Byron Easy (44 page)

I sat and watched the two academics gently take a pair of seats dangerously close to mine. Women whose occupation is the life of the mind move slower than other mortals, I reflected. They were certainly an odd pair. Professor Organ had a compacted, serious presence; a round ruddy face, with spokes of irony etched from the corners of her eyes. She wore no make-up, her lips as thin and pleasureless as a man’s. She made a big deal of not making eye contact with me, as if the answers to her imminent questions were not to be located in the corneas, but in the cerebral caverns of the ether—measureless to man, of course. Dr Schnitz, on the other hand, stared at me from the off, with a fascinated evaluating scrutiny. This I found rather unnerving. She had a long banana-shaped nose, beady black eyes and so much foundation and powder that she seemed at times (over the next treacherous hour) to resemble a bon-bon under a blonde wig. Both were terribly dressed (supermarket training shoes with drainpipe jeans). Both were spectacularly unattractive. But attractiveness is not the name of the game in academia, oh no. In fact, being a bit of a poster-boy-or-girl can seriously work against you in this racket. Look at Plath, or Fitzgerald or Hemingway. All suspect from the start. No, the more divergently Sartrean your eyeballs in this business the more seriously you are taken, the more the mind seems to hold supremacy. Ugliness, for some reason, equals legitimacy. Look at Shakespeare, with his chinless smirk, or Dickens with his musket-barrel nostrils. No, to be a bit of a looker is a sin of the first order.

The equatorial heat basted my face with sweat. They commenced the interview. The only time I remember being this embarrassed in front of two women was with my mother and the midwife at my own birth.

‘So, what did you read to get in the mood for today?’ whispered Professor Organ.

‘Sorry, I didn’t catch that.’

She repeated the question.

‘Oh, a bit of, you know, app-apposite criticism,’ I stammered.

Silence.

I see.

‘Well, I thought it best to start, to start—with the major schools of thought.’

She looked victorious for a moment, like a chess opponent to whom one has just offered a mug’s opening move.

‘Of whom, may I ask?’ she said, leaning closer in her chair. I could tell Dr Schnitz, observing me as if I were a rare specimen, was dying to speak. ‘Apposite criticism of whom?’

‘Erm. The Bard. I mean Bradley. On
Othello!
I felt like a hedgehog as the juggernaut bears down, klaxon screaming. Professor Organ scratched her slightly stubbly chin.

Another lengthy pause. I thought these brainbos (brainbox bimbos) worked quicker than this. She glanced at her colleague, as if to sanction her contribution. Jesus, this was like good cop, bad cop.

Dr Schnitz’s magpie eyes flashed. She spoke for the first time in a staccato treble: ‘How did you think he dealt with the question of Shakespeare’s double time-scheme?’

‘I thought he, er, dealt with it very comprehensively.’

Professor Organ smiled at my non-answer. She would have to use a different instrument. A sharper scalpel. To save my embarrassment (or maybe to increase it—by this point I wasn’t sure), she said, ‘Yes, what do you think are the advantages of starting a narrative
in medias res.’

In medias res?
Christ, my brain cells felt pulverised by the gladiatorial effort. That’s Latin, right? Or is it a place? Is it in St John’s Wood? No, that’s a
des res.
Giving up, I allowed my gaze to fall on my shoes. For a full minute. So powerful was Dr Schnitz’s stare in its effort to burrow under my brow that I thought she might have some sexual interest in me. As roasted as I looked, this didn’t surprise me that much. Universities are very sexual places; all that dry-as-dust learning must give everyone the horn. They are indeed perverse institutions. What else is there to get worked up about? All those Bard madmen and blue-stocking imbibers of Keats, too timid to drink their warm beakers of the south directly from life. They need a shot of real sex more urgently than the rest of us. And Dr Schnitz didn’t appear overly fussy. The thought of this made me feel much, much worse.

Professor Organ put an end to my misery by changing the subject. ‘Tell me, Brian, what poetry do you like?’

My mind went blank. I felt like the losing contestant on
Mastermind,
flailing in his ebon chair. But this, surely, was my subject? How could I be unable to name a single well-known poet? All I could think of were the smutty verses of Lord Rochester that I had been perusing in the common room.

‘Well, I’m a big fan of Rochester,’ I managed to squeak, relieved that I had located an example from, you know—the past.

The professor shot me a patronising and disapproving look down the lines of her nose.

‘And when did you first come across Rochester?’ she purred, but not nicely.

At this I almost laughed out loud. ‘Erm, perhaps that’s the wrong choice of verb!’

Her unkissed mouth gave a kind of mirthless grimace to the thick silence of the room. She rephrased her question. ‘Okay, when did you first
encounter
Rochester’s verse?’

