Babel Tower (79 page)

The subsequent conversation is conducted by the two solicitors with occasional comments from the two silks. Preliminary discussions are held of lines of argument in defence of
Babbletower.
psychological, political, literary merit, usefulness as emetic, religious depth. One of the lawyers—Raby—says he feels clergymen can “backfire” as witnesses. It might be possible to agree with the other side not to call clergymen. Canon Holly says that would be a pity, since there is great and genuine theological suffering and profundity in the work. “Convince me,” says Samuel Oliphant, mildly, enticingly, dangerously. “There was a Bishop in the
Chatterley
case,” says Hefferson-Brough. “Got rather mangled. Said the book promulgated marriage. Got reprimanded by the Archbish, I hear. Cantuor. Not a good precedent, on balance.” Canon Holly says he knows a better Bishop, a radio Bishop with a large following, who might appear, who has thought much about the experience of pain and desolation. Raby says he is against bishops. Martin Fisher says, if they have a Bishop, we should have a Bishop. Jude says bishops are sods and buggers like everyone else. Phyllis Pratt tells Jude that the assembled company is trying to
help
him; her tone is that of the chairman of the Mothers’ Union (this is before chairwomen and before personified Chairs). Jude says, “I simply thought—” Phyllis Pratt says, “Don’t. Don’t simply think. You have a task to perform, part of which is not to make things difficult for your friends.” Jude says, “Who is my friend, when all men are against me?” “And
folie de grandeur
, dear,” says Phyllis Pratt, “and premature martyrdom, are both
unhelpful.
”

Hefferson-Brough says, “Naturally, your appearance will have to be regularised.”

“Regularised?”

“You will have to be tidied up. Short back and sides. Suit. Tie. A good wash.
Sine qua non.
”

“Oh no,” says Jude. “I am a poor bare forked thing, and such as I am, I am, and as such you must e’en take me, for a man and his clothes are
one flesh
and cannot be parted. I have as it were and to my
own secret deities
vowed
that neither hair of my head nor nail of my feet and fingers shall I wilfully cut with scissors or injure with files and this state I propose to maintain come hell come high water.”

“Short back and sides,” says Hefferson-Brough.

“It might be best,” says Oliphant, “not to call you into the witness box at all. It might be the most advisable course.”

“It would be extremely foolish not to call me,” says Jude. “I will speak. I will appear and expound and defend my book.”

“I can tell you now,” says Hefferson-Brough, “that if you insist on going into the box looking like that, we may as well go home now. That is what I have to say.”

Duncan Raby changes the subject. He asks about witnesses to literary merit. It is agreed that Anthony Burgess shall be sounded out, since he wrote well of the book. Also Professor Frank Kermode, Professor Barbara Hardy, Professor Christopher Ricks, William Golding, Angus Wilson, Una Ellis-Fermor, and “that chap at Cambridge,” says Hefferson-Brough, “that chap everyone’s always talking about.” “Dr. Leavis,” says Frederica. “Him, yes.” “He wouldn’t appear for
Lady Chatterley
,” says Martin Fisher. “Although he’s a Lawrence man. I can’t see him liking
Babbletower.
”

“I was his student,” says Magog. “As a postgraduate. He is cranky and paranoid, though undoubtedly a genius. I think I myself will better represent his critical approach. He is not easy to deal with, and I don’t think he’d agree.”

“We are glad of your support,” says Martin Fisher.

“You represent the teaching profession also,” says Duncan Raby, bending back his fingers.

“I want to put the case that
nothing
should be suppressed, that censorship is ludicrous and unworkable.”

“Here you must argue for the merits of
Babbletower,
as an expert on its merits, literary or social,” says Raby.

Magog does not answer this remark. It occurs to Frederica that he has not actually read
Babbletower
: as a teacher, she is now experienced in the eye-movements, the judicious nod, of those who have not read something they claim to have read. Magog says there are writers on the Steer-forth Committee of Enquiry who might have the requisite
gravitas.
Alexander Wedderburn, for instance. He himself thinks there is little merit in Wedderburn’s
writings
but Wedderburn has a good presence and is taught at O Level and A Level, he will impress. Hefferson-Brough says he is exactly the sort of chap who will go down well with a jury.

