One Fat Englishman

by Kingsley Amis

  ‘Oh, that old nitwit. What does he want?’

  ‘Isn’t he a friend of yours? He seemed to think—’

  ‘We did his book on Melville and I couldn’t get out of seeing something of him last year. What does he want?’

  ‘He wondered if you’d be interested in giving a talk to the English Club. Next Friday would be the—’

  ‘Why doesn’t he ask me, then?’

  ‘He asked me to see if you were interested. Then if you are he’ll write to you, you see.’

  ‘Yes, I see. Well, I don’t really think . . .’

  ‘They pay a hundred dollars, I should have said.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Something on the book trade in Britain and America, Parrish thought.’

  ‘Mm.’

  ‘You must come, Roger,’ Ernst said. ‘Say you will. You’ll stay with us, of course. We can easily put you up.’ He leant forward animatedly. ‘Stay the week-end. We’ll have a party. Helene. Helene, darling, Roger will be coming for next week-end to stay with us. Isn’t that a good idea?’

  First laughing and saying something to Joe, Helene looked over and said it was, then turned back to Joe.

  ‘That’s settled, then,’ Ernst said. ‘You can come down from New York in the afternoon – there’s an excellent train service, and you needn’t go back till Monday. First-rate. Get on to Parrish straight away, Nigel. I promise you we’ll all have the most marvellous time.’

  Four

  Roger’s elation at the way things had turned out lasted an hour or two. He had been determined to get himself into the Bangs’ house even if it had meant breaking their door down, but this method was better. He would always cherish the memory of his own acceptance of the invitation: surprised, grateful, calculating whether he could fit it in. He did not even scowl when Joe, after waiting for the sobering effects of the meal to wear off, proposed they played the Game.

  ‘The Game?’ Pargeter asked in wonder.

  ‘Well, this is a kind of alternate form of it,’ Joe explained. ‘You have to guess an adverb.’

  ‘Any adverb?’

  ‘Well yes, it can be almost any adverb, but it’s the one we act. We all act the adverb in turn.’

  ‘Which adverb?’

  ‘Naturally there are some that wouldn’t be any good, like often and sometimes. They are adverbs, aren’t they? Ernst would know. Where’s he gone?’

  ‘I’m afraid you’ll have to—’

  ‘Joe means we send someone out of the room,’ Grace said, ‘and the rest of us decide on an adverb, like proudly or uninterestedly or lecherously – that’s if Joe has any say in the choice, and then we call the guy in and he says to each of us one after the other, “Go polish that mirror or light a cigarette or wind your watch in the way indicated”, and after a while he guesses the word.’

  Pargeter frowned. ‘How would you wind your watch lecherously?’

  ‘You wait till you see Joe working on it. Last time we played he blew his nose adulterously. It’s all right, you’ll catch on.’

  Perhaps Pargeter did in some inner recess of his mind, but when it came to his turn he watched Strode Atkins hopping round the room (and twice bouncing off the wall) energetically and Grace folding up a rug energetically and Suzanne Klein putting on lipstick energetically before saying: ‘Incredibly.’ Soon after that they told him.

  Then it was Helene’s turn. While her adverb was being selected Roger dallied with thoughts of a variation on the present game. In it, Helene would act a special set of adverbs for him to guess. Nobody else would be about. He lent judicious support to Joe’s final suggestion of passionately. Having stationed himself nearest the door for the purpose, he was elected to go and fetch Helene, or rather had bolted from the room before anybody had thought of simply yelling her name.

  She was looking at college groups in the sort of study where Joe worked at week-ends if he worked at all. Roger grabbed her instantly. All things considered she reacted well to having sixteen stone of drunken garlic-breathing Englishman flung at her. Only when she was in grave danger of collapsing backwards on to Joe’s recording machine did she wriggle free. And even in that short space of time she had made it clear that her Certificate of Oral Proficiency, once mentioned on an occasion when matters French were under discussion, had not been awarded in error.

  Panting a bit, working hard on lipstick-removal, Roger managed to get out a question about when he could telephone her.

  ‘Oh, any time at all.’

  ‘You mean . . . Listen, darling, when can I telephone you when Ernst won’t be about?’

  ‘But what’ll you want to say? Can’t you tell me now?’

