call that's been put through by mistake,'

  After a brief silence, the voice quavered, 'Why, bless my Philip said.' Please disconnect it.'

  soul Mr Boon, that's exactly what I was going to say.'

  'Don'tyou dare, Philip,' said Hilary. 'I've been trying for

  ' What about that, Phil ?' said Charles Boon.' You got any a whole hour to get through to you.'

  views on N-O spells NO as a panacea for our times?' He

  ' How in God's name did you get the number ?'

  took a swig from the Coke bottle in front of him, and gave a

  'Mrs Zapp gave it to me.'

  practised silent burp. Through the glass panel to Boon's left

  'Did she happen to mention that it was the number of a Philip could see the sound engineer yawning over his knobs phone-in programme ?'

  and dials. The engineer looked, ungratefully, rather bored.

  'Eh? She said you were anxious to get in touch with me.

  Philip wasn't in the least bored. He had enjoyed the broad-Was it about my birthday ?'

  cast enormously. For nearly two hours he had been dis-

  'My God, I forgot all about that.'

  pensing liberal wisdom to the audience of the Charles Boon

  ' I t doesn't matter in the least.'

  Show on every conceivable subject - the Garden, drugs, law

  'Look, Hilary, you must get off this line.' He leaned and order, academic standards, Viet Nam, the environment, across the green baize table to reach the control switch, but nuclear testing, abortion, encounter groups, the Under-Boon, grinning demonically, fended him off with his plaster ground press, the death of the novel, and even now he had cast and made signals to the engineer to turn up the volume.

  enough energy and enthusiasm left to find a word on the His vagrant eye was shooting in all directions with excite-Sexual Revolution for the old lady.

  ment. 'What is it you want, Hilary?' Philip asked anguish-

  'Well,' he said, 'sexual morality has, of course, always edly.

  been a bone of contention between the generations. But

  'You've got to come home at once, Philip, if you want to there's more honesty, less hypocrisy about these matters than save our marriage.'

  there used to be, and I think that must be a good thing.'

  Philip laughed, briefly and hysterically.

  Charles Boon couldn't stand any more of this. He cut off

  ' Why do you laugh ?'

  the old lady and started to wind up the show. The red light 198

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  ' I was writing to tell you more or less the same thing.*

  with a prolonged fart that nearly lifted him off the mattress.

  ' I'm not joking, Philip.'

  It was his customary salute to the dawn; something about

  'Neither am I. By the way, have you any idea how many Rummidge, the water probably, gave him terrible wind.

  people are listening to this conversation ?'

  His ears twitched at the sound of a footfall on the landing.

  Hilary? He leapt out of bed, rushed to the window, flung

  ' I don't know what you're talking about.'

  it open and furiously flapped the bedclothes.

  ' Exactly, so will you kindly get off the bloody phone.'

  'If that's the way you feel about it . . . I just hope you All wasted effort. The feet belonged to Mary Makepeace: understand that I'm very probably going to have an affair.'

  he recognized her heavy pregnant tread. For a moment he'd thought Hilary had relented and was going to slip into his

  ' I ' m having one already!' he cried. 'But I don't want to room for a quick roll in the hay before reveille. He slammed tell the whole world about it.'

  the window shut and hopped shivering back to bed. How That finally stopped Hilary. There was a gasp, a silence close, actually, he'd come to getting into the sack with and a click.

  Hilary last night.

  'Terrific,' Charles Boon said, when the red and green She'd been blue because it was her birthday and Swallow lights went out and the mike was dead at last. 'Terrific.

  hadn't sent her a gift, not even a goddam card. 'When I Sensational. Fantastic radio.'

  don't want them he sends me roses by Interflora, then he The weather forecast had predicted sunny spells, and
the goes and forgets my birthday,' she complained with a first of them woke Morris early, shining straight on to his crooked smile. 'He's hopeless about things like that. Usually face through the thin cotton drapes. Sunny spells. 'Who is the children remind him.' To cheer her up, Morris invited casting these sunny spells?' he used to ask his Rummidge her out for a meal. She .demurred. He pressed. Mary sup-acquaintances.' What kind of a witch wastes her time casting ported him, also Amanda. Hilary allowed herself to be sunny spells?' Nobody else seemed to think it was funny, persuaded. Took a shower, washed her hair, and changed however, and now even he was getting used to the quaint into a fetching black maxi that he hadn't seen before, with a meteorological idiom. 'Temperature about the seasonal low-cut neckline that showed off the smooth creamy texture average.' 'Rather cool.' 'Scattered showers and bright of her shoulders and bosom.' Hey, you look terrific,' he said periods.' The imprecision of these terms no longer bothered sincerely, and she blushed right down to her cleavage. She him. He accepted that, like so much British usage, it was a kept fiddling with her shoulder straps and hitching a shawl language cf evasion and compromise, designed to take the round her shoulders until she'd had a second dry martini, drama out of the weather. No talk of'lows' or 'highs' here: after which she leaned negligently forward across the res-all was moderate, qualified, temperate.

