Stepping Westward

by Malcolm Bradbury

  ‘Actually,’ said Walker, ‘I don’t even know where Benedict Arnold is. Is it in the Middle West?’

  ‘Vell,’ said Dr Jochum, ‘not really. It’s on the edge of the middle; it’s nearer than the far; it is north of the south. Do you think you can find it now?’ Dr Jochum put both hands on the rail and turned his large dark face to Walker to smile at him, screwing up his eyes against the wind.

  ‘Is it pleasant there?’ said Walker, trying again. ‘Do you like it?’

  ‘Vell, beggars can’t be choosers, you know the old story. One goes where one is taken in. I am a foreigner, a doubtful case, not a man to keep. Benedict Arnold is not the best of universities, but it took me in and up to now it has kept me. I can think of nothing better to say for it.’

  ‘What do you teach there?’

  ‘Oh, some courses in political science. It is not an easy subject. One has to try so hard to keep politics out of politics. But then I will teach anything. I am something of an all-round man. I have even taught pastry decoration in home economics. And what do you teach?’

  ‘I’m going as a sort of resident writer. Actually I’ve never taught before, not in a university.’

  Jochum turned and looked at Walker in evident amazement. He said, ‘You are a writer?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Oh, come now, you are much too nice to be a writer. We have had writers at Benedict Arnold before. While they were there they undressed themselves and their students and their colleagues’ wives. Then when they went away they undressed them all once more, in books. No, you are not like that.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Walker, smiling, ‘I have hidden capacities.’

  ‘Vell,’ said Jochum, taking out a cigarette, ‘that is more than the others had – all they hid was their incapacities!’ He lit his cigarette, inside his shirt, with a book-match.

  ‘Why do they have a writer?’ asked Walker.

  ‘That is a good question. Vell, for that you must look at the map. Party, that’s our town, is in good new country. Nearby is cattle country. In another direction there is oil country. All around is mineral country. There is even gold in them thar hills. So . . . there are a lot of rich people there. And they have a writer because they are rich.’

  ‘And a university?’ asked Walker.

  ‘Yes,’ said Jochum. ‘A hundred years ago there were buffalo and Indians. Now . . . a university. Don’t ask why; I suppose they think that universities are the proper things to have. They are new people; they want to do things right; they have three fundamental religions – Baptism, Americanism and Philanthropy. With Philanthropy comes a university. The problem is it sometimes violates the other two.’

  ‘Then why a university?’

  ‘I am not sure. I must try to guess. Let us say that in America it is hard to give money away. You never know when it is going to some organization that may in due course turn out to be subversive. With a university, one assumes, that is the end of it.’

  ‘A dangerous assumption,’ said Walker

  ‘Oh, very dangerous, but very nice. So . . . when Benedict Arnold has an argument about whether to buy a Gutenberg Bible or build a new laboratory for biological research, some man who ten years ago was hanging on the bottom of freight cars appears and tells, Be my guest, please, have both!’

  ‘Are they pleased when they get them?’ asked Walker.

  ‘I see, the question really is, will they be pleased with Mr Walker when they have him? Vell, they take care of what they have.’

  ‘That’s nice, anyway.’

  ‘Don’t misunderstand please. Benedict Arnold is not a bad place. The Animal Husbandry Department has revolutionized our thinking about the cattle tick . . . do you think about the cattle tick? The Physics Department may reach the moon before the US government. Dr Bourbon, the head of the English Department, is a Shakespeare authority and an eminent man. There is even me. You see, money is a power. It brings leisure and that may even bring wisdom. So . . . we must be optimistic about these things. I expect you to enjoy Benedict Arnold.’

  ‘I shall enjoy leisure,’ said Walker.

  ‘Too much. Vell, onward, fat men. More exercise!’

  Walker heaved himself unwillingly off the rail and they set off along the deck again, their feet clopping on the boards. A puzzled look had appeared about Walker’s eyes, as he went over what Jochum had just told him and tried to link it with his destiny. But this was a world of incomprehensibles; the link would have to be forged on the spot.

  ‘I hope I have not depressed you,’ said Jochum, noticing his reaction.

  ‘No, I’m just mystified. I wonder how I shall take it. Of course I shall try to take it very well.’

