David Lodge - Small World (10 page)

“Some are more errant than others,” said Morris.

“I know,” said Hilary meaningfully.

They shook hands and Morris pecked her awkwardly on the cheek. “Take care,” he said.

“Why should I?” she said. “I’m not doing anything adventurous. Incidentally, I thought you were against foreign travel, Morris. You used to say that travel narrows the mind.”

“There comes a moment when the individual has to yield to the Zeitgeist or drop out of the ball game,” said Morris. “For me it came in ‘75, when I kept getting invitations to Jane Austen centenary conferences in the most improbable places—Poznan, Delhi, Lagos, Honolulu—and half the speakers turned out to be guys I knew in graduate school. The world is a global campus, Hilary, you’d better believe it. The American Express card has replaced the library pass.”

“I expect Philip would agree with you,” said Hilary; but Philip, pouring out the whisky, ignored the cue. “Goodnight, then,” she said.

“Goodnight, dear,” said Philip, without looking up from the glasses. “We’ll just have a nightcap.” When Hilary had closed the door behind her, Philip handed Morris his drink. “What are all these conferences you’re going to this summer?” he asked, with a lain covetousness.

“Zurich is Joyce. Amsterdam is Semiotics. Vienna is Narrative. Or is it Narrative in Amsterdam and Semiotics in Vienna…? Anyway. Jerusalem I do know is about the Future of Criticism, because I’m one of the organizers. It’s sponsored by a journal called
Metucriticism
, I’m on the editorial board.”

“Why Jerusalem?”

“Why not? It’s a draw, a novelty. It’s a place people want to see, but it’s not on the regular tourist circuit. Also the Jerusalem Hilton offers very competitive rates in the summer because it’s so goddam hot.”

“The Hilton, eh? A bit different from Lucas Hall and Martineau Hall,” Philip mused ruefully.

“Right. Look, Philip, I know you were disappointed by the turnout for your conference, but frankly, what can you expect if you’re asking people to live in those tacky dormitories and eat canteen meals? Food and accommodation are the most important things about any conference. If the people are happy with those, they’ll generate intellectual excitement. If they’re not, they’ll sulk, and sneer, and cut lectures.”

Philip shrugged. “I see your point, but people here just can’t afford that sort of luxury. Or their universities won’t pay for it.”

“Not in the UK, they won’t. But when I worked here I discovered an interesting anomaly. You could only have up to fifty pounds a year or some such paltry sum to attend conferences in this country, but there was no limit on grants to attend conferences overseas. The solution is obvious: you should hold your next conference abroad. Somewhere nice and warm, like Monte Carlo, maybe. Meanwhile, why don’t you come to Jerusalem this summer?”

“Who, me? To your conference?”

“Sure. You could knock off a paper on the future of criticism, couldn’t you?”

“I don’t think it has much of a future,” said Philip.

“Great! It will be controversial. Bring Hilary along for the ride.”

“Hilary?” Philip looked disconcerted. “Oh, no, I don’t think she could stand the heat. Besides, I doubt if we could afford her fare. Two children at university is a bit of a drain, you know.”

“Don’t tell me, I’m bracing myself for it next fall.”

“Did Hilary put you up to suggesting this, Morris?” said Philip, looking slightly ashamed of his own question.

“Certainly not. What makes you think so?”

Philip squirmed uncomfortably in his seat. “It’s just that she’s been complaining lately that I’m away too much, neglecting the family, neglecting her.”

“And are you?”

“I suppose I am, yes. It’s the only thing that keeps me going these days, travelling. Changes of scene, changes of faces. It would defeat the whole object to take Hilary along with me on my academic trips.”

“What is the object?”

Philip sighed. “Who knows? It’s hard to put it into words. What are we all looking for? Happiness? One knows that doesn’t last. Distraction, perhaps—distraction from the ugly facts: that there is death, there is disease, there is impotence and senility ahead.”

“Jesus,” said Morris, “are you always like this after a medieval banquet?”

Philip smiled wanly and refilled their glasses. “Intensity,” he said. “Intensity of experience is what we’re looking for, I think. We know we won’t find it at home any more, but there’s always the hope that we’ll find it abroad. I found it in America in ‘69.”

“With Désirée?”

