Eating People is Wrong (12 page)

Treece adjusted his goggles and climbed aboard. Up to the top of the hill he went, signalling with his arms for the most trivial reasons; around he turned, and down he came. Suddenly, out from
behind a car, a figure stepped. Treece squeezed the brakes, the bicycle skidded, and then he hit him. His clipboard and hat hurled into the air. It was the examiner.

He’d spoiled his suit, but otherwise he was all right – right enough to go on with the test. Treece had a graze down his nose, but that was nothing. Afterwards, when it was all over,
Treece asked: ‘Did I pass?’ ‘Knocks me arse over tip, and then wants to know if he’s passed,’ said the examiner laughing delightedly. He was getting really fond of
Treece. ‘Let me know how much it costs to have that suit cleaned,’ said Treece. ‘See you again,’ said the examiner. ‘Yes,’ said Treece. ‘See you
again.’

Solace was what Treece wanted at this point; and solace he was offered, for as he chugged off down the High Street who should he see, gazing into the window of an antique shop, but Emma
Fielding. He pulled into the kerb and uttered her name. She turned and, on seeing that it was he, came over to his side. ‘What have you done to your nose?’ she said. ‘I’ve
been taking my driving test,’ said Treece, taking out his handkerchief and wiping the graze. ‘Did you pass?’ asked Emma. ‘I didn’t,’ said Treece ‘and if
the truth is to be expressed I never shall. That is what I have to understand and come to terms with.’

‘I’m sorry,’ said Emma.

‘I wondered if I could trespass on your time and good nature,’ said Treece. ‘I was just going to have some tea. Will you join me?’

‘I have to get some vegetables,’ said Emma. ‘They sell them off cheap in the evening, and prudence is a virtue that my mother taught me.’

‘What were you looking at so concernedly in that window?’ asked Treece.

‘There’s a harmonium in there that I’m very fond of,’ said Emma.

‘You are fond of music,’ said Treece politely, wheeling his bicycle through the streets, ‘or just of musical instruments?’

‘Both,’ said Emma. In fact for her, the harmonium brought back the recollection of a happy period in her youth, when her mother had played at the harmonium on quiet evenings, and she
and her sisters had sung. The pursuit had a quaint and foreign flavour about it. What perhaps struck home sharpest was the name of this instrument, which expressed precisely that quality, of
harmony, which Emma sought from life. Life as she now led it was perpetually restless, searching, inharmonious; nothing was resolved and there were no firm rocks to settle on. To go home –
that was Emma’s one desire, but there was no home. It had broken up long ago.

The housewifely aspect of marketing was not lost on Professor Treece, who was interested in the flavours of separate sorts of experience. To pass among the wooden stalls of the market, lighted
with heavy yellow-hazed lamps, while the evening airs of the town gathered round its grey buildings in a twilight mist, was a pleasant sensation. It may be, said Treece, that one feels much like
this when one is married; he was thinking, specifically, of the heavy bag of potatoes which he was carrying; it was a cosy kind of experience. Things like this had not, for Treece, lost their
cultural novelty. Presently they retired to the Kardomah Café and, on the first floor, found a table overlooking the square. It was filled with housewives and clergymen, biting delicately on
crumpets.

‘I always have tea in town on Mondays,’ said Treece, as they sat down, ‘because I teach an evening class at the Adult Education Centre here.’

‘Do you enjoy teaching adults?’ asked Emma.

‘Sometimes I think I prefer them to university students; they know what you mean when you talk about life.’

‘Do you like talking about life?’ asked Emma.

‘It’s the only way I can get my own back on it,’ said Treece. ‘And after all its behaviour is scandalous enough. I’m glad I saw you, because I’ve been wanting
to talk to you,’ said Treece. ‘I wanted to ask you what happened about Mr Eborebelosa. I felt I . . . well, stepped wrong over that.’

‘Well, the position now is really rather more complicated,’ said Emma with a smile, ‘because now someone else wants me to marry
him
, and I don’t want to, so I
begin to feel that if I ought to marry Mr Eborebelosa then probably I ought to marry him too. With Mr Eborebelosa it’s his colour, and with this other one it’s his class, that come into
the picture. As he told me in a letter, with class you need a lot of good-will.’ Emma was referring to the fact that she had received two letters from Louis Bates, in which he had confessed
his mad passion and sought to drag her some way towards the altar. These letters had been so pompous and ill-considered in tone, and so unrelated to effective action, that it was impossible for
Emma to think of them without either annoyance or amusement. ‘Perhaps’, said Emma, being a little over-bold, ‘the best thing to do would be to decide which one I like least
– and then marry him.’ Treece peered about him, as if he could see words written on the air, and he looked severely at them; it was not at all funny. Obviously what people had to do in
this sort of situation was to summon up all their reserves of goodwill and honest feeling, and get this thing sorted out.

