Point Counter Point - Aldous Huxley [74]
‘One of the few completely impossible, if you only knew.’ Among the Bidlakes of Walter’s generation the impossibility of old John was almost axiomatic. ‘You wouldn’t find him quite so perfect if you’d been his wife or his daughter.’ As he uttered the words, Walter suddenly remembered Marjorie. The blood rushed to his cheeks.
‘Oh, of course, if you will go and choose him as a husband or a father,’ said Lucy, ‘ what can you expect? He’s a possible old man just because he’s been such an impossible husband and father. Most old people have had the life crushed out of them by their responsibilities. Your father never allowed himself to be squashed. He’s had wives and children and all the rest. But he’s always lived as though he were a boy on the spree. Not very pleasant for the wives and children, I grant. But how delightful for the rest of us!’
‘I suppose so,’ said Walter. He had always thought of himself as so utterly unlike his father. But he was acting just as his father had acted.
‘Think of him unfilially.’
‘I’ll try.’ How should he think of himself?’
Do, and you’ll see that I’m right. One of the few possible old men. Compare him with the others.’ She shook her head. ‘It’s no good; you can’t have any dealings with them.’
Spandrell laughed. ‘You speak of the old as though they were Kaffirs or Eskimos.’
‘Well, isn’t that just about what they are? Hearts of gold, and all that. And wonderfully intelligent—in their way, and all things considered. But they don’t happen to belong to our civilization. They’re aliens. I shall always remember the time I went to tea with some Arab ladies in Tunis. So kind they were, so hospitable. But they would make me eat such uneatable cakes, and they talked French so badly, and there was nothing whatever to say to them, and they were so horrified by my short skirts and my lack of children. Old people always remind me of an Arab tea party. Do you suppose we shall be an Arab tea party when we’re old?’
‘Yes, and probably a death’s head into the bargain,’ said Spandrell. ‘It’s a question of thickening arteries.’
‘But what makes the old such an Arab tea party is their ideas. I simply cannot believe that thick arteries will ever make me believe in God and morals and all the rest of it. I came out of the chrysalis during the War, when the bottom had been knocked out of everything. I don’t see how our grandchildren could possibly knock it out any more thoroughly than it was knocked then. So where would the misunderstanding come in?’
‘They might have put the bottom in again,’ suggested Spandrell.
She was silent for a moment. ‘I never thought of that.’
‘Or else you might have put it in yourself. Putting the bottom in again is one of the traditional occupations of the aged.’
The clock struck one and, like the cuckoo released by the bell, Simmons popped into the library, carrying a tray. Simmons was middleaged and had that statesman-like dignity of demeanour which the necessity of holding the tongue and keeping the temper, of never speaking one’s real mind and preserving appearances tends always to produce in diplomats, royal personages, high government officials and butlers. Noiselessly, he laid the table for two, and, announcing that his lordship’s supper was served, retired. The day had been Wednesday; two grilled mutton chops were revealed when Lord Edward lifted the silver cover. Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays were chop days. On Tuesdays and Thursdays there was steak with chips. On Saturdays, as a treat, Simmons prepared a mixed grill. On Sundays he went out; Lord Edward had to be content with cold ham and tongue, and a salad.
‘Curious,’ said Lord Edward, as he handed Illidge his chop, ‘curious that the sheep population doesn’t rise. Not at the same rate as the human population.
One would have expected…seeing that the symbiosis is such a close…’ He chewed in silence.
‘Mutton must be going out of fashion,’ said Illidge. ‘Like God,’ he added provocatively, ‘ and the immortal soul.’ Lord Edward