  ‘I . . . I want to arrange to see you.’

  She looked at him with just a hint of puzzlement. ‘But you can come around any time, and anyway you’ll be seeing me next week-end.’

  ‘I mean see you on your own, damn it, so that we can . . . Quick now. When? When can I phone you, Helene?’

  ‘We should get back in, shouldn’t we?’

  ‘For Christ’s sake, Helene, when can I phone you?’

  ‘Oh, any time . . . All right, between nine and ten in the morning is usually okay.’

  ‘I’ll phone you at nine-thirty on Monday. Now you go in. I’ll dash upstairs. See you soon, darling.’

  Roger got as near dashing as he normally let himself get after eating something like five per cent of his unloaded weight. On this visit he regarded the centralized Americas with more tolerance. A continent where he and Helene were going to get together had something to be said for it.

  Back at the centre of things he found Helene composedly watching Pargeter, who, with a good deal of coaching from everybody else, was trying to drink his highball passionately. Roger promised himself he would give her full value, but in the event had to do his best with reading aloud passionately part of an article in a handy copy of Life. ‘Laos is a storm-centre,’ he croaked, goggling at Helene’s bosom, ‘in a region traditionally long on storm-centres.’ He broke off now and again to snort and quiver. But it was no good really.

  After a time Helene was agreed to have got near enough to make no difference. Then it was Roger’s turn. He had hardly left the room before Macher recalled him to it. This struck him as ominous. So did the way they all grinned at him.

  He decided to get it over quickly. ‘Examine yourself in the glass like it,’ he said to Joe.

  Wiggling his bottom, Joe strolled over to the mirror above the nearer hearth. He clasped his hands behind his head and smiled at himself, put his hands on his hips and frowned and pouted, smoothed his eyebrows with moistened fingertips.

  ‘Effeminately,’ Roger said.

  There was laughter, especially from Macher and Suzanne. ‘Not really,’ Macher said.

  ‘Not too far off, though,’ Strode Atkins said.

  Reactions were similar when Grace minced round the room wielding an imaginary feather duster and Roger said: ‘Haughtily.’

  ‘That’s part of it too,’ Atkins said.

  At Roger’s bidding Ernst emptied ashtrays into a wastepaper basket. His movements were swift and decisive, his face without expression. When he had finished he turned to Roger and gave a curt nod.

  ‘Efficiently.’

  ‘No, you’re getting right away from it now,’ Atkins said.

  ‘Helene,’ Roger said. He could put it off no longer. ‘Make love to that standard lamp like it.’

  She thought a moment, then marched like a Guardsman in the direction named. Roger, who had a front view of her for once, fully appreciated this unforeseen bonus. Arrived at the lamp, she seized the brass pillar in both hands, bestowed a single token peck on the shade, turned about and strode back to her starting-point. All the others laughed and applauded, looking at Roger rather than at Helene.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Roger said. ‘Severely. Chastely. Masculinely. You all seem to be doing different words.’

  ‘Shall we tell him? He’ll never get it.’

  ‘
Yes, why not? Go ahead and tell him.’

  Helene faced Roger. ‘Britishly,’ she said.

  Roger’s eye held hers. She smiled cheerfully and unmaliciously at him. There was a feeling in his head, neck and chest as if pockets of warm air were gradually expanding. It was how rage usually took him. ‘Who thought of it?’ he asked very slowly. ‘You?’

  ‘No, actually it was me,’ Pargeter said.

  ‘Oh, it was, was it? And what was the precise nature of the appeal the notion held for you?’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘What was the idea?’

  ‘Oh, I thought it would be amusing.’

  ‘Permit me to congratulate you on your taste in humour.’

  ‘I just thought it would be interesting to see what mannerisms and things struck Americans as typically British. Sort of a new light on how they felt about us.’

  ‘Oh, fascinating. And so vitally necessary, new light on that. Well, I trust you’re satisfied with the results of your little field study?’

  ‘Oh yes, I thought it was most—’

  ‘However, I’m afraid you’ll have to excuse me from taking any further part in your sociological investigations. Good night.’

  Helene, with a troubled expression, took a pace towards him and said: ‘Oh, please, Roger.’ He ignored her.

