Eating People is Wrong (6 page)

II

Treece wished that he did not have to stare, all the time, at pretty women; sometimes it seemed to him his one overriding interest. It was not that he willed it like that; it
was something that was drawn out of him, and it was in consciousness of facts such as this that he sometimes had to concede that perhaps Freud might be right, and there was a bit of the irrational
in man after all. It was the following Saturday, and the occasion was a meeting of the town’s Literary Society, a group of fanciful persons who met monthly to discuss the prosecution of good
literature. If an atmosphere of seediness hung over the Society, it was not because of the weakness of its membership; the persons who attended were all worthy personages, not without status in the
town, and not without performance; no, the trouble was that, as in all literary discussion, there comes a point where the critical has to give way to personal fondnesses, personal friendships, and
this was the point at which the society had stalled. Nowadays, there, nobody said what they thought, for they knew whom they liked, and whom they loathed, and whose toes they wished to spare, and
whose to stamp upon. Today, the meeting was addressed by a local writer of children’s books, a stout and hearty personality whose suit looked as though it had been made from the skin of a
donkey; and it was this person that Treece had come to introduce. There were people who, in such a context, could introduce, and there were those who could not; Treece was so oppressively one of
those who could, none better; so he nearly always did. The room was a big one, and wintry sunlight lay in big pools on the old Victorian carpet; the audience, scattered about the room in armchairs,
shimmered in the half-dark of the place; and time seemed to move indolently, slower than the tick of the clock, while the writer spoke on, talking of Piaget and infantile communication. And in the
front row, eager, intense, lips half-parted as if in pleased surprise, sat Mrs Rogers, mother of three boys, wife of an accountant, a contributor of short stories to
Woman’s Journal
, a
delight to look upon. It was enough that she existed, felt Treece; he asked no more of her than that. Bronzed, fair, finely dressed, she came each month, and said nothing, and smiled brightly, and
scattered approving interest about her; she was a motherly woman, and Treece loved motherly women. He thought of Mallarmé, who had written, surely, about
her
:

And the talk went on, and Treece thought, with a little giggle to himself, and with a sense of discovery: Why, women are much more interesting than
anything
, and I
don’t even know why.

The speaker stopped, and Treece thanked him, and asked for questions. ‘I just want to say that I think you’re a very interesting man,’ said a woman from the back. Someone else
then asked how many people Enid Blyton were. Mrs Rogers smiled, and said how interesting it all had been, and how all mothers were often frightened to think of the hands they left the writing of
children’s books in, but now that she’d seen the speaker, she would have no qualms about letting her children read his work. After this a lady at the back, with a long-drawling voice,
said from beneath a large flowerpot hat: ‘Well, I read one of your things, and I didn’t like it.’ ‘Why not, madam?’ said the speaker, a little put out; he was the sort
of man that always called ladies ‘madam’, and it brought in the aroma of an
ancien régime
; one thought of Wells and Bennett and a sort of literary society which was gone –
gone, no doubt, for good. ‘I don’t know
why
,’ said the woman in the flowerpot hat. ‘I just didn’t like it.’ Treece thanked the speaker and brought the
meeting to a close. Mrs Rogers beamed sweetly at him as he did so.

It was the custom for the members of the literary society then to retire to the lounge of the Black Swan Hotel, where they took tea together. Shepherding their speaker fondly, they made their
way there in cavalcade, past Dolcis and Woolworths and Sainsburys. In the lounge of the hotel were huge leather armchairs that looked like cows; you wouldn’t have thought it odd if someone
had come along to milk them. Here they sat and looked at each other. The lady in the flowerpot hat sat down beside Treece and sighed deeply. ‘It’s terrible to be abnormal,’ she
said, and heaved another sigh. ‘Did
you
have an unhappy childhood?’ ‘I had an unhappy maturity,’ said Treece. ‘I had a frankly bloody childhood,’ said the
woman. ‘Tell me, do you like this hairstyle? Be frank: I can have it done again somewhere else.’

‘Darling, I was going to ask you what happened to it,’ said a man in a bow tie. ‘You could have fought back. Or did they give you an anaesthetic?’

‘You should have seen what he did to my dog,’ said the lady. She turned again to Treece. ‘I suppose you know lots of writers,’ she said.

