The Loo Sanction Read online

  Jonathan shouted to his taxi driver over the din, “Charing Cross Underground!”

  “But that’s only a block away, mate!”

  Jonathan passed forward the other half of the torn note. “Then you’ve made out, haven’t you?”

  The driver added his horn to the cacophony and pulled away from the curb. “Bleeding Americans,” he muttered. “Bloody well mental they are.”

  Just as the taxi turned the corner, Aloha Shirt and Bullet Head burst through the revolving doors, flinging out before them a bewildered old woman who spun around twice before sitting on the steps, dizzy. The Bentley was only half a block behind as Jonathan jumped out at the Underground entrance. Holding his bulky packages over his head, he ran down the long double escalator, passing those who obediently kept to the right. The passageways were crowded with commuters, and the parcels were both a burden and a weapon. Instantly he came out on the waiting platform, he walked along to the “Way Out” end, so he had an avenue of escape should the train not come in time.

  And he waited. No train. Girls babbled to one another, and old men stared ahead sightlessly, in the coma of routine. The train did not come. An advertising placard requested readers to attend a benefit concert for Bangladesh, and a scrawled message beside it enjoined them to “Fuck the Irish” and another said “Super Spurs.” No train.

  There was a flutter in the crowd at the far end of the tunnel, and Bullet Head and Aloha Shirt rushed out to the platform. The former’s head was glistening with sweat as he looked up and down, scanning the faces of the throng. Jonathan pressed against the wall, but no good. They spotted him, and the two of them were breasting through protesting commuters in his direction.

  Jonathan slipped out the exit and up a tiled passageway toward the double escalators. A train had pulled in at another dock, and just behind him came a flood of people, rushing to make connections. At the head of this mob, he was able to trot up the long escalator two steps at a time. At the top he looked back. Aloha Shirt and Bullet Head were crowded into the center of the human ice jam, slowly oozing up the escalator. Jonathan U-turned and stepped onto the nearby empty down escalator. His pursuers watched with helpless rage as he passed them, not five yards away. They struggled to push ahead, but sharp words and threats of physical retribution from men in cloth caps forced them to accept the inevitable, if not philosophically. As they drew abreast, Jonathan nodded in sassy greeting and slipped his middle finger along the side of the box in his arms. They did not react to the taunting gesture, and Jonathan realized he had used the one-finger American version, rather than the two-finger British orthography for the universal symbol.

  No sooner had he stepped back out onto the platform than he felt the rush of stale air that signaled the arrival of a train. It stopped with a clatter of opening doors, there was a gush and countergush of people, the doors slammed shut, and it pulled out with a squeal. Bullet Head, outstripping his panting companion, ran along just outside the window, shouting his rage and frustration. Jonathan leaned over and communicated with him in sign language, this time in British. As they plunged into the black tunnel, Jonathan glanced up to see a look of frozen indignation on the face of a prim old lady on the seat opposite. He had inadvertently made the gesture within inches of her nose.

  “Well, tipped up this way, it could mean Victory, you know. Or Peace? I’ll bet you don’t want to talk about it, right?”

  Jonathan took breakfast in the Victorian abundance of the grand dining room of the Great Eastern. The railroad hotel was a perfect cover. With his native panache, he would have been conspicuous in a bed-and-breakfast place, and they—whoever they were—would already have checked the ranking hotels.

  The night before, he had taken a long, very hot bath in a bathroom so cool that it rapidly filled with thick swirling steam. He had lain soaking in the deep tub, the open hot tap keeping the temperature of the water high, until the stresses and fatigues of the day had seeped out of his body. His skin glowing from the bath, he had gotten into bed naked between stiffly starched sheets. He would need rest when the business began again tomorrow, so he emptied his mind and set his breathing pace low as he folded his hands together and brought on sleep through shallow meditation. Each stray thought that eddied into his mind he pushed aside, gently, so as not to disturb the unrippled surface of the pond in his imagination. The last conscious image—Maggie’s imperfect but pleasing face—he allowed to linger before his eyes before easing it aside.

