What We Can Know, page 14
Over the next two days I read through everything between October 2014 and October 2016 and found nothing, or nothing new. I read all the messages from Vivien and Francis to Harry and he to them. I searched for Harry’s name in everything that passed between Francis and Vivien. I did not neglect any of the social media available to them. If Harry arranged with Vivien or Francis to read or possess a copy of the poem, it must have been by telephone or in a meeting. Between Vivien and Harry, the messages, never that frequent, cease for a while after the Dinner. That was not surprising. Her irritation with Francis may have spilled over – the last thing she would have wanted was to have anything to do with her husband’s editor. In that time, she travelled frequently to London, but it was Peter she saw rather than Harry and Jane.
In the afternoon dusk of approaching winter, I walked along the cliffs beyond the funicular station. It was not only Corona business that had brought me here. I wanted to be alone. The unusual student walkout, the collapse of our course and the embarrassment it caused us in our dealings with the administration, which regarded us now as fools and failures – all of it had brought on a coolness between Rose and me. It was not mutual blame so much as shame and wariness. We had failed at this, and we might disappoint each other again. We would not have brought down such ignominy on ourselves had we not been so close, had we been living apart and more objective with each other. Disruption of any kind by students was an astonishing event and everyone was talking about it. The clamour amazed us. Hilarity, ridicule, contempt. That Rose and I were left staring at empty chairs was entertaining. The spokesman, Kevin Howard, became a local hero. His little speech, described as an ‘evisceration’, had been recorded somehow and a transcript circulated. The entrenched enemies of the humanities joined in. Our ‘History of AI’ course was yet one more example of a pointless project. The students were being failed by an outdated and exhausted mode of thought that was typical of the humanities in general. The various subjects had no proper theoretical underpinning. Their confident assertions were not subjected to conventional methods of proof. Published essays were not peer-reviewed. The best portion of the Humanities funding would be better spent in the Science departments.
Rose and I could no longer discuss the mess we had made and the damage we had caused. We could barely look at each other. When I told her that I was leaving for the Bodleian, she did not conceal her relief. So I took my walks after work along the clifftop path and wondered about our future. I made no progress. Surely, we could not end our marriage because of a failed course. That we were thinking of it suggested our bond was frail. That we blamed each other suggested the same. But I was in the right – this course was her idea, not mine. When I asked myself if I loved her, I felt nothing at all, neither for nor against her. That was an answer in itself. Then I should fight for our marriage and go on living with her. I mentally shrugged. If I moved out, I would be offered a ‘studio’ apartment, one small room and a shared bathroom along a corridor. Fine by me. Stay or leave, I didn’t care.
One evening, after dinner in the Bodleian canteen, I spent time with Lars Corbel. He was more engaged politically than I was. He was exercised by the state of the various Citizens Committees that ran the country at local and national levels. According to him, there was corruption and malign influence in the selection process for the committees. He was astonished by my political innocence. For all the calamities and change, Corbel said, our system was unchanged in 130 years. The same top two per cent, highly educated, highly trained, hard-working, met their spouses at elite institutions, ensured the best schooling and health care for their progeny to whom they passed on their capital and ensured their group’s continuation. They were cut off from the rest of us and were large and varied enough as a faction that they didn’t even think of themselves in those terms. They had taken over the high ground of the Pennine Chain, transforming it into a massive and wealthy suburb. They were barely aware of how they controlled almost everything. In the name of ‘fairness’ they had selected a preponderance of early school-leavers to serve on the Citizens Committees. Those with minimal education were more easily influenced by subtle input. ‘Ordinary’ people were predisposed towards hearsay, prejudice, ill-placed anger and an absence of objectivity. They were easily steered. Lars said that if there had to be a selection process, he would want it to go the other way. Education to a high level should be a minimum requirement to sit on a Citizens Committee. There were still enough freethinkers around to ask the awkward questions. The elite promoted and hid behind the wisdom of the common people. But early school-leavers made disastrous decisions.
‘Like what?’
‘Legalising cigarettes.’
‘Nicotine? Really?’
‘It’ll be law next year. Where have you been, Thomas! It’s grown under glass in the lawless south-west. The bureaucracy hasn’t the resources to fight smugglers and dealers, and the Treasury needs the tax revenue. The committee was a pushover.’
‘How do you know about this influence?’
‘It’s common knowledge!’
A conspiracy. Lars had a cranky side.
I said, ‘Have you tried it?’
‘Tobacco? You inhale it once and you’re addicted. Then you die of cancer.’
‘Why would an early school-leaver vote for it?’
Lars glared at me. ‘The administration gets the results it wants.’
I didn’t ask him how he knew this because I guessed the answer would be some variant of ‘common knowledge’. I would have liked to challenge him on the Citizens Committees, but I didn’t have the background and I hadn’t been following events. I never do. It was my old problem. I preferred the past. I moved Lars onto safer ground. We talked happily about Milton’s Comus.
