by David Lodge
“Isn’t Mr. Boon with you?” was his hostess’s first question when he presented himself at the Hogans’ palatial ranch-style house for their cocktail party. Her eyes raked him from head to foot as though she suspected that he had concealed Boon somewhere on his person. Philip assured her that he had passed on the invitation, as Hogan himself loomed up and crunched Philip’s fingers in a huge, horny handclasp.
“Hi, there, Mr. Swallow, mighty glad to see you.” He ushered Philip into the spacious living-room, where forty or more people were already assembled, and helped him to a gin and tonic of giant proportions. “Now, who would you like to meet? Nearly all English Department folk here, I guess.”
Only one name would come into Philip’s head. “I haven’t met Mr. Kroop yet.”
Hogan went slightly green about the jowls. “Kroop?”
“I’ve read so much about him, in buttonholes,” Philip quipped, to cover what was evidently a faux pas.
“Yeah? Oh yeah. Ha, ha. I’m afraid you won’t see Karl at many cocktail parties—Howard!” Hogan’s enormous paw fell heavily on the shoulder of a sallow, bespectacled young man cruising past with a tumbler of Scotch held to pursed lips. He staggered slightly, but skilfully avoided spilling the drink. Philip was introduced to Howard Ringbaum. “I was telling Mr. Swallow,” said Hogan, “that you don’t often see Karl Kroop at faculty social gatherings.”
“I hear,” said Ringbaum, “that Karl has totally rethought his course on ‘The Death of the Book?’ He’s removing the query mark this quarter.”
Hogan guffawed and thumped Ringbaum between the shoulder blades before moving away. Ringbaum, swaying with the punch, kept his balance and his drink intact.
“What are you working on?” he asked Philip.
“Oh, I’m just trying to sort out my teaching at the moment.”
Ringbaum nodded impatiently. “What’s your field?”
“Yours is Augustan pastoral, I believe,” Philip returned evasively.
Ringbaum looked pleased. “Right. How did you know? You’ve seen my article in College English?”
“I was looking through the Course Bulletin the other day…”
Ringbaum’s countenance darkened. “You don’t want to believe everything you read in that.”
“Oh no, of course… What d’you think of this chap Kroop then?” Philip inquired.
“As little as possible. I’m coming up for tenure myself this quarter, and if I don’t make it nobody around here is going to be wearing RETAIN RINGBAUM BUTTONS.”
“This tenure business seems to create a lot of tension.”
“You must have the same thing in England?”
“Oh no. Probation is more or less a formality. In practise, once you’re appointed they can never get rid of you—unless you seduce one of your students, or something equally scandalous.” Philip laughed.
“You can screw as many students as you like here,” said Ringbaum unsmilingly. “But if your publications are unsatisfactory…” He drew a finger expressively across his throat.
“Hey, Howard!”
A young man dressed in a black grained-silk shirt with a red kerchief knotted round his throat accosted Philip’s companion. He towed behind him a delectable blonde in pink party pyjamas. “Hey, Howard, somebody just told me there’s an English guy at this party who asked Hogan to introduce him to Karl Kroop. I’d love to have seen the old man’s face.”
“Ask him,” said Ringbaum, nodding towards Philip.
Philip blushed and laughed uneasily.
“Oh my God, you aren’t the English guy by any chance?”
“You goofed again, Sy, dear,” said the woman.
“I’m terribly sorry,” said the man. “Sy Gootblatt is the name. This is Bella. You might think by the way she’s dressed that she’s just got out of bed, and you wouldn’t be far wrong.”
“Take no notice of him, Mr. Swallow,” said Bella. “How are you liking Euphoria?”
Of the two questions he was asked at the cocktail party by everyone he met, this was the one he preferred. The other was, “What are you working on?”
“What are you working on, Mr. Swallow?” Luke Hogan asked him when they bumped into each other again.
“Luke,” said Mrs. Hogan, saving Philip from having to think of a reply, “I really think Charles Boon is here at last.”
There was a flurry of activity in the hall, and heads turned all across the room. Boon had indeed arrived, dressed offensively in singlet and jeans, and escorting a handsome, haughty Black Pantheress who was to appear on his programme later that night. They sat in a corner of the room drinking Bloody Marys and giving audience to a neck-craning circle of entranced faculty and their wives. The Pantheress did little except look coolly around at the Hogans’ opulent furnishings as if calculating how well they would burn, but Boon more than compensated for her taciturnity. Philip, who had rather counted on being himself the evening’s chief focus of attention, found himself standing neglected on the fringes of this little court. Disgruntled, he wandered out of the living-room on to the terrace. A solitary woman was leaning against the balustrade, staring moodily at the Bay, where a spectacular sunset was in progress, the orange globe of the sun just balanced, it seemed, on the suspension cables of the Silver Span bridge. Philip took up his stand some four yards away from the woman. “Delightful evening,” he said.