  Whatever happened, he had to keep her to the lee of trouble.

  Luncheon at the Embassy was, as always, both vigorously animated and abysmally dull. Jonathan considered his attendance at such functions the price he had to pay for their lavish support of his stay in England, but he made it a practice to be dull company, talking to as few people as possible. It was in this mood that he carried his glass of American champagne away toward the social paregoric of an untrafficked corner. But it was not sufficiently insulated.

  “Ah! There you are, Jonathan!”

  It was fforbes-Ffitch, whom Jonathan seemed fated to encounter at every function.

  “Listen, Jonathan. I’ve just been in a corner with the Cultural Attaché, and he gives his support to this idea of mine to send you off for a few lectures in Sweden. The American image isn’t particularly bright there just now, what with the Southeast Asia business and all. Could be an excellent thing, jointly sponsored by the USIS and the Royal College. Sound enticing?”

  “No.”

  “Oh. Oh, I see.”

  “I told you the other evening I wasn’t interested.”

  “Well, I thought you might just be playing hard to get.”

  Jonathan looked at him with fatigue in his eyes. “Don’t rush at it, f-F. You’ll make it. With your hustle and ambition, I have no doubt you’ll be Minister of Education before you’re through. But don’t climb on my back.”

  fforbes-Ffitch smiled wanly. “Always straight from the shoulder, aren’t you? Well, you can’t blame a fellow for trying.”

  Jonathan looked at him with heavy-lidded silence.

  “Quite,” f-F said perkily. “But you will honor your commitment to lecture for us at the Royal College this afternoon, I hope.”

  “Certainly. But your people have been remiss in their communications.”

  “Oh? How so?”

  “No one has told me the topic of my lecture. But don’t rush. It’s still an hour away.”

  fforbes-Ffitch frowned heavily and importantly. “I am sorry, Jonathan. My staff has been undergoing a shake-up. Heads rolling left and right. But I’ve not put together a trim ship yet. In any department I run, this kind of incompetence is simply not on.” He touched Jonathan’s shoulder with a finger. “I’ll make a call and sort it out. Right now.”

  Jonathan nodded and winked. “Good show.”

  fforbes-Ffitch turned and left the reception room with an efficient bustle, and Jonathan was in the act of retreating into another low-traffic corner when he was intercepted by the host, the Senior Man Present. He was typical of American Embassy leadership—a central casting type with wavy gray hair, a hearty handshake, and an ability to say the obvious with a tone of trembling sincerity. Like most of his ilk, his qualifications for statesmanship were based upon an ability to get the vote out of some Spokane or other, or to contribute lavishly to campaign funds.

  “Well, how’s it been going, Dr. Hemlock?” the Senior Man Present asked, pulling Jonathan’s hand. “We don’t see enough of you at these affairs.”

  “That’s odd. I have quite the opposite impression.”

  “Yes,” the Senior Man Present laughed, not quite understanding, “yes, I imagine that’s true. It’s always like that, though, really. Even when it doesn’t appear to be. That’s one of the things you learn in my line of work.”

  Jonathan agreed that it probably was.

  “Say,” the SMP asked with a show of offhandedness, “you’re out in the wind of public opinion. What kind of ground swells do you get conc
erning the American elections?”

  “None. People don’t talk to me about it because they know I wouldn’t be interested.”

  “Yes.” The SMP nodded with profound understanding. “No—ah—no comments about the Watergate bugging business?”

  “None.”

  “Good. Good. Nothing to it, really. Just an attempt to implicate the President in some kind of messy affair. Between you and me, I think the whole thing was cooked up either by the other party or by the Communists. I imagine it will blow over. This sort of thing always does. That’s one thing you learn in my line of work.”

