Helen was gazing absently into her wine, rotating her glass reflectively on the table, as if admiring the gleams of its ruby light. It sent a flush upwards to drift about her throat.
“What would you expect, Walcott? blood, these days?”
“Don’t be silly. But I’d like to know why you literary critics are so keen over those morbid symptoms. Why not cut up dogfish with me?”
The critic looked sadly but tolerantly at the biologist, and smiled. Walcott was so young that he was lively. The kindly critic did not appear to think it was necessary to answer. He guarded the secret of literature with a pleasant but superior smile.
“Well, give me something I can enjoy. I’ve always thought literature was above my laboratory, but from the modern books Doris presses on me for my good I’ve been thinking it must be the same thing as the dissecting slab, only more smelly.”
“If you are able to find books you can enjoy, why not enjoy them? There’s something for all of us,” the critic murmured.
“I know. But consider the young learner. Isn’t the best meant for enjoyment, these days?”
“Obviously it depends on what you can enjoy.” The critic’s gentle but deprecating smile showed that he was not to be idly provoked. “Why not keep, for a time, to Lamb and Dickens and—and the approved entertainments?”
Jimmy turned quickly to the speaker. The man seemed to mean it. Perhaps he would regard death with a gentle sneer. He did not appear to be expecting applause for an original remark.
The amusement of the biologist, however, was now a little embarrassed, as though he had become conspicuous with a childish enthusiasm. His forehead was pink. Doris watched him with a trace of affected weariness in her eyes.
“I should like to know what you think is important in literature—if, of course, I may be told.”
“Important?” The critic was slow and deliberate. “I never said that literature has anything of importance to say. If you were to ask me, I should say that I don’t think it has. Its importance, if we were honest enough to admit it, is but in its manner, which is a matter of taste. One need not insist on one’s own taste.”
The critic was patient, and spoke as if this belief, like all else, afforded him no pleasure. If the truth was insisted, on, well, there it was.
“Sorry. I’ll give thanks for my dogfish then. I found a new parasite in the liver of one yesterday. Might be the same as the truth in literature.”
“You stick to your protozoa, my lad,” said Doris.
“Yes, I must. It seems as if anything more than unicellular is probably fake.”
“No, not fake,” wisdom assured him. “There again you are imputing idealism where it cannot be found. Why name it?”
Colet moved as if to ask the critic a question, but relaxed again. He refrained. The conversation continued, facile and inconsequential as an air-balloon to the touches of children. Were these people serious? Very likely such evenings were only the desperation of empty existences. But he looked again at the critic to confirm a sense of loss. He felt as if something of value had been withdrawn, by an authority who was able to declare, if pressed, that literature has nothing of more importance to say than a dado. Choose your dado to taste. Yet he had always read that critic’s contributions to the more serious reviews with respect, if bewilderment.
Walcott, who had evoked this disillusion, saw Colet’s interest. The critic was now, in ironic humour, elaborating his views to Helen and Doris, tapping the edge of the table with a forefinger. The young ladies were as attentive as though he were a priest.
“Look at his tiepin,” whispered the biologist.
Colet looked. It was an opal, but it was an opaque blue. There was no light in it.
“Even his opal looks like the eye of a dead fish. Now he’s giving the girls the outlook of Bloomsbury.”
“Don’t know it. What’s that like?”
“The prospect of a dead fish. Nothing really matters. That’s all. But you ought to show good taste, though, and that is fairly easy if you consider other people’s preferences are very funny.”
A girl danced languidly down the room between the tables as if she were expected to do it and were getting it over. She avoided the eyes of the diners, but only a few of the men looked at her as she approached, and the elder women glanced after her critically when she had passed their table. Colet watched her go by, and felt still more humiliated. Helen saw his detachment, and his dislike as the dancer swam past. The critic had not amused her. Things, she understood, were certainly good if you thought they were, and if you thought they were poor they could be entertaining, sometimes. She was glad Jimmy was different. He was not an intellectual. You could hold on to him—more like a coarse man. She had mocked his beard, but after all it was the only one in the room. Just under the reddish cheekbones it was golden, but it was grizzled already by the sides of the mouth, and under the lower lip. She had not noticed this before. When he turned his head to young Walcott—they seemed very friendly this evening—a muscle stretched like a strong cable from his ear to his throat. He looked solid, and as if he would last. There he was. The evening could be a success after all.
But when Colet chanced to see her face Helen had turned it, in the idleness of contentment, to the Russians. She was an admirer of that critic, he thought. Used to recommend his stuff to him. She was part of this place. He was an outsider. Better be off. Most of these people were a little queer, like the pictures painted on the walls. Over their table was a puzzle of heterogeneous yellow and crimson geometry, in
