On Beauty Read online

  ‘If we are to speak of explicit agendas, we might discuss the under-the-counter manner in which class admissions are organized here at Wellington – a policy that is a blatant corruption of the Affirmative Action bill (which, by the way, is itself a corruption) – whereby students who are NOT enrolled at this college are yet taught in classes here, by professors who, at their own “discretion” (as it is so disingenuously put), allow these “students” into their classes, choosing them over actual students better qualified than they – NOT because these young people meet the academic standards of Wellington, no, but because they are considered needy cases – as if it helps minorities to be pushed through an elite environment to which they are not yet suited. When the truth is that the liberal – as ever! – assumes there is benefit, only because doing so makes the liberal herself,’ said Monty with mischievous emphasis, ‘feel good!’

  Howard clapped his hands and looked to Jack French in exasperation.

  ‘Sorry – which case are we arguing now? Is there anything in this university that Professor Kipps is not on a crusade against?’

  Jack French looked distraughtly at the agenda notes Liddy had just passed him.

  ‘Umm, Howard is correct there, Montague – I understand you have a concern about class admissions but that issue comes fourth, I think you’ll find, on our agenda. If we could just stick with the . . . I suppose the question, as it has been framed by Howard, is: Will you give your text to the community?’

  Monty pushed his chest up and out, and held his pocket-watch in his hand. ‘I will not.’

  ‘Well, will you submit to putting it to the vote?’

  ‘Dean French, with all due respect to your authority, I will not. No more than I would accept a vote on whether a man might be allowed to cut out my tongue – a vote is completely irrelevant in this context.’

  Jack looked hopelessly at Howard.

  ‘Opinions from the floor?’ suggested exasperated Howard.

  ‘Yes . . .’ said Jack, with great relief. ‘Opinions from the floor? Elaine – did you want to say something?’

  Professor Elaine Burchfield pushed her glasses up her nose. ‘Is Howard Belsey really suggesting,’ she said with patrician disappointment, ‘that Wellington is such a terribly delicate institution that it fears the normal cut and thrust of political debate within its halls? Is the liberal consciousness (which it pleases Professor Kipps to ridicule) really so very slight that it cannot survive a series of six lectures that come from a perspective other than its own? I find that prospect very alarming.’

  Howard, glowing with anger now, addressed his answer to a high spot on the back wall. ‘I’m obviously not making myself clear. Professor Kipps is on record, alongside his “kindred spirit” Justice Scalia, denouncing homosexuality as an evil –’

  Monty sprang from his seat once more. ‘I object to that characterization of my argument. In print I defended Justice Scalia’s view that it is within the right of committed Christian people to hold such an opinion of homosexuality – and furthermore that it is an infringement of the rights of Christian people when their personal objection to gay people, which they hold to be a moral principle, is translated into the legal category of “discrimination”. That was my exact case.’

  Howard watched with satisfaction as Burchfield and Fontaine shrank in distaste at this clarification. Which made it all the more astonishing to Howard when Fontaine now raised her infamous lesbian baritone to say: ‘We may find these views objectionable, even repulsive – but this is an institution that defends intellectual discussion and debate.’

  ‘Jesus Christ – Gloria, this is the opposite of thought!’ cried the head of the Social Anthropology Department. Thus began a verbal ping-pong, which collected more players as the argument ranged the room and continued without the need for Howard as umpire.

  Howard sat down. He listened to his argument get lost in accounts of other cases, some similar, some tediously irrelevant. Erskine, meaning well, gave a long and exhaustive history of the civil rights movement, the point of which seemed to be that given Kipps’s rigid views of the constitution, Kipps himself would have never voted with the majority on Brown v. Board of Education. It was a good point, but it got lost in Erskine’s emotional delivery. Half an hour passed this way. At last Jack brought the debate under control. Gently he pressed Monty with Howard’s request. Once more, Monty refused to share the text of his lectures.

  ‘Well,’ conceded Jack, ‘given that clear determination on Professor Kipps’s part . . . but we do still have the right to vote on whether these lectures should take place at all. I know that wasn’t your original intention, Howard, but given the circumstances . . . We do have that power.’

