Eating People is Wrong (17 page)

‘No,’ said Emma.

‘Come on,’ said Louis. ‘Come in here.’

‘You come in here,’ said Emma, ‘and finish your tea.’

‘Please come,’ said Louis. There was no reply. He popped his head back into the bedroom again. His voice came again, apparently talking to itself: ‘Goodness, it’s lovely
in here,’ it said. There was a pause. Then he said: ‘I’ll throw the alarm clock out of the window if she doesn’t come in here.’

‘You’ll pay for it if you do,’ said Emma warmly.

‘Damn, damn, damn,’ shouted Louis apoplectically. He came out of the bedroom furiously. ‘What’s wrong with me? I’m the plaything of the gods. The buffoon, the
whipping-boy, the scapegoat.’

‘Sit down, Louis,’ said Emma.

‘At least, spare me one little kiss,’ said Louis, in desperation.

‘No,’ cried Emma. He looked at her and she was sobbing. Little tears coursed down her cheeks. ‘Go away, Louis, please.’

‘Why am I the one who goes unloved?’ demanded Louis. ‘What’s wrong with me? Don’t you like my face? Or is it my class? Isn’t that good enough for
you?’

‘Louis, don’t,’ cried Emma. ‘I hold nothing against you.’

‘I know I’m not very good with women; I’m no Don Juan. My intentions were honourable; I’m not doing this for
fun
, you know.’ No, fun was the last thing it
was. Love, for Louis, was a serious matter. It was big business. He could imagine no more delightful prospect than that of being seen talking intimately to Emma, walking with her in the street,
helping her off with her coat, being leaned on by her as she tipped stones out of her shoes. He could see her in these simple images – cooking at his stove, darning his socks, making their
bed, dandling their children, nursing his influenza, knitting his sweaters. And it was images of the same sort that filled Emma’s mind – the prospect of darning his seedy socks, washing
his great socks, ministering to his weak chest, producing his snotty brats – and assured her that there was no hope of their intimacy.

‘Stop talking about it, Louis,’ she said.

‘Can I still hope? Have I offended you too much?’

He had; but Emma could not say so; he would take it as a slight to his face, to his class, to his lack of normality. ‘I’m not offended,’ said Emma.

‘And I can hope?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Emma.

‘You don’t see how much I need you.’

‘All right then, Louis, but please go.’

He picked up his damp coat, heaved his black beret on to his head, and she saw him to the door. As she went downstairs with him she wondered how she could have let all this happen. She
wasn’t a hard person, making quick dismissals of unwanted people. She placed the highest regard on personal relationships: what else, in this day and age, did one have? But Louis was hardly
normal, hardly real. With his great, balding head and cadaverous body, his shabby, shapeless clothes and that immensely long, unbelted raincoat that hung down close to his feet, those large,
knuckled, simian arms that dangled from sleeves always too short, he looked an absurdity; in him there was something of the butt. How could one offer him anything but pity?

Meanwhile, Louis walked home under the damp trees, perversely trying to catch pneumonia, bursting with chagrin, and asking himself furiously why everything good that he touched snapped in his
clumsy paws. Why isn’t my life like other people’s? he wondered. What do I
do wrong
? Why are some singled out for special misfortune, congenitally condemned to writing to Anne
Temple or Dorothy Dix, and being advised to join a tennis club or learn one topic of conversation really well? Louis tried to think of some stratagem by which he might restore himself to favour, a
neat little social subtlety that might make up for the solecisms. But subtleties! – he was about as subtle as the smell of bad drains. And then he thought of something; he thought in fact of
someone, and that was Mirabelle Warren.

III

There are people to whom life seems so simple, and so
pleasantly
simple, that when you look at them you wonder, ‘Well, look, perhaps I just haven’t thought
this through far enough – I, and Shakespeare, and the rest of us.’ Mirabelle Warren, the girl who had lisped about the cakes at Professor Treece’s departmental party, was just
such a person. If someone said to her, in passing, ‘Life is not a bowl of cherries,’ she would doubtless have protested, mystified, ‘But it is, of
course
it is.’ For
her zephyrs blew softly, rivers ran sweetly, the sun shone daily. If Pippa had gone past her, singing, ‘God’s in His heaven, all’s right with the world,’ Mirabelle would
have looked at her curiously, as she did at cynical people, and said, ‘Well of course He is; you don’t have to tell me
that
.’ In her scheme of things, everyone at this
lovely university nursed secret passions for everyone else, and was afraid to
speak forth
; but she wasn’t; speaking forth was her forte. Affection swarmed like bees in everyone’s
heart, and the world was one great big party. Parties were her dedication; she was a sort of intellectual Elsa Maxwell. ‘You’re not enjoying this party as much as you ought,’ she
once told Louis, when she found him standing uncooperatively by a wall. If she was mystified by Louis, he was even more mystified by her. How could she possibly see life as so chummy an affair,
when people were immense and solitary and one held them in fear and awe, as a sensitive child holds adults, when punished for misdemeanours he cannot understand and praised for goodness he cannot
identify. Mirabelle seemed to have a compulsive liking for people.

