Stepping Westward

by Malcolm Bradbury

  ‘Well, it’s a good story,’ said Froelich.

  There was something in Walker that made him want to believe that Froelich’s hints were right, that Julie Snowflake had come out here just to see him; and at seven o’clock he stood in excitement at the window, looking up and down the street. ‘Oh, just look at him,’ said Patrice. As the campanile chimed out seven, a black Volkswagen turned the corner and pulled up in front of the house. Julie got out, wearing a cashmere coat and a blue straw hat. Walker grabbed his coat and went out on the porch. ‘Hi there, Mr Walker,’ Julie called from beside the car. ‘Just walk slowly down the path. I want to check your coordination.’ Walker went slowly down the path, reached her and kissed her on the forehead. ‘Hi,’ she said. ‘Yes, I guess you’ve improved slightly. Boy, it’s cold here, let’s get in.’ They did. Julie turned the ignition. ‘You know the way to this place?’ she asked.

  ‘No, we have to follow the Froelichs. They’re coming right now. That’s their car.’

  ‘That’s a car? I thought it was an ancient monument. Well, okay, let’s hope they make it. Well, hey, Mr Walker, together again!’

  ‘Yes,’ said Walker, ‘it’s splendid.’

  ‘We’ll celebrate. Reach in the glove compartment. There’s a box of panatella cigars. Have one. Light one for me too.’

  ‘You smoke these?’

  ‘I smoke anything,’ said Julie. ‘Hey, you were all written up in the press. It really changed my image of you. I thought it was virtually heroic, what you did. And out here too. I suppose they almost lynched you.’

  ‘No, not really,’ said Walker.

  ‘Oh well, never mind,’ said Julie. ‘You can’t have everything.’

  ‘I can’t?’ said Walker.

  ‘No, but you can aspire,’ said Julie. ‘Hey, we’re here. Just look at that.’

  Dean French’s house was a modern A frame, composed almost entirely of glass. There was, apparently, only one room in the house, right in the centre, into which you couldn’t directly see from outside, and this one you could watch people going into. ‘I guess that’s the can there in the middle,’ said Julie, ‘if people who live this way use anything like that.’ The downstairs rooms were full of folk, and Julie said: ‘This is quite a party. I’m going to feel a real ringer. At Hillesley the faculty parties are quite different. I went to a couple. They serve tea and then somebody plays, you know, the lute?’

  ‘I don’t think Dean French’s parties are like that,’ said Walker.

  ‘Come on in, you two,’ said Patrice Froelich, putting her head into the car. ‘We’re abolishing small groups.’

  ‘Hello,’ said Julie. ‘I’m Julie Snowflake, from the east coast.’

  ‘I always thought Jamie liked the young ones best,’ said Patrice. Walker looked down in embarrassment and scratched his nose. ‘Come on out of there, Jamie,’ said Patrice. ‘Let’s get you where you’re safe.’ Inside, Dean French, a very big man who wore a monocle and a velvet smoking jacket, welcomed them. Dean French, a bachelor, had the reputation of setting the social pace in Party; his main role in life was introducing everyone to everyone else, and when people couldn’t recall where they had met someone before, they always said: ‘We were introduced at one of Dean French’s parties.’ He had an expensive and very public house, and even during the day, if you drove past, you could see people sitting around in the living rooms, drinking martinis, people perhaps left over from last night’s party or arrived early for that night’s.

  ‘I hope you don’t mind,’ said Walker. ‘I’ve brought along an old friend of mine.’

  ‘No, I love that kind of thing,’ said Dean French, taking Julie’s hand and squeezing it. ‘And how did you get mixed up with this ivy-covered ruin from limey-land?’

  ‘I met him last summer coming back home from Yerp,’ said Julie.

  ‘Be careful of people you meet that way,’ said Dean French. ‘Stay here and talk to me. In any case he’s too foreign to appreciate you.’

  ‘Hey,’ said Julie, ‘I just love your abstract.’ A large red painting, evidently of the interior of a womb, covered one whole wall. ‘I have this great admiration for modern art, because it’s so confused. It doesn’t understand life and tells you so. I’m just like that.’

  ‘Let me show you around the house,’ said Dean French, ‘and then we’ll go out back and I’ll show you the pool. Did Dr Froelich tell you we were going to swim?’