  Joe barred his path to the door. ‘Oh, come on, Rog, don’t be huffy. Have a drink. Don’t break up the party.’

  ‘I fail to see how my departure can adversely affect the possible—’

  ‘Oh, crap. Fail to see. Adversely affect. The guy was fooling. We all were. This is supposed to be a game, for Christ’s sake. What are you trying to prove? Oh, all right, hell, have it your way, see if I care.’

  Roger went and stood at the french windows in the study. Eventually his ample chest slowed its rise and fall. Meanwhile the party was indeed breaking up, not coming to an end but relaxing its cohesion. Roger heard voices shouting and laughing at different distances. He became aware that Mrs Atkins was standing near him, a drink in her hand. She gave him her watchful look. Immediately he knew exactly who she reminded him of: any and every one of a dozen or so women he had run into in the past year or so. Heavy breathing made itself heard behind him. Strode Atkins, he saw, was standing a couple of yards inside the threshold raising his drink to his mouth. When it got there he reeled backwards out of sight as if hit in the face. From the hall came the sound of a heavy body striking furniture, then silence.

  Roger turned to Mrs Atkins and jerked his head towards the windows. ‘Out,’ he said in a drill-sergeant’s tone. ‘Or, if you prefer it, oat.’

  What happened next happened somewhere down by the swimming-pool. That was all Roger was really sure of afterwards, that and the fact that it had happened. Oh yes, and he fancied there had been a lot of talking going on during it, much more than usual, and of an unfamiliar kind.

  Ten or fifteen minutes later, or quite possibly two minutes or an hour later, he was standing in the light from one of the windows trying to write down a telephone number and the address of what seemed to be a shop. He noticed that the grass looked unexpectedly green. Then he realized that he was confronted by a re-entry problem as acute in its way as any astronaut’s. ‘You go back that way,’ he said into the darkness. ‘I’ll go round to the front.’

  There were no snags, none obvious enough for him to notice, anyway. In what Joe called the talking-room Roger was surprised to see Atkins on his feet still, or again, holding a drink and talking to Macher. Tactical instinct took him straight over to them. Macher glanced at Roger indulgently. ‘I’d like that,’ he said to Atkins.

  ‘Any time at all, kid,’ Atkins said. ‘We hardly use the place. Just stop by at the office and pick up the key.’ He put his hand carefully on Macher’s shoulder and addressed Roger. ‘Young fellow like this needs a place in the big city where he can take a bath or a nap or change his clothes, know what I mean?’ He winked, using a lot of face. ‘Mitch knows what I mean, don’t you, Mitch? Youth. Youth will be served, right, Mitch? And not only youth, either. Old Mitch has been served before now, eh, Mitch? Helps himself all the time. I’m for that. When old Mitch moves in for the kill – whoo! Old wham-bam-thank-you-mam Mitch. You know, Irving, my old friend Mitch isn’t as bad as he looks. Little bit stiff and formal, sure, but we all have our weaknesses, don’t we?’

  ‘He showed up very well at the end of that hilarious game.’ Macher appeared entirely sober. ‘He was good then.’

  ‘In what way good?’ Roger asked, glaring only slightly.

  ‘You behaved without thinking. You did what you wanted to do. You should try it more often. It works. And it’s your duty.’

  ‘Duty? What the devil are you talking about?’

  ‘Human life is so horrible,’ Macher said, as if wearily but good-humouredly expounding the self-evident, ‘that the only thing to do is do what you want. Any means are justifiable for getting what you want, up to and including murder.’

  ‘Is this supposed to be new?’ Roger picked up an unattended drink and began drinking it.

  ‘Who cares whether it’s new? What matters is whether it’s right. And it is right.’

  ‘I should very much dislike living in that kind of world.’

  ‘But it’s the world you do live in. It’s just you don’t realize it.’

  ‘I’d wager any sum you care to name that I’m at least as selfish as you are, but I must confess I’m unable to see the need of working the whole thing up into a philosophy.’

  Macher’s manner remained as friendly when he said: ‘Utter nonsense. It isn’t working anything up into anything to describe a situation correctly and deduce a plan for dealing with it. There’s no rain in a week and the grass needs water so you water it. And this isn’t selfish in the way you probably mean. We all have people we like and love. It’s our duty to steal and cheat and lie and use violence whenever it’s necessary to look after these people.’