‘Just now, in the common room. Sorry, I’m not doing very well, am I?’ I said, and shifted in my seat.

‘Oh, I wouldn’t say that,’ grinned the tall doctor. Oh God, she definitely fancies me.

Professor Organ took the reins once more, with a sigh of vexation. ‘Okay, Brian, what fiction has stimulated you lately? Doesn’t have to be the nineteenth-century novel—old, contemporary, anything you’ve liked.’

At last: a question I could answer! I wiped a slick of sweat from my brow and said, truthfully, ‘Blimey—everything from Norman Mailer to Henry Miller to Bret Easton Ellis.’

Organ and Schnitz exchanged worried glances. By this I assumed that Mailer, Miller and Ellis weren’t their favourite authors. That they were somehow—what’s the phrase?—uncanonical.

‘And what, I’d be interested to know,’ said the professor almost inaudibly, ‘recommended you to these …’ she paused for maximum pejorative impact, ‘… writers?’

‘Oh, you know. Their energy mainly; their manly take on modern life. And, it has to be said,’ I announced with a glint in my eye, ‘the nooky.’

Schnitz leaned forward. ‘Sorry, the what? Synecdoche?’

‘No, the sex. I mean, it’s how we all really think and feel isn’t it? Sex on the brain, most of us. Not like all that repressed Jane Austen stuff. How can you trust a forty-year-old virgin to write with authority on human relationships? I mean, when it comes to sex, Jane Austen’s just,’ I searched for the correct adjective, ‘crap.’

Relieved that I had made a start (though somewhat worried that my thesis had been all selling and no substance), I was perturbed to see a deep frown materialise on Professor Organ’s robust face, like the first furrow cut into a wedding cake. Her colleague appeared to be suppressing a laugh.

‘And how,’ said the older woman with skyscraper-high disdain, ‘would you describe their treatment of women?’

Some sort of contrarian voice—a goading yob-voice—had taken up residence in me over the past few minutes. ‘Well, it’s horses for courses, isn’t it. I’m sure men got a hard time from, what’s her name, the one that looked like a wrestler—mates with Picasso?’

‘Gertrude Stein?’ asked Dr Schnitz, raising an eyebrow and so elongating her nose to the length of a largeish courgette. This fiendish double act, these weird sisters, were beginning to seriously upset my equilibrium. The job of bike messenger suddenly seemed very appealing.

‘And how would you describe the work of Gertrude Stein?’ said Professor Organ with impatience. ‘Crap?’

This hit me straight in the guts. The penny had dropped. Somehow, I knew in that moment, with the repetition of my somewhat generalised adjective, that I had failed the interview. For the rest, it was a season in hell. During the remaining forty-five minutes the word ‘crap’ would be fired at me again and again with the relentless accuracy of a Bosnian sniper. I counted thirty of them. At least. My lack of knowledge on every topic known to man was subjected to a strenuous investigation. The heat just never let up. I felt—to repeat one of Dr Schnitz’s classical allusions that I had to look up later—like Ixion on his wheel of fire.

In the end, they both politely walked me to the door. With great insincerity, Professor Organ shook my hand and delivered her standard final line, as her colleague smiled libidinously in my direction.

‘Thank you, Brian. Feel free to look in on the library before you leave.’

I closed the door and breathed fresh, uncontaminated, non-gender-specific air. Set alight by two feminist academics! Grilled to a cinder by gynocentric goons! My dream of a degree, of water-fights in the dorm, of a timber-floored London flat rich in reference works, of a better life … like cold ashes in the mouth. On unsteady legs, I staggered down to the library. But I didn’t have the stomach to enter. Instead I bumped into Emily and Pippa, exiting the canteen.

‘And don’t forget to bring me your Hobbes and Locke … Ciao!’ said Emily, her voice thunderously deep as before.

Something turned direction in me then. Like a flank of timber breaking free from the log-jam. Something bitter and sour and encrusted took offence at their casual sense of entitlement to all this. The gravy train of privilege that they clung to until they were kicked off screaming. No—they didn’t need to cling to it and were never kicked off. The world welcomed them with warm, adoring arms. Like high-ranking credit cards, there was nowhere (and nothing) on this earth these girls were refused. Inevitably, I thought of their parents. Yes, you are to blame, I decided, for your Little Pippas and Poppets and Emilys learning nothing worth knowing in twenty years. I’ve had enough! Understand? You fucks with your two February weeks in Chamonix, your kids with Latin to A level, your million-pound houses ringing with accomplishment, cello-practice and the traditional songs of your Norwegian nannies! Your cats named Sophocles and Aristotle. Your four-wheel drives and teary compassion for those little ‘golliwogs’ starving south of the equator; your Sophies, Tabithas and Natashas with their own ponies and shelves full of Austen and Bronte by the age of ten; you muesli-eating,
Guardian-reading
covert yuppies (for that’s what you are in spite of your earnest altruism and leftist bravado)—you have no idea, as you leave your Rembrandt exhibition for an evening of ‘magical’ Verdi at the Royal Opera House, that somewhere (in Camden, Toxteth, Middlesbrough, East Kilbride) A SINGLE MOTHER IS TAKING IT UP THE ARSE FROM HER PIMP JUST SO SHE CAN AFFORD ENOUGH CRACK TO KEEP HERSELF ALIVE IN ORDER TO KEEP HER
BABY
ALIVE FOR ANOTHER WEEK!

