by Lodge, David
“Oh, hallo, Philip,” says Bob Busby. Robyn merely says, “Hallo.” She is always uncertain how to address her Head of Department. “Philip” seems too familiar, “Professor Swallow” too formal, “Sir” impossibly servile.
“Had a good vac, both of you? All set to return to the fray? Jolly good.” Philip Swallow utters these platitudes without waiting for, or appearing to expect, a reply. “What are you up to, Bob?” His face falls as he reads the heading of the notice. “Do you really think a strike is going to do any good?”
“It will if everyone rallies round,” says Bob Busby. “Including those who voted ‘Against’ in the ballot.”
“I was one of them, I don’t mind admitting,” says Philip Swallow.
“Why?” Robyn boldly interjects. “We must do something about the cuts. Not just accept them as if they’re inevitable. We must protest.”
“Agreed,” says Philip Swallow. “I just doubt the effectiveness of a strike. Who will notice? It’s not as if we’re like bus drivers or air traffic controllers. I fear the general public will find they can get along quite well without universities for a day.”
“They’ll notice the pickets,” says Bob Busby.
“A very sticky wicket,” says Philip Swallow.
“Pickets. I said, they’ll notice the pickets,” says Bob Busby, raising his voice against the surrounding hubbub.
“Hmm, mounting pickets, are we? Going the whole hog.” Philip Swallow shakes his head, looking rather miserable. Then, with a slightly furtive glance at Robyn, “Have you got a moment?”
“Yes, of course.” She follows him into his office.
“Have a good vac?” he says again, divesting himself of his coat.
“Yes, thanks.”
“Do sit down. Go anywhere interesting? North Africa? Winter sports?” He grins encouragingly, as if to intimate that a positive reply would cheer him up.
“Good Lord, no.”
“I hear they have very cheap packages to the Gambia in January.”
“I couldn’t afford the time, even if I had the money,” says Robyn. “I had a lot of marking to catch up on. Then I was interviewing all last week.”
“Yes, of course.”
“What about you?”
“Oh, well, I, er, don’t do admissions any more. Used to, of course—”
“No,” says Robyn, smiling. “I mean, did you go anywhere interesting?”
“Ah. I had an invitation to a conference in Florida,” says Philip Swallow wistfully. “But I couldn’t get a travel grant.”
“Oh dear, what a shame,” says Robyn, without being able to work up much genuine compassion for this misfortune.
According to Rupert Sutcliffe, the most senior member of the Department, and its most pertinacious gossip, there was a time not so long ago when Philip Swallow was forever swanning around the globe on some conference jaunt or other. Now it seems that the cuts have clipped his wings. “And quite right, too,” Rupert Sutcliffe declared. “A waste of time and money, in my opinion, those conferences. I’ve never attended an international conference in my life.” Robyn nodded polite approval of this abstention, while privately guessing that Rupert Sutcliffe had not been embarrassed by a large number of invitations. “Mind you,” Sutcliffe added, “I don’t think it’s just lack of funds that has kept him at home lately. I have a hunch that Hilary read him the riot act.”
“Mrs. Swallow?”
“Yes. He used to get up to all kinds of high jinks on those trips, by all accounts. I suppose I ought to tell you: Swallow has a bit of a weakness where women are concerned. Forewarned is forearmed.” Sutcliffe tapped the side of his long nose with his index finger as he uttered these words, dislodging his spectacles and causing them to crash into his tea-cup—for this conversation took place in the Senior Common Room, not long after Robyn’s arrival at Rummidge. Looking at Philip Swallow now, as he seats himself in a low, upholstered chair facing her, Robyn has difficulty in recognising the jet-set philanderer of Rupert Sutcliffe’s description. Swallow looks tired and careworn and slightly seedy. She wonders why he has invited her into his office. He smiles nervously at her and combs a phantom beard with his fingers. Suddenly a portentous atmosphere has been established.
“I just wanted to say, Robyn… As you know, your present appointment is a temporary one.”