  ‘I have no objection to a democratic vote where there is right and power, which there is here,’ said Monty in stately mode. ‘It is clearly the members of this faculty who ultimately decide who shall or shall not be free to speak at their college.’

  Howard, in response to this, could offer only a sulky nod.

  ‘All in favour – I mean, in favour of the lectures going ahead, without prior consultation.’ Jack put his glasses on to count the vote. There was no need. With the exception of Howard’s small pockets of support, all hands went up.

  Howard, dazed, made his way back to his chair. On the way, he was passed by his daughter, who had just entered the room. Zora squeezed his arm and grinned at him, presuming he had just acquitted himself as well as she was about to. She took a chair next to Liddy Cantalino. She held a pristine pile of paper in her lap. She looked powerful, lit from within by her own fearsome youth.

  ‘Now,’ said Jack, ‘one of our students, as you see, is with us – she is going to be talking to us about an issue she feels passionate about, as I understand it, and which Professor Kipps touched on earlier – our “discretionary” students, if we can put it that way . . . but before we get on to that, there’s some standard college business to be attended to . . .’ Jack reached out for a piece of paper that Liddy had already drawn from the pile and extended to him. ‘Thank you, Liddy. Publications! Always happy news. And publications next year will include Dr J. M. Wilson’s “Windmills of My Mind”: Pursuing the Dream of Natural Energy, Branvain Press, which is due for publication in May; Dr Stefan Guilleme’s “Paint It Black”: Adventures in Minimalist America, Yale University Press, in October; Borders and Intersections, or Dancing with Anansi: A Study in Caribbean Mythemes by Professor Erskine Jegede, published by our own Wellington Press this August . . .’

  Through this list of triumphant forthcoming publications Howard doodled his way through two sides of paper, waiting for the inevitable, now almost traditional reference to himself.

  ‘And we await . . . we await,’ said Jack wistfully, ‘Dr Howard Belsey’s Against Rembrandt: Interrogating a Master, which . . . which . . .’

  ‘No date as yet,’ confirmed Howard.

  6

  At one thirty the doors were opened. The ‘funnel’ that Jack French had predicted now manifested itself, in the doorway, as many faculty members forced themselves through a small gap. Howard packed in with the rest and listened to the gossip, much of which was of Zora, and her successful address. His daughter had managed to postpone the decision on discretionary students until the next meeting, a month from now. Within the Wellington system, achieving a postponement of this kind was akin to adding a new amendment to the constitution. Howard was proud of her and her speechifying, but he would congratulate her later. He had to get out of this room. He left her chatting to well-wishers and launched a determined assault on the exit. In the hall, he turned left, avoided the crowd heading for the lunch room. He escaped into one of the corridors that came off the main lobby. The wall along here was lined with glass cases, each with its booty of rusty trophies and curling certificates, photos of students in outmoded sportswear. He walked to the end and leaned against the fire door. You weren’t allowed to smoke anywhere in this building. He wasn’t going to smoke; he was just going to roll o
ne and then take it outside. Patting the pockets of his suit jacket, he found the comforting green and gold pouch in the breast. You can only buy this brand in England, and at Christmas he had stocked up, buying twenty pouches in the airport. What’s the New Year’s resolution, Kiki had asked, suicide?

  ‘There you are!’

  The worm of tobacco nestling in Howard’s palm jumped on to his shoe.

  ‘Oops,’ said Victoria and knelt down to rescue it. She stood up again with grace, her spine seeming to uncurl notch by notch until she was straight as a post and right next to him. ‘Hello, stranger.’

  She placed the tobacco back in his hand. There was a visceral shock in this closeness. He had not seen her since that afternoon. And with the miracle that is male compartmentalization he had barely thought of her either. He had watched old films with his daughter and taken peaceful, meditative walks with his wife; he had worked a little on his Rembrandt lectures. He had recalled, with the mawkish tenderness of the disloyal, how very lucky and blessed he was to have his family. In fact, taken as a concept, as a premise, ‘Victoria Kipps’ had done a world of good for Howard’s marriage and for Howard’s general mental state. The concept of Victoria Kipps had put the blessings of his own life in perspective. But Victoria Kipps was not a concept. She was real. She patted his arm.

