The Millstone (7 page)

"It's not really very noticeable, is it?" I said anxiously.

"Oh no. I only noticed it myself this evening. And with your feeling off-colour too. Have a drink, I should think you need it."

"No," I said. "I do need it, but it makes me feel awful."

"Oh look," said Roger, "here they come with my crêpe mixture. Let's just sit quietly and watch the flames."

So we sat and watched the flames, and when Roger had with great satisfaction finished eating he turned his attention back to me, and said:

"Well, what are you going to do about it, if that's not too tiresome a question?"

"Nothing," I said.

"Nothing at all?"

"Nothing at all."

"You're going to let nature take its course?"

"That's right."

"Well, well," said Roger. "What a brave girl you are."

"It might be quite nice to have a baby," I said, thinking that if I said this to everybody for the next six months I might convince both myself and them.

"My dear girl," said Roger, "it's not quite as easy as all that, you know. It's quite a performance, having a baby. And then what do you do with it when you've got it?"

"Keep it," I said.

"What on? Is he going to support you? I don't suppose for a moment that he is, and you couldn't possibly keep a child on what you've got."

"People," I said, "bring up families of four on ten pounds a week."

"Nonsense," said Roger. Though it wasn't nonsense.

Our discussion paused for a while as our coffee arrived and was poured out. While he was stirring in his sugar, he said, "You don't feel like getting married, do you?"

"Not particularly," I said. "In fact, not at all."

"That's a pity," he said, "because I thought you might like to marry me."

"Good heavens, Roger," I said, touched and impressed,
"how extremely noble of you. How lucky for you that I declined before you offered."

"We could always get divorced more or less instantly," he said.

"I don't see that that would do any good to anyone," I said. "Think of your career."

"That's true," said Roger. "Still, it would have its compensations."

"I can't think of any," I said. "I think it's a ridiculous notion. But nice, just the same."

"Good," he said. "I'm glad you liked it."

And there our conversation seemed to rest as I could not think how to continue it: the thought of marrying Roger was pleasantly exciting and most unattractive, and I glanced at his smooth hands with a kind of horror. His cheek to touch was always firm and taut like a child's, and his teeth were very clean and even. We drank our coffee in silence, and I watched all the people at the other tables: to me, sober and slightly sick, they all looked disgusting as they sank heavily into their chairs over plates of food that would have kept a child alive for a week. No wonder, I thought, that waiters always dislike their clients so much, when they see them at such sordid moments. I had myself taken a particular dislike to the couple at the next table, both fat Americans, both bulging from their ill-chosen clothes: she had been making a nuisance of herself throughout the meal, sending things back, changing her order, asking for things that weren't on the menu. She had started off with melon and had choked on the ginger, which she had applied with ludicrous liberality. From their highly intermittent conversation, I gathered that they spent their time eating all over Europe. I thought of the woman in the doctor's, who had been of the same build, though for different reasons.

They started on their coffee just as we were finishing ours. I watched her pour it out, with her fat dimpled
beringed hands, and then I watched her reach for the sugar, except it wasn't the sugar, it was the ginger, which was in a small glass dish and which had been on their table throughout the meal. I knew it was the ginger; my attention had been drawn to it by the choking episode. Anyway, it was too fine for brown sugar and rather too pale. Fascinated, I watched her take a spoonful and stir it into her cup. It didn't quite mix and I was afraid that she was going to notice in time, but she didn't. She didn't take a drink for quite a while, but when she did she really gulped it down. I watched her face closely: her expression changed, her eyes twitched, and she put the cup down rather quickly. But she said nothing. She must have noticed, but she said nothing. In fact she finished the cup. I have never made up my mind whether she was too drunk to know what she had done or had too bad a palate; or whether she knew quite well but wasn't going to admit her error. Only waiters err.

Roger drove me home, as ever. We parted in the car in the road outside: it was not necessary to make any formal move towards discontinuing our contact because I knew quite well that Roger would not ring or try to see me again. He said that if I wanted help of any sort I was to get in touch with him, but I wouldn't want help, would I, he said. No, I agreed. Will you announce it in
The Times,
he asked, and I said certainly, why not: but thinking such announcements a waste of money, myself.

So much for Joe and Roger. I was of course acquainted with a few other people but most of them were neither here nor there. The only people that really worried me were my pupils. I never saw any of my superiors in the academic world and as far as I knew there was nothing in any of my endowments or scholarships about illegitimate children: there was some qualification in one of them about not being married, but I considered myself clear
on that score. I saw no reason why my proposed career of thesis, assistant lectureship, lectureship and so on should be interrupted: I saw a few non-reasons, I must admit, but in my wiser moments I knew they would not weigh heavily enough against my talents. However, I was worried about the people I was teaching. They were an odd lot and I had taken them on for odd reasons. Most of my research student acquaintances who were not teaching regularly did a little private teaching, mostly for the money, and partly for the practice. At this time I was myself teaching four separate people for an hour a week, which involved about as much homework as I could find time for; I had foolishly consented to teach a wide and abstruse variety of subjects instead of sticking to my own field. My reasons for undertaking this work cannot have been financial, for I undercharged all of them, as I seriously distrusted the value of the commodity I was offering: somebody pointed out to me that as a good socialist I was making a grievous error by lowering the price of my profession which, God knows, was low enough anyway, and she was quite right too, but by then it was too late and I was humanly incapable of raising, once stated, my charges.

As a matter of fact, while distrusting the value of my own teaching, I felt a simultaneous pride and confidence in it because I knew quite well that I was offering this strange quartet a far higher standard of information and intelligence than they would have been likely to get elsewhere, particularly through the education agency that had sent them to me. Yet while I was expounding to them my theories, I was always overcome by a sense of inadequacy, for which I paid at a rate of seven and six an hour.