Forgive me. I think I need a little lie down.

‘Your move,’ says Robin, and takes his hand from his bishop.

Michelle smiles at his foolish blunder, her grin reproduced in the black windows of the train. She pretends to um and ah over her next move—this little piggy went to market, this little piggy went …

‘Uh oh,’ I say, over the muted thunder of the sleepers. I watch her bony hand reach for her queen, as spontaneously as she can make it.

That’s the problem with women, they’re always pretending to make decisions when they’ve already made their minds up. Hours ago. Weeks ago. Why do they do this? Why do they play this transparent game, this tired ritual? Ah, the mendacious mores of the gentler sex. One of the oldest subjects known to man. Quite obviously Homer’s Penelope didn’t exist. Before the stereotype-hacks identified the sluttish toga-babe, the Elizabethan temptress, the Augustan bodice-burster,
she
was the first male fantasy figure. Certainly chimerical. No woman was ever so constant in real life. Wait twenty chaste years for some geezer while he gallivants round the Med with nymphs and sexy sorcerers? I think not, somehow. In real life she would’ve been twice divorced with another teenage son. And teaching those suitors a few positions, too. The only thing Penelope really did was to perform an operation every night that she wasn’t entirely honest about the following morning. That much smacks of real life, of real insight into the feminine psyche. That’s how I know Michelle is only pretending to her husband that she hadn’t decided on her next move ten minutes ago,

‘Check,’ Michelle announces, trying not to sound too triumphant.

A cloud passes over Robin’s brow. Outwitted and unmanned, sir! I have been watching their game for half an hour. Or rather, I have been watching Michelle let Robin think he had a hope in hell for half an hour. They’ve been quite chatty with me, all told. Amazing how friendly people can be if you make the effort. They even told me more about their plans for their first child, down to possible names for both genders. A baby—something they can both cherish and celebrate, that will inaugurate their long future together. How a marriage should be, really. And all this I didn’t anticipate when we left King’s Cross two hours ago. Takes all sorts to make up a world, I suppose.

To save Robin his embarrassment I clear my throat and ask a question.

‘Big wedding was it? Last July?’

Michelle looks up from the board with a dreamy grin.

‘Two hundred guests, a country church, and a horse and carriage to the Chinese restaurant in the village afterwards.’

Robin straightens proudly in his confined train-seat at the memory.

‘I tell you—my speech, mate. What a classic. I can still remember it line for line. Shame I couldn’t then!’ At this he bursts out laughing, his jellied black hair shaking on his crown. Of course, I had to make the mistake of asking them how they met. In ten minutes they’d privileged me with their entire life stories. I just had to know why they chose each other; had to know the secret of happiness and why it had proved so elusive for me. I also wondered, but didn’t ask, about their sex life. I was curious to know if they were still doing it with the same frequency and at the same rate of knots as when they first met. Were they still doing it at all? After all, once Mandy and I had co-habited for a year, the only sexual activity in our house was the dismal sight of Fidel attempting to fellate himself night after night. I glanced at the suitcases under Robin’s eyes and decided he looked tired. Very tired. Yes, they were still at it, all right. Like laboratory rabbits, if I guessed correctly I bet Michelle, with her enthusiastic, energetic hands, never allowed him a moment’s rest. And probably after he’d endured a gruelling day advising on capital gains tax, too. I really felt for him. What is it about women always wanting sex when you’re at your most exhausted? You take them away for the wicked weekend in the Cotswolds with the two dozen red roses and the Bollinger on ice and they’re not interested. Then, after the month from hell at work, when you are at mental and physical breaking point, they will—completely against expectation—choose to treat you to the basque and sheer hold-ups concealed under colourless jogging attire … They don’t want a quick one with the lights out, oh no: they want to draw a real first-night performance from you. A proper neck-ricker, with a month of foreplay and the sort of gymnastics that would kill a parallel-bars Olympic gold medallist.