Next morning Lars was due to leave. I waited for him in the reception hall. A librarian I did not recognise approached me with an envelope in her hand. She told me it was a note from her colleague Donald Drummond and apologised for not passing it on sooner. I stuffed it in a pocket of my coat. It would be an apology for his absence. I wished illness on no one, but I had been happier without him. At that moment, Lars appeared and I walked with him to the funicular. We stood to one side to watch the carriage water tank being filled from a pond fed by a small waterfall. I didn’t refer to our conversation of the night before. I’d had enough of being told I was politically naïve. I preferred a brief and pleasant farewell. Before he boarded, we swapped contacts and shook hands. I waited to wave as he receded down the mountainside, then I went back to work.
I suspected that I would be going through the motions. I had no hopes for fresh discoveries, but after an hour I opened box 98 of the Blundy archive and found a passage in a notebook from 2001, probably jottings of his towards a poem, though not one I recognised. Nothing relevant to my immediate research but it spoke to me and I took a picture.
Loss in general. Something pure. If you find that thing at last (which you probably won’t) it will not live up to your hopes. Always beyond reach, is the principle. This is how religions begin, with pursuit of the ineffable, and continue, as their gods become lost gods. Where is Thor? Where is Jupiter? Or God? (See Norman Cohn’s Pursuit of the Millennium. The prediction and the longing are for God’s return.) If you love the natural world, you will think of loss. Paradise Lost. Expulsion inevitable. Childhood is the lost estate. Children at their happiest enact for adult onlookers a tragic foretelling – the estate will not last. Loss is the fabric of existence. All bad things are lost too. All torturers, all diseases. Lost civilisations, lost causes, lost symphonies, computer files, Edens, umbrellas, loves, landscapes, keys, wallets, pens, cats, innocence, sorrows, talent, parents, wits, reading glasses – a ceaseless parade of receding carnival floats.
Half an hour before lunch, I decided I could do no more. I’d had enough. There was nothing between Vivien and Harry beyond sparse and uninteresting emails. NAI’s proposal was a dud. I decided to leave a day early. I would have tried to phone Rose to let her know, but I knew that any conversation between us would be awkward. I packed at speed, made my closing arrangements with the librarian in my section and by two o’clock was making my own descent to the afternoon ferry.
We had a lucky escape as we made our way southwards along the Welsh coast. After five hours and only slow progress against a headwind, the skipper came to tell the passengers that there was a storm on its way and we might have to put in somewhere for safety. The sea was choppy rather than rough and no one was seasick as we dozed through the night on the hard benches. By the time the storm broke the next morning, we were already a few miles into the relative safety of the old Severn Estuary and soon we were passing between the piers and eerie ruined towers of an old suspension bridge. Then we turned east and later passed the Cotswold Hills to our left. We were not in the moorings at Port Marlborough until six that evening. All the bikes were out on hire. I had to choose between walking the twenty miles across Marlborough Island to Ball Hill Quay or waiting for a bike to be returned. I was tired from the journey and decided to wait. It was a lucky call, for I was on a bike by seven thirty and was on the last ferry to South Downs Harbour at ten.
It was one in the morning as I walked the last couple of miles to the campus into a strong wind. I was cold and exhausted. Rose was likely to be in bed. My plan was to sleep on the sofa in the living room rather than wake her. When I was at last outside our apartment door and reaching into my backpack for my key, I had an intimation that something was not right. Nothing extraordinary in that. I was coming into a tense situation. I indulged a wild fantasy that she might have killed herself and her body had been lying on the floor undiscovered for days. All my fault. I turned the key softly. There was a single lamp on by a low table close to the sofa. On that table was an empty bottle and two glasses with the dregs of red wine. The sofa resembled an unmade bed. Two cushions that belonged with it were on the floor. The bedroom door was closed. As I advanced into the room and the apartment door clicked shut behind me, I heard Rose’s muffled voice. ‘Shit.’ The sibilant sounded loud in the night. Then, the creak of the bed. Seconds later the door opened, and she was before me in her dressing gown, my wife, unkempt and beautiful, tenderly closing the bedroom door on her lover.
In the circumstances, any opening remark was going to sound stupid. She said in a flat tone, ‘You’re back early.’
It was spoken like an accusation. After a silence I said, ‘You have a visitor.’
She went forward to pick up the cushions and take the wine glasses and bottle to the kitchen sink, removing evidence, making everything OK. Or a step in that direction. She came towards me and stopped and used both hands to settle her hair, ruffled by the rut I had interrupted.
‘Tom, I’m sorry.’
I waited.
‘We can talk in the morning. You could sleep over at—’
‘Get him out.’
‘No.’
‘Then I’ll do it.’
As I went towards the door, she stepped in front of me. ‘All right. All right. I don’t want violence.’
‘There won’t be if he leaves now.’
She went in, closing the door noisily behind her. I tossed my backpack onto the floor and sat. I heard voices, mostly hers interspersed with a monosyllabic male’s. Even in my worked-up state, I could not suppress my curiosity. There was a Jane Austen specialist on our corridor said to be active among faculty women in the residence blocks. Another possibility: when Rose and I had gone to one of the Science buildings for our course research, there was a big blond fellow, an AI coder. Rose had spent a long time with him. He would tear me to pieces in seconds.
