The History Man (2 page)

After the instinct about the party comes to them, an instinct so harmonious that neither one of them can now remember which of the two of them thought of it first, the Kirks go down to Howard's study, which is in the basement of their Georgian terrace house, and pour themselves some wine, and start to work on what Howard calls ‘the loose frame of reference surrounding this encounter'. There are two studies in the Kirk house, though it is a very unstructured house, the opposite of the kind of thing people call a home: Howard's, downstairs, where he writes books, and Barbara's, upstairs, where she means to. Howard's study is lined with bookshelves; the bookshelves are filled with sociology texts, books about encounter groups and interpersonal relations, new probes into radical experience by American visionaries, basic political manifestos. Under the window is a white desk, with a second telephone on it; on the desk lies a fluttering pile of paper, the typescript of the book – which is called
The Defeat of Privacy
– that Howard has been working on over the recess and withdrawal of the summer, the recess that is now ending. The grilled window over the desk looks out onto a basement yard, with an untended plant tub in it; you must look upwards to see the railings onto the street. Back through the grilled windows comes in the sun that has been shining all day, a weak, late-year sun that slants in and composes square shapes on the bookcases and the walls. On the walls, between the bookcases, there are African masks, faces in black and dark brown carved wood set against white emulsion. The Kirks, in their bright clothes, sit beneath the masks, in two low white canvas chairs. They each hold their glass of red wine, and they look at each other, and they begin to talk the party into existence. They name names, they plan food and drink.

After a while Barbara rises, and goes to the bottom of the stairs. ‘Anne,' she shouts up into the hall, ‘Howard and I are planning a party. I wonder if you'd give the children a bath?' ‘Fine, Mrs Kirk,' shouts Anne Petty, the student who has been living with them over the summer, having fallen out so severely with her parents she cannot go home, ‘I'll see to it.' ‘I don't know how I'd manage without Anne,' says Barbara, sitting down in the canvas chair again. ‘Beamishes,' says Howard, ‘can we stand the Beamishes?' ‘We've not seen them all summer,' says Barbara, ‘We've not seen anyone all summer.' And that is true, for to the Kirks the summer represents the low point of the year, the phase of social neglect. Howard has finished his book – it flutters at them on the desktop – but creation is a lonely and introverted activity; he is in that flat state of literary post coitum that affects those who spend too much time with their own lonely structures and plots; he needs to be back into, to intervene in, the larger, grander, more splendid plots that are plotted by history. And Barbara has been domestic, and domesticity is an evasion to people like the Kirks; the self has bigger business to perform. But their party is a party for the world, too; they construct it solemnly. Howard is a theoretician of sociability; he debates about what he calls ‘relevant forms of interaction', and the parameters of the encounter. Barbara performs the antithetical role, and thinks of persons and faces, not because men are abstract and women emotional – that is the sort of role-designation both of them would deny – but because someone has to keep abreast of who likes whom, and who can't be in the same room as whom, and who is bedding whom, and who ought sooner or later to bed whom, if you want to have really good parties. And the Kirks always do have good parties, have a talent for giving them. They are unstructured parties, frames for event, just as are Howard's seminars at the university, and his books, where urgent feeling breaks up traditional grammar, methodology and organization. But, as Howard always says, if you want to have something that's genuinely unstructured, you have to plan it carefully. And that, then, is just what the Kirks do, as they sit in their study, and drink their wine.

The sunsquares on the wall fade; Howard switches on his desk lamp. The principle is creative mixture. So the Kirks are mixing people from the town with people from the university, and people from London with people from the town. They are mixing heteros with homos, painters with advanced theologians, scientists with historians, students with Hell's Angels, pop stars with IRA supporters, Maoists with Trotskyites, family-planning doctors with dropouts who sleep under the pier. The Kirks have a wide intellectual constituency, an expansive acquaintance; there are so many forms and contexts of changing life to keep up with. After a while Howard gets up; he leans against the bookcase; he says ‘Stop there. I'm afraid it's hardening. If we say any more, it'll turn into the kind of bloody bourgeois party we'd refuse to go to.' ‘Oh, you'd never refuse to go to a party,' says Barbara. ‘I think we're losing spontaneity,' says Howard, ‘we said an unpredictable encounter.' ‘I just want to ask,' says Barbara, ‘how many people we'll have at this unpredictable encounter. I'm thinking about the work.' ‘We have to make it a real scene,' says Howard, ‘a hundred, maybe more.' ‘Your idea of a good party,' says Barbara, ‘is to invite the universe. And then leave me to wash up after.' ‘Oh, come on,' says Howard, ‘we need this.
They
need it.' ‘Your enthusiasm,' says Barbara, ‘it never wears, does it?' ‘Right,' says Howard, ‘that's why I exist. Now I'm going to pick up the telephone and make twenty-five calls, and you're going to make twenty-five calls, and there's our party.' ‘Martin's wet his pyjama trousers,' shouts Anne Petty from upstairs. ‘Give him some more,' shouts Barbara, up the stairs. ‘Roger, it's Howard,' says Howard, with the red telephone next to his ear. ‘We're planning a bit of action. No, not that kind of action: a party.' There is a new book by R. D. Laing lying on the table next to Barbara's chair; she picks it up and thumbs through its pages. ‘An accidental party,' says Howard, ‘the kind where you might meet anyone and do anything.' ‘Or meet anything and do anyone,' says Barbara. ‘Barbara's fine, I'm fine,' says Howard, ‘we're just ready to get started again.' ‘Oh, yes, I'm fine,' says Barbara, ‘fine fine fine.' ‘No,' says Howard, ‘it's just Barbara having schizophrenia in the background. See you on the second. And bring anyone you can predict will be unpredictable.'