“Not just Désirée, though she was an important part of it. It was the excitement, the richness of the whole experience, the mixture of pleasure and danger and freedom—and the sun. You know, when we came back here, for a long while I still went on living in Euphoria inside my head. Outwardly I returned to my old routine. I got up in the morning, put on a tweed suit, read the Guardian over breakfast, walked into the University, gave the same old tutorials on the same old texts… and all the while I was leading a completely different life inside my head. Inside my head, I had decided not to come back to England, so I was waking up in Plotinus, sitting in the sun in my happi-coat, looking out over the Bay, putting on Levis and a sports shirt, reading the
Euphoric Times
over breakfast, and wondering what would happen today, would there be a protest, a demonstration, would my class have to fight their way through teargas and picket lines or should we meet off-campus in somebody’s apartment, sitting on the floor surrounded by posters and leaflets and paperbacks about encounter groups and
avant garde
theatre and Viet Nam.”

“That’s all over now,” said Morris. “You wouldn’t recognize the place. The kids are all into fraternities and preppy clothes and working hard to get into law school.”

“So I’ve heard,” said Philip. “How depressing.”

“But this intensity of experience, did you never find it again since you were in America?”

Philip stared into the bottom of his glass. “Once I did,” he said. “Shall I tell you the story?”

“Just let me get myself a cigar. Is this a cigarillo story or a panatella story?”

“I don’t know, I’ve never told it to anyone before.”

“I’m honoured,” said Morris. “This calls for something special.”

Morris left the room to fetch one of his favourite Romeo y Julietas. When he returned, he was conscious that the furniture and lighting had been rearranged in his absence. Two highbacked armchairs were inclined towards each other across the width of the hearth, where a gas-fire burned low. The only other light in the room came from a standard lamp behind the chair in which Philip sat, his face in shadow. Between the two chairs was a long, low coffee table bearing the whisky bottle, water jug, glasses and an ashtray. Morris’s glass had been refilled with a generous measure.

“Is this where the narratee sits?” he enquired, taking the vacant chair. Philip, gazing absently into the fire, smiled vaguely, but made no reply. Morris rolled the cigar next to his ear and listened approvingly to the crackle of the leaves. He pierced one end of the cigar, clipped the other, and lit it, puffing vigorously. “OK,” he said, examining the tip to see that it was burning evenly. “I’m listening.”

“It happened some years ago, in Italy,” Philip began. “It was the very first lecture tour I did for the British Council. I flew out to Naples, and then worked my way up the country by train: Rome, Florence, Bologna, Padua, ending up at Genoa. It was a bit of a rush on the last day. I gave my lecture in the afternoon, and I was booked to fly home the same evening. The Council chap in Genoa, who’d been shepherding me about the place, gave me an early dinner in a restaurant, and then drove me out to the airport. There was a delay in the flight departure—a technical problem, they said, so I told him not to wait. I knew he had to get up early the next morning to drive to Milan for a meeting. That comes into the story.”

“I should hope so,” said Morris. “There should be nothing irrelevant in a good story.”

“Anyway, the British Council man, J. K. Simpson, I can’t remember his first name, a nice young chap, very friendly, enthusiastic about his job, he said, ‘OK, I’ll leave you then, but if the flight’s cancelled, give me a ring and I’ll get you into a hotel for the night.’

“Well, the delay went on and on, but eventually we took off, at about midnight. It was a British plane. I was sitting next to an English businessman, a salesman in woollen textiles I think he was…”

“Is that relevant?”

“Not really.”

“Never mind. Solidity of specification,” said Morris with a tolerant wave of his cigar. “It contributes to the reality effect.”

“We were sitting towards the rear of the aircraft, just behind the wing. He had the window seat, and I was next to him. About ten minutes out of Genoa, they were just getting ready to serve drinks, you could hear the clink of bottles from the back of the plane, when this salesman chap turned away from the window, and tapped me on the arm and said, ‘Excuse me, but would you mind having a look out there. Is it my imagination or is that engine on fire?’ So I leaned across him and looked out of the window. It was dark of course, but I could see flames sort of licking round the engine. Well, I’d never looked closely at a jet engine at night before, for all I knew that was always the effect they gave. I mean you might expect to see a kind of fiery glow coming out of the engine at night. On the other hand, these were definitely flames, and they weren’t just coming out of the hole at the back. ‘I don’t know what to think,’ I said. ‘It certainly doesn’t look quite right.’ `Do you think we should tell somebody?’ he said. ‘Well, they must have seen it for themselves, mustn’t they?’ I said. The fact was, neither of us wanted to look a fool by suggesting that something was wrong, and then being told that it wasn’t. Fortunately a chap on the other side of the aisle noticed that we were exercised about something, and came across to have a look for himself. ‘Christ!’ he said, and pushed the button to call the stewardess. I think he was probably some sort of engineer. The stewardess came by with the drinks trolley at that moment. ‘If it’s a drink you want, you’ll have to wait your turn,’ she said. The cabin staff were a bit snappish because of the long delay. ‘Does the captain know that his starboard engine is on fire?’ said the engineer. She gaped at him, squinted out of the window, then ran up the aisle, pushing her trolley in front of her, like a nursemaid running with a pram. A minute later and a man in uniform, the second pilot I suppose, came down the aisle, looking worried and carrying a big torch, which he shone out of the window at the engine. It was on fire all right. He ran back to the cockpit. Very soon the plane banked and headed back to Genoa. The Captain came on the PA to say that we would be making an emergency landing because of a technical problem, and that we should be prepared to leave the aircraft by the emergency exits. Then somebody else told us exactly what to do. I must say he sounded remarkably cool, calm and collected.”

