1964 contained the poem I’d been meaning to look out, ‘Dockery and Son’, in fact a B-grade PL poem famous for its last four lines.*2 But the bit I wanted came in the stanza before…Funereally dressed for the occasion (‘death-suited’), the poet-narrator, who is forty-one (and wifeless and childless), pays a visit to his old college and learns that a contemporary of his, Dockery, already has a son enrolled there. And the stunned ‘I’ wonders at how
Convinced he was he should be added to!
Why did he think adding meant increase?
To me it was dilution.
And I thought, No. To me it wouldn’t be dilution, and not addition, either. Something more impersonal. Continuation: so that when the only end of age at last arrives, your story doesn’t just stop – doesn’t just stop dead.
Children, that was the thing (that was the next thing): you needed children. Because (or so I later came to believe) they were the ones who embodied the ordinary, the average, the near-universal push for a kind of immortality. Or so I later came to believe. I would say it out loud, gropingly, several times a day – I just want to see a fresh face…
Julia, then (I hoped), let it one day be Julia.
Apollo 2
‘They’re used to us in here now,’ I said (it was six months later – March 1981). ‘I don’t even feel particularly white.’
‘Nor me,’ he said. ‘I just feel particularly alcoholic. And particularly gay.’
‘I know what you mean…Yeah, but they don’t mind us.’
‘No. We’re just those two pissed little queers.’
‘Exactly…Hitch, I thought only chicks felt broody.’
‘Me too. But maybe it’s just that blokes never own up to it.’
‘Or don’t know they’re feeling it. Are you feeling broody do you think?’
‘No. I’m feeling open to experience, but I’m not feeling broody.’
‘Mm. Talking of not feeling broody, how did you find Larkin that time? Did you talk? I can’t remember.’
‘I only had a couple of minutes with the old buzzard. And he just went on and on about his bills. His bills. Especially as they related to his car.’
He got more drinks and I said,
‘Didn’t he say something about black people?’
‘About foreigners in general. He said he didn’t like London because of all the foreign germs…You know, that’s the one thing that really daunts me about America. Race. And now Ronnie’s stirring it up with that guff about welfare queens and strapping young bucks buying T-bone steaks with food stamps.’
‘All plain invented. “I’m not smart enough to tell a lie” – remember that?’
‘He’s too thick to make any up, but he’s happy to repeat all the ones he hears. He’ll even tell the same lie twice! They’ve worked out he tells a lie, in public, every single day. Can you imagine?’
‘Unbelievable. Yeah. “Eighty per cent of acid rain is caused by trees.” He’s not just pig-ignorant, it’s as if he’s anti-knowledge. He’s actually anti-science!’
‘Did you see that quote from Andy Warhol? Saying it was “kind of great”, so American – having a Hollywood actor as president. Yeah, but what next?’
I said, ‘Ronnie’s still an actor, and quite good at it too. Don’t forget I travelled with him for nearly a week last year, and I heard him tell the same long anecdote nine times – with identical intonations. That’s what actors do.’
‘And now he’s an actor playing the part of an aw-shucks goodie. He’s not a goodie. You’re meant to think there’s no harm in the old boy, but I sense…Oh, the pen of the Hitch’ll have some warm work to do in America.’
‘It’ll be okay. The First Lady’s a distinguished astrologer. She’ll keep him steady.’
I got more drinks and he said,
‘Tell me, Little Keith. I’ve just reread Lucky Jim. Is it true that Margaret Peel was based on the old buzzard’s bird? On Monica?’
‘Absolutely. And with the old buzzard’s enthusiastic collaboration. And no disguise – not even an alias. Monica’s full name is Margaret Monica Beale Jones. But Larkin drew a line. He made Kingsley change Beale to Peel.’
‘Ah, so chivalry isn’t dead…Christ, that Margaret. Dirndls and weird jewellery, and not only always tedious but always absolutely excruciating.’
‘…Monica can’t be that bad. Or she can’t still be that bad. They’ve been together since we were one. Imagine that.’
‘Mm, well that’s how it happens. No kids. So you get stalled in your status quo.’
‘That’s what Mum says. Childlessness dooms you to childishness. Having kids isn’t the trap – not having them’s the trap…Right, that’s it, I’ve decided. Which means farewell to Phoebe.’
‘You’re always saying that. Then you creep back to your sick bonk…’
‘That’s stopped working. Now even the sex is fucked up. All the time, while we’re writhing around, I’m thinking, What’s sex for?’
‘What’s it for? Well, pleasure, morale. And an escape from thought.’
‘And also the little matter of procreation. I can’t go on evading it, Hitch. I need to see a fresh face. One unmarked by the world. I need to see an innocent.’
In conversation with Monica Jones
‘THEN THE RECTOR,’ she said, ‘BY WHICH HONORIFIC I DO NOT REFER TO THE INCUMBENT OF A PARISH AND THE RECIPIENT OF THE TITHES THEREOF IN THE GOOD OLD CHURCH OF ENGLAND, OH NO. I MEAN THE HEAD OF ONE OF OUR VENERABLE SEATS OF LEARNING.’
‘Do you mean Leicester University, Monica?’ I asked.
‘WELL DONE THAT MAN! NONE OTHER, GRACIOUS SIR!…OUR MOST HONOURABLE RECTOR! NOW, AT THIS JUNCTURE, SAID RECTOR PERMITS HIMSELF A COPIOUS DRAUGHT OF SHERRY AND THEN LOOKS ME UP AND DOWN AND ENQUIRES, “HELLO. WHO ARE YOU THEN?” ’
‘And what did you say?’
‘ “RECTOR!” I BEGIN, TURNING TO SAME, “I TEACH ENGLISH LITERATURE HERE IN YOUR HALLOWED HALLS.” TO WHICH, IN HIS STENTORIAN TONES, HE EXPOSTULATES THUSLY…“MADAM,” QUOTH HE. “IT IS NOT A FUNCTION OF MY OFFICE TO COMMIT TO PHOTOGRAPHIC MEMORY
