CHAPTER 4
It was a typical evening at my mother’s. She had the Glass Tit on as I read, watching some “Britain’s Got X-Rated Dancing Talent” or something, a style of programme I find profoundly irritating.

They all seem to focus on whichever tuneless style of wailing is currently in fashion with the prepubescent, in combination with a very narrow range of physical appearance. Following my conversation, my enlightenment, with Dave, I wondered how many of the contestants were prepared to offer similar deals to that allegedly proposed by the female student.

I did the lecture for Dave the next morning, after a night spent in the smells of my room. It is a subject that intrigues me, as I disagree deeply with the Formalists’ premise, and having delivered material on intertextuality the day before I was finding it hard to maintain due respect for the argument. I cannot accept that something can be fully examined in purely technical and isolated fashions. Context should be everything in understanding a text, and the strict technique advocated here, or in my case described, was arid even for me.

There was an interruption early on, as a man a few years older than the other students was brought in in a wheelchair. It was no ordinary National Health Service juggernaut; as a cyclist I recognised the look of good components. His right leg was missing, and a pair of crutches was mounted on the back of the chair rather like an odd flagpole.

“Sorry I’m late, Dr Forbes, I had difficulty finding the lifts”

“It’s Dr Evans. I am standing in for Dr Forbes today as he has another engagement.

There was a snigger from more than a few of the students, and I caught the whispered words “pissed” and “hangover”

Well, they weren’t wrong.

I found his presence troubling. I am used to standing to give my lectures to a reasonably well-arrayed expanse of faces, usually blank, but all more or less arranged n my line of sight. The older man was, of course, to one side of the tiers of seats, and I had to keep turning to include him in my words. It was odd, he seemed to pay more attention than almost any of the others, who were the usual collection of people who wanted to learn, people who thought they should learn, people who thought they should be at university, and people whose parents thought they should be there.

I can deal with the first, I do my best for the second, and I tended to leave the other two categories to find whether it was the right place for them. He seemed to be in category 1, and the pattern there is lingering at the end of the lecture and asking more questions. The questions chosen were usually an advanced indication of their intellectual ability, and so I resolved to pay particular attention to this one. Dave would need warning of any upcoming problems; they were his students, not mine.

I wasn’t disappointed. After I had left them with Dave’s essay title, which was to consider the blindingly obvious question of context in Formalism, the older man came up to me and asked the other obvious question.. Dave’s is indeed one that shouts to be asked, but the answer is a devious collection of apparent contradictions. Like so much of this subject, it is not the answer we seek but the thought processes that take then to their answer. If there is any ability to think, of course.

The other “obvious question” came from the cripple: “Why?”

“It was a reaction to Romanticistic analysis, in which the suffering artist was the focus rather than their work. It was an attempt to set absolute criteria for analysis, and for a certain sort of mind…”

Mine, for example, in most cases.

“…it allowed a direct comparison of widely variant texts. The real problem is that it has a lot of political freight. Look at it as a tool, like schematic analysis, not as an answer. Both Dr Forbes and myself will be looking for a toolbox approach in your work. Think of it like that: a spanner will undo a bolt, but screws, though mechanically similar, require a screwdriver.. We will be delivering a number of different tools this year, but the choice in which is appropriate will be yours.”

He smiled, which revealed a number of small scars around his eyes, and I wondered what had happened to him. He stared at me for a while.

“Are you local?”

“Gosport, so not that far away”

“Which junior school were you at? I’m sorry to pry, it’s just that II think might have gone to school with you”

“Hardway Junior Mixed…”

“I KNEW it! John Evans, your father…”

He stopped dead.

“I’m sorry, I have a bit of a problem not putting my foot in my mouth. My trick cyclist says I will learn, but it’s early days…”

I realised he was no longer looking at me, nor talking to me. In a shocking moment, for me, of perception I realised he was no longer in the lecture theatre. He shook himself.

“Sorry, I drift off now and again. Makes lectures fun; I carry a tape recorder, which was something else wanted to run past you”

He smiled again, and I saw more tiny scars, and realised something had cut his face up rather badly. There was a small chunk missing from his right ear..

“Yes, that John. I don’t recognise you, I’m afraid”

“Pete Hall?”

I had a sudden bright memory of a young face, squealing ‘gotcha!’ as he snapped a towel against my bare bottom in the showers after games, and I remembered it hurting more than it should. He had wet it first.

“Good god. What happened to you?”

“IED, they call it. Roadside bomb, I call it. I was lucky. I was drinking a real find, a proper bottle of Coke, you know the glass ones? A fragment went through the bottle, and my face got sprayed with broken glass. I had my sand goggles down, though, so I kept my eyes. Couple of inches either way would have been my arm or my head. The other bit wasn’t as much of a fluke, though. Caught one piece right in the middle of the ceramic plate”

And two or three other pieces of jagged whatever had sliced and diced his right leg. Lucky, I suppose, compared…I remembered him now, always a clown, always with the latest things to read, though, and in a sudden rush of very old memories I remembered how many books ha had lent me, magazines too. His mother had run a newsagent, and each month when the new editions came out the old ones would be stripped of their covers for pulping. She got her credit from the returned covers, and I got the innards of the magazines free. He had been a keen cyclist, footballer….for once I was feeling a connection outside the patterns, a vicarious loss on his behalf. If I had ever had a friend at school, and in truth I hadn’t, it had been him.

“What are you doing, Pete?”

“Sitting in a wheelchair talking to my lecturer”

No change there, then.

“No, where are you living, what are you doing here, that sort of thing”

“As eloquent as ever, John? Well, I have sheltered accommodation out at Hedge End and I’m trying to do a BA in English and Literary Criticism. And trying to get back to the real world after rather too long in and out of hospitals. You?”

I ran out of structure there. Too many variables, wild cards from another planet it seemed, to allow me to answer. I think I stood for about fifteen seconds until I could find the thread.

“Short answer? I found my wife in my bed with a policeman a couple of days ago, I am staying at my mother’s for now until I can sort something out, and today when your regular lecturer has recovered I will be going with him to collect as many of my things as I can from my former residence. Apart from that, my life is uneventful”

He started to laugh. “You haven’t changed, have you? Is your mother still in Grotspot? We shall have to get out for a pint some time”

He paused. “You do drink, John? No offence, but you seem very on edge”

“I have my own issues, Pete”

There was a sudden overwhelming need to unburden myself, there and then, ell him everything. My one and only sort-of-school-friend shows up, and I go irrational. I came back from my fugue to see him holding a piece of paper out to me, his address and mobile number I realised.

“Call me, John. I am afraid I am a little isolated these days, and it would be extremely helpful to have a face from my past to give some grounding again”

His smile had disappeared. “I’m a bit lost, you see. A bit fucked. Sorry to drop that one on you, but I would really appreciate a chance to look back at brighter days. If you can’t, I will understand”

We said a particularly stilted goodbye, and I went off to find Dave.

She hadn’t changed the locks, and I managed to get a fair bit into his car, with the back seats lowered, including the other woman. One of the things I really wanted was my collection of orchestral music scores. They cost a fortune, but I can read them and the structure leaps out at me, and it is better than a recording or a performance, because everything is unfiltered by the interpretation of anyone other than myself. As we would have to leave the car in the open until the run down to my mother’s, I had to leave my other bikes behind. There would be other times to pick them up. I didn’t really think she would be vindictive; the word she had used was “tired”.

So was I, and that last conversation with the doctor had left me very confused, and drained, and the scene with Pete just added to it all.