Malcolm Bradbury - The History Man

'But there is a baby in there?'

'Oh, yes,' says Macintosh, 'there's one there all right.'

'There's a rumour that Mangel's coming here to lecture,' says Howard. 'Good,' says Macintosh, 'I'd like to hear what he's got to say.'

'That's right,' says Howard. In the living-room the faces have all changed; none of them does he recognize. A six-foot woman lies asleep under a five-foot-six coffee table. A man comes up and says: 'I was talking to John Stuart Mill the other day. He's gone off liberty.' Another man says: 'I was talking to Rainer Maria Rilke the other day. He's gone off angels.' Howard says, 'Flora Beniform?'

'Who?' asks one of the men. There is a space by the mantelpiece where the girl stood: Miss Callendar. Myra Beamish comes out of the kitchen, her hair tipped yet further over. 'You didn't tell Henry,' she says. 'I didn't tell anyone,' says Howard. 'It's our secret,' says Myra, 'yours and mine and Sigmund Freud's.'

'He won't tell either,' says Howard. 'I was talking to Sigmund Freud, the other day,' says a man. 'He's gone off sex.'

'Mmmm,' says Myra Beamish, kissing Howard. 'Mmmmmm.'

'Why don't you write a book about it, and shut up?' says someone. 'Howard, do you think it's really true that fully satisfying orgasm can alter our consciousness, as Wilhelm Reich says?' asks Myra. 'I've got to play host,' says Howard. He leaves the living-room. He moves the chair that blocks the staircase down to his study, and goes down the steps.

Above him he can hear the feet of the party pounding. He has had a thought about his book. The book begins: 'The attempt to privatize life, to suppose that it is within single, self-achieving individuals that lie the infinite recesses of being and morality that shape and define life, is a phenomenon of narrow historical significance. It belongs to a particular, and a brief, phase in the evolution of bourgeois capitalism, and is the derivative of peculiar, and temporary, economic arrangements. All the signs are that this conviction about man will soon have passed away.' He opens the door of the study; the glow of the sodium street-lighting falls crazily over the walls, the bookshelves, the African masks, sliced through with lines of shadow from the basement railings. The light is off; he realizes, suddenly, that someone is in the room, sitting in the canvas chair in the further corner. He puts on the light. Half-sitting, half-lying in the chair, her dress awry, the manuscript of the book on the floor around her, is Felicity Phee. He says: 'How did you get here?'

'I knew you had a study down here,' she says, 'I wanted to find it. I thought you were busy with the party.' Howard stares at her: at her anxious white face, at the mottle of spots above her breasts, visible where her dress falls forward as she leans towards him, at her tight-knuckled hands and bitten nails. He says: 'Why? What were you after?'

'I wanted to know what you were like when I don't see you,' she says, 'I wanted to look at your books. See your things.'

'You shouldn't,' says Howard, 'you just get caught.'

'Yes,' says Felicity, 'Is this your next book? I've been reading it.'

'You'd no business to do that,' says Howard, 'it's not quite finished. It's private.'

'The attempt to privatize life is a phenomenon of narrow historical significance,' says Felicity. 'Why are you doing this?' asks Howard. 'I've made you my subject of research,' says Felicity, 'my special option.'

'I see,' says Howard. 'You're my tutor, Howard,' says Felicity Phee, her face screwed up, 'I'm in trouble, I'm not right. You have to help me.'

Howard walks across to his desk, and reaches across it, to draw the curtains. He looks out onto the railings, the area wall, the gaunt outlines of the houses opposite outlined against the pink urban sky. Someone is leaving the house. The figure comes directly in front of the window, by the railings, and looks down into the basement. It is alone, it wears a white hat and a blue trouser suit. Miss Callendar, who looks immensely tall when seen from below, unlocks from the railings and carefully detaches a high, elderly, black bicycle. Her cheeks look flushed, and she appears to be beaming a private smile to herself. She offers a small wave of recognition to Howard; then she tugs her white hat straight, slides a leg across the bicycle, and sits up on the high saddle. She pushes forward and pedals off, in furious motion, a frenzy of uncoordinated forms, back stiff, knees jostling, her legs going up and down, as she disappears through the dereliction towards wherever she lives. 'Who's that?' asks Felicity. 'She's someone new in English,' says Howard. 'You were talking to her at the party,' says Felicity. 'You like her.'

