thee, what is man? He is even as a pauper and the glories of the world shall not profit him, neither shall they yield him aught of joy. Without thee, what may a man do? Pray. That was all you could do. Pray to Nature to take her erratic course. And Nature said, let there be blood. And there was blood. That was all he could hope for. That was all he could do. Pray. ‘More things are wrought by prayer than this world dreams of.’ Well, he would put it to the test.
‘Of course, it is hoped that Juliet will marry Count Paris. But in reciprocating Romeo’s love she helps to create the microcosm of sanity and love within the macrocosmic hate and senseless conflict of Verona.’
The voice droned on, buzzing against Charlie’s brain like a fly against a window-pane. He was worried about telling his father, not because of what he would say, but because he set so much store by Charlie’s going to university, and it was enough of a struggle without adding mendicant grandchildren. That was the worst part of all, the way you inevitably impinged on other people in these things. If it had just been a matter of themselves it wouldn’t be so bad. But you were all connected by invisible wires so that anything you did provoked a response in others. He could imagine Mary’s father doing his fireside Stoic about the whole thing, bleeding quietly all over the place, stabbed to the heart by Charlie’s treachery. And her mother. That was going to be worse. Mrs Littlejohn. She was bad enough at any time. She was a conning-tower for misfortune. She saw it coming when nobody else could, dim in the distance, and she put out the welcome mat for it. Charlie could almost sense the forthcoming cataclysm, like earth termors. Her shock would be seismic. It always was, even in trivial matters. She enclosed herself in a crinoline of rigid convictions and seemed constantly offended that the rest of the world was out of step. Every time she moved, she rustled with bigotry. In her presence Charlie always felt like being in a room cluttered with ornate bric-à-brac of cut glass where you couldn’t make a wrong move or say a wrong thing without another transparent prejudice being smashed. When she heard of this, the noise was going to be deafening. Charlie didn’t relish playing the bull to her china shop.
‘But can he, in fact, openly profess his love for Juliet? Today, no doubt, things would be different. But we must try to think ourselves into the social climate of his time and society. We must try to appreciate that the very air he breathes has a texture different from that which we inhale at this moment in this room. In our society, for better or for worse, the reins are being given more and more into the hands of youth. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that crupper, bit, and bridle are being dispensed with altogether and the individual clings only to the mane of natural instinct to guide the course of his life. This is doubtless a sad reflection on the social horsemanship of your elders. Be that as it may. It is not so in Verona. For Romeo, personal choice is gravely restricted because of the social pressures under which he lives. Authority is to a degree sacrosanct. Romeo owes allegiance to his father, who in turn owes it to the duke. He is subject to a strict authoritarian hierarchy. So too, of course, is Juliet. Witness old Capulet’s outbursts at her unwillingness to accept Paris as a husband. How then, in this atmosphere of claustrophobic conformity, can Romeo fulfil his personal feelings without coming into direct and open conflict with this hierarchy and authority? Here lies Romeo’s problem.’
Stuff Romeo, Charlie thought. He thought he had problems. He didn’t know the half of it. ‘Oh, speak again, bright angel,’ and tell me that ‘I-know-what’ has come at last.
‘Montague and Capulet are the pincer-jaws between which Romeo and Juliet are caught, crushing them in the end, but also in so doing squeezing out of their tragic love an intensity and a poignancy which would not otherwise have been.”
Montague and Capulet? They weren’t in the same league as Mrs Littlejohn. She was Verona all on her own. Maybe she was just sharpening her pincer-jaws at that very moment, and looking out her thumbscrews.
‘Accident plays its part, it is true, and the play is the weaker for it. Nevertheless, the tortuous sequence of events that culminates in a double suicide as well as the deaths of Paris and of Tybalt to balance that of Mercutio stems directly from the need for constant subterfuge that is imposed on the two lovers. Therefore, where does the blame finally lie?’
With the rubber tree? Perhaps that was it. His tragedy might have its origin in the dim recesses of some Malayan forest where one tree among thousands had been smitten with the dreaded rubber-worm. And now he was reaping the fruits. ‘Fruits’ was right.
‘Accident, yes. But accident nurtured by hate. Accident which has as its foster-parent human error. Notice that accident enters into it only after the initial damage has been done by human agency. Notice human error. Notice human guilt. Notice . . .’
‘Notice the time, Jimsy,’ Andy muttered. ‘For God’s sake, man, even intellectuals have to eat. Ah’ll be reduced tae gettin’ beetled into this desk in a minute.’
Charlie smiled to himself. Andy’s voice summoned him back to commonsense. He looked at Jim and Andy, waiting like horses at the gate to go and get fed. There were only a couple of minutes to go. Just being with them helped. With them, through banter and familiar jokes and clowning, he could build up a synthetic atmosphere, like an oxygen tent, in which he could breathe easy again and the pulse of panic could settle back to a contrived normalcy. All he wanted was for things to go on the way they were going without disturbance. He would be happy to go on like this for another two years, attending lectures, carrying on interminable conversations of abysmal profundity in the Students’ Union, working in the reading-room, having a drink with Andy and Jim in the beer bar, going home for a week-end every month or so. It was a good set-up. He had no complaints, if only this thing would blow over. And there was still some hope. Perhaps the crisis was over already and he didn’t know it. Perhaps a letter was on the way, telling him it was all right. He hoped he knew for certain before next week, anyway. He had examinations then. And he couldn’t settle to work with this hanging over him. Perhaps he would know before then. He might go home at the week-end, although he hadn’t intended to be home for a fortnight yet. If he hadn’t heard by the week-end, he would go home and see Mary. Having made a definite decision, however small, he felt a little better. That meant he had three more days before he could do anything positive, and the best thing he could do meanwhile was to try and carry on just as usual. There was no point in doing trouble’s work for it. If the situation was going to give way under him, it would. And when it did it would be bad enough without his making it worse by anticipation. There was nothing he could do just now. Any minute they would be going down to the Union for lunch and maybe have a game of snooker before going up to the reading-room to work.
‘But Verona can only be purged of its evil hatred through the deaths of these two people, people themselves innocent of that hatred.’
‘Come on, come on,’ Andy said. ‘Ring the bell, verger, ring the bell, ring.’
‘Hell, we’re gonny have tae shoot this man,’ Jim said.
‘Through these scapegoats a corrupt community is shriven.’
Professor Aird shuffled his notes and took off his glasses, looking round the students. Charlie liked these moments. The professor could express more with his face than with words. Charlie remembered the time he had demolished the Chicago school of critics with one eloquent eyebrow. Now his face seemed to express regret at the atavism which put food before Shakespeare.
‘Dinner is served,’ he said.
There was a respectful pause as he left the rostrum and headed for the door of his side-room. But before he could escape he was ambushed by three girls with ears asinine for learning. Those less dedicated made for the door.
Andy was one of the first to get out. He raced across the quadrangle and through the cloisters, dodging students and moaning, ‘Food, food!’ Jim and Charlie came up with him at the top of the hill and fell into step. University Avenue was busy and they walked quickly, knowing there would be a queue at the Union.
Jim held out an invisible microphone to Andy and said, ‘And would you like to tell the viewers something about the life of a chimera in our day and age? Would you recommend it to others?’
Andy assumed what were apparently the rough tones of the professional