by David Lodge
What are days for?
Days are where we live.
They come, they wake us
Time and time over.
They are to be happy in:
Where can we live but days?
The familiar, nostalgic collocation happy days doesn’t actually occur in the poem, but it’s inevitably evoked; it echoes in our heads as we read, and reminds us of the transience and deceptiveness of happiness. The days we live in always inevitably disappoint, by not being as happy as they were, or as we falsely believe they were, in ‘the good old days’, when ‘those were the days’. But where can we live but days?
Ah, solving that question
Brings the priest and the doctor
In their long coats
Running over the fields
A footnote to the above: it occurred to me that negative particles might have been omitted from the analysis of collocations of happy, so I did a check on the small corpus I have on CD here at home, and sure enough, entirely happy is frequently preceded by not or some other negative word like never. But perfectly is usually unqualified. In fact the distribution is almost exactly equal: not entirely happy occurs about as often as perfectly happy, and entirely happy is as rare as not perfectly happy. I wonder why? Corpus linguistics is always throwing up interesting little puzzles like that. I looked up deaf a few years ago in the biggest corpus of written and spoken English available, about fifty million words, and the most common collocation, about ten per cent of the total, was fall on deaf ears (counting fall as a lemma, standing for all forms of the verb). Now it’s no surprise that the main contribution of deaf to English discourse is as part of a proverbial phrase signifying stupid incomprehension or stubborn prejudice; what’s puzzling is the verb fall, given that the human ear is positioned to receive sound waves from the side, not from above. And the enigma is not peculiar to English. A quick dictionary search revealed that German has auf taube Ohren fallen, French has tomber dans l’oreille d’un sourd, and Italian cadere sugli orecchi sordi. Subject there for another article that never got written.
5th January. I had an unexpected phone call today, from Simon Greensmith, a British Council chap I haven’t been in touch with for years. He was a very friendly junior member of staff in the BC office in Madrid, who showed me round the city and took me to the best tapas bars, when I was on that lecture tour in Spain. Later he did a spell in the Council’s Specialist Tours department in London, and was instrumental in sending me to several other foreign countries, for which I was grateful. He’s now in a senior post in Warsaw, where he was calling from. After a New Year greeting and a few courtesy questions about how was I and did I have a good Christmas, he came to the point of his call. ‘A bit of an emergency, Desmond. I’m hoping you will help us out.’ He explained that a linguist at Lancaster, who had been due to do a short tour in Poland at the end of January, speaking about discourse analysis to staff and postgraduates in university English departments, had a nasty skiing accident a few days ago in the Haute-Savoie and was going to be in traction in hospital there for the next six weeks. Simon was asking if I would step into the breach. ‘It’s very short notice, I know,’ he said, ‘but it’s your field and I’m sure you’ve got lots of lectures filed away that you could use. It’s only ten days and three places, Warsaw, Lodz and Cracow. Cracow’s lovely, by the way, if you haven’t been there, European City of Culture and all that -’
‘I’ve never been to Poland before,’ I said.
‘Well, then, all the more reason. It’s a very interesting country. English language studies are booming - you’d be sure of good audiences. And it would be great to see you again.’
‘The trouble is, Simon, I don’t do this sort of thing any more. I’m too deaf.’
‘Well, I know you have a bit of a problem, but we can work round that.’
‘It’s much worse than it was when we last met,’ I said. ‘I can do a lecture of course, but I can’t hear questions.’
‘You’ll have a chairperson who will repeat them for you.’
‘But the chairperson will be Polish and speak with a thick accent which I won’t understand. The vowels will be distorted and I won’t hear the consonants,’ I said. ‘Polish itself is pretty well all consonants, isn’t it? Must be hell being a Pole with high-frequency deafness.’
Simon chuckled. ‘The language is a bit of a beast to learn,’ he said. ‘But look, we’ll have a break after the lectures and invite the audience to write their questions down and pass them up to you.’
