David Lodge - Small World (17 page)

Fulvia Morgana pouted. “Ooh, the English and their ironies! You never know where you are with them.”

The arrival of the drinks trolley at this point was a happy distraction. Morris requested scotch on the rocks and Fulvia a Bloody Mary. Their conversation turned back to the topic of the Chicago conference.

“Everybody was talking about this UNESCO chair,” said Fulvia. “Be’ind their ‘ands, naturally.”

“What chair is that?” Morris felt a sudden stab of anxiety, cutting through the warm glow imparted by the whisky and the agreeable happenstance of striking up acquaintance with this glamorous colleague. “I haven’t heard anything about a UNESCO chair.”

“Don’t worry, it’s not been advertised yet,” said Fulvia, with a smile. Morris attempted a light dismissive laugh, but it sounded forced to his own ears. “It’s supposed to be a chair of Literary Criticism, endowed by UNESCO. It’s just a rumour, actually. I expect Arthur Kingfisher started it. They say ‘e is the chief assessor.”

“And what else,” said Morris, with studied casualness, “do they say about this chair?”

He did not really have to wait for her reply to know that here, at last, was a prize worthy of his ambition. The UNESCO Chair of Literary Criticism! That had to carry the highest salary in the profession. Fulvia confirmed his intuition: $100,000 a year was being talked about. “Tax-free, of course, like all UNESCO salaries.” Duties? Virtually non-existent. The chair was not to be connected with any particular institution, to avoid favouring any particular country. It was a purely conceptual chair (except for the stipend) to be occupied wherever the successful candidate wished to reside. He would have an office and secretarial staff at the Paris headquarters, but no obligation to use it. He would be encouraged to fly around the world at UNESCO’s expense, attending conferences and meeting the international community of scholars, but entirely at his own discretion. He would have no students to teach, no papers to grade, no committees to chair. He would be paid simply to think—to think and, if the mood took him, to write. A roomful of secretaries at the Place Fontenoy would wait patiently beside their word-processors, ready to type, duplicate, collate, staple and distribute to every point of the compass his latest reflections on the ontology of the literary text, the therapeutic value of poetry, the nature of metaphor, or the relationship between synchronic and diachronic literary studies. Morris Zapp felt dizzy at the thought, not merely of the wealth and privilege the chair would confer on the man who occupied it, but also of the envy it would arouse in the breasts of those who did not.

“Will he have the job for life, or for a limited tenure?” Morris asked.

“I think she will be appointed for three years, on secondment from ‘er own university.”

“She?” Morris repeated, alarmed. Had Julia Kristeva or Christine Brooke-Rose already been lined up for the job? “Why do you say, `she’?”

“Why do you say “e’?”

Morris relaxed and raised his hands in a gesture of surrender. “Touché! Someone who was once married to a best-selling feminist novelist shouldn’t walk into that kind of trap.”

“‘Oo is that?”

“She writes under the name of Desiree Byrd.”

“Oh yes, Giorni Difficili. I ‘ave read it.” She looked at Morris with new interest. “It is autobiographical?”

“In part,” said Morris. “This UNESCO chair—would you be tempted by it yourself?”

“No,” said Fulvia emphatically.

Morris didn’t believe her.

As Morris Zapp and Fulvia Morgana addressed themselves to a light lunch served 30,000 feet above south-eastern France, Persse McGarrigle arrived at Heathrow by the Underground railway. With Angelica gone, there had been nothing to detain him at Rummidge, so he had skipped the Business Meeting which constituted the last formal session of the Conference and taken the train to London. He was hoping to get a cheap standby seat on the afternoon flight to Shannon, since his conference grant had been based on rail/sea travel and would not cover the normal economy air fare. The Aer Lingus desk in Terminal Two took his name and asked him to come back at 2.30. While he was hesitating about what to do in the intervening couple of hours, the concourse was temporarily immobilized by a hundred or more Muslim pilgrims, with “Saracen Tours” on their luggage, who turned to face Mecca and prostrated themselves in prayer. Two cleaners leaning on their brooms within earshot of Persse viewed this spectacle with disgust.

“Bloody Pakis,” said one. “If they must say their bloody prayers, why don’t they go and do it in the bloody chapel?”

“No use to them, is it?” said his companion, who seemed a shade less bigotted. “Need a mosque, don’t they?”

