The History Man

and undress, and get under the duvet. They say nothing, being tired people; they do not touch each other, having no need; Barbara, in her black nightdress, folds her body into Howard's, her buttocks on his knees, and they are quickly asleep. And then it is the morning, and the Habitat alarm clock rings on the bedside table, and they wake again, back into the life of ordinary things. Consciousness returns, and feels heavy with use; Howard presses his eyelids open, jerks towards being, regresses, tries again. Traffic thumps on the creases of the urban motorway; a diesel commuter train hoots on the viaduct; the graders are revving on the construction sites. The bed vibrates and bounces; Barbara is getting up. The Habitat alarm clock says it is v to viii. Barbara pads across to the door, and takes her housecoat from the hook; she goes across to the window and pulls back the curtain to admit dull wet daylight. The room appears in its unmitigated thinginess, flavoured with the dusty smell of cigarette smoke, the sweet aftersmell of pot. A thrown-off dress, gutted by its long zip, hangs askew on the door. On the junkshop chest of drawers, its grain surface rough, one handle gone, two handles broken, are some plates, three full ashtrays, and many empty wine glasses from the supermarket. The lavatory flushes along the landing. Outside black rainclouds move in off the sea and over the tops of the luxury flats; the rain pours' and smudges and blackens the brickwork of the shattered houses opposite, dripping violently in the Kirks' unstable guttering. In Howard's head is the dry image of a person: Felicity 'Phee, a mottling of spots above her breasts. He activates muscular mechanisms; he gets out of bed and walks, through the party detritus and the unredeemed daylight, to the bathroom. He urinates into the bowl; he takes his razor from the medicine cabinet, and unravels the cord. He plugs the razor into two black holes under the white globe of the light.

He pulls the string of the switch. Light and razor, glare and noise, both come on. His face rises into visibility in the fingermarked glass of the mirror. In the cool urban sheen of the morning, he inspects the Condition of Man. His bleak, beaky features, the moustache worn like a glower, stare out at him as he stares back in at them. 'Christ,' he says, 'you again.' His fingers come up and touch and shape this strange flesh into position. He runs the razor over it, shaping and ordering the construct before him, sculpting neatly round the edge of the moustache, clipping at the line of the sideboards. He stops the razor; from downstairs, he can hear the barbaric yawp of his children. The features he has been designing hang pallidly, abstractly, before him in the mirror; he pokes at them, hoping to urge into them that primordial glow which is actual and real livingness. There is no response. He picks up a bottle of aftershave lotion with a machismo label, and slaps some into his cheeks. He switches off the light above the mirror; the face fades. A family row of toothbrushes are prodded into a metal rack above the washbasin; he takes one, and scrubs up a foam inside his mouth. The rain splashes in the gutters. A female cooing sounds in the acoustical complexities of the staircase; he is being called to breakfast and his domestic duties, for it is his turn to take the children to school. He combs his hair, and drops a fuzz of haircombings into the yellow waters of the lavatory bowl. He presses the handle, and flushes it. He returns to the bedroom and reaches into the wardrobe, selecting some clothes, his cultural identity. He puts on jeans and a sweater; he straps on his watch. He goes toward the domestic arena. On the landing, on the stairs, there are empty glasses and plates, cups and ashtrays, bottles. Anita Dollfuss's dog has left its traces, and there are strange dark drips of something along the length of the hall. A silvery dress lies on the floor. He goes through into the pine décor of the kitchen, where chaos is total. Many empty bottles stand on the pine counters; many dirty plates are scattered everywhere. The stench of old parties prevails. In an endless sequence of little explosions, rain plumps on the glass roof of the Victorian conservatory, where the children are playing. The electric kettle fuzzes a thin line of steam around Barbara, who stands in her housecoat, in front of the cooker, her hair untidy.

'My God, just look at it,' says Barabara, putting eggs into a pan. 'Go on, just look at it.' Howard puts bread into the toaster; obliging, he looks around. 'It's a mess,' he says. 'Which you undertook to help me clear up,' says Barbara. 'That's right,' says Howard, 'I will.'

'Can you advise me when?'

'Well, I'm teaching this morning,' says Howard. 'And there's a departmental meeting this afternoon, which will go on very late.'

'It wouldn't,' says Barbara, 'if you didn't argue so much.'

