Haw! haw! deep then and masculine from this son of the new world of exchange lectureships.
‘He gave me this book of his poems.’
Held up, bashful, proud, a slim volume with, yellow on green, Cocksuck, but he was opening it to give the Professor so it might have been Slowworm or Coachtrip. Cockroach?
‘Dedicated it to me actually. Well, not the book, of course, but this . . . this copy. He’s written here at the front.’
Impassive, the Professor studied the dedication and then held it up to give us a glimpse of the hasty slanted scrawl – ‘To Jerry, one of the gang – I think.’
‘I really value that. It’s the highlight of my last trip. I mean, it made the trip – I did feel that.’
‘Has Mr . . .’ the Professor wafted the volume in decreasing circles, ‘has— has he written anything else?’
As if he had been away long enough to mistake that kind of careful stammer for nothing more than diffidence, Jerry expanded: ‘Anything else! Jesus, everything else would describe it better – but then I’m an enthusiast.’ He grinned boyishly. ‘After putting up with me all evening, you won’t need to be told that. He’s simply covered the whole American experience. Past and present. Future too, possibly – that is if you believe Dexroth. He called the Epsilon sonnet sequence “science fiction made over into prophecy”. Wasn’t that good?’
‘When I listen to remarks like that,’ someone said, ‘I get the feeling we’re being asked to pay a high price for the privilege of the Americans protecting us.’
The Professor laughed, and Jerry cried, ‘Christ! isn’t that typically English? Isn’t it time we stopped pretending to some kind of cultural superiority that hasn’t existed for fifty years?’
‘Is that what I was doing?’ the same someone pondered ironically. The voice was deep but soft. I envied its certainty that everyone would listen. From where I perched on the windowseat, I could see only one shoulder and a hand very white against the black leather of the chair. ‘ “Science fiction made over into prophecy.” Does that mean anything? Most science fiction tries to be some kind of prophecy anyway, doesn’t it?’
‘Like – ah – Dr Who,’ the Professor volunteered.
‘Who?’ Jerry looked bewildered.
‘It’s a serial on television,’ Margaret Briody said, laughing, intervening innocent in the arena to draw the Professor’s offering of biscuits and cheese and embarrass me on her behalf into a hallucinatingly vivid, brief memory of Jackie Kennedy.
‘Actually,’ the Professor took up the definition with surprising amiability, ‘it is by this time a series of serials. Do you see? Sets of episodes, each forming a story, and each leading into a new set while all the time featuring the same central character.’
The incorrigible Margaret rang out, ‘We’ve discovered your secret vice – watching Dr Who.’
‘My grand-niece is devoted to it. But I don’t apologise for watching it. The format has some interesting conse— consequences. Take this latest episode. The Doctor is confronted by an alien intelligence, a splendid villain. For him to overcome it entirely would mean it couldn’t crop up in a later serial of the series. So, at the moment he’s about to obliterate it, his friends burst in with the best of intentions and inadvertently allow it to escape off into outer space. The intelligence which runs away, lives to fight another day – or aeon rather.’
‘The point’s a nice one, Tom.’ The same deep soft voice sounded from the depths of the black leather chair. ‘Take the parallel case of our local theology. God and the Devil are locked in perpetual conflict, but Dr God never manages to wipe Lucifer out. Just as well of course, or the world and all of us with it, moon too, sun and stars, would snuff out and be done.’
‘I don’t see why the world should do that,’ Jerry grumbled. It was obvious he disapproved of this conversation but couldn’t resist trying to retake the high ground. ‘Get rid of the Devil and the world should turn back into Eden.’
‘I seem to remember, Brond,’ the Professor addressed the man hidden from me in the chair, ‘you inclining to the opinion that Satan made the material universe in a series of feints, weavings and subterfuges as he defended himself against a vengeful Creator.’
‘I’ve never been persuaded,’ the hidden speaker said, ‘that God would not dispose of evil at once – if He could.’
‘Oh, great!’ Jerry said harshly. ‘So God’s a loser as far as you’re concerned. What happens then if Satan wins? Have you a theory for that?’
‘That would be absurd,’ the soft voice said dismissively.
‘For a man who wants to limit the divine power, Brond,’ the Professor said, ‘it hardly seems sporting to argue its omnipotence in the next breath.’
‘You misunderstand me,’ the voice said pleasantly. I could not see his face, but I imagined somehow that he might be smiling. ‘It’s my idea that defeat is what Satan is after, not the destruction of souls and all that melodrama.’
‘The Devil wants to be defeated? But you’ve already said that he has the power to prevent God from doing that. Isn’t there a contradiction there somewhere?’
‘Not really. Satan sets out to torment and so God, who is good, is compelled to encounter him – when required. God has no choice, however weary He may be of the game. Satan has to be defeated – but never is entirely. In which case, we owe roses and sunsets,’ the white hand tapped upon the black leather of the chair, ‘to Satan’s pleasure in being mastered.’
‘It’s the wine Prof Gracemount serves that does the damage,’ Donald Baxter said and belched. ‘Cheap wine, cheap theology. If I could find a church that served Château Lafite for communion, I’d become a convert.’
He lifted his pint and took a long slurping draw on it. I had to lean forward to hear what he was saying; the downstairs bar of the Union was crowded and everybody was yelling over the Country and Western.
‘You look awful,’ he said. ‘You’re sweating like a pig. Gracemount’s wine has poisoned you.’
‘I didn’t feel like going home.’ My lips were thick and rubbery. ‘My digs, I mean. Not home. Long way from home.’
‘Are you all right?’
‘I don’t despise you,’ I said. ‘For being a conscientious objector. That’s your business. And anyway the war’s over a long time. That’s the way I look at it. I don’t believe in wars myself – or violence. I’m a pacifist.’
Baxter looked offended. ‘I’m not a bloody pacifist,’ he said. ‘Never have been.’
I tried to get him into focus but his face ran like white fat melting against the smoke.
‘What about – what about all that stuff about being in a camp? What about all that crap about getting beaten up by the guards?’
The oldest student in the world scowled at me. ‘I refused to join the army. But it wasn’t because I didn’t believe in fighting for my country. Only I’ll pick the country. Do you understand?’
I shook my head. The movement hurt; waves of pain came and went. ‘I don’t get a bloody word of what you’re on about.’
‘I could believe that,’ Donald Baxter said. ‘That’s why I don’t explain any more why I didn’t let them call me up. Who would know what I was talking about? What’s the use in this country?’
Before I left the Professor’s, things became a little blurred. I seemed to remember Professor Gracemount talking about being in Czechoslovakia. He had been in charge of some examination – for the British Council? did that make sense? – and a young Czech girl had come to see him. My brother has to pass this exam, she had said to him. It’s very important to the family. It’s very important to me. We would do anything to make sure he passed. I personally would do anything to make sure he passed.
I could see that girl. She was wearing a long cotton skirt with the kind of bright pattern a peasant in a movie might wear. I could see the way she licked her tongue over her upper lip when she murmured ‘personally’.