'Were you watching me upstairs too?' asks Howard. 'Yes,' says Felicity. Howard draws the curtain across. He says: 'What's the matter with you, Felicity?'

'You must help me, help me,' says Felicity. 'What's wrong?' asks Howard, sitting in the other canvas chair. 'How am I ever going to get out of this screwed-up, stinking, shitty, uptight me?' asks Felicity. 'Why am I stuck in this beastliness of self?'

'Aren't we all?' asks Howard. 'No,' says Felicity, 'most people get out. They have other people to get them out.'

'Don't you?' asks Howard. 'Maureen?' asks Felicity. 'She's a thug.'

'I thought you were going to find a man.'

'Yes,' says Felicity, 'I meant, of course, you.'

'You did?' says Howard. 'As you knew,' says Felicity. 'No,' says Howard.

'Christ,' says Felicity, 'you showed much more curiosity about that girl there than you show about me.'

'Which girl?' asks Howard. 'The one who went.'

'I hadn't really thought about her,' says Howard. 'Have you really thought about me?' asks Felicity. 'Thought what about you?'

'Well, my curiosity in you. My coming to see you so much. All the unhappy things I've told you about. Didn't those things affect you?'

'Of course,' says Howard, 'as a tutor and a teacher.'

'Those are just roles to play,' says Felicity, 'I've been asking for something better than that. For a year I have. I've concerned myself with you. I've not just been watching you to write an article. I want you to concern yourself with me.'

'Let's go upstairs,' says Howard, 'there's a party.' Suddenly Felicity pushes herself forward out of her chair, and is on the floor beside him. Her face is distorted and her mouth open. 'No,' says Felicity, 'you're my tutor. You're responsible for me.'

'I think you're mistaking how far the responsibility goes,' says Howard. 'Are you frightened of me?' asks Felicity. 'Not a bit,' says Howard, 'you're just offering too much.'

'Aren't you lucky?' asks Felicity. 'Won't you take it?'

'I get a lot of offers,' says Howard. 'You remember what you told me,' says Felicity. 'Follow the line of your own desire, Do what you want.'

'But your desire has to connect with other people's desire,' says Howard. 'Can't you make it?' asks Felicity. 'Can't you try and make it?'

'I ought to see what's happening upstairs,' says Howard. Felicity pushes her hand in between his legs. 'Forget what's happening upstairs,' she says, 'do something for me. Help me, help me, help me. It's a work of charity.'

What is happening upstairs is something that Howard will hear about only the following day. A window smashes in one of the small bedrooms, along a corridor where silence reigns; the cause is Henry Beamish, who has put his left arm through and down, and slashed it savagely on the glass. Only a few people hear this, and most are heavily occupied; but someone is curious enough to look into the little bedroom where he is, and see him, and lift him from the debris around him, and call others. Someone else, the girl who thinks about Hegel, sets off to look for the host of the evening. Someone else, Rosemary, sets off to look for Barbara. But they are neither of them to be found, and nor, for that matter, is Felicity Phee, or young Dr Macintosh. It is lucky that there is someone to take charge; it is Flora Beniform, who has arrived at the party, the date of which she has inscribed in her diary, very late. Indeed a day late; for she has come back on the midnight train from London, where she has been listening to a new paper on female schizophrenia at a seminar at the Tavistock Clinic. But she is an able and reassuring woman, and everyone feels that she is the one to cope: she manages a tourniquet; she sends someone to ring for an ambulance. 'We've had people looking all over the house,' says a thin faculty wife, sensible and sober because it is her turn this time to drive the car home through the police traps of early-morning Watermouth. 'No one can find Howard or Barbara anywhere.'