David Lodge - Small World (36 page)

As he hurried towards the exit of Terminal One with this intention, he was accosted by an eager female voice.

“Hallo there!”

Persse recognized Cheryl Summerbee, sitting on a stool behind a British Airways Information desk. He stopped and retraced his steps. “Hallo. How are you?” he said.

“Bored. I prefer working on checkin, especially when it’s Terminal Three—that’s long-haul flights. There’s more… scope. You’re not wearing that lovely hat.”

“Hat? Oh, you mean Professor Zapp’s deerstalker. It’s too warm for that.”

“Are you over here for long?”

“No, just for the day. I’m going straight back to Ireland tonight. There’s a summer school I’ve got to meet up with in Galway tomorrow.”

Cheryl sighed wistfully. “I’d love to go to the west of Ireland. Is it very beautiful?”

“It is. Especially Connemara. I rented a cottage there these last few months… Look, Cheryl, I’d love to chat with you, but the fact is that I’m in a tearing hurry. I have to get back to London before the bookshops close.”

“What book was it you wanted?”

“Oh, it’s a book of poetry—a long poem called
The Faerie Queene
. I want to look up a reference very urgently.”

“No problem,” said Cheryl; and to Persse’s astonishment she reached under the counter and pulled out a thick library edition of
The Faerie Queene
.

“God love you!” he exclaimed. “That’s what I call service! I’ll write to British Airways. I’ll get you promoted.”

“I shouldn’t do that,” said Cheryl. “It’s my own book, for reading at slack times. We’re not supposed to.”

Persse, searching his pockets for the piece of paper with the reference on it, glanced at Cheryl with surprise. “Your book? I thought you went more for the Bills and Moon type of romance.” He seemed to have lost the precious bit of paper. Damn.

“I used to,” Cheryl agreed. “But I’ve grown out of that sort of book. They’re all rubbish really, aren’t they? Read one and you’ve read them all.”

“Is that right?” Persse murmured abstractedly. He tried to recall the details of the reference written in Angelica’s neat italic script. It was stanza sixty-something, and he was fairly sure that it was Book Two—but which canto? He riffled his way through each canto of Book Two, while Cheryl prattled on.

“I mean, they’re not really romances at all, are they? Not in the true sense of romance. They’re just debased versions of the sentimental novel of courtship and marriage that started with Richardson’s
Pamela
. A realistic setting, an ordinary heroine that the reader can identify with, a simple plot about finding a husband, endless worrying about how far you should go with a man before marriage. Titillating but moral.”

“Mmm, mmm,” Persse muttered absently, flicking the pages of
The Faerie Queene
with moistened fingers.

“Real romance is a pre-novelistic kind of narrative. It’s full of adventure and coincidence and surprises and marvels, and has lots of characters who are lost or enchanted or wandering about looking for each other, or for the Grail, or something like that. Of course, they’re often in love too…”

“Ah!” Persse exclaimed, coming upon the episode of the Bower of Blisse, for he remembered Angelica mentioning to Morris Zapp the two girls whom Sir Guyon sees bathing in the fountain. His eyes zoomed in on stanza 66, and two words leapt off the page at him: The wanton Maidens him espying stood Gazing a while at his unwonted guise; Then th’one her selfe low ducked in the flood Abash’t that her a straunger did avise: But th’other rather higher did arise, And her two lily paps aloft displayed, And all, that might his melting hart entise To her delights, she unto him bewrayd: The rest hid underneath, him more desirous made.

“Lily Papps!” Persse shouted joyfully. “There are two girls, not one. Lily and Angelica! They must be sisters—twins. A modest one and a bold one.” He leaned across the counter and, cupping Cheryl’s head between his two hands, stifled her still-continuing monologue with a smacking kiss.

“God bless you, Cheryl!” he said fervently. “For being in the right place at the right time with the right book. This is a great day for me, I can tell you.”

Cheryl blushed deeply. Her squint increased and she seemed to experience some difficulty in breathing. In spite of these symptoms of stress, she managed to complete the sentence on which she was embarked before Persse interrupted her: “… in psychoanalytical terms, romance is the quest of a libido or desiring self for a fulfilment that will deliver it from the anxieties of reality but will still contain that reality. Would you agree with that?”

Persse now registered a long-overdue astonishment. He stared into Cheryl’s eyes, which were a remarkably pretty shade of blue. “Cheryl—have you been going to night-school since I first met you?”

