The History Man (15 page)

Above him he can hear the feet of the party pounding. He has had a thought about his book. The book begins: ‘The attempt to privatize life, to suppose that it is within single, self-achieving individuals that lie the infinite recesses of being and morality that shape and define life, is a phenomenon of narrow historical significance. It belongs to a particular, and a brief, phase in the evolution of bourgeois capitalism, and is the derivative of peculiar, and temporary, economic arrangements. All the signs are that this conviction about man will soon have passed away.' He opens the door of the study; the glow of the sodium street lighting falls crazily over the walls, the bookshelves, the African masks, sliced through with lines of shadow from the basement railings. The light is off; he realizes, suddenly, that someone is in the room, sitting in the canvas chair in the further corner. He puts on the light. Half-sitting, half-lying in the chair, her dress awry, the manuscript of the book on the floor around her, is Felicity Phee. He says: ‘How did you get here?' ‘I knew you had a study down here,' she says, ‘I wanted to find it. I thought you were busy with the party.' Howard stares at her: at her anxious white face, at the mottle of spots above her breasts, visible where her dress falls forward as she leans towards him, at her tight-knuckled hands and bitten nails. He says: ‘Why? What were you after?' ‘I wanted to know what you were like when I don't see you,' she says, ‘I wanted to look at your books. See your things.' ‘You shouldn't,' says Howard, ‘you just get caught.' ‘Yes,' says Felicity, ‘Is this your next book? I've been reading it.' ‘You'd no business to do that,' says Howard, ‘it's not quite finished. It's private.' ‘The attempt to privatize life is a phenomenon of narrow historical significance,' says Felicity. ‘Why are you doing this?' asks Howard. ‘I've made you my subject of research,' says Felicity, ‘my special option.' ‘I see,' says Howard. ‘You're my tutor, Howard,' says Felicity Phee, her face screwed up, ‘I'm in trouble, I'm not right. You have to help me.'

Howard walks across to his desk, and reaches across it, to draw the curtains. He looks out onto the railings, the area wall, the gaunt outlines of the houses opposite outlined against the pink urban sky. Someone is leaving the house. The figure comes directly in front of the window, by the railings, and looks down into the basement. It is alone, it wears a white hat and a blue trouser suit. Miss Callendar, who looks immensely tall when seen from below, unlocks from the railings and carefully detaches a high, elderly, black bicycle. Her cheeks look flushed, and she appears to be beaming a private smile to herself. She offers a small wave of recognition to Howard; then she tugs her white hat straight, slides a leg across the bicycle, and sits up on the high saddle. She pushes forward and pedals off, in furious motion, a frenzy of uncoordinated forms, back stiff, knees jostling, her legs going up and down, as she disappears through the dereliction towards wherever she lives. ‘Who's that?' asks Felicity. ‘She's someone new in English,' says Howard. ‘You were talking to her at the party,' says Felicity. ‘You like her.' ‘Were you watching me upstairs too?' asks Howard. ‘Yes,' says Felicity. Howard draws the curtain across. He says: ‘What's the matter with you, Felicity?' ‘You must help me, help me,' says Felicity. ‘What's wrong?' asks Howard, sitting in the other canvas chair. ‘How am I ever going to get out of this screwed-up, stinking, shitty, uptight me?' asks Felicity. ‘Why am I stuck in this beastliness of self?' ‘Aren't we all?' asks Howard. ‘No,' says Felicity, ‘most people get out. They have other people to get them out.' ‘Don't you?' asks Howard. ‘Maureen?' asks Felicity. ‘She's a thug.' ‘I thought you were going to find a man.' ‘Yes,' says Felicity, ‘I meant, of course, you.' ‘You did?' says Howard. ‘As you knew,' says Felicity. ‘No,' says Howard.

