by David Lodge
It won’t, of course. Vic is well aware of the hollowness of his small victory, a huge thirsty 5.3-litre engine pitted against the Toyota’s economical 1.8. But never mind common sense for the moment, this is the time of indulgence, suspended between home and work, the time of effortless motion, cushioned in real leather, insulated from the noise and fumes of the city by the padded coachwork, the tinted glass, the sensuous music. The car’s long prow dips into the first tunnel. In and out, down and up. Vic threads the tunnels, switches lanes, swings out onto a long covered ramp that leads to a six-lane expressway thrust like a gigantic concrete fist through the backstreets of his boyhood. Every morning Vic drives over the flattened site of his Gran’s house and passes at chimney-pot level the one in which he himself grew up, where his widower father still stubbornly lives on in spite of all Vic’s efforts to persuade him to move, like a sailor clinging to the rigging of a sinking ship—buffeted, deafened and choked by the thundering torrent of traffic thirty yards from his bedroom window.
Vic swings on to the motorway, going north-west, and for a few miles gives the Jaguar its head, moving smoothly up the outside lane at 90, keeping a watchful eye on the rear-view mirror, though the police rarely bother you in the rush hour, they are as eager as anyone to keep the traffic flowing. To his right and left spreads a familiar landscape, so familiar that he does not really see it, an expanse of houses and factories, warehouses and sheds, railway lines and canals, piles of scrap metal and heaps of damaged cars, container ports and lorry parks, cooling towers and gasometers. A monochrome landscape, grey under a low grey sky, its horizons blurred by a grey haze.
…
Vic Wilcox has now, strictly speaking, left the city of Rummidge and passed into an area known as the Dark Country—so called because of the pall of smoke that hung over it, and the film of coaldust and soot that covered it, in the heyday of the Industrial Revolution. He knows a little of the history of this region, having done a prize-winning project on it at school. Rich mineral deposits were discovered here in the early nineteenth century: coal, iron, limestone. Mines were sunk, quarries excavated, and ironworks sprang up everywhere to exploit the new technique of smelting iron ore with coke, using limestone as a flux. The fields were gradually covered with pitheads, foundries, factories and workshops, and rows of wretched hovels for the men, women and children who worked in them: a sprawling, unplanned, industrial conurbation that was gloomy by day, fearsome by night. A writer called Thomas Carlyle described it in 1824 as “A frightful scene… a dense cloud of pestilential smoke hangs over it forever… and at night the whole region becomes like a volcano spitting fire from a thousand tubes of brick.” A little later, Charles Dickens recorded travelling “through miles of cinder-paths and blazing furnaces and roaring steam engines, and such a mass of dirt, gloom and misery as I never before witnessed.” Queen Victoria had the curtains of her train window drawn when she passed through the region so that her eyes should not be offended by its ugliness and squalor.
The economy and outward appearance of the area have changed considerably since those days. As the seams of coal and iron were exhausted, or became unprofitable to work, mining and smelting diminished. But industries based on iron—casting, forging, engineering, all those kinds of manufacturing known generically as “metal-bashing”—spread and multiplied, until their plant met and merged with the expanding industrial suburbs of Rummidge. The shrinkage of heavy industry, and the development of new forms of energy, have reduced the visible pollution of the air, though the deadlier fumes of leaded petrol exhaust, drifting from the motorways with which the whole area is looped and knotted, thicken the characteristic grey haziness of the Midlands light. Nowadays the Dark Country is not noticeably darker than its neighbouring city, and of country there is precious little to be seen. Foreign visitors sometimes suppose that the region gets its name not from its environmental character but from the complexions of so many of its inhabitants, immigrant families from India, Pakistan and the Caribbean, drawn here in the boom years of the fifties and sixties, when jobs were plentiful, and now bearing the brunt of high unemployment.
