Wiggling her eyebrows at me to enjoin silence, Jean went into a vivacious speech which lasted more or less until I was sitting in Mair’s car next to its owner. Opened envelopes, typed lists, printed forms lay about us as at some perfunctory demonstration of bureaucracy at work. Jean continued her facial ballet until we left.
I knew Mair was going to tell me some more, or possibly run over a few familiar but essential points, about what being a social worker was like. She enjoyed getting me on my own and doing this because, it appeared, I was a man and, as such, easy to talk to. Sometimes her husband came into these conversations, but not often, and when he did it was likely to be as a feature of her exposition of what being married to a social worker’s husband was like. I hoped we were going to get the practical today; some of Mair’s case histories were of great anthropological interest, and those that weren’t were still a lot better than the theoretical.
We got the theoretical, but crossed with the autobiographical, which helped a bit. What had first attracted her to the idea of social work? Ah, there were many answers to this conundrum, every one of them demanding careful or at any rate lengthy consideration. Mair had taken a course in psychology, so she knew all about the power impulse and its tendency to be present in those who made a living out of good works. Several of her colleagues were prone to this affliction, and she had even detected it in herself before now. That was where psychological training was so usefuclass="underline" you knew how to examine your own motives and to guard against unworthy ones. With that out of the way, she felt safe in asserting that it was the duty of the mature and responsible elements of the community to do what they could for their less gifted fellows. At one time the more conscientious kind of squire had stood in a similar relation to his tenants, the right-minded employer to his workmen and their families, but the rise of the oligopoly (Mair kept up with Labour Party research pamphlets) had put paid to all that. One of the many all-important tasks of our society was the training of specialists for functions which at one time had been discharged as by-products of other functions. A case very much in point here was provided by the constantly expanding duties of — well, Mair recognized the term social workers, but for her own part she preferred (having once attended a Social Science Summer School in Cardiff) to think of herself and her associates as technicians in paternalism.
When she brought that one out I had the infrequent experience of seeing her face express only a limited satisfaction with what she’d said. We penetrated farther into an uncongenial district. Then Mair added: ‘Actually, John, I’m not altogether happy about that label.’
‘You’re not?’
‘No, I’m not. It’s a scientific term, of course, and so it’s quite accurate in a way, but like all scientific terms it’s incomplete, it doesn’t really say enough, doesn’t go far enough, leaves out a lot. It leaves out the thing that keeps us all going, sees us over the rough patches and stops us losing faith, which is the one thing we can’t afford to do in our job. It’s — well, I can’t think of any better name for it than… idealism. You can laugh if you like —’ she turned her profile far enough round to assure me that any such laughter had better remain internal — ‘but that’s what it is. Just a simple, old-fashioned urge to do good, not in a chapel way, naturally, but scientifically, because we know what we’re doing, but that’s the basis of the whole thing, no point in beating about the bush. I know that sort of talk makes you feel uncomfortable, but I believe in—’
Before she could mention calling a spade a spade, a mode of nomenclature she often recommended, I told her that that wasn’t quite it, and went on: ‘This isn’t aimed at you, Mair, but I think doing good to people’s rather a risky thing. You can lay up a lot of trouble, for yourself as well as the people who’re being done good to. And it’s so hard to be sure that the good you’re trying to do really is good, the best thing for that person, and the justification of the whole business is a bit—’
‘I’m in favour of taking risks. There’s far too much playing safe these days, it’s ruining the country, all this stick-in-the-mud attitude. I believe in taking off my coat and getting on with the job.’
‘But, Mair, these are risks that involve other people. You’re deciding what’s best for them and then doing it, just like that. You don’t give them a chance to—’
‘If you’d done as much social work as I have, John, perhaps you’d have some idea of how many people there are in this world who are constitutionally incapable of knowing what’s best for them. They’re like children. You wouldn’t let Eira be the judge of what was best for her, would you? You wouldn’t let her put her hand in the fire to see if it was hot, would you?’
‘No, of course not, but children aren’t—’
‘I know you think social work’s something terribly complicated and difficult. Well, believe me, ninety or ninety-five per cent of the time it couldn’t be simpler, at least making the right decision couldn’t: getting it carried out is something else again, of course, but the actual decision’s a piece of cake, because you’re dealing with complete fools or complete swine or both. You’d think the same after a month in my job, I know you would.’
‘I hope not.’
‘Honestly, John, if people in general thought like you there wouldn’t be any progress at all.’
‘No, there wouldn’t, would there?’
At this fundamental point Mair steered the car to the kerb and stopped it, not, it transpired, in order to fight me but because we’d arrived. Facing us when we got out was a meagre row of shops: a newsagent’s with a lot of advertisements written on postcards, a barber-cum-tobacconist, an outfitter’s whose window stock alone would have outfitted a hundred middle-aged ladies in wool from head to foot, and a place that had no doubt once been a shop in the full sense but was now whitewashed to above eye level. This last establishment had to one side of it a door, recently painted a British Railways brown, and a bell which Mair rang. Then she took me by the arm and drew me a yard or two along the pavement.
I said: ‘What’s this in aid of, then?’ in what was supposed to be a bantering tone. Actually I was only half noticing; my mind was busy trying to decide what Mair’s ‘you’d think the same after a month in the job’ thing had reminded me of.
‘You don’t want to be in front of the front door of a house like this when they open it.’
‘Oh?’ That was it: the veteran colonial administrator to the just-out-from-England colonial administrator. We’re all a bit prowog when we first get out here, my boy; it’s only natural. Soon wears off, though, you’ll find. ‘Why not?’
‘Well, the door opening makes the draught rush through the house, and the draught carries the bugs with it. You don’t want them to land on you.’
‘You mean really bugs?’ She had my full attention now.
‘You don’t want them to land on you.’
‘Hallo, Mrs Webster, don’t often see you up this way.’
‘Oh, good afternoon, Emrys, how are you?’ Mair turned animatedly towards the new arrival, a young police constable with a long, pale nose. ‘Wife all right?’
‘Well, no, she hasn’t been too grand, actually. They had her back in for three days’ observation the week before last, and the doctor said—’ His voice became indistinguishable, chiefly because he was lowering its pitch, but also because he was removing its source in the direction of the shop that had committed itself so wholeheartedly to the woollen garment. Mair retreated with him, nodding a fair amount. I was still feeling impressed by her bit of know-how about the bugs. Real front-line stuff, that.