David Lodge - Small World (22 page)

“You OK, Robin?”

“Yes, thank you.”

“Interesting?”

“Very.”

“Can I read the printout?”

“No,” said Robin Dempsey, “you can’t.”

Felix Skinner skimmed through Persse’s outline and thought it distinctly promising. “But before we give him a contract, we need a reader’s report,” he said. “Who shall we send it to?”

“I don’t know, Mr Skinner, I’m sure,” said Gloria, his secretary, crossing her legs and patting her wavy, honey-coloured hair. She waited patiently with her pencil poised above her notepad. She had only been Felix Skinner’s personal secretary for a couple of months, but already she was used to her boss’s habit of thinking aloud by asking her questions that she hadn’t a clue how to answer.

Felix Skinner bared his yellow fangs, noting, not for the first time, what a very shapely pair of legs Gloria possessed. “What about Philip Swallow?” he proposed.

“All right,” said Gloria. “Is his address on file?”

“On second thoughts,” said Felix, holding up a cautionary finger, “perhaps not. I have a feeling he was a teeny weeny bit jealous of my interest in young McGarrigle, the other day. He might be prejudiced.”

Gloria yawned daintily, and picked a speck of fluff from the front of her jumper. Felix lit a fresh Gauloise from the stub smouldering between his fingers and admired the contours of the jumper. “I tell you what!” he exclaimed triumphantly, “Rudyard Parkinson.”

“I know the name,” said Gloria gamely. “Isn’t he at Cambridge?”

“Oxford. My old tutor, actually. Shall we phone him first?”

“Well, perhaps you’d better, Mr Skinner.”

“Wise counsel,” said Felix Skinner, reaching for the telephone. When he had dialled he leaned back in his swivel chair and treated Gloria to another canine grin. “You know, Gloria, I think it’s time you called me Felix.”

“Oh, Mr Skinner…” Gloria blushed with pleasure. “Thank you.”

Felix got through to Rudyard Parkinson quite quickly. (He was supervising a postgraduate, but the porter at All Saints had instructions to put all long-distance calls straight through to the Professor’s room even if he was engaged. Long-distance calls usually meant books to review.) Parkinson declined, however, to take on the assessment of Persse McGarrigle’s proposal. “Sorry, old man, got rather a lot on my plate at the moment,” he said. “They’re giving me an honorary degree in Vancouver next week. It didn’t really sink in, when I accepted, that I’d actually have to go there to collect it.”

“I say, what a bore,” said Felix Skinner sympathetically. “Could you suggest anyone else? It’s sort of about the modern reception of Shakespeare and Co. being influenced by T. S. Eliot.”

“Reception? That rings a bell. Oh yes, I had a letter yesterday about a conference on something like that. A hun called von Turpitz. Know him?”

“Yes, we published a translation of his last book, actually.”

“I should try him.”

“Good idea,” said Felix Skinner. “I should have thought of him myself.”

He rang off and dictated a letter to Siegfried von Turpitz asking for his opinion of Persse McGarrigle’s outline and offering him a fee of Ł25 or Ł50 worth of books from Lecky, Windrush and Bernstein’s current list. “Enclose a copy of our catalogue with that, will you Gloria, and of course a xerox of McGarrigle’s typescript.” He stubbed out his cigarette and glanced at his watch. “I feel quite fagged after all that effort. Am I having lunch with anybody today?”

“I don’t think so,” said Gloria, consulting his diary. “No.”

“Then would you care to join me for a little Italian nosh and a glass or two of
vino at a trattoria
I know in Covent Garden?”

“That would be very nice… Felix,” said Gloria compacently.

“Cheek!” Rudyard Parkinson exclaimed, putting down the telephone receiver. The postgraduate he was supervising, not sure whether he was being addressed or not, made no comment. “Why should he think I would want to read some totally unknown bog-Irishman’s ramblings? Some of one’s former students do rather presume on the relationship.” The postgraduate, who had taken his first degree at Newcastle and whose initial awe of Parkinson was rapidly turning into disillusionment, tried to arrange his features in some appropriate expression of sympathy and concern. “Now, where were we?” said Rudyard Parkinson. “Yeats’s death wish…”

“Keats’s death wish.”

“Ah, yes, I beg your pardon,” Rudyard Parkinson stroked his muttonchop whiskers and gazed out of his window at the cupola on top of the Sheldonian and, further off, the spire of St Mary’s Church. “Tell me, if you were flying to Vancouver would you go by British Airways or Air Canada?”

