I Like It Here

beach, nor was there any danger of enforced participation in a game of ball in Portuguese. Further, shameful as it might be to admit it, the idea of the play had started to interest him rather. It was called Teach Him a Lesson, and was about a nasty man (the Gregory whose disavowal of credulity he was currently toiling to refine) and the nasty practical joke played on him by his nasty friends with nasty consequences. The friends were supposed to be less basically nasty than Gregory, but somehow got infected by the very nastiness they were setting themselves to avenge. Like nearly all Bowen’s artistic impulses, this derived from a long voluptuous daydream about getting Mrs. Knowles expelled from civilised society. Unfortunately the idea had lost some of its urgency in being modified, in obedience to the reputed rule that none but aesthetic considerations must dictate the shaping of a work of art. Having his way with Mrs. Knowles on paper was becoming an obsession with him and provided the sole possible reason for getting divorced from Barbara. Even with no holds barred he would probably only be able to get one book out of Mrs. Knowles, but Christ, what a book it would be. A gorgeous, star-shot, blood-red, awesome pall of hatred.

His mind groped painfully back to the theatre, that vast battlefield of taxi-getting, being on time, cloakrooms, programmes, waiting, tipping, no cigarettes I’m sorry sir, other entrance sir, two lagers four and six please sir, you can’t put your coat there sir, well Ken my dear just simply went overboard about it, but my dear you just have to admit it isn’t an Anglo-Saxon thing I mean look at O’Casey, look at Dylan, and if you aren’t terribly careful my dear you’ll have me shouting Wilde and Nolly Goldsmith and Farquhar. Why was it that everybody who had anything to do with the theatre went on as if they had everything to do with the theatre? Why didn’t master printers and binders and the girl who worked the switchboard at Hiscock & Weinstein go on about Evelyn and Graham and Tony and Nigel? And go on about them all the time? And go on about them in such away as to stop anyone in earshot from going on about anything else?

Bowen made another line of x’s and typed:

GREGORY: Don’t give me that.

After that he felt he had given the creative process enough outlet for one morning. The trouble was that he was committed to providing further outlets on succeeding mornings. His only hope lay in establishing some real foundation to his vague suspicion that someone had used his Teach Him a Lesson idea before. Well, you couldn’t force that sort of thing. It had to come of its own accord.

He next picked up and re-read the mysterious letter from his landlord that had arrived, thanks to miracles on the part of the Portuguese postal authorities, the previous day. After a salutation that featured one of the less common allotropes of Bowen’s surname, it said that the writer had been thinking things over again—in itself a questionable claim by one so clearly unused even to once-and-for-all cogitation. If Bowen considered himself entitled under the agreement to the room on the half-landing, it was further stated, he should confirm same at once with a view to matters being regularised. After that all there was was “Yours Knowland”.

Had the landlord really been ennobled during the last couple of weeks? No; he could not have been. What was “same” that Bowen was being asked to confirm at once? Was he really to write back saying Yes, he did consider himself entitled to the room on the half-landing? The letter was a very appropriate sort of document to receive abroad, in that it used the English language to suggest a rich variety of possible meaning, like a revolutionary kind of poetic style. Bowen was reminded of the forms he had had to fill in in order to get the car on board the Rio Grande with them. One extra good one had had spaces headed “Reg. No.”, “Serial No.” and “No.” on it, and he had had some marvellous fun reeling round the flat swearing about that one; but the best of the lot had had “Type” on it in two different places. Which of them meant which of the answers “Morris”, “Morris Minor”, “Saloon”, “Private Car” or (since the form said it could be used for motorbikes as well) “Car”? In the end he had just said “Type” to himself and written down in both cases what first came into his head, as if taking part in one of those tests where words like “love” or “lavatory” are used as response-detonators. He had thought at the time that to fill in the spaces with something like “oxymoron” and “valve-trombone”, say, would have done just as well, and that the only real purpose of the form was to remind you that doing something you didn’t want to do (like going abroad) was going to be just as hard as doing something you did want to do. More and more his life was becoming a matter of grimly going on day after day trying to persuade his mother-in-law to spend Easter with them—symbolically, anyway. By Christ, and actually too, by Christ.

These thoughts depressed him, and in addition brought no nearer a settlement with Viscount Knowland. After some time he was persuaded that the air of mystery here arose from drink or dementia rather than anything so practical as chicanery. He put himself on record to the effect that he did indeed consider himself entitled under the agreement to the room on the half-landing.

Short of devising a yet more succinct expression of Gregory’s scepticism (too depressing) or going down to the village for a quick one at the wine-shop (too likely to be menaced by staring children, footpads, etc.) there was nothing to do until lunch-time. Of course, he could always have a nice