She looked at him sharply, then returned to the contemplation of the sunset. “Yeah,” she said, at length.
Philip sipped his drink nervously. The silent, brooding presence of the woman made him uncomfortable, spoiled his enjoyment of the view. He decided to return to the living-room.
“If you’re going back inside…” said the woman.
“Yes?”
“You might freshen my drink for me.”
“Certainly,” said Philip, taking her glass. “More ice?”
“More ice, more vodka. No more tonic. And look for the Smirnoff bottle under the bar. Ignore the gallon jar of cut-price stuff on the top.”
Philip duly found the concealed Smirnoff bottle and refilled the woman’s glass, rather underestimating the space required for ice, which (inexperienced in handling liquor) he added last. Boon was still talking away in the background, about his plans for a TV arts programme: “Something entirely different… art in action… train a camera on a sculptor at work for a month or two, then run the film through at about fifty thousand frames per second, see the sculpture taking shape… put an object in front of two painters, let them get on with it, use two cameras and a split screen… contrast… auction the pictures at the end of the programme…” Philip topped up his own gin and tonic and carried the two glasses out on to the terrace.
“Thanks,” said the woman. “Is that little shit still shooting off his mouth in there?”
“Yes, he is, actually.”
“You’re not a fan?”
“Definitely not.”
“Let’s drink to that.”
They drank to it.
“Wow,” said the woman. “You mix a stiff drink.”
“I just followed your instructions.”
“To the brim,” said the woman. “I don’t think we’ve met, have we? Are you visiting here?”
“Yes, I’m Philip Swallow—exchanging with Professor Zapp.”
“Did you say Zapp?”
“You know him?”
“Very well. He’s my husband.”
Philip choked on his drink. “You’re Mrs. Zapp?”
“Is that so surprising? You think I look too old? Or too young?”
“Oh, no,” said Philip.
“Oh no which?” Her small green eyes glinted with mockery. She was a red-head, striking but by no means pretty, and not particularly well-groomed. He guessed she was in her mid-thirties.
“I was just surprised,” said Philip. “I suppose I assumed you had gone to Rummidge with your husband.”
“Your wife with you?”
“No.” She responded with a gesture whi
ch implied clearly enough that his assumption was therefore demonstrably unwarranted. “I would have liked to have brought her,” he said. “But my visit was arranged at rather short notice. Also we have children, and there were problems about schooling and so on. And there was the house…” He heard himself going on like this for, it seemed, several hours, as if he were answering a formal accusation in court. He felt increasingly foolish, but Mrs. Zapp somehow kept him talking, involving himself deeper and deeper in implied guilt, by her silence and her mocking regard. “Do you have children yourself?” he concluded desperately.
“Two. Twins. Boy and girl. Aged nine.”
“Ah, then you understand the problems.”
“I doubt if we have the same problems, Mr. Sparrow.”
“Swallow.”
“Mr. Swallow. Sorry. A much nicer bird.” She turned back to contemplate the sun, now sinking into the sea behind the Silver Span, and took a reflective draught from her glass. “Less promiscuous, for instance. How does your wife feel about it, Mr. Swallow, I mean is she with you about the kids and the schools and the house and all? She doesn’t mind being left behind?”
“Well, we discussed it very thoroughly, of course… It was a difficult decision. I left it to her ultimately…” (He felt himself slipping into the groove of compulsive self-justification again.) “After all, she has the worst part of the bargain…”
“What bargain?” said the woman sharply.
“Just a figure of speech. I mean, for me, it’s a great opportunity, a paid holiday if you like. But for her it’s just life as usual, only lonelier. Well, you must know what it’s like yourself.”
“You mean, Morris being in England? It’s great, just great.”
Philip politely pretended not to have heard this remark.
“Just to be able to stretch out in my own bed”—she gestured appropriately, revealing a rusty stubble under her armpit—“without finding another human body in my way, breathing whisky fumes all over my face and pawing at my crotch…”
“I think I’d better be going back inside,” said Philip.
“Do I embarrass you, Mr. Sparrow—Swallow? I’m sorry. Let’s talk about something else. The view. Don’t you think this is a great view? We have a view, too, you know. The same view. Everybody in Plotinus has the same view, except for the blacks and the poor whites on the flats down there. You’ve got to have a view if you live in Plotinus. That’s the first thing people ask when you buy a house. Has it got a view? The same view, of course. There’s only one view. Every time you go out to dinner or to a party, it’s a different house, and different drapes on the windows, but the same fucking view. I could scream sometimes.”
“I’m afraid I can’t agree,” said Philip stiffly. “I could never get tired of it.”
