Babel Tower Read online

  The headmaster introduces the committee to the school.

  “We have the honour to have amongst us a very distinguished group of people who are studying the very question we are debating today. We have Professor Wijnnobel, a distinguished grammarian, we have Alexander Wedderburn, a playwright whose rich language has entranced many of you, we have a young and popular poet, Mickey Impey. We have a scientist, a psychologist and an educational writer, all of whom will bring their own wisdom to the debate. I want them to see that the boys and girls in this school have thought carefully about this subject and I also want them to see that we are in the habit of debating issues that concern us, putting clearly points of view we may or may not agree with, and listening to what is said by others.”

  The debate is lively. The proposer, a pink-cheeked, darkly handsome sixth-form boy, argues that we all learn to speak grammatically without being taught, that we can understand poems, newspapers, political speeches and each other without always working out what is a noun or a verb, let alone a subordinate noun clause or a subjunctive. When we learn other languages we might need a small grasp of such terminology, but that is the place to learn it.

  The opposer, an intense plump girl, argues essentially that grammar is like the names of chemicals or parts of the body. We need to know about the circulation of the blood and the valves of the heart. Language is part of us: it is natural to want to understand it.

  The seconder of the proposal destroys this argument. You might die if no one understood your blood or your heart. You would go right on talking if no one told you what a noun or a verb was.

  The seconder of the opposer is a nervous boy with downcast eyes and argues that no one will get a job, or pass an exam, if they don’t speak and write properly. Rules are there to make life better. People may not like rules but they wouldn’t like life without them. Knowing the rules gives everyone an equal chance.

  The debate is good. A surprising number of children take part. They are well prepared, with points written out on little cards, which they read. It is quite clear where the passions of these children lie: the anecdotal comments are all one way, the meaninglessness, the injustice, the silliness of particular grammatical problems, the waste of time. Such supporters of grammar as there are are rather decorous and dutiful, perhaps even selected by teachers and briefed to support it. “It helps us to write in a more interesting way.” “It helps us to see what we really mean.”

  There is an overwhelming vote against grammar. Wijnnobel congratulates the headmaster on the articulacy of his students. Mickey Impey, who has been wriggling in his seat throughout the debate and occasionally putting his feet up on the back of the chair in front of him (Hans Richter’s), suddenly plucks at the headmaster’s sleeve.

  “Can I say something to these kids? I’ve listened to them, now I’d like to talk to them. Do you object?”

  “I told you,” says Auriol Worth to Alexander. “If I had him in my class, I’d watch him.”

  “Ought we to stop him?”

  “Probably But fortunately it isn’t our place.”

  “Go ahead,” says the headmaster to Mickey Impey.

  “Listen, you kids. My name is Mickey Impey, I’m a poet. I’ve listened to what you’ve been saying and some of it was good, real good stuff, but really you’re all herded along by all this way of talking you think is so clever, Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen, and all that junk. Listen to me, don’t let them brainwash you. Listen to me, think freedom, think creativity, think vision. They make you sit there and study all this stuff about Einstein and relativity and so on. You don’t need any of that. There was one great man who understood it all—William Blake. He saw that if you look at the world properly your imagination inhabits infinity. He understood infinity. Listen to this, it blows your mind.

  How do you know but ev’ry bird that cuts the airy way,

  Is an immense world of delight, clos’d by your senses five?

  Or

  One thought fills immensity.

  Or

  Energy is the only life, and is from the Body; and Reason is the bound or outward circumference of Energy. Energy is Eternal Delight.

  Those who restrain desire, do so, because theirs is weak enough to be restrained, and the restrainer, or reason, usurps its place and governs the unwilling.

  “You should be thinking about this, about how to use your own energy, about how to see Infinity, not all the stuff they teach you. When I was at school, no one told me anything like this, so I am telling you.”