All too soon it is time to slow down and leave the motorway, descending into smaller-scale streets, into the congestion of traffic lights, roundabouts, T-junctions. This is West Wallsbury, a district dominated by factories, large and small, old and new. Many are silent, some derelict, their windows starred with smashed glass. Receiverships and closures have ravaged the area in recent years, giving a desolate look to its streets. Since the election of the Tory Government of 1979, which allowed the pound to rise on the back of North Sea oil in the early eighties and left British industry defenceless in the face of foreign competition, or (according to your point of view) exposed its inefficiency (Vic inclines to the first view, but in certain moods will admit the force of the second), one-third of all the engineering companies in the West Midlands have closed down. There is nothing quite so forlorn as a closed factory—Vic Wilcox knows, having supervised a shutdown himself in his time. A factory is sustained by the energy of its own functioning, the throb and whine of machinery, the clash of metal, the unceasing motion of the assembly lines, the ebb and flow of workers changing shifts, the hiss of airbrakes and the growl of diesel engines from wagons delivering raw materials at one gate, taking away finished goods at the other. When you put a stop to all that, when the place is silent and empty, all that is left is a large, ramshackle shed—cold, filthy and depressing. Well, that won’t happen at Pringle’s, hopefully, as they say. Hopefully.
…
Vic is very near his factory now. A scarlet neon sign, Susan’s Sauna, subject of many nudge-nudge jokes at work, but to Vic merely a useful landmark, glows above a dingy shop-front. A hundred yards further on, he turns down Coney Lane, passes Shopfix, Atkinson Insulation, Bitomark, then runs alongside the railings that fence the Pringle site until he reaches the main entrance. It is a long fence, and a large site. In its heyday, in the post-war boom, Pringle’s employed four thousand men. Now the workforce has shrunk to less than a thousand, and much of the plant is in disuse. There are buildings and annexes that Vic has never been inside. It is cheaper to let them rot than to clear them away.
Vic hoots impatiently at the barrier; the security man’s face appears at the window and flashes an ingratiating smile. Vic nods grimly back. Bugger was probably reading a newspaper. His predecessor had been fired at Vic’s insistence just before Christmas when, returning unexpectedly to the factory at night, he found the man watching a portable TV instead of the video monitors he was paid to watch. It looks as though this one is not much of an improvement. Perhaps they should employ another security firm. Vic makes a mental note to raise the matter with George Prendergast, his Personnel Director.
The barrier is raised and he drives to his personal parking space next to the front entrance of the office block. He checks the statistics of his journey on the digital dashboard display. Distance covered: 9.8 miles. Journey time: 25 mins. 14 secs. Average for the morning rush hour. Petrol consumption: 17.26 m.p.g. Not bad—would have been better if he hadn’t put the Toyota in its place.
Vic pushes through the swing doors to the reception lobby, a reasonably impressive space, its walls lined with light oak panelling installed in a more prosperous era. The furniture is looking a bit shabby, though. The clock on the wall, an irritating type with no numbers on its face, suggests that the time is just before half-past eight. Doreen and Lesley, the two telephonist–receptionists, are taking off their coats behind the counter. They smile and simper, patting their hair and smoothing their skirts.
“Morning Mr. Wilcox.”
“Morning. Think we could do with some new chairs in here?”
“Oh yes, Mr. Wilcox, these are ever so hard.”
“I didn’t mean your chairs, I mean for visitors.”
“Oh…” They don’t know quite how to react. He is still Mr. New Broom, slightly feared. As he pushes through the swing doors and walks down the corridor towards his o
ffice, he can hear them spluttering with stifled laughter.
“Good morning, Vic.” His secretary, Shirley, smirks from behind her desk, self-righteous at being at her post before the boss, even though she is at this moment inspecting her face in a compact mirror. She is a mature woman with piled hair of an improbable yellow hue, and a voluptuous bosom on which her reading glasses, retained round her neck by a chain, rest as upon a shelf. Vic inherited her from his predecessor, who had evidently cultivated an informal working relationship. It was not with any encouragement from himself that she began to address him as Vic, but he was obliged to concede the point. She had worked for Pringle’s for years, and Vic was heavily dependent on her know-how while he eased himself into the job.