‘I know some,’ said Treece, ‘but I think I prefer people.’ This remark was not intended as a sally; Treece quite seriously divided the world into writers, who led life as
a conscious effort, and people, who didn’t; sometimes he preferred writers and sometimes he preferred people.

The lady in the flowerpot hat greeted this with a little giggle; then she said, ‘Do you know any of the London crowd?’ This was said so wistfully, with such an air of hope, that
Treece was sorry to disappoint her. But really, he had to admit, he didn’t.

‘It’s so difficult if you don’t live in London,’ said the lady in the flowerpot hat. ‘I don’t like London, but I must say I often wish I lived there.
It’s so hard to get published if you aren’t in the swim, and can’t butter up the right people. I mean, I have published, but it’s twice as hard as it would be if you lived
in London. People don’t
ask
you for things.’

‘I think it’s much easier now for people from the provinces to publish than it ever was,’ said Treece. ‘Don’t you?’

‘Well, no, I don’t think that,’ said the woman. ‘People seem to think that it was hard, once, for provincial writers to get published, but I don’t think it was any
harder then. I think you need to be in London more now than you did in those days . . .’

Treece had the wit to perceive that this topic was a matter of something more than passing interest to his companion, that they had touched on the soul of something; and it was not difficult to
see what it was, for Treece knew reasonably well the sort of surburban milieu in which the woman circulated; and he also knew some of her work, which was poetry of a sound and intense kind. There
exists a vast subculture of literature in England, of writers working on a part-time basis and circulating their work in closed circles, such as this very literary society; their work is good, but
little known, and is lacking simply in the intensity and originality of that of the committed artist. ‘Here’s the tweeny,’ said the lady in the flowerpot hat; and tea was
brought.

‘Where’s Mrs Rogers?’ said Treece as he spied around the circle present and noticed the sad omission.

‘She has to go home and get tea ready for her boys,’ said the man in the bow tie. ‘She’s a dear woman. Have you seen any of her stuff?’

‘She writes as though she’s just come in out of the dew,’ said the lady in the flowerpot hat. ‘I once went to her house and she said, “Have you seen our
goblin?” and, do you know, I wasn’t in the least surprised. It’s the one place where you wouldn’t be. The goblin turned out to be a make of vacuum cleaner, but, you know, if
it had been a real one I should have accepted it just as simply.’

There were times when Treece felt more at home in the pellucid air of the provinces than anywhere he had been in his life before; the conversation lapped on in little wavelets and the stout
businessmen passed and repassed outside the door and the buses screeched outside the windows. One felt cosy. England expanded and became a continent, and all that lay outside was infinitely remote;
England contracted and became an islet, and all that lay inside was sound and secure. ‘Sugar?’ said the lady in the flowerpot hat. ‘Yes?’ asked Treece; he thought she was
being fond, but she was simply pouring out his tea. He didn’t take sugar, but the mistake was too complicated to explain. ‘How many lumps?’ ‘One, please,’ said Treece
lazily; he had stretched out his legs and was now practically lying down. ‘Nonsense, you can’t taste one; I’ve given you three,’ said the lady in the flowerpot hat. She
handed him the cup. ‘You know, you’re as
lean
as a rake,’ she said. ‘You need fattening up. Doesn’t your wife feed you?’ ‘I’m not
married,’ said Treece. ‘I think that’s disgusting,’ said the lady in the flowerpot brightly. ‘Don’t you?’ She turned to everyone else: ‘He says
he’s not married.’ ‘Well, it’s not a matter of principle,’ said Treece. ‘I’ve wanted to marry, a great many times; I always seem to be asking women to
marry me. After all, there are things a wife can do that not even the best of housekeepers can manage. But they won’t marry me.’

‘What nonsense,’ said the lady in the flowerpot. ‘Let’s see, who do we
know
?’ ‘
Why
won’t they marry you?’ asked someone else.
‘Well, I can see their point,’ said Treece. ‘I must be about the least desirable bachelor I’ve ever come across. I just don’t seem to have the attributes women like in
a man – a car, a television set, you know.’ ‘We’ll find somebody,’ said the lady in the flowerpot hat.