  ‘Oh no, that’s a pity, because I don’t have a bathing suit.’

  ‘You don’t need a bathing suit,’ said Bernard Froelich.

  ‘Oh, really, Dr Froelich, you swim in the nude out here?’

  ‘Not tonight,’ said Dean French, ‘unless you specially want to. I’m no party-pooper. But we keep this whole range of swimwear that’ll fit any guest we have.’

  Miss Snowflake twisted her body, put her head on one side, poked out her bottom, and withdrew one hand into her sleeve. ‘You got anything to fit me since my accident?’ she asked.

  ‘I think we’ll get by,’ said Dean French. ‘I’ll take you on the tour, honey.’

  ‘Let’s get some drinks,’ said Froelich, leading Walker over to the bar, which was being kept by Hamish Wagner.

  ‘Pip pip, old top, keep your pecker up,’ he said to Walker.

  ‘He’s got it up tonight,’ said Froelich. ‘Give him Scotch.’ They got their drinks and strolled away.

  ‘Hello, sir,’ said a graduate student in the department, coming up to Walker, ‘I’ve been meaning to ask you – but first I ought to say how much I enjoy your novels – are you writing about us?’

  Froelich said to the graduate student: ‘Who are you?’

  ‘I’m Ewart Hummingbee, sir, I’m in your department.’

  ‘Well, don’t ask Mr Walker silly questions like that. He doesn’t have to answer that kind of thing.’

  ‘Maybe he wants to,’ said Hummingbee.

  ‘I’m looking after him, and he doesn’t. So blow. I love this man and I want to talk to him.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Hummingbee.

  ‘Blow,’ said Froelich, and turning to Walker he said: ‘Hi hi.’

  ‘Hi hi,’ said Walker.

  ‘Tell me something,’ said Froelich. ‘Right, now, what have you learned since you came here?’

  ‘I’ll tell you at the end of the year,’ said Walker.

  ‘Tell me now, goddam it,’ said Froelich. ‘Have you learned anything?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Well, I’ve learned how to hold my trousers up without braces, and how to work a coin-operated washing machine, and . . .’

  ‘What have you learned?’ demanded Froelich.

  ‘Well, all right, I’ve learned that, well, the things I believed in aren’t as secure as I thought. I’ve learned that literature is a bit more precarious in the future than I expected, that the new world of technology is one I don’t understand at all, that democracy is not what I thought it was, and that there’s more than one way of being a writer.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Froelich, ‘that’s a good answer you gave me. You’re a clever man, Jamie. So – what are you going to do?’

  ‘Do?’ asked Walker.

  ‘Yes, you’ll have to decide, won’t you?’

  ‘Decide what?’

  ‘Whether you’re going to stay here or to go, whether you’re going to go back to your large domestic wife or marry that kid you brought here tonight.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t think there’s much chance of that.’

  ‘Is your divorce arranged?’

  ‘No,’ said Walker. ‘My wife doesn’t like the idea.’

  ‘Do you want to marry this girl?’

  ‘I haven’t thought about it, since I don’t suppose for a minute she’d want to marry me.’

  ‘Well, let’s find out,’ said Froelich. ‘What’s her name?’

  ‘Julie Snowflake,’ said Walker.

  Froelich shouted over the crowd: ‘Julie Snowflake, come here.’
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  ‘Don’t,’ said Walker. ‘You can’t do that.’

  ‘Of course I can,’ said Froelich, ‘because I’m in America.’

  ‘Hi there,’ said Julie Snowflake, squeezing through the crowd, ‘I got a kind of a hint you wanted to speak to me, Dr Froelich.’

  ‘Right,’ said Froelich. ‘You see this man I’m talking to, this excellent man? Well, his name’s Walker and I’m his friend.’

  ‘So am I,’ said Julie. ‘He’s a very well-endowed guy, don’t you think?’

  ‘Well, I want to ask you a question about him. I want you to tell me briefly just what your sentiments are towards him.’

  ‘Boy,’ said Julie, ‘when you ask a question you really ask a question, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You don’t need to answer,’ said Walker. ‘Please don’t.’

  ‘She does need to answer,’ said Froelich, ‘because I asked her a polite question and polite questions have to be answered.’

  ‘Well,’ said Julie, ‘if you really want to go through with this, I think he’s, like you say, an excellent man.’