“Morning, Shirley. Make us a cup of coffee, will you?” Vic’s working day is lubricated by endless cups of instant coffee. He hangs up his camelhair coat in the anteroom that connects his office with Shirley’s, and passes into the former. He shrugs off the jacket of his suit and drapes it over the back of a chair. He sits down at his desk and opens his diary. Shirley comes in with coffee and a large photograph album.
“I thought you’d like to see Tracey’s new portfolio,” she says.
Shirley has a seventeen-year-old daughter whose ambition is to be a photographic model, and she is forever thrusting glossy pictures of this well-developed young hussy, crammed into skimpy swimsuits or revealing underwear, under Vic’s nose. At first, he suspected her of trying to curry favour by pandering to his lust, but later came to the conclusion that it was genuine parental pride. The silly bitch really couldn’t see that there was anything dubious about turning your daughter into a pin-up.
“Oh yes?” he says, with scarcely concealed impatience. Then, as he opens the portfolio: “Good Christ!”
The pouting, weak-chinned face under the blonde curls is familiar enough, but the two huge naked breasts, thrust towards the camera like pink blancmanges tipped with cherries, are a new departure. He turns the stiff, polythene-covered pages rapidly.
“Nice, aren’t they?” says Shirley fondly.
“You let someone take pictures of your daughter like this?”
“I was there sort of thing. In the studio.”
“I’ll be frank with you,” says Vic, closing the album and handing it back. “I wouldn’t let my daughter.”
“I don’t see the harm,” says Shirley. “People think nothing of it nowadays, topless sort of thing. You should have seen the beach at Rhodes last summer. And even television. If you’ve got a beautiful body, why not make the most of it? Look at Sam Fox!”
“Who’s he?”
“She. Samantha Fox. You know!” Incredulity raises Shirley’s voice an octave. “The top Page Three girl. D’you know how much she earned last year?”
“More than me, I don’t doubt. And more than Pringle’s will make this year, if you waste any more of my time.”
“Oh, you,” says Shirley roguishly, adept at receiving reprimands as if they are jokes.
“Tell Brian I want to see him, will you?”
“I don’t think he’s in yet.”
Vic grunts, unsurprised that his Marketing Director has not yet arrived. “As soon as he is, then. Let’s do some letters in the meantime.”
The telephone rings. Vic picks up the receiver. “Wilcox.”
“Vic?”
The voice of Stuart Baxter, chairman of Midland Amalgamated’s Engineering and Foundry Division, sounds faintly disappointed. He was hoping, no doubt, to be told that Mr. Wilcox wasn’t in yet, so that he could leave a message for Vic to ring back, thus putting him on the defensive, knowing that his divisional chief knew that he, Vic, hadn’t been at his desk as early as him, Stuart Baxter. Vic becomes even more convinced that this was the motive for the call as it proceeds, because Stuart Baxter has nothing new to communicate. They had the same conversation the previous Friday afternoon, about the disappointing figures for Pringle’s production in December.
“There’s always a downturn in December, Stuart, you know that. With the long Christmas holiday.”
“Even allowing for that, it’s well down, Vic. Compared to last year.”
“And it’s going to be well down again this month, you might as well know that now.”
“I’m sorry to hear you say that, Vic. It makes life very difficult for me.”
“We haven’t got the foundry on song, yet. The core blowers are always breaking down. I’d like to buy a new machine, fully automated, to replace the lot.”
“Too expensive. You’d do better to buy in from outside. It’s not worth investing in that foundry.”
“The foundry has a lot of potential. It’s a good workforce. They do nice work. Any road, it’s not just the foundry. We’re working on a new production model for the whole factory—new stock control, new purchasing policy. Everything on computer. But it takes time.”
“Time is what we haven’t got, Vic.”
“Right. So why don’t we both get back to work now, instead of nattering on like a couple of housewives over the garden fence?”
There is a momentary silence on the line, then a forced chuckle, as Stuart Baxter decides not to take offence. Nevertheless he has taken offence. It was probably a foolish thing to say, but Vic shrugs off any regret as he puts the receiver down. He is not in the business of ingratiating himself with Stuart Baxter. He is in the business of making J. Pringle & Sons profitable.