  “Good Lord, Jonathan, there’s been a ballup.” fforbes-Ffitch was back. “Ah!” He smiled profuse greetings to the SMP. “Did I catch you two chatting about my plans for a lecture series in Sweden?”

  “Yes, you did,” the SMP lied with practiced insouciance. “And I’m all for it. If there’s anything my office can do to move things ahead . . .”

  “That’s awfully good of you, sir.”

  After shaking hands with warm cordiality, both his hands cupped around Jonathan’s, the SMP returned to his hostly duty of pressing a drink on a visiting Moslem.

  “You say there’s been a ballup?” Jonathan asked.

  “Yes. I am sorry. Our fault entirely. I’ll cancel, if you want.”

  Jonathan had been looking forward to seeing Maggie in the audience during this lecture, perhaps even meeting her in the café afterward.

  “What’s the trouble?” he asked.

  “They’ve advertised that you’re going to lecture on cinema. I’ve got the title here: ‘Criticism in Cinema: Use and Abuse.’”

  Jonathan laughed. “No problem. Not to worry. I’ll vamp it.”

  “But . . . cinema? You’re in painting, aren’t you?”

  “I’m in just about everything. And, despite Godard, cinema is still essentially a visual art. Do you have a car here?”

  “Why, yes.” fforbes-Ffitch was surprised and pleased. “Could I run you over to the college?”

  “If you would.” f-F’s lickspittle conversation would be fair pay for the cover of traveling with him, in case Aloha Shirt and Bullet Head should be hanging about outside the post office bulk of the Embassy.

  “. . . which rhythms are established by cutting rate and cutting tone. While the intensity of the visual beat is a function of what Whitaker, in his lean description of film linguistics, has called ‘cutting volume.’ Does that answer your question?”

  Jonathan scanned the packed audience for a glimpse of Maggie while he responded automatically to the questions. The hall was filled, and a few people were standing at the back of the house. Because of the overcrowding, a policeman was present. In his tall hat and stiff uniform, he was in sharp contrast to the earthy-arty appearance of the audience.

  Someone with a thin nasal voice in the back of the hall was proposing a question when Jonathan caught sight of Maggie against the back wall. She stood under one of the conical light fixtures set in the ceiling of the overhanging balcony, and the soft narrow beam isolated her from the mass and mixed with the amber of her soft hair. He was pleased she was there.

  “. . . and therefore ineluctably interrelated with it?”

  He had not caught the whole of the question, but he recognized the style of inquiry: another involute question asked by a bright young person, not to learn, but to demonstrate the level of his recent reading.

  Jonathan faked his way out. “That’s a sinewy and complicated question with ramifications that would take more time than we have to explore adequately. Suppose you break off the fragment that most puzzles you and phrase that concisely.”

  The thin voice hemmed and hawed, then restated his question in full, adding additional fragments of erudition that occurred to him.

  But Jonathan’s attention was even slighter than it had been before. At the back of the hall, leaning against the wall, was Bullet Head. Jonathan scanned around. Aloha Shirt was making his way down the right aisle. Jonathan looked for Maggie. She still stood in her beam of light, evidently unaware of them.

  A pause and a cough. The question had been posed, and they awaited an answer. A couple of remembered key words in the question gave Jonathan adequate cue to form an answer: “That shifts us from the discussion of film qua film to a look at the state of film study and criticism in the world. But I’m willing to make the shift if you are. In broad, it is safe to say that current film study and criticism are both a chaos and a desert. First, we must acknowledge that, with the exception of Mitry and perhaps Bazin, there are no film critics of substance.”

  Where the hell was that bobby?

  “All we really have are reviewers on varying altitudes of diction. The French school—if one can call that colloidal suspension of spatting personalities a school—works from the principle that cinema is a Gallic invention, the subtleties of which can never properly be mastered by peoples of less fortunate nativity.”

  Bullet Head was making his way down the left aisle. Maggie still stood alone in the cone of light.

