Free Eating People is Wrong by Malcolm Bradbury

reception he had sought her out in the refectory, whither she retired, along with her fellow-students, for coffee and conversation, those two eighteenth-century graces,
now equally ersatz in the twentieth. He would pass back and forth behind her stool, remarking finally, as he came up close, ‘How do you do. You do not want me to sit here.’ ‘I
do,’ said Emma, who in this situation had little choice of words. ‘Come and sit down.’ Eborebelosa would rest his bottom precariously on an adjacent stool; she would introduce him
to the people present; conversation would continue and Eborebelosa would sit silently, nodding his black head in a somnolent fashion, until at last he would stir from his speculations to poke Emma
in the ribs and say, ‘You do not want me to talk with you.’ ‘Yes,’ she would say. ‘I do. What do you want to say?’ ‘You do not want to hear it,’
Eborebelosa would say, ‘and a silence is golden.’ And, eyeing each other warily, into silence they would both subside.
    IV
    ‘It’s an extremely difficult examination,’ Ian Merrick, MA, Lecturer in Philology, was saying to Treece when Emma Fielding entered Treece’s office for
her tutorial. ‘My word, is it?’ demanded Treece, concern bursting out on his face like spots. ‘Do you think I shall pass?’
    ‘No one ever passes first time,’ said Merrick, sitting on the desk. ‘The real problem is the practical part . . .’
    Treece noticed Emma standing there. ‘Do sit down, Miss Fielding,’ he said. ‘I shan’t be a minute.’
    ‘Yes,’ said Merrick; ‘there’s no problem about the theoretical stuff, of course; that’s simply a question of mugging up the notes. But when it comes to practical
performance, they’re very sticky.’
    ‘Oh, my goodness,’ said Treece.
    ‘Have you got a crash helmet?’ asked Merrick.
    ‘For a motorized bicycle? Oh, really old boy . . .’
    ‘Well, you have to show willing. I know it looks ridiculous. I always say they should make them look like bowler hats, and then a gentleman could wear them as well.’ Merrick, if he
was anything, was a gentleman. He was, it always seemed to Treece, a typical Cambridge product gone to seed; he was the bright young man of fifty, handsome, fair-haired, bursting with romantic
idealism, the sort that nice girls always loved, the sort that had gone off in droves to fight the First World War. There was something
passe
and Edwardian about Merrick. He was conceited,
cocksure, a public school and Cambridge Adonis fascinated by what he called ‘the classical way of life’. Treece privately described him as a Rupert Brooke without a Gallipoli, and this
was really almost fair; he seemed as if he had outstayed his lease on the earth, and now his romanticism was turning into a kind of Housman-like light cynicism, his open and frank assurance
curdling, his Grecian-god looks becoming almost grotesque with wrinkles. He reached into his waistcoat pocket and took out a gold cigarette case: ‘Gasper?’ he said. He would, naturally,
wear a waistcoat; cigarettes he would call, of course, ‘gaspers’. He smiled brilliantly at Emma and put his cigarette case before her; you felt that, like Bulldog Drummond, he would
say, ‘Turkish on this side; Virginias on that.’ ‘I’m sorry; I should have offered them to you first,’ was what he actually did say. ‘You must make your presence
felt, my dear.’
    ‘To revert to this driving test . . .’ said Treece.
    ‘Well, as I say, you mustn’t feel too disappointed if you don’t pass first time. They throw the book at you. They failed me for not giving proper signals. I was sticking my arm
out as far as the bloody thing would go. But no, they expect you to lean so damn far out of the car that the examiner has to hold on to your feet. They just don’t like passing
people.’
    ‘This is only a bicycle,’ said Treece.
    ‘It makes no odds, old boy,’ said Merrick. ‘They’re even worse with those things.