Starter For Ten (24 page)

'Sort of lean and angular - it's the Egon-Schiele-look . . .'

I turn my back and pull the new jumper over my head, and decide it's time to change the subject.

'How was the rest of your Christmas break?'

'Oh, you know. Fine. Hey, thanks for coming to stay.'

'Thank you for having me. Did you get rid of the cold meat okay?'

'Absolutely. Mingus and Coltrane say thank you very much.'

'And is your nan okay?'

'What? Oh, yes. Yes, she's fine.'

She presses Dad's photo back onto the wall and, taking care not to look at me, says, 'It got a little bit ... weird, didn't it?'

'/ got a bit weird you mean. It was losing my drugs-virginity, I think.'

'It wasn't just that though, was it? You were ...strange, like you thought you had something to prove.'

'Sorry. I get a bit nervous. Especially around posh peop . . .'

'Oh, please . . .' she snaps.

'What?'

'Please, don't start with that crap, Brian. "Posh" - what a ridiculous word. What is "posh" anyway? That stuff's all in your head, it's completely meaningless. Christ, I hate this complete obsession with class, especially at this place, you can hardly say "hello" to anyone before they're getting all prolier-than-thou, and telling you about how their dad's a one-eyed chimney-sweep with rickets, and how they've still got an outside loo, and have never been on a plane or whatever, all that dubious crap, most of which is usually lies anyway, and I'm thinking why are you telling me all this? Am I meant to feel guilty? D'you think it's my fault or something, or are you just feeling pleased with yourself for escaping your predetermined social role or some such self-congratulatory bullshit? I mean, what does it matter anyway? People are people, if you ask me, and they rise or fall by their own talents and merits, and their own labours, and blaming the fact that they've got a settee rather than a sofa, or eat tea rather than dinner, that's just an excuse, it's just whining self-pity and shoddy thinking . . .'

The Bach concerto's rising to a crescendo behind her as she speaks, so I say, 'And you join us live from this year's Tory Party Conference!'

'Piss off, Brian! That's not fair, that's not fair at all. I don't make judgements about other people because of their background, and I expect people to treat me with the same courtesy.' She's sat up on the futon now, stabbing the air with her finger. 'And anyway, it's not even my money, it's my parents' money, and it's not as if they got it from nicking people's dole, or running sweat-shops in Johannesburg or something, they worked fucking hard for what they've got, fucking hard . . .'

'They didn't work for it all though, did they?'

'What d'you mean?' she snaps.

'I just mean they inherited a lot, from their parents . . .'

'And ...?'

'Well, it's ...privilege, isn't it?'

'So, what, you think people should have their money buried with them when they die, like in Ancient Egypt? Because I would have thought passing money on, using it to help your family, to buy them security and freedom, was just about the only truly worthwhile thing you can do with it . . .'

'Of course it is, but I'm just saying, it's a privilege.'

'Absolutely it's a privilege, and they treat it as such, and they pay a fuck of a lot of tax, and they do their best to give something back. But if you ask me, there's no snob like an inverted snob, and if that doesn't conform to some conventional, student-approved system of socialist thought, then I'm sorry, that's how I feel. Because I'm just so fucking bored of people trying to pass plain old envy off as some sort of virtuer And she judders to a stop, red-faced, and picks up her mug of coffee. I'm not talking about you necessarily, of course.'

'Of course not,' and I sip my coffee too, which tastes bitterly of toothpaste, and there's a pause as we listen to the Brandenburg Concertos.

'Isn't this the theme from Antiques Roadshow?'

'It is. Though that's not what it says on the album cover.'

She smiles, and flops back down onto the futon. 'Sorry, just letting off steam.'

'No, that's fine. I sort of agree with you. In places,' I say, but all I can think of is Mingus and Coltrane eating bowls of pasta.

'I mean, we're friends, aren't we? Brian - look at me. We're friends, yes?'

'Yes, of course we're friends.'

'Even though I'm obviously the Queen of Sheba and you're a snotty-nosed chimney-sweep?'

'Absolutely.'

'So shall we just forget the whole thing? Just forget it and move on?'

'Forget what?'

'The thing we've just been ... oh I see. So it is forgotten?'

'It's forgotten.'

'Good.' She says. 'Good.'