  Some smile. Some titter. Some applaud. Some shuffle, embarrassed. The audience is not one. Those who have spoken are anxious to have their speaking praised. There is always the perennial fear of looking silly which runs in groups of the young. In other places, at other times, Mickey Impey can overcome that fear, can harness and use it, but here his speech goes off at half-cock. Both Mickey Impey and the headmaster are aware of this. The headmaster thanks Impey smoothly “for the message you have decided to share with us,” and Impey sits down, frowning.

  Alexander says to Wijnnobel, “Why do they so hate grammar?”

  “It is something we must try to understand. It is a phenomenon we must analyse. Of course, the grammar of which they are complaining is hopelessly out of date, it is Latinate, it has nothing to do with modern thinking. But I do not think that is at the root of the problem. Perhaps a reluctance of the brain to contemplate its own operations.”

  This last sentence appears at first to Alexander to have nothing at all to do with the teaching of clause analysis. Nevertheless, it is interesting.

  Mickey Impey is absent that night at dinner in the Dean Court Hotel. So is Wijnnobel, who has gone back to his university. It is Magog who asks Agatha Mond whether anything can be done about the behaviour of Mickey Impey. A professional enfant terrible himself, he does not like terrible behaviour in other, especially younger, men. Agatha replies diplomatically that she is sure that the chairman or the secretary will have a word with Impey about correct behaviour in committee members. In her experience, such problems are usually solved by the unruly member either conforming to the group customs or leaving. She is looking pretty, even beautiful, in a dark red dress which brushes her knees. Her legs are long and thin. She is one of the perhaps 10 percent of women who truly look good in such short skirts. Alexander goes up the stairs behind her and reflects that all the same, it is odd when Civil Servants wear dresses that reveal the movements of their bottoms and the backs of their knees, like schoolgirls, or female commanders of cartoon spaceships. He says, “Do you really think our Young Turk will conform or quit?”

  “He may well quit. He may get bored. My view is that he will quit. I don’t at all want to upset our political masters by complaining about him. He adds a bit of variety. He’ll get bored, don’t worry.” She adds, “Moreover, he is an excellent group irritant, like the grit in a pearl. He will make the rest of the group cohere, and work together.”

  He resists the impulse to put a fatherly arm round her shoulder.

  The next day is their visit to Freyasgarth. Alexander takes time out in the morning to walk up the road to see Bill Potter, who is expecting him. He is surprised to see Bill’s bruised and broken face and asks if he has had a fall.

  “No. I haven’t. I’m not an old man falling over my own feet yet. I had my head smashed between the door and the wall by a cross young man. My son-in-law. He wanted Frederica. Wouldn’t believe she wasn’t here. Wouldn’t believe I didn’t know where she was. Apparently she’s done a bolt, taking the boy. I await developments. Never a dull day. I’d be glad if I did know where she was. She needs protection.”

  “I know where she is,” says Alexander, after some thought. “She’s being looked after. Sensibly.”

  “If you see her,” says Bill, “tell her we’d be glad to hear from her. Tell her I haven’t got so long left on this earth. A daughter’s a daughter. She’ll come to understand that. Tell her. Oh, I don’t know what. You’d better not tell me
where she is. In case that lout comes back and tortures the information out of me. He’s capable. He’d cry over his handiwork after—he was very spry with damp cloths—but he’s got a temper.”

  “I’ll tell her. She’s lying low.”

  “Most sensible thing she’s done so far. Though if she’d had any sense at all, she wouldn’t be in this mess. She should have married a kind man, like Daniel.”

  “You wouldn’t let Daniel in your house.”

  “No. Well. I’ve come round. It was his Christianity I objected to, not him, and I’ve come to the conclusion he’s no more a Christian than I am.”

  “You’re a thorough old Puritan preacher, and always were.”

  Bill smiles at Alexander.

  “One of the very few benefits of growing old,” he says, “is finding out who’s gone along with you, who it is you really share your memories with. We know each other pretty well.”

