“Well…” says Howard, smiling awkwardly down into his beer. He hates this kind of talk.
“Oh dear,” cries Charles, gazing at Howard with a concerned look. “I’ve said the wrong thing. I’ve upset you.”
“No, no …” says Howard, smiling.
“I can see you’ve got some deep unspoken faith in poets. Unacknowledged legislators, and all that.”
“No … well …”
“I’m afraid you get a bit cynical when you’re actually dealing with them. Most of them are in it just for the by-lines and the booze, you know. They use the handouts you give them — but half the time they put some snide twist on the story. And one doesn’t expect thanks, of course, but when they use the handout — and then turn round and start blaspheming, you really do want to chuck the whole business up, and go and become a monk, or something.”
“Well …” says Howard. It’s true — he does have some sneaking faith in poets as being fundamentally decent people. He has some kind of innocence which Charles has lost.
“I mean,” he says, “I suppose I think that writers do a … well … a pretty good job, really. It can’t be all that easy — I mean, if you’ve ever tried to write anything yourself … and often they’re badly paid … and so on …”
Charles stops looking at Howard. He looks down at the table, smiling, and draws a face by running his finger through a ring of beer.
“Oh, sure,” he says gently. “Admirable sentiments. Lovely thoughts.”
“No, I mean,” says Howard, waving his arms about, “I mean, isn’t it perhaps just that the writers you deal with sort of live down to sort of your expectations? Don’t they behave badly just because they sort of feel that you, that we, sort of make use of them, sort of exploit them?”
“Ah,” murmurs Charles smoothly, “what would we all do without your idealism?”
Howard feels very strange. It’s as if he has been drawn outside himself by indignation; transcended himself; literally risen into the air above his own head, so that he can see beyond the confines of his own life. He sees clearly how things stand, and the words come to him with which to describe them.
“It’s not a question of idealism,” he says. “It’s just a practical, a practical, a practical thing, a thing of sort of, well, here we are, we’ve got into this place, and we’ve got a certain, a certain, a, a, a certain job to do. We’ve got to sort of create the world, and so forth, and sort of run it, and so on, and, well, try to make some kind of, of, of sort of viable proposition of it, and all the rest of it, and it just seems to me that we can get better results if we treat the, if we treat the sort of, well, for want of a better word, the local inhabitants with a certain amount of, of, of respect and, and, and trust, and, and, if we help them, and, and guide them, to the point where they can become sort of independent and sort of self-governing, within the framework of the free, well, of the free, sort of, well, of the, yes, free kind of system that we enjoy ourselves.”
He moves heavily about in his chair, frowning, and fiddling with his glass of beer. It slips out of his fingers and turns over. A stream of beer runs across the table and drips onto his trouser leg. He feels priggish and preposterous.
And in the right.
~ ~ ~
Charles draws another face in beer. The face is smiling a tiny smile.
“At least I don’t go round killing the poor buggers,” he says.
Howard looks up at him sharply.
“What do you mean?” he demands. “Killing them? Who’s killing them?”
“Well, you are.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Aren’t you?”
“Killing people?”
“Well, I don’t know,” says Charles, “but I met this girl in television the other evening, and she said people are going to be dropping off your Matterhorn thing like fleas off a dog.”
For a moment Howard just gapes at him, unable to grasp the enormousness of the misunderstanding.
“According to this girl,” says Charles, “huge avalanches are going to come sliding down the mountains, burying people by the dozen.”
A great gasping laugh bursts out of Howard.
“This is fantastic!” he shouts. “No one’s going to go up the mountains! No one’s going to go near them! Why on earth should they want to? There’s nothing but snow and ice and rock up there!”
To soldier doggedly on in the right — and then to crown the campaign with such a clear-cut black-and-white knockdown victory in argument! A sense of exhilaration sweeps through him.
“Well,” says Charles, the lumpish one now, “that’s what this girl told me.”
A delicately ludicrous picture comes into Howard’s mind, of an enthusiastic little hiker with a rucksack on his back, trying to walk up the side of the Matterhorn, and tumbling back with an astonished look on his face.
Howard can’t stop himself from laughing. He hides his face in his hands.
“I’m sorry,” he says. “It’s rude of me, but…”
But he has to behave a little badly. To be in the right — and right about it! It’s a pleasure too sweet to be enjoyed without a little sharpness in it.
But when Howard thinks seriously about the kind of rumours that are being spread around, he sees that it really isn’t funny. It’s terrible that the society they live in should be undermined like that. He feels real anger running in his veins — a generous fury that honourable people should be so traduced.
“I don’t care for myself,” he tells Felicity, walking up and down the kitchen as she prepares dinner. “But it’s so unfair on people like Harry Fischer. His whole life’s work twisted against him in one poisonous little rumour. And how about Jack? Where would the world be without bacteria? I mean, we all know the world’s not perfect. But we’re all doing our best to help people. Providing them with decent mountains to look at, and bacteria to, to, to, to make cheese with.”
He walks back and forth, transported with outrage.
“It’s so unfair on you,” he says, with a broad gesture.
“Me?” says Felicity.
“When I think of all the hours you spend trying to help people with their problems….”
For Felicity does voluntary social work, like everybody’s wife.
“Oh …” she says, shrugging.
“No, come on!” says Howard. “Don’t let yourself be put down like this! Hours you spend on that phone, listening to people pour out their problems!”
“Yes,” says Felicity doubtfully. “But I’m not sure I actually help them very much….”
“Well, you listen to them!”
“Oh, I listen to them. But … ”
“But that’s what they need! You listen — and you casework them.”
Felicity sighs.
“What most of them need is money, more than anything else,” she says.
“Oh, sure!” cries Howard, his heart full of love for her. “And there’d be nothing easier than popping a cheque in the post to them, or sending them some cast-off woollies, or ladling some soup into them, or offering them advice. But you’re too good at your job to give in to that kind of temptation. You know they’ve got to learn to confront their own problems, and work out their own solutions.”