Eating People is Wrong (29 page)

‘Are you married, Mr Willoughby?’ asked the wife of the Vice-Chancellor. She had not understood a word of all that had been said, but she had cottoned on to one thing, as women do,
and this was that Willoughby was playing footsie under the table with Viola Masefield.

‘I don’t suppose he believes in it,’ said the Vice-Chancellor in disgruntled tones.

‘Well, why buy the cow,’ asked Willoughby reasonably, ‘when you can steal milk through the fence?’

‘I suppose Mr Willoughby is what they call an angry young man, is he? He seems to talk so loudly,’ whispered the Vice-Chancellor’s wife to Treece, whom she was rather inclined
to blame for all this. ‘Angry?’ said Treece. ‘He’s livid.’

‘Ah well, the young, you know, the young,’ murmured the Vice-Chancellor’s wife. ‘Quite,’ said Treece. ‘Still, I must say I’m rather glad I’m not
the head of his department.’

‘Academic people chatter so,’ said the Vice-Chancellor’s wife. ‘They’re so articulate that one wonders simply how they do it. One wouldn’t mind, one rather
likes it, since one doesn’t have to talk oneself; but one rather wishes one could
lie down
, just now and then.’

III

Treece had invited a few people back, that evening, to meet Willoughby, and when they returned, after nine, from dinner at the Vice-Chancellor’s, there they all were, on
his doorstep, shivering and rubbing up against one another to keep warm.

They entered in a group and, Treece observed with alarm, Willoughby at once and without invitation disappeared upstairs. Who would follow? wondered Treece. Willoughby had been behaving quite
oddly in the car coming back; there was a crowd, and someone had to sit on someone’s knee, and of course Viola sat on Willoughby’s. Then somehow, from under Viola, Willoughby had
managed to produce a hip-flask and ‘Anyone care for a snort to wash his mouth out, after
that
?’ he asked. He then went on to tell stories about what a poor teacher he was, always
forgetting to bring books into class and failing to mark essays and dropping off to sleep in tutorials. ‘Have you ever thought of taking up writing fulltime?’ asked Treece, again rather
naughtily, since he was patently seeing the matter more from teaching’s point of view, than from writing’s. ‘Where would he get his material?’ asked Viola with a laugh; it
wasn’t, however, the sort of thing that Treece could laugh at. Being transmitted into art was not, he was sure, his function in life.

Viola set to work and made some hot cocoa, to thaw out Treece’s guests, and they all forgathered in the drawing room, expectantly waiting, positively poised ready for the return of Carey
Willoughby. They all had questions. Jenkins had expressly asked to come, in order to see an angry young man in, as he put it, the flesh, and observe his social motivations; it wasn’t a chance
that came up every day. Oliver was there, because he knew Willoughby; they had once met in the office of the Literary Editor of the
Spectator
, as they picked books from the shelves for
review: somehow Oliver never seemed to have got any of his reviews, though he was always writing them, actually into print. Tanya was there, because Viola had invited her. Professor de Thule and
his wife, Mavis, were there, and Mavis was already waxing garrulous. Treece, listening with half an ear and watching the stairs for the famed descent, reflected with growing horror how defenceless
these people all would prove when faced with Willoughby, always supposing he came down and joined them. He took Viola aside, and asked: ‘Do you suppose he’s gone to sleep up
there?’

At this moment the telephone rang. ‘It’s me, Bates,’ said a voice when Treece picked up the receiver. ‘I’ve searched the station from end to end and he simply
isn’t here.’ ‘Of course he isn’t,’ said Treece. ‘He’s here.’ ‘When’s he going to talk?’ asked Bates. ‘He already has,’
said Treece. ‘All right, was it?’ asked Louis. ‘A virtuoso performance,’ replied Treece. ‘Who introduced him?’ ‘I did,’ said Treece.

‘Well, I’d like to meet him,’ said Bates.

‘Well,’ said Treece, ‘I don’t know . . .’ The truth was that Treece simply did not feel like handling Bates at this hour and in this context.

‘I invited him, after all,’ said Bates.

‘Very well,’ said Treece. ‘Come up.’

Treece put down the receiver wearily, and returned to the drawing room to see whether Willoughby had reappeared. He had not. ‘It’s marvellous what a bassoon can do for a sick
man,’ a lecturer from the Music Department, who had a theory that music could cure physical illness, was saying. ‘And those little red Chinese hats, weren’t they charming; I just
love Disney,’ uttered the high virginal voice of Mavis de Thule.

