A Whistling Woman (36 page)

After coffee, the Vice-Chancellor said that he felt that real progress had been made. The Conference would show the new University to be what it had been designed to be—a paradigm, a web, a microcosm of interconnecting studies and ideas. Hodgkiss, looking at Wijnnobel with exasperated affection, knew what he was imagining. New intricate relations between the flow of the blood, the history of the genes, theological certainties and uncertainties, languages of men and beasts, flesh, bone, brain, thought and feeling. Wijnnobel was a polymath who had a very unusual recall of detail in very many contexts simultaneously. This passion for detail extended to the planning of the university community. He was interested in the design of chairs and walkways, and the meanings of those for the life of his small world. He was interested in microscopes and telescopes, computers and aesthetic theories. He was, Hodgkiss often thought, an innocent idealist who did not understand that the brute powers that really controlled the universe were not interested in—were alarmed by—his sphere of knowledge and understanding. He was not as aware as most Vice-Chancellors would have been that most of his colleagues saw the Conference in terms of the advancement or the overlooking of their own areas of expertise and political power. He noticed these things when they were brought to his attention.

Nick Tewfell said he thought he should say there was considerable unrest amongst the student body about the stresses placed on them by the four-year multi-subject course. They did not enjoy—many of them—being required to do maths and a language. It was hard on them.

Hodgkiss said that he was always ready to discuss this with them.

The Anti-University was discussed. It was growing. There were two fields now of caravans and tents. There was a lot of persistent noise—music, drumming. The UNY students were sampling classes on sex and astrology and anarchy, despite not having time to learn maths and languages.

“They are not breaking the law,” said Wijnnobel.

“Technically, they are,” said Hodgkiss. “The original cottages they set up in are on land belonging to the University. I don't know where we stand as far as all the bill-sticking and paint goes.”

“You ought to know,” said Lyon Bowman.

Hodgkiss wanted to say that provoking universities into calling in the police was a recognised aggressive tactic. He then decided not to. It was probably up to him, as Dean, to have been more vigilant about things, both on the University land and on the adjacent farmland, which might be thought of as nuisances, or health hazards, which might spontaneously, without any action from the University, attract the interest of the police. He said “I should probably pay them a courtesy visit.”

“That,” said Bowman, “might be acknowledging that they have squatters' rights. Depending on what you say.”

“They probably do have squatters' rights,” said Tewfell.

“They think they do, do they?” said Bowman.

Tewfell didn't answer. Bowman asked what the adjacent landowner thought.

“The land belongs to a Mr. and Mrs. Gunner Nighby,” said Hodgkiss. “Mr. Nighby has left the country after some problems with the law. Mrs. Nighby was, until recently, in hospital. She is now in a therapeutic community in her own house—Dun Vale Hall. Various letters have been written to her about the use of the land, but no replies have been received, that I know of. The land was never in use, although sheep did graze from time to time, both from her farm and from others.”

“I think watchfulness is all that is called for,” said Wijnnobel. “At present.”

“If we bore them enough with inaction,” said Hodgkiss, with a pursed smile, “they may strike camp and move on.”

Tewfell, who had been staring baffled at Wijnnobel, felt restored to healthy animosity by the high little laugh with which Hodgkiss accompanied this observation.
Striking camp was by now an accurate metaphor for any potential dismantling of the anti-institution. Someone had procured—whether by theft or by loan was not quite clear—two large marquees, of the kind normally on hire for wedding receptions or flower shows. One of these had been painted blood-red, and hung with streaming banners of hammers, sickles and little brass bells. It had a placard at the door saying Mao-Marx Marquee. There was a poster with a picture of Che Guevara. Inside the space had been divided into one large speaking area (“Bring your own chair, stool, cushion, carpet etc.”) and several small spaces for discussion groups. The other had been painted in gaudy psychedelic jungle and hothouse floral patterns, pink, mauve, lime, banana, sky blue, orange. Over the door hung a board painted lovingly by Deborah Ritter, announcing that this was “The Teach-Inn of Cosmic Empathetic Wisdom.” This work of art (decorated though it was with lotus-flowers and huge blankly calm eyes), was covered with graffiti denying the meaning of these words all and severally. Noteachcan'tbetaught. WisdomisNothing. Cosmosisgrainsofsand. And oddly “Empathyisinvasion.”