He was very persistent, and in the end I agreed. The fact is I wanted to be persuaded. I wanted to go to Poland - anywhere, really, to get away from the dull routine of a house-husband, the worrying problems of a mildly demented father, and the dangerous attentions of an importunate, unscrupulous postgraduate groupie; anywhere where I would once again be respected, deferred to, entertained and looked after, with the decorum appropriate to a visiting scholar. Like a disabled cowboy moping in forced retirement, I jumped at the chance to get back in the saddle again for one last round-up. As Simon talked I already envisioned his smiling face at the airport terminal exit, with a dark-suited chauffeur beside him ready to carry my luggage to the waiting Council limousine; saw myself sipping a cocktail and receiving compliments at a post-lecture reception, dining sumptuously in an elegant, wood-panelled restaurant with white napery and shaded lamps, and being given a personal guided tour of some historic church or castle by a charming young female academic with impeccable English . . .
‘Wonderful!’ he exclaimed, when I said I would do it. ‘I’ll get on to London straight away. They’ll send you a contract and the air tickets. I’ll email the itinerary to you today, and we’ll confer next week about what lectures you might give.You can do the same ones at the three universities, of course.’
I suppose I should have consulted Fred before committing myself, but Simon was in a hurry. It was a Friday afternoon and he was anxious to secure a stand-in for the injured lecturer before the offices in London and Warsaw closed. He was off skiing himself for the weekend. (‘Cross-country,’ he said, ‘quite safe.’) I couldn’t bear the thought of the opportunity going to somebody else while I dithered; and no doubt subconsciously I didn’t want to give Fred the opportunity to talk me out of it.
When she came in and I told her I was going to Poland, she put all the arguments against the idea that I had suppressed in agreeing to go. She reminded me of the frustration and exhaustion I had complained of on returning from my last few trips abroad, mostly caused by not being able to understand what people were saying to me, not only in Q&A sessions but on every social occasion, and pointed out what an inauspicious time of year it was for such a trip - Poland would be freezing in January and travel difficult.Three places in little more than a week sounded like a gruelling schedule. I would probably catch a cold and/or succumb to a stomach upset from eating and drinking too much, as I nearly always did on such trips in the past, when I was younger and fitter and able to throw off minor indispositions. In short, she thought it was a bad idea.
‘Well, I can’t get out of it now,’ I said.
‘Of course you can,’ she said. ‘Just pick up the phone.’
I told her it was too late: I couldn’t get hold of Simon again until Monday and I would feel I had really let him down, withdrawing at that point.
‘Then I’ve wasted my breath,’ she said, with a shrug. ‘You’d better tell your father, I don’t want to have to deal with his mad phone calls while you’re away.’ I said I would visit him in London before I go, and I would ask Dr Simmonds to look in on him while I’m in Poland.
6th January. An email from Alex today attaching what she called a ‘preliminary draft’ of a chapter entitled ‘The Absence of “suicide” and Suicide as Absence’, with my quote from Borges as an epigraph, and a few pages of argument more or less repeating my off-the-cuff remarks in the car on Boxing Day. She asked me to tell her if I thought she was heading in the right direction and said, ‘Fe
el free to fill out my sketchy ideas and add any more that occur to you’ - her most blatant attempt to date to get me to write her thesis for her. I took some satisfaction in telling her that I had been invited at very short notice to give some lectures in Poland and would be fully occupied for the next two weeks preparing for that. I expected a miffed response but she replied serenely: ‘That’s OK, it can wait. I may be busy doing some preparation myself - I’m applying to do some teaching this term. Dr Rimmer is on sick leave and they’re hiring a postgrad to take over her tutorials. Congratulations on the invitation. Have a great time.’ I’m surprised that she thinks she has any chance of getting teaching work in the English Department, since it would have to be approved by Butterworth.