“I’m not much of an expert on air travel,” said the young man. “A charter flight to Majorca is about the limit of my experience.”

“Majorca? Ah yes, I remember visiting Robert Graves there once. Did you happen to meet him?”

“No,” said the postgraduate. “It was a package holiday. Robert Graves wasn’t included.”

Rudyard Parkinson glanced at the young man with momentary suspicion. Was it possible that callow Newcastle could be capable of irony—and at his expense? The youth’s impassive countenance reassured him. Parkinson turned back to face the window. “I thought I’d be patriotic and go British Airways,” he said. “I hope I’ve done the wise thing.”

Oxford was still in vacation as far as the undergraduates were concerned, but at Rummidge it was the first day of the summer term, and a fine one. The sun blazed down from a cloudless sky on the Library steps and the grass quadrangle. Philip Swallow stood at the window of his office and surveyed the scene with a mixture of pleasure, envy and unfocused lust. A warm afternoon always brought out the girls in their summer dresses, like bulbs forcing their way through the turf and abruptly flowering in a blaze of colour. All over the lawns they were strewn, in attitudes of abandonment, straps down and skirts hitched up to tan their winter-pale limbs. The boys lounged in clusters, eyeing the girls, or pranced between them, stripped to their jeans, skimming frisbees with an ostentatious display of muscle and skill. Here and there pair-bonding had already occurred, and youthful couples sunned themselves clasped in each other’s arms, or wrestled playfully in a thinly disguised mime of copulation. Books and ringbinders lay neglected on the greensward. The compulsion of spring had laid its irresistible spell upon these young bodies. The musk of their mutual attraction was almost visible, like pollen, in the atmosphere.

Right under Philip’s window, a girl of great beauty, dressed simply but ravishingly in a sleeveless cotton shift, clasped the hands of a tall, athletic young man in tee-shirt and jeans. They held hands at arm’s length and gazed raptly into each other’s eyes, unable, it seemed, to tear themselves apart to attend whatever lecture or lab session called. Philip couldn’t blame them. They made a handsome couple, glowing with health and the consciousness of their own good looks, trembling on the threshold of erotic bliss. “More happy love,” Philip murmured behind his dusty windowpane.

“More happy, happy love!

For ever warm and still to be enjoyed,

For ever panting and for ever young.”

Unlike the lovers on the Grecian Urn, however, these ones did eventually kiss: a long and passionate embrace that lifted the girl on to the tips of her toes, and that Philip felt vicariously down to the very roots of his being.

He turned away from the window, disturbed and slightly ashamed. There was no point in getting all worked up by the Rummidge rites of spring. He had forsworn sexual interest in students ever since the unfortunate affair of Sandra Dix—Rummidge students, anyway. He had to rely on his trips abroad for amorous adventure. He didn’t know quite what to expect of Turkey, straddling the line between Europe and Asia. Would the women be liberated and available, or locked up in purdah? The telephone rang.

“Digby Soames here, British Council. It’s about your lectures in Turkey.”

“Oh yes. Didn’t I give you the titles? There’s ‘The Legacy of Hazlitt’ and ‘Jane Austen’s Little Bit of Ivory’—that’s a quotation from—”

“Yes, I know,” Soames interrupted. “The trouble is, the Turks don’t want it.”

“Don’t want it?” Philip felt slightly winded.

“I’ve just had a telex from Ankara. It says, ‘No mileage in Jane Austen here, can Swallow lecture on Literature and History and Society and Philosophy and Psychology instead’.”

“That’s a tall order,” said Philip.

“Yes, it is, rather.”

“I mean, there isn’t much time for preparation.”

“I could telex back ‘No’, if you like.”

“No, don’t do that,” said Philip. He was always cravenly eager to please his hosts on these trips abroad; eager to please the British Council, too, in case they stopped inviting him to go on them. “I expect I can cobble something together.”

“Jolly good, I’ll telex to that effect, then,” said Soames. “Everything else all right?”

“I think so,” said Philip. “I don’t know quite what to expect of Turkey. I mean, is it a reasonably… modern country?”

“The Turks like to think it is. But they’ve had a hard time lately. A lot of terrorism, political murders and so on, from both left and right.”

“Yes, I’ve read about it in the papers,” said Philip.

“Rather plucky of you to go, really,” said Soames, with a jovial laugh. “The country is on the rocks, no imports allowed, so there’s no coffee, no sugar. No bumpaper, either, I understand, so I should take some with you. Petrol shortages won’t affect you, but power cuts might.”