Mirabelle was now planning her Christmas party. To be invited to her parties, it was said, you had to be one of the best people or, if you couldn’t be quite said to be that, then fit to
mix with those who were. Louis was now generally ranked as neither. The impact that his austere and donnish appearance had made on some was diminishing under his poor social performance, his
strange pretensions and manners, and his habit of inviting himself to occasions to which he had not been invited. At the last party of Mirabelle’s, he had insisted that people play
‘Sardines’ and when unwillingly they did he had locked himself in the lavatory so thoroughly with an hysterical girl from the SCM that the door had to be taken off at the hinges. Louis
did not care whether he went or not, in the ordinary way; but now he did, because he wanted to appear publicly in the role of Emma’s escort; he was the one who went round with her, if anyone
did.

When therefore he went into the University the next day he sought out Mirabelle Warren. The sight of Louis Bates, breathing heavily, approaching to detain one in conversation, was enough to send
terror into the hearts of the virgins of the University; and Mirabelle Warren was the apotheosis of them. She popped into the library; a girl was pretty safe in a library. Louis followed and found
her at a caryl in the reading room, amid the dense religious silence, where she was back at work on her essay on subdued homosexuality in George Meredith. ‘Hello,’ he said, in that
sibilant scholastic whisper, so much more irritating to those nearby than a conversation through megaphones, which is always adopted by those who chatter in libraries.

‘Oh, hello, you,’ said Mirabelle Warren.

‘I came,’ said Louis cunningly, ‘to see if I could bring someone to your Christmas party.’ This was cunning because, while Mirabelle’s irritation at Louis’s
inviting himself could easily make her say a firm no, her curiosity about who he was going to bring was stronger and she said a firm yes. ‘Who’s the lucky girl?’ she asked,
bursting with interest.

‘Well, actually,’ said Louis modestly, ‘it’s Emma Fielding.’

‘Louis, I do believe you’re in love,’ said Mirabelle with a great squeal of delight. Her words resounded and boomed through the stacks of books and people at the far end of the
room looked up as the words rocked in their ears, and, thinking they were being addressed, began to form a reply. There was a pause; then a steady hissing, the native call of the disturbed library
worker, arose. Poor Louis! What could he do? – for he was left with only one course. Everyone had heard the question and, if he was to go through with this, everyone must hear the answer. In
a loud, carefully enunciated affirmative syllable he broke the news to all. Furtive giggles sounded among the stacks.

‘You must be careful, you know,’ said Mirabelle, full of advice, ‘she’s not
our
sort, at all. She’s clever with men, I imagine. She always seems cold to me.
I think women should be warm.’

‘So do I,’ said Louis.

‘Attention please; no talking,’ a large middle-aged Central European woman who was writing a thesis in sociology announced in imperious tones.

‘Well, don’t forget to bring a bottle,’ said Mirabelle. ‘It’s a bottle party. Don’t you just love them? It mixes the drinks before you even start.’

‘There iss no talking in this rum,’ came the loud, uninhibited tones of
Mittel-Europa
.

‘Thank you so much,’ said Louis.

‘Hist!’ cried the sociologist; and Louis left. He made his way to the telephone booth in the Union Building. It was engaged, but he tapped on the glass and the couple inside stopped
kissing and emerged. Louis hated the telephone; people always seemed so unreal and disembodied; it was like being in touch with the spirit world and one forgot what one wanted to say. He lifted the
receiver and chirped into it, ‘Hello, hello. Who’s there?’ No one was. Someone waiting outside the booth to use it pulled the door open: it was the Central European sociologist.
She gave him a sour look. ‘I always get behind people like you with the telephone,’ she said. ‘I am a foreigner, but even
I
know this: you must dial.’ He read the
instructions, looked up Emma’s number, and dialled it. It was access to a new mechanical world; numbers were whirling, sorting themselves out, making contact. Suddenly out of the dark world
sounded the voice of Mrs Bishop, magnified and altered.

