Eating People is Wrong (7 page)

‘Very well,’ said Treece, looking at the ears. ‘I’m quite prepared to do it.’

‘He also wondered if you knew of any . . . well, the phrase he used was “Big Name”, who’d come down and speak to them.’

‘Had he anyone in mind?’ asked Treece, swinging his leg idly.

‘Well, he wanted Eliot, or perhaps a Sitwell.’

‘We shall have to see,’ said Treece.

Meanwhile, Mr Schenk had been trying to talk everyone into going to see the nude show at the variety theatre; he said that anyone who was interested in society or in our contemporary estimate of
the worth of man should go. ‘Yes, let’s, just for fun,’ said the lady in the flowerpot hat; you knew this was her phrase. One or two of the ladies said they had to go and feed
people. ‘You must come,’ said Schenk. ‘We want to watch the expression on your faces.’ Butterfield was equally keen. ‘It’s not that I have a sociological
interest,’ he said. ‘I just
like
nude shows.’ ‘This is fun,’ said the woman in the flowerpot, as they drank down their glasses and off they all went. ‘If
only Mrs Rogers could have been here,’ said Treece. They went in cavalcade through the streets to the theatre and in the interval Treece kissed the woman in the flowerpot hat on each pretty
ear, just for fun. He found he was liking the provinces more and more; it was something less than London, but it was also itself.

III

Of all the problems that nibbled at Treece’s mind and brought him to anxiety, there were none sharper than his worries over status. The catechism began simply: what, in
this day and age, was the status of a professor in English society, and what rewards and what esteem may he expect? Secondly, and to add another dimension, what was the status of a professor
in
the humanities
, in England, in this day and age? Third, what, then, was the status of a professor in the humanities
at a small university in the provinces
, in England, in the present
age? It could not be denied that all the forms of social stratification, once solid, were liquefying in the torrid heat engendered by reforming zealots like himself. Treece had to admit that, if it
became a choice between being respected too much and not at all, he would, in spite of his liberal pretensions, rest easier in spirit under the former régime. And, to sum the matter up, what
emerged for Treece was that to be a professor, of the humanities, at a provincial university, in England, in the nineteen-fifties, was a fate whose rewards were all internal, for in the matter of
social status he was small enough beer. A man who had a fondness for human manners, the local manners of circles and groups that are formed by a traditional accretion of associations, he sought to
follow the given manners for himself, to live within them in no spirit of cheap emulation, but with the zest of one who believes that manners are an access to morals, and that manners pursued with
passion never atrophy. Such was the passion with which Treece queried whether it was proper for him to possess, as he did, a motorized bicycle; and a somewhat seedy late Victorian house; and an
account with the Post Office Savings Bank, because it was always useful to be able to go and draw out a few pounds, anywhere; and a National Health Service doctor, because you paid once to be ill,
anyway, and Treece was never ill enough, in the course, it seemed, of any given year, to make those weekly payments a fair bargain in his case; and pyjamas bought at Marks and Spencers, because
they seemed just as good as more distinguished garb, though perhaps less well-cut around the crotch; and paperback books, because you could possess more (though you had to go, always, to the
library to provide references for scholarly articles from the hardbound editions). On the other side of the coin, however, to point up that, even in the fluidity of the contemporary English social
scene, not all is lost, Treece wore an establishment shirt, made to measure for him, usually in blue or grey fine stripe, with three loose collars; a suit, also made to measure for him, from a
small local tailor, with pockets at the back of the trousers, and the side, and the front (this for the wallet), and a buttonhole for the passage of a pocket watch; and braces, because one did,
though belts were pleasanter. Treece’s answer to the problem of what is
à propos
for the person that, in terms of social status, he supposed himself to be, was that if most of
what he had was
à propos
, and a little was flagrantly not
à propos
, then society would grant his recognition of the fact that here was a problem, and that, for the
future, it was an open problem. A partial immersion in professorship was really the most the world could hope for from Treece, and it accepted that.