“Doesn’t sound too cheerful,” said Philip.

“Oh, you’ll find the Turks very hospitable. If you don’t get shot by accident and you take your tea without sugar you should have a very enjoyable trip,” said Soames with another merry chuckle, and rang off.

Philip Swallow resisted the temptation to return to the window and resume his covert observation of student mating behaviour. Instead, he ran his eyes along his bookshelves in search of inspiration for a lecture on Literature and History and Society and Philosophy and Psychology. What, as always, caught his attention was a row of mint copies of
Hazlitt and the Amateur Reader
in their pale blue wrappers, which he had bought from Lecky, Windrush and Bernstein at trade discount to give away to visitors, having despaired of commercial distribution of the book. A little spasm of resentment against his publishers prompted him to pick up the phone and make a call to Felix Skinner.

“Sorry,” said the girl who answered, “Mr Skinner’s at a meeting.”

“I suppose you mean lunch,” said Philip sarcastically, glancing at his watch. It was a quarter to three.

“Well, yes.”

“Can I speak to his secretary?”

“She’s at lunch too. Can I take a message?”

Philip sighed. “Just tell Mr Skinner that Professor Zapp never received the complimentary copy of my book, which I specifically requested should be sent to him on publication.”

“OK, Professor Zapp.”

“No, no, my name’s Swallow, Philip Swallow.”

“OK, Mr Swallow. I’ll tell Mr Skinner as soon as he gets back.”

Felix Skinner was in fact already back from lunch at the time of Philip Swallow’s phone call. He was, to be precise, in a basement storeroom on the premises of Lecky, Windrush and Bernstein. He was also, to be even more precise, in Gloria, who was bent forwards over a pile of cardboard boxes, divested of her skirt and knickers, while Felix, with his pinstripe trousers round his ankles, and knees flexed in a simian crouch, copulated with her vigorously from behind. Their relationship had ripened rapidly since the morning, warmed by several gin and tonics and a large carafe of Valpolicella over lunch. In the taxi afterwards, Felix’s exploring hands encountered no defence—quite the contrary, for Gloria was a warm-blooded young woman, whose husband, an engineer with the London Electricity Board, was working the night shift. Accordingly, when they got into the lift of the Lecky, Windrush and Bernstein building, Felix pressed the button to go down rather than up. The storeroom in the basement had served him on similar occasions before, as Gloria guessed but did not remark upon. It was hardly a romantic bower of bliss, the concrete floor being too cold and dirty to lie down on, but their present posture suited them both, since Gloria did not have to look at Felix’s horrible teeth or inhale his breath, which now reeked of garlic as well as Gauloises, while he could admire, as he held her hips, the way her plump white cheeks bulged between the constriction of suspender belt and stockings.

“Stockings!” he groaned. “How did you know I adored stockings and suspenders?”

“I didn’t knowwwww!” she gasped. “Oh! oh! oh!” Gloria felt the boxes shift and slide underneath her as Felix thrust harder and faster. “Look out!” she cried.

“What?” Felix, his eyes shut tight, was concentrating on his orgasm.

“I’m falling!”

“I’m coming!”

“OH!”

“AH!”

They came and fell together in a heap of crushed cardboard and spilled books. Dust filled the air. Felix rolled on to his back and sighed with satisfaction. “That was bloody marvellous, Gloria. The earth moved, as they say.”

Gloria sneezed. “It wasn’t the earth, it was all these parcels.” She rubbed her knee. “I’ve laddered my stocking,” she complained. “What are they going to think upstairs?”

She looked at Felix for some response, but his attention had been distracted by the books that had fallen out of the broken boxes. He was on all fours, his trousers still fettering his ankles, staring at the books with astonishment. They were identical copies, in pale blue jackets. Felix opened one and extracted a small printed slip.

“My God,” he said. “No wonder poor old Swallow never got a single review.”

The day before he left for Vancouver, Rudyard Parkinson received a letter from Felix Skinner and a copy of
Hazlitt and the Amateur Reader
. “Dear Rudyard,” said the letter, “We published this book last year, but it was largely ignored by the press—unjustly in my view. Accordingly, we are sending out a fresh batch of review copies this week. If you yourself could possibly arrange to review it somewhere, that would be marvellous. I know how busy you are, but I have a hunch that the book might take your fancy. Yours ever, Felix.”