  “Their most insidious export since the French pox has been their capricious insistence that American cinema is greatest at its most common denominator. They have seduced spineless American and British scholars into giving the benediction of serious study to such thin beer as the films of Capra, Hawks, and Jerry Lewis.”

  The young driver of the Bentley was moving across the back of the hall toward Maggie! Where in hell was that policeman?

  “The situation is no healthier in the United States, where the ranking reviewers operate as petulant social starlets. Snide infighting, phrasemaking, and pantheon building are the symptoms of their critical affliction. Then, of course, you have the Village Blat types pandering to their young readers’ assumption that befuddlement is Obscurantism and that technical incompetence denotes social concern. But the greatest burden to American film criticism is that it is resident in the universities and therefore blighted by the do-nots.”

  Aloha Shirt stood at the foot of the stage steps on one side, Bullet Head on the other. The young driver had slipped to Maggie’s side.

  “The East Coast universities devote their attention to obscure films, sequences, and filmmakers that require the beacon of critical analysis to rescue them from the limbo of deserved obscurity. This symbiotic affair between filmmaker and critic has entangled them in studies of Vertov and Antonioni that delight small coteries of wide-eyed apostles, but contribute nothing to the mainstream of cinema. The West Coast schools are little better. All hardware and hustle, they produce students in whom the technical proficiency of Greenwich Village is blended with the sensitivity of ‘I Love Lucy.’”

  The driver leaned over and said something to Maggie. She looked at Jonathan, her eyes wide. He shook his head in answer. The driver took her arm and guided her out the back door. Where the fuck was that bobby?

  “And in the center of the continent, insulated by landmass and disposition from contradictory thought, is what might be called the Chicago School of Criticism. Here we find bitter, envious young men who, lacking the spark of creativity, attempt to deny its existence in others by focusing their attention on filmic genres. As though films made themselves, and the men who direct them are no more artists than are they, the leveling critics.”

  A question came from the hall. Jonathan glanced into the wings and was relieved to see the dependable bulk of the policeman, his hands behind his back, his eyes on the lights in the grid, stoic and bored. A rock in the storm.

  “As a guest in your country, I should say nothing about the state of British film study other than it’s well financed and the government seems particularly patient with the several institutions who have been sorting themselves out for years now. I feel sure they will get around to making a contribution to film study by the end of the century.”

  Ignoring the applause, Jonathan made quickly for the wings, where he addressed the police officer, who appeared to be surprised at being approached by him. “There are three
men out there, Officer.”

  “Is that a fact, sir?”

  “They’ve got a girl with them.”

  “Have they, sir?”

  “I haven’t time to explain. Come with me.”

  “Right you go, sir.”

  A quick glance over his shoulder told Jonathan that Aloha Shirt and Bullet Head had not come onto the stage. The bobby following along, he pushed through the exit doors from the wings and ran down a deserted outer corridor. Echoing footfalls advanced toward them from around the far corner. Jonathan stopped, the policeman beside him. The footsteps continued to near. Then the four of them came around the corner, Bullet Head and Aloha Shirt in front, the driver with Maggie behind. They stopped at their end of the hall.

  Jonathan and the bobby walked slowly toward them. “Let her go,” Jonathan said, his voice unexpectedly loud in the empty corridor.

  The policeman spoke. “Is this the man, sir?”

  “Yes.”

  “Yes.”

  Jonathan and Aloha Shirt had spoken at the same time.

  “Right you are, then!” The big bobby took Jonathan by the arm with a grip like metal.

  “What the hell is going on?” Jonathan protested.

  “Our car is just outside, officer,” Aloha Shirt said. “Bring him along, won’t you?”

  “Come on now, sir.” The Officer spoke with condescending paternalism. “Let’s not have any trouble.”

  Bullet Head closed the distance between them with a menacing swagger. “Maybe I should take him. He wouldn’t give me no trouble.” He brought his porcine face close to Jonathan’s. “Would you, mate?”