Tim Connor Hits Trouble Read online

  During a late afternoon break between sessions Tim found himself stood next in the coffee queue to the retro hippie he had briefly mistaken for Henry. The older man had sat listening quietly during the cross-generational debate but Tim sensed he might have something interesting to say. He introduced himself and suggested that they sit down together. The response was friendly.

  ‘Thanks. I’m Calvin Frazier, Cal for short. Yeah, I noticed you, too. You were looking at me like you thought you might know me. I’m pretty sure we’ve never met.’

  ‘No… no, we haven’t. Well, I guess we have now.’

  ‘Cool.’ Cal reached out, catching Tim’s hand in an awkward vertical grip. For a moment it looked like Cal was setting himself for a follow-through hug but a quick step backwards took Tim safely out of distance. This guy might look vaguely like Henry but he certainly didn’t act like him. Henry was not the hug a stranger type. As they passed through the checkout Cal complimented the young female cashier on her beautiful brown eyes and expressed the hope that she wasn’t finding her job too boring. The dark eyes smiled in amused surprise. She assured Cal that he needn’t be concerned - she was a PhD student filling in at the checkout to make some pin money. She was confident that better opportunities lay ahead.

  Cal looked ready to extend the conversation but thought better of it as impatient noises from the queue rose in volume. Queues are great places for impromptu chit-chat during the waiting phase but hopeless at the business end.

  Aware that the next session was due shortly, Tim led Cal to an empty table. As they sat down Tim dived in with a question on the generational guilt theme.

  ‘So are you on the side of those that blame the older generation for the plight of the current one?’

  ‘You mean the boomers? My own generation? Some of them are pretty greedy and selfish but you can’t generalise. A fair number are quite radical. Anyway, whole generations don’t think and act collectively. No, I agree with what you were saying. It’s the minority of the powerful and wealthy that control things and by no means all of them come from a single generation. Besides, many born in the decade or so after the Second-World-War are now quite poor and needy and were never particularly well off anyway.’

  Cal’s response was more down-to-earth than the ‘peace and love’ stuff Tim had half expected. Not that he was against peace and love. In fact he was curious to know more about where Cal was coming from philosophically. He was about to probe when he was interrupted by a familiar voice.

  ‘Tim, you son of an Englishman, can I join you?’

  It was Brad Purfect. He sat down without waiting for an invitation.

  ‘Scottish, actually.’

  ‘Scottish what?’

  ‘My dad was Scottish not English.’

  ‘My apologies. We Americans forget that you guys still have your local rivalries. You’d think the country was too small to cope with them. Anyway Tim how about introducing me to your friend?’

  ‘Sure. Cal, meet Brad Purfect, he’s visiting with us at Wash University from the States. Brad, this is Calvin Frazier, we’re in the same theme stream.’

  The two men exchanged brief gestures of acknowledgement.

  ‘Brad, I’ve just met Cal,’ continued Tim, ‘we were just chatting for a few minutes before going into the next session.’

  ‘Don’t make assumptions, Tim. In the States hardly anybody attends the last session of the day. The best part of conferences are the breaks between sessions, and in the evenings when the formal stuff is over. And I’m not just talking about professional networking. What’s the point of coming to these great cities if you don’t take a look around? Anyway I…’

  ‘Hang on a minute, Brad. We’ve only just sat down. Let’s forget about re-timetabling the conference to suit our own whims for the moment. I was just asking Cal here…’

  ‘Sure, let’s talk now but it means we’ll be late for the next session. Or, better still we can miss it altogether,’ Brad persisted, ‘How about…’

  ‘Ok we can skip the next session as long as Cal is ok about it.’ Cal gave a nod of assent. ‘But let’s relax for a few minutes. I was just asking Cal about his opinions on the current crisis.’

  ‘Sure, of course, I was only…’

  Tim cut Brad off. He wanted to hear more from Cal.