  “We do,” says Alexander.

  Bill has twice said he is old, since Alexander came. He looks older. The battered skin is healing slowly, and is thin as onion skin. The bruises are huge. The blood in them is black. His smile is unintentionally gruesome. Alexander smiles back with love.

  Alexander rejoins the committee in Freyasgarth School. They are listening to Miss Godden, the headmistress, telling a fairy tale, The Great Green Worm, to the middle class, the seven- to eight-year-olds. The school is made of the local grey stone and is large and simple, a space divided by two movable partitions, dating from the 1930s. The children sit in rows behind long desks, the younger ones at the front, the older ones at the back. The committee sit at the very back. They are not comfortable. Those with small enough bottoms—Agatha Mond, the poet, Roussel, even Hans Richter in his suit—are on infant chairs. Wijnnobel is enthroned high on Miss Godden’s shabby desk-chair. Miss Worth and Mr. Magog share a small gym bench, on which they make room for Alexander.

  “The Green Worm gave a long hiss (that is a serpentine way of sighing) and without reply, plunged beneath the waves. What a loathsome monster, said the princess to herself; he has greenish wings, and his body is all sorts of changing colours—he has ivory claws and his head is covered with a mane of ugly fronds. I really would rather die than owe my life to that creature.”

  Miss Godden’s voice is quiet. She lingers on the more enticing words: serpentine, hiss, fronds. The children are still. They listen. They do not shuffle. She expects them not to and they do not. She writes up on the blackboard a series of synonyms: snake, serpent, dragon, worm, and gets the children to add other words they know: viper, adder, python, grass-snake, slow-worm (“A legless lizard, you know, children, not a real snake, a creature that evolved legs and then decided to do without them”), boa constrictor, cobra, Nag (one child has read Rikki-Tikki-Tavi), puff-adder, black mamba, rattlesnake. This leads to a brief discussion of the difference between synonyms and scientific names designed to differentiate clearly between species and varieties. They talk about the “feel” of words, what is different in worm (a “fat, thick, slow word,” says one red-haired girl) and snake (“a kind of quick-sliding but cutting word,” says the same girl) and serpent (“a kind of fairy-thing, or demon out of the Bible,” says the girl). They talk about why people don’t like snakes and why in stories people are often changed into them. Alexander looks at the girl. She has soft red-gold hair and large dark eyes, and freckles, a soft scattering and speckling of pale coffee on cream. Her brow is wide, her mouth is wide and soft. He knows her, he can read her genes in her face, in her skin, in her lips, even in the movements of attention of her head. She is Stephanie’s child, and also Daniel’s child, Mary; she carries Bill’s flyaway redness and Winifred’s old-gold slowness, an alertness that is Frederica (but also dead Stephanie), a slow stare of thought that is her father. She was born within a week of Simon Vincent Poole. Alexander thinks of the boy. He is himself, he has his life ahead of him. Does it matter if he carries Thomas Poole’s genes or mine? To Alexander, it does. He wants to know Simon. He looks at Mary. He thinks of Agatha Mond’s Saskia, who “has no father.”

  “At the end of these lessons,” says Miss Godden, “we always read the page of the dictionary with our word on it—worm today, or snake, you may choose, Mary Orton, since you have been thinking so hard, which. We look to see all the words there are that none of us know, even me. We think about how many words there are, and what a lot we can do with them.”

  Wijnnobel nods his head. The poet does not attempt to address this class, partly perhaps because he recognises another charismatic presence in this stout, story-telling middle-aged teacher, partly because he appears to be genuinely interested in the story and the word-game.

  He gathers his forces, however, at school dinner. This is eaten at long tables constructed of the bench-desks, and served from large aluminium cans by overalled dinner ladies. The committee sit at the teachers’ table, and are served with a sort of lamb stew, some very watery reconstituted peas, some mashed potatoes grey in colour and containing pebbles of solid starch.