Cheryl blushed even more deeply, and dropped her eyes. “No,” she said huskily.

“You’re never telling me that those are your own ideas about romance and the sentimental novel and the desiring self?”

“The desiring self is Northrop Frye,” she admitted.

“You have read Northrop Frye?” his voice rose in pitch like a jet engine.

“Well, not read, exactly. Somebody told me about it.”

“Somebody? Who?” Persse felt a fresh quickening of inner excitement, the premonitory vibrations of another discovery. Who in the world was most likely to engage airline staff in casual conversation about the generic characteristics of romance?

“A customer. Her flight was delayed and we got chatting. She noticed I was reading a Bills and Moon romance under the counter, and she said what are you reading that rubbish for, well, not in so many words, she wasn’t rude about it, but she started to tell me about the old romances, and how much more exciting and interesting they were. So I got her to write down the names of some books for me, to get from the library.
The Faerie Queene
was one of them. To be honest, I’m not getting on with it very well. I preferred
Orlando Furioso
, it’s more amusing. She knew ever such a lot about books. I think she was in the same line of business as you.”

Persse had scarcely dared to breathe in the course of this narrative. “A young woman, was she?” he said coaxingly.

“Yes, dark, good-looking, lovely long hair. A foreign sort of name, though you wouldn’t have said so to hear her speak.”

“Pabst, was it—the name?”

It was Cheryl’s turn to look astonished. “That’s right, it was.”

“When was it that you were talking to her?”

“Just the other day. Monday.”

“Do you remember where she was going?”

“She was flying to Geneva, but she said she was going on to Lausanne. Do you know her then?”

“Know her? I love her!” Persse exclaimed. “When is the next plane to Geneva?”

“I don’t know,” said Cheryl, who had now gone very pale.

“Look it up for me, there’s a good girl. She didn’t happen to mention where she was staying in Lausanne? The name of a hotel?”

Cheryl shook her head. It seemed to take her a long time to find the flight information. “Come on, Cheryl, you found
The Faerie Queene
for me quicker than this,” Persse teased. Then to his astonishment, a tear rolled down her cheek and splashed on to the page of the open timetable. “What’s the matter, for the love of God?”

Cheryl blew her nose on a paper tissue, straightened her shoulders and smiled at him professionally. “Nothing,” she said. “Our next flight to Geneva is at 19.30. But there’s a Swissair flight at 15.45 which you might catch if you run.”

He ran.

Persse had scarcely recovered his breath before the Swissair Boeing 727 was airborne. He blessed the impulse that had made him apply for the American Express card, which made flying almost as simple as catching a bus. He could recall the elaborate preparations for his first flight, not so many years ago, from Dublin to Heathrow, entailing the withdrawal of a thick roll of banknotes from his Post Office savings account, and the paying over of the same across the counter of the Aer Lingus office in O’Connell Street weeks before the date of his departure. Now he had only to wave the little green and white plastic rectangle in the air to be wafted to Switzerland at five minutes’ notice.

At Geneva airport, Persse changed the money he had on him into francs, and took the bus into the centre of the city, where he transferred immediately onto an electric train to Lausanne. It was a warm, breathless evening. The train ran out along the shores of the lake, its surface smooth and pearl-pink, like stretched satin, in the glow of the setting sun, which struck rosily on the peaks of distant mountains on the other side of the water. Fatigued by the long day’s travelling, and all its emotional excitements, rocked gently by the swaying motion of the train, Persse fell asleep.

He woke suddenly to find the train halted on the outskirts of a large town. It was quite dark, and there was a full moon reflected on the surface of Lac Leman, some distance below the railway track. Persse had no idea where he was, and his compartment was empty of other passengers whom he might have asked. After about five minutes, the train moved slowly forward and pulled into a station. Loudspeakers whispered the name, “Lausanne, Lausanne.” He alighted, apparently the only person to do so, and climbed the steps to the station entrance. He paused in its colonnaded portico for a moment to take his bearings. Before him was a forecourt, with taxis drawn up. A driver cocked an interrogative eyebrow. Persse shook his head. He would have a better chance of spotting Angelica, or being spotted by her, if he explored the town on foot.