I suppose I taught because of my social conscience. I was continually aware that my life was too pleasant by half, spent as it was in the gratification of my own curiosity and of my peculiar aesthetic appetite. I have nothing against
original research into minor authors, but I am my parents' daughter, struggle against it though I may, and I was born with the notion that one ought to do something, preferably something unpleasant, for others. So I taught. The identity of my pupils would certainly bear out this interpretation of my conduct, for they were as I have said an odd lot, and three of them at least would have been rejected by my more serious friends as a waste of time. The fourth was an orthodox enough case; a seventeen-year-old girl who had left boarding school under a cloud, and wanted coaching for her University Entrance. She was very bright, and easy to teach; in fact, she had been passed on to me by a reputable don and did not come from the same dubious source as the others.

The other three were a little difficult. One was an Indian, one a Greek, and one a Methodist minister. The first two were both hoping, quite vainly I thought, to get into university, and the Methodist minister just wanted to brush up his English literature by taking it at advanced level. The Indian, I regret to say, was really a dead loss, as I knew from the moment I set eyes on him: he was over thirty, I am sure, and had gold teeth and a dark brown suit. It was my initial despair at the sight of him, coupled with his insistence, that made me take him on, for I could not bear the thought that I might be mistaken. He arrived one morning to discuss the possibility of taking lessons, and I tried to ask him sensible questions about when he hoped to take his entrance examinations, and which college he hoped to apply for, and what was his experience of English literature; he replied with a pathetically confused and garbled account of his past career, full of references to Bombay University, which meant less than nothing to me, and then went on to say that he hoped to go to Jesus Christ's College at Cambridge, because that famous poet Wordsworth had been there. Oddly enough, I happened to know that Wordsworth had been at John's. I wished I had
not known, for the awareness rattled me. Then I said what English literature had he studied, and he said that famous poet Harrison, or so I thought, until I realized that he must have said Henryson. I hastily made it quite clear that I knew nothing about Henryson at all, and that he had better find someone who knew more about the period than I did. Whereat he said plaintively that he had tried everyone else, and I thought yes, I bet you have. Even so, I managed for almost the first time in my life to say No, but he kept ringing me up, and in the end I thought I must give him the benefit of the doubt. After all, he had heard of Henryson, which was clever in itself, and if he knew anything about Henryson, then he would know more about him than me. And, who knows, all that rigmarole about Bombay University might have been true, and many a gold tooth shines above a heart of gold, and so on: so I took him on. It was a mistake. It was a useless task: we ploughed through the entrance syllabus and I actually organized him sufficiently to make him write off to Bursars for entrance papers, but he had no more hope of getting in than a child of ten. I could not decide whether it would be good for him to fail his exams and come to terms with reality, or whether it would have been better for him to have lived on forever convinced that he could have made it if only he could have found a tutor. Not that that could have been my decision anyway: the choice was not mine. But I did my best and I felt he was my responsibility.

The Greek was a very different case. He was a young lad called Spiro who also wanted to get into Oxford or Cambridge: he was only eighteen which, for a start, put his chances higher than the Indian's. He clearly came from an affluent family which he seemed to have mislaid somewhere on the Continent; one parent was usually in Rome and the other in Spain, though they shifted from time to time. I started on him about three weeks after I started on the Indian, and was expecting like despair, but he quickly
convinced me that he had at least a superficial brightness and intelligence. His English was excellent, which helped. It was months, however, before I realized the truth about him. It is alarming to see how strong one's prejudices are and how convinced one is (or I am) that no foreigner can ever have quite the same standard of intelligence as products of the English educational system. I do not mean that I think foreigners are stupid; merely that I always doubt if they can do it on quite the same ground. But after a few weeks I realized that Spiro could. He was quite outstandingly gifted, so gifted that he could even beat the examination system and eighteen years of unhelpful inheritance. He had always told me what a fantastic prodigy he was, but the more he had said it the more I distrusted him, until with a little practice and very little guidance, he started to turn out weekly essays of the most excellent, orthodox practical criticism, which would have been a credit to any first-year scholar anywhere. I was amazed, delighted, and a little crestfallen to find how narrowly my judgment operated. I tried not to let him see how much my opinion of his chances had improved, but I knew he could tell. He was a shockingly self-confident, conceited boy, but he was only eighteen, and he had a right to be.

The Methodist minister was a quiet, diffident and charming man whose one anxiety was lest he should embarrass me by obtruding his religious opinions. He felt it his duty to do such set authors as Milton and T. S. Eliot, but his passion was for Wordsworth, whom he admired for all the reasons which I found most suspect. He would clearly pass A Level with ease, being much better read than most schoolboys, but his essays were not very well organized as he was out of practice, and knew little of critical vocabulary. Since he was only doing the course for pleasure and would get through the exams anyway, I just did not know whether I should press him about his weaknesses or not. I did not want to confuse his pleasure with
technicalities, though that perhaps was precisely what he was paying me to do. So my corrections were always very tentative, as tentative as his references to God, which were bound to creep in on any discussion of Milton.

When the third month of my pregnancy drew to an end. I began to worry myself to death about these four dependants. My instinct was to tell them all I was ill and unable to continue the course, but I felt some guilt about doing this midway to the exams, when they would find it very difficult to get a replacement, and certainly not a replacement with anything like my cheapness or qualifications. One minute I would tell myself that it was none of their business if I had a baby or not, and the next I would be driven to tears by the sheer embarrassment and absurdity of the situation, which I did not think I had the stamina to bear. I knew that I would have to come to some decision, through the pressure of time and the growth of my belly; I had heard of people who had disguised their condition till six months or later, but I did not fancy such evasion. On the other hand, how could I possibly put the thing into words?