  ‘Cal, I was interested in what you were saying about the economic and financial crisis? Even as we speak the rich are getting richer, and the richer they are the quicker it’s happening. And, of course, the gap between the very rich and the rest of us is widening. But what I’m really interested in is your moral take on the whole thing. How do you see things changing? You have the look of someone who might have thought about that side of it.’

  ‘Well, thanks. I’ll take that as a compliment. You’re half-right in trying to second-guess me. Moral and cultural change has to be part of the picture. That won’t come from the elites, the perpetrators and beneficiaries of inequality. Real change will have to be rooted in the actions of ordinary people. So, yes, there has to be a collective change of mind and heart, a change of culture. You do get such changes. Systems, regimes, empires, can be changed when enough people want it and are able to make their feelings count. The underlying process of change takes time but there are catalytic shifts and symbolic moments. For instance the freeing of Mandela accelerated the end of apartheid but the moral as well as the practical opposition to it across the globe had already underlined its credibility. Generally there have to be deep cultural shifts to prepare the way for radical institutional change. And the change in peoples’ values and the way they relate to each other has to be sustained otherwise a reversion to elitism or even authoritarianism is likely. Maintaining genuinely democratic and humanistic systems can be as hard as establishing them in the first place.’

  By now Brad was interested.

  ‘As you say, the elites, I still prefer to call them the ruling class, cling on to their power as long as they can. They even resist the implementation of weak forms of liberal democracy until it becomes less trouble to implement than resist. When it comes to demands for real equality the wealthy and powerful will always resist because turkeys don’t vote for Christmas. Or as Sartre put it more elegantly ‘no man can condemn himself.’ Very few do, anyway. Cal, no amount of cultural change will persuade these guys to share things out more fairly. They won’t do it. They’ll have to be removed by one means or another. Violence could play a role, maybe a crucial role. If a regime really does lose credibility, the armed forces, or some of them, sometimes defect to the popular cause, to the people. Sometimes violence is necessary.’

  Cal waited patiently for Brad to finish before responding.

  ‘The difficulties rule violent revolution out in technologically advanced democracies. Modern states have centralised the means of violence as well as increased their effectiveness. And the other part of the equation is that, however gross their inequalities, liberal democracies do allow for some expression of opinion, including dissenting ones. That decreases pressure for violent change and can even lead to some progressive social reform, although nothing much has been introduced by the neo-liberal regimes of the last thirty years. So, no; the bottom line is that if you want long-term change there has to be a change not only in people’s values but in how they relate to each other.’

  ‘You sound a bit like a preacher man,’ said Brad half mockingly.

  Cal looked at Brad sceptically but gave him the benefit of a serious reply. ‘Not at all. I don’t preach at people, I’m no priest. I have a philosophy of this life but not the next. If there is any conscious life after death I imagine it will be some kind of continuation of this one. That would seem logical but I don’t know.’

  ‘Now you’re beginning to sound like a hippie. I bet you took a stack full of psychedelics in the sixties and seventies.’ Brad seemed determined to needle Cal.

  ‘I had my share but not now. They can take a toll on you and anyway these short cuts can leave people suspended in a
counterfeit infinity believing all kinds of fuzzy-brained rubbish.’

  In his efforts to annoy Cal, Brad had succeeded in annoying himself. He was beginning to look edgy and combative. Tim decided to move in again. He shifted his chair closer to Cal.

  ‘So, Cal, you’re a lifestyle radical?’

  ‘You can put it that way if you want. Capitalism has mugged just about every area of institutional life, even the arts, maybe especially the arts, and higher education. There’s no alternative but to work with our own lives. ‘The personal is the political,’ as someone once said. Ultimately if enough people change their values and lifestyles, the old system will dissolve. Not that there’s any guarantee.’

  Tim leaned back, noticing that the room was now almost empty. People had headed off to the final sessions and the clatter of waiters clearing up was beginning to drown out their conversation. He took the opportunity to move things on.

  ‘Look, we have to make a decision. Do we bunk the final session or not?’

