The Noonday Devil

by Alan Judd

  ‘I don’t fancy men.’

  ‘You lack imagination. Mind you, I’m annoyed by the way they’ve hijacked that pretty little word “gay”. I can’t use it in my poems without being misunderstood.’ He grinned. ‘Or understood. Ever my greatest fear.’

  Robert resolved to leave in half an hour. He would have time to sleep it off and work on the play before his run.

  ‘Then there’s God.’ Chetwynd held out his hand. ‘Say nothing. I know it’s your subject. I don’t enquire whether or not you believe. It depends whether you have the necessary capacity for self-deceit.’

  ‘Do you?’

  ‘Not any more.’

  Robert used to discuss religion with great enthusiasm but now he either avoided it or tried to discuss it in relation to people other than himself. ‘Why did you give up wanting to be a priest?’

  ‘Mundane things like truth and evidence. I was keenly disappointed to find my nature fundamentally and finally empirical. I need reasons to believe and there is none, not a single good reason for believing in any of it. Most priests know that and it doesn’t stop them, I admit, but in the end I just kept banging my head against a kind of integrity, if you can believe that of me.’

  Robert smiled. ‘I can, though I don’t know why. You always do your best to undermine it.’

  Chetwynd held up his hands. ‘I had to acknowledge it because Christianity is so powerfully attractive. It would have seduced me utterly. It’s wonderful. No tradition, no belief is worth so much as the little finger of Christ on the Cross. As an idea it’s irresistible, but the more you look at its basis in fact – and it’s on fact that it claims to base itself, is it not? – the less there is. It dwindles to nothing and you’re left with faithless virtue: believe and it shall improve thee, act as if it is true and truly it shall seem so. You will at least be a better person and you may be granted life everlasting. Maybe. But . . .’

  ‘Are you sure I haven’t said all this to you?’

  Chetwynd spread his hands over his thin face. ‘Almost certainly. I have such a jackdaw mind. If I hear something I like I appropriate it immediately.’ He smiled and his eyes glistened. ‘I’ll tell you what would make me believe. Something apocalyptic. If when I trickle out of here this afternoon the sun is blotted out and the sky becomes a great pair of lips and a mighty voice flattens me to the ground saying, “I AM”, then would I worship. Willingly. But even so I know there’d be a malicious little corner of my heart that would thrill at the thought of all those mewling bishops and clerics having at last to take their own creeds literally. Truly should the righteous suffer.’

  Robert drank. Chetwynd demanded little from his audience apart from attention and in that he demanded absolute fidelity. He remembered nearly everything he said. Next he spoke about thieving. He was an accomplished shoplifter and claimed to do it for the love of it rather than because he had any use for what he took. He hoarded some of what he stole and gave the rest away. Blackwells was his favourite target because they took the most stringent precautions. He boasted that in Hilary Term he had got away with two display copies of Williamson’s Guide to Tropical Diseases.

  ‘I stole a painting from Balliol JCR last night. It’s back there now. Go and see if you can guess which – a test of how well you know me. Balliol louts were in there playing billiards so I had to edge it towards the door behind the chairs while their unappealing bums were thrust towards me. I had to pretend to be asleep in each chair all the way to the door. It took half an hour. It always astonishes me how unobservant people are.’

  His Adam’s apple jerked in his scrawny throat. ‘Just got through the door with the painting under my arm when I met this drunken Marxist who started haranguing me. I dropped the painting and we went up to his room, clinging to each other and competing hoarsely in rhetoric. I pretended I was Polish. There was some Glenfiddich. I can take even the dialectic with that.’ He put his chin to his chest and deepened his voice. ‘I am for Marx. You English capitalist pig. “No, no,” he protests, “I am for Marx too.” Ees not possible for fascist hyena. Polish people do not drink. Filthy capitalist habit. Give me whisky. I look after.’

  He moved his hands slowly across the table. ‘Meanwhile, what do I find but his podgy little paw creeping up my thigh? I waited until it had nearly reached what I still call my private part then leapt to my feet crying, “Ees not Marx! Ees not Lenin! Only the hand of Marx for me!” Then I left, unsteady but intact for once.’ He leant back and laughed loudly, attracting attention. His eyes watered. ‘Of course,’ he added between breaths, ‘Balliol, you see. I should have known.’