  ‘How excellent?’

  ‘Very excellent.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Oh, because he’s in my term paper and because he said those things about the oath here and because he’s attractive, I don’t know.’

  ‘Do you find him sexually attractive?’

  ‘Yes, I think I do,’ said Julie. ‘But then I find a whole lot of people sexually attractive. It’s amazing. You expect there’ll be just one and then there are these dozens and dozens, just walking about.’

  ‘Would you marry a man like that?’

  ‘Hey, I don’t have to answer that kind of question, Dr Froelich. I make up my mind when it’s put direct to me by the man who’s proposing. I think that’s a reasonable enough approach to the problem.’

  ‘Would you marry a man like that?’

  ‘I could do, I guess, if all the things were right, which they aren’t. Mr Walker knows what I mean.’

  ‘You mean he’s a married man.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Julie. ‘I didn’t know whether he’d told you. He doesn’t tell everybody.’

  ‘Okay, fine, that’s all we want to know. Go back to Dean French. He’s leering at you.’

  ‘I don’t want her to go,’ said Walker. ‘I’ve hardly talked to her yet.’

  ‘Oh, don’t worry, Mr Walker, I’ll come back,’ said Julie.

  ‘She’ll come back,’ said Froelich. ‘So – what do you want to do, Jamie?’

  ‘God knows,’ said Walker, confused.

  Julie had gone back to Dean French, who put his arm round her. This reminded Walker of Dr Millingham, and the talk on the ship, and the heather Elaine had sent him, and of Elaine’s last letter in his breast pocket, telling him to remember to change his underpants.

  ‘No, He doesn’t,’ said Froelich. ‘I do, but He doesn’t.’

  Walker had become oriented towards Froelich’s advice, he didn’t know quite how, and he found it natural to say: ‘What am I going to do, then?’

  ‘Well, you’re going to go home, aren’t you?’

  ‘Am I?’ asked Walker.

  ‘Yes, because you’re afraid? And because if you stayed you’d turn into Mrs Bourbon or that madman Jochum? And because Julie is young and deluded about Englishmen and writers? And because everybody looks better when they’re away from home, and it embarrasses them?’

  Walker felt uneasy about these words, for he began to suspect that Froelich was telling him he had been fired. But that seemed too simple, and he had long understood the complexity of Froelich’s motives. The most satisfactory explanation that occurred to him was that Froelich was telling him this out of concern and affection; he was trying to protect him from becoming the permanent expatriate that Walker had seen exemplified in a number of Anglo-Americans. He had suspected Walker’s feeling for Julie Snowflake and grown worried about it. If so, he had observed well. Julie’s coolness, calmness, freshness had all staked their claims in Walker. Evadne Heilman came by and handed Walker a plate of rare roast beef and salad. ‘You look ready for some food,’ she said, ‘I’m sure you’re losing weight around the middle.’

  ‘It’s this healthy life I lead,’ said Walker. ‘Marking fifty themes a night is real exercise.’

  ‘You know you have to swim later?’ said Evadne Heilman, big and booming.

  ‘Oh, not me,’ said Walker. ‘I’m not athletic.’

  ‘Yes, you,’ said Evadne.

  ‘Out there?’ cried Walker. ‘It’s much too cold. The temperature’s probably below freezing. I’d drop dead.’

  ‘The pool heating’s been on all day,’ said Evadne. ‘Oh, we’re counting on you, buddy. For the honour of the English.’

  Walker took his plate and went with it into the study. The house was packed with people, all in a state of high euphoria, and Walker had an image of Party as a vast nudist colony. In it people had no privacy and no defects were concealed. Sex and friendship hung in the cold air like summer pollen, and exposure, of self and of others, was the essential ethic of the place. The rooms were full of asserting, sensual souls. Near him a girl in a grey swimsuit was having her left buttock caressed by a man in a red blazer, a professor of French literature. ‘What an ass, baby, what an ass,’ he was saying.

  ‘You hate me, don’t you, doll, I can see the look in your eye,’ said a man on his other side; the woman he was with, fully dressed in a black cocktail dress with a low neckline and a neat corsage, said, ‘You’re so degenerate you ought to go right out and drown in that pool. Why don’t you? Go ahead, kid.’