“But you haven’t lived with it for ten years. Wait a while. You can’t rush nausea, you know.”
“Well, I’m afraid that after Rummidge…”
“What’s that?”
“Where I come from. Where your husband’s gone.”
“Oh yeah… What’s it called, Rubbish?”
“Rummidge.”
“I thought you said Rubbish.” She laughed immoderately, and spilled some vodka on her frock. “Shit. What’s it like, then, Rummidge? Morris tried to make out it was the greatest, but everybody else says it’s the asshole of England.”
“Both would be exaggerations,” said Philip. “It’s a large industrial city, with the usual advantages and disadvantages.”
“What are the advantages?”
Philip racked his brains, but couldn’t think of any. “I really ought to go back inside,” he said. “I’ve scarcely met anyone…”
“Relax, Mr. Sparrow. You’ll meet them all again. It’s the same people at all the parties in this place. Tell me more about Rubbish. No, on second thoughts, tell me more about your family.”
Philip preferred to answer the first question. “Well, it’s not really as bad as people make out,” he said.
“Your family?”
“Rummidge. I mean it has a decent art gallery, and a symphony orchestra and a Rep and that sort of thing. And you can get out into the country quite easily.” Mrs. Zapp had lapsed into silence, and he began to listen to himself again, registering his own insincerity. He hated concerts, rarely visited the art gallery and patronized the local repertory theatre perhaps once a year. As for “getting out,” what was that but the dire peregrinations of Sunday afternoons? And in any case, what kind of a recommendation for a place was it that you could get out of it easily? “The schools are pretty good,” he said. “Well, one or two—”
“Schools? You seem really hung up on schools.”
“Well, don’t you think education is terribly important?”
“No. I think our culture’s obsession with education is self-defeating.”
“Oh?”
“Each generation is educating itself to earn enough money to educate the next generation, and nobody is actually doing anything with this education. You’re knocking yourself out to educate your children so they can knock themselves out educating their children. What’s the point?”
“Well, you could say the same thing about the whole business of getting married and raising a family.”
“Exactly!” cried Mrs. Zapp. “I do, I do!” She looked at her watch suddenly, and said, “My God, I must go,” somehow managing to imply that Philip had been detaining her.
Unwilling to make a Noël-Coward-type entrance through the French windows in the company of Mrs. Zapp, Philip bade her good evening and lingered alone on the terrace. When he had allowed her enough time to get off the premises, he would plunge back into the throng and try to find some congenial people who would offer him a lift home and perhaps invite him to share a meal. At that moment he became aware that the throng had fallen eerily silent. Alarmed, he hurried through the French windows and found that the living-room was quite deserted, except for a coloured, or rather black, woman emptying ashtrays. They stared at each other for a few moments.
“Er, where is everybody?” Philip stammered.
“Everybody gone home,” said the woman.
“Oh dear. Is Professor Hogan somewhere? Or Mrs. Hogan?”
“Everybody gone home.”
“But this is their home,” Philip protested. “I just wanted to say goodbye.”
“They gone somewhere to eat, I guess,” said the woman with a shrug, and recommenced her leisurely tour of the ashtrays.
“Damn,” said Philip. He heard the sound of a car starting outside the house, and hurried to the front door just in time to see Mrs. Zapp driving away in a big white station wagon.
…
Morris Zapp was standing at the window of his office at Rummidge, smoking a cigar (one of the last of the stock he had brought with him into the country) and listening to the sound of footsteps hurrying past his door. The hour for tea had arrived, and Morris debated whether to fetch a cup back to his office rather than drink it in the Senior Common Room, where the rest of the faculty would gather to gossip in the opposite corner or peer at him over their newspapers from his flanks. He gazed moodily down at the central quadrangle of the campus, a grassed area now thinly covered with snow. For some days, now, the temperature had wavered between freezing and thawing and it was difficult to tell whether the sediment thickening the atmosphere was rain or sleet or smog. Through the murk the dull red eye of a sun that had scarcely been able to drag itself above roof level all day was sinking blearily beneath the horizon, spreading a rusty stain across the snow-covered surfaces. Real pathetic fallacy weather, Morris thought. At which moment there was a knock on his door.
He swung round startled. A knock on his door! There must be some mistake. Or his ears were playing him tricks. The darkness of the room—for he had not yet switched on the lights—made this seem more plausible. But no—the knock was repeated. “Come in,” he said in a thin, cracked voice, and cleared his throat. “Come in!” He moved eagerly towards the doo
r to welcome his visitor, and to turn the lights on at the same time, but collided with a chair and dropped his cigar, which rolled under the table. He dived after it as the door opened. A segment of light from the corridor fell across the floor, but did not reveal the hiding-place of the cigar. A woman’s voice said uncertainly, “Professor Zapp?”