  taurant table and didn't seem to mind his taking long appreHe lay on his back for a while, eyes closed against the ciative looks down inside her dress.

  sunlight, and against the almost equally blinding floral He took her to the one tolerable trattoria in Rummidge, wallpaper adorning the walls of the Swallows' guest room, and afterwards to Petronella's, a small club in a basement listening to the house rousing itself for a new day, the whole near the station where they usually had decent music and structure stretching and groaning like a flophouse full of old the clientele were not too oppressively adolescent. This men. The floorboards creaked, the plumbing whined and evening the entertainment was provided by a so-so folk-throbbed, doorhinges squeaked and windows rattled in their blues group called Morte D'Arthur with a wistful girl frames. The noise was deafening. Morris added his quota singer who sang pastiches of recordings by Joan Baez and SOI

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  other vocalists of that ilk; but it could have been worse, a

  ' I'll be glad to see the twins again. But it may be the last heavy rock band for instance which Hilary wouldn't have time. You know Ddsir^e wants a divorce.'

  liked at all. She seemed to enjoy herself, anyway, looking Hilary's eyes filled with ginny tears.' I'm sorry,' she said.

  round at the Tudor-adobe decor wonderingly, and ap-He shrugged and put on his stoical, weary, Humphrey plauding enthusiastically after each song, saying, 'I never Bogart expression. There was a rose-tinted mirror behind knew there were places like this in Rummidge, however did Hilary's head in which he was able to make small, un-you discover it?' He didn't like to point out that Petronel-obtrusive adjustments to his face when he wasn't occupied in la's and a dozen places like it were advertised every evening looking down Hilary's neckline.

  in the local paper, it would have seemed like a put-down,

  ' Isn't there a chance of a reconciliation ?' she asked.

  but it was a fact that Hilary and her peer group simply

  'I was hoping this trip of mine would swing it. But by the didn't see most of what was happening in the city around way she's been writing, her mind's made up.'

  them. There was, believe it or not, a Rummidge scene of

  ' I'm sorry,' she said again.

  sorts, though you had to search quite hard for parts of it -

  The girl in Morte D'Arthur was singing 'Who Knows the gay clubs, for instance, or the West Indian dives in the Where The Time Goes?' in a very passable imitation of Arbury ghetto - but there were other parts, almost as Judy Collins.c You and Philip ever have a n y . . . problems ?'

  interesting, that were accessible enough. For instance, the he risked asking.

  cocktail bar of the Ritz, Rummidge's best hotel, on a Satur-

  'Oh, no, never. Well, I say never -' She stopped, em-day night, when the car-workers gathered with their wives barrassed.

  and girl friends for the conspicuous consumption of alcohol.

  He reached across the table and covered her hand with However high the hotel pegged its prices in an effort to his.' I know about Melanie, you know.'

  maintain a classy atmosphere, the car-workers could match

  'I know.' She stared at his big, brown hand, hair luxu-them. They gathered round the tables or perched at the riant on the knuckles. It looked like a bear's paw, De'sire'e bar, the women balancing their huge beehive wigs, towering used to say, but Hilary didn't flinch. 'That was the first like cumulus cloud above their stocky, broad-shouldered time,' she said.

  escorts who sat stiffly, calloused horny hands sticking out of

  ' How do you know ?'

  their sharp new suits, ordering round after round of dai-

  'Oh, I know.' She looked up at him. 'I'm sorry it'had to quiris, whisky-sours, White Ladies, Orange Blossoms, and be your daughter.'

  special inventions of Harold, the prize-winning barman -

  If there was a correct formula for accepting this kind of Mushroom Cloud, Supercharger, Fireball and Rummidge apology, Morris couldn't think of it. He shrugged again.