Inside the Teach-Inn, there were moveable canvas walls and painted paper screens. There was a space covered with mattresses, velvet cushions and Indian bedspreads, there was a circular dais for musicians and a pile of cushions for listeners, there were spaces resembling fairground booths which offered information on biotic diet and brown rice, a disc exchange and a henna expert who coloured hands, hair, and other body-parts. Everywhere was lit by floating candles in bowls and buckets, by dangling lamps with red glass and brass. Both tents were heated with rickety paraffin stoves, and smelled of paraffin and incense, curry and an underlying taint of sewage (a smell which was indeed everywhere on the anti-campus).

Lectures were advertised daily on notice-boards posted at the doors of the marquees and the door of the cottage occupied by the Core People (they did not want to use the word “administration” and half of them disliked the word “committee”). Lectures that were advertised did not happen, at least as often as they did happen, and they could last anything from a minute—“If you think I think I can tell you anything useful you can think again—” to lectures that went on for four or five hours, to audiences varying from sixty to two or three.

Often also—it was winter, and raining or snowing—the schedules of gatherings were washed into trickles of weeping ink, or blown into trees and bushes (from which nobody thought they need be collected). The trees and bushes were also hung with shreds and streamers of ripped and rippling plastic, moving like perched ghosts or faded knightly pennants. Some of the more mystical Anti-Universitarians thought these bleaching strips resembled Tibetan prayer-rags. Others thought they were not nice and represented the last vestige of capitalist conspicuous waste. No one fetched a ladder to take them down.

Tewfell and Maggie Cringle picked their way through rain, across sucking mud, between the big and little tents, benders and scout tents, wooden huts and bits of sacking. Maggie Cringle was wearing a strawberry-coloured mini-skirt, a tight blue jumper with silver and puce stars sewn on to it and a transparent hooded raincoat, also mini, that skimmed her strawberry buttocks, above an expanse of plum-dark, violet-blue, goose-pimpled fleshy thighs, above a jaunty and very muddy pair of tight white plastic boots. Under the hood her hair was a mass of Medusa-coils. Tewfell, walking behind her, thought, in words, “Mini-skirts only work on thin women.” Maggie Cringle, a second-year student reading English, had been elected because the Vice-Chancellor had said that two student reps would be better than one—for the students—they could feel freer to speak and would have someone to discuss projects and debates with. Tewfell found Cringle's presence largely hampering. He was more worried about her judging him than whether she supported him. She never said anything, ever, in the university committees, but sat picking at bits of her body and crossing and uncrossing her legs. Her face was heavily made up, with careful eyeliner and dark brownish blusher. Underneath there was a small, nicely symmetrical face with intelligent grey eyes, which he had never really seen, because of the fake eyelashes and the descending hair. But he had noticed that she could not stop looking at Jonty Surtees. She turned into “one of those pointing dogs” he said to himself, when they entered the Cottages.

Outside the cottage, a hand-written schedule promised

“Mao-Tse-Tung-thought—the astonishing genius, philosopher and
general poet and statesman”

“Correct theory is fact because it is correct theory.”

“Ongoing analysis of bourgeois ideology. Criticism of British
philosophy and economics.”

“And I saw a new heaven and a new earth. Where shall the young,
disgusted with their parents' materialism and narrowmindedness, look
for reality? We can change minds—literally. And minds change matter.
They do. Come and hear.”

“The signs of the Zodiac and their esoteric natures.
This week we shall speak of SCORPIO.
Private consultations also given on Tarot,
Clairvoyance and avoiding malign influences.”