There was an air of excitement and gaiety on the streets of Lausanne this evening that surprised Persse, who had always thought of the Swiss as a rather disciplined and decorous people. The pavements were thronged with strollers, many of whom were dressed rather theatrically in the fashions of yesteryear. An early twenties’ look seemed to be all the rage in Lausanne this season: tailored, long-skirted costumes for the women, suits with waistcoats and small, narrow lapels for the men. Smiling faces turned outwards from café terraces beneath strings of coloured lights. Hands pointed and waved. A babble of multi-lingual conversation rose from the tables and mingled with the remarks of the parading pedestrians, so that to Persse’s ears, pricked for a possible greeting from Angelica, the effect was rather like that of twisting the tuning knob of a powerful radio set at random, picking up snatches of one foreign station after another. “
Bin gar keine Russin, stamm’ aus Litauen, echt deutsch… Et 0 ces voix d’enfants, chantant dans la coupole!… Poi s’ascose nel foco the gli affina…
” Though he was a poor linguist, and spoke only English and Irish with any fluency, these fragments of speech seemed strangely familiar to Persse’s ears, as did the words of a song carrying from an open casement, rendered in an operatic tenor:
Frisch weht der Wind

Der Heimat zu

Mein Irisch Kind,

Wo weilest du?

Persse stopped under the window to listen. Somewhere in the neighbouring streets, a clock struck nine, with a dead sound on the final stroke, though by Persse’s watch it was twenty-five minutes past the hour. A woman in long skirts, hanging on the arm of a man wearing a silk hat and opera cloak, brushed past him saying to her escort, “And when we were children, staying at the archduke, my cousin’s, he took me out on a sled, and I was frightened.” Persse wheeled round and stared after the couple, wondering if he was dreaming or delirious. A young man thrust a card into his hand: “Madame Sosostris, Clairvoyante. Horoscope and Tarot. The Wisest Woman in Europe.”

“Stetson!”

Persse looked up from his dazed inspection of the card to see a man dressed in the uniform of an officer in the First World War, Sam Browne and puttees, bearing down upon him, swagger-stick raised. “You who were with me in the ships at Mylae! That corpse you planted last year in your garden, has it begun to sprout?” Persse backed away in alarm. A group of people in a nearby beergarden, dressed in modern casual clothes, laughed and applauded. The madman in uniform rushed past Persse and lost himself in the crowd. Soon Persse heard him accosting someone else, crying “Stetson!” The clock struck nine again. A line of men dressed in identical striped business suits and bowler hats, and clasping rolled umbrellas, marched in step along the pavement, each man with his eyes fixed on the ground before his feet. They were followed by a laughing, jolly crowd of revellers in jeans and summer frocks who carried the bewildered Persse along with them until he found himself back near the station again. He saw a neon sign, “English Pub,” and made towards it, but the place was so crowded that he couldn’t even squeeze through the door. A poster outside announced: “Beer at 1922 prices tonight, 8—10.” From within came, every few minutes, a gruff exclamation, “HURRY UP PLEASE IT’S TIME!” followed by the groans and pleas of those still waiting to be served. Persse felt the pressure of a hand on his shoulder, and turned to confront a brown, leathery countenance, hooded eyes and a reptilian smile.

“Professor Tardieu!” he exclaimed, glad to see a familiar face, even this one.

The other shook his head, still smiling. “
Fe m’appelle Eugenides
,” he said. “
Negotiant de Smyrne. Goütez la marchandise, je vous prie
” He withdrew his hand from his jacket pocket and offered on his open palm a few shrivelled currants.

“For the love of God,” Persse pleaded, “tell me what is going on here.”

“I believe it is called street-theatre,” said Tardieu, in his immaculate English. “But you must have read about it in the conference programme?”

“What conference?” said Persse. “I’ve only just arrived here.” Tardieu stared at him for a moment, then burst into prolonged laughter.

At Tardieu’s suggestion, they took the funicular down to the little port of Ouchy, and shared a snack of
perches du lac
and dry white wine outside a harbourside tavern. From the bar inside came the pleasant whining of a mandoline—for the “Waste Land” happening extended this far.

“Every three years, the
T. S. Eliot Newsletter
organizes an international conference on the poet’s work in some place with which he was associated,” Tardieu explained. “St Louis, London, Cambridge Mass.—last time it was East Coker. I’m afraid we rather overwhelmed that charming little village. This year it is the turn of Lausanne. As you undoubtedly know, Eliot composed the first draft of
The Waste Land
here while recovering from a nervous breakdown in the winter of 1921-2”