  ‘I thought you were not simply an aimless rogue,’ said Jochum. ‘You cheer me.’

  ‘Oh, I’m a great believer in behaving right. All I ask is for the world to help me along a little.’

  ‘Ah, there is the problem,’ said Jochum.

  They navigated the bow. The wind caught in Walker’s seedy hair and raked out the dandruff. Air poured deep into his lungs. The white paint of the deckworks shone at him. ‘I suppose,’ he said, ‘one has to believe that all that happens is for the best.’

  ‘Not at all, you must acquire some behaviour of your own.’

  ‘In that case,’ said Walker, ‘I haven’t been doing very well lately.’

  ‘Oh, really?’

  ‘I’ve been trying to leave room for the future, you see. I know what I ought to do. I know what my parents did. But what kind of guide is that, for a man who’s going to America?’

  ‘Ah, it is the old problem. Nobody wants to be what he is any more. Everyone hates himself. The priest says, “Ah, if it were not for my silly flock, what wouldn’t I be free to believe.” The duke says, “Please excuse me, no more duties, it’s not so nice to be a lord these days.” The writer says, “Culture! Who these days can believe in culture!” The rich man wants to be poor. The Englishman,’ he waved at Walker, ‘wants to be in America. Everyone wishes he didn’t exist! People say, “See my nice new picture! This is my style – this week!”, or “Look how I behave – these are my morals, until I get some more.” You know Karl Marx always talked about people’s interest? Vell, I will tell you a story about his grandmother. She said, “If our little Karl had made as much capital as he has written about, it would make more sense.” That old lady: she knew more about interest than the grandson!’

  ‘But there’s no fun in doing what you know you must do. It’s freedom that makes the world interesting.’

  ‘Are you so free?’ asked Jochum.

  ‘I try to be.’

  ‘Then why do you stay away from Miss Snowflake?’

  ‘Well, I had to talk to that English girl,’ said Walker, uncomfortably.

  ‘And why?’

  ‘Because I said I would and because she’s rather sad and lonely, I think.’

  ‘You see, Mr Walker, you are a liberal. You are tempted by pathos. I think a really free man would have followed the path of Miss Snowflake.’

  Walker, who had been following the path of Miss Snowflake to corners behind the lifeboats and had already arranged to meet her for tea in the Winter Garden Lounge, found this very sharp, so sharp as to be disquieting. For the path was not a straight one. How free, really, was he? Walker, to try to suggest the enormity of the problem, said to Jochum, ‘How do you like this heather?’

  ‘Fine,’ said Jochum, glancing at it. ‘You look like a fertility god.’

  ‘It’s from my wife,’ said Walker.

  ‘Aaah!’ cried Jochum. ‘What a man! What a man! This is marvellous for a man who is not really interested in love at all! That is my diagnosis of you. You have left your wife?’

  ‘At home.’

  ‘So, you believe in homes too. I think you are in a very interesting position.’

  The sailor with the bucket appeared again. Jochum, not noticing that it was the same man following their progress with fascination, said, ‘Beautiful day!’


  ‘Left right, left right,’ said the sailor.

  ‘How they look after you on this ship,’ said Jochum. ‘What a crew!’ Walker said, close to them, the stairway that led to the sports deck, all chairs and comfort. Dr Jochum said, ‘Now, I think, a swim.’

  Walker took the occasion to excuse himself: ‘I can’t redeem my physique in one day,’ he said, ‘I’ve got pains from my visick to my gatch, as Miss Snowflake keeps saying.’

  ‘Tomorrow, same time, more weight off,’ said Jochum, watching Walker’s flabby, lazy body struggle up the stairway. Walker made his way through the chairs, filled with dozers and sleepers, until he found his own. The blankets rapidly warmed his bulk. The virtues of laziness instantly commended themselves to him. He knew he could hold off a while yet the summons of the future. He felt about in his wraps for his book.

  ‘Looking for this?’ said a voice above him. A tanned arm handed him the volume; it was attached to Julie Snowflake. ‘Jesus, it’s great,’ she said. ‘There’s some really fine despair in that book. I read it in Comparative Lit., but I could read it again a hundred times; it’s fantastic.’

  ‘It is,’ said Walker.

  ‘See you,’ said Miss Snowflake.