Maggie Cringle was intrigued by this last. She stopped to read it, and Tewfell stopped to wait for her. She said she might look in on the talk on Scorpio. “I am a Scorpio,” she said. Tewfell said noncommittally that it might be interesting. He was curious about Eva Wijnnobel.
The atmosphere inside the Griffin Street Cottages was at once heady with loose energy, and soporific with smoke of various kinds, lounging bodies, and streams of speech. There were heaps of paper everywhere now, yellow and purple, posters and pamphlets, typescript and hand-written documents. There was a scattering of enamelled Polish dishes, scarlet and ink-blue, full of half-eaten curry and fruit-skins, amongst the papers. There were two paraffin stoves, a sullen fire in the grate, which belched smoke as Nick and Maggie came in, and a mixture of fug and icy draughts of air. A typewriter clicked; it was Greg Tod, writing an article on the hidden ideology of British historical writings. A ladle clattered. It was Deborah Ritter making soup in a preserving pan. The soup had a strong, pleasant scent of apricots and cumin. Tod wore a tartan blanket like a cloak, and a crimson knitted hat. Waltraut Ross was arguing with Jonty Surtees. Phrases purred through the air like sexual provocations, which perhaps they were. Greg Tod looked up uneasily from time to time and clacked louder. “A culture whose dogmata presume that self-organisation has to be hateful and derogatory,” “The hypostasisation of a static concept of freedom defined as freedom from neurosis,” “
Curing
the individual means accepting rebellion or martyrdom ... ,” “false consciousness,” “illusory centre of self ” ...

“Ah, Tewfell,” said Jonty Surtees, stopping Deborah in mid-sentence. “Come to report?”

Nick Tewfell's hackles wriggled. He knew very well that Surtees regarded him as his delegated and manipulated organiser within the target institution; he had read the handbooks for revolutionaries; the idea was to keep him happy by showing a specious interest in his own immediate aims (getting rid of maths and language, relaxing exams, improving the library) so that he would be led to help with a far more radical overturning of order. Surtees saw him as a minion reporting to a general. That was OK, as long as he himself knew he was not. Two could use people for their own ends. The presence of the antis could (couldn't it?) help liberate students from hampering regulations and structures?

That wasn't why he was here, he knew. It was the whiff of the possibility of unimaginable violent change, that drew him like a magnet crackling with power. He didn't know
what
might happen. He didn't want to back off. He sat down without being asked and offered Surtees his delicious information. Pinsky thought Eichenbaum was a Nazi. He had the references to the offending article. He recited what he could remember of Pinsky's letter. “The vocabulary echoes the National Socialists' detestable vocabulary,” “The desirability of breeding improved individuals,” “social-darwinism,” “eugenicist.”

“That's disgusting,” said Waltraut Ross. “He has to be stopped.”

“We don't want Pinsky, either. He's CIA-funded.”

“We don't know that,” said Greg.

“That's worse,” said Waltraut. “If it isn't open, if it's covert, that's even worse.”

Deborah Ritter laid aside her ladle and joined them.

“We should organise a march.”

“I support that,” said Nick Tewfell.

“Wait a little, wait a little,” said Jonty Surtees. “The time is not ripe.” He turned to Nick Tewfell. “You must get a copy of the whole Eichenbaum article, and a translation.”

“Get it yourselves. You have contacts in Germany. I'm just a student with an inadequate library. We don't have old German periodicals.”

“Microfilm,” said Surtees, his eyes glinting with argumentative pleasure.

“OK. I order microfilm.
If
I can. And they see we are interested. Very clever.”

“He's right,” said Greg Tod. “Ask the Germans.”

“Then we can march,” said Waltraut.

“Wait a little, wait a little. Let them come, and then confront them. Lie low, and when they are here, throw everything at them. Stick to
constant criticism
as Che said, and then, when the enemy is assembled, move to de-stabilise. De-sanctify the institutions. Expose the kind of corrupt power-structure they are. Make Sir G's Round Table into a Witches' Sabbath.”

“With what ultimate aim?” Nick Tewfell asked.

Surtees smiled. He had the most pleasured, the most animated smile Tewfell had ever seen.

“Anarchy, initially. Followed by a free restructuring. A new Heaven and a new Earth, so to speak.”

Maggie Cringle smiled in response to his smile. Tewfell drew himself together. He said tightly that his own aims were not as extensive as that. He really didn't want to countenance people like Pinsky and Eichenbaum, who supported, or were supported by, evil entities.