‘That's what we need,' says Howard, putting down the telephone, ‘people.' ‘You've had all the people you can eat,' says Barbara. ‘We need some fresh ones,' says Howard, picking up the telephone again, ‘who do we know that we don't know? Ah, Henry, we need you, Henry. Can you and Myra come to a party?' And so Howard talks on the telephone, and makes twenty-five calls, while Barbara sits in the canvas chair; and then Barbara talks on the telephone, and makes twenty-five calls, while Howard sits in the canvas chair. The Kirks are a modern couple, and believe in dividing all tasks equally down the middle, half for you, half for me, like splitting an orange, so that both get involved, and neither gets exploited. When they have finished on the telephone, they sit in the canvas chairs again, and Barbara says, ‘You buy the drinks, I'll buy the food,' and the party is all ready. So they go upstairs, to the kitchen, and here, side by side, wearing similar butcher's aprons, they prepare the dinner. The children run in and out, in their pyjamas; Anne Petty comes in, and offers to make dessert. Then they all sit at the table and eat the meal they have prepared; Anne Petty puts the children to bed, and the Kirks sit down in the living room with their coffee, and watch television. It is unusual for them to be so together; they dwell on their amazement. Later on they go upstairs to bed together and, standing on opposite sides of the bed, undress together. They turn down the duvet; they switch on the spotlight over the bed; they touch each other, and make love together. The faces and bodies they have invented to populate their party come into the bedroom with them and join in the fun. Afterwards the light shines down on them, and Barbara says to Howard, ‘I'm just afraid I'm losing some of my enjoyment.' ‘Of this?' asks Howard, pressing her. ‘No,' says Barbara, ‘parties. The swinging Kirk scene.' ‘You couldn't,' says Howard. ‘Maybe I'm getting old,' says Barbara, ‘all I see in my mind are dirty glasses.' ‘I'll make it interesting for you,' says Howard. ‘Oh, sure,' says Barbara, ‘you're a great magician of the feelings, aren't you, Howard?' ‘I try,' says Howard. ‘Howard Kirk,' says Barbara, ‘what we have instead of faith.'

The days go by, and the telephones ring, and then it is the morning of Monday 2 October, when things are really starting again: the first day of term, the day of the party. The Kirks rise up, early and together. They pull on their clothes; they tidy the bed; they go downstairs. The kitchen is done out in pine. The rain washes down the window; the room is in wet half-light. In the kitchen Anne Petty stands by the stove in a candlewick dressing gown, cooking an egg. ‘What gets you up so early?' she says. ‘We're going shopping,' says Barbara, ‘for the party.' Howard goes to the toaster, and presses bread into it; Barbara takes a carton of eggs from the refrigerator. Howard pushes down the button on the toaster; Barbara cracks eggs and drops them into the frying pan. The children come in, and sit down at the places Anne has already laid for them. ‘Cornflakes, yuk,' says Martin. ‘Oh, Jesus,' says Barbara, looking in the sink, ‘I didn't know we dirtied all those plates last night. How did we do that?' ‘We ate,' says Howard, who sits down at the table, inspecting the outrages of the day in the morning's
Guardian
. Anne Petty looks up; she says, ‘You want me to wash them up, Mrs Kirk?' ‘Oh, would you really, Anne?' says Barbara, ‘there's so much to do today.' ‘Oh, yes, Mrs Kirk,' says Anne Petty. ‘Eggs, again,' says Martin, as Barbara serves them, ‘why do you always give us the same every day?' ‘Because I'm busy,' says Barbara, ‘and put your plates in the sink when you're through. Howard and I are going shopping.' ‘But who's going to take us to school?' asks Celia. ‘Oh, hell,' says Barbara, ‘now what can we do about that?' ‘Would you like me to take them to school?' asks Anne Petty, looking up. ‘It would be marvellous,' says Barbara, ‘but I hate to ask you. You're not here to do jobs. You're here because we like having you here.' ‘Oh, I know that, Mrs Kirk,' says Anne, ‘but I really do like helping you. I mean, you're both such busy people. I don't know how you do so much.' ‘It takes a certain genius,' says Howard. ‘I do hope you're staying on with us for a bit,' says Barbara. ‘We'd love to have you, and I want to make one of my little shopping trips to London next weekend. So I'll need someone for the children.' ‘Oh, I don't know,' says Anne Petty, looking embarrassed, ‘next weekend?' ‘She means no,' says Howard, looking up from the
Guardian
, ‘the statement's equivocal, but the subtext says: “Lay off, you're exploiting me.”'

