by David Lodge
“You’re a romantic, Percy, you know that? You ought to write poetry. This is the street: Gittings Road.”
“My aunty’s street,” said Persse.
Morris Zapp stopped in the middle of the pavement. “That’s a remarkable coincidence,” he said. “What’s your aunty’s name?”
“Mrs. O’Shea, Mrs. Nuala O’Shea,” said Persse. “Her husband is Dr. Milo O’Shea.”
Morris Zapp performed a little jig of excitement. “It’s him, it’s him!” he cried, in a rough imitation of an Irish brogue. “It’s himself, my old landlord! Mother of God, won’t he be surprised to see the pair of us.”
“Mother of God!” said Dr. O’Shea, when he opened the front door of his large and gloomy-looking house. “If it isn’t Professor Zapp!”
“And here’s your nephew from the Emerald Isle, Percy McGarrigle, come to see his aunty,” said Morris Zapp.
Dr. O’Shea’s face fell. “Ah, yes, your mammy wrote, Persse. But I’m afraid you’ve missed Mrs. O’Shea—she left for Ireland yesterday. But come in, come in. I’ve nothing to offer you, and surgery starts in twenty minutes, but come in.” He ushered them into a chilly parlour, smelling faintly of mildew and mothballs, and switched on an electric fire in the hearth. Simulated coals lighted up, though not the element. “Cheerful, I always think—makes you feel warm just to look at it,” said the doctor.
“I’ve brought you a little duty-free hooch,” said Morris Zapp, taking a half-bottle of scotch from his raincoat pocket.
“God love you, it’s just like old times,” groaned Dr. O’Shea. He got down on his knees and groped in a sideboard for glasses. “The whisky flowed like water,” he confided in Persse, “when Professor Zapp lived here.”
“Don’t get the wrong idea, Percy,” said Morris Zapp. “It’s just Milo’s way of saying I usually had a bottle or two of Old Grandad in the cupboard. Here’s looking at you, Milo.”
“So where’s Aunty Nuala?” Persse enquired, when they had sunk the whisky, and O’Shea was refilling their glasses.
“Back in Sligo. Family troubles.” Dr. O’Shea shook his head gravely. “Her sister is very bad, very bad. All on account of that daughter of hers, Bernadette.”
“Bernadette?” Morris Zapp cut in. “You mean that black-haired kid who was living with you when I had the apartment upstairs?”
“The same. Do you know your cousin Bernadette, Persse?”
“I haven’t seen her since we were children. But I did hear rumours of a scandal.”
“Aye, there was a scandal, all right. After she left us, she went to work in a hotel in Sligo Town, as a chambermaid in a hotel there, and one of the guests took advantage of her. To cut a long story short, she became pregnant and was dismissed.”
“Who was the guy?” said Morris Zapp.
“Nobody knows. Bernadette refused to say. Of course, when she came home, her parents were very shocked, very angry.”
“Told her never to darken their doorstep again?” said Morris Zapp.
“Not in so many words, but the result was the same,” said Dr. O’Shea. “Bernadette packed her bags and left the house in the middle of the night.” He paused impressively, drained his glass, and drew the back of his hand across his mouth, making a rasping sound on his five-o’clock shadow. “And niver a word has been heard of her since. Her mother’s gone into a decline with the worry of it. Of course, what we all dread is that Bernadette went to London to get rid of the baby in one of them abortion clinics. Who knows, she may have died that way, in a state of mortal sin.” Jumping rather hastily to this sad conclusion, Dr. O’Shea crossed himself and sighed. “Let us hope that the good Lord gave her the grace to repent at the last.”
In the hall a telephone began to ring.
“That’ll be the surgery, wanting to know what’s become of me,” said Dr. O’Shea. He stood up, and stooped to switch off the illumination of the electric fire.
“We’ll be on our way,” said Morris Zapp. “Nice to see you, Milo.” Outside the house, he turned and surveyed the top storey of the house with a sigh. “I had the apartment up there—Bernadette used to clean it. Poor kid, she was kind of cute, even if she had lost all her teeth. It makes me mad to hear of girls getting knocked up in this day and age. You’d think that the guy, whoever he was, would have taken precautions.”