Willoughby now put in his appearance, and all conversation stopped short, as people observed a phenomenon which, while not much in itself, was clearly made of the stuff of drama. Stuart Treece
was standing by the fireplace, looking towards the doorway, and Willoughby stood framed in the entrance where all could see him. His head was bent and he was staring down at his feet. Nor was he
the only one; Professor Treece, equally, was staring, with rapt attention, at the feet of Mr Willoughby, of the new movement. People all looked at the feet; there was little apparent in them that
deserved close study. They looked back at Treece. For a moment more he appeared speechless; then under the force of some powerful emotion, which he was clearly trying to control, he asked:
‘Aren’t those
my
shoes and socks, Mr Willoughby?’

‘Yes,’ agreed Willoughby.

‘Did you take them?’

‘Well, how else would they get down there?’ asked Willoughby reasonably. ‘I found them in a drawer upstairs. My feet were wet. My shoes let water in. They’re no good.
I’ve put them in the furnace.’

‘And your socks too?’

‘And my socks too,’ agreed Willoughby. ‘Why, for goodness sake, you don’t
mind
, do you? What is man in this world for, if not to help his fellows?’

‘My name’s Mavis de Thule,’ said Mavis quick-wittedly; she had been brought up on the importance of social tact, which was probably why her husband had got his chair. ‘We
haven’t met yet.’

‘Hullo,’ said Willoughby.

‘Tell me, Mr Willoughby,’ said Mavis, tapping him on the chest with a forefinger; Willoughby looked at the finger with fascination, as if he was considering biting it. ‘I mean,
I’ve always wondered, where do novelists get their ideas
from
? What sets things in motion, you know?’

‘Fruit-salts,’ said Willoughby.

‘Oh, don’t be like that with
me
,’ said Mavis winsomely. ‘I really want to know. I mean, it must be awfully exciting to conceive a book that you know is a
masterpiece.’ This was rather clever for Mavis, and it even worked.

‘You never know that,’ said Willoughby, ‘and really you never know where the idea actually came from, or how much of it you actually had when you started to write. It’s
like conceiving a baby; babies really start when the woman first drops her glove.’

‘My God! We must be careful,’ said Tanya, who was standing by. ‘So that is how babies start.’

‘You write because you’re a writer,’ went on Willoughby, at the same time taking a surreptitious look at Tanya, and being impressed; ‘what you write about is incidental,
just simply what your world happens to be. I write about universities because I work in a university and I can collect the stuff . . .’

‘What’s this I hear about your novels being
romans à clef
?’ interposed Professor de Thule.

‘Oh, everyone thinks he can identify people in these books. He can’t of course. I’m not a fool. I like to keep my friends. I can’t afford to lose any more friends. A man
needs friends. It’s simply that my novels are about people who exist in such multiplication in our world.’

‘Oh, I hope you won’t put
us
in, then,’ said Mavis.

‘What Mrs de Thule means,’ interposed Tanya, ‘is that she hopes you will put us in.’

‘Now would I tell you?’ asked Willoughby, feeling warmed by all this attention. The group grew larger.

‘Oh, dear,’ said Mavis, laughing appreciatively. ‘You know, people, we shall all be in a bestseller and the whole world will laugh at us.’

‘Ah, a sad fate,’ said Tanya ironically.

‘Not the whole world,’ said Willoughby. ‘Have you ever considered what a lousy proportion of the public ever actually
read
my books? And of that small proportion, what a
small proportion actually buy them? Have you read any of mine?’

‘Both,’ said Mavis promptly. ‘And I thought they were awfully good.’

‘And did you buy them or get them from a library?’

‘We have a very good library in town, so there was no need to buy them.’

‘No need?’ cried Willoughby. ‘If you liked them, why not reward me, make sure I write another one? You talk about being in my next one. What next one? I work at a full-time job
like you . . .’

‘Yes, Willoughby, where do you find the time?’ asked de Thule.

‘I
make
it,’ said Willoughby. ‘I work hard. If everyone in this room bought at full price a copy of my novels, and everyone else in every room that contains so-called
intelligent people, who could claim to be interested in this sort of thing, I could write full-time.’

‘Would you say, then,’ asked Jenkins, ‘that this was broadly why you are angry? Let me put it another way: do you find that the material rewards and status claims available to
writers seem to you inferior, and a source of frustration therefore? Actually I’m just testing out a little theory . . .’

The doorbell rang. It was Louis Bates. Treece went to let him in, and introduced him to Willoughby. ‘I’ve been looking for you,’ said Bates. ‘I’ve been looking for
you
,’ said Willoughby; Louis looked very pleased. ‘You owe me two quid.’