Treece was no aesthete, no exotic; his driving forces were self-discipline and moral scruple, or so he was disposed to think. He had no time for the pleasurable, only the necessary. For
instance, he spent most of his time in his office, having painful encounters with students, who wanted him to read stories they had written about sensitive youths, pining for a new world, or
inquired at what sort of shop one could buy books, or wanted to know whether he collected dinner money – although he would much rather have hidden behind the door or in a book cupboard.
People always thought he had been to Oxford or Cambridge, that he was that sort of man. But he had gained his wisdom at the University of London, which is a very different thing; he had gone to
university not to make good contacts, or to train his palate, or refine his accent, but rather to get a good degree. He had had to give up punting, which he enjoyed, because to punt one had to punt
from one end or the other, and one end was the Oxford, the other the Cambridge, end. So much of the world was like that too. The same sort of people wondered too about his regiment, which they
supposed would be the Guards. In fact, during the war Treece had been a member of the London Fire Service, putting out fires with Stephen Spender. People supposed, likewise, that his family would
be a sound one, his father an artist, or a bibliophile, his mother at home on a horse. In fact his father had had a wallpaper shop, and when, once, he had told his father that it was wrong that
people’s relationships should be those of buyers and sellers, his father had gazed at him blankly. What else could they be? Treece was never ashamed that his background was of this sort; but
he was
surprised
by it; it was not what he would, if he had met himself as a stranger, have expected.

Of Treece’s formative years, which were the nineteen-thirties, of those busy days when to be a liberal was to be something, and people other than liberals knew what liberals were, of this
period Treece had one sharp and pointed memory, that cast itself up like a damp patch on the wall of an otherwise sturdy house, a memory of a time when late one night – indeed, at the two
o’clock of one early morning – he had gone from the room he rented in Charlotte Street because he had had a row with the woman he was living with. On the night in question, Treece, then
a research student with holes in his underpants and not a change of socks to call his own, was determined to leave Fay, in part because she did not like his poetry, but also because he knew that
she did not trust him, since, with the cunning of females who know what faculties are of most or least worth in their prey, she had observed that he was a person without a firm, a solid centre; he
was easily blown or altered. On this topic they had exchanged acrimonious words, and Treece had hurried forth into the dark street, pausing only to dress and snatch up his thesis, which reposed,
well-nigh completed, at the side of the bed. Coming along the Soho street, wearing a leather jacket and a most determined visage, Treece had met a friend of his, a speedway rider of strong and
engrossing character. He was a communist and, unlike Treece, took an active part in the political life. The two withdrew to an all-night café and Treece, pressed to account for his presence
abroad, told him of the row with Fay; he said he was fed up with her and didn’t wish to go back. The speedway rider observed that severed links were the order of the day; he had finished his
job and was going away, probably abroad; and he asked Treece to come with him. I have no money, said Treece; whereat, from all over his leather jacket, the speedway motorcyclist produced wads of
pound notes, all his savings, which he had withdrawn. But as they talked, through the night, Treece began to think about Fay again, and how warm it was in bed. Finally, uncertainly, he went back to
Fay, receiving a poor welcome; she had hoped, she said, that he meant it. Some time later Treece learned that his friend had in fact been on his way to Spain, where he had fought; and later still
he heard that he had died heroically holding a solitary machine-gun position which had finally been wiped out accidentally by planes on his own side. When Treece heard all this, he felt that, if
only the man had said that it was to Spain that he was going, he would surely have gone; afterwards he wondered whether he would; from time to time he certainly wished that he had.

