Philip Hensher - Tales of Persuasion

‘Now my professor-lady at Sydney University, she takes me under her wing, because I’m a bright lad, and I pick up the old Hebrew for the Old Testament, and I pick up the old Greek for the New Testament, and she says to me, “What about taking it a bit further, because you know, my dear, it fits you for all sorts of things a degree in theology? And I say, “Like what?” And she says, “Well, you could become a priest,” to which I say, “No, thanks, love.” And I say, “Like what else?” And she says, “Hmm.” And it turns out that the other thing it turns you out for, fits you for marvellously, it’s doing more degrees in bloody theology. So then she says to me, “I’ve got an idea for something you can write about for your doctorate, son.” So, being a bit wet behind the ears, I say, “What’s that, then?” And she says, “Well, I reckon that there’s this book in the Bible called the Book of Kings – I don’t expect you to know of it, son – and I reckon, if you look at it, there’s bits that’s been written by one fellow and bits that’s been written by another fellow. Well,” she says, “I reckon that the bits that were written by the other fellow, it wouldn’t surprise me if they were written by a woman and not a fellow at all.”

‘So I says, “Why do you think that, then?” And she says, “You go and write your thesis and tell me why. And I tell you what, call the first fellow P and the other fellow Q.” So there it was, and here I am, and for thirty years, I’ve been writing about this nutty old girl called the Q narrator in the Book of Kings and no one else believes in her, and if she existed, I don’t know why you’d think she was a woman, and if she was, I guess she was fairly typical of her time and place, which means that she struggled with a major facial hair problem and took a bath maybe once in her life, like by accident. And she seems a bit slow on the uptake, because I tell you, the bits she wrote, she’s missed the point a bit, I reckon. And it’s taken me thirty years to work out that I hate a prehistoric old girl called Q who never existed, and I hate the Book of Kings, and I hate theology and, son, I’m not that keen on God in the first place. You ever think, we all end up doing the one thing – the one thing, mind – guaranteed to make you want to puke every day of your life?’

‘Yay,’ Natasha said. ‘Listen to your father, Kev. He knows about God.’

‘But God knows more about him,’ Kevin/Benedict said, placing his knife and fork fastidiously parallel.

Mrs Quincy put her knife and fork down too, in a furious clatter. ‘If you don’t stop it now, this second,’ she said, with real venom, to her son, ‘you can go and sit on the naughty step.’

Professor Quincy’s story – obviously a much-repeated one – had cheered him up. It cheers most people up to tell the story of their life, particularly if you can reduce it to well-paid catastrophe. He set about his lamb, now rather cold-looking, with beard-smearing gusto.

‘No no no no no no no no no,’ Silvia said. ‘You can’t say everyone hates what they do. Look at him. He works in the museum, he loves it.’

‘I don’t love it exactly,’ I said, unheard. ‘My job. That was a lovely dinner.’

‘The naughty step,’ Natasha said, in stages. Her face was purple; she had been in choking hilarity for a minute and a half. ‘The naughty step.’

‘The naughty step,’ Mark said, in solemn tones. ‘Do you hear that? Kevin?’

‘Benedict,’ Kevin/Benedict said, all fight out of him.

The next morning I lay in bed, listening to the radio wind itself up into early fits of irritation and denunciation. The specific repetitions of government ministers wound in and out of my dreams as I dropped in and out of thin layers of sleep, and the faces of old friends looked into my eyes, telling me with concern about dangers to the environment. I thought about the night before. Silvia’s vividness had been lost somewhere in that family, and her spotlit personality subsumed in the execution of her fine national dishes. Most of what I had said to her had been mere compliments on her cooking. I might as well have told her how well she managed to be an Italian woman. But perhaps that was right. I realized, after all, that I had no concept of Silvia apart from her nationality. She was just Italy in Yorkshire, an idea complete enough in itself that it sounded like the title of a symphonic poem by Delius. No nation is as interesting as a human being. So I was late in the museum, and Margaret, loitering round the eland in the foyer with a pen on a string round her neck, had a word for me. ‘So we’re friends with the professor of theology now,’ she said. ‘Eating dinner round there. You live dangerously, I must say.’

There was an unexpectedly hostile glitter in her eyes. She’d been preparing herself to coruscate lightly over the details of my expanding social life.

‘Dangerously?’ I said.

‘I’ve heard they use the dog’s basin as a pudding bowl,’ Margaret said. ‘If there’s more than a given number of guests. It’s said that many an unwelcome guest’s found “Bonzo” written at the bottom of the cherry trifle when, naturally, it would be too late to do anything about it.’

Sherry trifle, I silently and irritably corrected. ‘No, it was very nice. Silvia cooked. It was very good.’

Margaret, huffing off, was premature in her suggestion, but after that evening, I did rather take to the Quincys. Less predictably, they seemed rather to take to me. I did my grocery shopping in Sainsbury’s, a branch I’d always thought far too big for my bedsit needs. Like a child, I went up and down every aisle, even the sock aisle, generally finding something necessary in each one, and a few days down the line generally throwing out a pile of decaying compost, the evidently perishable remains of my excessive shop.

Going round a supermarket, one too big for your needs, is like a sad evening in front of the television, hurtling through the channels and seeing the same faces recurring, harassed and increasingly familiar. The OAP you greet absently like an old friend by the time you reach the whisky was a new face as recently as the organic peas. A White Queen-like figure was floating in and out of my awareness at the far ends of aisles, only doubtfully recognizable. But I did know her: it was the professor’s wife. She was only vague because she was out of her initial context. I was standing in front of the milk display when Mrs Quincy hailed me, coming alongside with a gigantic and nearly filled trolley, like a docking liner.

‘You look lost and confused,’ she said, hoisting four six-pint cartons of milk into her trolley, the shopping of a materfamilias with milk puddings to make.

‘I was looking for milk,’ I said.

‘Well, you’re in the right place,’ Mrs Quincy said.

‘No,’ I said. I gestured feebly. ‘I only want a pint of milk. Just for my cup of coffee in the mornings. They’ve only got enormous ones.’

She admitted this to be true. There were the gargantuan cartons suitable for her needs, but nothing smaller.

‘Well, that’s no good,’ she said. She looked around for an assistant. ‘Excuse me. Excuse me. Yes. I mean you. Yes. Hello. Thank you.’

The assistant who came over unwillingly was a tall youth. He might have been a sixth-former doing a holiday job.

‘Do you really not have any milk,’ Mrs Quincy said, ‘in any size smaller than this? My friend here only wants to buy a single pint.’

‘It’s really not that important,’ I said, Mrs Quincy contradicting me. ‘I could buy a pint at the newsagent’s round the corner.’

‘At considerable inconvenience to yourself and some increased expense, I imagine,’ Mrs Quincy said. ‘Pay no attention. Now. Do you have one-pint sizes of – what, full-fat milk? You should drink semi-skinned. You get used to it in no time at all, three weeks, max.’