  ‘Rock-cakes for two at four,’ said Walker.

  ‘Thanks for the loan,’ said Miss Snowflake. He peered through the cushions until she disappeared into her own blankets. Then he riffled through the volume until he had found his place. The fine Russian despair was soon flooding into his lungs; he took it in in life-giving breaths.

  The sea shimmered. A thin sun broke through and beat lightly on his pate. Someone brought him his bouillon and he drank it down and put the bowl on to the floor beside him. The rugs smelled of succour. The pages in front of him began to blur. The next thing he knew was that someone was slapping him savagely above one ear with a newspaper. The blows stung. He looked up to see Miss Marrow, clad in a bright orange lifejacket. ‘We’re sinking,’ she said.

  ‘I like your new bra,’ said Walker.

  Miss Marrow seized his hand and tried to lift him, all dead weight, from his chair. She could not budge him an inch. ‘Come on, it’s lifeboat drill,’ she said. The ship’s siren shrilled a call to duty. The sun shone in his eyes; the day was peaceful; the calls to save himself had no weight at all. ‘Come on,’ said Miss Marrow. ‘We’re supposed to.’ But Walker turned on his side and before he knew it was asleep again.

  On the fifth night, when they set their watches back an hour for the last time and the dinner-table conversation was entirely about the size of tips to be given to stewards in the morning, tourist class held its Farewell Dance. IT’S BEEN NICE TO KNOW YOU said the battered banner in the ship’s bar, and the sweat poured off Jack Wilks as he strove to cope with the spirit of the occasion. Already people felt they had known one another at least a lifetime. Tomorrow New York would come over the skyline, at earliest light, looking like a tall heap of packing cases. Old points of reference would have to be recovered. On ship an air of vague disappointment prevailed; people realized that they spent their daily lives under a kind of sedation. Now the mood was like that at the end of some salesmen’s conference, when all the fun was ending, friends were parting and everyone had to recollect how they managed to live, day in, day out, with their lives. In cabins people sorted their slides for the Luncheon Club, checked their card indices, filled in their immigration papers with sad, slow pens. In the bar, feet pounded harshly on the floor as the dancers got in their last shipboard whirls, their last cheap liquor. On deck, fresh-featured, short-haired Fulbright men said to fresh-featured, short-haired Fulbright girls, ‘You know, since I met you, I’ve really found direction.’ Everywhere offers of hospitality, proposals of matrimony, avowals of undying affection abounded. In her cabin, beside a full bottle of whisky bought that afternoon from the ship’s store, Miss Marrow sat on her bunk, talking seriously to James Walker. ‘Oh God,’ said Miss Marrow. ‘Oh God.’

  ‘Don’t be silly,’ said Walker consolingly, ‘you’ll really enjoy it.’

  ‘I’m dreading it,’ said Miss Marrow.

  ‘It’ll do you a world of good,’ said Walker, ‘make a man of you.’

  ‘I hope not,’ said Miss Marrow. She was afraid of America. They sat side by side on the bunk. This was the quiet party she had asked him to. He had his arm round her shoulder in a brotherly way, part of his consolatory role. At the end of the arm his hand held, in the toothmug she had asked him to bring along from his cabin, a half-glass of whisky. He was feeling very uncomfortable. Faintly he could hear through deck above deck the beat of the indefatigable Jack Wilks, calling him to a more attractive duty. Julie Snowflake was in the bar upstairs; he knew it, because he had arranged it. He thought about this and watched with horrid fascination as he saw that his other hand, his free hand, was doing something it had no business doing; it was sliding up under Miss Marrow’s skirt, and now it affectionately twanged the elastic of her suspenders, to reassure her and himself that nothing here was ill-meant. Miss Marrow said, ‘That’s all very well, but I just don’t trust you very much.’

  Walker affected surprise. ‘What’s all very well?’ Miss Marrow patted his hand through her skirt vaguely, and seemed to go on thinking about the perils of America. Her face was woebegone, her eye-shadow was smudged. Hanging on the back of the cabin door Walker could see her shapeless woollen dressing gown, a nursery dressing gown, and he felt a deep indignation with himself, a deep pitying affection for her. A feeling of the hopelessness of all that was second rate ran through him, and he knew his pain was because in so many things, he, a man from the provinces, a man without elevation, a man who couldn’t sag, belonged with it. He was sorry for Miss Marrow. Miss Marrow was one of his kind, his level. And so he was also here, wasn’t he, because Miss Marrow didn’t frighten him and Julie Snowflake did. A throbbing mechanism inside him sent his head forward to kiss Miss Marrow on the cheek. She sighed, put her hand on his hair, and said, ‘Porker? Do you believe in love?’