Robyn’s heart leaps with hope. “Yes,” she says, interlocking her hands to stop them from trembling.
“For three years only. You’re a third of the way into your second year, with another full year still to run from next September.” He states these facts slowly and carefully, as if they might somehow have slipped her mind.
“Yes.”
“I just wanted to say that, we would of course be very sorry to lose you, you’ve been a tremendous asset to the Department, even in the short time you’ve been here. I really mean that.”
“Thank you,” says Robyn dully, untwining her fingers. “But?”
“But?”
“I think you were going to say something beginning with But.”
“Oh. Ah. Yes. But I just wanted to say that I, we, shouldn’t at all blame you if you were to start applying for jobs elsewhere now.”
“There aren’t any other jobs.”
“Well, not at this moment in time, perhaps. But you never know, something may turn up later in the year. If so, perhaps you should go in for it. I mean, you shouldn’t feel under any obligation to complete the three years of your contract here. Much as we should regret losing you,” he says again.
“What you mean is: there’s no chance of my being kept on after the three years are up.”
Philip Swallow spreads his hands and shrugs. “No chance at all, as far as I can see. The University is desperate to save on salaries. They’re talking about another round of early retirements. Even if someone were to leave the Department, or drop dead—even if you were to, what’s the expression, take out a contract on one of us”—he laughs to show that this is a joke, displaying a number of chipped and discoloured teeth, set in his gums at odd angles, like tombstones in a neglected churchyard—“even then, I very much doubt whether we should get a replacement. Being Dean, you see, I’m very aware of the financial constraints on the University. Every day I have the Heads of other Departments in here bellyaching about lack of resources, asking for replacements or new appointments. I have to tell them that the only way we can meet our targets is an absolute freeze. It’s very hard for young people in your position. Believe me, I do sympathise.”
He reaches out and puts a hand comfortingly on Robyn’s pair. She looks at the three hands with detachment, as if they are a still life. Is this the long-delayed, much-heralded pass? Is there a promotions-and-appointments couch somewhere in the room? It seems not, for Philip Swallow immediately removes his hand, stands up and moves to the window. “It’s no fun being Dean, these days, I can tell you. All you do is give people bad news. And, as Shakespeare observed, the nature of bad news infects the teller.”
“When it concerns the fool or coward.” Robyn recklessly recites the next line from Anthony and Cleopatra, but fortunately Philip Swallow appears not to have heard. He is staring down gloomily into the central quadrangle of the campus.
“I feel as if, by the time I retire, I shall have lived through the entire life-cycle of post-war higher education. When I was a student myself, provincial universities like Rummidge were a very small show. Then in the sixties, it was all expansion, growth, new building. Would you believe our biggest grouse in the sixties was about the noise of construction work? Now it’s all gone quiet. Won’t be long before they’re sending in the demolition crews, no doubt.”
“I’m surprised you don’t support the strike, then,” says Robyn tartly. But Philip Swallow evidently thinks she said something entirely different.
“Exactly. It’s like the Big Bang theory of the universe. They say that at a certain point it will stop expanding and start contracting again, back into the original primal seed. The Robbi
ns Report was our Big Bang. Now we’ve gone into reverse.”
Robyn glances surreptitiously at her watch.
“Or perhaps we’ve strayed into a black hole,” Philip Swallow continues, evidently enchanted with his flight of astronomical fancy.
“If you’ll excuse me,” says Robyn, getting to her feet. “I have to get ready for a lecture.”
“Yes, yes, of course. I’m sorry.”
“It’s all right, only I—”
“Yes, yes, my fault entirely. Don’t forget your bag.” With smiles, with nods, with evident relief that an awkward interview is over, Philip Swallow ushers her out of his office.
Bob Busby is still busy at his bulletin board, rearranging old notices around the new one, like a fussy gardener tidying a flower bed. He cocks an inquisitive eyebrow at Robyn as she passes.
“Is it your impression that Philip Swallow is a bit hard of hearing?” she asks him.
