a quack faith healer he wouldn’t be in this state now.
Eleanor held her tongue and ate some more chocolate cake.
Bernard said, ‘Ellen doesn’t believe in black magic any more than the Marxist dialectic, any more than she did Catholicism. Ellen won’t let anyone believe in anything, except her. Ellen is the new religion.’
Eleanor said, ‘They weren’t really trying to raise the Devil, according to Jed. They were trying to create an optimum environment for an experiment in mass suggestion.’
Bernard said, ‘Jed was trying to create an optimum environment to seduce girl students. Yet he flourishes like the bay green tree.’
Eleanor said, ‘His baby died,’ and Bernard said, ‘That’s flourishing,’ and Gillian said she’d make him wash his mouth out with soapy water and Ken said so far as he could see there wasn’t any soap: there hadn’t been for weeks.
Bernard said, ‘I say what I want. That group of Jed’s ruined me and what’s more it raised the Devil. I saw him. He was floating outside my window, on the second floor. It is not something I care to remember.’
Gillian said, ‘Have some more chocolate cake. I’m sorry I was nasty. It was only a dream, Bernard. He’s been in a bad way, Ellen.’
Bernard said, ‘Dreams are something you wake up from. This was not a dream. It was real. I didn’t wake up from it. He was real. The Devil is real. He has a mouth with flabby black lips and slit eyes like a goat: they glow like a dog’s eyes do in the dark but it wasn’t dark, it was still light. His breath smelt sickly sweet, like dry rot. His skin was scaly and hairy. His edges were a bit blurred but he was real. He was floating, not standing: the ground was too far beneath him for him to be standing, unless he was totally out of proportion, which I suppose is possible. Then he faded away. It wasn’t that I woke up but that he faded out. Except of course he’s still there. Just because you can’t see him doesn’t mean he isn’t there.’
‘I wish you wouldn’t, Bernard,’ said Gillian. ‘You upset yourself. He came home and gibbered for weeks, Ellen, and never went into college again. Now we’re all on benefits.’
‘Just as well,’ said Ken. ‘He was making a fool of himself; he should have resigned before he was fired. They gave him every opportunity, but you know our Bernard.’
They were very cosy together. Eleanor felt excluded.
Eleanor said, ‘So you won’t be standing outside our window any more, Bernard?’
Bernard said, ‘Oh yes I shall. I have nothing else to do. No car to drive, no job to go to, no hair to comb, no friends, no visibility; I reserve the right to stand beneath my wife’s window and fart while she makes a fool of herself having sex with a buggering old fascist.’
After a little while Eleanor said, ‘Ex-wife’s window, if you’d only sign the divorce papers. It might make you feel better.’
‘Wife,’ said Bernard. ‘Catholics do not believe in divorce.’
‘So you’re back in the faith,’ said Eleanor, coolly and politely. ‘After all that! I couldn’t believe it.’
‘Yes,’ said Bernard. ‘It’s safer. I keep my nose to the ground, think what I’m told, obey the rules, and go to Mass on Sundays. I have been punished for the sin of intellectual arrogance; God has demonstrated to me that the ecstasy of pure thought is reserved for heaven, not for earth; it is for angels, not for man. No, virtue lies in obedience; I will never teach again: it is a sin to interfere with the simple belief structures of innocent students—’
‘Let alone their bodies,’ said Ken, who as he grew older seemed to grow simpler. ‘Heh, heh, heh!’
‘And if I stick to all this,’ said Bernard, ignoring him, ‘my belief is that at least I won’t see the Devil in the flesh again, and that’s just about the height of my ambition. I’ve learned my lesson.’
‘Superstition,’ said Eleanor, ‘will get you nowhere. Shall we change the subject? How’s poor Prune?’
Gillian said, ‘Who’s Prune?’
Eleanor said, ‘Poor Prune is Jed’s wife. We all used to be quite close: not any longer. Jed had an affair with Nerina, but Nerina never liked anyone mentioning it. Now more than ever, I expect, since she’s married.’
Bernard clutched his stomach and said he had a bad pain, as if a needle was being driven into it. Ken said he wasn’t taking Bernard up to the hospital yet again, Bernard