‘You know,’ Emma said, ‘I did go over the whole thing very carefully and seriously. You must do me the justice to think that I try to do the right and honest thing.’

‘But I do think that, Miss Fielding,’ said Treece, with a pleasant, approving smile. ‘I respect your choices.’

‘This really upsets me, to be honest,’ said Emma. ‘Am I some sort of Belle Dame Sans Merci, who tempts people into love without having the least capacity to respond with any?
Of course, everyone thinks his behaviour has been sound and honest, and if people only wouldn’t be so blind, they’d see it’s absolutely right that you should have committed the
murder, or stolen the money, or performed the adultery. But I don’t think I’m deceiving myself like that, Professor Treece; I honestly don’t.’

‘And I don’t either,’ said Professor Treece.

Emma looked out of the window, feeling shaken and disturbed. Outside the dusk was creeping up between the market stalls, and it was beginning to rain. The winter weather was really coming;
afternoon rain dripped off the roofs, blustery winds buffeted the black, leafless trees, and people went by in their raincoats, looking enclosed and self-contained.

Treece scratched his ear uneasily. ‘I want to tell you’, he said, ‘that I felt I’d misled you in my little conversation, last time we talked. I suppose you’re right
in accusing me of underestimating your integrity.’

‘Well, I didn’t really do that,’ said Emma, ‘but, you know, I’m twenty-six. It’s a terribly old age. I can’t afford to make any more mistakes. I try to
be fair to people and things, but I want to be fair to myself as well.’

‘Yes, I know,’ said Treece, ‘and I . . . well, I apologize.’

‘Well, what is it, then?’ said a brisk voice; it was the waitress. Treece’s head bobbed up. ‘What will you have?’ he said to Emma. ‘Just tea and toast,’
said Emma. But Treece was obviously going to take the amount she ate as an index of the degree to which she accepted his apology; he pressed her to more and more.

‘The trouble is’, said Emma, when the waitress had gone, ‘that with one’s behaviour one doesn’t know what to believe.’ Believe, believe, who said believe?
Treece’s eyes seemed to say; here in my universe there is someone who talks of believing!

‘Do you believe?’ asked Treece.

‘No; I don’t really believe; I just do things,’ said Emma. It was only men, Emma considered, who believed in things; women recognized that being a woman was way of life
enough.

‘Do you believe?’ asked Emma.

‘I believe, I suppose, in my way; I believe in scrupulousness in the face of action. You know, I’ve spent all my life trying to understand the relationship of action and
consequences. I wonder if I shall ever learn – I find myself singularly obtuse. But the two seem in such different spheres – actions are in time and consequences are in
suspension.’

‘I know what you mean, and in a way I’d say the same,’ said Emma. ‘But at the same time you aren’t really saying anything, are you? Not about the world. I mean,
where do you take your values from, and how does this apply to other people?’

‘But it doesn’t,’ said Treece, ‘and it isn’t a valuable position. You mistake me if you think I’m trying to elevate it into a public philosophy. All I’m
saying is that I don’t believe in public philosophies, that I want to live according to my own lights, and that I don’t want to change anyone else.’

‘But you did, with me,’ said Emma.

‘That’s true,’ said Treece, ‘and I’ve repented. But . . . if people can believe in God, so much the better; they have a code they can, and ought to, live
by.’

‘But you cultivate your own garden?’

‘My
avant
-garden,’ said Treece.

‘And how do you determine what’s scrupulous?’

‘The same way as you do,’ said Treece. ‘I try to examine what lies before me in all its complexity and to bring to bear on it all the moral resources at my disposal. That is
what life is, as far as I’m concerned.’

‘But there are three obvious objections to that, aren’t there?’ said Emma cruelly. ‘One is that your process inhibits action; that is you weigh intellectually, instead of
being a moral being and acting and letting your morality come out in your action. And then one can scrupulously rob or murder or commit perversion. And it offers nothing for other
people.’

‘I am a teacher,’ said Treece, ‘and I talk about life, as I told you. And, moreover, I think there are certain moral passions common to all men.’