  Robert got more Guinness and they moved on to James Joyce and Virginia Woolf. Chetwynd preferred Joyce because he could cope in literary terms with sex. Robert nodded, listened and wondered how many of his acquaintances Chetwynd would wear out during the next two days and night before sinking back into his Old English or Old Norse.

  For some time there had been shouting and chanting in the street outside but the noise in the pub had made it indistinct. The shouting petered out and shortly afterwards the bar was filled by people carrying leaflets and placards. Orpwood was among them, his eyes shining as he expostulated with those near him. The placards denounced the American presence in the Gulf with such slogans as, ‘Stop the Nuclear War’ or ‘Let’s All Be Here Next Year’. They got between drinkers and their beer, were pressed against the ceiling or pushed to the floor until someone suggested stacking them outside and they were passed over heads to the door.

  Orpwood spoke eagerly to a small girl with a deep frown and brown hair cut severely short. Robert had never met her but knew she was Janet Simpson from Somerville. She headed a Trotskyist group and several times interrupted Orpwood with sharp questions, apparently about what had happened outside.

  ‘I fantasise about that woman,’ said Chetwynd. ‘Hard to believe when I look at her but when I can’t I imagine lurking behind a curtain when she’s addressing a meeting, then leaping like a stoat upon her and ravishing her to tumultuous applause. Bet she goes like a rabbit. That’s not a political statement, though I don’t doubt that’s how she’d see it.’

  Robert accepted a pamphlet from a girl in a pink tracksuit. It urged American withdrawal from the Middle East in order not to provoke the Russians, who were there already. There were paragraphs about economic imperialism, and the abuse of sovereignty and an announcement that the Iraqi ambassador was soon to speak at the Oxford Union.

  Janet Simpson finished talking to Orpwood and he squeezed through the crowd to their table. He clutched half a pint and laid the other hand on Robert’s shoulder. ‘I borrowed some paper from your room this morning. Thought you were in because the door was open. I’ll repay you but I had to finish an essay before the demo. Hope that was okay.’

  ‘Fine. It’s always open.’ Robert never locked his door, which anyway opened by itself when the wind was westerly.

  ‘Would you take me to your leader?’ Chetwynd asked politely.

  Orpwood was immediately wary, which was most people’s reaction to Chetwynd. ‘Who do you mean?’

  ‘That woman.’

  ‘Jan? You want to meet her?’

  ‘At least that.’

  Orpwood did not wait for Chetwynd but went off and brought Jan back to their table. She looked quick, intelligent and hard. Undergraduate life had not deprived Robert of all his natural courtesy and he offered her his seat.

  ‘I don’t want that.’

  ‘Are you sure? I’m up now.’

  ‘You don’t have to patronize me.’

  ‘I wasn’t.’

  She nodded at Orpwood. ‘Why didn’t you offer it to him, then?’

  Robert shrugged and sat, trying to mask his resentment with a show of indifference.

  Chetwynd grinned. ‘You may have embarrassed my friend but you won’t embarrass me. Please remain where you are.’

  ‘What do you want?’

  ‘I want you to convert me.’

  ‘To what?’ />
  ‘To your cause. What else? I am so pleased to see the Trots and Marxist-Leninists coming together, so glad the ice axe is buried at last. The popularity of that tactic has always been a problem for my bourgeois conscience, you see, but now that you’re reconciled I feel very much better. So please convert me.’

  ‘Are you taking the piss?’

  Chetwynd looked at his most lugubrious. ‘I assure you I am not. I want you to tell me why you are opposed to nuclear war. That’s a serious matter, surely?’

  Janet stared at him hard but he neither smiled nor looked away. ‘Isn’t it obvious?’ she asked at last. ‘Most people are.’

  ‘It’s not at all obvious to me why anyone should wish to prolong the human tragedy, especially now we can all fry ourselves together. I’d like to be fried with you, by the way.’

  ‘You are taking the piss.’

  ‘I’m waiting for an answer.’

  ‘Ask someone else.’ She glanced at Orpwood and moved away.

  Orpwood was indecisive. He made to follow but Chetwynd took his arm. ‘No hard feelings. Sit and talk. I need some good talk.’