  D e w . . . ' I'll take you there some time,' he promised Hilary.

  'And you've forgiven him for that ?' he said.

  'Goodness, you do seem terribly aufait with everything,

  * Oh yes. Well, I think so.'

  Morris. Anyone would think you'd lived in Rummidge for

  ' I wish De'sire'e was as understanding as you,' he sighed.

  years.'

  ' Perhaps she has more to forgive ?' she said timidly.

  ' Sometimes it feels like that,' he joked mildly.

  He grinned rakishly. 'Perhaps.'

  'You must be looking forward to going back to Euphoria.'

  The girl vocalist had been joined by the lead and bass

  'Well, I don't know. I'll be sorry to miss the first Rum-guitars and they were singing 'Puff the Magic Dragon' in midge Grand Prix.'

  imitation of Peter, Paul and Mary. The lead guitar was the

  'Surely the climate... and your family?'

  weak link in the ensemble, Morris decided. Perhaps he was aoa

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  Arthur. In which case the group's name was a consummation

  'Where else? When else? Tomorrow I go back to devoutly to be wished. 'Shall we move on to some other O'Shea's. The roof is fixed.'

  place?' he said. Now that the pubs were shut, Petronella's

  ' I know. I'm sorry Morris.'

  was filling up with less refined customers, heavy drinkers

  'Come on, Hilary, let yourself go. Relax. You're all and the odd hooker. Any minute now Morte D'Arthur tensed up. Let me give you a little massage.' He moved up would finish their set, and a rowdy disco would begin. There behind her, and placed his hands on the back of her neck.

  was a roadhouse Morris knew that had a juke box loaded He began to work his fingers into Hilary's shoulder muscle.

  exclusively with forties swing records.

  But she did not relax, held her head rigid and averted, so

  ' I think we should be going home,' Hilary said.

  that in the mirror they resembled a tableau of a strangler He glanced at his watch. 'What's the hurry? Mary is and his victim. ' I ' m sorry, Morris, I just couldn't,' she baby-sitting.'

  murmured.

  ' Even so. I'm getting drowsier and drowsier. I'm not used

  ' O K , ' he said coldly, and left her, immobile before the to drinking this much in an evening.'

  mirror.

  In the Lotus, she let her head fall back against the headA few minutes later they met again on the landing, coming restraint and closed her eyes. 'It's been a lovely evening, and going between their bedrooms and the bathroom.
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  Morris. Thank you so much.'

  Hilary was in nightdress and dressing-gown, her face shiny

  'It's my pleasure.' He leaned across and kissed her with face-cream. He must have looked grim and resentful, experimentally on the lips. She put her arms round his neck because she put a hand on his arm as he passed.

  and responded with relaxed enjoyment. Morris decided to

  ' Morris, I'm sorry,' she whispered.

  take her home after all.

  'Forget it.'

  The household was asleep when they got back, and they

  ' I wish I could . . . I wish . . . You've been so kind.' She tiptoed around without speaking. While Hilary was laying swayed against him. He caught and kissed her, slipped his the breakfast table ready for the next morning, Morris hand under her gown and was going great when a floor-went to the bathroom, briskly washed his private parts and board creaked somewhere nearby and she tore herself brushed his teeth, changed into clean pyjamas and silk away from him and rushed back into her room. Nobody was kimono, and waited expectantly in his room until she around, of course. It was just the goddam house talking to mounted the stairs. He gave her a few minutes, then quietly itself as usual. Hilary said it was the central heating that crossed the landing and entered the bedroom. Hilary was caused the ancient wood to shrink and expand. Could be.

  sitting at the dressing-table in her slip, brushing her hair.

  There were huge gaps between the floorboards in the guest-She turned round, startled.

  room, through which a delicious aroma of bacon and coffee

  'What is it, Morris?'

  now began to percolate from the kitchen below. Morris

  'I thought maybe I would sleep in here tonight. Isn't decided it was time to get up.

  that what you had in mind ?'

  He found Mary Makepeace cooking breakfast for the She shook her head, aghast.' Oh no, I couldn't.'

  three children in one of Hilary's button-through overalls that scarcely met across her bulging stomach.

  •Why not?'

  ' What did you do to Hilary last night ?' she greeted him.

  'Not here. Not with all the children in the house. And

  ' What d'you mean?'

  Mary.'

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