Zia Rahman - In the Light of What We Know

I pushed myself across a plate bearing two sausages in dire need of medical attention and where, divided by an expanse of porcelain, lay helpless pieces of carrot and potato boiled out of their brains. Conversation hadn’t yet caught on, but there were diversions in the room to hold the eye. I thought of the summer with Dave and Bill, and I remembered the accoutrements of the English public school that I came across in those houses, the class photographs of children away at boarding school. Here, too, in the kitchen, there were some photographs of Emily and James, and, looking at the pictures on the wall, I thought of how Emily always found a way to mention someone’s schooling.

As you know, I said to Robin, I went to a rather ordinary state school, but I’ve been thinking about these public schools. Could you explain to me how you think they differ? There was mischief in my question. I wanted to see if and how he might temper his answer in deference to my state schooling. Of course, I would not have the counterfactual to compare with — I’d never know what he might have said to someone who had in fact gone to a public school — but there might nonetheless be clues.

Robin popped some more food into his mouth, which gave him a moment to consider his response.

When his answer came, it was evident that he’d misunderstood me, but the misunderstanding itself was so telling I refrained from stepping in to correct him. What I had meant was the distinction between state schools and English public schools. But what Robin had understood by my question was how public schools differed among themselves.

My father told me a story once, said Robin, and I don’t know if it’s true but it’s rather amusing. After the war, there sprang up a number of new public schools to cater to a growing middle class, and rather quickly these schools turned out very able students who went on to Oxbridge. At that time, the headmasters of the old public schools formed a headmasters’ association in order, it would seem, to formulate a response to the new competition. They met, the story has it, in one of the better clubs in London—

Where they eat well?

Precisely.

And everyone’s a seal pup?

I beg your pardon?

Clubbable?

Indeed.

In the course of their conversation, continued Robin, the question arose as to what the public schools were for. What did their schools prepare their pupils for? The headmasters of Eton, Westminster, Winchester, and other schools were there, as was the headmaster of Ampleforth, a Benedictine monk, since Ampleforth is run by an abbey and is, as you know, unusual for being Roman Catholic.

Surely it’s not unusual for Ampleforth to be Roman Catholic? I asked.

Quite, said Robin, glossing over my second foolish witticism before continuing with the anecdote.

The headmaster of Winchester stated that he prepared his boys for lives of scholarship; the headmaster of Eton said he prepared his pupils for government; the headmaster of Westminster said he prepared them for the armed forces; and when it came his turn, the headmaster of Ampleforth said he prepared his boys for death.

I smiled appropriately and wondered if a state school head teacher would ever admit to preparing his or her students for disappointment.

I don’t suppose you have any idea why I asked to see you?

Robin never responded quickly, always deliberately, as if the sentences were formed first, in the manner of trial lawyers of an older generation, so that to begin with I did not notice a new edge in his voice.

I might but I wouldn’t presume, he answered.

I suppose Penelope has told you that Emily and I are now engaged.

She has.

Something in Robin’s tone troubled me. Then I had that kind of flash of insight that comes suddenly and must be the product of a brain processing information received from the eyes and ears but without conscious register.

Robin, should I have asked you for your daughter’s hand in marriage?

Robin did not hesitate.

Well, as a matter of fact, I rather think so. I know that might sound rather old-fashioned these days, but there it is.

Should I now?

The horse has bolted, don’t you think?

Even if I didn’t feel I had done anything wrong, I apologized to Robin. It is a habit, isn’t it? To apologize in the face of someone’s grievance, in order to assuage him perhaps or merely to smooth over relations but not with any genuine remorse. It may be that those are the only apologies that work.

* * *

May I ask you a question? I asked him.

Please do.

What kind of man did you imagine Emily would marry?

Again, there was mischief in the question. How much would class or, for that matter, race be part of the kind of man he had imagined for his daughter?

Robin again seemed to consider his response.

There’s a way this might sound rather crass, but I think you’ll know what I mean when I say it. I’d rather thought Emily would do well to marry a Scottish laird sort of man. I think she needs someone to rein her in. She needs firmness.

I reflected that I was as far from the Scottish laird as could be. But I felt revulsion, too. I thought of the Asian women I knew of in parts of London, the people of my parents’ acquaintance, housebound and subservient, and even if my mother was not such a woman, there was always the fact that my father controlled the credit cards and bank accounts.

I had never sought to rein in Emily, and here it was being described as my failing. Of course, it was directed at me. What I had regarded as virtue was represented as weakness. To issue an ultimatum to Emily, as Penelope had once urged me to do, was, I explained then, an act of aggression, though I do not believe that now. An ultimatum, properly conceived and formulated, is not coercion, since, outside marriage, at any rate, no one has a right to another human being’s loving conduct: We have the right to issue an ultimatum just as we have the right not to abide by it. I consider Robin’s words now in another light. If he had meant positive actions to rein her in, then I was not the man. But I could at least have set out my terms, the conditions for love, and that would have been within my rights and within hers to accept or reject.

* * *

What do you think are the key ingredients to a successful marriage? I asked Robin.

I’m hardly in a position to advise on that, he replied.

Why?

I’m divorced.

And married again.

It would be somewhat presumptuous, he said.

Only if I hadn’t asked you. I once asked my professor at Oxford what made a good mathematician. She said she wasn’t sure she was in a position to answer. I told her that now that we’d got the English disclaimer of modesty out of the way, she could tell me what she actually thought. Good mathematicians, she believed, try not only to correct their mistakes but to understand why they made them. I asked her if she was also assuming that good mathematicians made mistakes. Everyone makes mistakes, she replied.

Robin gave his answer.

Trust and respect, he said.

He would have been content to leave it there, but I wanted to hear more.

Please go on.

Look, I’ll tell you this, but on the understanding that it must not get back to Emily.

He looked at me for confirmation.

I don’t know what you’re going to say, I said.

I don’t trust her one bit. I don’t trust my own daughter. She has a lot of her mother in her, you know.

I did not say it to Robin but remembered that Penelope had said the opposite to me, that Emily had much of her father in her. And Penelope’s psychiatrist had said the same.

She’s my daughter and of course I love her and all the rest of it, but there’s no beating about the bush: She is a thoroughly untrustworthy young woman.