‘Wait while I fix my deaf-aid up. I have to switch it on and put it next to the thing. I hope I’m talking in the right end. Now then, can you hear me? Can I hear you?’

Louis talked. ‘Hello there,’ cried Mrs Bishop.

‘Press button A,’ said the Central European sociologist.

‘Hello, Mrs Bishop. May I speak to Miss Fielding?’

‘I’m afraid she’s engaged,’ said Mrs Bishop.

Louis decided that he couldn’t possibly go through all this again. ‘Is she in the toilet?’ he demanded.

‘Certainly not,’ said Mrs Bishop, as if nothing like that ever happened in her house.

‘You see, it’s urgent,’ said Louis.

‘Wait a minute,’ said Mrs Bishop. The minute extended itself into several minutes. Outside the booth the Central European was salivating heavily. She stepped towards him as if she
was going to ask why he wasn’t talking, whether he just liked to hear it buzz. He started to speak rapidly into the mouthpiece. ‘I come from haunts of coot and hem, I make a sudden
sally, and sparkle out among the fern, to bicker down the valley,’ he said.

‘Do you?’ said Emma Fielding.

‘Oh, hello,’ said Louis. ‘It’s lovely to hear your voice.’

‘It’s lovely to hear yours, except that I’m stark naked and dripping with water. I’m having a bath. Who is it?’

‘I’ll crawl down the wire,’ said Louis, excited by this image. ‘It’s Louis Bates.’

‘You just stay where you are,’ said Emma. ‘Well, what is it, before I catch my death of cold?’

‘We’ve been invited to a party,’ said Louis.

‘We have?’

‘Yes, you and I.’

‘But I hate parties.’

‘So do I,’ said Louis.

‘Then we won’t go, will we?’ said Emma.

‘But we ought to go. It’s Christmas.’

‘What, again?’ said Emma.

‘Yes,’ said Louis. ‘Look, you must come. I’ve been to all kinds of trouble to get us invited; Mirabelle didn’t want me to come, because I cheated at
“Murder” last time, I think.’

‘What did you do?’

‘I committed suicide,’ said Louis. ‘You see, it’s not that I want to go; I don’t; I wanted to take you.’

‘Look, Louis, I’m shivering; if I get any colder they’ll have to wheel me off on a barrow. Let’s leave it for now.’

‘Say you’ll come, then.’

‘Oh, all right.’

‘I’ll pick you up, then.’

‘No, there’s no need . . .’

‘That’s how it’s done,’ said Louis firmly. Emma said goodbye and rang off and it wasn’t until Louis had come out of the booth and past the steaming sociologist that
it occurred to him that he did not know, and therefore had not told Emma, on which night the party was to take place. He hastened back to the library to find Mirabelle and repair the omission.

IV

A stout woman in her corsets ran across the dress shop. ‘Whoops!’ she said when she saw Treece. Treece, who did not like dress shops, picked up his parcel and
hurriedly found the exit. It was the following Monday and Treece was on his way to Emma’s. Complex motives had filtered through his mind and brought him to this spot. After Viola’s
party, Treece had felt himself to be a little committed to Viola, or Dr Masefield, as he now preferred to call her. The fact that he felt committed made him determined not to be. No one owned him
(except perhaps his motorized bicycle, whose subject he felt himself to be). A visit to Emma was the answer. Then again on the last occasion they had met he had spilled tea on Emma and she probably
regretted her open invitation. She would not wish him to come after that solecism. But she might respect him more if he did. Lastly he wanted to honour his promise to buy a new dress.

He arrived at Emma’s and rang the doorbell. No one came. Within a piano rang out loudly. He rang again and then he tried the door. It was unlocked, so he entered. In the room directly
facing him, a strange vignette met his eye. An elderly lady was lying full-length on the floor, reading
The Times
. Behind her an elderly gentleman sat at a pianola, treadling it furiously to
keep it working. The machine was grinding out the inevitable Chopin waltz. Treece picked up the hammer to the dinner gong and rang it loudly. No one heard. Then, all at once, the old lady looked up
and saw him. ‘He’s back, he’s back,’ she cried, jumping to her feet and snatching up a statue of a whistling boy.