“Oh yes, it’s been getting worse lately,” says Bob Busby. “It’s high-frequency deafness, you know. He can hear vowels but not consonants. He tries to guess what you say to him from the vowels. Usually he guesses what he happens to be thinking about himself, at the time.”
“It makes conversation rather a hit-or-miss affair,” says Robyn.
“Anything important, was it?”
“Oh no,” says Robyn, disinclined to share her disappointment with Bob Busby. She smiles serenely and moves on.
There are several students slouching against the wall, or sitting on the floor, outside her room. Robyn gives them a wry look as she approaches, having a pretty good idea of what they want.
“Hallo,” she says, by way of a general greeting as she fishes for her door key in her coat pocket. “Who’s first?”
“Me,” says a pretty, dark-haired girl wearing an outsize man’s shirt like an artist’s smock over her jeans and sweater. She follows Robyn into her room. This has the same view as Philip Swallow’s, but is smaller—indeed, rather too small for all the furniture it contains: a desk, bookcases, filing cabinets, a table and a dozen or so unstacked stacking chairs. The walls are covered with posters illustrative of various radical causes—nuclear disarmament, women’s liberation, the protection of whales—and a large reproduction of Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s painting, “The Lady of Shalott,” which might seem incongruous unless you have heard Robyn expound its iconic significance as a matrix of male stereotypes of the feminine.
The girl, whose name is Marion Russell, comes straight to the point. “I need an extension for my assessed essay.”
Robyn sighs. “I thought you might.” Marion is a persistent defaulter in this respect, though not without reason.
“I did two jobs in the vac, you see. The Post Office, as well as the pub in the evenings.”
Marion does not qualify for a maintenance grant because her parents are well off, but they are also estranged, from each other and from her, so she is obliged to support herself at university with a variety of part-time jobs.
“You know we’re only supposed to give extensions on medical grounds.”
“Well, I did get a terrible cold after Christmas.”
“I don’t suppose you got a medical certificate?”
“No.”
Robyn sighs again. “How long do you want?”
“Ten days.”
“I’ll give you a week.” Robyn opens a drawer in her desk and takes out the appropriate chit.
“Thanks. Things will be better this term. I’ve got a better job.”
“Oh?”
“Fewer hours, but better pay.”
“What is it?”
“Well, it’s sort of… modelling.”
Robyn stops writing and looks sharply at Marion. “I hope you know what you’re doing.”
Marion Russell giggles. “Oh it’s nothing like that.”
“Like what?”
“You know. Porn. Vice.”
“Well, that’s a relief. What is it you model, then?”
Marion Russell drops her eyes and blushes slightly. “Well, it’s sort of underwear.”
Robyn has a vivid mental image of the girl before her, now so pleasantly and comfortly dressed, sheathed in latex and nylon, the full fetishistic ensemble of brassière, knickers, suspender belt and stockings with which the lingerie industry seeks to truss the female body, and having to parade at some fashion show in front of leering men and hardfaced women from department stores. Waves of compassion and outrage fuse with delayed feelings of self-pity for her own plight, and society seems for a moment a huge conspiracy to exploit and oppress young women. She feels a choking sensation in her chest, and a dangerous pressure in her tear-ducts. She rises and clasps the astonished Marion Russell in her arms.
“You can have two weeks,” she says, at length, sitting down and blowing her nose.
“Oh, thanks, Robyn. That’s super.”
Robyn is rather less generous with the next supplicant, a young man who broke his ankle falling off his motorbike on New Year’s Eve, but even the least deserving candidate gets a few days’ respite, for Robyn tends to identify with the students against the system that assesses them, even though she is herself part of the system. Eventually they are all dealt with, and Robyn is free to prepare for her lecture at eleven. She opens her Gladstone bag, pulls out the folder containing her notes, and settles to work.
3
The University clock strikes eleven, its chimes overlapping with the chimes of other clocks, near and far. All over Rummidge and its environs, people are at work—or not, as the case may be.