  ‘Here’s another of our guests from across the sea.’ Atkins, after listening with puzzled disgust to the start of Macher’s exposition, had wandered off. He now returned, dragging with him Pargeter, who until just then had been sitting on an oak settle with his face in his hands. ‘You homesick yet, old boy?’

  ‘Good God, no,’ Pargeter half yelled. ‘What, homesick for that bloody awful dump?’

  ‘There you are, he’s one of us already,’ Atkins said, beaming.

  ‘What did you say your name was?’ Roger asked. ‘Pargeter or something?’

  ‘Nigel Pargeter.’

  ‘Well, Pargeter, I’m afraid I don’t understand you.’

  Macher laughed. ‘Confess yourself unable to understand him as it were – isn’t that more your style, Mr Micheldene? But seriously, you have a lot of trouble with these matters of communication, don’t you? Kind of a recurrent problem.’

  Roger ignored this. ‘Come on, Pargeter, how is England a bloody awful dump?’

  ‘Oh, I’m sure it’s all right for you, Mr Micheldene Esquire, with your expensive accent and your . . . Not for poor sods like me, though. Class distinction and the old-boy network and the Queen and the Archbishop of Canterbury and Eton and the telly and the affluent society and materialism and . . . well . . .’

  ‘Oh, I’ve got you now, Pargeter, you’re one of these beastly little—’

  ‘No values, no sense of—’

  ‘You’ve picked a funny place to come to if you want to get away from materialism and the affluent society, haven’t you, Pargeter? And class distinction. I suppose you think that just because there aren’t any dukes here everybody’s all chums together. Complete illusion. Look, when the Queen and Prince Philip were here and drove through New York or Washington or one of these places they had more of a reception than that frightful man General MacArthur. More popular than a national—’

  ‘No, a good deal less popular,’ Macher said. ‘To be precise, between one-quarter and one-fifth as popular.’

  ‘Well, that’s a marvel of Ame
rican scientific know-how, to be sure,’ Roger said happily. ‘So you’ve learnt how to measure popularity, eh?’

  ‘In this situation, yes. When these processions pass, people throw ticker-tape and suchlike out the windows on to the—’

  ‘Ticker-tape, ticker-tape? What a—’

  ‘I’m sorry, Mr Micheldene, but whether you like it or not it’s called ticker-tape. Anyhow, when the streets are cleaned afterwards the New York City Department of Sanitation weighs the ticker-tape, and – I’ve forgotten how many tons are involved or where I saw the figures, but I remember noticing that your Queen and Prince rated between one-quarter and one-fifth as much as that (I agree) frightful man MacArthur.’

  Pargeter, whose occasional yelped half syllables had shown he was trying to get back in, managed to when Roger found nothing to say for the moment. ‘Christ,’ he howled at Roger, ‘you don’t think I take that line on the States, do you? Do you think I don’t know it’s a bloody sight worse than England in all these ways? Bloody gold-plated bathroom taps and the John Birch Society and muggings in Central Park and no Jews in the golf club and Little Rock and Las Vegas and Vassar and . . . well . . . If it was my own country I’d simply . . .’

  A tricky regrouping seemed in store for Roger, but Atkins now said pleadingly: ‘Mitch, listen to me.’ He put his face near and his arm round Roger’s shoulders, using the other hand to wave Pargeter down. ‘Mitch, I’d like to ask you something. Come on now, listen. Why do you hate us?’

  ‘Hate you? How do you mean? I mean—’

  ‘Why do you hate us? You do, don’t you? You all do. Why? Why? What have we done to you? We didn’t want to be world leaders. Last thing we wanted. We’ve never been imperialist. And yet you hate us. Why? We’ve never been colonialist. And yet you—’

  ‘Oh, really?’ Roger snapped into action again, going the faster to obviate the insult of Pargeter’s support. ‘Never been imperialist or colonialist? What about the Mexican War and the Spanish War? Why do you think places like California and Arizona and Florida and Puerto Rico and the rest of them have got those curious foreign-sounding names? And the South – the only reason it’s not called a colony is because it’s within the—’