  ‘I’m for bunking,’ said Brad. ‘I’m looking forward to a guided tour of the great metropolis, or at least part of it.’

  ‘That’s fine by me. I don’t know the city that well, though, so I won’t offer to be the guide. Maybe Tim can do that,’ suggested Cal.

  ‘Ok, no problem. There’s enough daylight left for a stroll along the riverfront and maybe through one of the parks. After that we could stop off in Soho for a meal unless either of you have signed up for the formal conference dinner tonight.’

  Neither had.

  ‘That’s sensible of you,’ commented Tim, ‘it’s expensive and you don’t get a proper pudding.’

  The three men made their way out of the university and onto the Aldwych crescent immediately to the south. The huge solid buildings amplified the crashing din of the traffic. Across the crescent was the massive edifice of Bush House, home of British public radio broadcasting and on the other side, the Strand. Bush House looked like the hulk of a vast beached ship. Traffic hurtled relentlessly round the one-way system regulated only by seemingly random traffic lights.

  ‘Follow me you two,’ Tim shouted above the cacophony. The three of them skipped across to the Bush House side of the crescent just as the lights let loose another barrage of traffic. A couple of car horns blasted behind them as they made it to the pavement. Tim shuddered at the mad, blaring noise; Brad shouted a generalised ‘fuck off’ at the oblivious vehicles; and Cal, kaftan flapping, just about preserved his trademark cool.

  ‘Keep following, we can cut through here,’ Tim gestured towards an open throughway between two sections of Bush House. Emerging at the other side they took advantage of a lull in traffic to cross the Strand. Tim waved a hand in identification of his old college, King’s, confining his comments to an expression of regret that his favourite student drinking-hole nearby had disappeared.

  Within a couple of minutes they had reached Waterloo Bridge.

  ‘I don’t want to drag you two all the way to the other side of the river but let’s walk to the middle of the bridge, it gives a good view of the Thames and the surrounding city.’

  As they made their way onto the bridge Tim attempted to recall items of historical or literary interest about it. Apart from mentioning Monet’s stolen painting of the bridge, all he could come up with was the Kinks’ Waterloo Sunset. It turned out to be a good call as both Brad and Cal knew the song. And as it happened the pale sun was just beginning to set, diffusing a diaspora of light blue, silver and gold across the evening sky.

  ‘Waterloo sunset time,’ Cal quoted a line from the song.

  ‘Yeah, it’s almost like I planned it,’ said Tim, pleased with himself.

  ‘Didn’t Shakespeare write a poem about a bridge?’ asked Brad.

  ‘Could be – he wrote about most things - but you’re probably thinking of a famous sonnet by Wordsworth, Upon Westminster Bridge,’ Tim suggested, ‘it’s a bit further up river.’

  ‘That sounds right, you ought to know. Good name for a poet, Wordsworth. You know worth …’

  ‘No need to explain,’ there was a hint of irritation in Tim’s voice. He wanted them to enjoy the scene, not listen to feeble puns about it. Some phrases of Wordworth’s sonnet came to mind.

  ‘Wordsworth has a line in his poem something like ‘ships, towers, domes, theatres and temples lie open to the fields and to the sky.’ You can probably still pick out examples of all of those, apart from fields, even though most of those features are dwarfed by more recent stuff.’

  ‘St Paul’s still looks impressive despite the glass and concrete giants around it,’ Cal commented.

  ‘What’s that? Brad asked gesturing to a point south of the river more or less opposite St Paul’s.’

  ‘That’s the Gherkin.’

  Brad puzzled for a minute.

  ‘I’ve never thought of gherkins as beautiful.’

  ‘What do you think of that one?’ asked Cal.

  ‘The same, it’s not beautiful.’

  ‘Postmodern architecture isn’t necessarily beautiful. It’s more conceptual,’ Cal explained.

  ‘What’s the point of the concept of a gherkin?’

  ‘I don’t know. Maybe it asks a question.’

  ‘It certainly isn’t asking me a question.’