“You can’t obtain contraceptives in Ireland,” said Persse. “It’s against the law to sell them.”
“Is that right? I guess you’ll be filling your suitcase with, what do they call condoms here, Durex, right?”
“No,” said Persse. “I believe in premarital chastity for both sexes.”
“Well, it’s a nice idea, Percy, but if you want my opinion, I don’t think it will catch on.”
They separated at the corner of Gittings Road, since Morris Zapp was going to the Swallows’ house, not far away, and Persse was returning to the halls of residence. “Will you be going to the theatre tonight?” Persse asked.
“No, Philip Swallow warned me against it. I guess I’ll have an early night, catch up on my jet-lag. Take care.”
Persse hurried back to Martineau Hall, but found that he was too late for dinner, which had been brought forward because of the theatre outing. “Never mind, love, it wasn’t very nice,” said the lady with yellow curls, laying out breakfast things in the empty dining-room. “Shepherd’s Pie, made from lunchtime’s leftovers. There’s some biscuits and cheese left if that’s any use to you.”
Gratefully cramming cream crackers and cheddar cheese into his mouth, Persse hurried to the foyer of Lucas Hall. Dempsey, spruce and expectant in a dark brown blazer and grey flannels, was standing near the door.
“Are you going to the theatre?” Persse asked. “I need a lift.”
“Sorry, old man, my car’s full. There’s a coach leaving from the bottom of the drive. If you run, you’ll probably catch it.”
Persse ran, but did not catch it. As he stood at the gates of the hall site, wondering what to do, Dempsey swept by at the wheel of a Volkswagen Golf, spattering Persse with slush. Angelica was in the front passenger seat. She smiled and waved. There was nobody in the back seat.
It was cold, and growing dark. Persse turned up the collar of his anorak, thrust his hands into his pockets, and set off in the direction of the city centre. By the time he found the Repertory Theatre, a large futuristic concrete structure near the Town Hall, the performance of Puss in Boots was well under way, and he was ushered to his seat while a man, dressed apparently as Robin Hood, was coaching the audience in hissing whenever they saw the wicked Baron Blunderbuss appear. There followed a duet for the Miller’s son and the princess with whom he was in love; a slapstick comic interlude in which two incompetent decorators, who were supposed to be papering the King’s parlour, covered each other with paste and dropped their implements repeatedly on the King’s gouty foot; and, as a finale to the first act, a spectacular song and dance number for the whole company, entitled “Caturday Night Fever,” in which Puss in Boots triumphed in a Royal Disco Dancing competition at the Palace.
The lights went up for the Interval, revealing to Persse the bemused countenances of his fellow conferees. Some declared their intention of leaving immediately and looking for a good film. Others tried to make the best of it—“After all it is the only genuinely popular form of theatre in Britain today, I think one has a duty to experience it oneself”—and some had obviously been enjoying themselves immensely, hissing and clapping and joining in the sing-songs, but didn’t want to admit it. Of Angelica and Dempsey, however, there was no sign.
Searching for them in the crowded foyer, Persse encountered Miss Maiden, who presented a striking figure among the drab provincial throng, wearing a fox-fur stole over a full-length evening dress, and wielding opera glasses mounted on a stick. It struck Persse that she must have been a very handsome woman in her prime. “Hallo, young man,” she said. “How are you enjoying the play?”
“I’m finding it very hard to follow,”
he said. “What is Robin Hood doing in it? I thought Puss in Boots was a French fairy tale.”
“Pooh, pooh, you mustn’t be so literal-minded,” said Miss Maiden, tapping him reprovingly with her rolled-up programme. “Jessie Weston describes a mumming play performed near Rugby in Warwickshire, of which the dramatis personae are Father Christmas, St. George, a Turkish Knight, the Knight’s mother Moll Finney, a Doctor, Humpty Jack, Beelzebub and Big-Head-and-Little-Wit. What would you make of that?”
“Nothing very much, I’m afraid.”