'So - d'you want to come to the pictures later this afternoon or something?'

The can't - I've got this audition later . . .'

'Right - what for?'

'Henrik Ibsen's Hedda Gabler."

'Which part?'

'The eponymous Hedda.'

'You'd be a great Hedda.'

2O9 Thank you. 1 hope so. Still 1 doubt if I'll get it. The third years have got it all stitched up. I'll be lucky if I get cast as' - cock-er-ney accent - 'Berte the bleedin' maid . . .'

'But you're coming to the team meeting tonight?'

'Is it tonight?

'First of the new term!'

'Oh God, do I have to?'

'Patrick's being very strict. He specifically asked me to make sure you came tonight, or you're off the team, he says.' He didn't say any of that of course, but still. 'Okay, I'll see you there, and we'll have a drink afterwards.' She crosses the room, puts her arms around me so that I can smell the perfume on her neck, and whispers in my ear. 'And friends again, yes?'

'Absolutely. Friends again.'

But I'm still brooding over the conversation with Alice when Professor Morrison says;

'Tell me, Brian, why are you here exactly?'

The question takes me by surprise. I stop looking out of the window, and turn to Professor Morrison, who's lying back in his chair, fingers laced across his little pot belly.

'Urn, personal tutorial? Two o'clock?'

'No, I mean here at university, reading English? Why are you here?'

To ... learn?'

'Because?'

'It's ...valuable?'

'Financially?'

'No, you know . . .'

'Improving?'

'Yes, I suppose so. Improving. And I enjoy it, of course. I like education, learning, knowledge . . .'

'"Like it?"'

'Love it. I love books.'

'I he contents of books, or just owning a whole load of books?'

'The contents, obviously . . .'

'So you're serious about your studies?'

'I like to think so.' He doesn't say anything, just leans right back in his chair, his arms stretched behind him with his fingers laced, and yawns. 'You don't think I am?'

'Not sure, Bri. I hope you are. But the reason I ask is because this last essay, "Notions of 'pride' and 'prejudice' in Othello", is, well, it's really just awful. Everything about it, from the title onwards, is just awful, awful, awful . . .'

'Yes, well I wrote it in a bit of a hurry actually . . .'

'Oh I know that, I can tell that. But it's such an awful, vapid, fatuous thing, that I wondered if you'd written it at all?'

'Right, so, what didn't you like?'

He sighs, slumps forward and runs his fingers through his hair, as if he's about to tell me that he wants a divorce.

'Okay, well for a start, you talk about Othello as if he's this guy you know who you're a bit worried about.'

'Well that's good, isn't it? Treating him like a real individual. Isn't that a testament to Shakespeare's vivid imagination?'

'Or your lack of insight? Othello's a fictional character, Brian, he's a construct, a creation. He's a particularly rich and complex creation in a remarkable work of art, but all you can say about him is it's a shame he has a hard time just because he's black. All I learnt from this is that you think bigotry is "a bad thing". Why are you telling me this? Did you think that maybe I thought bigotry was a good thing? What's your next essay, Brian? "Hamlet - Why the long face?" or perhaps, "Why can't you Montagues and Capulets just get along?" . . .'

'Well, no, because racism is an issue that I feel passionately about.'

'I'm sure it is, but what am I supposed to do about it? Phone lago's mum, tell her to get him to back off? In fact, ironically, as a discourse on race, your portrayal of Othello as a blameless, suggestible Noble Savage might almost be viewed as racist in itself 'You think the essay's racist?'

'No, but I do think it's ignorant, and the two aren't unconnected.'

I start to say something, but can't work out what, so just sit there. I feel hot and red and embarrassed, as if I'm six years old, and have just wet myself. I want it to be over as soon as possible, so I half stand, reach over to the table to pick up the essay; 'Okay, well maybe I should give it another go . . .' but he's not finished yet, and he pulls the pages back towards him.

'This to me isn't the work of someone who "loves knowledge", it's the work of someone who quite likes the idea of appearing as if he loves knowledge. There isn't a shred of insight or original thought or mental effort here, it's shallow, pious, ill-informed, it's intellectually immature, it's stuffed full of received ideas and gossip and cliches.' He leans forward, picks up my essay with his fingertips, like a dead seagull. 'Worst of all it's disappointing. I'm disappointed that you wrote it, and even more disappointed that you thought it worth my time and energy to read the thing.'