  ‘Been looking for you,’ she said.

  ‘Vee.’

  ‘What’s the occasion?’ she asked and touched the lapels of his suit. ‘Oh, ’course – faculty meeting . . . Very nice. You can’t out-dress Dad, though. It’ll only end in tears.’

  ‘Vee.’

  She looked at him with the same amused face he had just seen on her father. ‘Yes. What?’

  ‘Vee . . . What . . . what are you doing here?’

  He scrunched up the Rizla and tobacco and threw them in a nearby trash can.

  ‘Well, Dr Belsey, actually I study here.’ She lowered her voice. ‘I tried to call you.’ She thrust both hands deep into his trouser pockets. Howard grabbed her hands and removed them. He got her by the elbow and pulled her through the fire door, which led into the secret interior of the building: emergency stairs and cleaning closets and stockrooms. Below them, the sound of a photocopier huffing and shaking. Howard skipped down a few steps to look through the spiral of the stairwell to the basement, but there was no one. The photocopier was on autopilot, disgorging pages and stapling them together. He walked back slowly to meet Victoria.

  ‘You shouldn’t be back in school so soon.’

  ‘Why not? What’s the point of staying at home? I’ve been trying to call you.’

  ‘Don’t,’ he said. ‘Don’t try to call me. It’s better if you don’t.’

  Down here, in this grotty stairwell, the natural light came in through two grated windows in a manner both penal and atmospheric, reminding Howard, incongruously, of Venice. The light fell perfectly on the sculptural construction of lines and planes that was her face. It moved Howard to an emotional urgency he had not felt, or had not felt until this moment.

  ‘Just forget about me, all of it. Please – do that.’

  ‘Howard, I –’

  ‘No – Vee, it was insane,’ he said, holding on to both her elbows. ‘And it’s over. It was insanity.’

  Even in the panic and horror of this situation Howard stopped to wonder at this drama, of the sheer energizing fact of being returned to drama such as this, properly the preserve of youth, with the hiding and the low voices and the surreptitious touches. But now Victoria drew away from him and folded her arms across that drum-tight adolescent stomach.

  ‘Umm, I’m talking about tonight,’ she said tartly. ‘That’s why I was calling you. Emerson Hall dinner? We’re meant to be going together? It’s not a proposal of marriage – why do all your family always think someone wants to marry you? Look . . . I just wanted to know if you’re still coming. It’s just a pain if I have to find someone else to go with now. Oh, God . . . this is embarrassing – forget it.’

  ‘Emerson Hall?’ repeated Howard. The fire door opened. Howard flattened himself against the wall as Vee pressed herself against the banister. A kid in a knapsack came between them, passed by the photocopier, and then through a door that led to who knew where.

  ‘God, you are so vain,’ said Victoria in a wearisome way that returned to Howard some of the reality of that afternoon in the boudoir. ‘It’s a simple question. And, you know: don’t flatter yourself. I didn’t think we were going to run off into the sunset. You’re really not that great.’

  These words momentarily kicked up a little psychic dust between them, but it was inert somehow, it was just noise. They didn’t know each other at all. It wasn’t like it had been with Claire. That was a case of two old friends losing their nerve at the same time, both on the last lap of their lives. And Howard had known, even as it was happening, that they were switching lanes out of fear, just to see if it felt different, better, easier, to run in this new lane – scared as they were of carrying on for ever in the lane they were in. But this girl hadn’t even stepped into the race. She wasn’t to be belittled for that – God knows, Howard himself had only heard the starting gun in his late twenties. But he had underestimated the strangeness of talking about the future of his life with someone for whom the future still seemed unbounded: a pleasure palace of choices, with infinite doors, in which only a fool would spend his time trapped in one room.

