Sing Like You Know the Words (6 page)

She paused for a moment to allow
him to consider the difficulty.

-And there’s just this one
moment really, after Eliza’s accent slips, and because Eliza looks
so beautiful and Higgins pretends that cockney is becoming
fashionable, Clara, wants to imitate her. So I make this comment
about Victorian prudery, and Higgins agrees, and then I am
encouraged to make this comment “such bloody nonsense”, but it has
to come out as shocking, because no proper lady would use such
language then.

-Just say it with an affected
upper class voice, as if you’re trying the word out for the first
time.

-But then, Matt, it goes on. Let
me read it, I say “Ha! Ha!” Well that’s not so easy to get right is
it? And then it says “she goes out radiant, conscious of being
thoroughly up to date, and is heard descending the stairs in a
stream of silvery laughter”. I ask you, how can I make that seem
real?

Now Matthew was smiling.

-I really don’t believe it’s all
that complicated, he replied. If I was you, I would learn the lines
as well as you can, and just say them as if Clara was just a silly
misguided girl with no substance. I’m positive that is all that Mr
Shaw would expect of you. Clara is a stock character that his
audience would recognize. It’s true that he undercuts the
stereotype in the back story that follows on from the play, but
that’s for the reader not for the theatre. Stories and plays;
they’re different. You know, Shaw would have written novels if he’d
had the patience. That was his first ambition.

-So you think that really it’s
just a trivial part, written to move the business of the drama
along?

-Exactly, yes. Nothing to worry
about at all.

He was so pleased at having
easily cleared up Patricia’s little difficulty that he could not
understand why David was staring daggers at him.

-It’s based on a Greek myth you
know, said David, sounding a little desperate, for some reason.
Pygmalion was the statue brought to life by magic, like Eliza.

Matthew was happy to clear that
up.

-Oh, no, Pygmalion is the name
of the man who brings the statue to life, like Higgins.

-Ah.

-I’ll leave you to it then, now
you’re sorted. Good luck with Clara, Pat.

Patricia gave him a look that
did not seem quite as full of gratitude as he might have expected,
but Matthew was oblivious to such subtleties.

***

When David’s father first heard
from his son that he was planning to marry, he didn’t say too much.
Inwardly his response was similar to what Matthew and Tim had told
David. Mr Thomas had only met the girl three times. That he hardly
knew her was not important, but knowing David and how he jumped at
things, his father thought it probable that David didn’t know her
that well either.

Mr Thomas’s only comfort was to
hear that, in spite of David regarding the matter as settled, he
had not said anything about it to Patricia as yet. He did not see
his son often and sometimes he believed that he did not know the
boy at all. But not to know what was going through David’s mind at
a time like this; that was just another worrying part of the
business.

It was not that Mr Thomas was
against early marriages in general. David was not much younger than
he’d been when he married David’s mother. But by then he’d been
working for a few years and he knew a little bit about the world.
David had done nothing yet and sometimes he acted like he’d not
even begun to grow up. As for the girl, Mr Thomas thought he liked
her well enough, from what little he’d seen, but there was
something about her that made him doubtful so far as marriage was
concerned. She was pretty and she seemed good natured, but you
could see that she had some odd ideas. There was something under
the surface that made him uneasy.

For a start, they’d had not had
Catholics in the family up to now, so far as he knew. He didn’t
have anything against Catholics except that some of them seemed to
take religion seriously. This girl wasn’t exactly churchy.
According to David she hardly went to mass, though that could
easily change over the years. Even now, she seemed to find little
ways to let you know that faith meant something to her.

He’d come across that sort
before, even in people you only knew from work you’d see it. They
seemed normal, then one little thing that an ordinary person
wouldn’t even think about would turn out to hold all manner of
superstitious importance for them.

There would be complications
about the ceremony and later about the children too, but the worst
thing about people like that was that they changed as they got
older. She might become devout, or worse, one of those women who
obsessed about going to church every day and telling other people
how they should live.

Mr Thomas senior thought of
himself as a practical man. It was not that he was against
religion, in its place. He would go to weddings, funerals and
baptisms and remember to look serious in the right places;
listening to all the nonsense that was spoken and looking at his
shoes when he felt like laughing. Churches were alright for that; a
bit of formality to the rites of passage, a little comfort for old
people and others who couldn’t cope with the truth that once you
were dead, it was the finish.

But this Patricia of David’s,
when she talked about “her faith” - well for a start, to use a
phrase like that without blushing didn’t seem natural to him. In
short, she sounded sincere about the whole business and that could
only be dangerous.

But if I say anything against
it, he told himself, that will only make David more set on the
idea.

He knew that the boy’s
resentment of him had carried over from childhood. There were lots
of reasons for it, he supposed, but he was painfully conscious that
the loss of a mother was something that he had not been able to
make up for, with his clumsy kindness, his common sense and he
supposed his lack of imagination.

I only hope he never starts to
take all that god rubbish seriously himself, the father
reflected.

He might have been more worried
if he had heard David arguing with Matthew about religion. David
had taken to describing himself as an agnostic, which Matthew
claimed meant he was more than halfway ready to give in to the god
superstition. David denied that it was so. From time to time they
discussed their respective positions in the earnest way of those
who are young enough to believe that their opinions matter to
anyone.

But just now they were at home.
They‘d started to watch a game of football. It was supposed to be
an important match. Important to who? Tim had demanded to know. He
despised the game, and had left the house to avoid its taint.
Patricia regarded football as an acceptable manifestation of the
male need to spend time away from women: She didn’t consider it a
threat and was content to feel harmlessly excluded. However, the
game turned out to be so dull that even the TV commentator admitted
to being bored. An exchange about cities with Catholic and
Protestant football teams started them talking about religion
generally. As usual, David was on the defensive.