“It was a cassette,” said Morris. “They have these prerecorded cassettes for all contingencies. I was in a Jumbo, once, going over the Rockies, and a stewardess put on the emergency ditching tape by mistake. We were having lunch at the time, I remember, a perfect sunny day at 30,000 feet, when this voice suddenly said, ‘We are obliged to make an emergency landing on water. Do not panic if you are unable to swim. The rescue services have been advised of our intentions.’ People froze with their forks halfway to their mouths. Then all hell let loose until they sorted it out.”

“There was a fair amount of wailing and gnashing of teeth in our plane—quite a lot of the passengers were Italian, and you know what they’re like—they don’t hide their feelings. Then the pilot put the plane into a terrifying dive to put the fire out.”

“Jesus!” said Morris Zapp.

“He was thoughtful enough to explain first what he was going to do, but only in English, so all the Italians thought we were going to crash into the sea and started to scream and weep and cross themselves. But the dive worked—it put the fire out. Then we had to circle over the sea for about twenty minutes, jettisoning fuel, before we tried to land back at Genoa. It was a very long twenty minutes.”

“I’ll bet.”

“Frankly, I thought they were going to be my last twenty minutes.”

“What did you think about?”

“I thought, how stupid. I thought, how unfair. I suppose I prayed. I imagined Hilary and the children hearing about the crash on the radio when they woke up the next morning, and I felt bad about that. I thought about surviving but being terribly crippled. I tried to remember the terms of the British Council’s insurance policy for lecturers on Specialist Tours—so much for an arm, so much for a leg below the knee, so much for a leg above the knee. I tried not to think about being burned to death.

“Landing at Genoa is a pretty hairy experience at the best of times. I don’t know if you know it, but there’s this great high promontory that sticks out into the sea. Planes approaching from the north have to make a U-turn round it, and then come in between it and the mountains, over the city and the docks. And we were doing it at night with one engine kaput. The airport was on full emergency alert, of course, but being a small airport, in Italy, that didn’t amount to much. As we hit the ground, I could see the fire trucks with their lights flashing, racing towards us. As soon as the plane stopped, the cabin crew opened the emergency exits and we all slid out down those inflatable chute things. The trouble was they couldn’t open the emergency exit nearest to us, me and the wool man, because it gave on to the wing with the duff engine. So we were the last out of the plane. I remember thinking it was rather unfair, because if it hadn’t been for us the whole thing might have blown up in mid-air.

“Anyway, we got out all right, ran like hell to a bus they had waiting, and were taken to the terminal. The fire engines smothered the plane in foam. While they were getting our baggage out of the plane I telephoned the British Council chap. I suppose I wanted to express my relief at having survived by telling somebody. It was queer to think that Hilary and the children were asleep in England, not knowing that I’d had a narrow escape from death. I didn’t want to wake Hilary up with a call and give her a pointless retrospective fright. But I felt I had to tell someone. Also, I wanted to get out of the airport. A lot of the Italian passengers were in hysterics, kissing the ground and weeping and crossing themselves and so on. It was obvious that we shouldn’t be flying out till the next morning and that it was going to take hours to sort out our accommodation for the night. And Simpson had told me to phone him if there was any problem, so although it was by now well past one o’clock, I did. As soon as he grasped what had happened, he said he’d come straight out to the airport. So about half an hour later, he picked me up and drove me into the city to find a hotel. We tried a few, but no luck—either they were shut up for the night or they were full, there was a trade fair on in Genoa that week. So he said, look, why don’t you come home with me, we haven’t got a guest bedroom, I’m afraid, but there’s a kind of put-u-up in the living-room. So he took me home to his apartment, in a modern block, halfway up the mountain that overlooks the city and the sea. I felt extraordinarily calm and wide-awake, I was rather impressed by my own sangfroid, as a matter of fact.