  ‘It’s a difficult word,’ said Walker.

  ‘Yes, it’s very difficult,’ said Miss Marrow.

  ‘Do you believe in it?’ asked Walker.

  ‘Yes, I do,’ she said.

  ‘Tell me what it means then,’ said Walker.

  ‘Well,’ she said thoughtfully, ‘it means being tied or committed to a person. Feeling fidelity, duty, loyalty. Taking someone seriously. Respecting them.’

  ‘It sounds like the patriotism you talked about on the first night,’ said Walker.

  ‘Well, there is a connection,’ said Miss Marrow.

  ‘I don’t see it,’ said Walker, leaning forward and kissing Miss Marrow on the mouth. This tipped her back on her bunk, so that her upper body lay below him, her head on the pillow, his head above hers.

  ‘Whoops!’ said Miss Marrow. Her eyes looked tensely at him. She was afraid. The bunk was narrow and clearly not made for this sort of thing; it was probably made to prevent it. So Walker’s rump hung uncomfortably over the edge, sagging toward the floor, and a bar of wood, the edge of the cot at the top, stabbed sharply into his side. The glass of whisky and contents had disappeared somewhere. His trousers had rucked up to his knees. His heart was thumping. A heated machinery inside him stirred against pity, conscience and memory. He bit Miss Marrow’s ear. He looked at her face; it had grown flushed and blotchy. She was also breathing hard. Her eyes were closed and she murmured, ‘Porker?’

  ‘Yes?’ said Walker.

  ‘You are . . . you are just a bit serious, aren’t you, Porker?’

  ‘Yes, pretty serious,’ he said, kissing her eyelids.

  ‘But honestly?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Walker.

  She opened her eyes. ‘Just tell me,’ she said, ‘is it just for fun? Will I ever see you again? When you’ve finished will you be off just as fast as your little legs can carry you?’

  Walker’s lips were against hers. ‘I suppose I might,’ he murmured.

  ‘I thought yo
u were a very decent person, Porker, I’ve come to think a lot of you.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Walker.

  ‘Would that be decent?’ murmured Miss Marrow.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Walker.

  ‘Well, think about me, look at me,’ said Miss Marrow. ‘How old do you think I am?’

  ‘Let me guess,’ said Walker, stalling, looking at her teeth. ‘Twenty-five.’

  ‘Well, you see, I’m thirty-two. And I’m not very marvellous looking. And I’m not exactly the toast of Rickmansworth. And I’m a virgin, more or less through choice. I admit there hasn’t been any really great onslaught, though. So what do I do, Porker? Think about me, study me. What do I do? Are you just making me suffer? I’m good at it, but don’t give me more if you needn’t. And it’s time I got married . . .’ She breathed hard, turned her face away, and said, ‘But I don’t suppose you have anything like that in mind. Oh, Porker, can I trust you?’

  ‘For what?’

  ‘For anything?’

  Walker looked perplexed and sat up. He reached out and poured himself another glass of whisky. Miss Marrow looked at him. ‘But I can’t be my own conscience, never mind yours,’ he said. ‘I don’t know what I’m doing. How can I think about you, how can I decide what’s for you? My own moral motive power’s only just enough to keep me from pinching apples from the greengrocer’s. I can’t give it big jobs like this.’

  ‘But you wanted to sleep with me.’

  ‘Yes, I know. That’s because I enjoy fornication and I think highly of it as a way of getting to know people. I have a relationship with you which involves me several ways. You’re nervous of going where you’re going and so am I. You don’t think too much of yourself and I think even less of me. I also feel sorry for you because like everyone going from a little place to a big one you find out all sorts of limitations in yourself; I’m in the same position.’

  ‘I reach you where your kindness meets your lechery,’ said Miss Marrow, taking the glass that Walker had poured for her and gulping it like a child. Globes of tears were pinned to her cheeks.