-It’s not that I’m religious or
a believer or anything like that. Of course I’m not. I’m just
saying that if I were, I would have to agree with Patricia that the
Catholic version is the only sensible form of Christianity. The
other sorts make an appeal to reason you see; and obviously that’s
nonsense. How can you believe based on logic?

-You can’t, but there’s a good
reason why rational belief is not possible. That’s not an argument
for irrational belief. Just because you might want to believe in
something doesn’t make it any true. I’d rather cold reason to blind
belief.

-Well suppose you are right, who
knows? All I am saying is that you could only experience knowledge
of god through faith, and faith is knowledge of the heart. And
because of that, religion should be tied to beauty. It’s when you
are moved by beauty that you have the awareness of spirituality,
whether it’s from painting, or a piece of music; whatever. And at
least the Catholics have a feeling for beauty, not like the Church
of England. So grubby. Did I tell you about the time I went to
Westminster Abbey? A thousand years of history and they have broken
furniture lying around the corridors, and hand written posters for
restoration appeals on the walls. There’s no aesthetic to it. It’s
so mundane

-You mentioned it before. But
please, don’t give me that guff about knowledge that’s not based on
reason. I don’t know that feeling; but I’m sure it’s not knowledge.
You shouldn’t trust it. And in any case you can’t help but see that
all this beauty that has passed down the ages has come at a price.
From where I stand, religion just looks like one more big business
that the bosses run for their own benefit like any other. Seems
that the Church believes that it’s fine to take money from the
starving poor to buy gold plate for the altar or another painting
for the bishop´s palace.

-My dad talks like that. He goes
on about how the Church has kept the people down wherever it can;
but he’s an engineer, a materialist. He only has one way to
understand the world. He’s concerned himself all his life with
knowing the exact measure of what he can touch. What can’t be
touched doesn’t matter to him. To me, there’s a kind of poverty in
allowing yourself such a narrow experience of life.

Matthew did not reply to that.
Sometimes he thought there was no point arguing with David about
anything. He had such certainty that you could never shake him,
even when he was clearly wrong. There were ways in which David was
even more exasperating than Tim. You’d get to thinking he was
reasonable and that you understood him; and then every now and then
he would show a glimpse of the inner self; a person driven by
obsessions he didn’t understand himself. Didn’t want to understand
most likely; given that he was so hungry to feel that some dark
mystery guided his path. Matthew could see one truth about David
that David couldn’t see for himself: he was a hopeless mystic.

It wasn’t even funny. People’s
lives were affected. Take this business with Patricia. David had
got it into his head to get married, for no good reason that anyone
could see; and now the wedding was going to happen. Matthew had no
doubt about that, even if David had yet to inform Patricia of her
fate. In Matthew’s experience, once David made up his mind to go
after something, he would have it; whatever obstacles might lie in
the way. And probably it will end badly for both of them, he
thought. But then it was in Matthew’s nature to store up images of
impending dread.

***

As late spring began to hint at
the coming of summer, the routines of David and his housemates were
disrupted by an unusual invitation.

From the start, it was clear
that the party would be a special occasion. David had no scale to
measure social events, but his invite was printed on a card which
specified that he should wear a suit or dinner jacket. These facts
spoke for themselves

The occasion was to be the
engagement of one of Patricia’s well heeled girlfriends. The family
wanted to show off about it. They owned a big farm somewhere out in
the Yorkshire countryside, and the celebration would take place in
a giant marquee pitched in the grounds, with lighting and a
temporary hard floor laid down for the occasion. More importantly,
there would be a live band and free drink for the guests.

-They´ll need the floor to cover
up the pig shit that’s lying there for the rest of the year,
suggested Tim.

He claimed to hate the
countryside and country dwellers as much as he hated football fans.
There’s nothing there, he said, but red-faced farty old men
drooling into their flat beer, and various kinds of dumb animals
crapping everywhere while they wait to be turned into meat.

-Nevertheless when he heard
about the free beer, Tim consented to accept one of the additional
tickets that had been allotted to David as the boyfriend of the
bride to be’s best friend at college. His acceptance was a mixed
blessing for David.

-But Tim, and I am serious now,
you have to behave and not show us all up.

-Of course.

David was disappointed, even if
not surprised, when Matthew claimed a prior engagement that he
could not avoid.

-Don’t push him, there’s no
point, said Tim. You know how he’s allergic to toffs.

The arrangements would be that
Patricia and some other girlfriends were spending the weekend at
the farm, so the boys would need to make their own way there and
back on the big night. The distance was not so great, but David was
surprised when Tim offered to drive.

-Not much point me spending my
junior officer’s allowance to keep a car on the road if I never use
it. In any case, if I drive I won’t drink, which should put your
mind at rest. I think there‘ll be plenty to entertain me without
booze. You never know, maybe me having my own wheels might turn the
head of one of those buxom farmers’ lasses.

-She’ll need to be blind and
daft as well as buxom to be impressed by your car, commented
Matthew.

-Always the negative comments
Matt. Why don’t you change your mind and come with us? It will be
fun.

-Four hours of standing around
not knowing what it’s polite to say, while a local band murders
creaky old rock and roll hits and some pimple who calls himself a
DJ talks over crappy pop records.

-Yes, like I say, it will be
fun.

-No thanks.

The night before she left for
the farm, Patricia asked David for a favour.

-I wondered if you could pick up
Abbas on the way, and bring him with you.

-Abbas who?

-Ali Abbas. You’ve seen him. We
used to be in halls together in the first year. You know, the Asian
boy.