“Oh yerse!” said the first man sarcastically. “That’s all we need in ‘Eathrow, a bloody mosque.”

“I’m not sayin’ we ought to ‘ave one,” said the second man patiently, “I’m just sayin’ that a Christian chapel wouldn’t be no use to ‘em. Them bein’ in-fid-els.” He seemed to derive great satisfaction from the pronunciation of this word.

“I s’pose you think we ought to ‘ave a synagogue an’ a `Indoo temple too, an’ a totem pole for Red Indians to dance around? What they doin”ere, anyway? They should be in Terminal Free if they’re goin’ to bloody Mecca.”

“Did I hear you say there was a chapel in this airport?” Persse cut in.

“Well, I know there is one,” said the more indignant of the two men. “Near Lorst Property, innit, Fred?”

“Nah, near the Control Tower,” said Fred. “Go dahn the subway towards Terminal Free, then follow the signs to the Bus Station. Go right to the end of the bus station and then sorter bear left, then right. Yer can’t miss it.”

Persse did, however, miss it, more than once. He traipsed up and down stairs and escalators, along moving walkways, through tunnels, over bridges. Like the city centre of Rummidge, Heathrow discouraged direct, horizontal movement. Pedestrians about and about must go, by devious and labyrinthine ways. Once he saw a sign “To St George’s Chapel,” and eagerly followed its direction, but it led him to the airport laundry. He asked several officials the way, and received confusing and contradictory advice. He was tempted to give up the quest, for his feet were aching, and his grip dragged ever more heavily on his arm, but he persevered. The spectacle of the Muslim pilgrims at prayer had reminded him of the sorry state of his own soul, and though he did not expect to find a Catholic priest in attendance at the chapel to hear his confession, he felt an urge to make an act of contrition in some consecrated place before entrusting himself to the air.

When he found himself outside Terminal Two for the third time he almost despaired, but seeing a young woman in the livery of British Airways ground staff approaching, he accosted her, promising himself that this would be his last attempt.

“St George’s Chapel? It’s near the Control Tower,” she said.

“That’s what they all tell me, but I’ve been searching high and low this last half hour, and the devil take me if I can find it.”

“I’ll show you, if you like,” said the young woman cheerfully. A small plastic badge on her lapel identified her as “Cheryl Summerbee.”

“That’s wonderfully kind of you,” said Persse. “If you’re quite sure I’m not interfering with your work.”

“It’s my lunch break,” said Cheryl, who walked with a curious high-stepping gait, lifting her knees high and planting her feet down daintily and deliberately, like a circus pony. She gave an impression of energetic movement without actually covering much ground, but her style of walking made her shoulder-length blonde hair and other parts of her anatomy bounce about in a pleasing manner. She had a slight squint which gave her blue eyes a starry, unfocused look that was attractive rather than otherwise. She was carrying a shopping bag of bright plastic-coated canvas, from the top of which protruded a romantic novelette entitled
Love Scene
, and a deerstalker of yellowish brown tweed with a bold red check which looked familiar to Persse. “It’s not my hat,” Cheryl explained, when he remarked upon it. “A passenger left it with me this morning, to mail to a friend of his.”

“It wasn’t a Professor Zapp, by any chance?”

Cheryl stopped in mid-stride, one foot poised above the pavement. “How did you know?” she said wonderingly.

“He’s a friend of mine. Who were you to send the hat to?”

“Percy McGarrigle, Limerick.”

“Then I can save you the trouble,” said Persse. “For I’m the very man.” He took from his jacket pocket the white cardboard identification disc issued to him at the Rummidge Conference, and presented it for Cheryl’s inspection.

“Well,” she said. “There’s a coincidence.” She took the hat from her bag and, holding it by the flaps, placed it with a certain ceremony on his head. “A perfect fit,” she smiled. “Like Cinderella’s slipper.” She tucked the label addressed in Morris Zapp’s hand in Persse’s breast pocket, and it seemed to him, inexplicably, that she gave a quick poulterer’s pinch to his pectoral muscles as she did so. She held up two pound notes. “Your American professor friend told me to buy a drink with the change. Now there’s enough for two drinks and a couple of sandwiches.”

Persse hesitated. “I’d love to join you, Cheryl,” he said, “but I must find that chapel.” This was only part of the reason. A sense of loyalty to Angelica, in spite of the trick she had played on him the night before, also restrained him from accepting Cheryl’s invitation.