‘The trouble with me is I just enjoy more and more things,’ said Emma. ‘First I just liked milk; then I learned to like tea and coffee; and then cocoa and lemonade; and then
port and sherry; and then gin and whisky. Soon I shall like everything.’

‘You must hurry up,’ said Treece.

‘What I begin to suspect about life is that anything in it is pleasure if you can only simply adjust, in some ways, to the terms of what’s offered. If anyone has a pure and honest
self, that stays meticulously clean on the sidelines, I have; but it’s a fight to remain like that.’

‘Well, this
has
been interesting,’ said Treece. ‘I don’t know about you, but I’ve enjoyed this. There’s something about teashops,’ Treece added.
‘I can take teashops in the same way that people take tranquillizers.’

‘Yes, I’ve enjoyed it too,’ said Emma. ‘You must let me repay this invitation. Why don’t you have tea next Monday with me at the flat.’

‘Splendid,’ said Treece. He half-rose and gave an expansive gesture with his hand, which overturned the teapot, pouring its contents neatly into Emma’s lap.
‘Damnation,’ said Emma, getting up suddenly. ‘I’m terribly sorry,’ said Treece. He kneeled down in front of her and tried to eliminate the large stain with a discarded
teacake. Emma pushed his hand away with an angry gesture. A waitress came with a cloth. Emma looked at his face and said: ‘It will wash out.’ ‘I’ll buy you another
dress,’ said Treece. ‘Certainly not,’ said Emma. Treece got out his diary and made a note: ‘That’s one suit and one dress today,’ he said plaintively.
‘Sometimes I wish I could just go away and start again in another town.’

Emma asked for her coat and he brought it. ‘It doesn’t show under the coat; that’s one consolation,’ he said. ‘I don’t need consoling,’ said Emma.
‘Must you make a crisis out of it?’ The waitress brought their change and they left. Outside the evening was cold and wet, and Treece was terrified that he had given her pneumonia; it
was a poor way to start a friendship. Tea dripped steadily from the hem of her dress to the pavement; sadly he rubbed it in with his foot. ‘You ought to take that dress off,’ he said.
‘Here?’ said Emma sharply. ‘No, not here,’ said Treece. ‘I’m going home to change,’ said Emma; she was annoyed with his officiousness, for all she wanted
was for him to look after her, neither humbly nor apologetically, but sensibly; it wasn’t a crisis for him; he should be thinking of her. ‘Has it gone right through?’ he asked.
‘Yes, it has,’ said Emma. ‘And can I still come to tea next Monday?’ he asked as she turned to go. ‘I suppose so,’ said Emma.

4

I

D
R
V
IOLA
M
ASEFIELD
’
S
flat was not a place where you simply lived; you
proved
something. It was a showpiece of the
unendurably modern – when you saw the modern like that, it looked so dated that you couldn’t believe it. When you went there, you always discussed things as they discuss things in
Vogue
: What does one do with dustbins to make them look interesting? What goes with
shishkebab
? How often do you water succulents? How high up do you put your bosom this month? Which
is the best make of motor scooter? What do you do with a mobile when it isn’t? What is the best way of renovating old skis? Reading articles called ‘Are you an understanding wife?
– test yourself’ and ‘Have a goat’s-milk bath this week’, Viola felt at home in the world. She seemed to have boyfriends because they could make bookcases, or
transplant cacti, or cook
wiener schnitzel
; at least there was always one there doing it, whenever you went, and they really were boyfriends, like the ones in the women’s magazines.
Meantime, Tanya would be standing by, with a quiet, a knowing smile on her European face. There is such a thing as a European face, which seems to say, ‘I have lived where you never could
have survived’; Tanya had one. She was a lecturer in Slavonic languages at the University, and owned the house; she had taken Viola under her wing. Herself of Russian stock, she had come to
England before, during, after the war – it was impossible to say – after knowing God knows what horrors and savagery. What she had learned could not be effaced from her; she could look
at Machiavelli or La Rouchefoucauld and find them innocent. To treat her as a person, to offer her civilized manners, took on with her almost the quality of an insult: only young people and
innocent countries could afford to play about like this. The proximity of Viola’s English, fresh-cheeked innocence and Tanya’s experience was a mystery. It was commonly rumoured that
Tanya was Lesbian, but Viola denied it, said there was nothing, that Tanya liked her to have men friends, and one was left not knowing whether Viola was less innocent or Tanya more innocent than
each seemed.