Read Online Eating People is Wrong by Malcolm Bradbury - Free Book Online Page B

jacket and a most determined visage, Treece had met a friend of his, a speedway rider of strong and
engrossing character. He was a communist and, unlike Treece, took an active part in the political life. The two withdrew to an all-night café and Treece, pressed to account for his presence
abroad, told him of the row with Fay; he said he was fed up with her and didn’t wish to go back. The speedway rider observed that severed links were the order of the day; he had finished his
job and was going away, probably abroad; and he asked Treece to come with him. I have no money, said Treece; whereat, from all over his leather jacket, the speedway motorcyclist produced wads of
pound notes, all his savings, which he had withdrawn. But as they talked, through the night, Treece began to think about Fay again, and how warm it was in bed. Finally, uncertainly, he went back to
Fay, receiving a poor welcome; she had hoped, she said, that he meant it. Some time later Treece learned that his friend had in fact been on his way to Spain, where he had fought; and later still
he heard that he had died heroically holding a solitary machine-gun position which had finally been wiped out accidentally by planes on his own side. When Treece heard all this, he felt that, if
only the man had said that it was to Spain that he was going, he would surely have gone; afterwards he wondered whether he would; from time to time he certainly wished that he had.
    It was against this sort of background that moments like the reception for foreign students, or Treece’s responses to provincial life, took their shape. Being a liberal, after all
that
, meant something special; one was a messenger from somewhere. One was, now, a humanist, neither Christian nor communist any more, but in some vague, unstable central place, a humanist,
yes, but not one of those who supposes that man is good or progress attractive. One has no firm affiliations, political, religious, or moral, but lies outside it all. One sees new projects tried,
new cases put, and reflects on them, distrusts them, is not surprised when they don’t work, and is doubtful if they seem to. A tired sophistication runs up and down one’s spine; one has
seen everything tried and seen it fail. If one speaks one speaks in asides. One is at the end of the tradition of human experience, where everything has been tried and no one way shows itself as
perceptibly better than another. Groping into the corners of one’s benevolence, one likes this good soul, that dear woman, but despairs of the group or the race; for the mass of men there is
not too much to be said or done; you can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear. Persons tie themselves into groups, they attach to this cause and then to that and, working with these
abstracts and large emotions, they rush like a flock of lemmings, into the sea to drown themselves. What can one do? One gives, instead, teas for foreign students, teas which say, in effect,
‘Foreigners are not funny’. And even that is hardly true. Treece wanted to hear no more of the departmental reception; far from proving that foreigners were as normal as you or me, the
occasion had been a subject of public amusement and complaint ever since; a letter had appeared in the local evening paper about the religious rites that had taken place on the University’s
front lawn, asking if young girls were safe any more, and a Frenchman had been arrested afterwards for urinating against a tree on Institution Road. He had telephoned the Vice-Chancellor from the
police station, to enlist his aid: ‘
C’est moi
,’ his rich French voice had announced in the Vice-Chancellorial ear. ‘
J’ai pissé
.’ Moreover,
Treece’s fond hope that Emma Fielding’s kindness at the departmental reception would dissuade Mr Eborebelosa from hiding out in the lavatories was answered; Eborebelosa forsook the
lavatories for another cause, the pursuit of Emma Fielding.
    Every morning since the