It was against this sort of background that moments like the reception for foreign students, or Treece’s responses to provincial life, took their shape. Being a liberal, after all
that
, meant something special; one was a messenger from somewhere. One was, now, a humanist, neither Christian nor communist any more, but in some vague, unstable central place, a humanist,
yes, but not one of those who supposes that man is good or progress attractive. One has no firm affiliations, political, religious, or moral, but lies outside it all. One sees new projects tried,
new cases put, and reflects on them, distrusts them, is not surprised when they don’t work, and is doubtful if they seem to. A tired sophistication runs up and down one’s spine; one has
seen everything tried and seen it fail. If one speaks one speaks in asides. One is at the end of the tradition of human experience, where everything has been tried and no one way shows itself as
perceptibly better than another. Groping into the corners of one’s benevolence, one likes this good soul, that dear woman, but despairs of the group or the race; for the mass of men there is
not too much to be said or done; you can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear. Persons tie themselves into groups, they attach to this cause and then to that and, working with these
abstracts and large emotions, they rush like a flock of lemmings, into the sea to drown themselves. What can one do? One gives, instead, teas for foreign students, teas which say, in effect,
‘Foreigners are not funny’. And even that is hardly true. Treece wanted to hear no more of the departmental reception; far from proving that foreigners were as normal as you or me, the
occasion had been a subject of public amusement and complaint ever since; a letter had appeared in the local evening paper about the religious rites that had taken place on the University’s
front lawn, asking if young girls were safe any more, and a Frenchman had been arrested afterwards for urinating against a tree on Institution Road. He had telephoned the Vice-Chancellor from the
police station, to enlist his aid: ‘
C’est moi
,’ his rich French voice had announced in the Vice-Chancellorial ear. ‘
J’ai pissé
.’ Moreover,
Treece’s fond hope that Emma Fielding’s kindness at the departmental reception would dissuade Mr Eborebelosa from hiding out in the lavatories was answered; Eborebelosa forsook the
lavatories for another cause, the pursuit of Emma Fielding.

Every morning since the reception he had sought her out in the refectory, whither she retired, along with her fellow-students, for coffee and conversation, those two eighteenth-century graces,
now equally ersatz in the twentieth. He would pass back and forth behind her stool, remarking finally, as he came up close, ‘How do you do. You do not want me to sit here.’ ‘I
do,’ said Emma, who in this situation had little choice of words. ‘Come and sit down.’ Eborebelosa would rest his bottom precariously on an adjacent stool; she would introduce him
to the people present; conversation would continue and Eborebelosa would sit silently, nodding his black head in a somnolent fashion, until at last he would stir from his speculations to poke Emma
in the ribs and say, ‘You do not want me to talk with you.’ ‘Yes,’ she would say. ‘I do. What do you want to say?’ ‘You do not want to hear it,’
Eborebelosa would say, ‘and a silence is golden.’ And, eyeing each other warily, into silence they would both subside.

IV

‘It’s an extremely difficult examination,’ Ian Merrick, MA, Lecturer in Philology, was saying to Treece when Emma Fielding entered Treece’s office for
her tutorial. ‘My word, is it?’ demanded Treece, concern bursting out on his face like spots. ‘Do you think I shall pass?’

‘No one ever passes first time,’ said Merrick, sitting on the desk. ‘The real problem is the practical part . . .’

Treece noticed Emma standing there. ‘Do sit down, Miss Fielding,’ he said. ‘I shan’t be a minute.’

‘Yes,’ said Merrick; ‘there’s no problem about the theoretical stuff, of course; that’s simply a question of mugging up the notes. But when it comes to practical
performance, they’re very sticky.’

‘Oh, my goodness,’ said Treece.

‘Have you got a crash helmet?’ asked Merrick.

‘For a motorized bicycle? Oh, really old boy . . .’

‘Well, you have to show willing. I know it looks ridiculous. I always say they should make them look like bowler hats, and then a gentleman could wear them as well.’ Merrick, if he
was anything, was a gentleman. He was, it always seemed to Treece, a typical Cambridge product gone to seed; he was the bright young man of fifty, handsome, fair-haired, bursting with romantic
idealism, the sort that nice girls always loved, the sort that had gone off in droves to fight the First World War. There was something
passe
and Edwardian about Merrick. He was conceited,
cocksure, a public school and Cambridge Adonis fascinated by what he called ‘the classical way of life’. Treece privately described him as a Rupert Brooke without a Gallipoli, and this
was really almost fair; he seemed as if he had outstayed his lease on the earth, and now his romanticism was turning into a kind of Housman-like light cynicism, his open and frank assurance
curdling, his Grecian-god looks becoming almost grotesque with wrinkles. He reached into his waistcoat pocket and took out a gold cigarette case: ‘Gasper?’ he said. He would, naturally,
wear a waistcoat; cigarettes he would call, of course, ‘gaspers’. He smiled brilliantly at Emma and put his cigarette case before her; you felt that, like Bulldog Drummond, he would
say, ‘Turkish on this side; Virginias on that.’ ‘I’m sorry; I should have offered them to you first,’ was what he actually did say. ‘You must make your presence
felt, my dear.’