Последние отзывы

  13  

'Well, it won't be the end of the world.

'Jesus. That's what I like about you, Mike, you take a broad view of

life.

"I'll be back, said Mike, going to serve a customer.

A week ago Charlie had gone to the doctor with a cyclostyled leaflet in his hand. It was called A Report Into the Increased Incidence of Breakdown Among Undergraduates'. He had underlined the words:

Young men from working-class and lower-middle-class families on scholarships are particularly vulnerable. For them, the gaining of a degree is obviously crucial. In addition they are under the continuous strain of adapting themselves to middle-class mores that are foreign to them. They are victims of a clash of standards, a clash of cultures, divided loyalties.

The doctor, a young man of about thirty, provided by the college authorities as a sort of father figure to advise on work problems, per sonal problems and (as the satirical alter ego took pleasure in pointing out) on clash-of-cukure problems, glanced once at the pamphlet and handed it back. He had written it. As, of course, Charlie had known. 'When are your examinations? he asked. Getting to the root of the matter, just like Mum, remarked the malevolent voice from behind Charlie's shoulder.

'I've got five months, doctor, and I can't work and I can't sleep. 'For how long?

'It's been coming on gradually. Ever since i was born, said the enemy.

'I can give you sedatives and sleeping pills, of course, but that's not going to touch what's really wrong.

Which is, all this unnatural mixing of the classes. Doesn't do, you know. People should know their place and stick to it. 'I'd like some sleep pills, all the same.

'Have you got a girl?

'Two.

The doctor paid out an allowance of man-of-the-world sympathy, then shut off his smile and said: 'Perhaps you'd be better with one?

Which, my mum figure, or my lovely bit of sex? 'Perhaps I would, at that.

'I could arrange for you to have some talks with a psychiatrist — well, not if you don't want, he said hastily, for the alter ego had exploded through Charlie's lips in a horselaugh and: What can the trick cyclist tell me I don't know? He roared with laughter, flinging his legs up; and an ashtray went circling around the room on its rim. Charlie laughed, watched the ashtray, and thought: There, I knew all the time it was a poltergeist sitting there behind my shoulder. I swear I never touched that damned ashtray.

The doctor waited until it circled near him, stopped it with his foot, picked it up, laid it back on the desk. 'It's no point your going to him if you feel like that.

All avenues explored, all roads charted.

'Well now, let's see, have you been to see your family recently?

'Last Christmas. No doctor, it's not because I don't want to, it's because I can't work there. You try working in an atmosphere of trade union meetings and the telly and the pictures in Doncaster. You try it, doc. And besides all my energies go into not upsetting them. Because i do upset them. My dear doc, when we scholarship boys jump our class, it's not me who suffer, it's our families. We are an expense, doc. And besides — write a thesis, i'd like to read it… Call it: Long-term effects on working-class or lower-middle-class family of a scholarship child whose existence is a perpetual reminder that they are nothing but ignorant non-cultured clods. How's that for a thesis, doc? Why, i do believe i could write it myself.

'If I were you, I'd go home for a few days. Don't try to work at all. Go to the pictures. Sleep and eat and let them fuss over you. Get this prescription made up and come and see me when you get back.

'Thanks, doc, I will. You mean well.

The Irishman came back to find Charlie spinning a penny, so intent on this game that he did not see him. First he spun it with his right hand, anticlockwise, then with his left, clockwise. The right hand represented his jeering alter ego. The left hand was the didactic and rational voice. The left hand was able to keep the coin in a glittering spin for much longer than the right.

'You ambidextrous?

'Yes, always was.

The Irishman watched the boy's frowning, teeth-clenched concentration for a while, then removed the untouched beer and poured him a double whisky. 'You drink that and get on the train and sleep. 'Thanks, Mike. Thanks.

'That was a nice girl you had with you last time. 'I've quarrelled with her. Or rather, she's given me the boot. And quite right too.

After the visit to the doctor Charlie had gone straight to Jenny. He had guyed the interview while she sat, gravely listening. Then he had given her his favourite lecture on the crass and unalterable insensibility of anybody anywhere bom middle-class. No one but Jenny ever heard this lecture. She said at last: 'You should go and see a psychiatrist. No, don't you see, it's not fair'

'Who to, me?

'No, me. What's the use of shouting at me all the time? You should be saying these things to him. 'What?

Well, surely you can see that. You spend all your time lecturing me. You make use of me, Charles. (She always called him Charles.)

What she was really saying was: 'You should be making love to me, not lecturing me. Charlie did not really like making love to Jenny. He forced himself when her increasingly tart and accusing manner reminded him that he ought to. He had another girl, whom he disliked, a tall crisp middle-class girl called Sally. She called him, mocking: Charlie boy. When he had slammed out of Jenny's room, he had gone to Sally and fought his way into her bed. Every act of sex with Sally was a slow, cold subjugation of her by him. That night he had said, when she lay at last, submissive, beneath him: 'Horny-handed son of toil wins by his unquenched virility beautiful daughter of the moneyed classes. And doesn't she love it.

'Oh yes I do, Charlie boy.

'I'm nothing but a bloody sex symbol.

'Well, she murmured, already self-possessed, freeing herself, 'that's all I am to you. She added defiantly, showing that she did care, and that it was Charlie's fault: And I couldn't care less.

'Dear Sally, what I like about you is your beautiful honesty.

'Is that what you like about me? I thought it was the thrill of beating me down.

Charlie said to the Irishman: 'I've quarrelled with everyone I know in the last weeks.

'Quarrelled with your family too?

'No, he said, appalled, while the room again swung around him. 'Good Lord no, he said in a different tone — grateful. He added savagely: 'How could I? I can never say anything to them I really think. He looked at Mike to see if he had actually said these words aloud. He had, because now Mike said: 'So you know how I feel. I've lived thirty years in this mucking country, and if you arrogant sods knew what I'm thinking half the time

'Liar. You say whatever you think, from Cromwell to the Black and Tans and Casement. You never let up. But it's not hurting yourself to say it.

'Yourself, is it?

Yes. But it's all insane. Do you realize how insane it all is, Mike? There's my father. Pillar of the working class. Labour Party, trade union, the lot. But I've been watching my tongue not to say I spent last term campaigning about — he takes it for granted even now that the British should push the wogs around.

'You're a great nation, said the Irishman. 'But it's not your personal fault, so drink up and have another.

Charlie drank his first Scotch, and drew the second glass towards him. 'Don't you see what I mean? he said, his voice rising excitedly. 'Don't you see that it's all insane? There's my mother, her sister is ill and it looks as if she'll die. There are two kids, and my mother'll take them both. They're nippers, three and four, it's like starting a family all over again. She thinks nothing of it. If someone's in trouble, she's the mug, every time. But there she sits and says: "Those juvenile offenders ought to be flogged until they are senseless." She read it in the papers and so she says it. She said it to me and I kept my mouth shut. And they're all alike.

  13