  Mickey Impey says very loudly, “This stuff is muck. Nobody ought to be asked to eat muck like this muck. Kids ought not and we ought not, and I won’t eat this muck.” Alexander can see him thinking: it crosses his mind to incite all the children to throw around, or symbolically refuse, their food. Some are eating busily: some are making listless gestures with their forks. It is not nice food, and it is not completely inedible. He would rather not eat his own, but is embarrassed by the poet into making an effort. The poet stands up and scrapes the whole of his plate into the can of hot water in which the dirty cutlery is soaking. He says, “There must be a pub in this village. Anyone for a sandwich?” Nobody answers. He stalks out. Agatha is right. The rest of the committee becomes markedly more cordial towards each other.

  • • •

  The committee meets to discuss these and other visits. They sit round a long table in a drab room in the Ministry of Education, which is to be transformed into the Department of Education and Science. They sit on the whole in little professional groups: academics with academics, teachers with teachers, writers and journalists uneasily with each other, no one next to the sweet-faced poet, who sits drawing cartoons on his notepad. Later, these groups will splinter and reconstruct themselves. Alexander sits opposite the chairman, Philip Steerforth, the secretariat, and the other academics, Wijnnobel, Naomi Lurie, Arthur Beaver. He sits there not to catch the chairman’s eye but in order to be able to look at Agatha Mond. He does not see himself as part of this group, but as an individual, an observer, present almost by mistake. Other people, as they have done throughout his life, see him as understanding and gentle: a force for cohesion. Auriol Worth and Roger Magog are sitting one on each side of him.

  Agatha has written clear reports on the visits they have made. Arthur Beaver, who was not present on the visits, remarks that the Star Primary School and Freyasgarth represent opposing ideas of primary education. He is interested to know if the visiting party has formed any views about their relative merits.

  Hans Richter says that it is autumn. He says he says this because in summer the Star School, which appears to be so airy and light, will become intolerably hot, and both teachers and children will be simmering with discomfort. He says architects often ignore people.

  Alexander says that that school contains no private places.

  Magog says most schools do not contain private places. He asks Hans Richter if his observation is a metaphor.

  Richter says no, it is a physical observation. But that mental states flow from physical states, and that when the children are too hot, they will learn less well.

  Steerforth recalls his committee from architecture to the teaching of language.

  Auriol Worth says that both primary schools were good schools; that the children in them were learning and were happy. She says that unfortunately, perhaps, the good teaching depended in both cases on individual teachers. The headmaster of the Star School had eyes in the back of his head an
d an unusually good organisational brain. Another head in his place might well, with the same principles, preside over aimlessness and chaos. Equally, Miss Godden was a teacher capable of holding the attention of several age and ability groups at once, and exercising their minds. But a teacher less gifted and inventive could simply lose their attention.

  Arthur Beaver says that the committee’s report must contain a chapter on the activity of the teacher; the language teaching depends on the ability, and indeed the philosophy, of the teacher.

  Magog says that what strikes him is the hatred of grammar demonstrated by the debate at the comprehensive school. It appears that no amount of good teaching can make grammar other than repulsive to the vast majority of kids and probably teachers. When he was a boy—

  (All the committee members, all through the committee’s deliberations, refer in a certain tone to when they were a boy, or a girl. They trail clouds of past life, glorious or cramped, through the dusty official room. Alexander watches them. He imagines the boy Magog was: fat, thick-kneed, curly, sulky, aggressive, never the best boy at anything in the class, always near the best.)

  —when he was a boy, grammar was experienced as a trap set to catch you out, as a series of gates in a maze for rats, as an instrument of absolute power and punishment by teachers, as a series of nasty interruptions to any creative flow your writing might get up, as oppression, in short.

  He says it doesn’t seem to have got much better. He says he is sympathetic to the abolitionists. What that boy said in the debate is true. We speak grammatically without learning grammar.