…
Robyn Penrose is making her way to Lecture Room A, along corridors and down staircases thronged with students changing classes. They part before her, like waves before the prow of a stately ship. She smiles at those she recognises. Some fall in behind her, and follow her to the lecture theatre, so that she appears to be leading a little procession, a female Pied Piper. She carries under one arm her folder of lecture notes, and under the other a bundle of books from which to read illustrative quotations. No young man offers to carry this burden for her. Such gallantry is out of fashion. Robyn herself would disapprove of it on ideological grounds, and it might be interpreted by other students as creeping.
…
Vic Wilcox is in a meeting with his Marketing Director, Brian Everthorpe, who answered Vic’s summons at 9:30, complaining of contraflow holdups on the motorway, and whom Vic, himself dictating letters at 9:30, told to come back at eleven. He is a big man, which in itself doesn’t endear him to Vic, with bushy sideboards and RAF-style moustache. He wears a three-piece suit with an old-fashioned watch-chain looped across his waistcoated paunch. He is the most senior, and the most complacent, member of the management team Vic inherited.
“You should live in the city, like me, Brian,” says Vic. “Not thirty miles away.”
“Oh, you know what Beryl is like,” says Brian Everthorpe, with a smile designed to seem rueful.
Vic doesn’t know. He has never met Beryl, said to be Everthorpe’s second wife, and formerly his secretary. As far as he knows, Beryl may not even exist, except as an excuse for Brian Everthorpe’s delinquencies. Beryl says the kids need country air. Beryl was poorly this morning and I had to run her to the doctor’s. Beryl sends her apologies—she forgot to give me your message. One day, quite soon in fact, Brian Everthorpe is going to have to concentrate his mind on the difference between a wife and an employer.
…
In a café in a covered shopping precinct at the centre of Rummidge, Marjorie and Sandra Wilcox are sipping coffee, debating what colour shoes Sandra should buy. The walls of the café are covered with tinted mirrors, and soft syncopated music oozes from speakers hidden in the ceiling.
“I think a beige,” says Marjorie.
“Or that sort of pale olive,” says Sandra.
The shopping precinct is full of teenagers gathered in small clusters, smoking, gossiping, laughing, scuffling. They look at the goods in the shiny, illuminated sh
op windows, and wander in and out of the boutiques, but do not buy anything. Some stare into the café where Marjorie and Sandra are sitting.
“All these kids,” says Marjorie disapprovingly. “Wagging it, I suppose.”
“On the dole, more likely,” says Sandra, suppressing a yawn, and checking her appearance in the mirrored wall behind her mother’s back.
…
Robyn arranges her notes on the lectern, waiting for latecomers to settle in their seats. The lecture theatre resonates like a drum with the chatter of a hundred-odd students, all talking at once, as if they have just been released from solitary confinement. She taps on the desk with an inverted pencil and clears her throat. A sudden hush falls, and a hundred faces tilt towards her—curious, expectant, sullen, apathetic—like empty dishes waiting to be filled. The face of Marion Russell is absent, and Robyn cannot suppress a tiny, ignoble twinge of resentment at this ungrateful desertion.
…
“I’ve been looking at your expense account, Brian,” says Vic, turning over a small pile of bills and receipts.
“Yes?” Brian Everthorpe stiffens slightly.
“It’s very modest.”
Everthorpe relaxes. “Thank you.”
“I didn’t mean it as a compliment.”
Everthorpe looks puzzled. “Sorry?”
“I’d expect the Marketing Director of a firm this size to claim twice as much for overnight stays.”
“Ah, well, you see, Beryl doesn’t like being on her own in the house at night.”
“But she has your kids with her.”
“Not during term, old man. We send them away to school—have to, living in the depths of the country. So I prefer to drive back home after a meeting, no matter how far it is.”
“Your mileage is pretty modest, too, isn’t it?”
“Is it?” Brian Everthorpe, beginning to get the message, stiffens again.