The door opened and my wife came out first.
‘He’s going, OK?’ She made a downward pushing gesture with her hands to mime or promote a lowering of tension. Some hope. Her lover followed her out. I knew him instantly and was amazed. Kevin Howard of the kissable mouth and spotless complexion. I stood. It could have been taken for a mark of respect. Perhaps it was. What an achievement! His best friend, even his mother, would have thought that a woman like Rose was beyond his grade. There was a time when Rose would have thought so too. He would not meet my eye as he hurried towards the door. Rose took care to keep herself between us. As soon as he was gone, she went past me, also careful not to look in my direction, and locked herself in the bedroom. Silence settled over the apartment. I took off my coat and shoes, found a blanket in a cupboard and lay supine on the sofa, waiting for my heart to calm and sleep to come.
19
The man I shared a bathroom with was an authority on the thirteenth-century papal court of Innocent III, its reforms, crusades and spiritual sway over Christian princes across Europe. When I bumped into Cyril Baker on the landing for a chat, he soon turned the conversation to that court. He spoke with an air of baffled wonder at its complexity and intrigues. He wanted to lend me some books about it, one of which was by him. Not to have lived in that time, he told me once, was his only enduring regret in an otherwise happy life.
Cyril was an obsessive tender of our bathroom’s porcelain and its tiled floor. He wiped down the walls, the chrome taps and shower head and used bleach on the lavatory after each use. When he was done, he took his towel and washbag back to his room, leaving no trace. I was no slob, but I felt obliged to raise my game. After sharing with others at the Bodleian, I was sympathetic to the notion of an aseptic communal space, burnished clean of a stranger’s presence. I wanted to be alone, purged of mess, connection, entanglements and reproaches, especially my own or Rose’s. The indifference I experienced on the Snowdonian heights had hardened into the saintly detachment of a hermit. I was beyond liking or disliking anything or anyone. My monkish cell of a room suited me. Lidded boxes of clothes, books and notes were piled along the walls, almost to the ceiling. More boxes than the Francis and Vivien archive. What was not there of my entire life was held digitally elsewhere, suspended, just as I was.
My one tether was the project. I made no advances or discoveries and wrote nothing. Immersion was all I needed. To swim through the gloom of the irrecoverable past, among the familiar sunken wrecks and their scattered debris, was enough. Rereading was the thing. With no aim in mind, I went through hundreds of Percy Greene’s emails of the 1990s onwards. Specifications and costings for violins, loving messages to Vivien, arrangements for evenings, weekends and for what he intended to cook for her. He knew his way round Italian cuisine, he liked ‘the hearty country wines of the Midi’, he was fussy about knives and brought his own to her flat on the top floor of a north Oxford house. In his twenties he had played rugby as a second-row forward with a serious amateur team until he tore a ligament in his knee. He was an experienced hiker and scrambler, could fix things, knew basic wiring and plumbing. Among Vivien’s friends, Percy the craftsman and handyman was a rarity and welcomed, just as Chris Gage was in the Blundy household. Percy carried out emergency repairs for them sometimes. Vivien’s circle consisted of academics married, mostly, to other academics. Percy had left school at sixteen. Reading and talking about books made him restless. To relax from the painstaking construction of violins he played a five-string banjo for a traditional jazz band, the Hotfeet, that performed Jelly Roll Morton numbers at weekends in an east Oxford pub. He played, it was said, in the languid but precise style of Johnny St Cyr and, as if by instinct, knew his way round the more unusual augmented chords. His solos, especially the one for ‘Doctor Jazz’, were big favourites with a knowing crowd.
The pub was on the Cowley Road, well off Vivien’s usual beat. She was taken there in 1993 on a warm Sunday lunchtime by a husband and wife, professors of Arabic and Spanish respectively. Jazz, and in particular traditional New Orleans jazz, had never interested Vivien, but sitting with her friends, drinking halves of bitter, sometimes chatting, sometimes listening, she became entranced by the merrily whirling counterpoint of trumpet, trombone and clarinet, the elephantine tread of the euphonium and most of all by the syncopated choppy clinking sound of the banjo. She was a half-competent pianist and she knew enough to be impressed to hear him strike four different but related chords to each bar. She watched the banjoist’s left hand flash up and down the frets, she admired the flickering muscle in his bare forearm and, naturally, she studied his face, ‘that most erotic of parts, second only to the mind. Ah, is this the almost middle-aged woman’s first flight from the body?’
Her journals record and seem to predict her course towards him. He never glanced at his hands. His attention was on the audience, though ‘sometimes he bestows a grateful nod and half-smile on one of the other players’. It was a ‘big, generous wholesome face’. His expression was ‘bold and friendly’. There was ‘a challenge in his look which seems to say I hope you’re having as much fun as me’. He became aware of her gaze and briefly met her eye and smiled without parting his lips. Meanwhile, ‘his fingers go on playing as though they have nothing to do with him, though occasionally he cocks his head to listen’. The next Sunday she went to the pub alone and approached him at the bar during the break between sets.