“It’s easy!” Miss Maiden cried triumphantly. “St. George kills the knight, the mother grieves, the Doctor brings him back to life. It symbolizes the death and rebirth of the crops in winter and summer. It all comes back to the same thing in the end: the life-force endlessly renewing itself. Robin Hood, you know, is connected to the Green Man of medieval legend, who was originally a tree-god or nature spirit.”
“But what about this show?”
“Well, the gouty King is obviously the Fisher King ruling over a sterile land, and the miller’s son is the hero who restores its fertility through the magic agency of Puss in Boots, and is rewarded with the hand of the King’s daughter.”
“So Puss in Boots is equivalent to the Grail?” Persse said facetiously.
Miss Maiden was not discomposed. “Certainly. Boots are phallic, and you are no doubt familiar with the vulgar expression ‘pussy’?”
“Yes, I have heard it occasionally,” said Persse weakly.
“It is a very ancient and widely distributed metaphor, I assure you. So you see the character of Puss in Boots represents the same combination of male and female principles as the cup and spear in the Grail legend.”
“Amazing,” said Persse. “It makes you wonder that they allow children to see these pantomimes. By the way, Miss Maiden, have you seen Angelica Pabst and Professor Dempsey this evening?”
“Yes, I saw them leaving the theatre just before the performance started,” said Miss Maiden. “They’ll be sorry when they hear what they’ve missed. Ah, there’s the bell. We must get back to our seats.”
Persse did not return to his seat, but left the theatre and made his way back to Lucas Hall. He took the lift to the top floor, which was dark and deserted, since it had not been necessary to accommodate anyone so far from the ground. The building consisted of twin tower blocks, connected at alternate floors by glassed-in walkways. The walkway on the top floor, as Persse had already ascertained, gave a fine aerial view of the grounds of the two halls, the artificial lake between them, and the south-western suburbs of Rummidge. He stared at the sky: there were wisps of cloud about, but generally it was clear, and the moon was rising.
After nearly an hour had passed, Persse heard the whine of a lift climbing the shaft. He ran to the doors of the lift and stood there, smiling expectantly. The doors opened to reveal the frowning figure of Dempsey. Persse rearranged his features.
“What are you doing here?” Dempsey demanded.
“Thinking,” said Persse.
Dempsey stepped out of the lift. “I’m looking for Angelica,” he said.
“She isn’t here.”
The doors of the lift closed automatically behind Dempsey. “Are you sure?” he said. “It’s very dark up here. Why haven’t you got the lights on?”
“I think better in the dark,” said Persse.
Dempsey switched on the landing lights and looked around him suspiciously. “What are you thinking about?”
“A poem.”
Dempsey’s frown momentarily dissolved into a leer. “I’ve been working on that limerick,” he said. “What about this for a start:
There was a young fellow from Limerick
Who tried to have sex with a candlestick…”
“It scans better than your last effort,” said Persse. “That’s about all I can say in its favour.”
Dempsey pressed the button to open the lift doors. “If you see Angelica, tell her I’m in the bar.”
As the lift descended, the door of the emergency exit opened and Angelica stepped out on to the landing. Her beauty looked a little tousled, and she was out of breath—indeed her bosom was swelling and sinking in the most amazing fashion under the high-necked white silk blouse she was wearing. It looked to Persse as if a button was missing from the blouse.
“Has that fellow been annoying you?” he said fiercely.
“Who?”
“That Dempsey. Big-Head-and-Little-Wit.”
Angelica grinned. “I told you, I can look after myself,” she panted. She put a hand to her bosom. “I’m out of breath from the stairs.”
“Why didn’t you make Dempsey stop his car when you passed me in the drive?” he said accusingly.
“You told me you weren’t going to the theatre.”
“I changed my mind. So did you, apparently. I couldn’t find you there.”
“No, when we discovered it was Puss in Boots instead of King Lear, we went to a pub instead. Robin wanted to go on to a discothèque, but I explained that I had an appointment back here. So here I am. Where’s the poem?”
“It’s a one-word poem,” said Persse, somewhat mollified by this account. “The most beautiful word in the world, actually. And you can only read it in the dark.” He turned off the landing lights. “Here, take my hand.” He led Angelica out on to the glassed-in walkway, and showed her the view. “Down there,” he said. “By the lake.”