  There was no malice in Orpwood. He liked to get on with people and talked as naturally as he breathed. They shifted someone’s kitbag from the window seat and he squeezed in. The bar was now so crowded that those standing hardly had room to raise their elbows.

  Orpwood was keen to talk about what had happened. ‘We were going to occupy the Sheldonian and hold it till they got the pigs in to boot us out. We had loudspeakers and placards and posters and stuff. The idea was to draw attention to what’s going on in the Middle East, maybe even get on the national news.’

  Robert was irritated with himself for still being resentful of Jan Simpson. ‘Who needs their attention drawn to it? It seems to me no one talks about anything else these days.’

  ‘Well, it’s more than just drawing attention. We’ve got to persuade people to press for a sensible solution, to make their demands heard. I mean, maybe they don’t want to go to war over who pinches whose oil. Or, even if they do, they’re not being given any choice. I mean, do the people of this country really want to risk nuclear war so that the American government can appease its Jewish lobby?’

  Chetwynd slapped his hand triumphantly on the table. ‘Anti-semitism! The Left always is in the end, always. Despite its origins, its Jewish prophets, its proclaimed internationalism – in the end they always go for the Jews.’

  ‘It’s not that, it’s not that at all,’ protested Orpwood. ‘I’m Jewish, my mother’s family came from Hungary and they were all killed by the Nazis.’

  ‘Exactly what I was saying. The Nazis – the left-wing National Socialist Workers’ Party – killed your family. And if they hadn’t Stalin would have. After the revolution they’ll start on you. I’m serious. The Left has to have enemies and the Jews are naturals. I daresay you still think all men are brothers beneath the skin, not beasts. Am I right? Go on.’

  Orpwood’s eyes shone with sincerity. ‘Look, my movement is not anti-semitic. We oppose the aggression of the State of Israel but that’s a different matter. So do many Israelis.’

  Robert hated the emotion generated by a political argument. ‘What happened when you tried to take the Sheldonian?’ he asked.

  Orpwood continued staring, almost pleadingly, until Chetwynd grinned, and he turned to Robert. ‘They were ready for us. We didn’t get in. It was guarded by pigs and proctors. There were even some bulldogs in bowler hats. Amazing – I didn’t realize they still went in for all that. I mean, we could have had a punch-up there and then but we decided to save it. Someone must have talked. Jan reckons there’s a Special Branch spy in the group. She wants him rooted out and dealt with.’

  ‘Dealt with?’ asked Chetwynd.

  ‘Well, it depends. Personally, I think it’s more likely to have been loose talk overheard by fascists like Hansford and his mob.’

  ‘Mad Hansford should be dealt with, of course.’

  ‘That’s what Jan thinks.’

  ‘I’m sure she does. But it’s not because of his politics that I think so. It’s because he’s Hansford.’

  ‘He’s not so bad,’ said Robert. ‘He’s friendly enough. Helpful.’

  Chetwynd raised his eyebrows. ‘So were all the great dictators, in their ways. Fond of dogs, loving fathers, keen amateur historians to a man.’

  ‘Very true,’ said Orpwood.

  ‘Of whom I’m passionately jealous. Jealous of every last one.’

  ‘Jealous?’

  ‘Of course. If you can’t be William Shakespeare – I was thirty-one before I acknowledged I couldn’t – you have to be dictator of the world. It’s the only acceptable alternative. Power is so attractive.’

  Orpwood took it seriously. By the time Robert left the two men had ordered more beer and were arguing about Lenin. Near the door Jan Simpson and some of her supporters were in intense conversation. They talked in low voices and stopped while Robert passed them.

  It was absurd to feel so drunk on two pints, he told himself. The sun made it worse. He would go back, sleep, have tea, go for a run, get on with the play. Another day without work.

  On the other side of the Broad he saw Suzanne and a man he did not know looking in the window of Thornton’s second-hand bookshop. He crossed with a vague notion that by talking to her he would be doing Tim a favour. As he did so he glimpsed the Daimler Majestic he had seen when walking with Anne. He would find out who owned it, perhaps put a note on the windscreen, make an offer. He approached Suzanne with renewed enthusiasm.