7th January. I made my usual Sunday evening telephone calls. Dad is now totally confused about his income tax rebate, his savings certificates and his Premium Bonds - they are all hopelessly mixed up in his mind, as is the geography of Great Britain. ‘That letter you sent to the geezer up north, you gave me a rub - you know what I mean by a rub? [he meant a photocopy] - about the competition, well it’s not a competition exactly, but you know what I mean, you buy them at the Post Office, the money multiplies itself over five years . . . I haven’t heard from him lately, I don’t know if I will get something or nothing . . . they’re such a lot of thieving bastards up there in Blackpool, I don’t mean Blackpool, it’s one of those islands off the west coast of Scotland, the Isle of Sheppey or the Isle of Scilly or the Isle of Man . . . I’m going to go through my papers again tonight, see if I can pin them down . . .’
‘I wouldn’t do that Dad,’ I said. ‘Leave it till next time I see you.’ To change the subject I asked him what he had had for his dinner today. ‘A very nice bird,’ he said. ‘You mean a chicken?’ I said. ‘It might have been a very small chicken,’ he said. ‘I got it at the market yesterday.You just point and they give it to you.’ ‘How did you cook it?’ I asked him. ‘I bunged it in the oven, and took it out when it looked cooked. I had mashed potatoes with it, and half a tomato, and some . . . What is it? A green one.’ ‘Cabbage?’ ‘No, not cabbage, it’s like cabbage, but you don’t cook it.’‘Lettuce?’‘No, not lettuce . . . it’s got a hard skin like a crocodile . . .’ ‘Cucumber?’ ‘Yes, that’s it, cucumber, I cut it up, you know, and sprinkle a bit of pepper and salt on it . . .’
I reminded him that he had an appointment to see Dr Simmonds tomorrow, and his tone immediately became melancholy. ‘I think he wants to get me into hospital for an operation,’ he said. ‘No he doesn’t, Dad,’ I said. ‘It’s just for a check-up.’ ‘What’s he going to do, then?’ ‘He’ll probably take a blood sample -’ ‘That’s a needle, innit? I hate needles’ ‘- and a urine sample.’ ‘Oh, well, no problem there, I produce one of them every five minutes.’ I thought it was a good sign that he could still crack a joke.
I phoned Anne. She is OK, apart from backache. I told her I was going to Poland, but would be back in plenty of time for the arrival of the baby. ‘Were you thinking of giving a hand with the birth, then, Dad?’ she joked. ‘No, I’ll leave that to Jim,’ I said. ‘But I’d like to be around.’ She was supportive about my trip. ‘It’ll do you good to have a change. I feel you’ve been getting into a bit of a rut lately.’ ‘It’s called rut-irement,’ I said. She groaned. ‘You always loved making terrible puns, didn’t you? And you encouraged us to do the same when we were kids - I remember it used to drive Mum mad.’ ‘It was an educational device,’ I said, ‘to give you a feeling for language.’ ‘Well now you could get a retirement job making up jokes to go in Christmas crackers.’ ‘Thank God we’ve seen the back of all that for another year,’ I said. Fred and I spent this afternoon taking down the Christmas decorations, putting them back in their cardboard boxes for storage in the attic, carrying the moulting Christmas tree through the French windows into the back garden and hoovering up the needles in the drawing room.
I phoned Richard, and got through to him for once, instead of just his answerphone. I told him about the trip to Poland. ‘I expect you’ve been there,’ I said. ‘Yes, I went to a conference at Cracow a few years ago,’ he said. ‘It’s very beautiful - it was hardly damaged at all in the Second World War - just about the only city in Poland that wasn’t. Wonderful churches of every period - Romanesque, Gothic, baroque - it’s an architectural anthology.’ Richard is a cultured scientist, and knows much more about architecture than I do. ‘And of course Auschwitz is quite near,’ he added.
‘Is it?’ I said. ‘I didn’t know that.’
‘Yes. You should go.’
‘Well, I don’t know if I shall have time . . .’ I said.
‘You shouldn’t miss it,’ he said. ‘Everyone should go if they get the chance.’
I told him about Dad, and said that if he happened to be in London with some time to spare it would be nice if he called at Lime Avenue, especially when I would be away. He said, without great enthusiasm, that he would try. ‘Be sure to phone him first,’ I said, ‘or he might not recognise you. He might not even open the door.’