  ‘Maybe I will,’ said the man. ‘Women always did make me self-destructive.’

  Walker watched and listened and ate his beef, and presently Patrice Froelich came and sat down beside him. ‘Hi, honey,’ she said. ‘What happened to your friend?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Walker. ‘She’s here somewhere.’

  ‘She’s with that fat-assed Dean French,’ said Patrice. ‘He’s really taken a shine to her. Still, she’s having a great time. She’s a marvellous kid.’

  ‘Yes, isn’t she?’

  ‘Are you in love with her?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Walker, embarrassed. ‘I like her a great deal.’

  ‘Ah, it’s that old yearning for innocence. Which we never find, remember?’

  ‘Well, she’s hardly innocent,’ said Walker. ‘I think it was Dr Jochum who was telling me the roles are reversed now. European innocence chases American experience.’

  ‘And is that what you’ve been doing over here?’

  Walker saw this was dangerous ground, and said, ‘Well, something like that.’

  ‘Now what does that mean?’ said Patrice. ‘Remembering I’m just a little involved here.’

  ‘I mean intellectually; and in spirit. As Bernie was just telling me, I’ve learned a great deal over here.’

  ‘Bernie means from Bernie,’ said Patrice. ‘Still, we’re always glad to help.’ She put down her plate and said: ‘Come and take a look at the pool.’ They went through some glass doors and out on to the patio, in the middle of which was set Dean French’s enormous pool. It was a dark evening, and the only illumination came from four flambeaux, stuck into the turf, their flames burning brightly, and some pool lights which lit the green water from below; clouds of steam blew off from the pool’s surface into the darkness. ‘Feel how hot it is,’ said Patrice.

  ‘Wow,’ said Walker, dipping his hand into the water; it was as hot as a good bath.

  ‘Were you expecting her?’ asked Patrice.

  ‘Julie, you mean? No, that was a great surprise.’

  ‘Yes, Julie I mean; does Bernie want you to have her now?’

  ‘I don’t know what he wants. I don’t think so. I think he probably wants me to go back home.’

  ‘To your wife?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. I suppose at th
e end of the year. If they let me stay here.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Patrice. ‘I can see how going home would be the best thing, after you’ve pleased him so much. I mean, you’ll have done all you can for him then.’

  ‘What pleased him so much?’

  ‘Oh, the way things worked out last week, when he kept you quiet with me while he got the whole thing tidied up. That’s why he’s been so gay just lately.’

  ‘I didn’t know it was tidied up.’

  ‘I expect he’ll tell you all about it, when he’s ready. I’m surprised he hasn’t told you now. I wonder why?’

  ‘Yes, I do.’

  ‘Perhaps he’s afraid you’ll be upset,’ said Patrice.

  ‘Why, what at?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. Will you go home?’

  ‘I don’t know, it depends whether I can choose. In any case it’s my decision, not Bernie’s.’

  ‘I hope it is, I hope everything has been.’

  ‘I think it has. You know, it will be very hard to leave this place. I love it here. Just look how beautiful it is. See the mountains?’

  ‘Yes, it’s fine,’ said Patrice. ‘And we’d miss you, Jamie. I would. Even Bernie would. He really cares for you a lot.’

  The glass door opened again; it was Julie Snowflake. ‘I’ll go inside,’ said Patrice, ‘you want to talk to her.’ Walker did.

  ‘Come on, Mr Walker,’ said Julie, ‘we’re going swimming.’

  ‘Oh, I’m not the swimming type,’ said Walker. ‘In any case, I’ve just eaten.’

  ‘Look, Mr Walker, I thought I was teaching you poise and co-ordination. I want to see you right there in that pool, I mean that. No fooling.’

  ‘Where do we change?’

  ‘Right here in these cabins,’ said Julie. ‘There are suits in there. This is the men’s, right here. I’ll be next door. Let’s see who gets out there and into the water first. Okay?’

  ‘All right,’ said Walker, putting his drink down on the patio table. He really didn’t want to. The cold had already kept him shivering. Now he had to undress, get his hair wet, no doubt catch a cold. He was not as healthy as these citizens of an outdoor society. But he went into the men’s cabin and took off his jacket and shirt. The cold was hideous. He unbuttoned the ancient British flies on his trousers and dropped them round his feet, standing there in his underpants.