The snow-covered landscape brilliantly reflected the light of the nearly full moon, now high in the sky. The lawn that sloped gently upwards from the margin of the artificial lake was an expanse of dazzling whiteness, except where a trail of footprints, that had melted in the day’s slow thaw, spelled out in huge, wavering script, a name:
“Oh, Persse,” she whispered. “What a lovely idea. An earth poem.”
“Why do you call it that? I would have said a snow poem.”
“I was thinking of earth art—you know, those designs miles long that you can only appreciate from an aeroplane.”
“Well, it’s also a sun poem and a moon poem, because the sun melted the snow in my footprints, and the moon lit them up for you to see.”
“How bright the moon is tonight,” Angelica murmured. She had not withdrawn her hand from his.
“Have you ever thought, Angelica,” said Persse, “what a remarkable thing it is that the moon and the sun look to our eyes approximately the same size?”
“No,” said Angelica, “I’ve never thought about it.”
“So much mythology and symbolism depends on the equivalence of those two round disc-shapes in our sky, one presiding over the day and the other over the night, as if they were twins. Yet it’s just a trick of perspective, the product of the relative size of the moon and the sun, and their distance from us and from each other. The odds against its happening like that by chance must be billions to one.”
“You don’t think it was chance?”
“I think it’s one of the great proofs of a divine creator,” said Persse. “I think He had an eye for symmetry.”
“Like Blake,” Angelica smiled. “Have you read Frye’s Fearful Symmetry, by the way? An excellent book, I think.”
“I don’t want to talk about literary criticism,” said Persse, squeezing her hand, and drawing closer. “Not alone with you, up here, in the moonlight. I want to talk about us.”
“Us?”
“Will you marry me, Angelica?”
“Of course not!” she exclaimed, snatching her hand away and laughing incredulously.
“Why not?”
“Well, for a hundred reasons. I’ve only just met you, and I don’t want to get married anyway.”
“Never?”
“I don’t say never, but first I want a career of my own, and that means I must be free to go anywhere.”
“I wouldn’t mind,” said Persse. “I’d go with you.”
“What, and give up your own job?”
“If necessary,” he said.
&nbs
p; Angelica shook her head. “You’re a hopeless romantic, Persse,” she said. “Why do you want to marry me, anyway?”
“Because I love you,” he said, “and I believe in premarital chastity.”
“Perhaps I don’t,” she said archly.
“Oh, Angelica, don’t torment me! If you’ve had other lovers, I don’t want to hear about them.”
“That’s not what I meant,” said Angelica.
“I don’t mind if you’re not a virgin,” said Persse. He added, “Of course, I’d prefer it if you were.”
“Ah, virginity,” mused Angelica. “What is it? A presence or an absence? The presence of a hymen, or the absence of a penis?”
“God forbid it’s either,” said Persse, blushing, “for I’m a virgin myself.”
“Are you?” Angelica looked at him with interest. “But nowadays people usually sleep together before they get married. Or so I understand.”
“It’s against my principles,” said Persse. “But if you promised to marry me eventually, I might stretch a point.”
Angelica tittered. “Don’t forget that this is entirely your idea.” She suddenly prodded the glass. “Oh, look, there’s a little creature in the snow down there—can it be a rabbit, or a hare?”
“‘The hare limped trembling through the frozen grass,’” he quoted.
“What’s that? Oh yes, ‘The Eve of St. Agnes.’
And silent was the flock in woolly fold.
I love that phrase, ‘woolly fold,’ don’t you? It makes one think of being snuggled up in a blanket, but it could also be a metaphor for a snowdrift, so that it sort of epitomizes the forcing together of the extremes of heat and cold, sensuousness and austerity, life and death, that runs through the whole poem.”
“Oh, Angelica!” Persse exclaimed. “Never mind the verbal texture. Remember how the poem ends:
And they are gone: ay, ages long ago
Those lovers fled away into the storm.
Be my Madeline, and let me be your Porphyro!”
