44 Scotland St
‘Every man is a Hemingway,’ wrote Irene. ‘Every man is a Norman Mailer. Do not be fooled by those writers who claim to have a different vision: men are never different’
VOLUME 14
CHAPTER 12
DOWN AMONG THE MEN
‘Please feel free to go out, Stuart,” Irene said over her shoulder, as she browsed through the contents of the food cupboard. She did not wait for a response before continuing, in a slightly sarcastic tone, “Now what have we here? Smoked oysters? Product of China. Well, that’s a thought, isn’t it? Chinese oysters.”
She turned to face Stuart, who was sitting at the kitchen table, a copy of The Scotsman crossword in front of him. He was trying to ignore Irene, but her presence made it very difficult for him to concentrate on the crossword. “An air force man looks jaunty!” he muttered, more for his own benefit than for Irene’s.
Irene smiled. “Pretty obvious.” She paused. “Is that the children’s crossword or the adults’”?
The slight was intended. Irene had always been better at crosswords than Stuart, and she took considerable delight in coming up with solutions that were, in retrospect, glaringly obvious but which had for some reason not occurred to Stuart.
“Well, then?” goaded Irene. “An air force man looks jaunty – more or less.”
She waited. Stuart tried to ignore her. He would move on to the next clue, he thought, rather than give Irene the satisfaction of solving this one. Long experience had taught him that if you moved the conversation on, you could wrongfoot her. Sometimes.
“I’ve got it,” he muttered, and then, “An old woman at first is followed by part of a backward analyst: tasty in January!” Haggis, he thought. Hag, followed by the first part of Sigmund, backwards. That would show Irene.
“You solved that first one?” asked Irene. “The jaunty aviator?”
Stuart hesitated. He was truthful by nature, but Irene was a force that disturbed all known patterns of type and character. He felt justifiably irritated. She had the right to visit the boys, but she had no right to go through the kitchen cupboard, make comments on tins of smoked oysters – implicit at this stage, but doubtless with more to come; nor had she the right to interfere with his doing of The Scotsman crossword. You never told people the answers to a puzzle they were doing. You just did not. It was the equivalent of telling somebody about the ending of a book or a play: it was a
spoiler. Irene loved spoilers, as long, of course, as they originated with her. “Yes, I’ve moved on,” said Stuart. “So?” Irene persisted. “What was it?” Stuart bit his lip. Sometimes Irene made him feel as if her were Bertie’s age, or even less. He had put up with that in the past, swallowing the pride that a grown man must feel on being treated as a small boy, but now that he was free at last – and that was the word he used: free – that small, so emotive word, heady in its potency – now that he was free he did not have to put up with this.
He looked up at Irene. He was seated – she was standing. This, he thought, was how the world must seem to Bertie, with all these adults a few feet above one’s own head. This was the view from down among the children.
Down among – that phrase could be used in so many different contexts where there was an upper and a lower level. Down among the children; down among the desperate; down among the …He stopped, remembering a paper that Irene had once delivered to a meeting of her Progressive Book Group. This was a book group that was based in the New Town and met once a month in places such as North West Circus Place and Howe Street to excoriate those who, for one reason or another, were not considered progressive, or at least were not progressive enough. The group consisted entirely of women, as far as Stuart could ascertain; he had once enquired of Irene whether there were any male members, only to be told that none had been deemed suitable. Stuart had very tentatively proposed himself, but this suggestion had been met with silence, and was not aired again.
It was for delivery at this book group that Irene had written her paper Down among the men. Stuart had discovered this on the family computer, and had printed it out to read it in a more leisurely way. For reasons of security, he had read it while sitting on one of the benches in Drummond Place Garden, where the chances of being discovered by Irene or any of her allies were low.
The main premise of Down among the men was that all male writers worked under the influence of a subconscious archetype to which Irene had given the name The Inner Hemingway.
“Scratch any male writer,” Irene had written, “and you will find a Hemingway not far below the surface. This Inner Hemingway is a Weltanschauung that sees the world as a tabula rasa upon which the dominant male must mark his territory – just as a wolf does. But there are other wolves around – we must never forget that – and they will be required to be subdued by the projection of strength. It is this projection of strength that informs every male endeavour, whether it be the subduing of Gaia (Earth, femininity) through big civil engineering projects, the annexation of the Crimea, or the creation of a fictional universe. It is all the same. Every man is a Hemingway. Every man is a Norman Mailer. Do not be fooled by those writers who claim to have a different vision: men are never different. Go down among the men and see for yourselves.”
Stuart had waded through this, feeling increasingly angry and despondent in roughly equal measure. It was just so unfair. There were Hemingways – of course there were – but there were also plenty of sensitive, sympathetic men who did not see the world in these terms. How unjust to describe half of humanity, or whatever percentage men were, with this dreadful stereotype. It was every bit as bad as those misogynistic comments that slipped from the lips of unreconstructed men from time to time and resulted in their rapid suspension or dismissal from their university chair.
He sighed, and laid Down among the men to one side. He closed his eyes. He did not think he could take this for much longer.
A voice spoke – a gentle, Italian voice. “Oh, Mr Pollock, here you are,” said the voice. “I turn a corner in the garden, and what do I see? I see you, seated like one of Poussin’s shepherds on a convenient bank.”
He opened his eyes and saw Sister Maria-fiore dei Fiori di Montagna standing before him, clad in her nun’s habit of Marian blue, like one of those visions that appears from time to time to surprised bystanders in places like rural Fatima, or credulous Knock, or, perhaps even Drummond Place Gardens.