Stephen Fry - Making History

by Stephen Fry

1996

This novel is in essence about briefcases, but it also explores the themes of high-energy physics and its impact on male contraception; love and the morality of joint car ownership in the late-20th century; and the consequences to world history of altering the water supply of a small Austrian well.

Little orange pills

Red fluid dripped into one of those spiralling, screw-like doo-dads they so love and I stared at it fascinated. Janes work was a dark mystery to me, which was the way she liked it, but there was no denying the pleasing prettiness of the paraphernalia it employed. Metres and metres of retort stands and capillaries and clear plastic tubing that went round and round, up and down, in and out, clockwise and anticlockwise, zigwise and zagwise. And centrifuges there were, sexy beyond anything. I had often watched her take a tiny stained dot of something bright and gloopy and fire a syringe gun with a delicate plip into little test-tubes arranged in a tight round drum like hungry nestlings. When all the glass mouths had been fed the drum would be set spinning. The chrome precision and low hum of it all were just bitching. So much more solidly built than a dishwasher or tumble-dryer. No vibration at all, just solid, smooth and scientific, like Jane herself. And on another bench I liked to look at coloured slides of gel with elegant marblings of another colour running down the middle, like something in a confectioners pantry or maybe like the wavy threads of blood you find in the yolk of an egg. Jane called her lab The Kitchen; the coming together of stainless steel and glass with coloured organic goo and bright liquids brought out the little boy in me, the helpful, heel-kicking son who liked to watch his mother beating the batter and rolling the dough.

Big business of course, genespotting. You pretend to the world that you are working on a grand scheme called the Human Genome Project, which is worthy and noble Nobel, in fact Good Science, Human Achievement, Frontiers of Knowledge, all of that, but really you are trying to find a new gene and copyright the pants out of it before anyone else stumbles across it too. There were dozens of commercial biotechnical companies in Cambridge alone. God knows what kind of bribery and badness they got up to. Not that Jane was corruptible of course. Never.

Sometimes I called her on the nature of her work.

What would you do if you discovered that there really was a gay gene? Or that black people have less verbal intelligence than white? Or that Asians are better at numbers than Caucasians? Or that Jews are congenitally mean? Or that women are dumber than men? Or men dumber than women? Or that religion is a genetic disposition? Or that this very gene determined criminal tendencies and that very gene determined Alzheimers? You know, the insurance ramifications, the ammo it would hand to the racists. All that?

She would say that she would cross that bridge when she came to it and that, besides, her work was in a different field. Anyway, if you, as a historian, discovered that Churchill was screwing the Queen all through the war, would that be your problem? You report the facts. Shared humanity has the job of interpreting them. Same with science. It wasnt Darwins problem that God didnt create Adam and Eve, it was the bishops problem. Dont blame the messenger, shed say calmly, grow up and look to yourself instead.

I flicked the side of the dripping tube with my fingernail. Donald, Janes research assistant, had scuffed awkwardly off to find her ten minutes earlier. I heard a door bang down the corridor and straightened up. She did not like things to be touched.

Well, bugger me. Its actually here. Its actually got the face to stand here and confront us.

Hi, baby

What have you touched? Show mother what youve fiddled with and fucked with, so we dont have to find out later.

Nothing! I havent touched anythingwell, I did just tap that tube there. The liquid was getting stuck so I helped it through. Thats all.

Jane stared at me in horror. Thats all? Thats all? She shrieked at the door, Donald! Donald! Get in here! Well have to start again. Ten weeks work down the fucking plughole. Christ.

Donald came hurrying through. What? What is it? Whats he done? Whats he done?

Jane, it was the gentlest tap, I swear.

The stupid dick only jogged the methyl orange reagent through the tartration pipe.

Bloody hell, Jane, I wailed, it cant have made that much difference surely?

Donald stared at the pipework. Oh Jesus, he said. No! No! He fell against the workbench and buried his face in his hands.

I breathed a sigh of relief and turned to face Jane. That was a bloody cruel trick, actually. If Donald werent such a pathetic liar Idve been really upset.

Janes eyebrows flew up. Oh, she said, that was a cruel trick, was it? I see. You would have been upset.

Look, I know what youre going to say.

Defacing my car, getting it towed from college for illegal parking. These were not cruel upsetting tricks, were they? These were the sweet reflexes of a loving, tortured soul. They were romantic games born in a beautiful, complex mind. Not childish, but mature. An ironic commentary on love and exchange. A most wonderful compliment. I should be grateful.

I just hate it when she gets like that. And Donald giggling as if he knew what she was on about.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I said, throwing up a hand. Cool.

Leave us, Donald, said Jane, settling herself on a stool. I need to have a conversation with this piece of work.

Donald, like me a ready flusher, backed dorkily from the room. Ho. Yes. Right, for sure. Illyes. K.

I waited for the flapping of the doors to subside before daring to look up into that mocking gaze.

Im sorry, I said.

The words fell with a thud into an achingly long silence.

It wasnt really a mocking gaze. I could have attached any property to it. I could have described it as a cool gaze, an ironical gaze. Or an appraising gaze. It was Janes gaze and to anyone else it might have appeared:

• a) friendly
• b) sweet
• c) amused
• d) provocative
• e) sexy
• f) forbidding
• g) sceptical
• h) admiring
• i) passionate
• j) whorish
• k) dull
• l) intellectual
• m) contemptuous
• n) embarrassed
• o) afraid
• p) insincere
• q) desperate
• r) bored
• s) contented
• t) hopeful
• u) enquiring
• v) steely
• w) angry
• v) expectant
• x) disappointed
• y) penetrating
  or
• z) relieved.

It was all of these things. I mean, it was a pair of human eyes, the mirror of the soul. Not the mirror of her soul, but of mine. I looked into them feeling like ten types of tit and so, naturally, a mocking gaze was what I got in return.

Suddenly, to my surprise, she smiled, leaned forward and stroked the back of my head.

Oh, Pup, she said. What am I going to do with you?

A word about the Pup business.

People call me Pup.

Its, like this.

Youre due to clock in at a big university wearing a jacket, tie and chinos, as bought by Mummy specially for the occasion. Your name is Michael. Youre younger than anyone else by two years and this is virtually the first time youve been away from home. What do you do? Your train journey from Winchester to Cambridge means you have to cross London to get from one station to the other. So, you hit the West End, returning with a serious haircut, way baggy trousers, a T-shirt saying Suck My Soul, a khaki parka and the name Puck. You reboard the next train to Cambridge reborn as a dude with attitude. It was more or less okay to say dude and with attitude eight years ago. Nowadays of course, only advertisers and journalists talk like that. What they say for real on the street today Ive less than no idea. I dropped out of that race early on after Id been lapped twice and told to get out of the fucking way.