Tea is served, by Rupert Parrott’s secretary, from a silver teapot into pretty little Crown Derby china teacups. A plate of biscuits is handed round: bourbons, custard creams, squashed flies. Avram Snitkin, sitting next to Frederica, murmurs, “Fascinating.”

“What is?”

“Your British rituals of decision-making. Tea and biscuits. I am thinking of writing a study of the compiling of lists. Who compiled the list of the people who are here to compile the list of the people who will be invited to give evidence for
Babbletower
? How far is this list a ritual list of people who must be asked but won’t appear? And so on.”

“I suppose an ethnomethodologist would be interested in what happens to a person who defines himself for the duration as an expert witness for the defence of a book, of this book?”

“Indeed. Including an ethnomethodologist.”

On the way out of the publishing house, Frederica finds herself between Jude and Elvet Gander. Jude is morose and unusually silent. Gander says to Frederica, “We have not officially met, I believe, but I know
of
you.”

“What do you know
of
me?” Frederica asks, truculent and rattled. Nothing has been heard of John Ottokar since the service of the counter-petition and prayer for relief. He has vanished from her life as though he had never been. A date has been set for the divorce hearing in November. She is afraid.

“Nothing but good,” says Gander, in reply to her question. “You were much in question at a difficult series of sessions in Four Pence this summer. I break no confidences if I say so, I think, and I assume that you too find your situation, shall we say,
difficult
? Forgive me if I speak out of turn.”

“Perhaps you do. I don’t know that I want to think or talk about—about
them,
about all that.”

“One of the two brothers took the same line. The other was voluble. I attempted to mediate—to make the silent speak, and the roarer be still. The results were unfortunate.”

Frederica is silent.

“Midnight arson,” says Gander. “Midnight arson, minor explosions, damage to property.”

“The path of excess leads to the palace of wisdom.”

“You mock. I do believe there is much truth in that. I would like to help you, but you are not ready to let me. You think I am a charlatan.”

“I don’t.” He waits. “Perhaps I do.”

“You don’t know.”

“I don’t know that I
want
to know.”

“You may suddenly, quite suddenly, decide that you need me. I am here, if you do. You interest me.”

“Don’t listen to the tempter,” says Jude. “He’ll blow your mind.”

This is an un-Jude-like phrase, in an un-Jude-like vocabulary. It sounds different. It evokes small mines, arson again, explosions.

Gander laughs. “Fair is foul and foul is fair. You do right to mistrust the chance-met. We shall meet again, in easier circumstances. As for you, Jude Mason, I would like to say, this process, this legal process, is going to be a severe test of your exiguous survival machinery. If you need help, I am here.”

“You will help the whole world,” says Jude. “Indiscriminately.”

“No, no. We meet those who need us. We gravitate to them. Karma brings us where they are. We three are walking along this road together for a reason. Or, if we were not, we now are. So I tell you what I see in your face and your stars and your body language, in case that may be the reason. If not, no harm done, forget it.”

As the divorce hearing approaches, Frederica grows thinner and sharper. She is obsessed by the fear of losing Leo, a person who makes her life difficult at every turn, who appears sometimes to be
eating
her life and drinking her life-blood, a person who fits into no pattern of social behaviour or ordering of thought that she would ever have chosen for herself freely—and yet, the one creature to whose movements of body and emotions all her own nerves, all her own antennae, are fine-tuned, the person whose approach along a pavement, stamping angrily, running eagerly, lifts her heart, the person whose smile fills her with warmth like a solid and gleaming fire, the person whose sleeping face moves her to tears, to catch the imperceptible air of whose sleeping breath she will crouch, breathless herself, for timeless moments in the half-dark.

She thinks, perhaps, she might be able to talk to Agatha about this terror, but Agatha is preoccupied and evasive, is uncharacteristically short with her. Frederica takes note of her own friends, her particular old friends, Daniel and Alexander, going up Agatha’s stairs, rather than down to her own basement, and tells herself it is natural, Agatha is beautiful and clever, Alexander has always been easy prey for mysterious silence, Daniel needs to get out of himself. Agatha is “working
late” a lot, too, which Frederica, asked to baby-sit, regards with sour suspicion. One evening she is baby-sitting when Agatha is still out and Alexander arrives. He comes down to talk to Frederica—“
faute de mieux
,” Frederica says, jokingly to him, and crossly to herself. Alexander accepts a cup of coffee and tells Frederica what he sees she needs to know and has not bothered to discover, that Agatha is strained to breaking by the practical and political difficulties of the drafting of the Steerforth Report.

