‘His teeth? Sank them into her? Bit her?’
‘Oh . . . must feel very bitter.’
Macintosh stood in the pulpit, leaning ponderously on the rail as if he were on his gantry, and gazing abstractedly at all the perambulating ethical machines in the room, perhaps wondering which of them would go overboard to save a sandbag. Goldwasser stood beneath and gazed up at him.
‘Someone ought to go and save my wife from Nobbs,’ shouted Macintosh. ‘But the point is, Goldwasser, I’ve been drinking, I mean, thinking. Freudian slip there, Goldwasser. The point is, Goldwasser, are you really cleverer than me?’
‘I’m not sure, Macintosh. I think so.’
‘I suppose you are. Do you ever worry about it?’
‘Yes.’
‘So do I. But listen, Goldwasser, I think you’re so bloody clever that you can see just how limited your cleverness is. Now the thing about me is that I’m so stupid I can’t understand how stupid I am.’
‘I know.’
‘So that effectively I may possibly be cleverer than you. Do you take my point?’
‘Oh, I thought of it a long time ago.’
‘Aha. You thought of it, and then immediately doubted it?’
‘Of course.’
‘Your cleverness is self-destructive, Goldwasser.’
‘What an obvious thing to say, Macintosh! Christ, you’re such a lump, Macintosh, such a slow-witted, mulish, insensitive juggins! If you knew how you irritated me sometimes!’
They gazed about them, pleased with themselves.
‘Such an appalling exhibition,’ said Mrs. Nunn to Mrs. Chiddingfold. ‘Now . . . shouting abuse at Macintosh . . . two minutes ago . . . indecent assault . . . poor Queenie Plushkov . . .’
The party was becoming a little quieter, as more and more topics of conversation were finally run to earth and battered to death. Plushkov, who was standing with Nunn, found her voice becoming audible again.
‘I’m not sure whether One has managed to make any headway with Haugh or not,’ she said.
‘Or not what?’ said Nunn.
‘Headway. With Haugh.’
‘Have you? Jolly good.’
‘He’s got some extraordinary idea into his head about getting the Institute to run a programme for pornographic novels and sex manuals.’
‘For what?’
‘Pornographic novels and sex manuals.’
Nunn stiffened. Pornographic novels and sex manuals! Raising their ugly heads again! Had he so skilfully extirpated this nonsense in Macintosh only to see it springing up again in Plushkov? It was like an underground fire, bursting out where one least expected it. Well, Plushkov needn’t think that the patronage she had enjoyed from him in the past would protect her from having her name written down in a sporting diary now.
‘Jolly good,’ he said absently. ‘So that’s your idea, is it?’
‘Not mine. Haugh’s.’
Haugh’s. Of course, he might have guessed it. An unreliable man, Haugh, a weak link in the team. He would take his name. In fact he could consider it taken already.
‘Though knowing Haugh,’ said Plushkov, ‘One doesn’t suppose he thought it up himself.’
‘I beg your pardon?’