  ‘No,’ agreed Howard, because the concession did not mean anything. ‘I’m not that great.’

  ‘No . . . but . . . well, you’re not awful,’ she said, coming closer to him and then at the last minute, flipping her body so she was by his side and against the wall as he was. ‘You’re all right. Compared to some of the wankers round here.’

  She nudged him in his gut with her elbow. ‘Anyway, if you are about to leave me for ever, thanks for the memento. It was very “courtly love” of you.’

  Victoria held up a strip of photos. Howard took them in his hands without recognition.

  ‘I found them in my room,’ she whispered. ‘They must’ve fallen out of your trouser pocket. That suit you’re wearing now. Do you only have one suit or what?’

  Howard brought the strip closer to his face.

  ‘You’re such a poseur!’

  Howard peered closer. The images were faint, ageing.

  ‘I have no idea when those were taken.’

  ‘Sure,’ said Victoria. ‘Tell it to the judge.’

  ‘I’ve never seen them before.’

  ‘You know what I thought when I saw them? Rembrandt’s portraits. Right? Not that one – but look at that one, with your hair all over your eyes. And it works because you look older in that one than that one . . .’ She was leaning into him, shoulder to shoulder. Howard touched one of his faces softly with his own thumb. It was Howard Belsey. This was what people saw as he moved through the world.

  ‘Anyway . . . they’re mine now,’ she said, snatching them back. She folded the strip in half and put it in her pocket.

  ‘So tonight – you picking me up? Like in the movies – I’ll wear a corsage and then later I’ll throw up on your shoes.’

  She moved away from him and took one step up, her arms stretched between the banister and the wall, swaying forward and back, fatally like one of Howard’s own children back in 83 Langham.

  ‘I don’t think . . .’ began Howard, and then started again. ‘What is it that we’re meant to be going to?’

  ‘Emerson Hall. Three professors a table. You’re mine. Food, drink, speeches, go home. Not complicated.’

  ‘Does your . . . Monty – does he know you’re going with me?’

  Victoria rolled her eyes. ‘No – but he’ll think it’s perfect. He thinks Mike and I should always put ourselves in the paths of liberals. He says you learn how not to be stupid that way.’

  ‘Victoria,’ said Howard and made an effort to look her in her eyes, ‘I think you should find someone else to go with. I think it’s inappropriate. And, to be hon
est, I’m really not in the right state at the moment to go to some –’

  ‘Oh, my God – hello? Girl whose mother just died. You are so bloody self-obsessed.’

  Victoria climbed back up the stairs and put her hand to the fire door. Her eyes filmed over with ready tears. Howard felt sorry for her, naturally, but mostly he felt extremely anxious that if she were to cry it should be far away from here and him, before anyone came down these stairs or through that door.

  ‘Of course, I recognize that . . . of course . . . but I’m just saying . . . you know, we’ve made this . . . awful mess and the best thing now is to stop it exactly where it – just draw a line before more people are hurt.’

  Victoria laughed horribly.

  ‘But isn’t that true?’ Howard pleaded in a whisper. ‘ Wouldn’t that be best?’

  ‘Best for who? Look,’ she said, marching back down three steps, ‘if you cancel now it’s actually going to look even more suspicious. It’s booked – I’m head of my table, I have to go. I’ve had three weeks of sympathy cards and bollocks – I just wanted to do something normal.’

  ‘I understand,’ said Howard, and looked away. He considered saying something else here about her bizarre choice of the word ‘normal’, but, for all Victoria’s glamour and chutzpah, the quality that she truly exuded right now was breakability. She was wholly breakable, and there was a threat there, in her shaky bottom lip; there was a warning. If he broke her, where would the pieces fly?

  ‘So just meet me at eight in front of Emerson, OK? Are you going to wear that suit? It’s meant to be black tie but –’

  The fire door opened.

  ‘And I’ll need that essay by Monday,’ said Howard loudly, his face cringing. Victoria mimed exasperation, turned and left. Howard smiled and waved at Liddy Cantalino, coming to get her photocopies.