‘Christ,' says Felicity, ‘you showed much more curiosity about that girl there than you show about me.' ‘Which girl?' asks Howard. ‘The one who went.' ‘I hadn't really thought about her,' says Howard. ‘Have you really thought about me?' asks Felicity. ‘Thought what about you?' ‘Well, my curiosity in you. My coming to see you so much. All the unhappy things I've told you about. Didn't those things affect you?' ‘Of course,' says Howard, ‘as a tutor and a teacher.' ‘Those are just roles to play,' says Felicity, ‘I've been asking for something better than that. For a year I have. I've concerned myself with you. I've not just been watching you to write an article. I want you to concern yourself with me.' ‘Let's go upstairs,' says Howard, ‘there's a party.' Suddenly Felicity pushes herself forward out of her chair, and is on the floor beside him. Her face is distorted and her mouth open. ‘No,' says Felicity, ‘you're my tutor. You're responsible for me.' ‘I think you're mistaking how far the responsibility goes,' says Howard. ‘Are you frightened of me?' asks Felicity. ‘Not a bit,' says Howard, ‘you're just offering too much.' ‘Aren't you lucky?' asks Felicity. ‘Won't you take it?' ‘I get a lot of offers,' says Howard. ‘You remember what you told me,' says Felicity. ‘Follow the line of your own desire. Do what you want.' ‘But your desire has to connect with other people's desire,' says Howard. ‘Can't you make it?' asks Felicity. ‘Can't you try and make it?' ‘I ought to see what's happening upstairs,' says Howard. Felicity pushes her hand in between his legs. ‘Forget what's happening upstairs,' she says, ‘do something for me. Help me, help me, help me. It's a work of charity.'

What is happening upstairs is something that Howard will hear about only the following day. A window smashes in one of the small bedrooms, along a corridor where silence reigns; the cause is Henry Beamish, who has put his left arm through and down, and slashed it savagely on the glass. Only a few people hear this, and most are heavily occupied; but someone is curious enough to look into the little bedroom where he is, and see him, and lift him from the debris around him, and call others. Someone else, the girl who thinks about Hegel, sets off to look for the host of the evening. Someone else, Rosemary, sets off to look for Barbara. But they are neither of them to be found, and nor, for that matter, is Felicity Phee, or young Dr Macintosh. It is lucky that there is someone to take charge; it is Flora Beniform, who has arrived at the party, the date of which she has inscribed in her diary, very late. Indeed a day late; for she has come back on the midnight train from London, where she has been listening to a new paper on female schizophrenia at a seminar at the Tavistock Clinic. But she is an able and reassuring woman, and everyone feels that she is the one to cope: she manages a tourniquet; she sends someone to ring for an ambulance. ‘We've had people looking all over the house,' says a thin faculty wife, sensible and sober because it is her turn this time to drive the car home through the police traps of early-morning Watermouth. ‘No one can find Howard or Barbara anywhere.' ‘I've no doubt they have their own fish to fry,' says Flora. ‘Well, you can't hold the hosts responsible for everything that happens at a party like this. It might have been better to look for Myra.' ‘I think she's down in the kitchen,' says the faculty wife. ‘Find her,' says Flora, ‘but look at her first, and don't bring her up here unless she's sober and rational.' ‘Is it serious?' asks the faculty wife. ‘Fairly,' says Flora. A solemn student has found a broom and a dustpan, and he sweeps away the broken glass under the window, and around Henry. ‘Steady,' says Flora. ‘Oh, God, I'm ridiculous,' says Henry, on the floor. Myra comes in, clutching her sequinned handbag, her coiffure now very tipsy, and looks at Henry, at Flora. She says: ‘I hear Henry's done something else silly.'

‘He's hurt himself quite badly,' says Flora. ‘I don't know how, I wasn't here. He'll have to go to the casualty department and have this stitched.' ‘I expect he was trying to make me feel sorry for him,' says Myra. ‘I'm not sure we're interested in your response at this moment,' says Flora. ‘You're over-acting, it's a nuisance.' ‘What are you doing, Henry?' says Myra. ‘Go away, Myra,' says Flora, ‘I'll take Henry to the hospital. I've been there many times. Why don't you go back home and wait for him?' ‘I might,' says Myra, ‘I might.' The ambulance arrives, with a flashing blue light, and so a lot of people help in the task of carrying Henry, who keeps groaning, down the staircase. Their feet thump heavily on the woodwork, and down in the basement study Howard hears the thunder of noise. The flashing light is shining bluely in through the curtains, casting strange shapes across the bookcases and the masks. But Howard, who is busy, does not properly see it, or interpret it. ‘They seem to be enjoying themselves,' he whispers into the ear of Felicity Phee. Felicity, underneath him, whispers, ‘I am too.' ‘Good,' says Howard. ‘And you?' ‘Yes,' says Howard. ‘Not very much,' says Felicity, ‘but I'm glad to have what you find you can give me.' ‘It's the very usual thing,' says Howard. ‘No,' says Felicity. The ambulance klaxon sounds out in the terrace as it drives off. ‘Drugs squad,' says Howard. ‘No, lie still, stay there,' says Felicity. ‘I thought something had happened, I should have been around,' Howard will say in the morning, when Flora tells him what it was that had happened. But Flora will also explain what is clearly true: that, at parties, everyone has his own affairs to attend to, and should be presumed to be attending to them, just as Henry, in his way, also was. For people are people, and parties are parties; especially when they happen to be at the Kirks'.