“Oh, yes,” said Cheryl, “I was forgetting the chapel.” She conducted him another fifty yards, then pointed out the shape of a large wooden crucifix in the middle distance. “There you are.”

“Thanks a million,” he said, and watched with admiration and regret as she pranced away.

Apart from the plain wooden cross, the chapel resembled, from outside, an air raid shelter rather than a place of worship. Behind a low wall of liver-coloured brick, all that was visible was a domed roof built of the same material, and an entrance with steps leading underground. At the bottom of the stairs there was a small vestibule with a table displaying devotional literature, and an office door leading off. On the wall was a small green baize noticeboard on which visitors to the chapel had pinned various prayers and petitions written on scraps of paper. “May our son have a safe journey and return home soon.”

“God save the Russian Orthodox Church.”

“Lord, look with favour on Thy servants Mark and Marianne, as they go to sow Thy seed in the mission fields.”

“Lord, please let me get my luggage back (lost in Nairobi).” The chapel itself had been scooped out of the earth in a fan-shape, with the altar at the narrowest point, and a low ceiling, studded with recessed lights, that curved to meet the floor; so that to sit in one of the front pews was rather like taking one’s place in the forward passenger cabin of a wide-bodied jet, and one would not have been surprised to see a No Smoking—Fasten Safety Belts sign light up above the altar, and a stewardess rather than an usher patrolling the aisle.

There was a small side chapel, where, much to Persse’s surprise and pleasure, a red sanctuary lamp was flickering beside a tabernacle fixed to the wall, indicating that the Blessed Sacrament was reserved. Here he said a simple but sincere prayer, for the recovery of Angelica and of his own purity of heart (for he interpreted her flight as a punishment or his lust). Feeling calmed and fortified, he rose to his feet. It occurred to him that he might leave a written petition of his own on the noticeboard. He wrote, on a page torn from a small notebook, “Dear God, let me find Angelica.” He wrote her name on a separate line, in the trailing continuous script he had used to inscribe it in the snow at Rummidge. If it was God’s will, she might pass this way, recognize his hand, relent, and get in touch with him.

Persse did not immediately approach the noticeboard with his petition, since a young woman was standing before it in the act of pinning one of her own to the green baize. Even with her back to him she presented an incongruous figure in this setting: jet-black hair elaborately curled and coiffed, a short white imitation-fur jacket, the tightest of tight red needlecord trousers, and high-heeled gold sandals. Having fixed her prayer to the noticeboard, she stood immobile before it for a moment, then took from her handbag a silk scarf decorated with dice and roulette wheels, which she threw over her head. As she turned and tottered past him on her high heels into the chapel, Persse glimpsed a pale, pretty face which he vaguely felt he had seen before, perhaps in the course of his peregrinations around Heathrow that morning. As he pinned his petition to the noticeboard, he could not resist glancing at the rectangle of pink card he had seen the girl place there: Please God, don’t let my father or my mother worry themselves to death about me and don’t let them find out what I am doing now or any of the workpeople on the farm or the other girls at the hotel God please.

Persse levered the card from the noticeboard with his thumbnail, turned it over and read what was printed on the other side: GIRLS UNLIMITED Hostesses Escorts Masseuses Artistes An International Agency. Headquarters: Soho Sq., LONDON, W.I. Tel: 012 4268 Telegrams CLIMAX London.

Persse replaced the card on the noticeboard as he had found it, and went back into the chapel. The girl was kneeling in the back row, her face bowed, her heavily mascaraed eyelids lowered. Persse sat down in the corresponding pew on the other side of the central aisle, and studied her profile. After few minutes the girl crossed herself, stood up and stepped into the aisle. Persse followed suit and accosted her: “Is it Bernadette McGarrigle?”

He caught her in his arms as she fainted away.

As Morris Zapp and Fulvia Morgana flew over the Alps, dissecting the later work of Roland Barthes and enjoying a second cup of coffee, the municipal employees of Milan called a lightning strike in support of two clerks in the tax department dismissed for alleged corruption (according to the senior management they had been exempting their families from property taxes, according to the union they were being victimized for not exempting the senior management from property taxes). The British Airways Trident landed, therefore, in the midst of civic chaos. Most of the airport staff were refusing to work, and the passengers had to recover their baggage from a heap underneath the aircraft’s belly, and carry it themselves across the tarmac to the terminal building. The queues for customs and passport control were long and unruly.