Vic flicks a switch on his telephone console and summons Shirley, whom he had gestured out of the office while Baxter was talking, to take some letters. He leafs through the file of correspondence in his In-tray, the two vertical lines in his brow above the nose drawing closer together as he concentrates on names, figures, dates. He lights a cigarette, inhales deeply, and blows two plumes of smoke through his nostrils. Outside the sky is still overcast, and the murky yellow light that filters through the vertical louvres of the window blinds is hardly enough to read by. He switches on his desk lamp, casting a pool of light on the documents. Through walls and windows comes a muffled compound noise of machinery and traffic, the soothing, satisfying sound of men at work.
2
And there, for the time being, let us leave Vic Wilcox, while we travel back an hour or two in time, a few miles in space, to meet a very different character. A character who, rather awkwardly for me, doesn’t herself believe in the concept of character. That is to say (a favourite phrase of her own), Robyn Penrose, Temporary Lecturer in English Literature at the University of Rummidge, holds that “character” is a bourgeois myth, an illusion created to reinforce the ideology of capitalism. As evidence for this assertion she will point to the fact that the rise of the novel (the literary genre of “character” par excellence) in the eighteenth century coincided with the rise of capitalism; that the triumph of the novel over all other literary genres in the nineteenth century coincided with the triumph of capitalism; and that the modernist and postmodernist deconstruction of the classic novel in the twentieth century has coincided with the terminal crisis of capitalism.
Why the classic novel should have collaborated with the spirit of capitalism is perfectly obvious to Robyn. Both are expressions of a secularised Protestant ethic, both dependent on the idea of an autonomous individual self who is responsible for and in control of his/her own destiny, seeking happiness and fortune in competition with other autonomous selves. This is true of the novel considered both as commodity and as mode of representation. (Thus Robyn in full seminar spate.) That is to say, it applies to novelists themselves as well as to their heroes and heroines. The novelist is a capitalist of the imagination. He or she invents a product which consumers didn’t know they wanted until it was made available, manufactures it with the assistance of purveyors of risk capital known as publishers, and sells it in competition with makers of marginally differentiated products of the same kind. The first major English novelist, Daniel Defoe, was a merchant. The second, Samuel Richardson, was a printer. The novel was the first mass-produced cu
ltural artefact. (At this point Robyn, with elbows tucked into her sides, would spread her hands outwards from the wrist, as if to imply that there is no need to say more. But of course she always has much more to say.)
According to Robyn (or, more precisely, according to the writers who have influenced her thinking on these matters) there is no such thing as the “self” on which capitalism and the classic novel are founded—that is to say, a finite, unique soul or essence that constitutes a person’s identity; there is only a subject position in an infinite web of discourses—the discourses of power, sex, family, science, religion, poetry, etc. And by the same token, there is no such thing as an author, that is to say, one who originates a work of fiction ab nihilo. Every text is a product of intertextuality, a tissue of allusions to and citations of other texts; and, in the famous words of Jacques Derrida (famous to people like Robyn, anyway), “il n’y a pas de hors-texte,” there is nothing outside the text. There are no origins, there is only production, and we produce our “selves” in language. Not “you are what you eat” but “you are what you speak” or, rather “you are what speaks you,” is the axiomatic basis of Robyn’s philosophy, which she would call, if required to give it a name, “semiotic materialism.” It might seem a bit bleak, a bit inhuman (“antihumanist, yes; inhuman, no,” she would interject), somewhat deterministic (“not at all; the truly determined subject is he who is not aware of the discursive formations that determine him. Or her,” she would add scrupulously, being among other things a feminist), but in practise this doesn’t seem to affect her behaviour very noticeably—she seems to have ordinary human feelings, ambitions, desires, to suffer anxieties, frustrations, fears, like anyone else in this imperfect world, and to have a natural inclination to try and make it a better place. I shall therefore take the liberty of treating her as a character, not utterly different in kind, though of course belonging to a very different social species, from Vic Wilcox.