The Secretary of the Society was a stout little man named Schenk, who sold carpets. ‘It’s six o’clock,’ he now said. ‘They’re open.’ ‘Who
are?’ asked the lady in the flowerpot. ‘The bar is,’ said Mr Schenk, who was an organizing genius; for instance, the Society always had a poetry weekend, at some country house
devoted to conferences, and Schenk not only managed to get hold of the most distinguished speakers, but, simply in order to give the thing more tone, he used also to persuade the AA to cover three
or four counties with large yellow marker signs saying poetry conference. The group rose and made their way into the bar, which was quaint and old-fashioned; there were post-horns on the wall, and
yards of ale. Businessmen chatted about wool and cotton, and county young men, in blazers and cavalry twill trousers, teased sweet girls with plummy accents and short hair. The countryside around
was hunting country. They sat down in Windsor chairs and ordered. Treece now found himself next to Butterfield, the man who ran the Department of Adult Education. Butterfield, who had got the job
because at the interview he claimed that he had once taught an all-in wrestler to love Shakespeare (he was, Butterfield explained afterwards, a very literate all-in wrestler), always described
himself as ‘a pleb’; it was his ambition to retire and keep a pub somewhere. Academic life at once charmed and bored him; he liked, as he said, to be in the vicinity of a university,
but not too firmly anchored to it. He used to go over to Cheltenham most weekends; he was having an affair with a very slick and sophisticated woman who had a hairdresser’s shop. The woman
had now decided that she wanted to marry Butterfield, and he was having rather a bad time; he had told the woman, falsely, that he was already married, and she now wanted to meet his wife so that
they could decide between them who was to have him. ‘She’s here,’ said Butterfield. ‘She’s rampaged all over the town, looking for my wife. If you should come across
her, don’t tell her I’m single. That would be the finish.’ Butterfield, who, rumour had it, had fathered two children by his hairdresser, didn’t look any too worried; he was
splendidly aware of his ability to cope with the most extreme situations. ‘I’m a bit of a rat, aren’t I?’ said Butterfield. ‘Still, they say the strongest human
instinct is self-preservation, and once they get the noose round your neck, you can never get it off.’

‘. . . I always feel that reading does much more good to others than it does to me,’ Treece found a stout elderly lady saying to him good-naturedly, as she sipped a gin and
orange.

The children’s novelist now leaned over. ‘Do you read much children’s literature, Professor?’ he asked. ‘I don’t,’ said Treece. ‘I think
you’re ignoring, if you don’t mind my saying so, a very fruitful field for study,’ said the novelist. ‘I’m sure you’re right,’ said Treece, ‘but the
trouble with me is that I have a sophisticated mind. Was it Chesterton who said he didn’t like children because they smelled of bread and butter? I dislike them because they aren’t
grown up.’

‘But aren’t you charmed by their innocence?’ asked the lady in the flowerpot hat.

‘But innocence is in the eye of the beholder, isn’t it?’ said Treece, ‘and in any case innocent is the last thing that children are. I think they’re cruel and
savage. If I had any children, I’d lock them up in a cage until they could prove that they were moral creatures. That’s because the only interesting thing about man, to me, is that
he’s a moral animal; and children aren’t.’

‘I can see now why you aren’t married,’ said the lady in the flowerpot hat. ‘Of course, you’d soon change your mind if you had any children.’

‘Besides, children are like old people; they’re culturally disconnected,’ said Treece.

‘You think that children should be seen and not heard then?’ asked the novelist.

‘I don’t approve either category,’ said Treece. He was growing expansive, more and more so as the day wore on; he thought the bit about not being married was funny enough,
funny but true, but that all this was funnier still. However, no one seemed very amused. He realized that he was in a mood of almost manic elation and irresponsibility, and that he would have to
pay for it all with a countervailing depression. ‘Of course,’ he said, concluding the topic, ‘what you don’t realize is, I’m a bastard.’

The lady in the flowerpot hat had sweet little ears, and Treece was just taking a really good look at them when Butterfield turned around to him, and said, ‘Mr Schenk asked me to have a
word with you about the poetry conference. He wanted to know if you’d be prepared to speak at it again this year. He wanted you to talk on poetic drama.’