He pauses, but I can't think of anything to say, so I just look out of the window, waiting for it to be over. But the silence is almost as uncomfortable, and when I finally turn back, he's giving me a look that I think I'm meant to interpret as 'fatherly'.

'Brian, this morning I had a private tutorial about W.B. Yeats with a student - a nice enough girl, sure to get on, privately educated at one of the more exclusive girls' schools - and at one point during this tutorial, I had to go out to my car and get my RAC Road Atlas so that I could actually explain to her where Northern Ireland is.' I go to speak, but he raises his hand. 'Brian. When I interviewed you in this office a year ago, you struck me as a uniquely enthusiastic and passionate young man. A little unfocused perhaps, a little gauche - may I say gauche? Is that a fair assessment? - but at least you weren't taking your education for granted. A lot of students, particularly at a university like this, tend to treat their education as a sort of state-subsidised three-year cheese-and-wine party, with a flat and a car and a nice job at the end, but I really thought you weren't like that . . .'

'I'm not . . .'

'So what's the problem then? Is something distracting you? Are you unhappy, depressed ...?'

God, I don't know. Am I? Is this what it feels like? Maybe I am. Maybe I should tell him about Alice. Is simply being in love a good enough excuse for irrational behaviour? It was for Othello, obviously, but for me?

'So. Is there something you'd like to talk to me about?'

I'm in love with a beautiful woman, more in love than I ever thought possible, so much so that that I'm incapable of thinking about anything else, but she is entirely unobtainable, and finds me amusing at best, repulsive at worst, and I consequently think that I may be going a little bit mad ...

'I don't think so, no.'

'Well, then I don't know what the problem is, because looking at your grades so far this year - 74%, 64%, 58% and for this, 53% - it would seem that you're actually becoming less intelligent. Which, strangely enough, is not what an education is for . . .'

QUESTION: Where might you find the pons, the arcuate fasciculus, Wernicke's area and the fissure of Rolando?

ANSWER: The brain.

It's true, I am becoming more stupid. Or do I mean 'stupider'? And it's not just barely making the team for The Challenge, it's the lectures. I go in and sit down, all bright-eyed and alert, and even when it's something I'm genuinely interested in, like metaphysical poetry, or the development of the sonnet form, or the rise of the middle classes in the English novel, I find that, after about ten minutes I'm so lost and confused that I might as well be listening to a football match on the radio. I walk into a university library that's almost audibly groaning with the huge weight and breadth of human knowledge, and the same two things always happen: a) I start to think about sex b) I need to go to the toilet. I go to a lecture and I fall asleep, or I haven't read the book because I'm always falling asleep, or I don't understand the book in the first place, or I don't get the references, or I'm looking around the room at girls, and even when I do understand the lecture, I don't know what to say about it, I don't even know if I agree with it, or disagree. I've been given the opportunity, entirely at the state's expense, to study beautiful, timeless, awe-inspiring works of art, and my response to them never gets any more profound than 'thumbs-up' or 'thumbs-down'. And meanwhile some intense bright, shiny-haired young thing in the front row will stick up their hand and say something like 'don't you think that, formally speaking, Ezra Pound's language is too hermetically sealed to be readable in structural terms?' and even though I understand all the words individually, 'readable' and 'formally' and 'is' and even 'hermetically', I have no idea what they mean when put together in that particular order.

And it's the same when I try to read the stuff, it just turns to mush in my head, so that an important, profound poem like Shelley's Mont Blanc goes something like 'The Everlasting Universe of Things/Flows through the mind, and rolls its rapid blah/Now dark - now bla-di-da - now da-di-bla-di-da' until it crumbles and disintegrates. Of course if Shelley had released Mont Blanc as a seven-inch single, then I'd be able to recite it word for word and tell you the highest chart positions, but because it's literature, and it's actually intellectually demanding, then I just don't have a clue. The sad fact is that I love Dickens and Donne and Keats and Eliot and Forster and Conrad and Fitzgerald and Kafka and Wilde and Orwell and Waugh and Marvell and Greene and Sterne and Shakespeare and Webster and Swift and Yeats and Joyce and Hardy, really, really love them. It's just that they don't love me back.