Malcolm Bradbury - The History Man

'The selfless service you perform,' says Barbara, 'it never ceases to astound. I gather you're right off out again.'

'I have to go to a meeting,' says Howard, 'a psychological meeting. Everything all right, Felicity?'

'Yes,' says Felicity, 'I got here early, and Mrs Kirk and I got everything sorted out. It's really great to be in a real house. I just love it.'

'Fine,' says Howard, 'can I give you a lift to your class, Barbara?'

'No,' says Barbara, pulling on her coat, 'I'll find my own way. Well, well, a psychological meeting.'

'A physiological meeting might have been a truer description,' says Flora Beniform, her naked body raised above him, her dark brown hair down over her face, her strong features staring down at his face on the pillow, while the clock in her white bedroom records the time as seven forty-five, 'but it's a familiar type of displacement syndrome.'

'I like to think it's a psychological meeting as well,' says Howard, looking up at her. 'So do I, Howard, so do I,' says Flora, 'but I begin to wonder about you. I think you enjoy deceptions, and I don't.'

'I just try to make things interesting,' says Howard. 'Oh, you're heavy.'

'Too fat?' asks Flora. 'No,' says Howard, 'I like it.'

Around them is Flora's white bedroom, which has long, deep windows and fitted wardrobes, and one picture, a large, steel-framed print of a Modigliani nude, and two small chairs, on which their two piles of clothes have been neatly stacked; they have hastened into the bed, but Flora maintains in all these things a certain orderliness. And now on the bed they lie, dipping and jogging in a steady rhythm; Flora's big bed is fitted with a motorized health vibrator, her one great opulence. 'Mangel,' says Flora, moving about him, above him, 'I'm disgusted about Mangel.'

'Don't talk, Flora,' says Howard. 'There's no hurry,' says Flora, 'you've got until nine o'clock. Besides, you don't come to my bed just for the fun of it. You have to give a reckoning.'

'No, Flora,' says Howard, 'do that more. It's marvellous. You're marvellous, Flora.'

'You lied to me,' says Flora, looking down at him fiercely from her eminence, 'didn't you?'

'When?'

'This morning in your room,' says Flora. 'How?' asks Howard. 'By not telling me what you knew. By not giving me all the truth.'

'There's so much truth to tell,' says Howard brightly. 'I don't know why I let you come this evening,' says Flora. 'You haven't let me come,' says Howard. Flora giggles, and says, 'Come to see me.'

'You did it because you wanted to find out the rest,' says Howard. 'Which is, of course, why I didn't tell you the rest.'

'Oh, yes?' says Flora, 'well tell me one thing.'

'Sssshhhhh,' says Howard. 'At a really good psychological meeting, the main business comes first, and then the question period afterward.'

'All right, Howard,' says Flora. 'All right, Howard.' And she weaves above him, her breasts dipping, her ribcage tight. Her body is there once and then twice, three times, because shadowed high on the wall and the curtains and the ceiling, in shapes thrown by the two small lights on the tables at either side of the bed. The shapes, the formidable body and its shadows, move rhythmically, as the bed does; the pulses of self in Howard's body beat hard; and time, at seven fifty-two, on Tuesday 3 October, pings like Benita Pream's alarm clock, comes to a point, distils, explodes; and then spreads and diffuses, becomes flaccid and ordinary and contingent time again, as Flora's head drops forward onto Howard's chest, and her body collapses over him, and the clock ticks emptily away on the table next to his sweating head.

The bed moves slowly, lazily under them. After a while, Flora's body slides off his, and comes to rest at his side, tucked in, delicately connected. Their sweat is ceasing, their pulses are slowing, the shadows are still. They lie there together. There is Flora, with Howard's left hand on her large right breast, her body long and solid, with dark hair, Flora with her doctorate from Heidelberg, and her famous little book on the growth of affection in the young child. And there is Howard, with Flora's right hand on his left inner thigh, his body neat and wiry, his Zapata moustache black on his skin; Howard with his radical reputation, and his two well-known books on modern mores, and his many television appearances. They lie there in the master bedroom of Flora's compact, modern service flat, with its good-sized living-room, well-fitted galley kitchen, its second bedroom that doubles as study, its bathroom with bath and fitted shower, in the elegant block in the landscaped grounds in the leafy suburb, all described by the letting agents as perfect for modern living, and ideal for the professional single person. They lie, and then Flora moves, turning slightly, lifting her head. She has a deep, serious, thoughtful face; it comes up and looks into his. He opens his eyes, he closes them, he opens them again. 'Good,' he says lazily. 'Very good. A perfect psychological meeting.' Flora runs a fingernail down the centre of his chest; his hand comes out, and strokes her hair. Her thoughtful face still looks at him. 'Yes, it was,' she says, and adds, 'Howard?'

'Yes?' says Howard. 'Howard,' she says, 'how's the family?'

There are people who ask the question 'How's the family?' and, receiving the answer 'Fine' are perfectly satisfied; there are other people, the real professionals, who expect the answer in a very different realm. Families are Flora's business; all over the world there are families, nuclear and extended, patriarchal and matriarchal, families cooked and families raw, which pause, rigid, in their work of raising children, bartering daughters, tabooing incest, practising wife-exchange, performing rites of circumcision, potlatching, as Flora enters their clearing or their longhouse or their living-room and asks, notebook in hand, 'How's the family?' It is a serious and searching question about the universe; and, Flora is seeking a universal answer. For Flora is famous for questions. When she is not in her service flat in the leafy suburb, or out in the world on fieldwork, she is to be found at meetings and congresses, in small halls in London or Zurich; here she habitually sits in a left-hand aisle seat near the front and, the paper over, rises first, a pencil held high for attention, to ask the initial and most devastating question ('I'd hoped to bring evidence to show the entire inadequacy of this approach. Happily the speaker has, presumably unconsciously, performed the task for me in the paper itself. As for my question…) Flora, it is widely known, wherever she goes, is formidable, with her dark serious eyes, her firm manner, her big, intimidating body. And as for her more intimate relationships, well, it sometimes seems to Howard, when he lies, on the happy occasions when the privilege has been granted to him, on her moving bed in her large white bedroom, that Flora has reinvested fornication, an occupation at which she is in fact extremely skilled and able, with new purpose and significance. She has conceived of it as a tactical-advance on the traditional psychiatrist's couch; permitting more revelation, more intimacies, it therefore leads, inevitably, to better questions. So he looks up at her serious face, peering at him over his bent arm; he considers; he says, 'Well, of course, it's the old story.'

'Oh, Howard,' says Flora, 'I want a new story. Which old story?'

'Well, when I'm up, Barbara's down,' says Howard, 'and vice versa.'

'When you're up who, Barbara's down on whom?' asks Flora. 'Flora, you're coarse,' says Howard. 'No, not really,' says Flora. 'And Barbara's down now?'

'Well, I'm up,' says Howard. 'Things are happening to me.'

'You ought to watch Barbara,' says Flora. 'Oh, it's the usual things,' says Howard. 'We battle on, emissaries of the male and female cause. Barbara says: "Pass the salt." And then, if I pass it, she smirks. Another win for the sisters over the brothers.'