VI

It is four in the morning when the party comes to its end. The last guests stand in the hall, some of them needing the support of the wall; they say their goodbyes; they venture through the door into the quietness of early-morning Watermouth. The Kirks, that hospitable couple, usher them forth, and then they go upstairs to their disorderly bedroom, which smells sharply of pot, and push the bed back into position, and take the ashtrays off it, and undress, and get under the duvet. They say nothing, being tired people; they do not touch each other, having no need; Barbara, in her black nightdress, folds her body into Howard's, her buttocks on his knees, and they are quickly asleep. And then it is the morning, and the Habitat alarm clock rings on the bedside table, and they wake again, back into the life of ordinary things. Consciousness returns, and feels heavy with use; Howard presses his eyelids open, jerks towards being, regresses, tries again. Traffic chumps on the creases of the urban motorway; a diesel commuter train hoots on the viaduct; the graders are revving on the construction sites. The bed vibrates and bounces; Barbara is getting up. The Habitat alarm clock says it is
V
to
VIII
. Barbara pads across to the door, and takes her housecoat from the hook; she goes across to the window and pulls back the curtain to admit dull wet daylight. The room appears in its unmitigated thinginess, flavoured with the dusty smell of cigarette smoke, the sweet aftersmell of pot. A thrown-off dress, gutted by its long zip, hangs askew on the door. On the junk shop chest of drawers, its grain surface rough, one handle gone, two handles broken, are some plates, three full ashtrays, and many empty wine glasses from the supermarket. The lavatory flushes along the landing. Outside black rainclouds move in off the sea and over the tops of the luxury flats; the rain pours and smudges and blackens the brickwork of the shattered houses opposite, dripping violently in the Kirks' unstable guttering. In Howard's head is the dry image of a person: Felicity Phee, a mottling of spots above her breasts. He activates muscular mechanisms; he gets out of bed and walks, through the party detritus and the unredeemed daylight, to the bathroom. He urinates into the bowl; he takes his razor from the medicine cabinet, and unravels the cord. He plugs the razor into two black holes under the white globe of the light.

He pulls the string of the switch. Light and razor, glare and noise, both come on. His face rises into visibility in the fingermarked glass of the mirror. In the cool urban sheen of the morning, he inspects the Condition of Man. His bleak, beaky features, the moustache worn like a glower, stare out at him as he stares back in at them. ‘Christ,' he says, ‘you again.' His fingers come up and touch and shape this strange flesh into position. He runs the razor over it, shaping and ordering the construct before him, sculpting neatly round the edge of the moustache, clipping at the line of the sideboards. He stops the razor; from downstairs, he can hear the barbaric yawp of his children. The features he has been designing hang pallidly, abstractly, before him in the mirror; he pokes at them, hoping to urge into them that primordial glow which is actual and real livingness. There is no response. He picks up a bottle of aftershave lotion with a machismo label, and slaps some into his cheeks. He switches off the light above the mirror; the face fades. A family row of toothbrushes are prodded into a metal rack above the washbasin; he takes one, and scrubs up a foam inside his mouth. The rain splashes in the gutters. A female cooing sounds in the acoustical complexities of the staircase; he is being called to breakfast and his domestic duties, for it is his turn to take the children to school. He combs his hair, and drops a fuzz of haircombings into the yellow waters of the lavatory bowl. He presses the handle, and flushes it. He returns to the bedroom and reaches into the wardrobe, selecting some clothes, his cultural identity. He puts on jeans and a sweater; he straps on his watch. He goes towards the domestic arena. On the landing, on the stairs, there are empty glasses and plates, cups and ashtrays, bottles. Anita Dollfuss's dog has left its traces, and there are strange dark drips of something along the length of the hall. A silvery dress lies on the floor. He goes through into the pine decor of the kitchen, where chaos is total. Many empty bottles stand on the pine counters; many dirty plates are scattered everywhere. The stench of old parties prevails. In an endless sequence of little explosions, rain plumps on the glass roof of the Victorian conservatory, where the children are playing. The electric kettle fuzzes a thin line of steam around Barbara, who stands in her housecoat, in front of the cooker, her hair untidy.