Anne Petty looks at him; she says, ‘Oh, Dr Kirk, Kirks don't exploit anybody. Not the Kirks. It's just that I really don't see how I can.' ‘Oh, everybody exploits somebody,' says Howard, ‘in this social order, it's part of the human lot. But some know it, some don't. When Barbara gets anxious, she starts handing out tasks to people. You're right to resist.' ‘I hand out tasks,' says Barbara, ‘because I have them to do.' ‘Please, look,' says Anne Petty, ‘no one's exploiting anyone. Really. I'd love to stay, but my friends are coming back to the flat, and I've paid part-rent.' Barbara says: ‘Oh, you're right, Howard. Everyone exploits someone. Notably you me.' ‘What did I do?' asks Howard, innocently. ‘Oh, God,' says Barbara, ‘how his heart bleeds for victims. And he finds them all over. The only ones he can't see are the people he victimizes himself.' ‘I'm sorry, Mrs Kirk, I really am,' says Anne Petty. ‘You mustn't blame Anne,' says Howard, ‘she has her own scene.' ‘I'm not blaming Anne,' says Barbara, ‘I'm blaming you. You're trying to stop my trip to London. You don't want me to have a weekend in London.' ‘You'll have your weekend,' says Howard, ‘Leave it to me. I'll fix it. Someone will look after the kids.' ‘Who?' asks Celia, ‘Anyone nice?' ‘Someone Howard likes,' says Barbara. ‘Doesn't Howard like Anne?' asks Martin. ‘Of course I do,' says Howard. ‘Get your coat on. I'm going to fetch the van.' ‘It's just I have to move back to the flat with these friends,' says Anne Petty, as Howard walks across the kitchen. ‘Of course you do,' says Howard, in the doorway. ‘Bring them to the party.' Howard goes out into the hall, and puts on a long leather coat from the peg, and a neat blue denim cap. The conversation continues behind him in the kitchen. He walks down the hall, opens the front door, and steps out. He stands in the wet light. The terrace is puddled, the rain pours down, the city is loud. He pulls the door to behind him, on the domestic social annex, which shrills behind him; he walks out onto the urban stage, the busy movingness of city life, the place where, as every good sociologist knows, the cake of custom crumbles, traditional role-ascriptions break, the bonds of kinship weaken, where the public life that determines the private one is led.

He walks along the terrace, with its cracked pavement stones, its scatter of broken glass; the rain soaks his hair, and begins to stipple the leather of his coat. The terrace curves around him; once an exact and elegant half-circle, the curious dentistry of demolition has attacked it, pulling out house after house from the curve as they have become empty. Most of those that still stand are unoccupied, with broken roofs and vacant, part-boarded windows, plastered with posters for political parties, pop groups, transcendental meditators, or rather surreptitiously occupied, for they are visited by a strange, secret, drifting population of transients. But, though there are few residents, the terrace has been metered for parking; the Kirks have to keep their minivan some streets away, in a square up the hill. A police car heehaws on the urban motorway being sliced through the demolition; buses grind below him, on the promenade. An air-force jet flies in off the sea, its line of flight an upward curve that brings it into sudden visibility over the jagged tops of the houses across the terrace from the Kirks' tall, thin house. He turns the corner; he walks up the hill. The long latticed metal of a construction crane swings into his eyeline, dangling a concrete beam. Up the hill he goes, past the remnants of the old order, the scraps of traditional Watermouth falling beneath the claims of the modern city. There are small shops – a newsagent with a window display of
The Naked Ape
, a greengrocer with a few crates of vegetables standing outside under a leaky canvas awning, a family butcher with a notice saying ‘We keep our meat on ice in hot weather'. There are small back-to-back houses, whose doors open directly onto the street; the bulldozers soon will reach them. Higher on the hill grow the new concrete towers. Before he reaches them Howard turns to the left, into a square of small houses, mostly flats and private hotels. His old blue minivan stands in a line of cars beside the kerb, under a sodium street-lamp. He unlocks the driver's door; he gets in; he turns the ignition twice to fire the engine. He drives the van back and forth, to clear the space. Then he drives out of the square, down through the busy traffic of the hill, and back into the terrace.