  ‘Looking at the covers won’t help. You’ve got to open them. I keep telling Tim that.’

  She was nervously lively. ‘Robert, you’re always creeping up on people. I never see you first.’

  ‘That’s because I’m so drunk I can only come at you sideways.’

  ‘You’re not that drunk.’

  ‘Sort of.’

  She introduced the man as David Long, the classicist she so often mentioned to Tim. He was thick-set and had cheerful, open features. His manner was frank and perceptive. In Robert’s experience there were two kinds of classicists, the mad and the disconcertingly sane. They were all intelligent. David was one of the sane. ‘At least you can enjoy being drunk,’ he said with a smile. ‘And you’re not so drunk you won’t be able to enjoy being sober again.’

  ‘I think he’s just proud to be drunk so early in the day,’ said Suzanne.

  Robert smiled. ‘Not proud. Just postponing the decision whether to work or sleep, though I know already which I’ll choose.’

  Suzanne spun on her heel in exasperation. ‘Why must everyone talk about work the whole time? It’s bad enough doing it without having to hear about it everywhere you go. It’s like some dreadful disease we’ve all got and all we want to hear of is someone in a worse state than ourselves.’

  ‘It’s either work, warm weather or war,’ said David. ‘Though I think war’s becoming rather declassé.’

  ‘I’d sooner talk about the weather, it’s so beautiful,’ said Suzanne. ‘I love the heat. It’s awful having to be inside all the time.’

  Robert tried to see her as Tim might. Her face was pretty but changeable, a provocative, inconstant face. He could see that you might not know where you were with her. At the same time, she looked as if she would readily be tender and affectionate. The gap between her teeth was beguiling, her black hair striking. ‘Take comfort from one of the two worst cases. I’m doing no more work than Tim.’

  She looked archly at him. ‘But, Robert, I always feel better for talking to you, anyway.’

  David Long laughed and turned away.

  ‘Tim tells me you work all the time,’ Robert continued, watching her carefully.

  She stopped smiling. ‘If Tim had his way I wouldn’t be fit to sit a single paper. Is he really not doing any work?’

  ‘None that I know of.’

  ‘Well, he must. Make him.’

  ‘I’ll tell him you said so.�
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  She turned to join David. ‘Don’t say that or he never will.’

  The next few days grew even hotter, and it was the Chaplain’s suggestion that he and Robert held their next tutorial afloat. They took one of the college punts. Robert punted in uneasy silence while the Chaplain reclined in the stern reading Robert’s essay.

  Afterwards, the Chaplain let the sheets of densely written paper slip through his fingers on to the slats in the bottom of the punt. His other hand trailed in the water and he gazed at the river bank as it passed in slow time with Robert’s punting. The Chaplain was almost impossibly handsome, slender with an intelligent sensitive face and very blonde hair. His smile was disarmingly and misleadingly shy.

  ‘It’s not the existential crises, the dark nights of the soul that are the problem,’ he said. ‘There’s no danger of not noticing them. In any case, they represent a spiritual progression, or are supposed to. It’s everyday life, tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow, which is the real enemy. All the mundanities of which our lives are made up, not special, not noticeably evil. Apathy, habits of thinking, habits of feeling, normality. The most dangerous devil is the noonday devil. He makes it seem as if nothing matters. You might do evil because you want to or because it’s wicked or just because it’s different but it doesn’t matter anyway. Nothing matters. He robs life of all value, and because you’re shamed and frightened by that you start to hate yourself, which makes you hate others. You harden your heart and despair, the sin that cannot be forgiven. You hate God. And habit is this devil’s friend. Habit is particularly powerful, it’s what keeps many people going. But we’ve been through all this before.’

  He picked up Robert’s essay and looked again at the flimsy sheets, holding them as if about to let them float away. ‘What you seem to be arguing is that, leaving aside the physical ills of the world, evil is that with which people wrestle in spiritual crises. It may be of supreme importance to them but it remains a purely private affair: you have it and I don’t and there’s an end to it. We are not in the same boat, as it were.’ He smiled. ‘You make it sound like an haphazard and self-centred drama, incapable of generalization, without serious effect or consequence. You seem to be trying to chip away the reality of evil.’