‘What for?’ asked Bates.

‘You don’t think I’m going to pay my own train fare for the privilege of talking to you boys, do you?’ asked Willoughby.

‘This place,’ remarked Mavis, ‘is turning into a bourse.’

Willoughby overheard this remark and turned to face Mavis. ‘You people,’ said he, ‘you don’t know what it is to have money matter to you, because you have it. I used to
go into cafés once, and have a meal and then walk out without paying, because if I hadn’t done that I would have starved. There was one thing you could always do, if you were really
bad; there was a photographer who took special pictures for homosexuals, and he’d help you if you’d oblige. But that sort of question doesn’t occur to you at all. Does it ever
occur to you that your comparative civilization, if that’s what it is, is a condition of your freedom from financial embarrassment?’

‘I think this point is clear to us all, dear Mr Willoughby,’ said Tanya. ‘But because we do not want for money is no reason that we should be ashamed of our civilization. I
happen to think it important that we have it. But then, you see, I lived somewhere where it would have mattered had there been more civilization and less people who thought as you do.’

‘I agree with him,’ said Louis Bates, and he turned to Willoughby. ‘That’s why you can’t have the train fare. The society will see to that. Do you know how much I
have left, after paying for a taxi down to the station to meet you, when you weren’t even there? Eightpence.’

‘Hell,’ said Willoughby, and it was clear that he was touched, unbelievable as it seemed to all about. ‘Forget about the train fare. You get it from the society and keep it. I
know how poor some of you boys are. Anyway, it didn’t cost me anything. I came on a platform ticket.’

People were beginning to feel that it was time that Louis was weaned away from the guest of honour, and Professor de Thule popped up at Bates’s elbow. ‘Do you have any other speakers
lined up as delightful as our guest of this evening?’ he asked. ‘I’ll be with you in a minute,’ said Bates. ‘I just want to ask him to look at some poems of
mine.’ He did, and Willoughby looked, and he surveyed Bates, up and down, and said that he would show them to an editor. Bates looked very pleased and asked Willoughby why he didn’t get
out of universities, among all these effete liberals, these jolly groves of
academe
, and into real life. ‘The danger of too much criticism really is, isn’t it, that it tends to
destroy creative activity altogether in the critic, by making him too self-conscious about his task? Whereas I write a shocking poem and think a lot of it at the time, and keep on doing that until
I turn out something better.’

Mavis de Thule set to work on Willoughby. ‘Isn’t this a splendid sideboard?’ she said. ‘You don’t have to say that to me,’ replied Willoughby. ‘I
don’t live here – it’s just so much firewood to me.’ He turned back to Louis Bates.

In a corner, Stuart Treece was talking to Oliver about his friends of a few evenings before. ‘How did you meet these people?’ he asked.

‘Well, what we do, people like us, is, when we see someone who looks interesting, we go up to them and say, “You look interesting; what do you do?” You see, I’m
interested in people of that sort. I suppose it all started with the milk-bar habit. I used to go into milk-bars, and one day I got talking to a group of three or four people, who just talked. What
I mean is, if there was any subject that came up, they knew something about it. They read all the time. They knew something about everything. It wasn’t particularly good talk, but it was
exciting. And then there was another thing about these people that fascinated me even more. They didn’t work. I couldn’t understand this. I couldn’t see how people managed without
working; I’d never really known anyone who had. But it’s all quite simple really: how it’s done. You simply don’t work. And everything follows from that.’

‘What struck me about them, really,’ said Treece, ‘was their cruelty. They seemed so careless of people.’

‘To you they would seem that. They’re many of them self-destructive, and, like most self-destructive people, they see to it that their fate is shared; they destroy other people. But
then they’re so creative as well, creative of ideas, I mean. I’ve known running conversations that have gone on for months, every night from eight till four the next morning, about the
relation between the finite and the infinite, or about Schopenhauer or Nietzsche. A lot of them became interested in German philosophy during the war, because, of course, none of them was in the
Army, because they got out by taking a hundred aspirins or affecting to be homosexuals. They weren’t identified with the war effort, so they went the other way. A lot of them really wept,
this is true, when Il Duce was hanged. What surprises me is how underground this strain of thinking, which is all perfectly connected and rather widespread, or was, manages to be. In America it
would have all been written up a thousand times. Here there’s just Colin Wilson, Stuart Holroyd . . . that’s the kind of preoccupation.’