'I exist to argue,' says Howard. 'I just want to be clear,' says Barbara. 'I am not doing this by myself.'

'Of course not,' says Howard, picking up the Guardian from the kitchen table. The headlines advise him of many indignities and wrongs. There is a new anti-pornography drive, a trial of a group of anarchist bombers, an equivocal constitutional meeting in Ulster, a fudging Labour Party Conference in Blackpool. Liberties are sliding; his radical ire thickens, and he begins to feel some of the bitterness that is part of the sensation of living self. 'I am not going to be that person,' says Barbara. 'Did you find me somebody?'

'Not yet,' says Howard, 'I'll find someone though.'

'I could fix it with Rosemary,' says Barbara. 'She was in good shape last night. She went home with your friend from the sex shop.'

'You see how quickly these agonies pass?' says Howard. 'No, Barbara; please not Rosemary.'

'In the meantime, the mess,' says Barbara. 'We'll do it tonight,' says Howard. 'I'm going out tonight.' The toaster pops; Howard takes out the warmed bread. 'Where?' he asks. 'I've signed up for an evening class at the library,' says Barbara. 'It starts today, and I mean to be there. Okay?'

'Of course okay,' says Howard. 'What's it on?'

'Commercial French,' says Barbara. 'Acceptez, cher monsieur, l'assurance de mes solicitations les plus distinguees,' says Howard. 'What do you need it for?'

'It's something new,' says Barbara. 'Don't they have car mechanics?' asks Howard. 'I want to read Simone de Beauvoir in the original.'

'In commercial French?'

'Yes,' says Barbara, 'that was all the French they had.'

'Well, it should bend your mind,' says Howard. 'Don't patronize me,' says Barbara, 'I'm not Myra Beamish.'

'Did she leave him?' asks Howard. 'I don't know,' says Barbara, 'I lost sight of that particular little drama, Myra making it into the now scene. There were so many.'

'A good party,' says Howard. 'A mess,' says Barbara, switching on the radio.

The radio trills, and there is a newsbreak. The noise of the radio draws the children, Martin and Celia, fresh, separate, critical beings, in their clothes from the manikin boutiques, into the kitchen; they sit down at the table, in front of coloured enamel bowls from Yugoslavia. 'Bonjour, mes amis,' says Howard. 'Did the party make you drunk, Howard?' asks Martin. 'Who left her bra in the plantpot of the living-room geranium?' asks Celia. 'Not me,' says Howard. 'You have the messiest friends in the whole world,' says Celia. 'One of them broke a window,' says Martin, 'in the guest bedroom.'

'You've checked around, have you?' asks Howard. 'Anything else I should advise the insurance company about?'

'I think someone jumped out,' says Martin, 'there's all blood in there. Shall I go and look outside?'

'Nobody jumped out,' says Barbara. 'You sit there and eat your cornflakes.'

'Cornflakes, yuk,' says Martin. 'My compliments to the cook, and tell her 'yuk',' says Howard. 'I expect this person jumped out because he couldn't stand the noise,' says Celia. 'You say we're noisy, but that was terrible.'

'Is there really some blood, Celia?' asks Barbara. 'Yes,' says Celia. 'Why does it always have to be cornflakes?' asks Martin. 'You can't say all that much for the human lot, as we bumble around in the Platonic cave,' says Howard, 'but sometimes there are glimpses of the eternals beyond. Like cornflakes.'

'No metaphysics, Howard,' says Barbara. 'Let's all just eat our cornflakes.'

'Are you opposed to metaphysics?' asks Celia, not eating her cornflakes. 'She's a British empiricist,' says Howard. 'Look,' says Barbara, 'these kids leave for school in fifteen minutes, right? I know it's against your principles, which are dedicated to driving me insane. But could you exercise a bit of parental authority here, and get them to eat their sodding cornflakes?'

'Are you going to eat your sodding cornflakes?' asks Howard of the children. 'Or do you want me to throw them out of the window?'

'I want you to throw them out of the window,' says Martin. 'Christ,' says Barbara, 'here's a man with professional training in social psychology. And he can't get a child to eat a cornflake.'

'The human will has a natural resistance to coercion,' says Howard. 'It will not be repressed.'

'By cornflake fascism,' says Celia.