Agatha does not discuss her work with Frederica. Frederica does, or did, discuss hers with Agatha—it interests both of them. Alexander leans back on Frederica’s sofa and talks about the committee.

“It’s very difficult for a
group
to write something. It’s quite interesting to see what kinds of manoeuvres we go through to get it done. We’ve got two people in overall charge of the writing—Agatha and myself—we co-ordinate what will be the chapters. Then we’ve got little sub-groups, working together on different areas—we’ve got a group on ‘Spoken and Written English,’ and one on ‘Classroom Conduct—Love and/or Authority,’ and one on ‘The Class Problem in the Class—the Question of What Is “Correct” and What Should Be
Corrected,
’ and one on ‘The Principles of Education—Is It Child-Centred or Community-Oriented, and Can It Be Both?’ And one on what sort of grammar to teach, and how much, and why. And that one has a sub-heading, language as an
object of study,
like zoology, or mathematics. It’s amazing what terrible passions it all arouses—real, important passions, mind you, about real, important things. You get evidence in from schoolteachers saying they want to create ‘whole personalities,’ ‘friendly atmospheres,’ ‘full and satisfying lives,’ ‘full development of potentialities,’ ‘satisfaction of curiosity,’ ‘confidence,’ ‘growth,’ ‘perseverance,’ ‘alertness,’ and that sort of thing—and when you actually start looking at what they do, how they behave, what they
mean
by these phrases, you find that the words are like sand slipping through your fingers, you feel you’re staring through a microscope at a lot of life-forms that suddenly look like great thick snakes curling round and
biting
each other. We’re writing about teaching language and the language we write about teaching language won’t stick to the thing we’re writing about. Won’t describe it. Steerforth himself said almost nothing for months of our deliberations and then suddenly made a little speech about how profoundly
resistant
the mind was to studying its own operations. He and Hans Pachter and Wijnnobel are writing a kind of preface pointing out how ‘children’
and ‘language’ have both been profoundly changed in our time by becoming objects of intense study, of focused attention.”

“Agatha never talks about all this. It’s fascinating. Go on.”

Alexander goes on. He describes the drafting groups, and the unexpected alliances, oppositions and alignments. The journalist, Malcolm Friend, who has contributed almost nothing to the debate, turns out to be a brilliant drafter of pellucid paragraphs and is in charge of the “child-centred, community-oriented?” debate. The teachers are divided on the question of classroom authority—some oppose learning anything by rote, and are in favour of the child “discovering naturally when he needs to,” using the model of language acquisition by untutored two-year-olds. Some believe equally strongly that children
need
to know things they are reluctant to learn, as a store for when they will be glad of them, or because “society” needs them to know these things. The word “society” is not yet the problem it will become, but it is a problem. A majority of the committee, probably, dislike grammar and teaching grammar: the minority in favour of it are ferociously moved by its order, its beauty, its complexity. Emily Perfitt believes in learning poetry, but in eschewing grammar, which she defines as “mental cruelty,” quite simply—an
interesting locution,
according to Wijnnobel, Alexander says. He describes how Agatha keeps the drafting groups in order by threatening to second Magog and Mickey Impey to join them. These two are part of no group and act as ambassadors “from one to another.”

Frederica says she met Magog at Bowers and Eden. She recounts the meeting of that committee. She says the lawyers were endlessly qualificatory and endlessly subtle about the nature of expert witnesses. She says life is full of lawyers and committees defining the in-definable, like childhood, tendencies to deprave and corrupt, language, pre-nuptial incontinence, adultery, guilt. She says she feels terribly guilty towards Nigel, because she should not have married him, but that she is not technically guilty of most of the things of which she now stands accused. Some, yes, she says. But it’s
nobody else’s business.