I wish Richard hadn’t told me about Auschwitz. It has cast a kind of cloud over the prospect of my trip. I’ve read about it, of course. I know about the glass cases full of shoes and hair, the gas chambers and the ovens . . . but I’m not sure I want to see them. There’s something wrong, it seems to me, about making the site of such appalling atrocities into a museum, a tourist attraction. I’ve read enough about the Holocaust - Primo Levi’s books, other memoirs, histories of the Third Reich - to convince me that the systematic cold-blooded murder of millions of Jews by the Nazis was a deed of unprecedented evil. I don’t know what visiting a kind of heritage site, with turnstiles and guides and coach parties, which I presume Auschwitz is like today, could usefully add. But perhaps I’m being lazy and cowardly.There was an implication that it is a kind of duty, a moral obligation, in Richard’s ‘should’: ‘You should go . . . Everyone should go, if they get the chance.’This is almost certainly the last opportunity I shall have in my life, so I suppose I will have to go, if only to be able to hold up my head in the presence of my son when I get back. I’ve looked at the itinerary Simon sent me and there seems to be a free afternoon in Cracow on my last day, but it’s not the climax to my trip I envisaged when I agreed to it.
8th January. I was going through my lecture notes and seminar papers this morning, sorting out material that I might use for my trip to Poland, and rather enjoying being focused on a purposeful intellectual task once again, when I was interrupted by a phone call from Colin Butterworth. ‘I’d be very much obliged if I could see you some time today,’ he said. He sounded tense and wound up. I told him I was rather busy and explained why - I was rather pleased to have the opportunity to let him know that I wasn’t altogether an academic has-been - but he said the matter was urgent. He was willing to come round to my house if that would be more convenient, at any time that would suit me, but the sooner the better. I asked him if it was about Alex, and he said it was but he would rather not elaborate on the phone. I invited him to call on me in the afternoon, any time after two.
He arrived on the dot at two o’clock. He had never been in our house before, and made some complimentary remarks about it as I led him into my study. I said Fred was mainly responsible for the internal decor. He seemed relieved to learn that she was out. I sat him down in the armchair and took the desk chair myself, moving it near to him to be sure that I heard what he had to say. He was dressed in his usual smart-casual style, but there was dandruff on the shoulders of his suede jacket and he had not shaved well. His eyes looked tired. He took out a pack of cigarettes and asked if I would mind if he smoked. I said I would.
‘You’re quite right, it’s a filthy habit. I’ve kicked it several times, but when I’m stressed . . . Frances is furious with me.’ He put the cigarettes back in his pocket. ‘I gather you’re still seeing a good deal of Alex Loom,’ he said. ‘Quite a friend of the family, she tells me.’
‘I wouldn�
�t say that,’ I said. ‘She came to a party here on Boxing Day. She was supposed to be going home for Christmas, as you probably know, her father sent her the money for the fare, but she was fogged in at Heathrow and gave up.’
Butterworth looked surprised. ‘Is that what she told you - about her father?’ When I confirmed it, he said: ‘Her father committed suicide when she was thirteen.’
I wasn’t sure that I had heard him correctly, and asked him to repeat this astonishing piece of information.
‘That’s what she told me - who knows if it’s true? She says that was why she got interested in suicide notes. Her father didn’t leave one, you see. She’s trying to discover why he killed himself by reading other people’s. At least, that was one therapist’s theory.’
‘She told me she got interested in the subject through a boyfriend who was doing psychological research on suicide,’ I said. ‘The one who wrote that article.’
‘Yes, well, he may or may not have been her boyfriend . . . Anyway, that’s not what I came here to talk to you about. She’s applied for a tutorial assistantship we’ve advertised internally, because Hetty Rimmer is off sick with ME. It’s out of the question, of course. We couldn’t possibly let Alex loose on a lot of undergraduates, and anyway there are several more deserving candidates. The trouble is, she doesn’t see it that way, and she’s convinced the job is in my gift. Well, perhaps once upon a time it would have been, but there are procedures now . . .’ He paused and looked at me. ‘I must ask you to treat this conversation as strictly confidential.’
