How It All Began Read Online Free PDF Page A

and goodness knows where they’re supposed to put down their newspaper?”
    “Minimalist,” said Marion. “Yes, I can do minimalist, if pressed. And oriental—Chelsea Arabian Nights. And Cotswold manor. Traditional American a specialty.”
    George Harrington beamed. “This is most exciting. What very good luck that Manchester brought us together in this way.”
    “It’s only by chance that I’m here,” said Marion. “My uncle’s secretary’s mother…Oh, we needn’t go into that.” She too was smiling.
    Cards were exchanged. The lunch drew to a close.
    Once in the lecture hall, Henry’s spirits rose somewhat. This was after all his natural habitat. He listened appreciatively to the Vice-Chancellor’s introduction, rose and moved to the lectern during the audience’s suitably welcoming applause, smiled around the room, saidwhat a pleasure and an honor to be here today, so forth and so on, and launched into the eighteenth century.
    For the first few minutes, fine. He was on autopilot—the introductory stuff. The general picture, the setting of the scene. Then to the detail: the defining political moves, the names. That was when everything came unstuck. This infinitely familiar scene dissolved into
mist, this period that he knew better than his own time, the age in which he moved with absolute confidence, became uncertain, betraying; the chronology escaped him, he started to get things in the wrong order. The notes he had made in the train were useless; they merely confused him. And the names, the names…He would begin to speak of a key figure and the man’s name would have vanished into a black hole. Henry hesitated, he stumbled, he corrected himself. He had to resort to the most appalling, blatant circumlocutions: “Walpole’s confidant…Walpole’s right-hand man…” He had lost his grip on the contents of his own mind: he
knew
these names, he
knew
the events, they were the element in which he lived—had lived—but now, suddenly, they had slithered into some pit from which he could not retrieve them. He waffled, he digressed, he gave himself pauses in which to retrench, to delve wildly for that
name
. He was fighting his way through a nightmare; from time to time he sensed an audience that was both restless and embarrassed. The Vice-Chancellor, in the front row, stared ahead with a fixed expression. Next to him, Henry’s other lunchtime neighbor looked down at his own shoes, concealing perhaps a smirk.
    At last, Henry managed to bring things to a close. Polite applause. The Vice-Chancellor joined him on the platform. Would Henry care to take a few questions? Henry would, with clenched teeth.
    The first question he could deal with, just. And then someone wanted to quiz Henry on the later part of the century. Would Henry like to comment on the relative roles of the prime minister before and after 1750?
    Henry began to speak. And as he did so he realized with horror that he could not remember the names of the late eighteenth-century prime ministers. The Elder and the Younger. Elder and Younger
what
?
Name
. The name? He spoke; he avoided, he danced away from the crucial word, he sounded odder and odder, he skirted, he fluffed, he knew that it was becoming obvious. And then at last the name surfaced: Pitt, Pitt, Pitt. He flung it out, triumphant, but too late: the puzzled faces before him told him that.
    Almost never before had Henry experienced humiliation. Occasional embarrassment, yes—moments when one had been at a loss, or when one was aware that one had not performed quite up to scratch. But not this total, absolute chagrin. He felt as though he had been flayed, mercilessly exposed to the scornful gaze of all those strangers. He wanted only to get away from this place, to end this horrid day, to be on the train, heading home, but was obliged to proceed to a room where tea was on offer, and submit himself to strained conversation. He could see only derision, he thought, in the eyes that he tried