  ‘Maybe not, but you asked one yourself a moment ago,’ Cal pointed out.

  ‘I know, anybody would, confronted by that dollop of…’

  Tim decided to change the topic and the location.

  ‘Let’s just shift across to the west side of the bridge and look up the river. We’ll see The Houses of Parliament and catch the best of the sunset.’

  They crossed over and despite the rush of pedestrians managed to plant themselves against the west railings.

  ‘Now that’s architecture,’ enthused Brad gesturing towards Parliament, ‘that’s no gherkin. That has elegance and style. It’s almost as impressive as the Kremlin.’

  ‘Yeah, true it’s a great example of the mid-nineteenth century gothic but you wouldn’t build something like that today,’ Tim suggested.

  ‘Maybe, maybe not but I’d rather see more buildings in that style than more gherkins. I mean, where do they go from a gherkin, a beetroot?’ Brad looked genuinely perplexed.

  Now Cal chipped in.

  ‘They go even bigger, I guess, and even more arbitrary in shape. In fact new concoctions are already in the pipeline. Look at that half-constructed giant saltcellar like folly behind us. It’s already dwarfing everything around it, an unintended monument to the sky-high egos of the age. Hubris signalling its own nemesis. Postmodernism’s inadvertent satire on itself, its concluding exclamation mark, hopefully.’

  ‘You’ve got a point there,’ said Brad out of his depth. ‘What’s it called?’

  ‘The Shard.’

  ‘Shard to swallow,’ Brad quipped.

  ‘Puny, but you’re right, it might well fail to pay for itself.’

  ‘Capitalism is always shafting itself,’ said Brad, feeling he was on a bit of a roll.

  Cal looked mildly miffed at Brad’s prosaic response to his flight of poetic social commentary. He decided to take a dig at him.

  ‘Brad, you ought to develop your own style of Marxist gothic, an extravagant celebration of irrelevance.’ He winked at Tim. Brad glared at them both.

  Sensing that the quality of their architectural discussion was about to plummet even further Tim brought it to a swift close.

  ‘Ok, let’s wander across to Trafalgar Square and think about eating somewhere in Soho. I don’t know about you two but I’m getting hungry. We’re gonna have to give the park a miss. It’s too dark.’

  ‘Good idea,’ agreed Cal, ‘it’s quite cold now the sun’s going down. Let’s move on.’

  ‘Let’s have a couple of drinks on the way. This walk has given me a wicked thirst,’ said Brad.

  Now that the idea of food and drink had been launched they moved quickly through the city, the day slipping into night as th
ey went.

  Brad was insistent that he wanted to sample the full ‘London English pub atmosphere’ and they stopped twice to knock back a few drinks. In practice Brad seemed to favour varieties of Eurofizz rather than English bitter but was still convinced that he was getting an authentically British experience. The effect was the same. The three of them were in light rococo mood as they made their way across Trafalgar Square.

  Brad and Cal were fascinated by Chinatown, but the three of them failed to reach a consensus on whether to eat Chinese. Eventually they crossed Shaftesbury Avenue and settled for an Indian restaurant in Frith Street in the heart of Soho.

  During the course of the meal the conversation turned to the other Wash sociologists at the conference. Tim was mildly concerned they might think he and Brad had ditched them in favour of the delights of the metropolis. It didn’t reassure him when Brad pointed out that they had done exactly that. Tim was beginning to regret that he had missed a possible opportunity to spend some time with Erica, even if not on a one to one basis. It frustrated him that their relationship seemed suspended between the compulsively physical and tantalising intimations of something more serious. Diversions and interruptions constantly cropped up, mostly in the form of other people. Gina’s image came into his mind. He smiled wistfully. He was by no means over her. Then he thought of Rachel, not so much a diversion as an obstacle as far as he was concerned. That was not Erica’s view. Frowning he drained off the dregs of his glass of wine. Putting the glass down he realised that the alcohol was beginning to go to his head. He’d rarely drunk so much so quickly since his student days.